interesting points from the conference

I went to a Microsoft conference today. The objective of the conference was to introduce to IT professionals some of the new generation applications being released right now. Those include Windows Vista, MS Exchange 2007, and Office 2007 with Sharepoint Services. Overall the conference was great and the new programs have really nice features, which I will not go into here. Unfortunately I could only go to one track so I went to the MS Exchange track because it is most relevant for me. I really would have liked to go to the Vista track as well, but it was not meant to be...

A few interesting points from the conference.

The conference opened up with a dedication to Nimrod Segev. Nimrod Segev was one of the prime developers and a major contributor in the development of Windows Vista. Nimrod was killed in the Lebanon War II.

Danny Yamin, the CEO of Microsoft Israel gave an introductory speech to the conference. He started off the speech by comparing it to his bar mitzvah speech, and then went on to thank numerous people who were involved in putting together the days events, along with teams involved in the development of the applications.

Danny Yamin, in his speech, was very hesitant when he did this, but he wished everybody well for the new year. He was cautious and even said it might not be appropriate as it is not really our new year but because it is the new calendar year he wished everybody a successful year. He mentioned an anecdote that his daughter is studying in Bar Ilan University and was sitting in a lecture next to a pregnant woman. She asked the lady when she is due to give birth and the response was, "in Cheshvan (the Hebrew month rather than mentioning the English month)".

Efi (I don't remember his last name), one of the heads of the development teams on Exchange 2007, was showing some and explaining some of the new features. He mentioned a movie clip that had been going around virally by email. The clip was one in which somebody used the Windows beeps to play a Christmas song. He mentioned it and then showed us what he did using the new version - he used the Windows beeps to make a Hannuka song instead!

And last but not least, there were the typos throughout the slideshows. It is a bit surprising considering these were senior people in Microsoft Israel, yet they had spelling mistakes in their presentations. The funniest of the mistakes was at the end of the day. The presenter was describing a case installation his team did in the Prime Ministers Office with the new applications. He was going to concentrate on one specific feature called Unified Messaging. The title of the slideshow presentation said, "Unified Massaging". It was pretty funny (I do not know how many people noticed it, but it was funny for me) picturing this guy installing a massage system for the Prime Ministers Office.