On Friday I was lucky enough to be invited into London for a special adventure. An adventure hosted by Microsoft and based around their SkyDrive product. Oh, and there were prizes!
Earlier in the week I received this email:
What?
A fun filled day in the cloud exploring Microsoft SkyDrive by competing with fellow tech Gurus to win some fantastic prizes.
Why?
To discover latest version of SkyDrive and the celebrate the release of SkyDrive apps for Windows Phone and iPhone we’ll be offering a fantastic day out and tech treasures up for grabs including a brand new Windows 7 laptop and Nokia Lumia 800 with Windows Phone.
So off I went on Friday morning to the Marriot Hotel (the site of the old County Hall) in Westminster armed with my iPhone and my MacBook Air (yes, it was a Microsoft event, but that was the kit I had, and after all, the SkyDrive app has just been released for the iPhone.
The Challenges
Upon arriving at the hotel, I was greeted by my fellow tech bloggers who were all eager to find out what this was all about.
Ian from Microsoft then told us about SkyDrive and gave us a little demo while we all ate breakfast (well ok, everyone else had ate breakfast, I had barely made it to the hotel in time).
He then laid out the challenges for the day.
The day was all about SkyDrive and how easy it is to use. So this is what we were told:
Today is all about exploring the cloud physically and virtually. Armed with your SkyDrive apps you’ll be taking to the clouds aboard a capsule on The London Eye where you’ll be tasked to capture and share images of iconic London landmarks.
Challenge 1
We had to find and take pictures on our phones, using the SkyDrive app and then uploading the pictures to our SkyDrive account of four landmarks :
- Battersea Power Station
- St Paul’s Cathedral
- The Shard
- BT Tower
Once we had uploaded each picture, we had to then use our laptops to log into SkyDrive and share out the picture for all to see. We then had to tweet the link to the picture to all our twitter followers and ask them the question “What is the landmark in the photo and where was it taken from?” The first person to get three out of four correct responses would win two Nokia Lumia 800 Windows phones. Oh, and they had to include the hashtag #SkyDriveLondon for it to count.
Mobile broadband would be provided in the private capsule via several 3 MiFi devices.
What could possibly go wrong? Well we will come back to that in a minute.
Challenge 2
If that wasn’t enough, our second challenge would take place as soon as we returned from the Eye. We had to create a PowerPoint presentation, using Office Web Apps detailing what we had just done.
The winner of this challenge would win a brand new Acer Aspire S3 Ultrabook.
Beginning the 1st Challenge
So we all trekked the short distance to the London Eye and waited for our private capsule were we would have 30 minutes to complete the task. Oh, and there would be plenty of champagne provided as well!
Not bad….