TechReady 13 Journal: T-0 Day 1 (We had the first “strange” Ranger session today)

We have officially started TechReady and one or five days is ticked off.

… every now and then you bump into a friendly face, as for example Bill Heys on the right

… John Jacob always drags his lab with him and is always busy.

We had the first Ranger session today. It was a very interactive panel discussion session to share the ideas for the next wave of projects and get the feedback from the field. To all External Rangers, “do not despair”, the Rangers Talk session on August 4th will be a repeat of the topic.

What made it strange was that Bijan had an attendee arrested for asking too many questions, was nearly arrested by security himself and was left with a room filled with computer 933|<s too afraid to ask any more questions. [Un]fortunately the video I took requires some heavy editing and cannot be shared yet. It was all fun and the poor arrestee was rewarded with one of the new Visual Studio ALM Rangers shirts.

The “strange”, but funny event highlighted the importance of attendees of Ranger sessions to be INTERACTIVE and CANDID! Jeff and Fred, thank you for being excellent security officials … had I not been warned, I too would have been shell shocked

Questions of the day, whereby I took the liberty to add some answers in italic.

• What are the Rangers all about?
  • See Rangers 5 Year Report for an overview.
• How to I volunteer to join the Rangers?
  • If (you are working for Microsoft) join the vstser (alias) list;
    else
    If (you are a Visual Studio ALM Ranger) contact me ;
    else get a Visual Studio ALM Ranger to submit a recommendation;
• Why are some of the sessions called Breakout sessions?
• More importantly, where is the Chalk in the Chalk Talk sessions?
• Why do stationary shop (store) staff look at you with a really puzzled face when you ask for a blackboard and some chalk?

See you at the following [Ranger|Ranger delivered] sessions tomorrow:

• DEV343 - Rangers: Branching for Scrum and more Agile Development
• DEV327 - Implementing Lean Software Delivery with Kanban and Team Foundation Server 2010