We had done lots of advertising and planning by 6th Evening for the Windows 7 Day at Bdotnet UG meet. However, we did not have any presentation intact till then. We decided to meet up by 9.00 AM at Vic’s office to work on the presentation and to sequence the session. Guess what, I was late to his office and I reached his office around 12.00 noon. We started creating the presentation content for the session and it all started with the title slider…Windows 7 “On the Rocks”. Our whole idea of doing this session was to give a “Wow” experience to all the attendees. We wanted to cover some not-so-common features, but which can play a major role in the day-day lives of End user, Administrator and a Developer. With all this is mind, we gave a broader picture of the session as “Transitional Approach of Windows from “providing UI to UX” and “w.r.t easing the developing and the deploying challenges”. Also, we wanted to explain the improvements which were identified, and how is it being addressed in this version of Windows. Time just passed, discussing on the session; it was 3.30 PM and we headed to EGL office. We were the first ones to reach the office and we wondered if we are goanna’ have few more guys joining it… Slowly attendees started walking in and we had 30 in the session. We gave a delayed start for session by 15 mins and Vic started the proceedings explaining the journey of Windows from 1.01 till 7.
I pitched in and started addressing the Myths of UAC. Trust me; UAC is not all that bad. It’s just as giving a shoes to someone who is used to walk barefooted. I showcased some statistical data which proved that, UAC has helped lives for many of the machines and it has improved the way applications are made and built. Then we went thorough various UAC annoying points in Vista like Duplicated prompts, Need for optimized controls and messages etc. Then, I explained on the enhancements of UAC in Windows 7 and how better it reaches out to all the concerns and provides effective end user Experience.
Just went about addressing the Application lifecycle experience from a Developer/ IT Pro and an end user viewpoint & identified ways with which these issues can be tackled with effective use of Standard User developer principles for Windows 7. Addressing the challenges in Application Installations on Vista, I gave details on the enhancements which are made to Windows Installer 5.0 and Application Patching methodologies in Win 7. Also, Emphasized on Multi-Package Installer and per-user application deployment scenarios.., where there is minimal or no UAC while deployment and while using the application.
This was too much of serious talking and that’s when Vic came in with speaking on some less talked, lesser known natively supported features of Windows 7 like proximity, light sensitivity, accelerometer, global positioning along with cool demos. The examples given for this cause like fuel saving, ATM Display etc were just thought provoking. You can check more on this at Vic’s blog. It was great to have Vic presenting with me. I had never seen him speak in a session before and it was just awesome to see him preach. I now understand how an Evangelist does his job. It was a good learning session for an aspiring evangelist like me.
Finally, there was a Q/A slide… Hey, wait a min. We did not let the attendees ask questions. Instead, we asked questions to them. We gave sample scenarios and asked them, how they could have done it in Legacy OS VISTA/XP. This is where we showcased Windows 7 UX capabilities’.
We almost spoke for 3 hours. Windows 7 had so much of features; we just didn’t have time to speak about it. Indeed, we gave a lot of homework as well. It was great to see, attendees receiving our session very well and feedbacks of 9 in almost all the forms. Also, we had 27 till the last moment even when there was No AC working, and not enough seats.
We gave a copy of Windows 7(beta) to all the attendees and had a good gag with everyone after the session.
Did you miss the Microsoft Teched last year? Hold a min., You haven’t missed it really! The community folks from Bangalore User Groups are arranging a 2 day Event, which would comprise of various sessions covering Agile Product Management, WCF 4.0 and WF 4.0, oData for Open Web, SharePoint 2010, ASP.NET, Windows Azure, SQL Server Tips and Tricks, ADO.NET, SQL Scalability, Active Directory Migration and Windows7 Lite Touch Installation.
Community Conference is a technology event for IT professionals and developers conducted by the User Groups in Bangalore. It’s the forum to learn, connect, explore, and evolve.
Attend deep technology sessions for developers and IT professionals, as some of the best-known names come to your city to share their insights in topics ranging from .Net, Visual studio, Silverlight, to Windows and SQL Server.
