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.
