Today was the Executive day at the Summit…. Lot’s’o’big shots.
First up was Lori Moore, vice president of Product Service Service, ie, the woman who’s budget is paying for all this. She is a rather nice person, and she tries to let her hair down a bit for the MVP summits, but she is, hopelessly, a suit.
Eric Rudder & Rich Kaplan (VP of Server & Tools, and VP of Content Development, respectively) gave interesting talks, but the parts I’m allowed to talk about didn’t lend themselves to pithy blog-worth comments.
Jim Allchin (Group VP of Platforms) is the cool Microsoft VP. I remember the first time I heard him talk. It was in 1997 or 1998, and he was speaking about the (then) upcoming Windows 2000 — for two hours — writing heavy tech talk on a white board — not buzzwords but serious nuts & bolts details, and kept the audience fascinated the whole time. Same deal today, except the talk was not as technical nor as long. And he was wearing a pair of worn, faded jeans……
Steve Ballmer (Pres/CEO) had to apologize for his dress – He’d just come from a meeting for a government contract — someone had to remind him to take off his necktie. He was introduced by this years “funny Microsoft Video”: A spoof of the Matrix, with Ballmer as Neo (“Steveo”) and Gates as Morpheus. (Lot’s of jabs at Linux, and one at “the Oracle”). According to Ballmer, they’d even hired the Wachowski Brothers’ to work on it. Unfortunately, the contract didn’t include rights to distribute it, so don’t expect to find it on Kaaza.
The day finished off with a kick-ass party in the Microsoft Conference Center. Lot’s of food. Karoke; an improv group; a jam session with MSFTies and MVPs; XBOX games, et al.
SWAG: Actually, a low take today…. A free copy of ChartFX Developer’s Studio by SoftwareFX (“Specially Produced for Microsoft MVPs”).