Last week I had the opportunity to attend the launch event for Lync 2010 in NYC. It was my second trip to the city and the event was a great experience. The night prior to the launch we were invited to a reception where we got to spend some time chatting with Kirk Koenigsbauer about some of the new and different things happening in the next year. There are a lot of really great things happening and as someone who spends a lot of time working with Information Workers I am excited to hear about the steps that MS is taking to make more relevant information easily available. We also chatted a bit about Office 365 and the power it will bring to organizations. I know Office 365 won’t work for everyone, but I am excited about the new opportunities it will bring to the market.
The actual launch event was great. The keynote kicked off with a call from Bill Gates and then consisted of many relevant demos. The thing that stood out to me the most was the ease of use when working with the tool. From an end users perspective the system seemed very intuitive and easy to work with. I am looking forward to getting it installed within a dev environment so that I can get some more hands on testing and also create some follow up blogs that show the integration with SharePoint.
Below are some links that provide some more information about Lync. I definitely recommend that you spend some time looking around. If you aren’t already using Lync, maybe you should be!
- Virtual Launch Event Site:
www.microsoft.com/lync
- Virtual Pressroom: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/presskits/office/servers/
- Lync Infographic: http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/images/features/2010/11-17LyncInfo_lg.jpg
- Microsoft New Center feature:
http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2010/nov10/11-17Lync.mspx
- Join the conversation on Twitter at #lync
Here are some of the pictures from the trip and the launch event:
Jennifer Ann Mason 
