On day 3 it was time to move from my first hotel to the second one, which is payed by Microsoft ^^
The streets are empty as usual and the weather was not very good in the morning (raining).
The walk from the first hotel (8ths Ave In) to the next (Sheraton) was about 1km and not much of an issue.
After dropping off my luggage I headed over to the Convention Center next door and the raining had stopped.
At around 12 am I registered for the MVP Summit and got my badge and swag. Since the keynote does not start till 4 pm, I planed to go watch another movie. This time in the Regal 16 like last year right in front of the Convention Center.
Since I still had some time until the first movies start at around 1 pm, I watched some StarCraft VODs via the Wifi on my iPod. I have to say it is nice that Apple added YouTube support to the iPhone/iPod, but the interface is so incredibly bad, I much rather search for stuff myself via Google or the YouTube website.
Okay, time to see another movie. It was raining again. I saw Gran Torino with Clint Eastwood and this was most definitively the funniest movie Clint Eastwood has ever made.
After that I walked a little through the city and got something to eat.
And this is how police cars look in Seattle.
Ohh, its time to get back to the Convention Center, the keynote will start soon. This is the area where each region will later meet with all the other MVPs from each region.
Getting ready for the keynote.
Some details about the agenda. The next 2 days will be packed with deep sessions. Most keynotes will actually be on the last day, which will contain probably the most interesting announcements about Windows 7 and Visual Studio 2010. Also notice that there is no more Salmon this years, since this seemed to be the number one complain from last year.
Toby Richards introduces us to a couple of important people telling us more details. After that it was possible to ask some questions, but they kept it short so we did not get bored by this (most questions are not really that exciting for most other MVPs).
After the keynote was done, we just had to get outside the keynote room and we were right at the meeting area, were I met all the other MVPs from Germany.
Other MVPs from Germany and Switzerland, most I have met before, but also some new guys. Most guys were from Small or Essential Business Server or ASP.NET MVPs, but also some Sharepoint and Sql mixed in.
After a while Katrin, our MVP Lead from Germany, came by with Toby Richards, which shook all of our hands. I asked him if he wants to shake every MVPs hand and he said "of course, long night ahead of me" ^^
After some beers and eating some free food some of us German MVPs decided to go to the Space Needle via the Monorail train and take a look at Seattle at night.
At about this time my batteries of my camera died and most pictures from now on are from my crappy phone until I buy more batteries again.
Since the pictures of Seattle at night did not turn out too bad, here are some of them.
We had some nice discussions about Windows Mobile, iPhones, Apple and other technologies up there.
Seattle Downtown at night.
We probably spend more time discussing things than looking down, but the weather was not great with some rain and not very good visibility. But looking around was still fun, especially with the telescopes - like checking out what some people were watching on TV ^^
And finally at around 9 pm we took the very last train back to downtown. Some guys went to some bar and continued the fun, but I went back to the hotel and wrote some blogposts like this one.
More photos of tomorrow coming soon.
