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« July 2004 | Main | September 2004 » August 28, 2004Crunching NumbersMy study results came back last week, and I'm trying to make sense of the numbers. The Excel version of my data set looks like the Matrix - columns upon columns of integers, falling from the sky. At the moment, I'm just trying to derive meaning from the patterns. It's engrossing ... and time consuming. I've been at it for a good chunk of Friday and today; my tomorrow is more of the same. Eventually, a glass of red wine will intrude. And the crunching will give way to something more relaxing. My presentation to the product team (and other interested parties) is Tuesday at 12:30. I wouldn't expect much from me in the way of posts before then. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 28, 2004 7:59 PM. August 24, 2004The Importance Of Fake PeopleMicrosoft products are designed for imaginary people. I know there's an obvious joke here, but I'm serious. We call them "personas." A persona has a first name, an age, a gender, a job, might have kids, might have a spouse (or a divorce), probably drives a car (Mini Cooper?) and could listen to the Cure (this last is true for any persona based on my friend Richard. Dude just left me a long, long voicemail of Robert Smith's latest song). Marketing people tend to think of the marketplace as a series of segments. An example of a segment might be "all left-handed dentists in the state of Florida" or "Women 18 - 29 who make more than $60,000 a year and have completed a four-year degree." A good segment is one that defines a group of people who have something in common in a way that's useful for target-marketing purposes. An example of this might be, say, people with a preference for buying food that has been grown or produced in an environmentally friendly way (hello, Whole Foods!). Good software is designed to solve a particular problem for a particular person. Historically, programmers have been very good at creating software that solved problems other programmers were having. However, when it comes to understanding the needs of a particular group of customers, programmers need more than their own experiences and hunches - they need data. Segmentation data is a good place to start to find common groups of needs, but segments are pretty impersonal (you're just not going to hear someone say, "I bet those left-handed dentists will LOVE the look of this new button!"). Enter personas. Personas take those segments and seek to find traits that are descriptive about the people in them, such as: are they married? Do they have degrees? How old are they? What is their comfort level with computers? Do they like technology, or do they see it as a means to an end? Once we have this information, we then embellish it with some additional flourishes (e.g., Mini Cooper), find an appropriate photo, and then publicize it to the relevant people (programmers, marketers, etc.) in the company. Suddenly, we're not talking about left-handed dentists; we're asking if "Joe" would like this feature, or of "Betty" would find that new layout too confusing. I know it sounds hokey, but I have to tell you that I've looked at a lot of personas since coming to Microsoft. In particular, looking over the personas used by the MacBU, I was suddenly hit by the feeling, "Hey! I KNOW that guy!" Frankly, it was a little bit spooky. But it's also very cool that the company spends as much time and energy as it does to really understand who its customers are and what kinds of needs they have. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 24, 2004 5:08 PM. August 23, 2004We've Got Questions, You've Got AnswersA major part of my project here involves doing primary research. Basically, this means I have to go to customers and ask them a bunch of questions. While there's a lot of ways that you can conduct primary research - customer visits, focus groups, conjoint testing - my chosen tool this time around is a Web survey, deployed to a bunch of folks across the United States. Creating a survey is a lot of work. First you have to figure out what you want to know. Then, you have to find a good way of asking questions that get at the heart of what you're interested in. This is an exercise both in linguistics (e.g., "That depends on what your definition of is is...") and psychology (e.g., if you ask a person something straight-out, like "are you a nice person?", are they going to be honest with you?). You also have a bunch of programming and logical challenges to make sure that people who respond to your survey are asked only those questions that make sense for them (e.g., if someone tells you they're a non-smoker in question #1, it's just stupid to ask them what brand of smoke they prefer in question #2). I mean, consider the person filling out the survey. This guy or gal has a job somewhere, and is busy with their day. They get an e-mail from a service that invites them to "come help shape the next generation of Microsoft software!" They click the link and are then asked a series of questions about some topic that they may - or may not - have ever spent any time thinking about. The challenge is to write questions that this busy person can understand and respond to without becoming frustrated and closing their Web browser. The survey process took me several weeks. This involved the creating of the questions, coming up with a good, logical flow for them, and then working with other groups here in Microsoft to make sure the questions we're asking are going to give answers those groups find valuable. I then test-fired the survey over the phone with some non-Microsoft people to get their reactions (valuable, because a few of the more brain-dead questions got cut). And then the thing was turned into the Web questionnaire, in all its HTML-rendered glory. Two internal beta cycles to debug the thing, and, as of Friday - it launched. One awesome thing about doing surveys over the Web is that they're immediate. People literally started responding within minutes of the survey deployment. Results poured in all weekend, and have been coming all day long. It's cool to see people giving us the data we need to get this project done. It's cool to think about how this information will be used to impact product development. And, finally, it's cool to click refresh in my browser window and watch the complete count spiral up, and up, and up... Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 23, 2004 7:43 PM. The Full-Time Thing"So, if you're an intern, will Microsoft make you a full-time offer at the end of the summer?" Since I've had this question put to me, in one way or another, by just about everyone I know, I thought this might be a good venue to talk about the internship process and how it seems to relate to the world of full-time, post-graduation work. First, let me say right up front that I don't have an offer from Microsoft at this time. Officially, my last day of work here is September 3rd. Interns are temporary workers, contractors, tourists - we're here for 12 weeks, do a gig, go home. There's absolutely nothing guaranteed about post-intern work. Officially. That said, Microsoft is clearly investing a lot of time and money in us. Interns go through a grueling interview process that's similar to that for full-time work. We have astounding access to senior executives in the company. And while we don't get health benefits, we do get paid holidays and a comp health club membership. So neither fish nor foul, right? The best way to think of the internship is that it's the World's Longest Job Interview. For 12 weeks, Microsoft will pay you to come to campus, put on a badge, and show them what you've got. Similarly, they try to make this place seem attractive and fun; a good place to hang your hat after school. So there's a delicate dance where each party gets to check the other out, see what they think, and make a more informed decision. Sidebar: my favorite favorite favorite Microsoft joke: Q: What's the difference between Microsoft and Jurassic Park? But back to reality. After your midterm review, HR will check in with you to see how things are going and if you're happy. In my case, they asked me if I was interested in doing something with Microsoft after graduation (yes). Then they wanted to know if I was interested in coming back to Planning (hell, yes), or doing something else inside the company. Because I dig Planning, my interviews are the simplest - just two. First is an interview with a HR person. This is followed by an interview with a long-term Microsoft employee, called an "as appropriate," to gauge long-term career fit with the business. Basically, this second interview is trying to answer the question, "Is Gavin just a good Planner, or does he have what it takes to contribute elsewhere in the business?" These interviews happen this Thursday. Had I elected to go to another part of the company, then HR would help me locate open positions in those areas where I was interested in working. From there, I'd go through another long series of formal interviews, much like the ones I did for the internship. I'd need to convince the group that I would be a good addition to their team, and so on. They might not take me, or I might find out that I wouldn't be happy there. It's very interactive. So, assuming things go well later this week (and that my project doesn't detonate on me between now and next Friday, or something), there's a reasonable opportunity for me to return to school with an offer. No pressure, right? Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 23, 2004 11:27 AM. August 22, 2004Business 2.0 Likes The UW!Business 2.0's September issue is out, offering a rating the "Top 25 Business Schools" in the country: "Quit worrying. If you're choosing among the 25 schools in this guide, you're going to get a great education. These schools attract the best of the best: The professors are top-notch, and the students are superachievers." I was thrilled to see that the UW made the list; they say we're "...like an earthier, more regional Stanford." I know rankings don't matter, but at the same time it feels great to see the program getting some of the recognition it deserves. I love UWBS. UPDATE, August 5, 2007: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 22, 2004 4:24 PM. August 20, 2004Crunch TimeI apologize for the lack of posts over the past few days. Things have hit a fever pitch here on my project, and I'm having a difficult enough time just staying hydrated, fed, and keeping the circles under my eyes from resembling something a raccoon would be pleased with. Hopefully, this weekend will afford me some time for writing. Stay tuned. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 20, 2004 7:34 AM. August 17, 2004MicrosofteseMicrosoft has a vocabulary all its own. This isn't terribly unusual for large companies or specific industries. My partners and I ran smack-dab into Venture Capitalistâ„¢, a dialect specific to the VC realm, when we sold Pacific Rim to Verio. I ran into it again when I was doing work with Qwest (telecommunications people have a very, very specific way of talking). You have to learn the lingo if you want to survive. I've already found myself adopting a number of terms that are in common use around here ("super" being one of them), but there's a handful of others that I've been working to slide in to my verbal patterns. In case you ever run into a Microsoft person in the wild (like, you know, at a Starbucks or something), here's a quick dictionary so you can converse with them. Think of it as a pocket travel guide. =) At the end of the day - Ultimately. Common usage: "At the end of the day, no one is going to care how much we put in to the product from a man-hours perspective. They only care about benefits to the BDM or end-user." This has massive, widespread use in Venture Capitalistâ„¢-speaking peoples. Call out - To highlight, or specifically mention something. Common usage: "We really need to call out those sources in that white paper." Crisp - Specific, clear, or cleanly-conceived. Common usage: "Be sure that your descriptions are really crisp, or the GPMs will discount your hypothesis." Disconnect - A break between two facts. Common usage: "There's a disconnect between what features the customers are telling us they want, and what they're willing to pay for." Drill down - To expand, zoom in, or get specific about something. Common usage: "After some discussion, we elected to drill down into the data in order to see what key learnings it contained." Key learnings - Important facts. Common usage: "Here are the key learnings from our research." Also known as "takeaways" in other corporations. Leverage - To make use of something in a new way. Carries connotations of efficiency or re-use. Common usage: "Be sure to review work that's been done on some related projects to see what you can leverage." Richness - Loaded with features or capabilities. Common usage: "Because we're building on top of Windows, we can leverage the richness of its user experience." Resonate - Something that people will agree with, such as a statement or an assertion. Common usage: "We need a message that resonates with our key customer." Scenario - A particular use case. Common usage: "The features that are relevant in an end-user scenario don't resonate with BDM scenarios." I hope this proves helpful at some point in the future. And, if you've got the time, feel free to do a Microsoft version of the "bullshit bingo" card - not that I'd ever use it in a meeting, of course. I'm too busy drilling down into the key learnings so I can get super-crisp about some of the feature richness that will resonate with our customers in certain key scenarios. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 17, 2004 8:27 PM. August 16, 2004August's Column...Friday's PSBJ has my most recent "Web Doctor" column: "Proper e-mail etiquette is required in business." (The Web link went live this morning.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 16, 2004 6:23 AM. August 13, 2004The HotZoneHey! This HotZone stuff works! I'm sitting in my room, on the 8th floor of the Doubletree, and the signal - while faint - is solid. Fantastic. Oddly, Spokane is using some kind of authentication system from Zum (the price is "free"), instead of leaving it wide-open as most free WiFi systems do. I wonder if they are doing it so people have to accept the terms and conditions of the network ... or if they want to eventually charge for the thing. At any rate -- free wireless. Right on. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 13, 2004 10:29 PM. Go East, Young ManMare and I are heading East this weekend. Our destinations are both Spokane (visiting family) and Athol, Idaho ... home of Silverwood Theme Park. Silverwood is the largest theme park in Washington, Idaho, or Oregon. They've got three great coasters, including the first-ever inverted coaster (they bought it from Knott's a few years back). For a coaster fanatic like me, Silverwood is a great way to get my fix without having to hit Six Flags. (And yes, I know that Six Flags bought Enchanted Village, but their coasters are kind of underwhelming.) The other cool thing about this weekend (in addition to seeing my Dad, which is always great) is that our hotel is in downtown Spokane. That means we'll be able to finally check out the much-ballyhooed Spokane HotZone free wireless network. Essentially, Spokane has invested in a WiFi infrastructure that covers 100 square blocks. Can you believe it? Spokane. In Seattle, I'm forever scampering around, trying to see which coffee shops have free WiFi. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 13, 2004 11:32 AM. August 12, 2004Lies, Damn Lies, And...Back in November of 2003, I went down to Apple for an informational interview. I was curious about doing my summer internship in Cupertino, but cultural fit is super-important to me. The point of the interview was to get the scoop - Up Close And Personal - before I really threw myself in to the full-court press of working for Steve. As luck would have it, the UW career center set me up, and I wonld up chatting with a few UW alums on Veterans Day (fun fact: Apple's cafeteria offers free coffee to employees ... and free apples!). We had a wide-ranging, nearly two-hour talk about MBAs, jobs in tech, the Bay area, and what Apple is like. At one point I asked Chris (a Finance guy) what classes he would take if he had his MBA to do over again. His advice? "Statistics. Take as much as you possibly can." After being at Microsoft for just a few weeks, I now know exactly what he was talking about. I've written before about how Microsoft is a metrics-obsessed company. Part and parcel with a commitment to metrics comes an ability to interpret - not just collect - data. This philosophy has massive currency inside Microsoft, and it's manifesting itself in very interesting ways. Let's take a simple example. If you've ever watched IE crash on you (and, c'mon ... we all know it happens), you've also seen that XP will pop up a dialog saying, "Hey! IE died! Can I send Microsoft an error report?" Clicking "send" will package up a bunch of environmental information inside your PC and shoot it off to Microsoft's engineering department. The pack-it-up-and-shoot-it-off software is called Watson. Watson data streams into Microsoft from all over the planet, literally every second of the day and night. Our engineers use statistical procedures to examine the crashes, determining which are similar to one another (clustering), which are happening with stark regularity (frequency), and which need immediate attention (customer relevance). Using these statistical detection routines, the engineers can now find obscure bugs, fix them, and then roll out the fixes using Windows Update in a very, very short cycle. The product gets better, faster, and the customers get happier. Everyone wins. The Watson idea - "get the facts, and use them to make better decisions" - is a core part of what we do in Planning. While I'm not a statistician, I have to understand standard deviations, significance tests, sample sizes and the rest to be effective in my job. As all companies become increasingly data-driven (especially true in marketing, which is undergoing something of a revolution right now), your ability to be an informed consumer of statistics becomes critical. As an MBA, you need to be able to look at a set of data and understand what it's telling you. You don't need to be a "numbers person," but you do need to be unafraid of the numbers. Numbers oftentimes can tell us things that our intuitive senses cannot. So if you want to take something really useful, I second Chris. Take stats. (And thanks again, Dr. Pilcher.) (And, because I know you're going to ask, the Apple story has two funny postscripts. First, I'm clearly at Microsoft .. but let's just say that I do my work while listening to my iPod every day. And second, Chris is now here, too. He's working on Longhorn.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 12, 2004 9:20 PM. August 11, 2004InterviewingI've had a huge number of people ask me about the Microsoft Interview (tm), so I thought I'd devote a post to discussing what THAT's all about. Microsoft, like a lot of big companies, does on-campus MBA recruiting (for instance, I also did on-campus interviews with RealNetworks and Amazon). At the UW, that means they contact our career services center and pick an arrival date; Microsoft then posts the kinds of positions they're interviewing for and begins soliciting resumes (electronically, natch). The Microsoft recruiter pores through the resumes and issues interview invitations to those students she (in my case, anyway) wants to chat with. As I understand it, Microsoft got something like 40 or 50 resumes from our class, and issued invitations to 9 of us. The interviews are held at the campus career center. They're formal (wear a suit), and last about an hour. The first part of the interview is casual chat; the second part is more in-depth case questions and hypothetical stuff. This structure is designed to give the interviewer a good sense of who you are and how you think. Basically, they want to know if you're someone that they feel comfortable bringing back to campus. If you don't have a lot of experience with case interviewing in general, be sure to check out a fantastic book on the subject, "How Would You Move Mount Fuji? After the interviews are over, The Great Waiting begins. Microsoft didn't give us a sense of when we should expect to hear from them, so you just kind of hang out and hope for good news. All nine of us compared notes pretty regularly ("You hear anything? Me either!"), and eventually notification arrived late on a Monday. Two emotions were stirred. First, it felt really special to go to round two. Of the nine of us that interviewed on campus, two were asked to round two - myself and Dave Bodmer. I should point out that I know the other seven folks, and they're all top-flight people. It could have been any of us. Second, it was terrifying to hear that the interview was scheduled for that Friday, leaving just 96 hours to prepare. The second round interview is the big one- Microsoft calls them "Super Fridays." Basically, MBAs from all over the country are flown in to Redmond for a long day of serial interviews. Dave and I both had the same start time (9 AM), so we carpooled (funny story: we played John Williams' "Imperial March" and Madonna's "Ray of Light" to psych ourselves up). When we arrived, we ran in to other students from Chicago, Berkeley, and Harvard. We had about ten minutes to chat with these folks and then the recruiters came to get us. Everyone was taken to their own office, where we spent the rest of the day. Super Friday works like "Survivor." You stay in your office all day long ('cept for soda and bathroom breaks), and different Microsoft employees come along and interview. Interviews last about 45 minutes each, and can be about any damn thing the interviewer wants to talk about. Once the session is done, the interviewer thanks you for your time, gets up, and leaves. At that point, the interviewer has to make a judgment about you - thumbs-up or thumbs-down - to the rest of their team. If you get a thumbs-up, the next person comes along for the interview. If you get a thumbs-down, you go home. The longer you stay, the better you're doing. This can create some surreal moments. I remember emerging from my first after-lunch interview (I was beat) and suddenly realizing that a good number of the other offices near me were empty. Before I went in for the interview, these all held other MBAs. It's kind of like a slasher film - the killer picks us off, one by one... The interviews themselves are pretty intense. Each person is looking for something specific, and they're going to drill and drill until you give it to them. Some people are looking for raw smarts. Others want to know how you approach problems. Still others are interested in how you present your life narrative, or how you choose to tell stories. It just depends. One thing that struck me is that the interview questions tended to stay off of the purely hypothetical ("How many golf balls will fit in a 747?") and instead revolve around projects that the interviewer is actually experiencing. In fact, I got asked questions about the project that I am now working on. Go figure. One of the great thing about Microsoft interviews is that they're a two-way street. The people I spoke with were interested in having a conversation, and it afforded me an opportunity to get the 411 about life in the company. This two-way-streetness also helped me get into my current role. When I signed up for the interviews, I selected Product Management and Product Planning as areas of interest. At the time, I had no idea what planning entailed - every tech company has a Product Manager, but planners? When I finally started meeting the planners during the interview loop, it became very, very clear very, very fast that planning was something I'd groove on. The end of the day finally comes, and your brain has the consistency of tapioca. Be sure to pick out a favorite watering hole BEFORE you head off that morning, because your mental faculties will be, shall we say, impaired, by the end of the day. Beer is also a perfect conduit to explain to your friends what you've just gone through, and to obsess frantically about your performance. =) So the punch line is that a week later, they made me an offer. For Product Planning. Which was killer. (Oh, and while Dave's Microsoft interviews didn't go as well as he'd hoped, he still scored some T-Mobile hotness for the summer. He's happy.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 11, 2004 1:18 PM. August 10, 2004Unvarnished FeedbackI just finished giving a presentation about my project to my group manager and her leads. It was quite illuminating. This was my first formal presentation (even though it was "informal" on paper) inside Microsoft. Here was a group that has no concrete idea of what I've been doing with my time (and their money), and they're hoping to get a glimpse of what value I am providing/have provided to the business. I had an hour (and about 24 PowerPoint slides) to walk them through what's been done, what I'm doing, and where I think things ought to go after I leave. The experience was excellent. First, let's get this out up-front: my presentation needs some work. It's not terrible, but I did do a few things with it that clearly rank as Rookie Central. Most of these revolve around a) gauging what my audiences are going to want and b) understanding how stories are told at Microsoft. Second, feedback comes fast and furious (keep pen and paper handy so you can take notes). If people want to know something, they're gonna ask you. And if you give them an answer they don't like, they might ask you a different question ... or the same question in a different way. The questions come from a good place; it's all about boosting comprehension inside Planning and making sure that external stakeholders (in my case, the product and/or marketing teams) are going to get value from the information. While it might sound brutal and in-your-face, it's kind of exhilarating. Indeed, if I had to choose between this and one of those typical, conflict-free, soul-killing "review sessions" where people just say, "it was fine" all the time ... I'd take challenge/response any day. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 10, 2004 2:35 PM. MBA Lunch Series: Robbie BachThe MBA lunches continued yesterday with Robbie Bach, Senior Vice President for the Games Division. (This means he's "Mr. Xbox.") Bach's been at Microsoft since 1988, coming here just after completing his MBA at Stanford. He's done a variety of stints inside the company, and has spent a fair amount of time representing Microsoft abroad. In addition to answering the barrage of Xbox-related questions on strategy, growth, partners, games and how to compete with Sony, Bach also dispensed a fair amount of career advice. He encouraged folks to think of their career from a "portfolio" standpoint - look at your skills, find gaps, and plug them. Over time, your portfolio of skills will become increasingly diversified and your job satisfaction - as well as your marketability - will rise. Bach also, unsurprisingly, suggested that Microsoft was an outstanding place to build your portfolio. =) (The best part of the day, however, was the tour of Microsoft's games usability lab ... and a half-hour shoot-'em-up session with the Halo 2 Beta. I haven't had that much fun since playing Marathon back at Pacific Rim Network in '95!) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 10, 2004 8:25 AM. iTMS Hits 1 Million SongsAnd in other iTunes Music Store news, the catalog now offers more than one million songs(!). Of course, their New Order collection is still incomplete, so perhaps some back-catalog improvements would be called for as a valid next step? UPDATE, February 6, 2006: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 10, 2004 8:21 AM. DNC Speeches on iTunesOkay, this is just cool. Apple has taken many of the speeches from the Democratic National Convention (Kerry, Edwards, Clinton, Dean, etc.) and made them available for free download through the iTunes Music Store. They plan to do the same for the Republican National Convention later this month. Slick intersection of technology and politics, huh? UPDATE, February 6, 2006: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 10, 2004 6:43 AM. August 6, 2004"Before Sunset"Mary and I are both huge, huge fans of the 1995 Ethan Hawke/Julie Delpy film, "Before Sunrise." Last night, we caught the sequel, "Before Sunset" at the Uptown. The first film tends to polarize people - they love it or hate it, without much middle ground. It's the story of an American guy (Hawke) who's been bumming around Europe for a few weeks, and is leaving for home the next morning. He runs into a French girl (Delpy) on a train, they like each other, and he manages to convince her to get off the train with him in Vienna. He's got no money for a hostel, so the idea is to walk around until his flight. The film follows them, and their conversation, for the intervening hours. What makes "Before Sunrise" spectacular is that the conversation is both natural and funny, engrossing and personal, yet manages to generalize the experiences of the characters into something that almost anyone who has Met Cute can appreciate or relate to. "Sunset," rather than rehashing this premise in the usual sequel = first-film-only-with-bigger-budget-and-more-explosions formula, finds the same characters nine years later. And then it deep-dives into what it's like to grow up and hit your later twenties and early thirties. It's about the good stuff and the bitter disappointments. And it's about second chances. Amazing. If you liked the first one, you'll love the second one. And if you hated the first one, well, Collateral opens today. Anyhow. This isn't a movie-review blog, so I'll leave it at that. The movie touched me; Mary and I couldn't stop talking about it. (It's in limited release, so run - don't walk - to the theater.) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 6, 2004 11:51 AM. Virgin Sues Apple Over FairPlayThe assault on Apple's DRM continued this morning with news that Virgin Mega has filed a lawsuit in France claiming Apple's FairPlay is anticompetitive. Interesting. Does Virgin Mega have a "right" to sell music that works on the iPod? Or is it their competitive burden to produce (or support) a music player that competes with/is superior to the iPod? Of course, as I've said previously, there's no limitation to bringing music (MP3) files on to the iPod, except that they're unencrypted, and it's unlikely that Virgin Mega would be permitted to sell unencrypted music by the labels. Perhaps Virgin Mega ought to sue the labels for insisting that they use a DRM scheme in the first place. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 6, 2004 8:26 AM. August 5, 2004Time DistortionsIt's 5:30. Already. Didn't I just get here? This place has an odd, timeless quality. The lighting, pace, and general bustle don't seem to adhere to natural circadian rhythms, as they do in other businesses. Microsoft looks much the same at 10 AM as it does at 1 PM as it does at 6PM. There's no lunch whistle, or sense of "opening" or "closing" as there is in manufacturing or retail, respectively. It messes with you. My internship ends four weeks from tomorrow. 28 days left, and I can feel the time slipping away already. I'm sure you've seen movies where the protagonist is told some bad news (or sees something shocking) - the camera zooms in on them while simultaneously zooming out from the background. This camera move creates an odd, careening, off-kilter effect, where time seems to slow down. This pretty much describes how I feel right now. Four weeks left, and there's so much to do. Four weeks left to finish my research, synthesize it, edit, prepare, present, defend. Four weeks, each day full of meetings and Things To Do. I'm feeling up against it - all of a sudden - because I'm looking down the barrel of my Outlook calendar and I know what I'm supposed to be doing each day. I've had jobs in the past (long, long ago, before I got bit by the pesky entrepreneurship thing) where I counted down the minutes until quittin' time. It's kind of the opposite here - I'm looking at the clock and cursing that I "only" have a few hours left until the end of a given work day. What can I say? I'm not bored. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 5, 2004 5:23 PM. August 3, 2004Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Curtain!Focus groups are a research tool. They allow an organization (in this case, Microsoft) to get unvarnished feedback from customers (or potential customers) in a structured way. As a planner, if I want to know if The Concept I have for software is going to "play in Peoria", a focus group can be one great way to get the answer to that question without the time and expense of actually building the silly thing. Focus groups start with a client (Microsoft) contracting with a vendor to help them pull together an appropriate panel of people. You typically want a group that's large enough for a diversity of opinions, but small enough that strange group dynamics don't occur. (Six is a good number.) Microsoft says to the vendor, "Hey, we're developing something cool for left-handed dentists that make more than $120,000 a year and like to vacation at Disney World." At which point, the vendor hits the phones and tries to get six-figure-earning dental professionals with a Mickey fetish to come in and spend a couple of hours in a small room. But, you know, the soda is free. And they'll pay you for your time. Once they arrive, these dentists all sit together in a conference room and are guided through a discussion of The Concept by the facilitator (an employee of the vendor). The facilitator explains The Concept and then starts asking open-ended questions like, "So what do you think of this?" or "How would you use a tool like this?" For our part, there's a group of us that watch the focus group from the safe anonymity of one-way glass. The conference room has one wall that's dominated by this (seeming) mirror; from the darkened side, we can see (and hear) everything that goes on. It's all videotaped, miked, and notes are taken. We do this for one simple reason: people say the damndest things. It's true. The Concept, which makes so much sense to all the other Microsofties you've presented it to, gets a big, collective "huh?" from the dentists. Or one of them says, "You know, I have to tell you that I'm philosophically opposed to this whole thing." Or another chimes in by mentioning that this computer/Internet thing is all a fad, and those kids today listen to their music too loud, and what's with all the piercings? So you sit, and you watch, and The Concept - in all its beauty - is punctured, and begins to deflate. And, once the deflation begins, one of the dentists pulls out a sword and starts hacking it to bits. At which point another dentist sets it on fire. We do this because it's easier, and cheaper, than going to developers, having them build a product, and then watching it flop in the marketplace. Although, it must be said, our focus groups on Monday were pretty dang successful. Props to my co-workers for really digging in and doing a fantastic job on The Concept. UPDATE, May 13, 2006: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 3, 2004 9:06 PM. Bridgetown WeekendI'm back. I'll blog in a different entry about my focus group experience in San Francisco (the volatile variable there is how much red wine I'm going to sip before I finish this post), but first I wanted to touch a bit on some cool stuff from this last weekend. Mare and I went down to Portland late Friday night and spent the weekend hanging out. This was a quasi-getaway, quasi-family thing: her sister, Lynn, lives in Portland, and is a big runner (as is Mary). Together, they were slated to do the Nike Run Hit Wonder on Sunday morning. Further, Lynn's SO, Zach, was coordinating the Soapbox Derby Race (the link is cached from Google; their server wasn't responding) in Portland on Saturday. Let's start with the Soapbox Derby thing. First of all, the people who do this are crazy. No, really. Not "crazy" in that they mutter to themselves and talk about "The Man" and whatnot, but crazy in that, "Oh, my God, this is a person who cannot see their own mortality or visualize pain in any regard, because if they could they simply would not be doing THAT" kind of way. Caveat: I've gone bungy jumping. Naked. It was great. It was safe. It had nothing on Soapbox Derby for sheer machismo and stupidity. Soapbox Derby contestants are allowed only $300 to build a machine that they will race in. The machine can only be powered by gravity. You do get a push at the beginning of the race, but the push is carefully constrained in terms of its length and whatnot. The machine, once pushed, races other machines down a hilly, twisting park just outside of Portland called Mount Tabor. Soapbox Derby cars can hit 40mph. They are often built out of plywood and bicycle tires. The brakes are, shall we say, primitive. I've seen better steering assemblies on 1978 Honda Accords. It's totally insane. It also draws a crowd. In fact, I ran in to some of my fellow B-school folks (shout out to Chris, Summer, Alan and Whit!) while strolling the length of the course. The crowd came to drink, and stayed to cheer. It was fabulous. Next morning the girls got up for the Run Hit Wonder. The conceit of this is pretty genius - hold a simultaneous 5K and a 10K in downtown Portland, and then get old 80s bands to play along the way. They had Tommy Tutone, Tone-Loc, Flock of Seagulls, General Public and - wait for it - Devo. 10,000 people run the course, and stop/dance in front of acts they like. Mary, who normally can bang out a 10K in well under an hour, took 90 minutes to do the thing. And then Devo played Portland's Pioneer Square for a good hour. Excellent, excellent times. One amazing thing about Portland is that it's bordered (bisected?) by the Willamette river. As such, the city has a handful of bridges that span the river so citizens (along with their cars, bicycles, and light rail) can get across. There's a fabulous walking path around the river that gives great insights in to when the various bridges were built, and their respective drawbridge mechanisms. If you come to town, split off an hour and take the tour. UPDATE, October 7, 2007: One or more of the original hyperlinks on this page expired, and has been dereferenced. The hyperlinked text is now underlined. Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 3, 2004 8:42 PM. August 2, 2004Steve's Out Of Action
Get better, Steve. We need you. =) Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 2, 2004 6:39 PM. |
" While it's specifically about Microsoft, I found that the material was pretty applicable to all the interviews I did.
I've only had sporadic online access during my travel to San Francisco today, but I saw