Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference 2009

For the second year in a row, July has been the month of Microsoft Partner Conference 2009 for me. This year, it was in New Orleans, LA. SoftCom Inc., the company I work for, is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner. This fancy designation, in short means, we almost live and die by Microsoft. Considering the importance of the event for the company and the interesting location, anticipation had been building up since couple of months.

Microsoft is a partner oriented company. Until very recently, the business model had been solely based on partners. They know how to train and entertain their partners. It is a simple method: “Work hard, play hard.”. The day starts early filled with keynotes, sessions, meetings and continues into the evening and night with business dinners, networking drinks and parties ending sometime around the wee hours of the next morning. Then it starts all over again and again and again. I have to say, to attend a Microsoft Conference and to operate at 100% is hard. But then again, you reap great rewards.

Here are the highlights from this year:

• Windows 7
• Microsoft Office 2010 Technical Preview
  
• Bing, the new decision engine from Microsoft
• Microsoft Partner Network launch and new partner resources which come with it
• Microsoft Azure, Microsoft’s new cloud computing platform and its pricing model
• MIcrosoft’s commitment to R&D and its tenacious pursuit of excellence and value in all product lines outlined by Steve Ballmer, CEO
• Microsoft’s detailed competitive strategy against Google, Apple, VMWare, IBM and SAP outlined by Kevin Turner, COO

Last year around these times, there were controversial issues surrounding Microsoft like Windows Vista’s weak uptake in the market, launch of Business Productivity Online Services and its competitors gaining momentum. Hence, at last year’s WPC in Houston, Microsoft’s message to its partner community was not very strong and clear.

As Steve Ballmer stated in his keynote, when you have a strong culture of innovation and a stash of almost 10 billion dollars allocated for R&D every year, it is no wonder that Microsoft keeps coming and coming until they get their act together and come up with a valuable product. Judging by all these major achievements either being launched or coming to fruition this year, apparently, Microsoft cranked up the 9.4 billion dollar R&D engine within the last year.

Windows 7 Taskbar and Screenshot

Microsoft asks us to bet on Microsoft in these competitive times. While we have already been doing that at SoftCom since many years, it is always easier to bet on a company as long as they keep delivering value and innovation. Therefore, the next couple of months will indeed be interesting times as Microsoft will start rolling out all the major product launches to general public. Personally, I am very excited about these new technologies and curious about how the competition will unfold.

For detailed information and videos from the keynotes sessions, you can always visit Digital WPC.

Written by Kaan Bora on July 31st, 2009 with no comments.
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A Conversation with President George W. Bush & President Bill Clinton

Power Within Inc. is a company based in Toronto, which is an organizer of educational, motivational and leadership events. SoftCom, the company I work for, has a close relationship with Power Within. We have been attending their events since some time now and we have always been very happy with their service and organizational skills.

Power Within had a very important event last Friday, May 29th, 2009. For the first time ever, they managed to put two former presidents, President George W. Bush and President Bill Clinton on the stage for an almost informal conversation. Here is the coverage of this event by Huffington Post and Time.

As SoftCom, thanks to our close relationship with Power Within, we got couple of invitations which included a brief moment with both of the Presidents, a photo opportunity and a front row seat to the public event.

Here is my photo with the Presidents.

Kaan Bora Soran's Photo with President Bill Clinton and George W. Bush on May 29th, 2009

It is quite an exhilarating feeling to shake hands with not long ago the most powerful men in the planet, look them in the eye and greet them. Both of the Presidents were very friendly, courteous and relaxed to make you realize that they are only human just like you and me. I guess, that is one of the traits of being a politician, a politician good enough to become the President of United States.

I would like to thank SoftCom, Power Within and Joseph Khoja from Power Within for providing this great opportunity with the Presidents.

Written by Kaan Bora on June 5th, 2009 with no comments.
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Holiday Season and Boxing Day in a Down Economy

In my humble opinion, the Christmas week, a.k.a the holiday season, is the most important time of the year in the western world and I am fascinated by the dynamics behind. There are many sides to the story in play here; there is the religious side which I find not too bad of a storyline and then, there is the capitalist side, which I find very creative. I don’t think myself as an expert on the matters of the heavens, so no comments there. For the other part, I think, the capitalist side of the story  is somewhat the endless pursuit of encouraging and deceiving people to spend more by capitalizing on side stories around the Christmas theme. Yes, sure, a little bit of Santa Claus is good for the kids’ imagination and also for the economy. But what about Boxing Day?

For people who are not living in Canada, Boxing Day is the Canadian version of the Thanksgiving weekend in US. For people who are not living in US, basically these days in North America are the “best days for shopping because of the huge deals around” kind of shopping days. Of course, you usually get to enjoy these deals if only you wake up at 5 a.m. on the 26th of December and then line up in front of the store before it is open around 8 a.m. (let me remind you this is Canada, so we are talking about some serious minus something temperatures out there) and then when the doors are finally open, rushing in while racing with your competitors and then finally putting your hands on one of the limited quantity “doorcrasher” deals in the store. Sounds like a challenge? You bet.

Given the state of the economy, the looming recession and the worst financial crisis of the century in action, I was curious about how the shopping during the boxing day would turn out this year. So, I cruised around couple of retailers and shopping malls early afternoon. In one shopping mall, it took me 35 minutes to find a parking spot. In another one where I parked almost a mile away, all the good deals were already sold out by early morning.  By 7:30 pm, half an hour before all the malls closed down, everywhere people were still shopping like there was no 2009. I could not make sense of all this. With all the tight credit and job losses, companies shutting down, there had to be a reason I didn’t know. And then, I saw this:

Shop, damn it, shop. It is your patriotic duty.

Just when I thought the boxing day was all about boxing and returning the unwanted gifts from the Christmas day and getting new ones instead, I suddenly realized that it was all about patriotism and the love of the country. One can only appreciate the creativity of the capitalist system.

Happy Holidays to you all…

Written by Kaan Bora on December 28th, 2008 with no comments.
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iPhone 3G, Barack Obama, Facebook and Financial Crisis: All the big things of 2008

As the year 2008 is coming to an end, it is about time all newspapers, magazines, TV shows and people with all sorts of opinions share their view of the best and worst of the year on varying topics. Without further ado, here are my candidates on technology, politics, internet and daily life which makes 2008 a year to remember.

• Launch of iPhone 3G: Change has first come to America as a first generation iPhone in 2007 and then to the world as iPhone 3G this summer. Much has already been said on iPhone’s feature set, usability, itunes integration, application store and so on. However, it is never enough to remind one thing over again; Apple has managed to change the way we perceive a mobile phone and set the bar very high at their first attempt. If the strong iPhone sales numbers are not enough proof, just take a look at how iPhone’s feature set is now being copied by all the major moble handset manufacturers. Mobile phones will never be the same again and I am grateful to Apple for that.
• Election of Barack Obama: Against all odds, against all the mighty powers of American politics and adverse perceptions of the American public, change has come to America and hopefully to the rest of the world. Barack Obama and his team pulled off the election win in such a dramatic fashion that it is a modern day David vs. Goliath. I guess, after the 2004 election, when the Americans overwhelmingly elected W. Bush, nobody could have predicted such a change for the next election. Obama comes to the office at a much needed time and he has some monstrous tasks at hand. Yet, we are full of hope and that is one good thing.
• Accelarated growth and adoption of Facebook as a social networking platform: The tremendous global growth of Facebook user base and its emergence from a simple social networking tool to a massive social networking platform with significant community and commercial support very much resembles the iPhone story. Again, like iPhone 3G, Facebook neatly integrates so many complex social networking tasks and simplifies our daily web 2.0 life. Despite the question marks about its monetization possibilities and privacy concerns, its capability of bringing social networking to masses and creating an ecosystem around it is destined to prevail over any obstacle.  
• Peak Oil of Summer 2008 and the following Financial Crisis: 2008 is one of these years like 2001. In 2008, world as we know it has again changed and there is no going back. Extreme consumerism, irrational exubarence and the greed which took the world in the last 10 years got a nasty wake up call of 145$/barrel oil prices and near collapse of all the financial system in the world’s biggest free market economy. Thousands have lost their jobs. On the bright side, green is the new buzz world. Plug-in electric cars are as close as 2010. True, nobody knows what is yet to come but we all know that it was 2008 when it all started. 

Chinese are said to use “May you live in interesting times” as a curse, referring to the insecurities and difficulties one faces during the times of change. We might feel that way, sometimes for good and sometimes for the other way around. One thing is for certain though, if not us, our kids will live in a different world with different values. I sincerely hope, it is a better one.

Written by Kaan Bora on December 9th, 2008 with no comments.
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Spock – The New People Search Engine

In my opinion, one of the hightlights of the Web 2.0 Expo 2007 was the Spock presentation at the first session of Launch Pad. Launch Pad is the venue where  organizers choose approximately a dozen companies wishing to have their first public unveiling, of either the company or a significant new product, on the mainstage at Web 2.0 Expo. Among the presentations conducted in that Launch Pad session, Spock was selected by the audience as the most interesting.

Now, what is Spock? Spock is the new people search engine. Once logged in, you can search for a certain person and if this particular individual is already in the Spock database, you can tag him/her as you wish and even upload a photo which you think relates to her/him. The leveraged Web 2.0 concept is “wisdom of the crowds”. So, ideally, once there are enough voters and votes for a person on the same tag or photo, his/her most popular and true attributes will prevail over the others. And if the person you are looking for is not there, you can send an invitation and then start tagging.

When I first logged in, I found my name and all the tags were by the ”Spock Robot”. Spock team seems to have used the LinkedIn database for the ordinary folks like me. If you find your name in Spock and if the information source is LinkedIn, you can claim that is you by simply clicking on the “claim: This is me” link and entering your LinkedIn email and password. At that point, the system will merge your two profiles into one. This merging process sometimes takes forever. Good thing is you won’t need to keep your browser window open for it to be completed. Just start it and come back in couple of days, you might find yourself lucky.

While there are some hickups with it, I like the Spock concept. I would be happy to see these folks at Spock succeed. Spock is still in private beta. That means to be able to use it, you will need an invitation. I initially got an invitation through a close friend and since than I have been tinkering with it. Apparently, these guys at Spock might have noticed that I have been very active so they gave me more invitations to share. So, I have plenty of invitations to share for anyone who is interested. Just post a comment and I will be sending you one shortly. I would like to hear about your experience with Spock as well.

Written by Kaan Bora on July 9th, 2007 with 1 comment.
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Web 2.0 Expo 2007

I spent the last week in San Francisco attending Web 2.0 Expo 2007. For beginners, the official web site defines Web 2.0 Expo as an annual gathering of technical, design, marketing, and business professionals who are building the next generation web. The web site also claims that Web 2.0 Expo features the most innovative and successful Internet industry figures and companies providing attendees with examples of business models, development paradigms, and design strategies to enable mainstream businesses and new arrivals to the Web 2.0 world to take advantage of this new generation of services and opportunities.

So, what is Web 2.0? The first Web 2.0 conference was held in 2004, so at least since four years, people are trying to define and refine the answer. Apparently, there are many answers to that question and they all seem to complement each other.

Tim O’Reilly briefly defines Web 2.0 as “Networked applications that explicitly leverage network effects”. This is quite a simple form of referring to user generated content, social software, syndication, participation, folksonomy and all other names and descriptors used to define Web 2.0. It covers a lot of ground, but does it cover all?    

The movie below was shown just before the keynotes of the first day.

And this one was shown on the second day, again, just before the keynotes.

 

Now, after watching these, I’d say Web 2.0 is all about “harnessing collective intelligence and enabling two way use of web”.

What is your pick?

Written by Kaan Bora on April 22nd, 2007 with no comments.
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Testing the link to the photos in My Photo Gallery

I have uploaded the legacy photos from my old www.soran.com home page to the new embedded gallery2 module (My Photo Gallery) on the blog page. So far, it seems to work fine.

Below is an example:

 

Photo taken with my sister on her wedding day…

Written by Kaan Bora on February 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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WordPress… Finally, something easy to use and customizable for quick updates…

You are right. It took me a lot of time to figure this out. Last update on soran.com was in March, 2002. Since then, I could not touch the site due many reasons; I migrated my data over three computers, I lost the photoshop images, my Front Page broke, etc. Besides, I could not decide how to structure the way my professional and personal web sites should look and link to eachother. But now, I know how to do it.

From now on, I will be blogging and experimenting with WordPress on blog.soran.com about my personal stuff. I will use soran.com for professional purposes, primarily about my views on project management as a profession and its impact on telecommunication and IT industries.

As a consequence, I should be able to provide you more updates on both ends soon…

 

Written by Kaan Bora on February 21st, 2006 with no comments.
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