Into the home straight for developer launch event: Satellite trucks and film crews - it's like a film set

It's surprising just how much effort it takes to put on a launch event. But then, there are quite a few moving parts - some of them quite literaly: we'll have a truck with a huge satellite dish parked at the venue so that we can upstream the keynote live to a satellite, then spew it down the internet so that thousands of people can watch it live.

Then there's the matter of pre-recording all of those technical sessions. That's happening today, so we can release them onto the website on Friday at the same time as they're delivered live here. At the moment the place is filled with film crews and cameras.

And not forgetting we have 5 customers presenting with us during various slots, showing how they have developed solutions on Windows Vista and Microsoft Office. At least one of them is flying in for the recording today, and again on Friday for the live session.

Sanjay Parthasarathy, who's delivering the keynote, will be arriving from Seattle on Thursday - I've seen his presentation (or at least, as it stands today) and it looks great. And I'm working with Gordon Fraser, UK MD of Microsoft, who will kick off proceedings on Friday.

So the place is really buzzing, and the huge team of people who are putting this together are hyped up and excited....and looking forward to it! I may need a lie down afterwards though.

Comments

• Anonymous
  January 14, 2007
  WOW! Sounds like its shaping up to be an amazing event, really looking forward to it and really happy to be attending.

• Anonymous
  January 17, 2007
  ok, I've read the launch e-mail about 5 times, I've scoured the launch site for information about 5 times as well - just one little question - WHERE IS THE ONLINE LAUNCH EVENT???? You keep going on about joining you online and viewing the 'online presentations throughout the day', but where is the link? Where are the presentations? If the link is somewhere obvious then sorry for shouting...

• Anonymous
  January 17, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  January 17, 2007
  As per the other thread, I got confused over what day it was (not unusual).  I will check back on Friday and hopefully the links will appear!  8-)

• Anonymous
  January 18, 2007
  well, the first 5 minutes of each presentation look good, pity the download drops the connection after downloading only that much :(

• Anonymous
  January 19, 2007
  Ive watched various ones, and listedn to parts of the keynote over and over again. That said, it's now 17:34, and the default homepage is still saying "at 5.30pm......." i want to try and enter!! Am i missing something?!

• Anonymous
  January 19, 2007
  The comment has been removed