Fear of Flying

This last Friday was the E-learning Expo at Microsoft. It was an internal expo held to evangelize new technologies and ideas among Microsoft Employees engaged driving in E-learning through their jobs.

So I was there along with Randy Choco from the Microsoft Webcasts team to hear what folks where talking about. Matter of fact we were both in the talk by Robert Scoble on blogging and wikis.

I’ve learned some interesting things in Robert Scoble’s talk. The Scobleizer spoke of where Microsoft’s Channel 9 name came from. Hope I got this right. Apparently one of the founder has a fear of flying, and would never fly anywhere to see his customers. It got to the point where his boss told him he had to travel or else. So he’s onboard this plane, and the pilot sees that he’s afraid. So the pilot tells him that when you're flying in the US, there's an onboard radio you can listen to, and when you put it on Channel 9, you can listen to what the pilots are talking about. You're listening to what they're talking about and learn tat that they’re not afraid, so why should you be? Hence the Channel 9 name was born. It’s a great story. I always like hearing what Robert is going to talk about next on his blog.

The reason I bring it up here, is because I’m gonna tell you not to be afraid of Microsoft tools and technologies. MSDN Webcasts is hear to help. Everyday we broadcast 3-4 webcasts live on on the coolest things you can do with Visual Studio.NET and other key developer tools and technologies from Microsoft. Everyday we bring in experts from inside and outside of Microsoft and they’re gonna talk to you about what’s happening with Microsoft tools and technologies.

As you know we’ve got the a huge week around ASP.NET Webcasts taking place from October 18 - 29, 2004 and it’s designed to help you learn all about web development and ASP.NET. In the same fashion we’ve got 64 bit Windows Server coming up in November and Yukon Technical preview week in the first week of December.

January is going to be wicked month, as we’re planning on bringing in IBM and Sun Microsoft Systems to talk about Interoperability. You look skeptical. Don’t be. I’m serious about this. I know how important it is to make everything work in a IT shop. It’s a challenge, and we’re going to co present with IBM and Sun to give you some best practices and highlight solutions that have helped our customers to find their very own developer nirvana.

So don’t be afraid, but rather tune in everyday and listen to the experts presenting on MSDN Webcasts. We’re here to help.

Regards,

George Pulikkathara, MSDN Webcasts