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June 25, 2005
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July 2, 2008

Gavin’s Adventures In Beijing, Day 1 (& 2)

Last week, Microsoft sent me to Beijing (along with my fellow MacBU-er Brooke) on business. Our flight left Seattle on Monday, the 23rd; I got home this morning. This afternoon's been a bit brutal, energy-wise - my internal clock is still 15 hours ahead of Pacific time, so my 8:25 AM landing (it's the morning!) was 11:55 PM to me (it's time for bed!).

The last 10 days have been a total whirlwind. While very much a work trip, we managed to use our weekend stayover for a bit of sightseeing. Very exciting.

As usual, I took a few notes during the trip:

  • During my Monday-morning suitcase-stuffing extravaganza, I peek at Dashboard, which says that Beijing has a low of 70 and a high of 95 all week. Yowza. Pack shorts.
  • Brooke's wife gave us a lift to the airport, so on the way out of town we stopped by Vivace for one final cup of Seattle coffee. We then popped downtown so I could give Elaine a goodbye hug at her office. Mid-squeeze, I'm reminded of why I was glad when my insane Product Planning travel schedule came to a close last year.
  • Since the time difference between Seattle and Beijing is so pronounced, it meant that our Monday afternoon departure wouldn't land in China until late Tuesday night. (Dude, where's my Tuesday?)
  • We're on Northwest for this trip, living large in business class (Microsoft travel policy lets you go business if your flight is more than 7 hours). After clearing Seattle airport security, we head to the South terminal and check out the Northwest executive lounge. It's my first time there, and it's pretty excellent: plenty of windows (lots of natural light), tables (places to spread out and work), free soda and coffee, free WiFi, and lots of quiet.
  • (Brooke and I are, I think, the most casually-dressed people in the lounge.)
  • Business class is addictive: champagne before takeoff, a fresh Wall Street Journal, an appetizer of seared Ahi tuna skewers with ginger and cucumber. We remark to each other, many times, that we are forever ruined when it comes to future travel in coach.
  • Northwest's Airbus A330s have AC power outlets in business. My initial feeling of joy ("Score!") gives way to mild annoyance as I realize the flight's AC power system is put together with baling wire and a couple of D batteries. The juice stops frequently, which makes it hard to sustain (or retain) a laptop charge. Our power manages to last the whole flight (and I have an outbox of queued up e-mail to prove it), but things feel very touch-and-go most of the time.
  • Our flight connects through Tokyo. I've never been to Japan before, so as we're descending I'm peering out the window of the plane like a 5-year old in front of a toy store, nose pressed against the glass and trying to absorb everything I'm seeing. The country is unbelievably green - they have farms and fields laid out in grids as far as the eye can see, incredibly lush and gorgeous.
  • We arrive in Tokyo at 4:15 PM, local time. We are pooped.
  • My iPhone can't seem to lock on to a cellular provider in Japan. I had this fantasy that I'd be able to zip around the world and at least have the option of paying $4.99 a minute on foreign networks, but apparently the AT&T people aren't talking to their Japanese counterparts. Grr.
  • The Tokyo airport has a McDonald's. Next to a sushi bar. I swear I am not making this up.
  • On the flight from Tokyo to Beijing, I watch "Ralph Nader: An Unreasonable Man", which I find to be an insightful and balanced portrait of a very complicated and stubborn guy. It starts with his work in the 1960s and 1970s, and then proceeds up to his 2000 presidential bid. Truthfully, I'd been a bit mad at Nader over 2000, and had seen him as a spoiler for Gore. After the movie ... well, I'm not mad anymore; I think I have a good sense of where he's coming from. I don't necessarily agree with him, but I do think I understand him a bit better. Highly recommended.
  • After the film, I manage to sleep for an hour.
  • We touch down at 9:28 PM, local time (6:28 AM Pacific).
  • Beijing's airport is gigantic, just enormous. It seems to go on forever. We taxi for a full 15 minutes after landing, and never run out of new things to look at - stretches of tarmac and clusters of buildings, going on and on and on.
  • The plane's doors pop, and the weather hits us. Beijing feels a lot like Houston - humid and hot, almost menacingly so, as if the weather wants you to know that it can take things from "pretty warm" to "Crock-Pot cooking" whenever it feels like it.
  • Inside, the airport looks like any other modern European airport, except with Chinese signage. Most signs and displays have English translations; international pictograms are used for bathrooms, exits, and the like. Navigating is not a problem.
  • The Chinese customs people are friendly and polite. They also have a push-button customer-satisfaction poll on the customer's side of the counter; you push the smiley-face or frowny-face that matches your experience ("Very satisfied", "satisfied", "unsatisfied", "Very unsatisfied"). I give my guy a "very satisfied" and head off to get my bag.
  • We are met at the airport by some of our fellow Microsofties. They meet us in front of ... the Starbucks. (I am a sad, sad Seattle cliche.)
  • A taxi is procured to take us in to Beijing proper, and our hotel. I had been warned about the driving in China, but the reality of it is really quite striking - people change lanes whenever they want, drive at different speeds on the freeway (very fast, very slow), pass on the shoulder, you name it. For all the chaos, the drivers seem acclimated, alert, and ready for anything.
  • (Brooke and I are both alarmed to find that our taxi doesn't have seatbelts in the rear seats. As we later learn, virtually none of them do.)
  • Our taxi ride takes 45 minutes, and sets us back 75 Yuan. That's about $10 US.
  • The hotel is very nice, very clean, and clearly caters to visiting Western businesspeople and tourists.
  • After unpacking everything, I notice the small sign in the bathroom - "The tap water is not safe for drinking." The hotel has set out two 12-oz bottles of (privately branded) water for personal use. I'd been warned about the water situation before leaving, but being confronted with it still requires a shift in my thinking. I need to use these two bottles for pretty much everything - drinking, rinsing my toothbrush, taking vitamins, everything. Conserving water becomes something I think about a lot during the trip, and I find myself wondering whether this kind of water rationing is something humanity as a whole is going to have to get used to in the future.
  • Slightly before midnight, I bomb out.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 2, 2008 4:47 PM.
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May 13, 2008

Office 2008 SP1

I'm happy to report that my colleagues at MacBU shipped the first service pack to Office 2008 (2008 SP1) today; you can get the bits directly from the "downloads" section of our Web site, or you can wait a day or two for it to appear in AutoUpdate.

All the product teams worked incredibly hard on this release, and I'm very proud to see the results getting out to customers. If you're interested in the scope of what got done, check out the KB article.

It's also worth pointing out that Office 2008 is a barnburner, sales-wise:

Office 2008 launched at Macworld Expo 2008, and sales for the productivity suite continue to soar, selling faster than any previous version of Office for Mac in the past 19 years.

..."The response has been amazing — since we launched in January, the velocity of sales for Office 2008 is nearly three times what we saw after the launch of Office 2004,” said Craig Eisler, general manager of the Mac BU.

(Awesome.)

UPDATE: Schwieb has a great post on SP1 on his blog. Check it out.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 13, 2008 7:15 PM.
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May 9, 2008

The New Commute

My commute has changed quite a bit over the last couple of weeks.

For starters, I'm on two wheels once in a while. May is here, which is Bike To Work Month (with Bike To Work Day on the 16th). May also represents the last month before the Alcatraz tri, which means that, assuming I don't want to flail spectacularly in San Francisco, I needed to get out, buy a bike, and actually start using it pretty regularly.

My solution has been to start riding to work a couple times a week - or, in some cases, ride to work one day and then ride home the next or the day after.

I'm very fortunate in that 99% of my ride is along the Burke-Gilman and Sammamish River bike trails, which are mostly flat, 100% free of cars, have periodic water stops and bathrooms, and run through some spectacular scenery. The total work-home commute mileage is around 26 (each direction), which takes me just shy of 2 hours. We have lockers and showers in the building adjoining MacBU, which makes it even simpler.

It's a easy, gorgeous ride, and a hell of a way to start the morning. I can't recommend it more highly.

When I'm not on my bike, I'm on the bus. I've moved from regular Metro transit to Microsoft's private bus service - "The Connector." The company rolled out Phase 1 of the service back in September, and recently kicked off Phase Two, adding a bunch of new routes (one of which is right by our place).

I was a bit torn about switching to the Connector. While it's a great perk for people with poor bus service to campus (e.g., you live in the suburbs, or a less commute-friendly part of Seattle, such as Ballard), we've got great bus service where I live. Further, the Connector seemed to be a bit of a push in terms of transit time (it's a private bus, not a private helicopter, so we're still stuck in the same traffic with everyone else), and the system requires advance reservation (through a Web site) to ensure that everyone gets a seat.

In fact, the service is amazing.

First, in terms of real-world throughput, Connector buses are actually faster than Metro. The shuttles leave precisely on time, which is a godsend if you've ever played the 5 - 15 minute waiting game that sometimes happens with popular Metro bus lines. It's understandable - Connector routes have 3 stops, total, while a typical Metro bus will stop, you know, 14,000 or 15,000 times over a decent-sized route. With such precise timing, you spend less time checking your watch at a Connector stop, and you can rely on the Connector being ready at the same time every day.

Second, Connectors all have free WiFi. While this isn't unique (many SoundTransit buses have it, too), the thing that makes it awesome is...

Third, Connectors guarantee you a seat, and have space for your bags. This is the big one. Being guaranteed a seat - and knowing that it won't be Sardine Can Seating - means you can walk out the door with your laptop under your arm and be confident that you can do some violence to your e-mail (or Web surf, or whatever) while on the road. It's wonderful, because I know I can defer some of my last-minute work to when I'm on the bus, be confident of getting it done, and walk through the door of my condo with a clear mind and a closed MacBook Pro.

Connector Phase Two was just rolled out this week, and the buses are already at capacity - a trend I expect to continue as the good word spreads. Part of this is simple gas-price economics - as BusinessWeek wrote, "Suddenly, It's Cool To Take The Bus", and, indeed I've seen several e-mail threads from car-centric colleagues extolling the virtues of not having to drive in our stop-n-go traffic anymore.

More than anything, the biking and the bus-riding have helped me reclaim some of my commute as "me time" - time to get healthy, see my community, get a few more things done in the day - instead of feeling like it's The Great Sucking Sound of emotional energy and patience that I associate with driving.

If you're sick of your commute and are ready for a change, try your bike or a bus. You won't regret it.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 9, 2008 12:43 PM.
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May 5, 2008

Microsoft's Own Little EPCOT

Last week, I was fortunate enough to tour the Microsoft Center for Information Work (CIW) and the Microsoft Home (aka, "The Home Of The Future").

If you don't know what these are, they're very much akin to a Microsoft "concept car," a never-to-be-built prototype of a possible tomorrow that demonstrates how people might work together (or, in the case of the Home, live together) with a little extra technology, smartly deployed.

Tours are generally available only to VIPs (and the occasional lucky employee), and most of the stuff that is shown off is strictly under NDA. So I can't go in to any kind of detail about what was shown, or the general direction of the content.

That said, the most interesting thing to me about both tours - and I suppose this was made all the more apparent because I took them back-to-back - was how utterly, completely, and totally Disney-like they were. It felt, eerily, like I was on some Microsoft-sponsored exhibit at EPCOT or Tomorrowland.

Neither exhibit has audio-animatronics, but they do have the Disney exhibit hallmarks - a "concept" or storyline that serves as the narrative for the time you spend in the exhibit, audience interaction that moves the story forward, a series of lessons that are taught as part of the experience (Disney goes with things like, "Protect The Earth"), and, of course, insanely high production values.

Another Disney parallel is that both the CIW and the Home suffer from the "Tomorrowland Problem" - namely, that the future has an awkward (and consistent) way of, you know, actually happening, which means that one year's breathtakingly cool and cutting-edge exhibit is next year's collective yawn. I remember walking through the "Innoventions" pavilion in Tomorrowland back in 2001, and listening to a Cast Member breathlessly describe how, in the future, people would actually listen to the radio through the Internet (...isn't technology amazing?).

I remember laughing to myself, checking my watch to make sure it wasn't still 1995, and strolling over to Space Mountain.

Keeping up with the future is hard problem, and it's easy to get snarky about some of the more fantastical or implausible parts of these sorts of exhibits. That said, both the CIW and the Home are pretty well-done, and I've found that a few of the ideas that were shown off are still sticking with me, popping in to my cerebellum now and again and attaching themselves to some of my other, more "grounded" projects.

Which is, of course, the point.

I wonder how many other companies are doing this sort of thing - producing Disney-fied exhibits to tell the story of their business, product, technologies, or vision. Certainly, plenty of organizations offer plant tours or behind-the-scenes glimpses to the public or VIPs. As the stakes go up for these sorts of tours - particularly among companies that sell ideas - I have to imagine that a lot of Imagineers are going to find themselves lucrative work as private consultants.

Overall, a terrific experience - particularly the Home. The Microsoft Web site has a number of still images from the Home - be sure to check them out.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 5, 2008 9:16 PM.
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January 25, 2008

Office 2008: The 10-Minute Walkthrough

The fine folks over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog have posted an interview with MacBU's own Amanda Lefebvre.

Shot at Macworld, Amanda spends a good 10 minutes talking about Office 2008 and showing off a number of the new, cool things you can do with the suite. It's a solid primer for folks thinking about upgrading.

(Nice work, Amanda!)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 25, 2008 4:35 PM.
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January 13, 2008

Off To Macworld

Macworld kicks off tomorrow, and a good chunk of the MacBU (including yours truly) are heading down to San Francisco to meet customers, take questions, and show off Office 2008.

I'll be working the Microsoft booth during the week, so if you're at the show, be sure to stop off, introduce yourself, and say hello!

(And, if you're at the show, don't forget to print your Keynote Bingo card!)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated January 13, 2008 8:52 AM.
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December 19, 2007

Scale

It's the holiday time of year, which means that Elaine and I have been catching up with old friends at parties and family gatherings. Time and again, I keep getting asked about my "new" (four months in, and it's still "new") job at MacBU - what it's like, what a "program manager" actually does, and so on.

Generally, I get asked what I like about the new gig, or what's surprised me the most. The answer is the same: scale.

I've spent my entire career in tech, doing services (Internet access/Web hosting), custom software (Web application development), and consulting. In each of these areas, I've always seen through the lens of a small business - my partners and I had companies that offered something to a defined population, and we customized, where possible, for specific audiences and needs. In many ways, this was the geek equivalent of running a Saturday-afternoon lemonade stand - you brew your lemonade, hang out a shingle, and look for thirsty customers. Since you're the one selling the lemonade, you have a personal encounter with most everyone you do business with. Your transactions are in your native language, and likely all in cash. The product you're selling is the product you've got - there's no customization or after-market. It's a simple business, and a satisfying one.

Making software that's used by millions of people, by contrast, is not a simple business.

Let's take the product I deal with - Office for Macintosh - as an example.

First, Mac Office isn't just used by one type of person - it's used by millions of different people. We use research to develop customer segmentations and personas that we can rely on to help guide our product investments. However, the devil is in the details - if you're trying to cater the product to a user that is less technical, say, then you need to do a good job of remembering what problem you're actually helping them solve (as the old saying goes, "Nobody buys a drill; rather, people buy a 2" hole in their wall").

Your feature needs to be built in such a way that it's also attractive, as much as possible, to other customer segments, who will have different assumptions about what your feature should or should not allow them to do. You're forever trading off complexity for simplicity - what's "flexible" to one person is "confusing as hell" to another. Product designs have to be tested, tested, and tested again - you can't just put a crazy idea in the box and ship it.

Second, Mac Office comes in a number of languages (English, Japanese, French, German, Spanish, and so on). Consequently, the product is sold in a number of different countries, each with their own specific market requirements and government regulations. As a practical matter, this means we have to have people who are doing translation and localization work, but it also means that, as product designers, we have to worry about specific aspects of the product that you might not think about.

Small things - an icon, say - might be just fine in the United States, but be really offensive to members of a certain group in another country. "Smiley faces", for instance, can imply one thing in one culture (e.g., happiness), and something else again somewhere else. We have teams of people who are responsible for ensuring that our products have been checked for just this sort of thing, and are acceptable to a global audience.

Third, Mac Office isn't just used by the people who buy the product at the Apple Store. There are lots of people who are responsible for installing, updating, and supporting our software (e.g., IT administrators at universities or corporations; parents on computers at home), many of whom have concerns about keeping their systems stable, secure, and available. We have people who work on things like the Installer - something that many people don't think about (most end users only fire up the installer once, when they first get the product), but that are critically important to this community. We have people who worry about security, people who worry about "sustained engineering" (those are the friendly folks who bring you the .1, .2, and .3 updates), and people who do nothing but bang on our products all day long and try to break them before customers get their hands on them. Each of these teams has its own set of requirements and concerns, and many of these teams can prevent the product from shipping if they feel that their concerns are not being addressed.

Fourth, Mac Office has a partner community - people who have extended our products with their own code or intellectual property. Much of our product can be accessed programmatically, using macro languages in the products themselves, or external languages like AppleScript. When you design a feature, you need to think about how someone might want to access it programmatically - how they might want to build on top of your stuff. You also need to make sure that this has been well-tested by your colleagues in quality control.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point - at scale, software is much, much more than it appears to be, and has some incredibly important aspects (e.g., security, quality testing) that users never see.

(Since arriving, I've felt a bit like Charlie, getting a tour of the Wonka factory.)

I mean, I knew this stuff existed - I saw it, at lemonade-stand scale, when I was working for myself - but to actually step on to the factory floor and see the blue ball machine running full-tilt ... it's a bit dizzying.

One intriguing aspect to all this is that no change is simple. God knows I've sat in front of software on more than one occasion and proclaimed, "Augh! If only this product did [blank] - I mean, how hard can it be?"

Answer: damn hard. There's no such thing as a "simple" change, because even "simple" changes need to be run through the necessary machinery to ensure they're not introducing more problems than they're solving. You think that menu item should use slightly-different wording? Great, let's change it ... but we need to make sure that it doesn't break a partner solution, or cause a localization issue, or make the product harder to understand by novice users.

Learning what it's like to work at scale has been the most eye-opening thing about my new job. And, in truth, it was a big part of what drew me to the position. My contributions to our 2008 release notwithstanding, I've never shipped a shrink-wrapped product before, and I figured it was a skill well worth learning. (And not "learn" in the sense of "I understand, conceptually, how this process is accomplished", but rather "learn" in the sense of "I've got mud on my face and shredded clothes after crawling through the rainstorms and razor wire of getting the thing out the door.")

Hence: Gavin Shearer, Program Manager, MacBU.

I expect the next few years to be incredibly fascinating.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated December 19, 2007 8:47 PM.
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December 13, 2007

Office 2008 Released To Manufacturing

It's official: Mac Office 2008 has been released to manufacturing. The product launch is January 15 at Macworld.

(And, I know I uh, work for MacBU and all that, but I really like the software.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated December 13, 2007 7:15 AM.
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November 19, 2007

You're A ... Program Manager?

On Saturday, I participated in a panel at the UW Business School with two other alums, talking to prospective MBAs about b-school in general, the UW in particular, career options and experiences for MBAs, and so on.

(Fun fact: this group will be the MBA class of 2010, which makes me feel fantastically old. Yikes.)

When we got to the part where I talked about what I do for a living, I saw a few furrowed brows - people 'get' that I work for Microsoft (and work on the Mac), but they didn't really understand a) what the heck a "Program Manager" is, b) what that job is all about, and c) what the heck an MBA is doing in the role.

In fairness, Program Management isn't a typical career track for MBA types. And, as it happens, I've been having this conversation - or flavors of it - with friends of late, many of whom want to know just what the heck it is that I do in my job, and how it differs from Product Planning.

Hence, this post.

When I started in Planning as an MBA intern, I typed up a quickie essay ("You're A Product ... Planner?") to explain what I was doing with my summer:

Put succinctly, planners help guide product evolution. ... We generate new ideas, identify trends, keep an eye on competitive products, and try to help provide thought leadership on products. We are, in effect, the "voice" of the customer.

As a Planner, it was my job to help the product team figure out what they should be building. In day-to-day terms, this meant tons of travel and customer research - in-person visits, focus groups, customer councils, surveys, you name it. Planners spend a lot of time in the field, trying to getting a sense of what's going on in the market. Planners work with people in the product team (e.g., Program Managers, Developers, Testers, Designers), as well as the marketing department (e.g. Product Managers) and executive groups to help get the people who build the product aligned around what the customer wants to buy. Planning is a job with lots of strategy, market-segmentation, analysis and number-crunching.

In other words, it's a classic MBA gig.

For me, moving into Program Management meant taking a step forward; rather than working with the product team to define requirements, I work on the product team, designing features, writing specifications, and trying to build a product that customers will love.

At a high level, Program Managers do two big things: they write specifications that govern how the product will look, work and behave, and they manage the schedule to ensure that all the various parts of the team are working in a coherent, consistent, rational way. Probably the best definition I've ever seen of what a Program Manager is/does comes from Jim McCarthy, author of (the excellent) "Dynamics of Software Development":

Program Managers are the team members who perform the following functions:
  • Lead the definition of a winning product.
  • Lead the evangelization of the product's vision.
  • Lead the team to predictable victory.
...Program Management is a technical track, and there are two aspects of technical mastery: (1) the technology with which the product is created and (2) the technical aspects of leadership in creating software, which is mostly the topic of this book. Program Managers must master the many arts of cajoling, facilitating, inspiring and demanding excellence and effectiveness from the rest of the team. They must know the ins and outs of actually shipping software on time. They must apply the best practices that yield the definition of great products and healthy technology. And finally, they must be spokespeople to the team, to the press, to customers, and to the corporate hierarchy.

So, yes, Virginia, Program Management isn't a typical MBA job. In fact, a lot of my PM peers around the company tend to be fairly technical folks with CS degrees.

Truthfully, as a lifelong geek, the technology side is really interesting; one of the best things about working at Microsoft is that you get to work with a lot of advanced stuff (and, being a Mac developer, I get to work with a lot of advanced Apple stuff). But at the same time, tech doesn't exist in a vacuum; customers don't buy technologies, they buy products, and if you want someone to buy your product, you better be doing something with that product that they find interesting or valuable.

And you know something? An MBA can be an awfully useful thing for figuring out what those "interesting" or "valuable" things might be. Which, I daresay, is a Good Thing. I like to think that my geekiness made me a better Planner, and I'd like to think that my MBA will make me a better Program Manager.

Does that help?

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated November 19, 2007 12:01 PM.
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October 29, 2007

MacBU Nerf Fight!

Nerf Guns!

So I came in this morning to find a Nerf N-Strike Maverick on my chair with a note:

Thanks for all the great work so far! Take time to have some FUN as we gear up to track down the remaining show stoppers on the way to shipping. HAPPY HUNTING!

Turns out that most of the people I work with got 'em, too.

So now the hallways are filled with flying Nerf bullets, and MacBU looks like a John Woo film. People are laughing their butts off.

Craig bought extra ammo. I caught him muttering something about "equipping the rebels."

(Days like this, I really, really, really love my job.)

PS - DUCK!

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated October 29, 2007 11:09 AM.
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October 27, 2007

Notes From My Quickie Trip To Los Angeles

This week's work trip to Los Angeles was an in-and-out affair; I touched down at LAX Tuesday evening and was back at my desk by 2 PM Thursday. Fast, fast fast - a far cry from some of my more involved trips as a Planner.

The usual (but somewhat abbreviated) trip notes:

  • It's damn exciting to see light rail going in at Sea-Tac. The station along 99 has been built, and the tracks are now being put in place from that station all the way to terminal. Opening Day 2009 is fast approaching, folks, and it's going to be great when it gets here.
  • So there I am, sitting at Gate D2 and doing a bit of e-mail, when I look up and spy today's USA Today ... with an iPhone sitting on top of it. All by itself. I was so surprised that I actually did a double-take (did someone forget their iPhone?!?!?), and then had the "candid camera" moment. After deciding that it wasn't some kind of SeaTac police sting thingy, I decided to get the phone out of plain sight and see if the owner came back for it. Twenty minutes go by ... no owner. I'm beginning to wonder if the poor sod is on Flight 2300 to Singapore right now, cursing him/herself for forgettting the phone, and I'm also wondering where SeaTac's lost and found is. A bit later, a guy shows up with a slightly-distressed look in his eyes: "Seen an iPhone around here?"
  • (I must say, witnessing their reunion was a bit touching.)
  • I'm still amazed at what people will talk about - very publicly and loudly - in an airport while on a cell phone. I personally overheard product plans, the outcome of a rather contentious board meeting (the guy was swearing so much I thought I was in an episode of Deadwood), Google AdSense response rates, how hard someone was working (and how his boss better not give him any more work, thank you), how hard someone was not working (and how she thinks her boss is figuring it out), and sex.
  • (Really.)
  • I got to LAX, snagged the shuttle to the rental car center, and proceeded to have another suboptimal Avis experience. The poor folks were swamped with customers, so, by the time I get to the front of the line it's been a good wait. The lady behind the counter checks me in, and then fixes me in the eye to deliver some bad news.
    Her: "I've got, like, 10 or 12 cars in front of you for cleaning, washing and delivery."
    Me: "Uh ... how long is that going to take?"
    Her: (Unconvincingly) "Uh, 20 or 30 minutes."
    Me: (Looks at watch). "What else you got?"
    Her: "We have a sixteen-person passenger van."

    And thus it came to be that I was tooling along the 405 in something that could hold a soccer team or a church group - possibly at the same time. It's big, it's bulky, it's underpowered, it steers like the Titanic. It's also, as you might imagine, a nightmare to park and has horrible visibility.
  • (But hey, at least I'm mobile.)
  • Microsoft was kind enough to put me up in the W Hotel. Holy cow, it's nice. There you are, dear traveller, tired and exhausted from your recent trip. You've checked in, made your way to your hotel room. You slide the keycard into the slot, hear the "cheep cheep" to let you know the door is unlocked, and the door swings open. Inside, the room is lit, music is playing. Things feel tasteful and calm. You stand, slack-jawed, at how nice everything is. No fumbling for light switches, no smell of mold, no hunting for a remote control to turn on the TV for some background noise. You just step in to the environment, and you're home. Fantastic. Apple does "out of the box" experience better than anyone in electronics; W does "out of the box" better than anyone in the hotel business.
  • The California wildfires are, if anything, bigger and scarier than the national news is conveying. Local news is dominated by it, and the sheer volume and scale of the thing is boggling.
  • The W's hotel bar has super-tasty club sandwiches and fries.
  • Back at LAX, I was again reminded of how people will talk about anything on their damn phones. This time, some blowhard was name-dropping Celebrities He Knows (George Clooney, etc.) to get something out of the person on the other end of the line. Sheesh.
  • The Starbucks' at LAX don't offer iTunes integration just yet, which seems odd to me, given that LA is Ground Zero for the recording industry.
  • With the exception of a few persistently cranky kids with generous lungs, the flight back to Seattle was one of the most pleasant I can remember taking in recent memory - fast, comfortable, courteous people. We even arrived 20 minutes early.

Damn, it's good to be home.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated October 27, 2007 11:22 AM.
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October 23, 2007

Off To LA

I'm heading to Los Angeles for some Microsoft business until Thursday; I'll blog when I can.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated October 23, 2007 1:55 PM.
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August 24, 2007

Kid In A Candy Store

(Big thanks to my colleague Alex, who inadvertently suggested the title of this post in a recent e-mail to me: "I assume you’re like a kid in a candy store right now." Damn skippy, I am.)

Today is the close of my first two weeks on the job at MacBU. And, so far, it's been a pretty cool trip (aside from being sick for the last two days, which were absolutely no fun at all).

A few notes from my experiences thus far:

  • Welcome To Bizarro-World, Part 1: We're in a standard Microsoft building, but the walls are positively plastered with Apple paraphernalia: you've got your "Think Different" posters, your ads for the 30" Cinema Display, Mac Office product shots, iMac promos from the late nineties, you name it. To put it mildly, this is not something you'd see decking the halls of my former building.
  • A lot of people outside of Microsoft believe that there is a single, unified "company culture" that governs behavior, regardless of the product/team/division they're working for. Now that I'm in the middle of my first intra-company job transfer, I can tell you confidently that this is not at all true. Different teams have their own cultural microclimates, their own sense of what's acceptable or not. MacBU, for example, is a heckuva lot more sarcastic than Office. People sass one another a ton around here, and I was (briefly) taken aback when I got my first full dose. (Of course, since my sense of humor is All Sarcasm, All The Time, I'm pretty much in heaven.)
  • For many of my coworkers, MacBU is their first Microsoft job - they took the gig because they wanted to work on the Mac, and they stayed for the culture and the opportunity to work on products they like. A good number of folks in MacBU also seem have built their entire Microsoft career working here, switching positions intra-BU (moving from test to program management, for example). Unsurprisingly, a lot of them are full-throated Mac fanatics.
  • Welcome To Bizarro-World, Part 2: I'm no longer the "the Apple guy" on the team. Used to be that whenever Apple had something going on in the news (iPhone, new iMacs, stock options scandals, whatever), I'd have co-workers pop by my office to chat about it (in a sort of, "Hey, ask Mikey, he'll eat anything" kind of way). Here, everybody is the "the Apple guy/gal" so the conversations tend to be Mac shorthand: "Hey, I just saw this on TUAW", "Did you read Gruber?" and so on. Dropping a Phil Schiller reference in meetings gets you the knowing smile, rather than the puzzled brow-furrow.
  • The Office Product Planners threw me a going-away party last week, which was a terrific send-off (and, truthfully a little sad). Their bon-voyage pack included:
    • a framed (and fake-signed!) photo of Steve Jobs;
    • a mock black turtleneck (perfect for my first MacWorld product demo, I assume);
    • a copy of "The Power Of Cult Branding" (Apple is mentioned about a zillion times);
    • an old "MacUser" t-shirt (!);
    • a gift card for the Apple Store.
    What's hysterical is that the Jobs photo is proudly displayed in my office, and absolutely nobody I work with bats an eye at it. Too funny.
  • (And, hey, Planners - I'm gonna miss you guys.)
  • We have a lot of Mac hardware around here. My colleague David Weiss did a photo tour of our (amazing) Mac lab last April, and its' every bit as cool as it looks from the photos.
  • (Yes, I've got cardkey access to the lab. No, I can't let you play Marathon in there. Sorry.)
  • Coolest new thing about the job: getting to play with Leopard and Office 2008 every day.
  • Worst new thing about the job: not being able to talk about what it's like to play with Leopard and Office 2008 every day.
  • (I'm getting really good at saying, "Well, uh, that's covered under NDA, so I can't really discuss it" to my friends.)
  • MacBU has an Xbox, Xbox 360, and a Wii for employee use. Rumor is that there's a Wii Bowling league around here.
  • We also have an old-tyme popcorn machine, which seems to generate a lot of activity around 3 PM.
  • Wednesdays are "work late nights" (we're trying to ship Office 2008, as you may have heard), and the company is kind enough to supply Jamba Juices in the afternoon and free 6 o'clock dinner for everyone sticking around.
  • Welcome To Bizarro-World, Part 3: Not to state the obvious, but Microsoft is a Windows-centric environment. And nothing, repeat nothing, will remind you of that like trying to navigate our internal systems on a Mac. Lots of our internal tools require the installation of an ActiveX control; others need .NET; still others prefer (or require) Internet Explorer. None of this is very satisfying when you're running Safari on OS X. I do have a PC on my desk for just this purpose, but it's a very Stranger-In-A-Strange-Land kind of feeling.
  • Welcome To Bizarro-World, Part 4: I'm spending a lot of my time getting up to speed on being a Mac Program Manager - learning how to use our internal bug-reporting and tracking tools, reading and reviewing specs, dogfooding new product. But of course, this also means that I'm spending time spelunking Mac OS X from a developer (rather than power-user) perspective. I'm getting more acquainted with Apple frameworks and technologies, because, you know, we can actually build on them. It's fascinating to spend time looking at technologies and asking, "How can we use this in the context of Office?" I don't actually consider a lot of this to be "work" in the classic sense - I mean, I used to spend weekends doing this kind of stuff for fun.
  • (Not that I plan to mention that at review time, or anything.)

I fully recognize that I'm in the honeymoon period around here, and eventually I'll be whining about this, that and the other damn thing. But for now ... kid in a candy store, indeed.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 24, 2007 4:15 PM.
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August 14, 2007

MacBU, Day Two: The Top Ten

I'm at Day Two here on the Mac team, and my "Hey, I'm Gavin, and I'm new here" e-mail went out this afternoon. I'm starting to feel all official n' stuff.

However, along with the usual biographical information, I threw together a quick Top 10 list - in this case, of things the new guy (fresh off the boat from Office for Windows) promises not to say while working on the Mac team.

('Cause, you know, I'd look, uh, pretty silly if I did.)

So without further ado:

The Top Ten Things The New Guy From Windows Office Promises Not To Say In The MacBU
10. "Where's the Start menu on this thing, again?"
9. "Wow, that Spotlight and Dashboard stuff sure looks a lot like Vista."
8. "So, why isn't there an Intel Inside sticker on this machine?"
7. "Man, I can't believe you can't use a two-button mouse on OS X."
6. "Anyone know why my Zune isn't being picked up by iTunes?"
5. "Yeah, I don't know what's wrong with my Mac. I think the registry got corrupted."
4. "We design for college kids and hipsters, right?"
3. "Oh, those guys can totally fail. Remember the Newton?"
2. "We make Office for MAC?"
1. "...and I'm a PC."

(Did I miss anything?)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 14, 2007 3:21 PM.
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August 10, 2007

Travel, Day Four: Phoenix, Seattle

Wednesday and Thursday were both travel days, and, thankfully, I'm now back in Seattle, back in my neighborhood, and, very shortly, back in my own damn bed.

It's still bizarre to think that this week is - more properly, has been - my last as a Planner, and that, come Monday morning, I'm starting the new new thing.

On the other hand, given some of the indignities suffered this week in the pursuit of customer feedback, well, I might be ready for the change.

The notes:

  • Our second stab at getting the heck out of Pittsburgh was more successful than the first. We arrived at the airport, slid up to the ticket counter, were informed that our flight was on-time, and checked baggage. (I about fell over in shock.)
  • God Will Make You Suffer If You Try To Leave Pennsylvania, Part 1: Our original tickets were on United, and, when United couldn't get us to Houston anytime before the Bejing Olympics or the second Clinton Administration, they were kind enough to book us on a rival airline - US Airways. On the plus side, US Airways has a direct-to-Phoenix flight (read: doesn't stop in Chicago), which meant that our chances of actually arriving seemed high. On the negative side, US Airways already had a pretty full plane when it took us, and they clearly knew they were dealing with people who hadn't chosen to do business with them in the first place. This meant we got, um, interesting seats - those fun middle jobbies that are situated somewhere behind the tail or just over an engine. I think my seat assignment was 26,000D. If we wanted out of town, it was going to hurt.
  • (And, of course, my ability to upgrade - that little sliver of hope - was nil. US Air and United share a first letter in their names, but not frequent-flyer programs. Pity.)
  • God Will Make You Suffer If You Try To Leave Pennsylvania, Part 2: Of course, we got picked for security screening. Of course we did. And not just the 'ol pat-down-and-wand routine, but the full-on bag search, replete with the chemically-treated paper, the turning on of the laptop, the works. TSA was totally professional and pleasant, but ... man.
  • I'm convinced that the food contracts for every airport in the country are handled by the same company. I was strolling around the dining choices and saw, well, all the same stuff I saw at SeaTac or Chicago or Denver - Qdoba, Quiznos, McDonald's, Ben & Jerry's. And all of it was right next to the CNBC/Hudson News place, just down the way from the Rosetta Stone kiosks. I suddenly felt like Ed Norton from Fight Club. Seriously, the only way I know which airport I'm in half the time is by the school/pro sports team printed on the sweatshirts/mascots for sale at the gift shops.
  • God Will Make You Suffer If You Try To Leave Pennsylvania, Part 3: And then, the storm came in. And not just any storm, but a fantastic, noisy, rainy, near-biblical-flood-inducing, thunder-and-lightning extravaganza that just shut down the airport, stalled flight loading at the gates, the works. It went on like that for 45 minutes, too. And I was honestly baffled/impressed - I mean, what else could happen?
  • God Will Make You Suffer If You Try To Leave Pennsylvania, Part 4: Didn't have to wait long to find out. Lightning struck the plane next to ours. Both planes were parked at their gates, and when the bolt hit, it made a sound like God snapping His fingers, or something, and scared the holy bejeezus out of some poor woman who was near the other bird. The entire concourse shut up - silence fell very eerily and quickly - and when the US Air announcer came on, she announced that the plane was out of service pending mechanical inspection. (And some people headed for San Francisco were decidedly not happy to hear that.)
  • Eventually (and filled with survivor's guilt), we boarded.
  • US Air has this "calming" video they play on the airplane's video monitors while you board. It's unbelievably cheesy, too - think "scenes of nature set to music you might hear while getting massaged" and you're in the ballpark. We're talking waterfalls, helicopter shots of rock formations, microscopic views of crystals and/or plants, and - my favorite - some random computer graphics sequence that that looks like a laser show for Pink Floyd's The Wall. The intent is to keep us docile, but instead it made me giggle.
  • (The CD and DVD are available for sale, too. I'm swear I'm not making this up.)
  • God Will Make You Suffer If You Try To Leave Pennsylvania, Part 5: We get on the runway, and then - another storm! We're sitting around for 40 minutes or so, waiting for this squall to pass. I'm bouncing in my seat, obsessive-compulsively flicking through lists on the iPhone and hoping like hell we're not next in line for the lightning strike. US Air pops on the "calming" DVD like it's some sort of video Prozac. I start giggling again.
  • Storm passes, engines start, we're airborne. It's bumpy - the air's full of pockets - and suddenly it occurs to me that I'm getting married exactly one month from now. Like, almost to the hour. <Keanu>Whoa</Keanu>.
  • (Elaine, I miss ya, baby.)
  • As luck would have it, I wound up sitting next to a fascinating guy, a Pittsburgh native who wanted to talk about software, Generation Y, finding good talent, the health care mess (he's in the industry), urban planning, national politics, and queuing theory. I was in heaven.
  • During my fascinating conversation, US Air interrupted the "calming" video to play "Spider Man 3," whose plot, near as I can tell (no audio), was that a computer-generated sand monster and computer-generated black goo monster both had it in for Spider-Man, who himself was largely computer-generated. Stuff blew up, Tobey Maguire looked sad and lost, and James Franco clearly had his eye on a piece of land, or something, because he clearly had other things on his mind. Frankly, the whole thing was so CGI-slick, over-the-top and pointless that it made me yearn for the good old days of ASCII art.
  • Phoenix, Arizona, was 102 degrees Fahrenheit when we landed. At 8 PM.
  • Our reservations for the evening were at the Phoenix Hilton, which is - and I'm being totally honest here - a kick-ass hotel. Say what you will about the misadventures of Ms. Paris, but the Hilton hotel people have it together when it comes to building oases of air-conditioned, clean-white-linened, white-wine-equipped fantasticness. Holy crap, I needed that hotel.
  • As suggested by the 102-degrees-at-8-PM thing, Phoenix during the day is hot. Hot, hot, hot. Really damn hot. People love to say things like, "Yeah, man, but it's a dry heat," to which the only appropriate response is: go stick your head in an oven.
  • If you have ever have lunch in Phoenix, there's a pizza joint called Nello's ("In Crust We Trust") that's pretty damn good.
  • Sky Harbor Airport in Phoenix has the most over-the-top, overbuilt rental car center you can imagine. It's huge. I daresay you could fit two or three regional airports inside it, and still have room for your CD collection and a family of four. It's also really remote - I actually think we went in to Nevada to return the Impala to Avis. It's absolutely crazy.
  • Yes, Avis really did give me an Impala. Stop laughing.
  • Good news for geeks: Sky Harbor Airport has free WiFi and decent numbers of A/C power plugs. W00t!
  • Our United flight back to Seattle (by way of San Francisco) was - yes- delayed. I'd have been more surprised if it hadn't been.
  • Turns out our flight was on "Ted", which is United's low-cost hipster brand that's intended to compete with Southwest. The most interesting thing about Ted is that people who work for Ted talk about Ted in the third person, like Ted is a real person who has preferences. The airline safety video, for example, says, "Ted wants to remind you..." and "Ted hopes you enjoy your flight." (It's creeeeee-py.)
  • Incidentally, the Ted safety video is the hippest safety video I've ever seen. It's got cuts, zooms, tons of greenscreen work, a hipster soundtrack. Crazy. Since when does Michael Bay do airplane videos?
  • In the first break of the day, our United flight from SFO to SeaTac boarded ... on time. And the nice man behind the counter offered me ... an upgrade. I just about hugged him.

Damn, it's good to be home.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 10, 2007 1:43 AM.
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August 7, 2007

Travel Day One (And Two, And Three): Pittsburgh

Verizon-sponsored power at O'HareI'm traveling this week, doing a string of customer visits in Pittsburgh, Houston and Phoenix (and if you guessed that I was careful to specify air conditioning in my rental cars, you'd be right). I took off from SeaTac yesterday afternoon, and am now safely ensconced in my second Pittsburgh hotel.

(There is a story here.)

The usual notes:

  • It does seem somewhat fitting that my last week as a Planner would be spent in the field. I tend to think of air travel as one of the defining hallmarks of Planning, much like dirty fingernails on mechanics or overuse of "air quotes" for MBAs.
  • Despite all the news hysteria about how bad it is to fly right now, I assumed (somehow) that I would be immune to the ill effects of the American airline industry, nature, and every other factor that could operate on me. Silly man. United loves Chicago, and when you fly United to Pittsburgh, you stop there. Chicago is, under good conditions, a busy airport ... and Monday did not offer good conditions. Weather was spotty, flights were late. In fact, by the time we arrived (an hour overdue) the "C" concourse looked like a refugee camp. I stood in line at Starbucks next to a woman who claimed to be on her 24th-straight hour of travel. (She looked like it, too.)
  • Thankfully, the connecting flight from Chicago to Pittsburgh was delayed as well, so I had some time to charge the 'ol laptop before resuming air travel. Chicago, like LAX, has sprouted some wicked-cool, Verizon-sponsored banks o' power plugs in their concourses. Fantastic!
  • I know I'm late to the mobile e-mail party and all, but can I just say how fabulous it is to have e-mail in the pocket at all times? I mean, it's not a big deal usually - at work or in Seattle, I'm never far from a browser - but when I'm sitting on an airplane, chilling out for that 10 minutes of dead time between "plane is docked" and "plane is actually unloading people," it's great to see what's been going on in my world.
  • The O'Hare-Pittsburgh flight got under way about an hour and 15 minutes after scheduled departure, and then proceeded to sit on the tarmac for another hour. The United people were wonderful about everything - fetching beverages, letting people use the restrooms, that sort of thing - but after the 25(!) flights in front of us had taken off, we were still nearly 3 hours overdue from our original time of arrival.
  • The "original time of arrival" was 11:30 PM Eastern.
  • Yeah, I was tired.
  • Magazines slayed: BusinessWeek (x2), MacWorld, Wired, Entertainment Weekly.
  • The Avis people apparently read this blog. After hearing me rail on about the crappy minivans and Kia whateverthehecktheyares I've rented from them in the past, they decided to saddle me with a Mercury Grand Marquis this time around. This is a big 'ol hunk of American steel, with stylin' that's right out of a 70s Blacksploitation flick. This isn't a car you drive as much as a boat you sail. I think we got a good 4.5 gallons per mile.
  • If there's a chunk of freeway in the Pittsburgh area that's not under construction, I'd like to know where it is.
  • (Construction is doubly fun when you're dead tired and sailing your 1982 Pimpmobile of Death around unfamiliar freeways at 2:30 AM.)
  • Pittsburgh really knows how to make an entrance. After 30 miles of freeway and general dead-of-night blackness, we shot through the Fort Pitt Tunnel, and were dazzled by the city's spires, light, buildings, and bridges. Truly a wonderful sight.
  • (Of course, it could have just been the fatigue.)
  • First words out of the hotel clerk's mouth when we appeared: "Wow, I'd given up on you guys. Usually 3 AM is the cutoff for people making good on their reservations."
  • 6 hours later, we were visiting with customers. And drinking lots of coffee.
  • If Portland (Oregon) and Dallas had a kid, it would look a lot like Pittsburgh - bridges and water everywhere, but muggy as hell and a little too hot. Ugh.
  • Our business conducted, we were back at Pittsburgh International this afternoon and subsequently (cheerily) informed that our United flight to Houston (by way of - wait for it - Chicago) was delayed, which was going to screw up our connection. The time they could get us in to Houston would be (very) late Wednesday morning. Since our Houston meeting was now off the table (we had 'em for early Wednesday, and were going to Phoenix later that day), we elected to get new tickets direct to Phoenix, hole up at the Airport Sheraton and look for some local flavor.
  • "Local flavor" in this neck of the state seems to be confined to strip malls. We found a chain steak place and downed some iced tea and an okay sirloin.
  • There are no sidewalks anywhere.
  • I'm officially feeling that special kind of punchy-tired I always get after a lot of flying and not enough sleep. (I couldn't sleep last night at all.) At least our flight cancellation means I can get some sleep tonight.

More later.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated August 7, 2007 5:34 PM.
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July 26, 2007

Switching To The Mac(BU)

As of August 13, I'm starting a new job here at Microsoft. I'll be a Program Manager in the Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU - pronounced "Mac Boo"), working to help design and build the next generation of Microsoft Office for the Mac.

I can't even begin to express how thrilled I am.

When I've shared this news with people over the past few days, I've received one of two responses. They are:

  1. It's about damn time. Pass the sugar.
  2. Whaaaaaaaaaa? I thought you liked Product Planning!

I'll take each in order.

First, it's no great secret that I'm a longtime Apple fan. I won't bore you with the usual discussion of my bona-fides, like when I got my first Mac (1990) or what model it was (SE/30); suffice to say that I've been doing my Amateur Apple Pundit Thing on this blog for a good three years now, and the company is clearly a passion of mine. I like their products, like their focus on the customer experience and think they're producing some of the hottest stuff in the industry right now.

MacBU is the largest Mac development shop outside of Apple (the Seattle PI did an article on the team a few years ago, called, "The Mac Lovers Of Microsoft"), and our flagship product is Mac Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Entourage, and Messenger). So if you want to have an impact on the software that a lot of Mac users use (which, uh, I do), Microsoft is an excellent place to do it.

Second, I do like Planning. I've been "living the dream" in Office - doing an interesting job with great people - since I connected with the Product Planning team as an MBA intern in 2004. Planning has been nothing but nice to me, generous with their trust and their resources. I've learned a lot, met wonderful folks, and done some work that I'm very proud of (and which you all will be able to see when Office ships next).

So why change?

Well, I've seen Microsoft VP Robbie Bach speak on more than one occasion, and whenever he talks about career development he invariably talks about building your "portfolio of skills." Broadly, this means you should look at what you do and don't do well, what parts of the company you have or have not worked on, and so on. In Bach's view, it's smart to do a 360-degree analysis of your skills, identify your strengths and weaknesses, and plug the gaps by trying new stuff from time to time. He counsels you to go give yourself experiences that seem interesting (work abroad, do a stint in sales, dabble in operations, etc.), and that pull you out of your comfort zone.

I find this model compelling. One reason I went to business school was because I wanted to try working for a big company. Office Product Planning was my first taste of that, and the experience has been well worth having. But as time has gone on, I've found myself yearning to own more and more of the product, take things from idea to execution, bring new stuff to market. It's something I've done in a startup context, but never with, you know, serious budgets and millions of customers. And of course, if I'm going to build something, I'd like to be building something I'm emotionally invested in, that I really care about. In my world, that really boils down to Internet stuff and/or Mac stuff.

Hence, I've been sniffing around the MacBU for a good while now, doing informational interviews and generally making a pest of myself. I heard earlier this year that the Program Manager gig might be coming, and, when it got posted, I went for it - submitted the resume, did the interviews, the works.

And now, well, you're reading about it.

I'm jazzed. Just .... jazzed. Jazzed about the job, jazzed about the Mac, jazzed about learning new skills, jazzed about getting to work on products that I'll have in my Dock. Jazzed that I'm going to get paid to attend things like MacWorld and WWDC, jazzed that my primary work machine is a MacBook Pro, and jazzed that I'll need to partition it for the Leopard beta, cause, you know, I need to know about that stuff for work. But mostly, I'm jazzed that I get to work on crazy/cool new software ideas that will, undoubtedly, keep my brain running full-speed.

Drawbacks? Yeah, a few. Elaine and I just finished moving (Megaproject #1), and all of this happened a lot faster than I thought it might. In my mind, any kind of job transition was going to kick off after we got back from our honeymoon in September. This would let us use the summer to plan the wedding and get married (Megaproject #2), and then figure out what to do, career-wise (Megaproject #3). But life kind of has its own schedule. This came up early, I realized I wanted it, and the tumblers all clicked. So #3 happened second, and my summer is going to be even nuttier than expected.

One thing I've been particularly impressed by is how open the process has been, internally. My lead and I had our mid-year career discussion back in February, and I told her I was planning to make a play for a Mac job if one became available. We've kept in touch on the issue over the last few months; I let her know that the job was getting posted, let her know when I applied, and so on. Being transparent has helped both of us plan for a clean, clear transition. Planning has been nothing but great about all this - Microsoft's got a strong commitment toward keeping people in the business, and working on projects that make 'em want to get in to work every morning.

(Which, uh, this does.)

So I'm winding down my Planning activities, transitioning my work to others, and, as I understand it, my MacBook Pro is on order. And about two weeks from now, I'll be reporting to work in Building 115.

Watch this space for details.

(Jazzed.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 26, 2007 9:16 AM.
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July 19, 2007

L.A. Story

(With a happy nod to Steve Martin's genius movie of the same name)

Work has brought me to Los Angeles for the past two days, which was much less in-n'-out than Oklahoma City (e.g., I was on the ground for more than 24 hours), but still didn't provide the kind of free time I need to see the sights, kick back, and enjoy a little vacation.

Plus, it's not like I'm ready to just run around like a frat boy at Daytona Beach: customer visits can be exhausting, mentally and physically, and by the end of a good half-day or day-long session, I've generally got a hard drive full of notes and a head full of cotton. Back to the hotel, sleep, repeat as necessary.

And yet, it was still a lot of fun. To wit:

  • Our hotel was The Standard in downtown Los Angeles. It's a total hipster joint, all sly/snarky wall coverings, clean white formica, plastic chairs, huge televisions, fluffy pillows, Bang-and-Olufsen knock-off CD players, beds on the floor, that sort of thing. The hotel rooms themselves are One Big Room; the bathroom is one corner, and separated from everything else with floor-to-ceiling glass. This, coupled with the low bed, makes the room feel huge. It's Euro as hell, and I loved it.

    The Standard is also home to a hip-and-happening open-air bar/lounge/dance club/swimming pool (no, really) on the roof of the building. It's something you have to see to believe; there's nothing quite like being 130 feet in the air, smack-dab in the center of tall, twinkling, glass-and-concrete buildings at 10 at night, surrounded by the Beautiful People, listening to techno, and holding a glass of wine in your hand. (Big, big thanks to my friend - and native Angeleno - Adrian for the hotel recommendation!)
  • The heat in Los Angeles makes me miss the endless gray of a Pacific Northwest February. I'm a mammal, not a reptile.
  • I got to drop in and see Heidi for a while, who is doing fabulous, looking fabulous, and took me to a fabulous sushi place in Hollywood. Seeing good friends is just the thing a guy needs after getting off a plane a couple hours beforehand.
  • LAX, the good: Los Angeles International unveiled fifty AC-power charging stations, salted around the airport in every terminal. This is, for obvious reasons, great news. Hopefully, someone at SeaTac will get a clue.
  • LAX, the bad: the place still looks unbelievably run-down. And let's not even talk about the carpet or the baggage claim.
  • Our appointment on Wednesday wrapped up earlier than expected, so the three of us found ourselves back downtown, blinking in the sunlight, and not too-terribly-shagged out. So we did what any three red-blooded American rejuveniles would do, and hit Disneyland.
  • (Don't even try to look surprised.)
  • We zoomed down I-5 to Anaheim (aside: I know it's passe to bitch about LA traffic, but, for the record, LA traffic really suuuuuuuuuuuuu-[breath goes here]-uuuuuuuuuuuucks), got parked at the garage, hooked up with Tony & Andrea, and proceeded to go on a full-on, full-throated, park-hoppin' rampage of the E-tickets: Soarin', Screamin', Tower of Terror, Space Mountain, Indy, and Buzz. It was a lot of walking, a lot of waiting, and a lot of fun. It was also phenomenally exhausting.
  • In a strange quirk of the calendar, this Afternoon Of Disney Park Craziness took place two years and one day after Khan, Christine and I attended Disneyland's 50th anniversary.
  • Obligatory iPhone reference: I sleep like the dead, but the iPhone's built-in alarm clock was loud enough to rouse my tired, dragging behind from an extremely comfortable bed and get rolling this morning. (And said alarm was considerably more reliable than the hotel wake-up service, which was 13 minutes late.)
  • Starbucks' new breakfast sandwiches aren't rolled out broadly in Los Angeles yet. As one who's become addicted to them on busy mornings, I found that to be a real downer.
  • My flight back to Seattle wasn't slated to fly until the evening, but I got to the airport soon enough that I hoped (prayed?) I might catch an earlier flight. No luck - United's Seattle-bound flights are booked solid, a function of overbooking and a cancellation somewhere else in the system. Thank God for widely-available AC Power (see above) and some T-mobile WiFi goodness.
  • Rather than tell you about the actual flight home, I'll just ask: when did planes become airborne day-care centers? Inquiring minds want to know.

Damn, it's good to be home.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 19, 2007 11:33 PM.
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July 17, 2007

OK Is OK

This is a travel-for-work week, and I'm writing this while zooming across the country (and, regrettably, deepening my carbon footprint).

First stop? Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

As the presumptive soon-to-be home of the Sonics and Storm, I've been intensely curious to see what the local vibe is all about. Sadly, this one is in-and-out (next stop: Los Angeles!), so I won't have the opportunity. Pity.

As usual, a few notes:

  • I've officially turned in to one of those travelers I used to mock – you know, those people, what with their Super Premier Frequent Flyer Pass, their special security lines, their early boarding, free in-flight wine and complimentary hot towels. You know something? I love it. If I have to fly (and Planners have to fly), I want to fly like this.
  • (Despite this, I have no plans to start bitching about taxes or voting Republican.)
  • SeaTac airport has a power problem. There – I've said it. The Port of Seattle needs to get themselves a calendar, figure out what year it is (it's uh, 2007, chaps), and install some freakin' AC power outlets in the concourses. Today, everyone with a laptop (at last count, 92.55% of the population) is forced to do the Chicken Walk, strutting up and down in the waiting areas, head jerking up and down and side to side, trying to spot the one column or wall with AC power. It's embarrassing. I propose we immediately move forward with a crash program to outfit all available walls with six-prong AC power jacks. In the meantime? Power strips with 10' cords. It's a start
  • I always store up grunt work to do on the plane – processing notes, dealing with e-mail, things like that. I never feel very creative (I mean, you can't exactly sprawl out with some table space and put your papers everywhere), so I'm stuck doing data processing. In its own way, it's really satisfying because a) you get to tick things off your list and b) you use a different part of the brain.
  • At 35,000 feet, I slay unread magazines by the dozens: a month's back issues of BusinessWeek, two Wireds, Entertainment Weekly,Business 2.0. Take that!, magazine backlog! Ha!
  • More on being part of those people: I note with some interest that the first-class cabin has a passenger: attendant ratio of 3:1, which results in lovely service. The coach cabin, by contrast, appears to have a ratio of 3,000:1.
  • This ratio bothers you less after two Jack Daniels and Diet Coke.
  • Apparently, the point of flying first class is to get loaded. I actually didn't drink on my first leg (Seattle – Denver) because I wanted to get some work done. This seemed to puzzle the attendants, who gave me increasingly-funny looks as I asked for ice water or Diet Coke. I could almost hear them muttering “sucker” under their breath.
  • Our flight from Denver to Oklahoma City was delayed an hour, so the group of us hit the Wolfgang Puck in DIA's B Concourse, and enjoyed a damn tasty BBQ chicken pizza. Definite recommend.
  • The Oklahoma City Airport is a bit high on Oklahoma, in a “don't mess with Texas” kind of way. The place is festooned with banners, signs, and announcements talking about how great the state is, how beautiful it is, etc. It's sort of small-town-boosterism (I half-expected the Mayor to personally greet us at the taxi stand), and I find it totally charming.
  • We walked out of the airport and straight in to good old-fashioned Southwest swelter. 79 degrees and high humidity at 11:30 PM. Mmmmmm…. Took me right back to living in Dallas in the summer of '97.
  • Learn from my mistakes, please: don't ever, ever, ever let the Avis people foist off one of their crappy Kia minivans on you. They're big, they're clunky, they've got all the nuance of Richard Simmons in drag. Leave them be. Rent a taxi if you have to.
  • Let us now praise the Hampton Inn, with its clean rooms, efficient counter people, free wireless and overall got-its-shit-together-ness. I loves me these hotels, and I stay at ‘em whenever I can.
  • Playing Snow Patrol through the speaker of your iPhone is a great way to make your hotel room not feel as lonely at midnight, when you're a bit out of your time zone, can't sleep, and and replying to mail that's queued up over the last nine hours.
  • 7 AM in Oklahoma City is like 4 PM on the hottest day of the year in Seattle. Air conditioning, anyone?
  • Everyone is really, really, really friendly here.
  • If you're going to get stuck at the airport, I recommend Oklahoma City's. It's nice, it's clean, it's modern. And they have lots of power plugs.

I'm off to Los Angeles. More soon.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated July 17, 2007 2:22 PM.
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June 5, 2007

Way To Go, Richard!

Pigs Flying!My good friend, longtime business partner, best man at my wedding and all around great guy Richard has just accepted a hot new job.

With Microsoft.

(Yes, those were flying pigs you saw last Friday.)

First, the job: Richard is going to be a Senior Analyst with Atlas, a Web analytics company based here in Seattle. It's one of those kick-ass jobs where he gets to apply his love of stats, knowledge of the Internet, and overall business hoo-ha to a lot of really interesting problems. In short, it's perfect. And it's in the International District, as well, which means he can a) have great Chinese for lunch every day and b) avoid crossing the 520 floating bridge like the rest of us software stiffs.

Ah, yes. So. Software. See, Atlas is owned by this little company called aQuantive, and aQuantive, as you may have heard, was just bought by Microsoft for roughly $6Bn.

What makes this funny is that Richard, more than any other person (save maybe Khan), has sworn up and down over the years that he would never, ever, never, ever, really, honestly, no-I-mean-it work for the Evil Empire. Part of this stems from the fact that he's a lifelong Sun fan (I mean his license plate says, "SOLARIS" ... and it's not a reference to the George Clooney film), part of it is that he's a Mac guy, and part of it is that, well, he just doesn't, uh, love Windows. Richard has had a lot of fun with me (especially on Confab) since I got my job here in 2005, and now that he's employee 1,228,945 (or whatever), well, I guess it proves that you Never Say Never.

Dude, I'm thrilled for you. Welcome to the Collective. Way to go!

(But expect a lot - and I mean a lot of cheap jokes over the coming months and years.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated June 5, 2007 10:48 AM.
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May 8, 2007

Introducing ... The OFone!

Spoof videos, as a general rule, are hard to do well. Capturing the right tone of the thing you're spoofing - without being too obvious, too mean, too weak, or too "me too" (see: 99% of the "Get A Mac" parodies out there) is a challenge.

So I'm pleased to report that this latest spoof - the "Microsoft OFone" is fantastic - just a perfect blend of breathless product-launch video and clueless crappy-tech product. The marketing guy, in particular, is genius:

This is more than thinking outside the box. We're nowhere near the box! The box is on Saturn ... or Jupiter ... whichever is farther away.

We showed this, apparently, at the Mobile and Embedded Developer Conference in Vegas. Do yourself a favor and check it out.

(Tip 'o the hat to Todd Bishop's Microsoft Blog.)

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated May 8, 2007 9:53 AM.
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February 4, 2007

Europa, Europa

I'm off to Europe for customer visits this week (I'm actually writing this from mid-air, having just passed over the Mississippi a few moments ago). The plan initially takes me to Munich (again), then zooming around Germany, staying in Switzerland for two nights, and finally coming home for the weekend. I'm hoping for some time to sightsee, but the odds are slim: it's the busy time at work, and I'm on deadline for a few projects. So, much as I'd love to grab some local cuisine, take a walking tour, and snap some local color, I suspect it'll be hotel room service, a bit o' jogging on a treadmill, and a full-tilt broadband connection.

Ah, well.

(The good news is that Elaine and I are taking much-needed time off at Disneyland shortly after I get back. That's a real light at the end of the tunnel, let me tell you.)

Should be a crazy week; I'll update when I can.

Posted by Gavin Shearer. Last updated February 4, 2007 12:36 PM.
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December 19, 2006

Product Planning: Traveling The World, So You Don't Have To

It's been a bit since I've posted about my job (my last entry was September 21st), and, as Elaine and I have been on the holiday party circuit these last few weeks, I've been seeing a lot of old friends. Many of them have asked me:

"Man! What's the deal with all the travel? What are you doing in all these crazy places?"

I can't talk about any specific projects, of course, but mostly I travel to meet with customers.

Planners in Office generally spend between 20% and 80% of their time in the field. This is driven, in a very literal sense, by the need to hear the "voice of the customer" when you're trying to figure out what to do with the product. You can read all the analyst reports you like, sift through articles in journals and magazines, chat with the sales force, get the opinion of the smart gal down the hall, whatever - but when that product finally ships we're going to ask some bloke/blokette to pull money from their wallet in exchange for a small, flimsy disc with bits encoded on it. If we haven't addressed what that person wants in the product, well, the money will stay in the wallet. Which is, as you know, a Bad Thing.

So we go ask 'em. D