A few of my Cincinnati Microsoft peers and I spent some time yesterday with a great group of high-school students with the INTERalliance of Greater Cincinnati. Kids from about a dozen different local schools got together to form four teams and compete in the “Microsoft Olympics”. Each team spent time working with and experiencing the newly released Windows 7. After gaining some first-hand experience with the new OS, Windows Live Messenger, Hotmail, Live Mesh and other technologies, the goal of the day was to research Microsoft competitors and competitive threats to the different technologies. After the research, each team delivered a 5 minute presentation discussing those threats and suggestions on how to overcome them. For a group of kids that don’t usually get in front of strangers to speak, I was very impressed with how well they handled themselves and communicated their ideas. There was a lot of potential in the room.

It was a great day and working with the kids was fun. It was also very informative just listening to the kids talk to better understand how they view computers, technology and what’s important to them. The overwhelming consensus among all the teams was that Microsoft’s biggest competitor (at least for Windows 7) is Microsoft itself with Windows XP. Apple and Google also have considerable mind-share with the kids. Talking with them reinforced to me where Microsoft has done well and where we still need to make some ground. A big highlight for me was showing the kids some cool feature in Win7, Bing, Mesh or something else and having them say “Cool… I didn’t know Microsoft did that”.