On Thursday and Friday last week, MSPs from all over Australia gathered at Microsoft’s Australian HQ for the Aussie MSP Summit 2009.
We were treated to two awesome days of presentations, workshops, gaming, food, prizes and plenty of free stuff.
Day 1 kicked off with some intros to awesome programs available to students such as DreamSpark, Imagine Cup, Students 2 Business, Microsoft Student Partners, MSDN-AA, Student Tech Clubs, Channel8 and more. Microsoft provided lunch with a chance to checkout some cool technologies in the cafeteria. The afternoon continued with presentations from Microsoft staff on Microsoft programs such as It’s Not Piracy, Microsoft Learning, MSPress, IT Academy, Imagine Cup and technologies such as Windows Live and Windows Mobile.
After a big first day, we all jumped into the bus and headed to the Great Northern Hotel for dinner and drinks.
Around 9pm we made it back to Microsoft Australia and went straight to the Xbox room. We were lucky to be able to play Halo Wars before its release along with other great games. Gears of War 2, Call of Duty and Forza seemed popular!
At the end of the night the MSPs were shocked to hear they would all be given Xbox 360s along with 4 games and an extra controller! Microsoft has gone out of their way to ensure when MSPs share their love of technology with the community, they can actually share it!
After a quick refresh on the previous days content, Day 2 started with a presentation from GP on where MSPs fit into the big picture at Microsoft. Michael Kordahi followed with an awesome presentation on the future of technology. Andrew Coates demonstrated Live Meeting and Nick Hodge presented on Microsoft’s Open Source program. Lunch was provided by the guys from Atomic Magazine who asked us to give away their magazines at our events… awesome for students all-round!
But one of the highlights for me, was each MSP getting up to present a 5 minute demo on stuff they are passionate about.
Of course there were prizes throughout the event, for the best questions and the most involvement from MSPs.
After 2 full days, MSPs headed back to their homes, Xbox under one arm, and various other loot under the other and heads full of ideas on how they can share their passion, excitement and love of technology with their fellow students.
In fact, some already have, such as Sean’s O-Week Presentation along with his post on new stuff added to DreamSpark.
All Aussie MSPs are fired up and equipped, so join us for an awesome 2009!
Luke
Aussie MSP Lead
The University of Western Australia