Before the holidays, everyone on our team visited with various small business owners in the Redmond area in an effort to learn more about how their businesses work, and how Microsoft products help (or hinder!) them.  This was the first time I was directly involved in one of these visits.  Chris and I met with Ivan Perez at Eastside Executive Transportation.  One thing that struck me was how Ivan structured his business in order to focus on his strengths - interacting with customers, handling logistics, delivering personalized service.  Technology is usually more helpful you are intentional about how to apply it, and Ivan definitely knows what he wants out of his tools.  Ivan had a Windows Mobile device that he seemed to be able to run most of his business off of.  While we were talking with Ivan I got a chance to see this happen, and it was fun to watch.

One thing that Ivan mentioned to us was that "simplicity comes from user customization."  Customization allows people to use technology to solve problems in ways that make the most sense to them.  As Chris put it, "think of what it means if customization is a core tenet of the product instead of just a partially implemented feature."  One quick example: as much as many project managers have a love-hate relationship with Microsoft Project, the VBA programming ability on the client and the PDS (now PSI) framework on the server are two big reasons why Project is so widely used.  However, customizability is so deeply woven into the fabric of Excel that I think Project users sometimes turn to Excel even when Project could have done the job.