Some companies encourage you to spend time doing stuff outside your job description. I think that's a great idea, but I'm kinda lucky in that my job description (Application Platform Specialist) means that I could spend my life just exploring all the cool stuff that my job entails without ever going outside my job description. Things like Silverlight, mobile development, Expression Studio, Robotics Studio, BizTalk (now there's a big beautiful beast of a product) keeps me more than happy with my lot.

Having said that, along comes something that makes you think "ok, that's a little outside my job description". And in this case, that something is the Space Elevator Conference that Microsoft is sponsoring. Check it out at http://www.spaceelevatorconference.org

enough said.