Trip to Microsoft

February 14, 2007
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    So, the question remains, who is screwing up everything at Microsoft ?

    Do you think that if the apple team is transfered to microsoft they would get a better product ?

    Or are those people simply too intelligent to be truely creative ?

    Marechal / 17/02/2007

    At the time of writing this I’m sitting at gate S10 in Seattle waiting to fly home after a lightning quick two night trip to Microsoft in Redmond. The main purpose of my visit was a little talk I did at Microsoft Research, talking about mN’s approach to technology and interaction design. A personal hilight was having the amazing Bill Buxton introduce me and then having lunch with the man himself. Myself and Bill have crossed paths before at a Flashforward a couple of years ago and every time I chat with him he leaves my head spinning (in a good way) and feeling very inspired. Bill Buxton being at Microsoft has to lead to good things.

    My friend from the old early Flash days Manuel Clement, who has been at Microsoft for over four years, looked after me during the visit and made sure my day was really busy with meetings with the Windows Vista User Experience team, Brad Becker from the Expression team and finally a meeting with the people behind XBOX 360 and Zune. I have to admit I didn’t know what to expect meeting people who worked at Microsoft - a company that many people love to hate. But without exception everyone was passionate about what they were doing there - with creativity and the love of good design seeming to be at the heart of everything they do. I didn’t think I’d ever be using the words Microsoft and creativity in the same paragraph but I’ve been there and met some of the people who are trying to change the perception of Microsoft and it was very inspiring.

    Am I about to ditch my Mac and get a Windows box? Nope - for me personally I’ll always love the Macintosh experience both in software and hardware, but having met some of the people behind the “software” giant my mind is now more open to the alternatives than perhaps it was before.

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