I attended the Windows Vista Launch event in Ottawa last week and the Ottawa Community VIP event the night before.
The community event was a networking event and a good opportunity for the different IT groups in Ottawa to mix it up a little. There was a pool tournament pitting the IT Dev’s against the IT Pros. The OWSUG also presented a thank you award to Rick Claus for our appreciation for some of the things he does to help the group out.
The following day was the launch event.
A little story to start the day off. I was at the event around 7:30 helping Garth get the OWSUG booth setup in the Community Zone. I was playing on one of the Vista computers setup in the zone and one of the catering staff came along to ask about Vista. He commented that Vista was nice, but his Linux box at home was better and that he was going to write a display driver to get an Aero affect on his Linux. Right. My gut feeling was he was trying to grind my gears thinking I worked for Microsoft but it didn’t bother me none.Chances are this guy wasn’t going to be writing a driver for anything.
Anyway, from there it was off to the keynote speakers, that was about an hour and half. After that it was the breakout sessions which went until 5pm. There were 3 tracks in Ottawa, IT Pro, IT Dev and a Business and Government track. Naturally, I spent the day in the IT Pro track and I think for me the best session was the fourth session on security. It was fast but it covered DRM, Forefront and NAP in Windows Longhorn.
After the show was over, there was a draw for some swag, including 3 golf bags, 3 Xbox 360s and tickets to the Senators. I didn’t win nothing but all in all it was a good event.
Here are some video clips Rick Claus did up from the events
Launch 2007 – Ottawa Reg Walkthrough