I was recently in New York to launch Office Live Workspace to the world. It was a significant milestone for the product so we also kicked off a sweepstakes where the grand prize is $100,000 and over 30,000 other prizes will be given away.

For the launch we invited Doug Ellin, creator and executive producer of the HBO series Entourage, as well as executive producer Rob Weiss and star Jeremy Piven to join us at the event. With the writing process being so collaborative we felt the Entourage guys would benefit from using Office Live Workspace.

For me it was a surreal experience hanging out with these guys. Jeremy Piven has been in some of my favorite movies like Black Hawk Down and Old School not to mention he plays Ari Gold masterfully in Entourage. As for Doug Ellin and Rob Weiss, they are the real genius behind Entourage, which is one of the hottest shows on television.

I didn’t know what to expect, were they going to be Hollywood prima donnas? After meeting them I can tell you they were so down to earth and genuine. I had an absolute blast working with them. You can check out my interview with them on MSN.

The day started when the guys came down to Twelve21. I showed them Office Live Workspace and we talked about how they could use it.

Doug Ellin started things off by saying he uses Microsoft Office Word to write all his scripts on his Mac. As we talked about the writing process Doug mentioned that there are sometimes 30 or more different versions of the script before they get to the final one. He said it was difficult to keep track of the latest version of the script.

When I walked through the demo of Office Live Workspace they became really excited about how easy it was to work on one online copy of the document and the service would keep track of the different versions. They also liked how easy it was to share a script and control editors and viewers. But the icing on the cake was the ability to access Office Live Workspace from any computer, even on their Macs.

Rob Weiss called Office Live Workspace a “virtual writer’s room” (just so you know he coined the term first) where it gave everyone a chance to collaborate throughout the writing process.

Jeremy Piven, self-described “caveman” when it comes to technology, saw it as an opportunity to be a part of the writing process. Instead of him doing a lot of improv on the set he could explore his ideas with Doug and Rob collaboratively in a workspace.

Later that night we turned Twelve21 into a hot NYC club and had a party to celebrate our launch. People were enjoying their cocktails, dancing to DJ Sky Nellor, and signing up for Office Live Workspace on laptops. Oh, and beautiful people were everywhere.

It turns out I know a lot more models than I thought. Thanks to my friend, Hana Soukupova, for coming and making the event much more glamorous. I think she made people think they were at Fashion Week not a Microsoft party.

Overall it was a terrific launch event and everyone had a great time.