Back in the Groove
Gack, an entire month on the calendar passed by since my last post. Here it is June, now.
When I last posted I was preparing to go on tour with other members of my team. On this stint, the team covered England, Switzerland, Netherlands, Portugal, Italy, Israel and France. I joined the team for the Netherlands and Italy stops. Overall the response to our visit was great. The response to the Beta 2 product was good but we still have work to do before we can ship the final version. We presented a lot of material which but couldn't cater to the areas of focus neede by each one, but I think we delivered at least some valuable content to everyone. In the Netherlands stop (Barneveld, at the new Microsoft Technology Center there) we presented to about 65 customers and helped five companies port projects to Whidbey Beta 2. In Italy, we presented to around 100 customers at the Microsoft Technology Center in Milan and also visited two companies in Genova. I'm glad that more of our team is getting out and working with directly customers, because there is really no better way for us to validate or see weaknesses in our product.
I had planned a few days of "fun time" in between and after stops. I walked around Amsterdam, took the train to Munich and spent a day there, but sadly I became very sick in Milan in reaction to some of the pollon there. I didn't really see much in Italy, and never made it to Paris, where I had hoped to get to before returning home. I tell you, no matter where you are from or what language you speak, there is certainly no place like home after being gone so long, and after being out of your native surroundings.
As promised I'll be getting some posts that talk about the content we covered. I'm also trying to get some folks from my team that don't blog to be guest bloggers here. Until then.....code on.
-AprilR
