Last Tuesday evening I attended a party at Skyventure, put on my Microsoft. As I understand it, the party was Josh Holmes’ idea, and he and my DE, Drew Robbins, were key to organizing it. I have to say it was a great idea and a lot of fun. The closest thing I would compare it to, in terms of conference outings, is the Richard Petty race course. Microsoft has hosted things there before, and it’s also a lot of fun, but given the time available I think Skyventure was more enjoyable (racing is more of an all day thing, in my experience).

Skyventure is basically a skydiving simulator, made possible by a huge vertical wind tunnel. After some brief but helpful training and suiting up, you get to fly in the wind tunnel for a couple of minutes at a time, with the assistance of one of the instructors. Apparently this is a sport, and sky diving teams use Skyventure equipment for training. Our instructors were all very impressive, having spent untold hours flying, and were able to do all sorts of aerobatic maneuvers. For the rest of us, we had fun flying on our stomachs, spinning about, and learning how to gain and lose altitude.

I’ve posted some pictures (provided by Skyventure) and you’ll find some others in the main TechEd2007 group on Flickr. Kudos to Josh, Drew, and Microsoft for this great idea!

[categories: teched, skydiving]