With Neon

This is what my view is like at night, neontastic and this is the tame part of the Strip!

The Strip

Brian suggested we use the Sunday to walk the Strip (what did you think I meant?) so I could see what all the different themes of the hotels were as I have never been to LV before. We also went to find the Apple store as my friend Adrie would like me to buy him a Macbook Air.

This is what we found when we got there...

Yes I framed the picture purposely, shiny and sexy as Apples products are, I do feel they are overpriced and over hyped. Interestingly a lot of recent articles on IT websites are suggesting that Macs will begin to both be pushed towards the enterprise market as well as pulled in by end users demanding them in non traditional Mac areas (i.e. non media uses). One of the sessions I am attending this week is about using System Centre to support non MS environments and Macs were specifically mentioned in the brief so that should be interesting.

So Adrie, I haven't bought you a Air as it was closed! I have also found that my bank has blocked my cards as they think they are being used fraudulently - I have now pointed out I actually am in the US and please will they let me have my money!

In another Mall we managed to visit the M&Ms store. I thought this would be for people to buy them but chocolate is perhaps the smallest range of items available. Whilst there are many colours of M&Ms to buy including the new Indiana Jones tie in flavour;

the majority of the merchandise available is things like clothing, stationary and so on. I think there were 4 floors and the shop was very busy which is great to see. It was also the first time we saw genuinely happy people that days with big smiles, people really identify with Red and Yellow and buy in to the brand, not just the products. No one in Casinos seem to be smiling! Some more pics of the shop:

I got to the end of the escalator hence the blurred action shot ;-)

and its consequences - I'm guessing that should get me the Homer award for a bit!

and as the team are into cars:

According to the USA Today I got this morning (Mon) the M&Ms car won yesterday, so congratulations to them!

The M&Ms store was the first time I had physically seen Ethel M's products too. There was more to come but Brian will blog about that.

As we walked back up the Strip we went to the Fashion Show Mall as Brian needed a book to read, here we found an open Apple store which was packed and had free Wifi and another store which claimed to be future technologies. Here there had an Asus EEE 700 (which has been superseded by the 900, but still looks good)

and some glasses with screens and earplugs for big screen action on the move.

and after 6 hours of walking we were done!

It's morning already?

Well we're here and have all day to acclimatise (explore and try to stay awake) before we get stuck into the conference proper tomorrow. I'd better go find Mat at the free wifi point as he hasn't worked out how to blog from his phone yet :-)

Brian gets ID'd

Well it didn't even occur to me to mention it, until Brian said "I bet that is the first thing you blog" with a look of embarrassment.

That will teach him to get upgraded air travel and leave his team member behind in cattle ;-)

Anyhoo, after a laborious 21 hour journey we finally got to the hotel at 19.30 ish, ironically Terminal 5 was not a problem for us but the queue to get past immigration in LAX was about 2 hours with broken aircon and a mass of disgruntled visitors. Then the flight to LV was delayed almost 2 hrs, which in a way was lucky as we may have missed it due to the immigration wait. Silver linings and all that.

At the moment I am struggling with scale, I keep getting lost walking from my room to the lobby and it takes 10 minutes and 2 different elevators when I do the way right. The indoor mall painted to look like it is out doors is huge and a little bit freaky. When you bodyclock is telling you it is breakfast, you are eating an evening meal and are sat in an area that looks like it is mid afternoon it is not surprising we were getting confused. I would have laughed at Brian falling asleep whilst trying to eat if I wasn't doing the same myself!

Having said that the hotel is very nice if not cheesily opulent, my room is bigger than my whole flat back in Reading, although I can get an internet connection in my flat. I'm trying this up stood at the end of the lobby check in desk as that's where the only free Wifi is.

I'm starting to see how everything is geared to making money off the punters...as I said the free Wifi means standing in the lobby, paid for Wifi is available elsewhere where there are seats but is incredibly expensive. Tomorrow when MMS starts I'll be able to use the MS network. They gym costs $35 a day, room phone charges are expensive and whilst they provide an in room fax and personal number for your stay, you guessed it, you pay to receive them. Everything is geared to get you out of the room and spending.

Today I think the plan is to do some exploring, on the map the Apple store looks relatively close, but I think in reality its probably a 40 min walk as I said the scales are a bit beyond my comprehension at the moment.

So what is the tech angle on this post you say (apart from the blogging/Wifi), well once I found the free Wifi CTM worked perfectly and I was able to use my EN provided Avaya softphone to call my girlfriend with a local cost call from my desk back in ISW, its this type of service Mars IS should be providing to the rest of the business, I have probably saved $10-20 on that call, multiply that by our travelling users and all the days they are away and you can see how small individual savings can become big savings! As my grandmother always said, save the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. Lets hope we can continue this great work with the likes of the Web conferencing project and the innovations seen via the Sametime 7.5 POC.

So to get some media involved, here are pics from my window at 6am.

Look Ma no neon!

Brian's Agenda

Brians first post, harnessing the power of both cut AND paste

Monday, April 28
System Center Documentation: Content Innovations, Content as a Service, and Other New Architectures
Demonstration of all 5 tools available through the Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack

Tuesday, April 29
Opening Keynote
Maximizing the Return on your System Center Investment
Implementing Branch Distribution Points in Configuration Manager 2007
How do they do that?!? The most efficient, effective configuration management operations found in the field.
Delivering a Microsoft-based Virtual Desktop Infrastructure from a Green Datacenter

Wednesday April 30
Opening Keynote
Microsoft Application Virtualization (Formerly SoftGrid): v4.5 Features
Connectors for System Center: The Microsoft Interop Strategy
MDOP: Microsoft Enterprise Desktop Virtualization, formerly from Kidaro
Intel vPro systems integration with Configuration Manager 2007 SP1

Thursday, May 1
Opening Keynote
Microsoft Application Virtualization - Publishing Lab
[Waitlist] IY02 Introduction to Configuration Manager 2007
Device Management with System Center Configuration Manager 2007
Operations Manager 2007: Audit Collection Services
Application Virtualization Management: The Enterprise of the Future using System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2 and Microsoft SoftGrid

Friday, May 2
System Center and SoftGrid: Better Together
Mastering the Virtualization Domain -- Energize your Large Organization Using Microsoft Softgrid
MDOP: Asset Inventory Services (AIS) will count your software and your licenses

Mat's Agenda

First post blogged directly from MS OneNote

Monday, April 28

7:30 AM - 8:00 PM	CommNet Open Registration Open Alumni Lounge Open
10:30 AM - 5:45 PM	Hands-On Labs: Self-paced & Instructor-Led
3:00 PM - 5:45 PM	Breakout Sessions
4:30 PM - 5:45 PM	SU33 Conquering the Summit - A Freshman Orientation Titian 2201B
5:30 PM - 8:30 PM	Welcome Expo Reception

Tuesday, April 29

7:30 AM - 5:30 PM	Registration Open
7:30 AM - 6:00 PM	Alumni Lounge Open
7:30 AM - 8:00 PM	CommNet Open
7:30 AM - 8:30 AM	Breakfast
8:30 AM - 9:45 AM	Opening Keynote
10:15 AM - 11:30 AM	SY41 System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008: Introduction Murano 3201A
10:15 AM - 5:15 PM	Breakout Sessions & Instructor-Led Hands-On Labs
10:30 AM - 7:00 PM	Self-Paced Hands-On Labs
11:45 AM - 1:00 PM	SR33 Real-world System Center Success Including PC Power Management: Significantly Lower your PC and Server Management Costs Veronese 2405
12:30 PM - 4:00 PM	Expo Hall Open
1:00 PM - 2:15 PM	Attendee Lunch
2:15 PM - 3:30 PM	SR36 Get IT Faster: Systems Management Solutions for Deployment and Update Veronese 2405
4:00 PM - 5:15 PM	SV07 Virtualization 360 Veronese 2401B
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM	QA01 Breakout Q&A Session - Tuesday Meeting Point Area
5:30 PM - 8:00 PM	Birds of a Feather Sessions (BOF)

Wednesday, April 30

7:30 AM - 5:00 PM	Registration Open
7:30 AM - 8:00 PM	CommNet Open
7:30 AM - 8:30 AM	Breakfast
8:30 AM - 9:45 AM	Keynote
9:00 AM - 6:00 PM	Alumni Lounge Open
10:15 AM - 11:30 AM	SV01 Introduction to System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 Titian 2304
10:15 AM - 5:15 PM	Breakout Sessions, Instructor-Led Hands-On Labs, Self-Paced Hands-On Labs (proctored)
11:45 AM - 1:00 PM	SR38 Extending the Power of System Center Configuration Manager to Heterogeneous Environments Veronese 2405
12:30 PM - 4:00 PM	Expo Hall Open
1:00 PM - 2:15 PM	Attendee Lunch
2:15 PM - 3:30 PM	SY42 System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008: Deployment and Planning Murano 3201A
4:00 PM - 5:15 PM	SU32 Ask the Experts Panel Titian 2201B
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM	Expo Hall Open
5:15 PM - 7:00 PM	Self-Paced Hands-On Labs (unproctored)
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM	QA02 Breakout Q&A Session - Wednesday Meeting Point Area
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM	Ask-The-Experts (ATE)
5:30 PM - 8:00 PM	Birds of a Feather sessions (BOF)

Thursday, May 1

7:30 AM - 7:00 PM	CommNet Open
7:30 AM - 8:30 AM	Breakfast
7:30 AM - 9:00 PM	Registration Open
8:30 AM - 9:45 AM	Keynote
9:00 AM - 5:00 PM	Alumni Lounge Open
10:15 AM - 11:30 AM	SM21 Analyzing 12,000+ IT Environments: What are the Lessons Learned? Bellini 2105
10:15 AM - 5:15 PM	Breakout Sessions, Instructor-Led Hands-On Labs, Self-Paced Hands-On Labs (proctored)
11:45 AM - 1:00 PM	[Waitlist] IY02 Introduction to Configuration Manager 2007 Murano 3203 SR34 Managing a Heterogeneous Client Environment with Microsoft System Center Veronese 2405
12:30 PM - 2:30 PM	Expo Hall Open
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM	Attendee Lunch
2:30 PM - 3:45 PM	SY15 System Center Configuration Manager 2007: Software Updates for the Enterprise – A day in the life of the Update Administrator Bellini 2001B
4:00 PM - 5:15 PM	SC31 Building the Perfect Master Image Bellini 2001B
5:15 PM - 7:00 PM	Self-Paced Hands-On Labs (unproctored)
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM	QA03 Breakout Q&A Session - Thursday Meeting Point Area
5:30 PM - 6:30 PM	Ask The Experts (ATE)
7:00 PM - 10:00 PM	Closing Party

Friday, May 2

7:30 AM - 12:45 PM	Self-Paced Hands-On Labs (unproctored)
8:30 AM - 1:00 PM	CommNet Open
8:30 AM - 10:00 AM	Breakfast
8:30 AM - 12:00 PM	Registration Open
8:30 AM - 12:45 PM	Breakout Sessions & Hands-On Labs
8:30 AM - 9:45 AM	SE06 New Internet Savvy Windows Remote Management Capabilities Bellini 2105
9:00 AM - 1:00 PM	Alumni Lounge
10:00 AM - 11:15 AM	SI22 Going Big with System Center Configuration Manager 2007 Veronese 2401B
11:30 AM - 12:45 PM	SY43 System Center Mobile Device Manager 2008: Operations and Best Practices Murano 3201A
12:45 PM - 1:00 AM	Event Closes

Pasted from <https://www.mms-2008.com/MySchedule_Print.aspx>

Consequences of Cloud computing

Saw this on CIO.com the other day and it made me laugh...
http://www.cio.com/article/340013/Cloud_Apps_Third_Cube_From_the_Left