Review of the Interact 2008 Conference

Interact 2008 was held at the Sheraton San Diego Hotel and Marina in San Diego, CA in April 2008. It's a short cab ride from the airport. Many if not most attendees stayed at the Sheraton. It was a good hotel in a beautiful setting. I used the fitness center each day and one day went for a run along the seawall to downtown San Diego and back. The conference center itself was not very big. The ceilings in the rooms seemed to be the height of rooms in a standard house. This prevented the presenters from standing too high or using a screen that was visible from the back. There were too many heads in the way to get a full view of the presentation slides in some rooms.

A giant tent was used at the back of the hotel as a social nerve center for the conference. There was a bar there (which aparently is quite important for some participants) and a large projection screen which played college basketball and NHL Hockey among other things for those enjoying the atmosphere. Birds-of-a-feather sessions were held there as well. One cool evening we were shuttled to the Wavehouse restaurant at Belmont Park in Mission Beach just north of San Diego for a party.

The weather in San Diego was cooperative. One brisk day did not prevent a wonderful outdoor buffet lunch by the water. A refreshing change from the equivalent day in other parts of the US. Obviously, we can't rate the organizers on things they can't control, like the weather, but we can applaud their choice of venue and city. Overall, a great choice.

It may have been just timing or the selection of presenters, but the content for Interact 2008 was excellent. Conferences where there are several sessions running concurrently are often frustrating because as an attendee, you can not be in multiple places at once. This conference was definitely such a situation. Office Communication Server was fairly new and even longtime Microsoft administrators were just looking into how unified messaging was being integrated into the Microsoft family of products. Other related Microsoft products, most fairly new, were also covered including Office Comminicator, Microsoft RoundTable, Office Live Meeting and Microsoft Hosted Services. The value of the content for this conference was excellent. The sessions I attended all returned great information by solid presenters, for example, Ross Smith IV of Microsoft, and creator of the Microsoft Exchange Storage Calculator, did a great presentation on Exchange Server storage scenarios. Third party products were represented as well, mostly through the small expo there, but also as presenters. Microsoft does not produce a PBX or a multimedia gateway appliance. Third party solutions are part of the UC integration in Microsoft's world. I went to as many sessions as were available to me and not one would I consider any less than very good.

Interact 2008 was sold out - attendees and exhibitors. The quality of the organization, the content, and the presenters made this conference a great value for companies working with or considering Microsoft solutions for their unified communications efforts. There is good focused content in a relatively intimate setting with great interaction between speakers and attendees.

If you are considering a unified communications conference, I would recommend Interact 2009.