OK, so much for the day-to-day summary (or blow-by-blow account) of the MVP Summit from my vantage point. We had WAY too much to do and I don’t think I have had less sleep than when I was in college… Now that it is over, I have some time to set aside (+ I don’t have to do real work tonight - woohoo!)

OK, the first full day of the summit was the Business Unit day. For me, that was the Windows Client team (although I would probably have preferred the Windows Server side more as it was a lot more specific). There wasn’t much new shown in the morning - Media Center demos, looking at the new Windows Mobile device (like the Motorola MPx), and discussing the changes that are being incorporated in Windows XP Service Pack 2.

BTW: If you have installed SP 2 and have had any issues, please file a bug report immediately.. The Windows team is trying to get feedback before they release the second release candidate in the near future.

The afternoon session was Longhorn, in depth… There wasn’t much talked about here that we can talk about yet, unfortunately. It is looking more and more promising… However, I still needed to get networking questions answered and Monday was somewhat devoid of anything networking specific, so I needed to wait until Wednesday to get some of my questions answered).

Other than Longhorn, there will be some tremendously cool improvements that will soon be released for the wireless community.� Unfortunately, this too is under NDA, so we will have to wait a few weeks to discuss this.

Monday night included a dinner put on by the Windows Business Unit in Building 9. This offered a great chance to network with other MVPs and MS employees. I had an interesting discussion with a member of the Virtual PC team. It seems that there is a coordinated effort on the part of MS to push the use of Virtual PC to IT users and developers. We talked about problems that we have seen with the current version of VPC, as well as discussing possible future improvements. I also talked with a member of the product group responsible for the Windows Firewall included in Windows XP Service Pack 2. We discussed some of the changes included in the new firewall as well as their impact on both home and small business environments. (More on this later).

Finally, I spent some time talking with Robert Scoble (wearing his horns!) about Longhorn (of course) and the climate at Microsoft. Robert seems extremely happy with what he is doing these days… He is very energized and excited about the potential of Longhorn. (to Robert - extremely cool business cards and remind me to bring you some real longhorn
“horns” next time I am up in Redmond).

That was about it on the first night… I got back to the hotel at about 10:00PM and ended up working for a few hours on an “emergency” project at work that apparently could not wait.

Day 2 and 3 tomorrow… I promise…