Launch T-2 days. The Virtual Launch Experience is nearly ready for launch

This is one crazy week!!

The main event on Wednesday which will be catering for over 3000 IT pros and devs has been keeping a lot of people very busy, but I have something else which is related and goes live on the same day...the Virtual Launch Experience

I have spoken about it before and it is 98% complete at this moment...in fact I am sat in the office waiting for out last rounds of amends to be completed so we can do a second round review. There are a few things for me that make it great:

1) It is a rich internet application, designed and built with Visual Studio 2008 and Expression Studio, hosted on Windows Server 2008 accessing SQL Server 2008, and presented in Microsoft Silverlight. So it actually uses all 3 launch products

2) It will enable Microsoft to reach more IT pros and developers than ever before for a launch. In the UK for example, the main customer event on 19th March and the following TechNet & MSDN roadshows will reach around 6000 people. The Virtual Launch Experience will increase that to just over 50,000. The worldwide reach figure will be over 1,000,000

3) It translates most of the elements of a physical event, into an online experience including some extra virtual functionality:

· Live streaming keynote address by Steve Ballmer (9AM PST)

· An interactive 3D Silverlight event guide

· Microsoft product and sponsor booths, rich with videos, presentations, brochures, and special offers

· Community exhibitors that allow you to connect with the companies and groups

· Breakout sessions for deep diving into the 2008 Launch Wave technologies

· A virtual backpack to store and download exhibitor content

· A unified event interface to effortlessly navigate your virtual experience

So watch out for the announcement about this on Wednesday - or maybe Thursday - depending on how the launch event goes in Birmingham!

Oh and here is a sneaky peak:

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