Windows Phone at WPC 11

Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference 2011 had some good sessions on Windows Phone 7, a couple of which I was able to attend amidst my hectic schedule of sessions & meetings and this is a rundown of what I saw.

First up, in one of the morning keynotes we saw the Lync client running on Windows Phone 7:

I realise that’s not the greatest picture you’ll ever see but you get the idea

I attended the Windows Phone 7 session, led by President of Windows Phone Division, Andy Lees.

There wasn’t a huge amount of new content but it did contain some great demos of Mango features such as Local Scout and Bing Audio music tagging, as well as the amazingly slick way that WP7 handles people and messaging. Here are some pictures of my favourite slides:

There was a pretty rapturous response to the majority of the demos from the 100’s of people in attendance, and there was a great energy in the room, both from the presenters and the Microsoft partners.

Microsoft have made some great changes to the Mobility competency to make it more worthwhile and effective for partners to develop apps for the Windows Phone platform. I had a chance to speak with Andy Lees after the session and it seems there are some good things coming further down the line for Microsoft partners. Not just for those that develop apps but also partners that work with licensing and products such as Sharepoint & Office 365.

Microsoft WPC 2011 in Pictures

Here are a few galleries featuring my pictures from WPC11

Read Microsoft WPC 2011

Read The Parties of WPC11

Read LA Dodgers

Read Ripley’s Believe It or Not

Read Pictures of Los Angeles

Enjoy!

ps: I did take pics in the sessions too, but they’ll be a separate post…

Microsoft WPC 2011

		WPC11 VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

The Parties of WPC11

WPC11 Parties VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

 

Here’s a collection of pictures from a few of the parties I attended in the evenings during WPC11. Some great locations

LA Dodgers

LA Dodgers VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

The night I arrived in LA, the World Famous LA Dodgers were playing the San Diego Padres so it seemed only right to go and watch them   I couldn’t sleep on the plane so when the game started, it was 03:00am in the UK – and also my head!

I have to say that I really enjoyed the game, although I’m still not quite sure about the vast majority of the rules Also, the “Dodger Dogs” really are world quality hot dogs…very tasty indeed!

Ripley’s Believe It or Not

 

Ripley’s Believe It or Not VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I’ve always quite enjoyed Ripley’s Believe It or Not and Hollywood is home to the original (and best?), so I had to pop in and see just how tacky it was Luckily I had some downtime before the crazy week of WPC started

Pictures of Los Angeles

These are some of the pics I took in my recent trip to LA for the Microsoft WPC 2011.

Pics of LA VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

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.I hope you enjoyed that as much as I did

Skype will come to Microsoft Office 365

Microsoft’s recent $8.5 billion purchase of Skype is close to being officially completed (pending international anti-trust go-ahead) and it’s first appearance will be in Office 365, Microsoft’s just launched cloud offering.

Kurt Delbene, MS Business Division President said:

“Office 365 will be the lead offering along with the client that should drive parity”

Client, in this case, means Office so does that mean there will be a separate “Skype” component in Office 15 or, more likely, will “Lync” simply connect to both?

Talking of the next version of Office, Mr Delbene had some info on that too.

Talking about when we can expect the next version of Microsoft’s desktop productivity suite, he said:

“We’re typically in a 2 1/2 year cycle”

which would put Office 15 (as I’m calling it for now) at June-December 2012. I’m not too sure about that as it is likely that will be the release schedule for Windows 8 too…I feel that trying to promote new versions of their 2 biggest products at the same time could be tricky.

Although if my prediction that Windows 8 will have a much bigger consumer focus is right,that could make it easier for Redmond’s marketing teams. Predominantly push Windows to consumers and predominantly push Office to enterprises…do you think that could work?

Wikipedia, via Neowin, also tells us that:

“notable changes in Excel include a tool for filtering data in a storm, the ability to convert Roman numerals to Arabic numerals, and the integration of advanced trigonometric functions. In Word, the capability of inserting video and audio online as well as the broadcasting of documents on the Web were implemented”

For more info, head over to the Seattle Times sites here.