Company Meeting
I attended the Microsoft Company Meeting at Safeco Field on Friday. Despite being pretty cynical about these rah-rah sorts of events, I am impressed that Microsoft thinks it's important enough to spend $$ to get us all together for one day and celebrate what we've accomplished, and get us fired up for what's ahead. Personally, I'm not much of a "pep rally" kind of person, but I did enjoy seeing the demos of our upcoming products like Office 12, Windows Vista, new MSN technologies and XBOX 360. The Natural Interactive Services Division (NISD), to which Speech Server belongs, had a section at Safeco reserved so we could all sit together, and make a ruckus anytime one of the speakers mentioned speech technologies.
It's also pretty amazing to see 15000+ Microsofties in one place, and to get an idea of how big the company really is, given that's only about a quarter of the total employees! It was cold sitting up in the 300-level section in the shade, but the fake American Idol contest and the careful engineering of paper airplanes was very entertaining. One made it all the way from our area to the front of the floor section. I was also surprised to see how many people I recognize across the company, just walking around Safeco. I've only been at Microsoft for 3 years, yet I saw tons of people I knew or had at least met once or twice. I guess in some ways, the company is pretty small. Being able to switch jobs and groups easily probably contributes to this as well.
Well, I'm back at work today after nearly 2 weeks of being out sick or taking half days due to illness. Still not 100% but it's now a month from the TAP kickoff and I need to start getting all these details sorted out. I'm working on the actual agenda for the training, which is like a puzzle to figure out which sessions go in which room at what time, and make sure everything is actually in an order that makes sense. I've also enlisted the help of our fantastic Admin Assistant Kathleen and our event planner Monica to make sure the Kickoff week goes smoothly.
We'll be using the new connect.microsoft.com site for both the TAP and Beta program communications and I've got to work on getting that site configured with our info. It seems easier to use than the Betaplace site. I hope our customers find that to be true!
