Free Flowing Thoughts

Practical, but potentially unpopular, solution to the economic crisis

Great column in the most recent Fortune on how to stimulate jobs and investment over the long term.

No one in either party seems to dispute that America needs to create jobs and increase investment. I hate to be the one who says this out loud, but where do those things come from? They come from companies and the wealthy.

 

 

eWeek Predictions on Windows Azure in 2009

Clint Boulton at eWeek makes his own predictions for cloud computing in 2009, and discusses those made by others.

"Then again, the task before Microsoft is unprecedented in the era of Web-driven software. I do know that if Microsoft fails to impress the Windows developers, it will severely damage the company. Microsoft can't afford this kind of failure, so I expect Azure to wow folks and offer flexible, competitive pricing to challenge Google, Salesforce.com and Amazon Web Services."

Although I am new to Microsoft, I hear repeatedly from people who have been around a while that we are making some of the most significant investments of talent and money in many years.  There is a very high level of confidence that Windows Azure is going to deliver, and an engineering team focused on customer feedback and incorporating that feedback collected through the CTP into the new service.

Boulton also made the point:

"Microsoft's SAAS will complement its on-premise apps until customers are ready to move entirely into the cloud. When will that be. If I knew that... well, I'd be the predictions market."

The feeling inside the Azure team is that most customers, especially enterprise customers, are not going to be shutting down their own data centers and moving entirely into the cloud anytime soon.  Instead, we anticipate customers to move some data and applications into the cloud over time, but at an accelerating pace, as they become more comfortable with the idea.  Our expectation was that the technology will be ready for a massive shift into the cloud before enterprise customers wanted to do so.  But, we still might be surprised by the pace of the adoption of enterprise customers.  Even in an early CTP stage we are seeing a surprising number of inquiries from enterprise customers.  It could be the economy and budget constraints are causing enterprise IT managers to consider alternatives they not have before

Changing How I use Twitter and Facebook

Lately I've found that some of my friends on Facebook are getting a little frustrated with my constant talking about Windows Azure.  As hard as it is for me to understand, not everyone is as fascinated by this product as me. 

When I first started using Twitter and Facebook, I used Twitter mainly for personal updates and linking it to my Facebook status was an easy to way to keep everything up to date.  Now that the volume of work related Tweets has increased so signficantly my Facebook friends are getting spammed with Azure, Azure and more Azure.  So I turned off the link to have Twitter update Facebook status.  Personal updates are going to Facebook, and other stuff is going to Twitter.

What made me think about de-linking these was this great post on personal productivity tips at GigaOM. Read the whole thing here, but tip #1 made a good point.

Pick a social network for each persona, and be strict about who gets in. Maybe Facebook is for friends and LinkedIn is for business. Or maybe you have a secret identity on Facebook for your buddies or a password-protected personal blog. The web offers many wonderful tools for updating folks about your personal life, but the best ones offer you a way to keep others out. Use these filters, especially if you don’t want to offend coworkers or clients with the latest tale about your ex. Don’t rely on them not finding you. They can — and will.

Highly technical (wink) video on Windows Azure

Prior to release, the code name for the project was Red Dog.  In this video technical experts inside Microsoft explain the service.

Putting the public back in PR

We are wrapping up our 2008 marketing plan review for MCEC, and starting the 2009 plan.  Although we will increase our PR spend significantly, the increased funding will target families and teachers of military children instead of reporters and editors.  With our baseline from last year will continue to reach out to the traditional media,  but our major efforts will target the mere mortals of the world directly. 

Increasingly these audience are relying less on traditional media, and more on each other.  They join Facebook groups where see discussions happening on how to help a child adjust to a recent move.  Our organization can has resources that can help, we need to be where these families are asking the questions.  We see teachers with their own blogs talking about what works in the classroom, we need to be engaged on those conversations finding the good ideas we can share with others. 

Over time, I suspect more and more of our efforts will shift from producing volumes of printed material we have today and more toward engaging our constituents directly online.  It's cheaper, it's more effective, and it's the first place people go today for information.

Zuckerberg’s Law Taking Hold at Home

At the Web 2.0 Summit last month Mark Zuckerberg stated "I would expect that next year, people will share twice as much information as they share this year, and next year, they will be sharing twice as much as they did the year before."

It's certainly true for me. Today it's not hard to find pictures of my new house, the baby, and where I am working today online. Just two years ago I would not have imagined blogging, telling people I'm getting my haircut on Twitter or, quite frankly, that anyone would care. Now I see family members and friends who were once paranoid of the Web doing the same things. I have a few hundred people getting updates on random events in my life or articles I found interesting between LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter and this blog. In the past six months my mom, uncles, former bosses (SVP and C-level execs) and other co-workers have been jumping in.

 

There a few obvious implications. On an entirely personal note, in many ways I am closer now to a larger circle of people even though I interact with them in person or via phone less frequently. I know more about many of them after interacting online in some way than I did when we sat next to each at work.

 

On a professional basis it means online and social media marketing become absolute requirements. Particularly if your product or service is consumer in any way. This may seem obvious, but I still run into many people who think of this as a niche market or specialty. If you are a marketer, word of mouth and online marketing will be table stakes requirements for most jobs. At a minimum all marketers at all levels of the company should be active online themselves.

 

What will Zuckerberg's law mean for you personally in two years? What will it mean for your company?

Christmas in Seattle

A new person at Microsoft (not me) sent out a request for ideas of things to see in the Seattle area around Christmas.  This is a typically thorough and exhaustive Microsoft email response. 

·         There’s a Winterfest that goes on every year around this time in Seattle Center with music, ice skating, train rides, etc. that might be worth checking out.

·         Also, we went to this last year in the Bellevue Botanical Gardens and it was pretty neat: http://www.bellevuebotanical.org/events/fmevents_gardendlights.htm.

·         The City of Redmond has a festival called Redmond Lights with a parade on 12/7: ·  www.redmond.gov/​recreationarts/​redmondlights/​redmondlights.asp

·         Bellevue has “snowflake lane” and “garden d’lights” – both very pretty

·         Ballet production of “The Snowman” put on by BalletBellevue, Dec 13 and 14^th at the Northshore Performing Arts Center in Bothell. Or Dec 28^th in Bellevue.  It’s wonderful and based upon the book by Raymond Briggs.

·         Leavenworth - www.leavenworth.org

o   Nice day trip

o   Get snow tires or chains!

·         Puget sound Christmas activities - http://gonw.about.com/od/eventswa/a/seatacholiday.htm

·         The Pacific Ballet Nutcracker is the classic Seattle Christmas show.  http://www.pnb.org/season/nutcracker/

·         You can get a permit from the forest service and still go out into the woods and cut your own Christmas tree.  An old-time tradition that can be fun for everyone.  Or closer in, there are plenty of Christmas tree farms.

·         The Dickens Carolers are fun to see.

·         The Seattle Yacht Club puts on a show every year where all the members dress up their boats in Christmas lights and sail around the lake in a parade.

·         Also somewhat unique to Seattle is the Christmas ship festival. A bunch of boats with Christmas lights tour around Lake Washington and Lake Union with carolers and music. It can be fun to hit a local park or marina and watch them go by (with some hot chocolate…) Argosy cruises also offers dinner packages where you ride on one of the ships with holiday festivities and dinner. They depart from the Kirkland Marina on many of the nights:  http://www.argosycruises.com/themecruises/xmasSchedule.cfm

·         At New Years, go downtown to watch the fireworks at midnight.

·         Stevens and Snoqualmie passes: Skiing!  Or sledding, snowboarding, tobogganing, etc.

·         If it gets cold enough to snow or freeze, see Snoqualmie Falls with snow & ice on the rocks.

·         Dinner at the Space Needle – bring binoculars to see all the lights all over the city.

·         For Christmas lights, the longest tradition of Seattle neighborhood lights is Candy Cane Lane. It can get crowded and isn’t really that big, but tons of lights at each house. Coming over from Kirkland, you may want to plan to visit the University Village shopping district nearby to make it worthwhile:  http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/mbase/cgi-bin/DisplayPage.pl?source=edb&source_id=42272

·         Downtown Seattle also has many Christmas activities such as the Christmas Carousel, gingerbread village at the Sheraton. Lot’s of great restaurants to try all around as well although nothing particularly Christmasy.  http://www.downtownholidays.com/

·         The Black Nativity at the Intiman theatre is also good.  http://www.intiman.org/2008Season/bn.html

 

Thank a Military Family

Yesterday someone at Military Child shared a story that I had to tell Kristie has a 6 year old son, Todd, and a husband serving in Iraq. For a few months they had been planning to surprise Todd at Christmas because his dad would be home for a two week leave. Instead he came home earlier at Thanksgiving. At the last minute Kristie scrambled to change plans and keep the surprise for her son. She put a large banner out front of the house and hoped that Todd, still learning to read, would not figure out what it said before he saw his dad.

 

As Laura and Todd pulled around the corner he immediately noticed the sign and asked what it said. She explained that it said ''We Support Our Troops." Todd was skeptical but distracted by a man standing in the front yard. Laura asked "who is that?" and Todd jumped out of the car and ran into his father's arms. As Laura walked up Todd asked "what does that sign really say mom?" Laura told him to sound it out, so Todd looked up and slowly read "Wel-come Home Dad!"

10 Things I Am Thankful For This Year

This is a non-MECE, non-prioritized list:

1.       My wife’s laugh

2.       My daughter’s new happy dance

3.       A home with a view

4.       An office with a door and a parking garage

5.       Apple’s license of Microsoft Exchange for my iPhone

6.       My experience and great friends from Dell

7.       That I no longer work there

8.       Landing on the Windows Azure team

9.       More friends and family using Facebook and Twitter

10.   Military families having Thanksgiving with an empty seat at the table this year

Finding a job

Quite a few friends have called lately looking for advice on finding a job.  While I am not an expert on this topic, I recently made the journey myself and want to see friends land in the right place.  Like most people I applied for more jobs than I interviewed for, and interviewed for more jobs than I was offered or wanted.  Along the way I learned a few things.

1) Start sooner than you think you need to, this can take a while
The first question I usually get, is 'how long were you looking' which is usually because the person is considering taking some time off without thinking about any job.  Finding a new role can take several months, particularly if you are on the higher end of the pay scales.    Start looking right away because there will be enough downtime for some relaxing.  Much of the job search is spent...waiting.  Waiting to hear back from a resume submission, waiting for an interview, waiting for feedback from interviews, waiting for offers, etc. 

2) Your best way to get into a company is through a connection
With one exception, any company I had an actual interview with (phone or in person) came through a person I knew.  These were not always deep personal relationships, sometimes they were friends of friends or a vendor I had worked with in the past.  Don't be afraid to reach out, most people are happy to help someone else find a job.  If you have a target company in mind who is not hiring now, reach out to your contacts there and just ask for some time to learn more about the org and what roles might be a fit.  I used The Ladders.com to find jobs, but then turned to my contact list for a way in.

3) Do your homework
While hiring at many companies slows at this point in the year, there is a lot of prep work you can do.  Particularly, start looking at specific companies you are interested in, and get a sense of what kind of roles they have available.  There is some soul searching required in this process, especially whether or not you are prepared to move.  For your target companies, spend a lot of time on their company career sites to learn more about the organization and products.  Start thinking about stories of projects you led that might be relevant in an interview.

4) Practice and prep for every interview
The most helpful prep work is making notes on stories and projects that might be relevant in the conversation.  Try to think about the right way to package the project as a story with a beginning, middle and end.  What was the situation, what did you do, and what were the results.  Make sure you can tell the story in 1-3 minutes.  Anything less than a minute is probably not deep enough.  Much more than 3-5 minutes and you're probably going too long.  Also think about what questions are likely to come up.  Beyond the basics everyone asks (strengths/weakness/tell me about yourself/etc) pick apart the job description line by line and think through how you can show you are ready for each aspect.  Match your stories to the job requirements.

5) Negotiate your offer
Most companies have very little flexibility on base pay, bonus programs and benefit plans as these are heavily managed by central HR functions.  But hiring managers usually have considerable latitude on most other variables of an offer.  Think about the total package of signing cash, signing stock, vacation, relocation services, and titles.  If you're not seeing what you hoped for on one variable, see if you can move another.  The most valuable piece now might be asking for assistance in duplicate housing costs in case your home takes longer to sell than expected.  Very few companies buy houses these days, but most have some flexibility on helping with payments until it sells. 

6) One last piece of advice
Do not underestimate the emotional challenges of this type of change.  It is very difficult to leave co-workers and move a family.  Make sure you have an open conversation with your family that everyone should expect big highs and lows in the process.  While leaving so many friends and family back in Texas was very difficult, this change has been one of the most exciting and professionally invigorating paths I have been down.