Jack Gudenkauf (JackG) WebLog : Technical Strategy

ThinkWeek RTW

JackG — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 21:09:00 GMT

Released to the internal web (RTW) anyway J

Much of my delay in blogging has been because I’ve been busy with trying to keep that “work life balance” and something had to give. J In a couple previous posts, I un-characteristically wrote in a style that was a bit more than “just the facts, Jack”. And while I didn’t receive any feedback on my sprinkling in some human attributes in the writings, I have decided to get back to what you may want to know about Microsoft (via my teams’ charter). Unless inquiring minds really want to know more about me (Follow me on Twitter? – Not). While I have led an interesting life and have many stories to tell (just ask anyone ;-) I find it hard to believe anyone would want to follow me for anything other than nefarious reasons.

The ThinkWeek site is an Intranet (internal) site and cannot be found on the public Internet. This is due in part, to the Intellectual Property (IP) contained on this site.

What is ThinkWeek?

ThinkWeek is a long-standing tradition at Microsoft, initiated by Bill Gates. It is an open and voluntary forum that enables any Microsoft employee to share his or her thoughts and ideas in the form of a well-researched and thoughtfully written paper, typically ranging from 5-15 pages that will be circulated among leaders in the company.

ThinkWeek offers Microsoft employees the opportunity to communicate their ideas and to network with other employees in the company. It is grounded in the premise that sharing diverse ideas and great thinking are key elements of maintaining our competitive advantage and thought leadership around the world. Participation in ThinkWeek enables any employee to become part of the rich legacy of great thinking at Microsoft as it builds a culture of well-articulated thought.

While ThinkWeek participation is rewarding, it can also be a demanding endeavor and it is considered work that goes above and beyond an employee’s work commitments. What motivates each participant will vary depending on the individual, and also the work load and the product release cycles in their division.

How does ThinkWeek work?

I thought the following would be interesting to add to the post for a couple reasons;

1. There was enough debate and minimally, curiosity, over how a traditionally, Bill Gates centric functionality would/could/should carry-over in a post BillG world.

2. As Bill may have been considered the hub in a hub and spoke model, it clearly shows how the participants (i.e., Advisors, Co-Chairs, and Reviewers) were and are, the “spokes” of the program/model.

3. For those that are either new to Microsoft or external to Microsoft, this program and its structure give you insight into Microsoft knowledge sharing and Innovation outlets.

The following is taken from our sites F.A.Q. section, so for those readers that work at Microsoft, please feel free to peruse the content for other such information.

“Any Microsoft employee can contribute a ThinkWeek paper. Authors begin the process by enlisting an advisor to help them refine their idea by reviewing it and providing feedback. An advisor should be carefully selected by the author, as the advisor can also help with the research and learning that are part of creating a ThinkWeek paper, and help make introductions across the company to socialize the idea prior to determining whether it should be written as a formal ThinkWeek paper.

Once the idea itself has been socialized and feedback obtained, the author can then produce a thoughtfully crafted, fully researched paper. The advisor must be willing to sign off on the paper in the contribution tool as being appropriate for ThinkWeek. Once a paper is accepted, it is routed to the most appropriate Co-Chairs, consisting of Technical Fellows, Distinguished Engineers, Senior Technologists, and other executives from across the company. The papers are then reviewed by small committees of readers, mostly made up of midlevel managers who are subject matter experts, headed by a Co-Chair. At this time, the paper is also published to the ThinkWeek Web site and is available to all employees for review, comment and rating. Employees create the Community rating of ThinkWeek papers. On the other hand, Co-Chairs and Assigned Reviewers create the Co-Chair rating.”

Now that BillG has chosen to focus on the Foundation, why are we still doing ThinkWeek?

“While Bill did initiate this process at Microsoft, ThinkWeek has proven to be a vital part of Microsoft’s product and corporate planning discussions, with a long list of successful ventures tracing their genesis to papers contributed and ideas generated each year. Building on this rich tradition, the redesigned ThinkWeek program cultivates the native engineering and business creativity of our employees, and broadens opportunities for all contributors within the company.“

What is the role of Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie in ThinkWeek?

“Ray and Craig were involved in architecting the next generation of ThinkWeek, and will undoubtedly be involved in reviewing papers. In fact, we have used the “Spotlight” section of the new ThinkWeek Web site to solicit papers specifically addressing next generation applications at the request of Craig because he is interested in the diverse perspectives and ideas Microsoft employees have on this subject.”

ThinkWeek

· The new program was redesigned based on feedback from Microsoft employees worldwide and includes a wider circulation of papers that are shared and socialized among an influential group of decision makers, managers, and company leaders who have interest in specific topics.

· We launched the new ThinkWeek site on time, on 7/6/09. Thanks to the team for all their hard work! (Dev’s - you can take those sleeping bags out of the office [for a while anyway J]).

· Apologies to my family for missing my nieces wedding on 7/4 due to the release. Part of that work-life” balance” ;-) Best wishes Maria!

· The new site has been well received and we have received several great papers already.

o Our first paper submission was in the category of Diversity and I love the title “Girl Geeks: Thriving as an Engineer in Microsoft Work Culture”.

· The paper currently has ~1,948 views and a community rating of 4/5 stars.

· I echo the comments of Rico Mariani, in that I too have had a number of female co-workers and managers and I believe this diverse exposure has contributed to my personal and professional growth.

· I was surprised at the statistics on the limited number of female Engineers in our industry. I guess I’ll keep working on my daughters to follow in my foot-steps. I personally can’t imagine choosing a different profession but I support any profession they are passionate about.

· We did the bulk of the development in Silverlight 3 and we utilized many of the RIA features to build the site.

· Schedule

o Call to action - Ok, Microsoft employees - Submit those papers *by 9/17/09*!

o Sept. – Oct: Co-Chairs manage review of papers

1. Co-Chair (Technical Fellows, Distinguished Engineers, Senior Technologists, and other executives) who will select reviewers (subject matter experts). These reviewers will read, comment, and rate the papers. The Co-Chair will do a final audit of the review feedback and ratings and then publish the formal feedback for the paper. In addition, the entire employee community at Microsoft can read, review, and rate the paper online.

2. Some Co-chair participants include such luminaries as; Qi Lu who is the president of Online Services (e.g., Search/Bing), Anders Hejlsberg Programming Languages Technical Fellow (of C# fame), Lisa Brummel (Senior VP of Human Resources), etc… There are ~46 Co-chairs.

· MS employees, check out the solicitations for papers if you are looking for a topic.

o Craig Mundie: The Next Generation of Killer Applications.

3. Btw, Craig submitted a paper on the subject as well!

o S. Somasegar: The Future of Client Development.

4. Btw, Soma’s blog is good resource for Microsoft developer information.

· Some site stat’s to date

o Most papers are submitted the day before close, so I won’t call out the number of papers received.

o We have already received ~15,000 unique visitors. Pretty good considering the total number of Microsoft “FTE’s”.

o We have ~1,445 subscribers to the ThinkWeek Community news letter.

o Total Page Views/Hits: ~676,028

I am looking forward to reviewing papers during the ThinkWeek ‘week’ (10/19-10/23).

Good luck to authors on achieving the ‘Best of ThinkWeek 2009’ paper recognition in November.

Technical Strategy Group (TSG)

JackG — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 19:33:00 GMT

Following on a previous post, I thought I would talk a bit more on my teams charter, contributions to Microsoft, and some of my areas of responsibility.

TSG Team Charter

The Technical Strategy Group (TSG) works to capture and influence Business, eXperience and Technology direction and opportunities for the company. TSG is managed from the Office of the Chief Software Architect (CSA – That’s Ray Ozzie). The TSG programs ensure long-range customer scenarios and trends are well understood with documented supporting technology requirements and via circulated, well-articulated thought, where there is the highest potential for impact.

Deliverables

Charter, Mission statements, blah, blah, blah – what tangible deliverables am I responsible for, you ask? Surely, your career hasn’t drifted from core Architecture, Design, and Development?!?

As I mentioned in a previous post, I am responsible for the Engineering team within TSG. Some of my responsibilities are in delivering our web sites in support of our CSA’s charter. Our sites are a bit more than the standard web sites, in that we do a lot of collaboration and/or joint development with teams such as MSR (Microsoft Research).

You can see some of the *cool* technology that we work with in this President Obama inauguration video. Check out the relevance, transcript sync with video frames, and the ability to jump around. While this video is built upon Flash, we use Silverlight 3 for our development J as our sites are quite rich, we take advantage of the RIA (Rich Internet Application) functionality in SL3. We had a seamless upgrade experience from SL2 to SL3, so I would highly recommend the upgrade. I would also recommend the Channel 9 videos on SL and as always check out Scott Guthrie’s blogs on the subject. I’ll come back to some of the technology later. In the mean time check out the Telerik controls we often use.

Before you ask, these sites are Intranet (internal) sites and may not be found on the public Internet. This is due in part, to the Intellectual Property (IP) contained on these sites.

One of the sites/applications we author is the new ThinkWeek site launched on 7/6/09. More on this site and the program in a blog coming soon to a theater near you.

Another site/application we have been supporting is the Quest program that has been helping our technical leaders think through our long-term technical vision. You might have heard recently that the Quest program is concluding and making way for a new way to look at long-range planning at the division level and cross company. Well, all that’s true, quests were successful and we are now refining what we do to a new level given that we are executing better than we were in those days and we’re structured differently now. If you would like to see something that was of the ilk of the Quests, check out this totally cool vision video (think CSI: or Minority Report) from the Office labs team on the future of technology and associated user experience. What can I say, but I want it now! And when will that transporter be delivered J Innovation! Innovation! Innovation!

We have some cool controls we prototyped for the ultimate experience and as I like to do we will utilize these controls on our other sites. I’ll blog more on our site(s) features and technology latter. Stay tuned.

Grassroots Innovation @ Microsoft

JackG — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:01:00 GMT

I will be blogging more on the subject of Innovation @ Microsoft as well as how our Technical Strategy Group supports innovation within (and external partnerships) Microsoft.

This post follows my previous article on the subject of the long standing Microsoft tradition called “ThinkWeek”. The program has evolved over the years, due in part, to scale out beyond Bill Gates as the primary audience.

Here is a brief (1:48 min.) video from Bill Gates on Thinkweek/Grassroots innovation.

From You Tube - “Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates discusses grassroots innovation at Microsoft and how "Think Week" has evolved over the years to become paperless, allowing employees to submit ideas online for review by the top 50 technical leaders in the company. Microsoft CEO Summit, Redmond, Wash. May 14, 2008.”

Here is a brief (1:28 min.) video from Ray Ozzie on Thinkweek “2.0”, posted on 6/5/09.

Microsoft - The Economy, ThinkWeek, Innovation,...

JackG — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 22:42:00 GMT

In my last post I mentioned my new role in the Microsoft Technical Strategy group and the promise of more on the subject. So here is some late breaking news, hot of the press, on one of our programs – ThinkWeek.

Context - Economic Realities

We are all effected (some more than others) by the current World economic conditions and Microsoft is no exception. The news is full of comparisons to the economic crisis in the early 80’s. This current economic down turn brings back some painful personal memories. I graduated from Dowling High School in West Des Moines, Iowa (Home of the best Steak, Corn and Wrestlers in the World) in 1981. Damn, I’m getting old, but like fine wine … After graduation, I soon lost my Father who was a tremendous influence in my life and shaped my core values - Honesty, Integrity, Work hard and be a man of your word to a name a few. I married at the age of 20 in 1983 and I became a father myself (hard to imagine). The stress of trying to provide for a new family during one of America’s most difficult economic down turns since the depression was a tremendous burden. Iowa was so depressed that I couldn’t find a minimum wage job, even at the typically hiring establishments like McDonald’s. And believe me, when I tell you, that eating government cheese, peanut butter and a meal about every other day (those years of Wrestling paid off when dealing with hunger) makes a job at McDonald’s seem like a glorious thing when you could have had a double cheeseburger with fries *and* be employed. What a treat that would have been.

I typically keep my personal life separate from my professional life, but I wanted to share some personal experiences as they are reflective of these difficult times. As you may have read, Microsoft recently went through a second wave of cut backs in response to the economy. Our team survived, but we lost some very good people as well as some of our program offerings. My thoughts and prayers continue to go out to many of those I know who are experiencing the difficulties I lived through in the early 80’s. Hang in there. This too shall pass.

Context - What is ThinkWeek?

As borrowed from my peer, Tricia Mayer, our much more articulate and capable Director of Marketing and Communications.

“ThinkWeek is a long-standing tradition at Microsoft, initiated by Bill Gates. Over the years, ideas generated through ThinkWeek papers have inspired direction and great thinking. Now that Bill has moved on to a more prominent role at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the ThinkWeek process is changing.

ThinkWeek is an open and voluntary forum that enables any Microsoft employee to share their thoughts and ideas in the form of a thoughtfully written paper, circulated among influential managers and senior leaders.

ThinkWeek is grounded in the premise that sharing diverse ideas and great thinking are key elements of maintaining our competitive advantage and thought leadership around the world.”

ThinkWeek and the Economy

Again from Tricia,

“As all groups at Microsoft undergo the evaluation of cost to value benefit for programs and projects, we are also applying the same scrutiny to the ThinkWeek program and process. Until that evaluation process is complete, the ThinkWeek09 cycle has been placed on hold.”

I was made aware there was some leaking (outside of Microsoft) of this programs “hold” status, so I felt now was the time (read below) to share some information on the subject from someone (Me) who has first hand information on the subject. Note that we received a lot of feedback from employees on the ThinkWeek “hold” status.

I believe the ThinkWeek concept has been around for ~27years. It has been a long standing tradition embraced by Bill Gates and was affectionately referred to as “the BillG ThinkWeek”, in part, because Bill would take a week off to read the papers and incorporate the input into the fabric of Microsoft’s product development. I doubt Bill truly unplugged. Remind me to tell you a personal experience that has become an urban legend on Bill’s work ethic.

On a personal note, In April 2001, I submitted a paper on MSN’s .Net Migration – “Porting a Multi-tier Distributed Platform”, with a little help from my friends (shout out to Mahesh and Stephen). The paper was based on the re-architecture of our content fetching/aggregation tool I invented and originally wrote in Perl and ported to “Cool”, which was the code name for C#. Participating in a program that allows you to reach thought leaders and influencers throughout Microsoft was (is) a privilege and an honor. Seriously! I make mention of this, along with my Microsoft ship-it awards, on my resume.

Signs of recovery

There is more positive news about the economy recovering and while certainly not the sole decision to launch the *new* ThinkWeek program, both are positive signs in my mind.

Yesterday, Ray Ozzie, announced in his Engineering Excellence forum keynote (a Microsoft campus event) that the new ThinkWeek program will launch next month!

And again,

“Over the past several months, the ThinkWeek program has been redesigned based on the feedback we have heard from Microsoft employees worldwide. The next generation of the ThinkWeek program will be launching on July 6, 2009.”

In conclusion

For those Microsoft employees reading this blog, submit those thoughtful papers and please give me feedback on the new site.

For those that read about the leaked information this should clear things up.

For those that are hearing about ThinkWeek for the first time, this should give you some insight into some Microsoft culture, employee participation in shaping Microsoft, and continued support for invention, innovation, and feedback by *all* employees.

I will continue to share more on the Technical Strategy Group programs (in additional to ThinkWeek) as well as more on innovation and Microsoft culture if my readers find the subjects interesting. Do inquiring minds want to know?

Now I have to get back to work as I recently picked up a number of new work items, requirements, expectations, and a firm ThinkWeek RTW date J