Worldwide Partner Conference 2009

This year's Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference (#WPC09) took place in New Orleans. It was the first time I had been back to New Orleans since hurricane Katrina, so I excited to see how the city is doing. However, we ended up being so busy at the conference that I didn't get a chance to get any further than the French quarter, so I really didn't see much at all.


- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer during a keynote (photo: http://www.momentsindigital.com/)

The hottest topics at the show were SharPoint 2010, bing and Windows 7. Of course, since Metalogix is the leader in SharePoint and Exchange productivity solutions, I was particularly interested in the SharePoint 2010 sneak peak session that Arpan Shah. I had heard that SharePoint 2010 would support different browsers, but it was interesting to see that all of the demos were done with Firefox.



I'm really excited about the developer tools that are coming. Check out the SharePoint 2010 developer sneak peak video. The visual web part editor looks great. As soon as I got back to the office I started setting up a Hyper-V image to run the technical preview build of 2010. I haven't installed the dev tools yet, but the install went smooth and I'm looking forward to diving in.

In terms of the success of the show, I sent out a tweet that started "recession, what recession?" Attendance was strong and we had more attention this year than in the past. The only sign of cutbacks were the feeling (maybe it was just me) that the air conditioning was noticeably less than in previous years and they actually ran out of attendee bags. I don't remember that ever happening before. In fact, exhibitors usually have to wade through them to get out on the last day.

Of course, since I hadn't been to New Orleans since 2004, I also got to catch up with some old friends from my Microsoft days and even one from junior high.


- ran into an old friend. Bruce from http://www.momentsindigital.com/

YouTube sensation Playing for Change killed with Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" at the closing party.


- Playing for Change playing the attendee party (photo: http://www.momentsindigital.com/)


- New Orleans still has its shine (photo: http://www.momentsindigital.com/)