Fighting the second law of thermodynamics

T-13 days

An understanding of physics, I always maintain, is a useful foundation for living.  It helps to understand why launching a product can feel like an uphill struggle.  The reason is that the entropy always increases.  Put another way, the natural order of things is to descend into ever greater degrees of chaos.  If you want to replace chaos with order, it takes a great deal of energy.  There's no point fighting that - its just the way the universe works.

This helps to explain why my email inbox has quadrupled during launch and why getting anything done seems to take unbelievable amounts of energy.  The reason is that we are vastly reducing the entropy of the universe by launching what is the most incredibly integrated and ordered set of products in a decade so naturally, it takes a lot of energy.

We are doing very well though with everything coming together.  I know a lot of people are wanting the code now to play with - trial should be available for download soon.  In the meantime, it is available on MSDN now if you are a subscriber.  SharePoint Server 2007 is available for trial to everyone though here:

Links to download the RTW versions:

Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 x86 English Evaluation

Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

I am back in the UK today after IT forum.  Here are some of the heros of IT forum who I caught up with while I was there.  These people know more about fighting ever increasing entropy than anyone.

Andrew Cheeseman (looking slightly wierder than in real life it has to be said, above left) heads up the team that builds the infrastructure at the events like teched it forum.  An absolutely incredible achievement all running vista and office and a wireless network.  Mark White had the tricky job of owning all the content for the tracks.  These guys are legends and officially the nicest blokes you could ever meet!