Wirelessly posted

Business casual dress code. Crackberry T-shirts optional.

Shorts... ha! Nobody wears shorts these days. It's uncool.

A lot of things are different this year. The showcase is in a different room entirely. I'd draw a floor plan but I'm lazy.

Wirelessly posted

Hmmmm. If its a different room, we might need to rethink the BBF rally point. If I only had a map of the room.......

Hey I'm up for a bit of that this year - I know I didn't really hang out with you guys much last year but times are a changing...

Darth let me know when/where, but I'm gonna pass on the parks as it's just not my bag baby?

Ya, I'll be in on getting together during the even too. I'm always looking for people to drink with. Drinking alone is no fun.

Sounds like Jon needs to show a little energy today and get a map out.

As long as we don't have to run for 15 minutes in the rain again. Although, watching you remove the battery and pour water out of your BlackBerry was priceless!

Rally point should be in the same area where we had our initial meetup in the Showcase Solution. If the room layout changes, I'll post a location update.

Absolutely you can join us! Don't know if Kevin Crackberry will be around much or if the WICKSoft Boys can leave their booth; we'll need another Canadian to talk "aboot."

Yep yep.

I have a good idea of where you could use for a new BBF rally point - unfortunately I can't really tell ya for a few more days ;p

Hey Folks I've been gone for awhile... switched jobs last August just before I got married. New company had a small # of folks with Blackberry's but no server just running individual BIS. Picked up a new blackberry almost immediately but had to wait on bringing a BES inhouse til the new budget year. Then RIM went and launched the new small business BPS which was perfect for the amt of Blackberry use in this firm. I'm all signed up and ready to go to WES. Hopefully RIM will support the BPS with service pack rollouts as often as they do full blown BES service packs.

hai kerry!

Looks like i'm going also this year.... wonder how it will be. We are staying in Buena Vista hotel, which kinda sucks - last year i was in Marriot :-/

Oh, tis not a problem. We've got plenty of time to figure things out.

Aaaagghh!

We only have 2 weeks, 6 days, 10 hours, 37 min, 40 sec... 39... 38...

Here's a WES Newbie question....are there alot of handouts?
printed material, booklets/papers etc. @ the sessions
Is some kind of portfolio necessary to carry everything?

There are a lot of handouts - When you sign in RIM usually gives you a bag of some sorts to hold all the stuff in.

It's like Halloween for BlackBerry users. One of the major sponsors usually give out a bag chock full o' swag. Comes in handy when you're "trick or treating" in the Solutions Showcase and getting printed material and freebies.

The Idokorro (now Rove) beanbag gets used daily... thanks to Alan!

Glad I could assist, Darth. Now, if only this year, Boxtone will handout some good swag. Hmm, wonder what the BBF crew will leave with from the carrier parties this year. We made out like bandits at the Verizon party.

How many of you are going to and/or have been to the Government day sessions in the past (if it was offered)? I received an invite to those sessions on Tuesday, but am curious if anyone found them worthwhile.

Got an invite for this year; sessions look interesting. Gonna wait to pass judgment though...

Sounds like fun...perhaps I'll dress my blackberry in costume.
Hmm....little brown pants sandwiched
between 2 yellow sponges.....SpongeBerry!

Way too funny

Hi all, I am so excited to go to WES this year but I am a newbie and my partner in crime is unable to attend, so I am flying solo.

Anyone from Edmonton going to be there? Where is a good place to meet up with people? The last thing I want to do is be a loaner LOL

Hi jnetter,

Make any good snowmen lately?
I'm in Winnipeg and apparently we're getting Alberta's leftovers tonite.
Snow advisory the end of April.....crazy!

I'm also a WES newbie. Will be there with a co-worker.
No worries about being there alone - you'll meet up with others from here.

What hotel are you staying at?

I would think it is indeed better to be a loner than a loaner

For you WES noobs, have no fear.... BBF WES Vets are here. We'll have our own meet-up at the reception Monday night. Some of us are even hanging about before hand. More details to come!

I think its called the Buena Vista? I had to book it last minute

I'm pretty sure being a "loaner" is illegal in the US... at least that's what the judge told me.

Looks like the tracks scheduler is up there now. Now to try and dig through all of those sessions and pick the good ones out.

If you scroll back a page I put all the sessions into a spreadsheet to allow easier planning. Some of the sessions I like are at the same time so hopefully they offer then more then once.

Still trying to get into the host site hotel .. at the Renaissance right now and if the host doesn't come available (at WES rate) I'm switching to Hilton or Doubletree

The online My Scheduler is pretty doggone cool at attendwes.com. You pick the sessions you're interested in, give it a rating of low, medium or high and then it creates a schedule for you. You're even given the opportunity to resolve conflicts if sessions occur at the same time.

Sadly, there isnt enough time in the day or frequency of some sessions for me.

Thanks - but you clearly have more free time than me!!

bb

I'm curious.....question for everyone:

What are your top 3 WES session picks?

I'm quite disappointed with the times of some of the sessions. There are times where I have 3 or 4 things I'd like to attend and other times I have a block of 2-3 hours where nothing is of interest to me. Looks like they are going to get my $200 for all of the session videos.

Only 3? I'm torn on learning things that will help me right now, things I do not already do in our environment but could help in the future, and learning a bit more about developing.


Right now, I like:

1. 'The Pain-free Way to Manage Software Device Upgrades on BlackBerry Smartphones'
2. 'WES Party 2008"
3. "Individual or Corporate Owned devices – Compliance & Cost Difficulties" or "Making it Easier - Self Service Ideas for your BlackBerry Deployment"

1. Reduce Server Costs with BlackBerry Support for Virtualization
2. The New BlackBerry Enterprise Solution v5.0: What's the Buzz?
3. The IT Manager's Secret Ally: Smart Monitoring and Alerting Tools for the BlackBerry Enterprise Server

I've got others scheduled, but this year these are my top picks.

I've got this as one of my top pics also.
But REALLY - what are they thinking?

It ends at 5:30 and the party starts at 7?
Hardly enough time to travel back to my hotel
and make myself purdy for John Mayer!

Party may start at 7, but dont count on him hitting the stage until at least 9ish.

Hmm I'm sure I went to that one last year and it sounded great. I'm amazed their bothering to re-run it now that we've all upgraded to 5.0

I've done the "pick the ones you're interested in, rate them" but then I'm missing something as it doesn't seem to create my schedule for me..