Now this should be interesting - our CTO, Ray Ozzie, has started a public blog on Spaces (of course) where he plans to enter in to public discourse about projects and stuff at Microsoft. Clearly smarter than the average bear, this should prove an interesting one to monitor.
Ray Ozzie was the man behind Lotus Notes which was a pretty groundbreaking product (I used it at two pharmaceuticals companies I worked at before joining Microsoft). As our chief technical officer Ozzie reports to BillG and as his bio says he has "has responsibility for influencing corporate communications and collaboration strategy, applications and platform infrastructure, and for helping drive Microsoft's software-based services strategy and execution across all three of the company's divisions". He was a driving force behind the recent Live annoucements - that alone should make his blog a good read.
Okay - I'm on a roll with this theme now. Check out this hilarious (but cool....yep, we do cool!) XBOX 360 ad
Hot on the heels of the Windows XP Start Something campaign, we have a next generation Windows PC design competition. Between May 18th and October 3rd, Microsoft and the Industrial Designers of America held a competition to challenge established design teams, indepdendent designers and students from around the world to come up with innoative new designs for PC's for work, home and play. With over $100,000 at stake there are some fantastic submissions at http://www.startsomethingpc.com/
Check out the video to find out more and register to vote
I've worked at Microsoft for almost 8 years now and it is my second job out of university. About a month in to the job I said to my family "I can't imagine I'd ever want to work anywhere else". That may sound pretty sycophantic but 8 years on, nothing has changed for the simple reason that we're just involved in an amazing industry that does amazing things - and I firmly believe that Microsoft can play a pivotal role in people's lives be that at home, work or play. To explain what I mean, take a look at the Start Something Amazing Awards site - it makes you realise that people are just doing cool stuff with software. Some days the hours are long and some days I wonder what it's like to work somewhere else but stuff like this and the recent Live announcments is why I work here. More on this soon....
Every now and then we have a great event that I suspect people will say afterward "oh I only wish I'd known...." and here is one of those:
If you are interested in learning how the new technologies available through Windows Server 2003 R2 can solve challenging IT problems, providing solutions for:
you should attend the TechNet Spotlight session on ‘What’s News in Windows Server 2003 R2 at our offices in Reading. Speakers include:
The registration site for this FREE event is at https://msevents-eu.microsoft.com/cui/EventDetail.aspx?culture=en-GB&eventid=118765273Meantime, you can learn more at http://www.microsoft.com/WindowsServer2003/R2/default.mspx