Ok, so I succumbed to presure to try and release the vlog in a .mov format. Let me know what you think, it is encoded as streaming with Fast Start so it should play almost immediately. The downside? It takes quite a bit of horse power to encode, this almost ran for two hours on a 3.0 GHz PC with 2GB ram. Also, not compatible with the old versions of Quicktime so hopefully you have a new one. On the bright side, it is almost the third of the wmv file.

Click here to start streaming

By the way, still going through the emails. I really did not expect this level of response to the first two videos. So far the favourite word seems to be "You made my day" Thank you, thank you, thank you. As for the tilted head - The camera itself is tilted so I try to compensate for it (unintentionally) and even seem to talk out of one side of my mouth more than the other. I've never really paid much attention to my mug until now, it's interesting to be self-conscious about the way I am at home. Should I shave? Do I need a haircut? Does this shirt look dirty? Weird.

Anyhow, the biggest complaint so far - enclosures. Considering that I haven't picked the default format yet doing enclosures would have been difficult. I create the enclosure feed for the SBS Show by hand so I am not 100% sure how to do this yet. Learning process folks, takes a while to nail down the distribution end of things but as usual, its all about the message.

By the way, set this beast up on the vlogmap . I'm node #1314

Hit the image above to download the movie or click here.

Susanne, Chris and I wanted to give you an idea of what it’s like to put together the most successful SMB podcast. Enjoy.

Update: Sorry about having to download these, I’ll publish the .mov/Quicktime later tonight to enable streaming – not 100% sure how to embed wmv (Windows Movie) into a player against WordPress but I’ll do the Quicktime.

Some of you read way too much into what I say. Still here, still perfectly fine, relax. They say a picture is worth a thousand words so hope this one helps:

Sometimes it takes a stroll in the park, a chat by the pond, a gay pose by the historic statue to take you out of your element. For me, the best thing that ever happened was a dead cell phone battery with Robbie and Susanne entertaining me and taking me to one party, concert, pub and event after another. That is not who I am, it is not what I do and it was… comfortably different.

I got taken out the role I live in, disconnected from the empire I have built, separated from the life-as-usual and I realized just what direction things were going and just how happy I was with everything. It was, quite honestly, the most liberating experience to step away from the common negativity, pressure, stress and unwanted insomnia. Don’t get me wrong, I take breaks and I do have a lot of fun in my life but they are always planned and thought through. This was different, I have never been this out of reach and it showed me whats truely important in life.

Everyone goes to these conferences to learn something about business, about technology, about partnership. I walked away learning a lot about myself, about what I’ve done so far, what I hope to do next and just how satisfying everything in life really is even without me IDDQD-ing it all the time. If you understand what I just said you’re far too big of a geek, sorry

Thank you Robbie, thank you Mark, thank you David, thank you Chris for everything man. Thank you Susanne for showing me all I didn’t know and thank you Tmobile for making this happen.  

Everyone wanted to know about WWPC, everyone wanted a blog,  pics, video, swag… Honestly, the most beneficial message I can offer you on the whole experience is quite simply in the picture above:

Sometimes it is a lot more fun to make an ass out of yourself.

… And so does this one.

A lot of life is about discovering who you are, sometimes sadly you discover who you are not. 

Thank you for your support, see you in a week. 

-Vlad 

This girl needs a fan club. She has been a friend for a while but I'm continuously impressed by what she is able to do. Namely,

1) Excellent presentation of the SMB community concepts on Monday

2) The best, eeeever, burn on Chris ever. Ever. I will make sure it ends up on his tombstone: "Chris: Wow, thats a tiny tripo.. Susanne: But its not all about the size, right Chris"

3) Wrestling with me for the dinner check. Of course she won (in polite terms of course because saying "She kicked my ass, hid the check behind her back and punched me in the ribs just doesn't have the same kind of a ring to it). Weak, weak, weak, can't even take our British friends out to dinner — and after all we did to them in Boston.

What a phenomenal, amazing, incredible day at WWPC. This has been the single most productive day of the year and I am not even home! Four hours of sleep here I come!

It is going to be hard to believe but the picture below is of Chris, myself and Susanne. Believe it or not, it is the second time we have ever been together in person. We have put well over 20 hours worth of “edutainment” with the SBS Show before ever meeting one another. Talk about the power of internet, collaboration and people who are willing to make a difference. Yes, we’ve been slowing down lately but we’ve fought through a disk replacement/fusing surgery, bitter divorce, many professional changes, challenges and opportunities.

 So in just a little under a year we’ve gone from almost certified unknowns to one of the most popular podcasts on the net and certainly the most dominant SMB IT show out there. Here is the first post of me meeting Susanne.

Now god save the queen. Queen, Queenie, Susanne Dansey, our pal invited us among her people at the WWPC party for UK. Thanks for Robbie for inviting us and playing a phenomenal host. As many of you know, I don’t drink. But here I was, at Cheers, with a bar full of Brits… let’s just say I counted up to 8 bud lights, and as big of a guy I am…. I’m really a wuss.

So man, did we have an awesome time. Thank you, thank you, thank you UK. Sorry Queenie if we embarrased you in front of your countrymen (and women) with our weak alcohol tollerance. I’m hanging out with Chris at the moment and he’s talking about going out again so… man, Ballmer is so going to get revenge for everything bad I ever said about Microsoft as he starts booming through my headache in the morning.

Ok, last post, no mo WWPC stuff. Back to business. But I sincerely hope you do find this inspirational. In the space of 12 months I’ve made some great friends, great connections and pushed out over a million podcasts. For a threesome that really didn’t think twice about the community at this time a year ago this is one hell of an accomplishment.

Bit of clarification on the Schragging that took place today at the Small Business Symposium. Man, what a sad yet ironic way for this great event to end. First off, a panel of senior Microsoft executives was introduced by Andrea Russell to answer quite a few questions. Schrag, in his usual courteous way, asked everyone to stand up if they liked Microsoft software in SMB — nearly everyone did, and some even clapped. But then as everyone sat down he asked them to stand back up in.. well, you can see where this one is going. Long story short, Schrag won the Xbox giveaway after insulting the deck of Sr. Microsoft managers and thanked god for it. Not exaggerating it at all.

Not all bad news, I totally called it, and saw Chris fall to his knees next to me as if he got hit by a bullet. In his defense, he has been craving an Xbox since we went to Best Buy the other day.

After the event we went to Harry Brelsfords launch of the SMB Magazine. Big thanks to Beatrice Mulzer of SMB Nation for giving us an ad for the SBS Show in there!

But on to the serious topic – as I noted earlier, SBS R2 is eeeeeeverywhere. Yet nobody is talking about it today. Read between the lines here, “The big dog is about to announce something tomorrow” – cheaper, bigger, slimmer, ? In the SBS community this will be a big non-event, I doubt my customers will ever even notice – but for WWPC it seems to be the big news. 

Part of the Australian and US reception.

And for the ultimate SBSer koolade drinker in you – green check on the lunch box, green check on the cup of water, green check everywhere.

As a partner, and as you can witness from the vlog, a Microsoft shareholder I have to show serious concern if this is “the” major announcement at WWPC in the morning. Microsoft’s most insignificant upgrade in its most insignificant server product justifies this kind of marketing expenditure? I’m sorry, but the end of the 2003 Server Wave is coming with the same excitement and shame as the end of Zidane’s career – battered, broken, aged and missing expectations despite a phenomenal quality throughout its lifecycle.

News from Small Business Symposium?

Whats in the works for the micro-Microsoft focus?

Look at Microsoft Office Live around the Office 2007 launch.

Where is SBS going?

Not sure. Partner ridiculed it as “Smallhorn” and the worldwide manager remarked to it as a part of Longhorn wave. When its coming, what it will have….. well, 64bit platform, thats about all we know.

Biggest understatement of the conference…

Cindy Bates: “I’m sure some of you have heard of lessthanfries.com or 86centsaday that Eric Ligman has been working on…” at which point everyone raised their hand “Wow, good job Eric”

Good job indeed.

Ok, so I got guilted into this post. Here is some interesting stuff in a few pictures. Needless to say SBS R2 is everywhere but nobody is saying anything about it, at all. So its even less of a non-event than even the biggest cynics presented.

But screw SBS, this event has been awesome for a 1.0. The symposium has all the SMB leaders you’re used to and I’m in the middle of a four-way Schragging of the MSP panel.

The UK crew (headed by Susanne) did an incredible job promoting SMB ITPRO collaboration and business relationships - we video taped it and got approval from Robbie The Man to post it on Vladfire. If you're in Cambridge and have a 4pin-to-4pin firewire cable I'll post it tonight.

Let's see, who is here. Eric Ligman, virtually all of TS2 (Ron, Charles V.H., Fred Pullen, Stephen Cracknell, Indy, Mike Marshall, Mark Moore of mspartnerevents.com), Jessica Emmons, our new PCM in the Gulf, lots and lots of big Microsoft folks.

Two spotlights: Charles Van Heusen offered to kick my ass and I nearly dropped my laptop on Karl Palachuk. I was doing a demo for Karl, surrounded by geeks and someone came over with, and I quote: "Vlad, there is a pretty girl that wants to meet you." Poor Karl didn't even know what hit him.     

Vlog.. bad idea. I'm not used to having complete strangers knowing who I am… 

Here are a few shots for your enjoyment.

Microsoft really did a great job with this event. I like the bar, I really, really do. The atmosphere is relaxed, content is professional, they aren't flooding us with food, everything seems to be remarkably well organized, on time… Just remarkably well done, to the point of shock. 

The false sense of security check is bright and green and nobody seems to care except one. Greetings from Boston Susan, are we even now?

P.S. So many questions about comments… The comments are now closed. Will likely remain so indefinitely. The comments via trackbacks (ie, if you create a comment about my post it will show up on comments) are still enabled. I'm OOF so I don't have the time to filter the obscene comments from all of Susannes fans and I sort of feel that if you think you have a valuable opinion that is strong enough to prompt you to comment on my blog perhaps you need to start a blog of your own. Give it a shot, www.blogger.com, it's far easier than it sounds.

Update: Can't believe I forgot this. Big thanks to Eric Ligman for hooking us up with the SBSC blue badge. More flare, now I'm a complete Microsoft certification xmas tree..  

Update 2: Thanks to Schrag for hooking me up with Wifi access this morning. Schrag is here for the whole week btw, $2k+ dropped on an event by a guy that won't drop $10 for professional business cards. Think there is value in professional conventions now?

This will be an unusually quiet week at Vladville.

I need a break from all the insanity and I do want to re-focus on what value I actually bring to you with this. I mean, lets face it, where is the value in endless ranting? Vladfire comments, so far, are amazing. Thank you, thank you, thank you! I am glad I can bring a smile to your face. People make my day, every day, and I hope I can return the favor.

There will be no blogging (by me) from WWPC. For one this is a business event and as much as there will be a spin on the community at the end of the day I'm here to find business opportunities and I don't think anybody will ever be honest with me if they have to even remotely question whether they'll end up on my blog. In slightly over a year of Vladville I've never betrayed  anybody's trust (if even slightly it was done anonymously). Now as for the number of people that have felt it neccessary to say "now do not blog about this", thats quite different. Let's just say that there are precisely three people that I have enough dirt on that a single blog post (or shall we say a podcast) could bring em down and all are either great friends with no shame or are marrying me

So sorry "community" I spent the evening with the Brits and Chris and I'm fairly certain the next update would be an orbituary if I shared even a little of what went down. But next week will bring more podcasts, more posts, more Vladfire. In the meantime cheers to Microsoft and WWPC (down's the koolade while pouring a sip to the site to all my dead beta homies).

Let's face it, most vendor gifts suck. The best thing I ever received was a 5lb case of german gingerbread cookies and it took me, my fiance and my dog roughly two months to go through the entire thing. Not only was it tasty but the presentation was remarkable. So I do want to talk a little about the present that came to my desk the other day that I literally could not put down. As a bit of a community service I do intend to publish a full review of this but I hope that you can trust me when I say you need to buy this book if you intend to live up to your IT promises:

Service Agreements for SMB Consultants

This book, in short, is the best guide ever written for anybody in SMB IT.

Bar none.

I have a huge stack of technical and business books that are in my library simply for the chapter or two that I cannot find elsewhere. The SLA book, cover to cover, ought to be the first, last and only thing you do this week as an investment in your business.