bluemonsterazure_sm
[Blue Monster PDC edition] 

The PDC is winding down and it’s been a hell of a week. A week of so many coincidences for me. For a birthday week it’s been incredibly memorable.

  • 5 years ago I was at PDC and also had my birthday here – I had dinner in the same place this week and even got a cocktail named after me. That was the so called Hailstorm PDC and was my first. It had some interesting similarities but more differences than this PDC.
  • Exactly 3 years ago I got a birthday present from Ray Ozzie on Oct 28th when he sent this services disruption memo (thanks to Mary Jo for reminding me). That memo changed how I thought about the company and where we were/are going. It gave me real faith that Microsoft v3 was a place I wanted to work.
  • For the last 12 months I’ve been working with the teams behind Azure which Ray signalled in his following memos and presentations. The highlight of the week for me was the announcements around Azure as they signal a big new direction for Microsoft and I’ve been able to be quite deeply involved with seeing the birth. Now I can talk more publicly about all the cool stuff going on at Microsoft and watch this baby move through toddler and in to teen and adulthood.

 

What a ride that has been. An interesting ride and at times a dangerous one for me personally. As James Senior said in a post earlier this week the PDC has been a Blue Monster week – for the second birthday we couldn’t have picked a better week. PDC has been full of world changing announcements. Maybe they’re just world changing from where I sit so please don’t think I’m suggesting we just cured cancer or something….but I continue to believe this company does world changing stuff. Stuff we should be proud of and that’s the kind of stuff we announced this week. For me, the coincidence of timing is amazing.

I was just lucky to be the right guy in the right place having an interesting conversation with one of the smartest guys I know. As I said, I took some heat over the last 2 years for Blue Monster, some of it deserved, some of it not. It was all worth it and I’m proud of the conversation is started and blessed to have met Hugh.

I guess all I really wanted to do here is get a set of weird coincidences out of my head – they’ve been bouncing around all week and I needed to air them. What I really wanted to say though is thanks to Hugh for a great birthday present. Your timing and couldn’t have better Hugh but the prescience was astonishing.