I spent today at the ICC in Birmingham at the Microsoft launch event for Windows 2008 Server, VS2008 and SQL Server 2008 (albeit SQL2008 isn’t quite ready…)
The event was well organized, plenty of freebies/food/drinks etc… however the first session overran by 20 minutes which then knocked out everything for the rest of the day. Not surprising for Microsoft.
The technical content of the sessions were aimed more at the beginner level which wasn’t that enthraling considering it was similar to the content I’ve seen presented at previous MSDN events. I would have liked to see some more advanced sessions for those developers who were already familiar with VS2008/.NET 3.5, perhaps even a session from the ALT.NET community, but I suppose this really wasn’t the main focus of the day.
The close of the day meant I could trade in my pass for the obligatory free software package (the only reason I really went) but was disappointed to see Windows Server 2008 only had a years evaluation licence and was not a full blown copy like the software I received at the VS2005/WS2005 launch a few years ago.
I’m hoping to get to the upcoming MSDN roadshow which hopefully should have some better content in the session, the ASP.NET Extensions sessions certainly look interesting.