This is my summary post about Microsoft Technology Summit 2007. For more details read day 1 , day 2 , and day 3.

1. Organization of this event was flawless.

2. Microsoft will do anything to sell more Windows licenses. Selling licenses is their today “s business model and they are serious about it.

3. I learned a new term “Coopetition rdquo; ndash; they “ll work with any other firm but will compete with them too. If Firefox has a cool feature that works in Vista, MS will be happy to work with Firefox, because this may help them to sell Vista licenses. No one just buys operational systems, people buy applications, and because of the OS. See item #1.

4. All presenters are smart people, and most of them are software engineers. Their minds are sharpened to make MS successful.

5. Google was mentioned on several occasions ndash; it bothers MS. These two companies make tons of money by using absolutely different business models (selling licenses vs. selling ads), but today “s cool-factor is at the Google “s side.

6. MS engineers are obsessed with non-disclosure agreements. Sometime I had a feeling that people are afraid to say too much.

7. Visual Studio 2005 Express Edition is free and can get you far.

8. It was a really pleasant experience interacting with people who I call “modest millionaires rdquo;. Whenever a speaker would introduce himself with the words, rdquo;I work for Microsoft for 15 years rdquo;, this technically means that this guy does not need to work anymore, and is just “volunteering rdquo; because his life would be boring otherwise.

9. Some of the speakers were not prepared ndash; it “s a star syndrome. I guess they were expecting that the audience would be happy just from being in the same room. But I preffer substance.

10. Is Microsoft for men only? There were no female speakers.

11. WPF and WPF/E will seriously compete with Adobe Flex and Apollo leaving Java and AJAX way behind in the fields of Web and Desktop application development. I am a Java developer and am not affiliated neither with Adobe nor with Microsoft, which hopefully makes my assessment a bit more trustworthy.

12. Microsoft is not evil. It “s a bunch of smart people. The just want to sell you a little more licenses. Buy them – they have good products, really.

Thank you Microsoft for inviting me, just being here is a memorable experience, and I wish Microsoft success with their software in this very-very competitive world. We will all benefit from it. Most of us are making a living by using Windows one way or another.