VSLive! has kicked off in Sydney today. The first day of VSLive is also the Business Launch day. Talk about overloading the event calendar! Our special guest keynote speaker was David Treadwell, Corporate Vice President, .NET Developer Platform, Developer Division (I notice that he has a blog, but hasnt updated for a while, but I am sure his trip to Australia will see him post a story or too, just like Rob Caron has done).
On Monday evening, to add to the noise of activities, we had the Sydney Community Launch, which brought together members of tje Sydney Deep .NET User Group, Sydney .NET Users Group, Sydney SQL Server User Group, Sydney Biztalk User Group and the Sydney Visual FOXPRO User Group. It was a big gathering indeed! But don't talk my word for it, see what Deepak had to say. On a sad note, there was no Karaoke and we didn't have any worthy winners of the Tablet Guy.
The tour now moves onto Canberra later this week. Will the Tablet Guy find a home in Canberra????
[ Currently Playing : Don't U Eva - Sarah Blasko - Triple J Hottest 100 Volume 12 Disc 2 (04:18) ]
Des Walsh, a business coach and blogging evangelist, pinged me about the upcoming World Swim for Malaria, which has been initiated by an Aussie based in London.
The equivalent of seven jumbo jets full of children die every day from the highly preventable disease, malaria (3,000 children every day) The single most effective way of preventing malaria is to have people in affected areas sleep under a mosquito net which can be bought for US$5 So a young Australian, Rob Mather, and a team of supporters and sponsors and swimmers are doing a World Swim for Malaria on Dec 3, 2005 - only one week away - to get a million people swimming to raise money to buy millions of mosquito nets. And 100% of the money is to be used for that.
The equivalent of seven jumbo jets full of children die every day from the highly preventable disease, malaria (3,000 children every day)
The single most effective way of preventing malaria is to have people in affected areas sleep under a mosquito net which can be bought for US$5
So a young Australian, Rob Mather, and a team of supporters and sponsors and swimmers are doing a World Swim for Malaria on Dec 3, 2005 - only one week away - to get a million people swimming to raise money to buy millions of mosquito nets. And 100% of the money is to be used for that.
A worthy cause indeed. Let's use the net to get nets!
Looking at the website - Total signed-up 253,385 as at 28 Nov 2005 and there are 1000's of Aussie signed up so far.
Oh, and the World Swim for Malaria website is running ASP.NET - so that's cool too!
[ Currently Playing : Last Christmas - Various Artists - Santa's Top 20 (03:24) ]
In the lift at the office today, I bumped into Angus Logan.
It's true - he works at Microsoft. He showed me his 'blue badge'.
Time to move from http://msmvps.com/anguslogan/
Welcome to Sydney dude!
[ Currently Playing : Felis Navidad - Jose Feliciano - So Fresh - Songs for Christmas Disc 2 (03:04) ]
I've returned home, following the Ready Launch in Melbourne.
The Melbourne Community Launch saw the who's who of the local sql server & dev community. For some reason the karaoke wasn't as popular as it was in Adelaide. Maybe the Melbourne folks are a bit shy. However, we did see some creative fellows put together a video which featured the Channel 9 Guy and the MSDN Webcast dude. These wacky developers are indeed worthy winners of the Tablet Guy.
The Business Launch was hectic.I saw many familiar faces, and as in Adelaide I found myself answering a lot of the same questions:
We ended our stay in Melbourne with a trip to Vlado's, which is a Melbourne tradition.
That's it for this week. Next week we head out to Sydney & Canberra. David Lemphers has been reviewing how to make the Community Launches even better. Let's make sure each city ROCKS!!!!!
[ Currently Playing : Radio Sweetheart - Elvis Costello - My Aim Is True (02:29) ]
The last few days have seen the Ready Tour kick off in Adelaide.
The community launch saw the local luminaries join in our "Karaoke madness", with a number of folks confirming that IT *is* the industry for them.
At the Business launch, I had lots of questions from the attendees, but it really boiled down to these 3 (follow the links for the answers)
We then capped off the Adelaide experience with a trip to Gauchos.
The tour moves on and we are now heading down to Melbourne . Tonight, we have the community launch and tomorrow the business launch, and Vlado's beckons.
[ Currently Playing : Whatsername - Green Day - American Idiot (04:12) ]
I'm sitting in the Adelaide office, about to head out to the the community launch here, and I've been asked by folks what this is all about.
Well, it's pretty simple - we have a fantastic collection of user groups around the country, and we want to use this time to acknowledge the folks who have support us, thank them, and give them back some love and attention. That's it. No hidden agenda. No secret conspiracy.
We have all the speakers attending and it is a chance for the community to meet the team from Microsoft.
Hope to see you at one of our events over the coming weeks.
[ Currently Playing : 105 - Smash Mouth - Get the Picture? (03:32) ]
The Tablet Guy has come to town and he is joining me on the Ready Tour Community Launches
I have one to give to the best Geek Rocker in each city, so see you there!
[ Currently Playing : Jingle Bells/Jingle Bell Rock - Hollyridge Strings - Ultra-Lounge Christmas Cocktails (05:15) ]