Yes there is a comma there a bit of ambiguity without it. Perhaps Free, Fun Friday would have been clearer, though I can see they wanted alliteration. It wasn’t Fun Free, in fact far from it! IMG00013-20100611-1102
After meeting and chatting to @bennuk I was invited to go to this event at Microsoft in Reading, along with @Daniel_Parker. We were both intrigued about the possibility of stepping foot on the Microsoft site. I would have been happy with just that, however the draw to come along was added to by the promise of food and giveaways. Being a student means both of these are a way to the heart! I didn’t even mind losing a lie in!
 

Location

Microsoft Campus on Bing maps

Many, and I mean many, Microsoft products were presented and demoed at this event (saw a quick blog update after my comment). This event was in a unique format; varying timeslots from 5 to 15 minutes were allotted to each presenter for them to deliver their presentation in. This really added entertainment to the day. Not only drawing attention, but also the addition of a horn blast to say that a presenter had run out of time certainly prompted some laughter.

 

List of Demos

  • Bing Maps
  • Photosynth
  • Community Clips
  • Worldwide Telescope
  • Pivot
  • DeepZoom
  • Live @ edu
  • Office Web Apps
  • Windows Live Messenger
  • Bing Translate
  • Windows Live Writer (beta, using an older version for this blog post!)
  • Windows Live Photo Gallery
  • Windows Live Movie Maker
  • Maths Worksheet Generator (exactly what it says on the tin)
  • Songsmith
  • Photostory 3
  • Office Moodle Add-In (saving and opening to/from Moodle)
  • Autocollage
  • Kodu
  • DreamSpark
  • Digital Literacy Curriculum
  • Office Ribbon Hero
  • Mouse Mischief (hilarious audience participation)
  • Flashcards
  • Internet Explorer Accelerators
  • PPTPlex
  • XNA Game Studio
  • Partners in Learning and Innovids

     

    The presentations were all a small number of slides along with demos of the products, with a few even causing spontaneous clapping! Some of the software did things I would think only a high powered computer could do, not to mention cost money, but my computer can handle them fine too. To easily be able to embed some aspects of these onto a website or in day to day use means that you not only get a slick and easy to use product, but it can be shown off too, all for free!

    Naturally a presentation day wouldn’t be a presentation day if it didn’t have a few technical hitches. These were well covered for and the momentum didn’t stop while things were sorted.

    I thoroughly enjoyed the day. I quickly realised my misconceptions about what Microsoft’s campus was like were wrong. It was an extremely friendly and efficient atmosphere. Everything seemed to tick along nicely. Never with a dull moment.

    I will blog about a selection of these products soon. But some of the products aren’t quite available yet, so I will have to wait until I can get my hands on them.