Wow. Just. Wow. Out of all the entries submitted for Microsoft’s Code2Fame challenge, and from the three excellent finalists, Whiist managed to take first place!

So here’s how it went down;

Early on the Tuesday morning Liz and I flew to Seattle. Microsoft had paid for my flight so we cashed in some airmiles for Liz and then upgraded to first class - I felt it would help me get into a better state of mind for the competition :) 

After we checked into our hotel (complete with a packed welcome basket and card from the Windows Home Sever team) we headed into downtown Seattle and spent the day exploring and eating too much seafood. I’d never visited Seattle but it’s a really great place, definitely different to LA and mostly in a good way.

On Wednesday morning a limo picked us up at the crack of dawn. This was the first time I met the other finalists, Prakash Gautam the author of the excellent Community Feeds Add-in and David Wright, the author of Jungle Disk. I was a little nervous as both of their entries were polished products that had been in development for a long time, whereas Whiist was something I’d knocked up from scratch in a couple of weeks. I thought the fact that Whiist had been developed specifically for WHS might help me but I wasn’t feeling especially confident.

When we got to the Microsoft Campus they had breakfast ready and a tech crew to help us setup. There was a little scare as I hadn’t realized we were expected to take our own server to demo on, but thankfully Joel from the Home Server team managed to get me access to a server in another building which I could demo on via Remote Desktop.

The five judges were the respected technology bloggers Ed Bott, Paul Thurott and Rob Enderle, Steve VanRoekel from the Windows Server division and Charlie Kindel who began the Windows Home Server movement several years ago. We each presented in turn (with the other finalists remaining in a green-room for fairness) and then had a Q&A with the judges. Although we’d been told they weren’t familiar with our Add-Ins they asked a lot of good questions about Whiist and where it would go from here.

After the presentations there was a mini-break while the judges conferred, then we went backstage to wait before being called onstage to collect our prizes. When Prakash was given third place I had this feeling I was going to get second. I was 100% certain, so when they called the next name I actually started moving towards the stage before I realized they’d called David. Wait.. I won!??.. I WON!! Wow!

We were all presented with oversized checks and goodie bags (including a full copy of Windows Home server) before having a lot of picture taken with the judges and some of the team. We also got to checkout some of the OEM home server designs and the famous “Hockey Puck” concept model. Aside from the hockey puck the HP Media Smart Server was definitely my favorite, they really need to put an apple next to it in pictures or something because it’s unbelievable small.

After lunch we had the chance to spend time with some of the developers from the Windows Home Server team. It was great to meet the people behind the actual product and they were quick to ask us a lot of questions about how the SDK could be improved and what we’d like to see in the future. Two of the nicest compliments I had were from Todd and Chris who both told me they’d been using Whiist since it was released and were big fans. They also gave me a couple of good ideas about ways to improve Whiist based on things they’d run into and had to solve for the full product.

Before we left Dileep and Sasha from the WHS team took us to the ultra-cheap Microsoft Store where I took the chance to grab a two copies of Vista to update some home PCs and a copy of Office 2007. This was the day after Halo 3 was released and the store was full of a) boxes of Halo 3 and b) people buying Halo 3 - although I did notice two people buying copies of Windows Home Server

So in a nutshell that was Seattle and the Code2Fame finals. Big big thanks to Microsoft for arranging the competition, Charlie, Todd and the team for creating Windows Home Server, Dileep and Sasha for sponsoring our trip to the Microsoft Store, and Joel for saving my bacon before the event even started

And yes, I took the fake check home