18 Weeks

18 weeks and 735 emails ago, Gianpaolo green-lighted my involvement on an Andrew Coates flight of fancy: What if we gave every paid delegate of TechEd a Netbook running Windows 7? Ideas are easy, implementation is hard.

By involvement read “Project Management”. And, oh what a wonderful ride it has been.

18 weeks of discussions, negotiations and thought. Wrapping your mind around all the side, non-technical implications has taken the last 18 weeks to contract signature.

People management, Finance policy, legal agreements, terms+conditions, understanding internal policies. The funny thing is that I’ve done all this before during the last 3 years of my Adobe sales management life. The internal Microsoft “stuff” was just my previous Adobe experience, with a different consequence.

Big thanks to Jorke Odolphi for being my sounding board. A calm shoulder to cry on. And thinking of things I didn’t anticipate. Thanks, Jorke!

What is new is the Project Management aspect. Technical Integration is going to be relatively easy: 2000+ high quality Netbooks with Windows 7 is a doddle. Jeff Alexander is taking point on the image build. David Haysom and David Connors are the logistics and install team leads.

Project Management not so much of a doddle. David Haysom will assist here. Right, David?

10 Weeks

The funnest part of this project begins now: one aspect is the logistics of getting 58 palettes of Netbooks loaded for the TechEd delegates.

The other major aspect is what happens with the Netbooks. Here, it’s the Microsoft community aspect: what can we do, as a Microsoft community?