This is the first "official"post to the IIS Team On Tour blog which is the blog we are using here on IIS.net to tell the commmunity about all the places we are going to, in order to meet, educate and learn from our customers. The team members On Tour this time are program managers, Alexis Eller and Chris Adams, along with me, Eric Woersching, the IIS product manager.
As the title and pictures suggest, we have been in Italy. We arrived in Milan on Saturday to start the second leg of the Web Administration Summit roadshow. The weekend before the event was a good time. We all watched the US-Italy world cup match Saturday night in a restaurant with a bunch of a Italians. Alexis and I went out for a delicious Italian dinner on Sunday. Chris stayed in and worked on his 3 talks for the next day - Authentication, Enterprise Management Tips, DebugDiag. But come Monday, it was all business.
Here we have Alexis and Chris looking over some IIS7 demo issues before I kicked off the event in Milan. Organizing these events is a lot of work and its usually my job to do it. But I do get help from our partners in the European subsidiarys such as Tom Presotto shown below in the next picture.
But the planning and preparation is just the half of it. The real work and value of these events comes from the speakers we send. Chris is awesome to have because his animated presentation style and backcountry colloquialisms keep the audience very engaged. I just have to make sure not to overwork him. The guy just got married and he still agreed to do five weeks on the road in May and June.
At this event, Chris gave most of the talks. He carried the weight of the event and really made it a success. We found that the topics we chose this time were dead-on what these customers were needing. For example, very few members of the audience have a strong understanding of the different IIS6 authentication methods so this talk went over very well. These customers absolutely loved the Enterprise Management talk Chris gave as it explains about 10 tools and scripts they should be using to make their lives easier while managing IIS.
Chris and I stay in the auditorium after each session to take questions. After a year with the team, I am finally able to answer some of them. Chris is really their IIS guru though. I think every single attendee grabbed one of his cards to email additional questions.
Alexis was great to have on this trip as well because she has a lot of speaking experience and is a fun travel companion. Her IIS7 talk was well received and the brave audience asked a number of questions in English afterwards.
Watching the talks is a great learning experience for me. I know so much more just from sitting in. Chris watches as well so he can give speaking feedback and just be ready to answer questions. We can't always sit in because sometimes we are getting demos prepared or handling logistical matters such as making sure Chris gets a plate of food after he's answered questions through most of lunch.
Good demos are critical for this sort of thing. Above anything else, you don't want the audience to lose interest. Plus you have to show off the product. IIS7 is just too cool. We were blessed with having all of the demos work too. The picture above shows Alexis demo that explains how to migrate ASP.NET 2.0 apps from ISAPI mode to Integrated Mode in IIS7. In any case, when the demos are good and they work, everyone is happy and we go out to dinner in a good mood.
Here we are at Celanto eating with Italian IIS MVPs. Our host from MS Italy, Tom Presotto, chose this place. He knows the owner very well and she made sure we ate every bite of our 3 delicious courses. Each part of the meal offered a new dish we had never heard of before. I think Chris just wanted a steak though.
In keeping with Italian customs, we had to celebrate the occasion. In case you are wondering that is a glass of Grappa in my right hand : )
While its fun, this trip has not just been a party for us. Preparing and presenting is a lot of work and it seems like our minds are never really off of the business at hand. For example, we spent the meal discussing IIS and other MS server technologies. We learned from the MVPs what MS could do to engage the community in Italy. And we made some valuable friends like, Donatella shown below.
All in all, Italy was fantastic. The food, wine, culture and people are exceptional. The event could not have gone better for us or the customers. We are in very high spirits as we spend our first night in Switzerland getting ready to present tomorrow.
Stay tuned, blog returns Thursday to tell all about the differences between Italian and Swiss IIS users and to tell you all about Alexis's turn to present 3 / 5 talks (hehehe).
- Eric