Time to party! Windows 7 is here!

It's only a few days away. The official launch of Windows 7 is here!

And of course, that means its time to party!!! You may have heard about the Windows 7 House Parties that are being thrown all around the world. Basically thousands of small groups of people are getting together to see what Windows 7 can do.

Personally, I thought we needed to do more. So fellow MVP and friend Charlie Russel and I decided we would throw our own party. But focused on IT pros and not the consumer angle. We plan to have a lot of fun, showing the cool features of Windows 7 for IT pros like BitLocker, AppLocker and DirectAccess. We plan to bring a bunch of laptops and show new shell extensions, Powershell, new multitouch features and basically sit around and enjoy hours of Q&A for those that haven't tried it yet. We are even planning on installing Windows 7 on a guest's Macbook to show how well it does using Bootcamp on Apple hardware and even on small netbooks.

I also wanted to send a message out to the Vancouver IT community to clear up some misconceptions. This is a party hosted by Charlie and myself. This is NOT a Microsoft event. Microsoft was gracious enough to let us use their facility and even sprung for some of the cost for pizza. However, they never planned this out. Nor did the local VanTUG and VanSBS groups.

Our party is an INVITATION ONLY event. Because we are limited in our own budget and constrained in where we could have the party... we only have enough room for 75 people. So we could only allow a certain number of our friends to come. Charlie and I decided the best way to handle this would be to simply invite who we wanted, and then open it to our friends at the local user groups on a first come, first served basis. This is why there is a cap on the registration on the event, and why it booked up so quickly.

I am hearing through the grapeline that there is a LOT of descent in the Vancouver IT community who feel that Microsoft, VanTUG and VanSBS did a poor job organizing this. >LET ME BE CLEAR. This is a personal party that Charlie and I organized. If you were lucky enough to get an invitation and registered, great. But if you didn't, don't take it out on Microsoft, the local usergroups or their leaders. It's not their fault!!!

We are using our own money and time to throw this party. Please be considerate and respect that we couldn't invite all of you. I am happy to see there is so much excitement about Windows 7 and that you wanted to party with us. And I am sorry if you feel it isn't fair that you didn't get invited. Please feel free to share your own Windows 7 experience, and host your own party. We may be the only IT pro party during the Windows 7 launch, but nothing says you can't have your own!

So party on. Welcome to a new world. Welcome to Windows 7!