Funj's Blurbs and More..

After more than a month of preparation, the monster demo was finally delivered.  Done as part of a Knowledge Sharing 2008 session by one of the large telcos, the CEO of the company with a roomful of high level business heads and GMs were attending.   It was the first time the MS Roundtable was being demo'ed live in Malaysia.  Worked with the local MS TS and SS in prepping, rehersing and delivering it all.  After late nights, drenched in the rain, flooded car parks, quirky tech anomalies, it came together. Man what an event!

 

This was my rig: Catalina, LifeCAM, Habu, Visualizer with a HTC Smartphone for the mobility bits over wireless

 

 

The MS Roundtable station. We placed it where the CEO and MS execs was sitting for the live demo.

 

The server, wireless router and 2nd Rig hooked up with another Catalina and LifeCAM, which my "Sales Director" was using.

 

 

3 projectors connected to 3 screens in the little executive dining room at the 54th floor. "trip hazard" so had to tip toe around the wires.

 

 

 

The Managing Director of MS Malaysia delivering her session just before mine..

 

 

Had a glitch with the Alerts engine in MOSS which caused multiple sync tries on my mobile device during the demo. But with so many "moving parts" demoed I am thankful nothing else broke.  Overall it was taxing, but I had fun.  Can't do too many of these tho else I'll die of stress.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I took this picture of a bowl of seafood noodles which I had in Penang a few weeks back during a business trip.  It was absolutely the best seafood noodles I had and each time I see the picture, I instantly get hungry.   One of the must do's again the next time I go to Penang.

 

After many months of waiting, our MS Roundtable unit finally arrived.  Within minutes a few of us in the office swarmed over it and went through the rather "thin" manual/user guide.  What was surprising is that the unit actually comes with so many piecies.  Extended microphones, extended dialpad, network/phone cables, power adapters etc.  Here's how it looked like when unpacked from the box

 

Since the device gives a 360 degree view of who is seated around it, I wondered how it'll work with Communicator or Live Meeting.  Do 5-6 people each sign in them selves on the device and does it directly plug into the LAN and find our OCS home server from the SIP URI?  Nope, its actually directly USB attached to a PC/Laptop running a single instance of Communicator or Live Meeting, and works like an extended Webcam/Microphone.  No special drivers are needed on the PC/laptop.   In addition, the device plugs into a normal analog phone line for normal conference call feature.  No integration to OCS for VOIP calling when used as a stand alone unit (i.e. not connected to PC via USB).  Here is the touch screen of the roundtable for analog call dialing.  Besides the LCD touchscreen there is a physical dialpad connected to the device via USB as well.

 

 

 

Once logged in on that PC/Laptop, the users video and audio is based on what the Roundtable sends back to the Live Meeting session.  Panoramic view is only enabled in Live Meeting and in Communicator video call mode, only the active speaker is shown inthe video call and keeps switching focus to the active speaker (automatically detected).  What was the coolest thing is that while in a video call, as you walk around the table, the main focus camera follows/tracks your movement based on the direction of the voice.  I.e. the camera chases after you.  The 360 degree panoramic camera view at the bottom of the screen gives you a feel of how the room looks like as well.

 

 

What is funky is that the device actually has an ethernet line directly connected to the LAN to fish for firmware updates and for configuration purposes.  The configuration such as camera white balance etc on the device is not so straight forward. Its lacking a nice configuration console wizard driven app and needs Infopath files for its configuration.  Haven't played with the custom configs yet, but it looks painful!

 

 

Games, Freebie give aways and models at the SAMLite booth at TechED SEA 2008 last week. A hectic week leading up to the event and an equally busy week at TechED.  We had quite a bit of fun at the booth tho.  Starting to feel more like a product company with t-shirts, banners, and models giving away stuff and posing with the product. 

 

It was a great time to reach out to orphanage kids last weekend at an IT event organized by MIND.  It was my first time presenting to an audience who were all below 14 years of age, and the slide content had to be very non-corporate and traditional.  I had a lot of fun presenting and I hope the kids enjoyed the session.  Managed to rope Dell in to become the platinum sponsor for the event whereby they sponsored a Dell Laptop to the home.  We sponsored 2 years Broadband subsription with parental control software and services to implement.  Hoping this will give a boost to the kids at the home to not be left out in the digital age.

 

My fun filled prezzo:

 

Alvin giving away our contribution to the home..

 

 

And a group shot of the kids, and sponsors/organizers of the event.  CEO of Mesiniaga and Dell's country manager participating at the event, and motivating the kids.

 

After working non-stop 24/7 at a customers site sniffing network traffic, Morpheus is finally back.  We popped open the hood and despite running 24/7 365 days, the server was relatively dust free inside.  Completely opposite from Agent Smith where we had to use a vacumn cleaner to suck out the dust after the loaner period.  One was a bank and the other a manufacturing facility.  Air quality differs greatly between the 2.