The visit to the Polish subsidiary was a highlight of the trip. I've never been to Warsaw, and in a certain sense was only marginally there this time. I arrived late one night and was up the next morning and back in a taxi for the subsidiary offices. After the meetings we jumped back in the taxi and went to the airport. I'm confident I never set foot on Polish soil -- polish cement, polish asphalt, yes, but no soil.

It was a highlight for several reasons. First the hosts were great, all of our hosts have been great, but the Polish team really had it going. They asked hard questions, and pointed out that they were in an opensource stronghold. They also pointed out that Poland was facing a brain drain as many college grads were picking up and moving elsewhere. They (only half jokingly) pointed out that the biggest Polish city was Chicago.

Perhaps most interesting though, they arranged to have about a dozen opensource and Microsoft technology focused customer community leaders and community members visit the offices in the afternoon for a question and answer session. Everyone, including our hosts I think, expected us to leave bruised and battered. Microsoft, in Poland, is definitely in the evil empire category.

As the customers walked in the door, I felt a little like a guilty felon must feel watching the jury return from deliberations.

Instead of presenting -- we knew Powerpoint would be the death of us -- we just started asking questions. At one point, I asked how they managed information. How did they cope with information overload. How did they obtain the information they needed to get their jobs done.

Honestly, up to this point we'd said nothing about RSS, nothing about social bookmarking, the Web 2.0 phrase never passed our lips. (I don't think so anyway.)

To my utter amazement about three fourths of the room said they relied upon RSS feeds viewed through an RSS aggregator to filter the internet. Only one person in the room expressed a different opinion -- and of all things, the exception was a college student. The remainder all just nodded.

I was dumbfounded. Yeah, that is exactly how I, and a lot of the people I know, have solved the internet information overload problem. And it is a key tenet in the community team strategy. But here was a room full of IT focused professionals, nearly half way around the world, in an area that's supposed to  be experiencing an outflow of qualified young people, and at least this group was way ahead of the curve.

At that point we started telling them what we were doing. Fewer by far were familiar with social bookmarking. They relied primarily upon technical blogs. So we spent most of our time discussing how bookmarking could compliment their activities.

I think we connected. It was really encouraging for us. The fact is, we fully realize that asking Microsoft customers to adopt new work habits will be hard. But to see some customers that have already made the transition, and to hear that it works for them, and to know what we're doing is going to work for them, was just great.

In case you're curious, my sniffles had by this time evolved into a minor cold. After that meeting, and on the way to airport, I barely noticed.