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September 24, 2005

Microsoft's Company Meeting

If technology is a religion, then the Microsoft Company Meeting is an old-time tent revival.

Microsoft employs, worldwide, about 60,000 people. A little less than half of those folks work in the Puget Sound area. And so, when you want to throw together a little function (a soiree, if you will) for roughly 30,000 people - well, there's only a handful of places you can do it. Microsoft uses Safeco Field, which has a capacity of 50,000.

(Personally, I would have pushed for Key Arena - it's warmer - but it's just too small. Think about that for a second.)

The scope and scale of the meeting is awesome, in the traditional sense of the word. The logistics and planning take on D-day proportions: transportation, of course, but also security, food (we all got boxed lunches), seating (people from the same product group or family sit together), and so on. There was even a prayer/meditation room for our employees to use (big shout out to the HR department on that one - I'm not religious, but I really love how much Microsoft promotes religious diversity).

The energy from the crowd is great. This is aided by the fact that the product teams and business divisions all provide their people with tribal clothing. Since I work in Office, I was given a yellow vinyl windbreaker to wear (it's got a nifty Office logo on the left sleeve, and a "Company Meeting 2005" logo across the shoulder blades). So there I am, sitting with the other Office folk, one droplet in a sea of yellow, and we're staring at the MSN guys across the way - who have all decided to go with four-color pullover hats to differentiate themselves.

This tribal thing plays in to the meeting in funny ways. As execs are doing presentations and showing off, say, Office 12, they might mention "Now we'll take a look at the new features in Outlook." At that point, the Outlook folks will erupt with cheers, clapping and hollering. Amplify this behavior across all the groups and products (Xbox, Windows Media, Server, etc.), make it competitive, (who represents the best for their team?), and remember that there are 18,000 people doing it, and suddenly you've got a pretty playful, "less filling/tastes great" vibe.

(This might sound hokey, but it's actually really cool.)

The day itself is a series of presentations. Bill kicked things off, showing some new and novel technologies and trying to get people excited about the future. (He also showed the "Napoleon Dynamite" spoof from PDC, which is hysterical. I didn't much care for "Napoleon Dynamite" when it came out, but this four-minute clip is genius.) As the day went on, we heard from execs throughout the company - Robbie Bach, Jeff Raikes, Jim Allchin - each of whom showed off products that are in development (e.g., Xbox 360, Vista, Office 12) or that have recently shipped (e.g., Small Business Accounting). The day wrapped with Steve Ballmer doing what he does. (And the crowd loved it.)

Nothing shown was really that "new" per se. If you read the Web, watched the PDC Webcasts, and basically stayed up on the publicly-available company news, none of this was earth-shattering. But seeing it all in one place, presented as a coherent whole, really adds up to a big wallop. Microsoft's got a lot goin' on over the next 12 months.

If you want outside coverage of the event, check out Scoble (natch), or Todd Bishop at the PI.

So what did I like? A lot of it, actually. Key takeaway, aside from the fact that Xbox 360 is clearly going to sell a million billion units, was the new Office. I admit to being chauvinistic about this, but for me, it exemplifies what Microsoft can do when it's willing to take risks and innovate. The product is hot. Period.

It's also personally inspiring. Office is a $10Bn business, and whenever you put that much money in one place, it tends to want to keep doing the same thing it's been doing. The new Office UI is a slap in the face of that kind of inertia. And that's a Good Thing.

One of the reasons I came to Microsoft was to help make things better. I suppose I could go into business for myself (it's not like I haven't done that before) and do something really innovative in the productivity space, but unless that idea a) gets reduced to practice in a smart way and b) gains high-volume distibution, then it doesn't do anyone any good.

More than four hundred million people use Office. One of the things about Planning is that it's entire purpose is to take good ideas and get them into product. Which means that if I do my job well, I'll be able to take those same innovative productivity concepts and inject them into the market a lot faster, and a lot more broadly, than I can on my own.

So yeah, I'm bullish. I'm not drinking the Kool-Aid (I kinda think that healthy skepticism - of our stuff, and of other people's - is really good for the Planning mind), but I wouldn't have thrown down with this company if I didn't believe that it would make a difference. And right now, I'm feeling validated.

UPDATE, November 18, 2005: 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 at September 24, 2005 2:24 PM. Posted to MSFT.

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