I spent an enjoyable morning today in Edinburgh with a group of our Gold Partners in Scotland. Held at the splendid Scotsman Hotel (ex-home to the paper of the same name) it was expertly coordinated by our team north of the border. For me t was great to see a number of familiar faces - Robert and Scott from Exactive to name two.

What I like about working with our Scottish team and partners is the real community feel they have. No disrespect meant to our Partners in England or elsewhere but there is a real community feel from the Scots. I'm hoping to see more of them at WorldWide Partner Conference next year as I know they'll make their presence felt.

I gave a brief presentation on the technology landscape and the changes and opportunities I see on the road ahead this year. Notably Windows Server 2008, SQL Server Katmai, Office Communications Server, Visual Studio and Silverlight. I also talked about the consumerisation of IT and the fact that the new entrants from college in to the workplace are Gen Y - they've never known life without the Internet and this changes the demands they will put on employers. More on that soon. What did I take away from this session?

1. Vista adoption within partners is on the rise - driver and application compat issues seem to be improving
2. Partner Program Benefit adoption is still low, notably on resources like Gear Up. If you're a partner reading this, please go check it out now. It's a fantastic tool
3. Partners weren't generally aware of the Partner Dashboard where they can see their own use of benefits
4. Silverlight is more widely known and being explored than I'd thought. Driving the installed base is what we need to be doing
5. Virtualisation is a hot topic - we're making big strides here and need to help partners and customers aware. More on this from Matt

Overall a valuable morning of feedback and information sharing. Peter and James are upping the ante on the blog front with the Technology Trumpet and  Tartan Tech.