Day +643 : HEROES Happen Here

I am fine today.

I went to attend a grand Microsoft products launching event called "HEROES happen here" in the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (KLCC) today. The products are Windows Server 2008, Visual Studio 2008 and SQL Server 2008, and there were 4,000 ‘heroes’ attended the event, the biggest crowd in South East Asia for the same event.

Do you think that the attendees really wanted to get a better understanding of the new products through the event? No, I believe this is not the case for most attendees as there is already tons of information available on the internet. Then why people still flooded the KLCC to attend the event?

I guess some of the following points might explain this.

1. The event is free.


2. Good lunch is provided.


3. Every attendee is rewarded with a free Windows Vista Ultimate, and one year evaluation of Windows Server 2008.


4. They wanted to be Heroes. Microsoft is ingenious of using “HEROES happen here” as the theme :-)


5. A great opportunity to escape from the work, legally :-)

I was a little bit surprised to see my nephew brought his girl friend - a student and most probably has nothing much to do with the newly lunch Microsoft products – to the event. But if we judge from the points that I listed above, it is perfectly reasonable for him to register his girl friend to the event.

My nephew told me proudly that he got two copies of Windows Vista Ultimate. Of course, one of them is from his girl friend.

I must admit that I am a lot less smart than him. If I thought about this earlier, I should bring my wife and the four children, and even our maid and “nenek” (mother-in-law) to the event. With this, we will get 8 copies of free Windows Vista Ultimate and at the same time, let them taste the wonderful feeling of being treated as heroes :-)

Hero with the free Windows Vista Ultimate and other evaluation softwares
Hero pass
This is how Microsoft treats the heroes
See you next post :-)