Author Archive

• The final coundown….

  Date: 2009.08.18 | Category: Australian Partner Conference 2009, Uncategorized, tech•ed 2009 | Response: 4

  We hit some big milestone in planning land this last week.

  The week started with an integration meeting. A group of us from across  the project (logistics, construction, technology, catering) lock ourselves away for half a day. We review each task from the moment the first person sets foot at the venue to the moment the last truck departs at the conclusion of the event. It’s a mind bending job, but on a project like this with literally hundreds of people making things happen, it’s an important milestone to have this integration meeting. You can imagine we always uncover a few issues where the schedules haven’t matched up entirely during the previous months of decisions. The document, with over 1,000 line items, then undergoes updates by everyone and then we come together to do it all again later this week.

  Last week ended with another important milestone for the technology team. We locked down the technology requirements / change requests on Friday night. While the project owners signed off the statement of requirements months ago, we obviously have a period where we need to cater for changes to the needs of the various event owners and Exhibitors. This week it’s all about our documentation, training crew, preparing final briefs and this Thursday we send the first shipment of technology gear from Sydney to for the venue.

• Is it that time already…

  Date: 2009.07.20 | Category: Australian Partner Conference 2009, planning, tech•ed 2009 | Response: 0

  I can’t believe we are just 4 weeks today from the first step we will take onsite at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre. I know this because its Friday night as I write this, my first backstage blog entry after some mind bending few day working on event technology runsheets.This is a great reason to stop runsheets.

  
  Maybe I should step back a bit, back to November last year. Or further back.

  So, this is my 10th Tech Ed as Technology Project Manager. Honestly I have the coolest job on the project (Kleefie always said he did). My role is to work across the business owners, sponsors, venue and technical guys where anything technology is involved. Pulling a truck load of bits together into some type of plan. That is under the watchful eye of Jorke as the technology lead for the project and David Connors as the Engineering lead.

  We have a structured 5 phases approach to the delivery of large scale event technology. Long before you get to know about the good stuff like mini notebooks (possibly the coolest take away ever. So much so it has other Tech Ed events around the world wishing they had the idea first), we conduct a feasibility phase. Various Microsofties, the event agency team and the Engineering team comes together to look at how the project could work be at the proposed venue. We don’t work with a load of detail at that stage, but we look for the obvious pitfalls around timing, location, connectivity etc. This phase brings with it long brainstorming sessions and usually lots of research tasks. That in turn means I and a swag of others spend ages writing reports on the if, but, and may etc. All necessary stages for the business guys to make the big decisions. Once the decision is done setting dates, locations etc in stone we start the longer road of understanding what the business folks need the technology to deliver.

  So, no Jorke I’m not going to be the International Man of Mystery and neither are the rest of the team. Stay tuned and over the next few weeks we will share more of what’s going on.

  - DavidH