In my previous posts I provided a couple of tips based on my experiences from previous Summits. I already mentioned that not all things are the same for each of the Summits. This is also the case for the 2013 edition of the MVP Global Summit.
One of the things that struck me most this year was that for me and a huge group of others there are no sessions scheduled at Microsoft Campus. Instead this year they decided to keep a large group of MVP’s in Bellevue and scheduled a lot of the sessions in the Hyatt conference rooms.
So what does this mean for MVP attendees? Well first of all, you won’t see a single thing of the Microsoft areas. For me that’s not so much of a problem, I’ve seen most areas and been to many of the developer buildings, lunch areas, conference rooms etcetera.
For new MVP’s it is however a sad thing, a setback maybe. You probably expected to see a lot of Microsoft’s working areas for the first time in your live and now they just ‘canceled’ that for you!
To solve that, and you probably wanted to do some shopping in the Microsoft Company Store (the store where employees and guests can buy Microsoft hard- and software at cost price, not the Microsoft Store in the mall) you now must pick your time to leave the Bellevue area and hop on one of the shuttle busses to the Campus area. The bus will stop at the education center, building 92 from the top of my head, close to Commons The Mixer lunch area.
By doing so you opted to cancel some of the sessions and probably spend your time on driving to the Microsoft Store, do some shopping and use the option that allowed you to spend YOUR OWN money in the Store and drive back again. Downside is that you lost two to three hours of your sessions time by doing so.
The education center (store and guest visitor center) is still not in the center of the ‘real’ campus area. If you want to explore more of the Campus area you can hop on to one of the shuttle busses that go to Building 36, the other conference center more in the middle of Microsoft Campus.
Driving over there will give you a good impression on how buildings are arranged and their environment. Without sessions scheduled -inside- the work areas you won’t however get the ‘feel’ of it.
Despite the relocation of the sessions to Bellevue for many of us the MVP Global Summit still is a great place to be, to meet your ‘old friends’ and connect and make some ‘new’ friends. But most of all, sharing all sorts of technical geek stuff just is the best!
Oh, and a new tiny -but important- tip:
Check the time on your alarm clock in your hotel room! This morning I woke up one hour early as the clock of the alarm was one hour ahead of time. I never noticed it last night when I set my alarm time. Maybe it was still set to Daylight Savings Time. Oh well … there is a benefit to that and that is that I now had an extra hour to slowly get up and do some extra things and read some more before the breakfast room opened.
What we learned: … Check your alarm clocks for the correct time!
Enjoy the remaining days at the MVP 2013 Global Summit!
PS: Another sad thing is that, as I can see it so far, there probably are not enough Surface Pro 128 devices available to bring one home 🙁