I had a chance last week to head up to Montreal and check out and help out at the Get on the Bus tour being sponsored by Microsoft.

The event started for us at 8:00am, which for me meant a 3:30am start from Kingston. I drove to Brockville and picked up David Myers and the two of us headed to Montreal. Thank goodness David picked up coffee for the ride. We arrived at the venue around 8:15 and were put to work guiding people. David and I had emailed the organizers and offered our assistance. As a leader of a user group in Kingston, I know it never hurts to have extra hands helping out.

I finished up guiding people and arrived into the theatre at around 9:20 and the Keynote was in full swing. One of the many technologies I perked up for was the Intune beta that is running right now.  For a small to medium sized business, it has great promise to help you manage your environment.

After the keynote, Office 2010 was covered off and we were presented some of the features of using Office 2010 and Sharepoint 2010 in the cloud. It definitely got me thinking on how I could use this in my environment at work; it will make life easier.

After this session Daniel Nerenberg came up and talked about App-V and Med-V. Both are virtualization technologies but very different. I will try to explain at a very high level. App-V virtualizes apps, Med-V virtualizes a Windows XP operating system which can be managed centrally.

After Daniel, Stephen Rose came up and talked about Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010 Beta 1. Stephen is a high energy speaker and you could really feel the energy in room  climb as he spoke. It was a great overview of the capabilities of the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit. It also showed that there are FREE tools available to help make your life easier.

After Stephen’s session, there was an Ask the Experts session. This is a photo from the session (the room was dark, so this was about the best shot I could get.)

It was well worth the time to drive up to Montreal and check out the tour. The sessions are great and if you haven’t seen Office 2010 or MDT 2010, be prepared to be awed. If the tour is coming to your neck of the woods, be sure to get out and check out the event.

Tools and information can be found, starting at the Microsoft Springboard Site,  www.microsoft.com/springboard