MVP Summit Day 1

Today was very, very, wet. Turns out that spending a bunch of time in a room with no windows has its advantages. Some great content though, and a chance to catch up with some splendid folks I've not seen for a while.

Heading to Seattle

Turns out that if you point a smartphone out of the window as you land you do get a picture.

Flew out to Seattle today. 

Via Amsterdam and New York. 

The circuitous route was the result of searching for the cheapest tickets. And I did get to see the inside of JFK airport. Turns out it looks like every other airport. I wasn't able to focus much on the decor though, as I was rushing to get through Homeland Security before boarding my ongoing flight, which left around an hour or so after I arrived.

However, everything when smoothly. Although when takeoff was delayed "Because we are loading some baggage that arrived late." I had an awful vision of my big awful suitcase being the one that was holding everyone up.

But we got to Seattle early and I'm now writing blog posts at "don't know o'clock" in the morning. And really looking forward to the next few days. 

Philadelphia Freedom

Flew back today from “The Best MVP Summit Ever”™. My flight was via Philadelphia, where they had a rather nice sunset (see above). I took the picture with my Lumia 1020 (actually I took 5 and then merged them together to get the rather pleasing result).  I think I’ll print out a really large version of this.

Another surreal favourite moment, hearing Elton John’s “Philadelphia Freedom” being played through the public address system while I was there. Awesome.

A Trip to the Space Needle

I made it to the top of the Space Needle ten minutes before sunset. It had been clear and bright all day (something of a rarity for Seattle) and I thought I might be able to grab some good pictures.

I was right.

I was there for quite a while taking pictures. It was very cold out on the observation deck, but there was a nice warm cafe where I could grab a coffee and wait until I could feel my fingers again.

This was a very fitting end to what has been one of the best MVP Summits I’ve ever attended. The depth of the content, the quality of the engagement and the scale of the developments coming down the tracks were all mightily impressive. I’m never quite sure just what I’ve done to deserve to get an inside track like this, but I’m very pleased that I have. Thanks to all at Microsoft for setting it all up.

Secret Agent Watch Secrets at the MVP Summit

Actually there are no secrets here really. It was rather nice to go to a session and hear the presenter say “You can blog all you want about this.”. So I am doing. Chris Walker, Founder of Secret Labs had come along to tell us about the new Secret Agent watch that his company launched on Kickstarter a while back. He’d brought along some hardware samples and the latest version of the software that lets you use the accelerometer in the device via a funky new emulator. I had a play with this and one of the demos shows how to make a big font watch face.

The code is very simple, each of the letters is a gif image that is just drawn on the watch screen.

If you fancy having a play with this you can download the software from the Agent Watches web site.Above you can see the emulator.The hardware looks very nice. Two processors, one a low power device, ground breaking power monitoring and new display technology. Great stuff.

This is the watch.

This is the hardware inside, with the display.

Chris was telling us that there have been some delays on the hardware (this is nothing particularly surprising when you are making stuff) but that it should be available after Christmas.

MVP Summit Day 2–Beer and Bicycles

Today was the time for more and more stuff. But then it was time for another in the series of World Famous MVP Summit pub crawls. Or in this case, pedal

This is the only bicycle with a bar that I’ve ever seen, let alone been on. The principles is simple enough..

It is a bicycle powered by MVPs. Powered by beer. We pedalled down the road to bar number one,

The first bar was great, although the duck shooting game was obviously broken as I was comprehensively beaten when we were playing it. /when moving on we switched to “stagger power” and went off to the next one.

The streets are very pretty round here

The second bar had a great name, amazing artwork inside (since it was for sale I’m not posting pictures)..

..and superb live music. And pizza. And beer.

And pretzels.

It was a great night. Thanks to Desiree and Sharon for setting up everything and making it such a wonderful occasion.

MVP Summit Day 1

When you go to the MVP Summit they essentially open up your head and pour a ton of stuff into it. Unfortunately I’m not in a position to say what the stuff was. I can’t tell you how many Non-Disclosure screens we saw. Actually, that’s not because the number is a secret, it is because I lost count. All I can write about the Windows Phone sessions is “Blimey, this all looks very nice”.

After our “reverse brain dump” we headed outside for a walk around. It has been cold, damp and raining since I got here, so of course I feel right at home.

Flying with Bad User Interfaces

So today I was lucky enough to get to fly out to Seattle for the MVP Summit. That’s twice in one year. Lovely. We took off and before long I was playing with the in-flight entertainment. As you do. The picture quality and sound were excellent. The range of movies and TV shows as wide. But the user interface was horrible.

Take the screen above. The user interface is touch driven, so you are reaching out with your fat fingers on the end of your wobbly arm to hit one of the two buttons, which do fairly critical things. Get the wrong button and you will be upset. So why are the buttons so close together, so small, and why is the text on them so hard to read?

And then there’s this:

This is how you pick the films. The screen is pretty enough but it is filled up with useless information. The titles of the films themselves are impossible to discern on the artwork and the scroll targets are tiny tiny.  If they had thought about it they could have put the name of every film, in text, on one screen and saved us the hassle of grinding through the pages.

Add to this a very unresponsive and inaccurate input and you have a recipe for an unhappy user. And the annoying thing for me is that the service, once you started watching, was very good indeed. It was just that someone really didn’t think how the user interface was supposed to work.

Flying with Dutchmen

Today it was time to pack up and head home from Seattle. I was on the same flight to Amsterdam as loads of other MVP delegates. Most of whom were from Holland. And had seen my memorable Kinect session last year at Tech Days Geek Night. And were quite happy to remind me of it again. I’m doing some sessions at Tech Days this year too. Some with gadgets. Now might be a good time to be very afraid. Or at least test the demos a bit….

MVP Summit Party

Another day, another party with free food and drink. Sometimes I love my life. Anyhoo, today was the day of the MVP Summit party. It was held at CenturyLink Field, home of the Seattle Seahawks and Seattle Sounders FC.

This is the view from the stadium steps.

This is the view from the Player’s Loft, where we met up with some Windows Phone team members and talked shop for a while.

The view of the pitch. They had a soccer goal at one end and American Football goalposts at the other end, reflecting the dual use of the stadium.

Oooh. Fireworks.

Walking the pitch

The hallowed (astro) turf.

I may be wrong, but I don’t think that this is an MVP doing karaoke.

Thanks to the MVP Summit folks for a great night out.

Windows Phone MVP Pub Crawl

Fancy a drink?

Tonight Desiree took the Windows Phone MVPs out for a pub crawl. And it was superb. We went to three places in all, starting at the Elysian Brewery Company where we got started with some great food and drink.

After that we headed to Tavern Law, which had the most amazing “Speakeasy” vibe and more great food.

Finally it was on to Unicorn for more drinks, and, joy of joys, pinball and video game action.

Nothing improves a bar like a moose head. Or two.

Pinball Wizardry

Desiree’s sister, who came along as part of her birthday celebrations (and was rewarded with a Geek Chorus singing “Happy Birthday”), told me that Desiree has got venues planned for the next 5 MVP pub crawls. I’m sure she has, and I hope I get to go to some of them too. Splendid stuff.

Early Start with Donuts

Not a bad sky for an early morning. Almost worth getting up for..

Microsoft campus looking good

“An early start is fine as long as there are donuts.”

Travel Tips from Rob

As a much travelled person I feel that now I can reveal a couple of my top travel tips.

Don’t wear brand new clothes to travel

I had this theory that my nice new deep indigo jeans would be both comfortable and stylish and send a message of quiet sophistication to the others at the summit. They sent a message alright, but not the one I wanted. I’d forgotten that some brand new clothes are apt to shed their colours on the wearer. When I washed my hands on the plane I noticed that my fingers had acquired a grimy tinge that was quite hard to remove. At each handshake with people I subsequently met I noticed that they were recoiling slightly as they discovered that I seemed to be suffering from what can only be described as “Blue Hand Disease”. Oh well.

Make sure you know what the switches in your hotel room do

My hotel room is splendid. Everything I need, comfortable bed and nice and quiet once I’d turned off the enormous fan heater in the corner. The bathroom is interesting though. It has two light switches. One makes a light come on. The other turns on a massively powerful heating lamp and also starts the bathroom extractor fan which makes a most impressive roar. When you are wandering around in a jet-lagged stupor at three in the morning it is best that you know which is which. Otherwise you will flick a switch and then immediately think you are in the middle of an alien abduction, which is quite invigorating in its own way, but does make it hard to get back to sleep again.

Out and about in Seattle

Yes, they have painted the trees blue. No. I have no idea why…

After a sumptuous breakfast (thank you Siler Cloud Inn) I headed for the bus station and a ride into Seattle. The busses to Seattle travel through these amazing tunnels underneath the middle of the city and it has been my ambition to get some pictures of the drive through them. So I sat carefully at the front and took a whole bunch of blurred, unusable shots. Oh well. At least I have an excuse to try again some time.

The weather was a bit grey, but I managed to make my way to Pike Place market without getting rained on too much, which was nice. I bought a bunch of things at the comic book store there, had a browse around the craft stalls and generally had a really great time.

Nice Lights

Anyone for fish?

Flowers

After spending a good long time in Barnes and Noble looking at stuff and trying very hard not to buy anything, and then dropping in to the Japanese store I caught the bus back to Bellevue and wrote some exam questions. Well, a chap can’t have too much fun in one day.

After I’d written the questions I headed over to the MVP showcase, where 20 MVPs had been selected to show off what they have been up to. Lots of good stuff and a chance to meet up with folks I’ve not seen in ages. And there was beer.

I managed to stay up to 8:30 tonight, which I think is something of an achievement.

Flying Out to a Surface Pro

There is nothing quite like getting up at 3:30 am to catch a 6:20 am flight. Nothing. Still, the good news is that I am flying out to Seattle, one of my favourite places in all the world (another one is Cottingham, which is just as well really). First stop on the itinerary was Amsterdam, where I met up with Tom, Boss, Joost and a whole bunch of other MVPs who were all taking the same flight over to America. I wondered aloud if Microsoft actually had a rule about the maximum number of MVPs allowed to fly on one plane. If they do, we must have been close to the limit. The best bit of the flight for me was when the entertainment system on the plane rebooted, filling every video screen with a Linux penguin and boot sequence. The roar from the assembled passengers was quite impressive.

One of the benefits of being crammed into a window seat with no legroom is that you do get to take pictures of the view outside. The lady at the gate was very sorry that she couldn’t find me a seat with a bit more space. But I doubt she was as sorry as I was. Anyhoo, the flight was smooth and speedy and I got to watch some movies, which was nice.

This is a slightly more interesting view, once we had arrived. Richard and Steve from Black Marble were kind enough to give me a lift to the hotel (thanks guys). We went via a shopping mall, so we could dive head first into the American Experience as quickly as possible. Then it was back to the hotel. I unpacked then headed out for a walk.

The rain over here is proper rain. And they seem to have an inexhaustible supply of it. I went out for a walk in the stuff and managed to stay mostly dry. Note to self, buy an umbrella at some point.

The Microsoft Store in the Bellevue Mall was packed. I actually got to handle a Surface Pro, which was very interesting. Having completely convinced myself that I had no need of such a device I have discovered, having handled one, that I actually want one rather a lot. I was expecting something much heavier and thicker than the Surface RT, but it is actually rather svelte and doesn’t feel too bulky for a tablet to me. The screen is to die for (although perhaps not literally) and the whole thing works very well.

There were only two issues for me. Well three if you count the fact I really shouldn’t get one. Firstly they only had the smaller 64G devices in stock, and secondly the pen, while it works well and seems very responsive, feels cheap and flimsy to me. Having seen the lovely engineering that has gone into the Surface and the Touch Keyboard I was expecting the pen to be of a similar quality. Unfortunately it is more Bic Biro than Mont Blanc, which rather lets the side down.

The helpful girl in the Microsoft Store said they might be getting some of the larger Surface Pro devices in early next week. So I’ve got a day or so to talk myself into, or out of, buying one.

Then it was time for a quick McDonalds meal. I always have a Big Mac wherever I go, just to make sure that they taste the same worldwide. They do. After that I headed home and was in bed for 6:00 pm. My plan is 6 hours sleep, wake up, do some work, four more hours sleep and then off to Seattle for a wander round. On the way back to the hotel I, of course, took some more pictures.

The food in Maggiano’s is lovely.

I’ve always liked the idea of putting light in trees.

Hmmm. Imax. I wonder what’s on?

Packing for Seattle

Well, it’s that time of year again. Microsoft very kindly invite us out MVPs to Redmond for a chat, and I’m flying out tomorrow. So it is the usual two hours choosing and packing the gadgets and power supplies and around 90 seconds packing clothes and we’ll be all set to go. Really looking forward to meeting up with some folks I’ve not seen for a while.

Windows Phone 7 Fun

Today we found out some more stuff about what’s coming for Windows Phone in the future. I reckon the only way to improve it would be to give away a free pie with each phone. Great stuff.

Steve Balmer Speaks

Say what you like about Steve Balmer, head honcho at Microsoft, but he can work an audience. We saw him in action today at the summit keynote. At the end of it I was left feeling that at the moment Microsoft doesn’t have all the answers, but it is certainly asking all the right questions.

In the evening we headed out to Jillian’s Billiards for some fun and games. The weather was dark and wet, something of a Seattle speciality it would seem. I got a bit carried away taking pictures of the traffic through the bus windows.

I think I was lucky to get this shot, which has the Space Needle in it – perhaps with a bit more post-processing I can actually make it visible….

We had a great time, I even managed to get a go at table tennis. And no, I didn’t fall off the table. On the way out to the taxi we were talking about business cards for some reason and I said that I thought it would be really cool to be able to whip out a playing card and say “The card you chose was the three of clubs” when someone gave me their business card. Well, I thought it was mildly amusing. Then Jeff produced this:

I think he had the other 51 cards with him as well.

Kudos to the Microsoft folks for a giving us such an interesting day and responding so constructively to the stuff that we said. Special shout out to Stephanie who is one of those organisers around whom the right things just seem to happen as though by magic.  Thanks for making everything work so well.

Return of the Midnight Coder

I’ve got this cunning plan for my trip to Seattle to avoid the dreaded jet-lag. The idea is to go to bed early each night and then get up around 2:00 am and spend a few hours awake doing stuff (which usually means writing some software). I then go back to bed around 4:30 and get a couple of hours more sleep before rising for the day. This should mean that I don’t actually adjust to local time, so when I go home I shouldn’t suffer too much.

Unfortunately this plan was somewhat sabotaged tonight when I ended up out and about until 10:30pm…. But it was a good night though.

This is what you see in the hotel lobby if you look straight up.

Seattle Shopping

We started the day with breakfast at Lowell's. If you ever go to Seattle you should just go there. Have anything, it is all great.

Good view of the bay too. I thought I’d take some pictures of signs.

I don’t think the sisters look that happy…