I've spent some time over the past couple of weeks conducting informal interviews with some internal folks about their app usage. These are folks who gave up an hour of their time in exchange for nothing more than the knowledge that they were helping out a fellow employee.

One of my findings from these interviews is that there are some absolutely awesome people who work here. I sent out an email to an internal mailing list explaining what I was up to, and had 20 responses within an hour. Responses ranged from worker bees in the trenches in groups all around the company to one of our vice presidents. Today, I got to spend an hour chatting with Major Nelson, and learned that he's one of the nicest people in the world, personable and funny and insightful. My chat with him is the best hour that I've had at work all week. (Nothing against everyone else that I've talked to!)

And that's one of the reasons that I work for Microsoft. Every time that I've sent a request out to someone on another team, regardless of whether I know them in advance, I've gotten a great response that's timely and helpful. When I've had the chance to meet other employees across the company, they've been pretty much universally great people.