This morning I had a rather important Final Year Project seminar accounting for 20% of the project’s grade but I paid little attention to this event today over the past few days as I knew that this afternoon I would be, for the first time, visiting the Microsoft UK campus.
My reason for going was because Microsoft Student Partners team sent me to Seattle and they wanted to have a chat with me about my experience on the other side of the pond…and they wanted me to return the gadgets they lent me. I also had the chance to meet people, such as those on the MSP team, whom I have known through social networks for a while now but never actually met.
Upon arrival to the Microsoft reception I was greeted with a large Windows Phone banner draped over the railing of the multi story atrium, the banner must have extended at least one floor. There was also a large cardboard Windows Phone which must have been about 6ft high and several large Office 2010 advert boards. In the middle of the atrium was some kind of Office/Christmas event where people were having green screen photos taken of them in some wintry scene or a snow globe.
Ben Nunney, Academic Developer Evangelist, then came and fetched me from the reception desk and I was given a tour of the 5 buildings at the UK campus which are full of various posters and stickers for different products. As someone who leads “The Microsoft Life” its what I love about going to Microsoft buildings, its full of interesting things related to their products, if only there was more of this on billboards around the country. (Although to be fair I did see quite a few Hotmail ads when on the Tube today). Another thing I love about the Microsoft buildings is that they have Starbucks in them which sells cake, much to Ben’s delight (then also have some humorously named cafes such as “Mega Bytes”).
After my tour I was taken to meet the guys who sent me to Seattle for PDC and who are in charge of the MSP programme in the UK; Geoff Hughes, Academic Strategy Advisor; Phil Cross, Academic Marketing Manager; Lars Lindstedt, Academic Team Lead; Rafal Kwiek, Academic Team Intern. I then went for a coffee at the Starbucks with a few of the guys (there may have been cake involved too) and we discussed many things from my trip to the US to Windows Phone 7 and Kinect. After that I went and had a play with a Surface, they is a very addictive tower defence game on it that me and Ben tried to win but failed. I then met briefly with Rob Margel who has been a friend of mine for some time through Twitter. After this I was shown a noisy and air conditioned room, AKA a data centre. It was used strictly for demo purposes but was very interesting to see and I learnt a lot from it.
This was then pretty much the end of the day at the Microsoft campus and I said my farewells to the academic team before heading off to the train station.
It was a great day and it was excellent to finally meet up with people I’ve communicated with for some time now and from what I can tell us UK MSPs are in very safe hands. In fact I will have some more MSP specific news to come in the next few days, hence the new banner/icon and new category page for MSPs that can be found at MyMicrosoftLife.com/MSP.
And for those of you who follow me on Twitter I wore a retro Microsoft t shirt that I bought from the company store in Redmond.
