Steve Balmer Speaks

Steve Balmer

Say what you like about Steve Balmer, head honcho at Microsoft, but he can work an audience. We saw him in action today at the summit keynote. At the end of it I was left feeling that at the moment Microsoft doesn’t have all the answers, but it is certainly asking all the right questions.

Reduced Speed Zone

In the evening we headed out to Jillian’s Billiards for some fun and games. The weather was dark and wet, something of a Seattle speciality it would seem. I got a bit carried away taking pictures of the traffic through the bus windows.

Space Needle

I think I was lucky to get this shot, which has the Space Needle in it – perhaps with a bit more post-processing I can actually make it visible….

We had a great time, I even managed to get a go at table tennis. And no, I didn’t fall off the table. On the way out to the taxi we were talking about business cards for some reason and I said that I thought it would be really cool to be able to whip out a playing card and say “The card you chose was the three of clubs” when someone gave me their business card. Well, I thought it was mildly amusing. Then Jeff produced this:

Three of Clubs

I think he had the other 51 cards with him as well.

Kudos to the Microsoft folks for a giving us such an interesting day and responding so constructively to the stuff that we said. Special shout out to Stephanie who is one of those organisers around whom the right things just seem to happen as though by magic.  Thanks for making everything work so well.

Return of the Midnight Coder

Fresh Fish

I’ve got this cunning plan for my trip to Seattle to avoid the dreaded jet-lag. The idea is to go to bed early each night and then get up around 2:00 am and spend a few hours awake doing stuff (which usually means writing some software). I then go back to bed around 4:30 and get a couple of hours more sleep before rising for the day. This should mean that I don’t actually adjust to local time, so when I go home I shouldn’t suffer too much.

Unfortunately this plan was somewhat sabotaged tonight when I ended up out and about until 10:30pm…. But it was a good night though.

Hyatt Lobby Roof

This is what you see in the hotel lobby if you look straight up.

Best Flight Ever to Seattle

Greenland Coast

The lady in the red blazer came up to me as I was standing in line to check in for the flight. “Would you like me to find you a seat with more legroom?” she asked. Would I??? With a flourish of boarding passes I was moved to a seat that they had been keeping for tall people. Wonderful. The flight itself was very smooth and much shorter than expected, so I arrived feeling, if not as fresh as a daisy, certainly not as the crushed flower I thought I’d be. Hmm. Perhaps I’d better work harder on my similes in future.

Anyhoo, during the flight we had a good view of the coast of Greenland, and so I took some snaps. I’m here for the MVP summit which starts on Monday, in the meantime I’ve been meeting up with people I know and forgetting to remember their names. Great fun.

Final Summit Friday

Today was the last day of the Summit. It has gone by real quick. Amongst the final presentations was one by Satya Nadella who heads up the new Microsoft search team.

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These are the people bringing you Bing. Personally I quite like Bing. I like the user interface, the pictures and the way it groups results. I don’t like the way that it doesn’t always find what I want though, which means moving over to Google for the more technical searches. Hopefully Bing will catch up in due course.

It was interesting to hear how Microsoft are trying to improve the “search experience” and are working on why we search, in a bid to improve the usefulness of the activity. The way I see it, they are changing Bing from “search” to a “research” engine. When you search for a place it will try to pull down travel and hotel details, along with pictures and links to official sites. Quite neat. This all needs some frightfully clever algorithms to recognise content, along with a fair amount of editorial input as well I would think. However, it is nice to see Microsoft not just trying to equal the competition, but to go beyond this and move the field on.

In the afternoon we had a final wander around Bellevue and then headed to a nearby place for tea.

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..can you guess where?

After tea I’d booked seats to see Avatar again, at the local Imax cinema in 3D. Awesome.

MVP Summit Sessions Again

I met another MVP in the lift today on the way to the sessions on the Microsoft campus. He asked me how I was getting on. “Fine” I said. “Yesterday they opened the top of my head and poured a whole bunch of stuff into it”. “Oh”, he replied. “With us they opened our heads and took a whole bunch out”.  Perhaps that will happen to me.today  Not sure what they will benefit from in my case though…

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The weather is lovely again. Although we had some frost last night, the morning looks great.

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Redmond Shuttle.

MVP Summit Product Sessions

I set off on the bus at 7:00 am this morning. I’m trying to keep to “sort of UK time” by getting up at stupidly early hours. Because we are in Bellevue the bus journey is very short, which is nice.

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As usual they had MVP banners on the Microsoft campus, which was nice.

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Went to the company store as well, and bought some tasteful clothing.

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We really are having fantastic weather this week.

MVP Summit and Fish Throwing

This evening the MVP summit started with the opening keynote. Before the session started they were showing things about MVPs of note. And for some reason my name came up on the big screen.

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As you all know I am very vain, and so I pulled out my camera and grabbed a picture. If you look very carefully at the middle screen you can see my name… 4367878083

The session ended with some fish throwing. As well it should. Then we went on for some free food, including hand thrown salmon, and discussion with fellow MVPs.

The agenda looks very interesting.

Bellevue Mist

The long range weather forecast for this week was rain. Thank heavens it was long range. And wrong. Today started really misty, in a fantastically photogenic way.

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It must be like being up in the clouds in those buildings at the top.

We found this place that did great pancakes, and nearly failed to eat all of them. They had a great set of posters advertising upcoming events in Bellevue.

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Hmmm. I’ve missed the bicycle conference.

Then we grabbed a car and went for a drive.

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View over the lake

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Highway and sky

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Mountain, truck and sky

We went out to the mall and I bought another robot. A friend for Jason.

The summit proper starts tomorrow. I’m hoping to find out a bit more about Windows Phone 7 which was announced today. It looks really good. It is definitely going on the “want one” list.

Hello from Bellevue

Well, after a boring (but in a very good way) journey I’m now in Bellevue, where the conference is based this year. The whole setup is very nice, with a king sized bed in the room.  I wonder if they measured it up against a real king?

Anyhoo, it is a very nice bed, although of course my body wants to use it at all the wrong times. I may have to do some “Jetlag coding” to get around this. The hotel is linked to a big shopping centre (how useful)

Bellevue Glass

 

On the way to the mall I saw this really fancy glass sculpture thing.

Bellvue Centre

Bellevue centre (or should that be center)

Packing for Seattle

purple Flower

It is that time of year again, when I head off to Seattle for the MVP Summit. I’m really looking forward to this year’s event. It is always nice to meet up with folks I’ve not seen for a while, and talk about technology.

Of course this means that I have to choose which gadgets get to go with me. I’ve left the trouser press at home. Three is a good chance that the hotel room will have one anyway…..