Daryll McDade - The High School Guy : Rants

Is Microsoft cool to students?

Daryll McDade — Thu, 29 Sep 2005 01:54:55 GMT

Apparently not.

The Saturday after PDC some of my colleagues on the Academic team met with a group students to discuss “digital lifestyle”. Chris Avis was there and took some good notes. A couple of things strike me about this;

1) Windows is not cool. These kids clearly don’t remember the world before GUIs for personal computing. Shall I walk you through what it was like to boot up my Commodore 64? :) Vista will change a lot of minds about this.
2) Office is not cool. Hmmm…business and personal productivity just isn’t “cool” no matter what the product is. What IS cool is being able to use tools like Office to blast through work that you HAVE TO do so that you can go do fun things that you WANT to do. That said, they clearly don’t remember a world when the kinds of apps that are in Office were a) non GUI based (Lotus 1–2–3 on an MS-DOS machine…enough said) and b) stand-alone with no interactivity.
3) Microsoft is for “grandma.” Grandma’s company and grandma’s operating system. Though I disagree with this, I think I’m ok with this. Windows works for grandmothers AND students—which is what it’s supposed to do. I wonder how many students’ grandmothers can use Linux? I would guess that is a small number.

Like Chris, I think that these kinds of session are the best part of this job—there’s nothing better than listening to customers. But I would say that Microsoft doesn’t get credit for some things that are very cool. I predict that the next year will tell a different story however…

Spammer to pay Microsoft $7 million

Daryll McDade — Tue, 09 Aug 2005 17:47:00 GMT

The fact that a Spammer has to pay Microsoft $7 million is big news IMO. In the scheme of things, $7 million isn't a lot of money to Microsoft--this is clearly about the principle. It's great that $5 million of this will go directly to Microsoft's efforts to chase down more Spammers--here's to the day when we live in a world without Spam. But what REALLY bugs me about this story is a) that this company has $7 million with which to settle and b) that it will be able to continue as an on-going concern (albeit in some alternate form). I'd only be satisfied if this guy was shut down permanently.

Tags: Spam, Microsoft

Where have I been?

Daryll McDade — Mon, 11 Jul 2005 23:08:00 GMT

You may remember my previous post on "convergence." Coming to the tail end of the pain now--the black holes are parting. Traffic should pick up soon.

Convergence

Daryll McDade — Fri, 24 Jun 2005 20:02:00 GMT

Most people hear a word like convergence coming from a marketing guy and think "oh boy, hear comes the fluff..."

But I'm gonna use it in a different context at the moment. In the case I mean when two giant black holes converge to suck up every bit of available time. See, Microsoft's fiscal year ends June 30 so I am spending a lot of time trying to close out things that I had going on for the past 12 months. But for the past 6 weeks or so, I've also had to develop my operating plan for the NEXT fiscal year which starts July 1. So like many of my colleagues, I have effectively been two jobs. Hence I haven't been blogging much for the last couple of weeks (that's my story anyway and I'm sticking to it!).

I'm at Gnomedex in downtown Seattle for the next couple of days so I'm guessing my energy level is going to see a spike!

OMG--blogger starves to death!

Daryll McDade — Tue, 10 May 2005 20:36:00 GMT

I have to agree with Alex on this one--this is easily one of the saddest things that I've ever heard.

I can't imagine being so obsessed by blogging, forums and online community to the point of starving to death.

Full article here.

Be careful out there...

Kevin asks where are the marketers?

Daryll McDade — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 23:12:00 GMT

Big thanks to my teammate, Kevin Briody for the airtime on his personal blog.

At the end of the post, Kevin asks why more Microsoft marketers don't blog. Here's my take on what's in the mind of the marketer on blogs;

1) Developers are harsh. "So what!?!" you may say. "Didn't you guys know that when you took a job working with Developers?" you may also say. As it relates to MSDN, I think that many marketers are fearful that they'll get flamed because the widespread perception of this audience is that "marketing is fluff." I seem remember a TON of flame when Scoble went off on the MSN Found campaign. Personally, I look forward to getting scorched a little--it'll make me better, as I imagine it made someone on the MSN team better. But I can understand the tendency to recoil from the flames.

2) The light hasn't gone on. For many, the light just hasn't gone on in terms of recognizing the power that is inherent in blogs as both a listening tool and a transparency tool. Some folks need some help to see the value . George from MSDN Webcasts gets it. When it comes right down to it, our job as marketers is to represent the needs of a segment of people. Can it possibly be a bad thing to engage in "conversation" with people about how to do that job better?

3) Time is precious. We work in a bit of a pressure cooker here. It's the same here as it is all over--be "efficacious" and do more with less. I think that folks are worried that blogging would take more time than they have to give. I would argue that the return-for-time-spent calculation would bear out that blogging is a good use of time.

So the real question is "Do Developers *really* want to read marketers' blogs?" I can't say that I know for certain but my guess is that they do...if for no other reason but to tell us marketers that we're cracked! :)

More bad news for Computer Science

Daryll McDade — Mon, 25 Apr 2005 19:59:00 GMT

It's really disturbing to me to continue to see stats like those in this article. Where will the next generation of software professionals come from? What needs to be done to get these levels to where they were in 1999?

Can Johnny still program?

Daryll McDade — Thu, 21 Apr 2005 20:08:00 GMT

Saw this article on CNET from David Patterson(President on ACM) about the showing of the US entries in the ACM student coding competition.

<rant>

IMO, this problem starts with high school. I have visited a TON of US high schools since starting in this role and my experience is that the majority of the current generation of US students are just plain lazy. Hard work for hard work's sake just doesn't mean much to the majority of American students. I refuse to buy the argument that these jobs are moving offshore. This article shows data that the US market for tech grads is the strongest it's been in 5 years. I think that programming students get hung up on the idea that studying CS means that they're going to end up being a "code jockey their entire life (not that there's anything wrong with that). Truth is, the coder down in the trenches has commodity skills--not a mystery as to why we see off-shoring of those jobs. But there is still TREMENDOUS opportunity up the food chain. Someone has to manage large-scale technology projects to completion. Someone has to architect complex software solutions. Someone has to come up with breakthrough innovations that change people's lives with software. Getting there starts with the study of science and technology. This is where I think that those of us who care about student futures are failing--providing the line of sight to what is possible through the study of science and technology. Computer Science like all other sciences, is hard. It takes desire, patience and fortitude. But if you look at the success of "scientists" like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison and Gordon Moore it can't be denied that the patience pays off.

</rant>

I hope that this stirs some emotion in folks. I hope that it sparks students' sense of personal pride and nationalism and encourages them to go do great things.