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Outsider looks in at GWAVACON

john weston MSFT's picture
Submitted by john weston MSFT on January 22, 2007 - 5:56pm.

Hello,
Yes I work for Microsoft and I am here at GWAVACON. I am part of a team at Microsoft called Microsoft Across America. We do presenations for IT Pros about things like Exchange, SQL, Windows and the like. A couple of times a year we are encouraged to go out and learn about the competition. I live here in the Dallas area, so I decided to attend GWAVACON. May years ago I owned my own business, we were Microsoft Partner and IBM partner and I did some work on very old Novell servers. So I have seen some of this before.

Since the Nov2nd "Agreement" between Novell and Microsoft I wanted to know more about what Novell is doing and what's up with Linux or groupwise. It has been a fun session so far. I have learned a bunch and met a bunch of very nice people. I understand some people are extremely passioniate about software, I am also passioniate!! I have been blogging about my experiences here on my blog. go read them at http://blogs.technet.com/jweston I think they are fair. Or fare...

I have met Richard Bliss, Joe Bertnick, and Mike Silverman. So what do you think of having an MS person in the house??

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re: Outsider at GWAVACON

Submitted by Bryen Yunashko on January 29, 2007 - 4:22pm.

I think its good for anyone to check out the competition or simply to go out and check out something new out there. We're all in the same boat even if some of us think our approach to solutions is better than others. ;-)

And anyone who feels threatened by having an outsider come in, clearly hasn't developed enough confidence in the products and solutions they support for their customers.

Personally, I think an 'outsider' attending GWAVACon speaks volumes to the importance and impact Beginfinite products has had within the Novell space. How many other Novell Third-Party products get this much attention?

As someone once mentioned to me, you know GWAVA is successful when as a third-party vendor, it has its own list of third-party vendors!

Bryen

Richard Bliss's picture

Macs and Open Office

Submitted by Richard Bliss on January 25, 2007 - 4:10pm.

John,

I presented with John Dragoon from Novell. John was using Open Office on Windows XP and I was using Powerpoint on Mac OS X. My second keynote I used Mac Keynote on Mac OS.

Thanks for visiting GWAVACon. I had an enjoyable discussion with you and look forward to you coming back next year.

Richard Bliss
VP Marketing
GWAVA

John, Please Correct...

Submitted by Tourist on January 23, 2007 - 2:10pm.

Both presenters used OpenOffice on Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop.

Even a MS expert can't tell the two apart. That says volumes for SLED and OpenOffice...

I can tell the difference,

Submitted by Tourist on January 26, 2007 - 4:26pm.

I can tell the difference, trust me. The presenters I specifically referenced also 'blamed' problems they were having with the presentations on Microsoft PowerPoint, and yes they also specifically mentioned why they were running Windows XP, and not another OS.

John Weston Blog

Submitted by BoughtTheFarm on January 23, 2007 - 7:18am.

Bring in more outsiders - we need the input!!

Interesting indeed, John tried very hard to not put down the event, but did seem to spend the text pointing out whenever he spotted something Microsoft.

Personally I prefer the red pill, but am realistic to note that when I go to a convention on motor innovation in elctric hybrid vehicles, most people will have arrived in Petrol cars.

That said John's Blog is well worth a visit and his points are very welcomed and should be acted on. Particularyl about how to spend the Microsoft money !!

Joe Bertnick's picture

Thanks for coming to GWAVACon

Submitted by Joe Bertnick on January 22, 2007 - 8:02pm.

John,

It was great to have you at GWAVACon and hear your thoughts on my "Defense Against Microsoft" session. We enjoy having everyone of different backgrounds come to GWAVACon and share in the GroupWise Community. I look forward to discussing more of the details of Exchange 2007 vs. GroupWise 7 with you and continuing the "Alliance" that Microsoft and Novell have started.

Joe Bertnick
VP, Products
GWAVA
jb@gwava.com