This article was originally posted in Global Nerdy.
On Tuesday, the day that Barack Obama got sworn in as the 44th President of the United States, my 3-month probationary period at Microsoft also ended and I became a full-fledged Microsoft Developer Evangelist. I figured that if Obama could have a swearing-in ceremony to mark his official entrance into his new job, why couldn’t I?
As luck would have it, I was at the Vancouver Convention Centre to speak at Microsoft’s TechDays conference, where the Microsoft logo was projected onto the waterfall on the second floor. It made a pretty good backdrop for the ceremony, which was conducted by my fellow Developer Evangelist John Bristowe. I swore my oath on a “Techie Crunch” box, a cereal box containing the swag we gave to every attendee:
This magic moment would’ve been lost forever if it weren’t for videographer, blogger and man-about-tech Warren Frey, who was recording interviews for TechVibes and caught it for posterity. Thanks, Warren! I salute you with a filet mignon on a flaming sword!
I’m flying out of Vancouver this morning to my next stop – Montreal, where I will be speaking at CUSEC, the Canadian University Software Engineering Conference. There, I’ll deliver my presentation, titled Squeezeboxes, Start-Ups and Selling Out: A Tech Evangelist’s Story.
Vancouver has been covered in fog for the past couple of weeks. They’re close to the record number of days of the pea-soup-thick variety of fog, as shown in the photo below:
Photo by Adrian Eden.Click the photo to see it on its Flickr page.
I think that this photo needs a teensy bit of editing:
Click the photo to see it at full size.
I found this poster amusing – click it to see a larger version:
I’m in Vancouver for one more night before flying off to Montreal to speak at CUSEC.
I’m meeting up with Boris Mann and the Vancouver Bloggers tonight at 6:00 p.m. at The End Cafe (2360 Commercial Drive). See you there!
Hello from Vangroovy! I’m at the Vancouver Convention Center to speak at the Microsoft Techdays Canada conference.
Here’s the Centre, as shown on the web site and postcards. It does look like this in the summer:
Here are the photos I took looking out onto the ocean from the Centre this morning:
My hotel is across the street from the Centre, so I didn’t wear a coat today. The doorman looked a bit worried when I passed him, but I said “Don’t worry. Next to last week’s weather in Toronto, this is tropical.”
Here’s a greeting card for my American friends to commemorate the inauguration of President Obama:
Yes, you can!
