Microsoft Giving Campaign is a tradition where employees are encouraged to give time and money to the community and Microsoft will match employees' contributions to eligible charitable organizations up to $12,000 per year. To encourage people to give time, money and hope, some organizations within Microsoft have a raffle drawing for those who contributes during the giving campaign. Depending on the amount of one's contributions you get a raffle ticket and you can win various prizes. The grand prize for Connected Systems Division (CSD) in the 2006 giving campaign was a dinner at Robert Wahbe's, the division's VP, house with the division's General Managers: Eric Zinda, Joe Long, and Oliver Sharp. There was 5 drawings and I won, not only once, but twice, which meant I could bring 3 guests to the dinner.

We had the dinner last Saturday and my guests were my good old friends Alex Cobb, Luanne Warden, and Amanda Silver. We had dinner with Robert, Eric, Joe, and Oliver and the rest of the winners: Izabella Lankerovich, Carlos Figueira, and Moon Majumdar, all of CSD. Tom Black was the chef. We all cooked dinner together and we had a blast. Good food and good times.

I wrote before here on how its great that Microsoft and its employees surpassed the $2.5 Billion mark through charitable donations and I mentioned that this is one of the reasons why I'm proud to be working for Microsoft. I am indeed flattered to see that some of the senior employees at Microsoft spend some of their private time, and open their homes, to support the giving campaign and subsequently the community. This is pretty cool.