I know this is an older clip, but it just keeps making me smile :-) - It’s funny, because it’s true.
As pointed out in the comments, credit where it’s due:
Rooster Teeth Productions at www.redvsblue.com created the video above. I love you guys !
This day was in fact a long day, but with only two sessions before lunch. The most interesting one was the motivational speech by Benjamin Zander, the conductor of the Boston Philharmonic. This was without any doubt one of the most constructive talks I had ever attended (from an external speaker). It was all about the art of possibility, which is in fact a method to approach the daily things in life. Every time you can say or do something in a conversation, you have the opportunity to be remarkable and to make somebody else feel special. You always have the opportunity to make things better for yourself or for others and it all depends on what you say and how you approach the situation as it presents itself.
At the end of the session, every attendee from Western Europe (the session was for this region) received a copy from the book Zander co-authored with his wife Rosamund Stone Zander (The Art of Possibility). If there is one book you should really read, let it be this one… it’s super. I started reading when I got home and I have serious difficulties of letting it go. It reads like a train. I think it’s very inspiring.
Then we had to grab a lunch bag and head for the buses to go to the main arena again for the closing presentations of Ray Ozzie, Craig Mundie and a lot of others. A few cool things where shown like 3D Photosynth for instance. Then Kevin Turner, who highlighted some social programs, closed the MGX event with ‘go dos’ (not DOS, DOs :p)
In the meanwhile it started to rain outside, and unfortunately enough, the attendee event was open-air. Cheryl Crow was going to perform live… but I had a dinner with Hans, Kurt and Christian and by the time that ended it wasn’t really worth it to go to the event anymore… and it was still raining. So we all headed to our hotels and started packing for the flight home the next day.
I had a good sleep and woke up at 9, then headed to the airport at 10 together with Hans and Kurt. Then I met up with KissMyBreeze Kris and Ritchie Houtmeyers and we went for a drink in the Fox bar, some shopping and a burger.
We got on the flight to New York at 3PM and paused for a Sam Adams in a bar at Kennedy airport. Then we headed for Brussels in an underbooked plane and I got 3 seats in the middle… I turned on my Zune and slept mostly all the way back. Awesome and waaaaay better than business class :)
There’s some fuzz about the fact somebody leaked from an MGX session that Microsoft is working on Windows 7. Some people think it’s a big deal, but in fact the story behind is quite easy. Internally Microsoft has always been using codenames for projects that were under development. Windows 7 is actually the following version after Vista and was previously called Vienna. For the Windows products, they’ve never used numbers until now - as opposed to Office, of which version 12 (2007) has been released.
The guy that previously ran the Office projects (Steve Synofsky) is now on the Windows project, and decided that it would be better to have product numbers instead of codenames, to avoid confusion since the codenames tend to be changed in the course of the dev track. So, Vista would’ve been version 6, and Vienna then became Windows v.7.
That’s it. Can’t really think of a reason why this would cause such a buzz.
One thing is that we will skip version 13 of Office, because 13 is an unlucky number. So the next release of Office will be Office 14 instead of Office 13.
Yesterday was a very busy day. First there was Sanjay’s keynote. Sanjay is the driving power behind DPE (Developer & Platform Evangelism) - he’s one of the leaders I value most because of his insights in how we should approach our audiences and which audiences we should focus on for which reasons.
Apart from paving our path, he also listed the best achievements of the past fiscal year, and Nic Fillingham - my fellow Enthusiast Evangelist from the Asian-Pacific region got nominated for an award! So cool! Later during the show, Sanjay appeared back on stage painted as a fifth Kiss-member to perform a rock song (with altered lyrics) together with the coverband Kisstory. After the song, the two brand new Harley Davidsons that stood on the stage were given away through a raffle, and Nic won a Harley !!! Damn lucky b*stard!!! That was pretty Wow!
Other sessions I attended were Joe Wilson’s ‘WOW’ session (Joe is my Director in Corp) and Justin Barsotti’s ‘how to work with influentials’ session, which had a slide deck filled with very useful stats I can take home and use to go talk to BMO and the other product teams to convince them that the key to the future is in the hands of the influencers, and not in the hands of classic media and their channels. I wanted to attend a session of Windows Live, but unfortunately it was fully booked, so Nic and I roamed around to see if we could sneak in on another session like the presentation of Windows Mobile.
I really REALLY need to upgrade my device software, or switch to a device that supports the functions already because this is just awesome! I want to play around with this a soon as possible. (mental note: ask new device upgrade to IT ASAP)
After the last session we went back to the hotel and freshend up a little for the evening events. We went to the Disney Downtown thing to attend the Server/security party in the House of Blues, which was going to host a concert of Live, a popular band I like since somewhere in the 90s. Before the headline band, a coverband played kick-ass songs of the 80s and 90s from Motley Crue, Van Halen, Guns N Roses and basically every other band that has a weak spot in the heart of everyone who listened to ‘the real’ rock and metal back in the days. You could see guys in their late 20s to early 40s totally go crazy as if they were a teenager again. Dresscode of the evening was ‘Margherita or beer’, which basically meant: if you don’t carry one, you better order it now’ ;-)
Around 10.30 pm, we headed over to the original Harley Davidson factory and store for the DPE party, and I had a supergreat time. I never actually saw my vice president walking around in a sleeveless leather jacket with a bandana on his head, but hey- there’s a first time for everything. The atmosphere was pretty wild with the same Kiss cover band on stage as during the morning keynote and dozens of ‘real bikers’ who’ve parked their babies out front and they’d take you for a ride. There was a pool table made of ice (which is a supercool idea for a summerparty back home) and you could have giant ice mugs where they’d tap your beer in so it was always ice cold during the evening. The amount of swag was ridiculously huge, I hope I can still close my suitcase.
I got back at the hotel around 1.30 am and checked my pile of email, took a shower and went to bed around 3.
Got up again at 6.45 to get ready for the sessions. There’s only two before lunch and after that we go back to the arena and later on to a theme park called Adventure Island (or something). It’s the general MGX attendee party. Looks like it’s going to be great - again.
Today was a very remarkable day. We attended the last demo Bill Gates ever gave as a chairman on MGX. It was actually his best demo I ever saw. It was very touching, a standing ovation of minutes and minutes before he even said a word, and a great talk about vision, strategy and where the future of Microsoft is. He also gave an extended demo of Surface and ‘the bedroom of the future’… but I already saw those earlier. It was the way in which Gates presented. The emotion… how he felt like it was his last MGX.
Then there was a tribute to Bill, with pictures from his youth, over to his early years at Microsoft, the product releases, his foundation… It was a really captive moment… I really got goosebumps from the reaction of all the employees. It was a weird sensation and you could see everyone was feeling it.
The day was actually filled with good news. The revenue growth, Halo 3, new products, new games… I really love this company and where it stands. We’re at the frontline of the battle and it looks like we will win, no matter what. 15.000 people, fired up with energy were shouting the same. We rock!
The day ended with the long awaited Ballmer show, and it was everything I ever heard about it. It was amazing. I can’t grasp how this one man is capable of firing up an entire arena… people were going crazy from the moment Ballmer set foot on stage, shouting, clapping their hands, cheering… it was a unique experience. I have never ever felt and seen this before.
We had a team dinner after the really long day -it’s been one large keynote session with different speakers that started at 8am and ended at 6pm -and I kinda sneaked out of that at 11 PM because I was really tired and tomorrow is going to be a long day too… so I better hit the sack. Here are a few snapshots of the day.
I left home at 7 am CET to go to the airport, with the idea it wouldn’t be all that long before I’d set foot to ground in Florida. NOT. The check-in took quite a while and I was pretty lucky to be there two hours in advance because the line was pretty damn long. We were on the same flight as our national basketball team that was heading for a training session in Dallas… and our national mountainbiking team was on the same flight as well. After boarding, the plane finally took off at 11 AM.
The flight headed for Atlanta - I needed to be in Orlando, so I had to swap planes after the obligatory customs check. It was a nine hour flight, with 2-3 hours transit in Atlanta. The plane in Atlanta got stuck in some sort of traffic jam on the tarmac and when it was finally our time to take off, as we turned at the end of the runway you could see a line of 23 planes all waiting to take off. Weird, it was like all the planes of Atlanta needed to take off on the same strip.
Then it was an hour and a little bit to Orlando and then half an hour with a van to the congress center to get our badges and register. It was 4 am CET when I stepped inside the hotel room. I went out for a pizza with my manager [i share a room with him] and then I planned to take a shower, but apparently I fell asleep on the bed whien I was ‘just chilling for a second’. Damn.
I got up this morning at 6 am local time, because the event starts at 8, but doors open at 7. Gotta grab some breakfast first and then get on the tour bus to go to the main arena. The weather is weird. It’s very very warm, but it’s tropically humid too. We had a tropical storm yesterday, and you’d think the rain would cool down things… but it doesn’t.
In a few hours I’ll be heading for Brussels airport to travel to Orlando, Florida. I’m going to an event called MGX, which is short for Microsoft Global Experience. MGX is an internal Microsoft conference for Microsoft’s global sales folks and the evangelists. It’s the occasion to meet A LOT of other employees, since about 14.000 will be attending, and I’m really looking forward to hook up with some people I haven’t seen in while.
I’ll be in the US until the 23rd, counting the timezone difference it’ll be the 24th when I get back. I’ll try to post from the hotel or from the conference, in between sessions.
MGX is also known for ‘the great Steve Ballmer show’ - it’s the ultimate Ballmer experience. :-)
It’s not that I’m going to be brainwashed or something, but I do admire the fact he can get so fired up on energy and litterally own the stage with his persona. I’m pretty sure that to most non-US residents it will be an interesting experience to see a crowd go wild the way they do, if you look at the movie clips that are around (think of ‘developers, developers, developers’)
This…, is my CEO.
Let me put it like this: at least mine humps around on stage instead of reading some boring text, like yours. :p
I hope my luggage doens’t get lost again.
So, two days ago I gave a Popfly demo in Brussels, in the house of the future - aka ‘Living Tomorrow’. The event itself was called ‘Circle of Media’ and it’s in fact an initiative to interact with reps from interactive marketing agencies, key influencers, bloggers and journalists. The idea is to do this in an informal context to present our latest products and technologies. The event is closed by a networking moment where everyone can ask employees anything about the topics (or related products/services). As long as it’s not under NDA, we can talk about it :-)
Objectives :
Agenda :
Maarten Schenk from SixApart was there too and captured my little demo. The demo is in Dutch, so I’m sorry if you can’t understand it. Should you have any questions related to PopFly, just drop ‘m in the comments and I’ll get you an answer!
Pictures are online as well - click here to check them out.
