Posts Tagged ‘Microsoft’

Microsoft Student Insider Kick Off in Seattle

Thursday, January 28th, 2010

The official kick off for the Microsoft Student Insider (MicrosoftSI) program took place virtually last Wednesday, January 20.  The program is organized by Jessica Anderson and Hilary Pike, and Hilary took the reins of this presentation.

The MicrosoftSI program strives to provide opportunities, nurture growth, provide insight, create a community, and help with networking.  Opportunities include conference trips such as my trip to PDC, presentations such as from Frank Arrigo and Scott Hanselman, and resources.  Growth includes online traffic, collaboration, and skills.  Insight includes access to conversations we might not otherwise hold.  Community refers to the Insider Community that has already naturally began to be built amongst the Insiders.  And finally networking, oh the ever stressed thing to do for your career, is essentially covered by the previous goals.

What I like about this program is that I’m expected to make my own experience.  While Hilary shared goals of the program, she also stressed coming up with a plan of what us Insiders want out of the experience.  I have the opportunity to interview three Microsoft employees and pick their minds.  I’ve googled them to find out some basic background information and prepare questions, but I’m excited to just sit down and chat and see where the conversation leads us.  (Thank goodness I realized I could use the Flip as an audio recorder.)

Tomorrow marks the in person kick off at Microsoft’s Redmond campus.  While I was flying out today, hit me how weird it is that Seattle will be “home” soon.  It took me about a year to begin to accidentally refer to DePauw as home, but I think if just let it sink in already, Seattle will make the transition quicker.  Flying into Seattle is already familiar.  The landscape, okay, yeah, most of it still just looks up and down all over.  (Otherwise known as hilly, but I grew up thinking hilly in terms of tiny, tiny rolling hills that were about a block long.)

The MicrosoftSI Redmond campus visit happens over two days.  In the mornings we meet as a group, in the afternoons we interview people on our own, and in the evenings we venture into Seattle.  I will laugh if I end up in the Space Needle at night again.  When I was in Seattle with Ed for our 2009 spring break, our first visit ended with us getting to the Needle after the observation deck closed, and our second visit we were there about a half-hour before it closed.

One thing that is cool about this trip is Hilary and Jessica gave me some free time so that I could meet some of my InfoPath team on Friday.  I’m cool about that now, but generally that means that directly before it happens I’ll get super nervous.  After all, this will be my team!

Whoa.  For serious.  Okay, I’m going to go back to my bubble where that isn’t a reality yet.

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And Out of Left Field, I’m Moving to Seattle

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

This will come as a complete shock to anyone who has spoken to me in the last, oh, four to six years about where I saw myself after college.  I have been bound and determined to end up in Fort Wayne.  I love this city.  Yes, even with all its flaws.  I mean, it’s Fort Wayne.  My favorite description (not because I like it, but because it’s accurate) is that Fort Wayne is a large small town.

So, I had this conviction that I would be here.  My first year of college, I took care of homesickness with photos surrounding me and subscribing to The Journal Gazette’s RSS feeds.  (I grew up on The News-Sentinel, but they didn’t have any RSS feeds at the time.  They do now, but one that I can find.  The JG has different categories.)  Man, I was more up to date on what was up in Fort Wayne than my dad.  Then sometime during my sophomore year I discovered Fort Wayne bloggers.  Since I love getting info from blogs, a whole bunch of them ended up in my feed reader, too.  During my junior year, I was so excited to be up to date on what was going on in FW.  I have lived out of Fort Wayne since graduating high school, and since this past summer I have been home.  I knew what was up, and had all sorts of plans (which about 25% occurred).

Then I began to look for my “Real Job” as I have tagged all the related emails.

Now, I had done serious legwork in the past three years searching out opportunities in Fort Wayne.  In fact, that’s why I was home this summer and fall: two internships.  Also, I found a company I was totally excited about the prospect of working for.

At first, I applied to companies outside of Fort Wayne to have better chances of obtaining a job offer, and because the jobs found via DePauw are all outside of Fort Wayne.  When things started to get serious, I had a conversation with Kenny that completely caught me off guard: “Ashley, you were the one who wanted to live in Fort Wayne.  I am fine living elsewhere for a while.”

Oh.

Then it dawned on me I could get a job ANYWHERE.

Whoa.  Whoa, whoa, whoa.  Anywhere?  (Okay, so Kenny’s probably really glad it didn’t actually end up being ANYWHERE, because I was totally feeling the desert climate of Arizona during GHC.)

Now, back in May during the Imagine Cup, the Microsoft Campus Recruiter for DePauw sent a, “Hey, I exist,” email.  We were smack in the middle of the competition in Boston, so I went, “Oh, that’s sweet,” and promptly forgot about it.

Then at the end of the summer, the Campus Recruiter contacted me again to see if I was interested in applying.  Sure, why the heck not?  It’d be sweet to be able to say, “I got an offer from Microsoft.”  (Obviously, at this point I was totally still staying in town.)

I did my phone interview, it went well, a Redmond interview was mentioned, and then a month and a half went past.  In this time frame, the job hunt ramped up in terms of getting to the point of receiving offers from the companies to which I had applied.

Then out of the blue I received an email detailing my on site interview at Microsoft in less than two weeks.

PANIC.

It was shortly before that when I realized I could work anywhere, and that this wasn’t just for props anymore.  I had serious reservations about living elsewhere, specifically because I felt I was giving Kenny no choice since he still had a year of school left.  It took him a long time to convince me that he’s totally cool with that big of a distance from Fort Wayne (I still don’t fully believe him).

So, next summer I will begin working as a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) on InfoPath at Microsoft’s Redmond campus.

It hasn’t sunken in yet.  This is mostly because my uncle had his heart attack less than twelve hours after I got back from the interview, and I’m in wait for next change (end of internship) mode.  But I have now officially accepted the offer, and can begin letting folks know.  This is to attempt to avoid another situation such as how Ed found out.

Ashley: “At least Kenny will like that it snows less in Seattle.”
Ed: *silence* “What’s all this talk about Seattle?”

Go me.  (I was planning on tell her in person, and instead told her over the phone the day I was going to see her.  FAIL.)

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The Good of Underground@PDC

Thursday, November 19th, 2009

At the beginning of the night we said hello to Lynn Langit who introduced us to Anton Delsink, a Developer Evangelist based out of Dubai.  At the events he presents at in his areas, oftentimes the rooms are completely void of females.  As in not a single one.  However, in Turkey the percentage of females is quite impressive.  He said he once had an event where the entire front row were women, and all were engineers, physicists, and computer scientists.

While on the balcony, Ed and I met up with Barb Dybwad, a Senior Editor at Mashable.  We had some great sarcastic and hilarious conversations.  Ed and her were rapid fire with their comments.  I took a back seat for a good chunk here, as this was when I was yawning and such.  We hung out with her on and off for the rest of the night.  All in all good times there.

While we still owned the table we were at on the balcony, we also met up with Jim Pinkelman of Microsoft.  He has been a huge supporter of diversity efforts.  He explained that there had money put toward such efforts all over the place, and he has been working on focusing the impacts so the funds are used in the most effective manner.  Running into allies is always awesome!

I shot some footage of our journey to the Underground@PDC and it includes a few clips of the event as well.

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Expo Roaming & Private Parties

Wednesday, November 18th, 2009

Having the Flip HD is rather nice for shooting short clips.  Unfortunately, it being a simple device, my shaking arm made for obviously non-tripod shot video.  However, no matter! I was able to throw together a really quick clip showing just a couple of the many sites in the Big Room at PDC09, specifically at the Coding4Fun booth. Coding4Fun is demoing five projects and you’ll see shots of three in the video.

In addition to this video, Ed and I were able to get five interviews for Ed & Ashley’s 5 Minute Show, which focuses on women in technology, as well as an interview for Microsoft’s outreach efforts to students.

When Ed and I got in Monday night, our original plan was to head to the tweetup.  Which we did enter, but then immediately headed out to dinner with Microsoft employees we met at the 2009 US Imagine Cup finals.  There we met Lynn Langit who invited us to a private reception that took place tonight.  There we ran into Jennifer Marsman whom we met at GHC09, and it was awesome to see her!  Especially since she introduced us to folks.  (That was really helpful for the introvert in me.  Which I don’t actually have to worry all that much about with Ed around.  No, she’s not an extrovert or anything.)

Once we met a few folks, it became a lot easier to hold conversation.  Had a good chunk of discussion on women in computing.  It’s interesting holding that conversation with men, since I am so used to discussing the topic with a group where the majority is female.  I was pumped when I was able to give folks a head’s up on some of the studies and research I learned about at GHC09 on women and diversity in technology. Next week I’ll be publishing a post where I go through some of that information, since I covered it during my presentation on women in technology to an Introduction to Women’s Studies course.

Besides talking women in tech, skipped from random tech topic to the next.  All in all, a successful night.  Someone even followed me on Twitter right there on the spot.  Then I remembered I could do the same via text.  (He had a fancy iPhone with a nice Twitter app.  Someday, I will have that and my texts can once again solely be used to contact me directly.)

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Microsoft Student Insider – Imagine Cup

Monday, November 16th, 2009

I guess this is an appropriate first post to be typed on my new netbook.   A week or so ago I was contacted by Microsoft and asked if I would like to be a “Microsoft Student Insider” for the Imagine Cup.  This involves attending conferences and Imagine Cup events and blogging approximately fifteen posts through the Imagine Cup World Finals in July 2010.  This is an unpaid job and in exchange for writing up these posts and spending my time at these events (which I was pumped about alone), Microsoft has sent me an Asus Eee PC 1005HA netbook, a Flip HD video camera, a 4GB flash drive, $100 gift card to cover my expenses at PDC09 (along with travel, hotel, and PDC registration fees), and two Quick Assistance cards for Microsoft Support in the case I run into someone who desperately needs expert assistance.  I figure full disclosure is better than missing anything.

Despite deciding I would not be buying a netbook with my own funds due to my awful vision, I am pleasantly content with this little guy.  This is probably due to the fact it has a very nice battery life compared to the non-existent battery on my Dell.  Stupid thing.  I also opened the box to the surprise Microsoft had already installed Windows 7 Ultimate on it for me!  I love me some Windows 7 if only for the magnificent built-in magnifier.  Like right now, netbook comfortably on my laptop and I’m leaning backward.  Microsoft upgraded the RAM to 2GB so things are running smoothly.  Only confusing hiccup was that I wasn’t informed that I would have to put in the Product Key of the Windows 7 DVD that was in the Eee PC box despite Windows 7 being already installed.  However, figured as much when Windows told me on boot up that I may be using a counterfeit copy of Windows.  I sent out a quick email to ask what was up with the sealed Windows 7 disk, and found out the Windows 7 installed was a trial copy.

While I’m still waiting to touch base with my Microsoft contact (almost 20 minutes late on that phone call), I’m thinking my coverage of PDC09 will be similar to the work I’ve done at GHC in 2008 and 2009.  This will include tweeting (the thing I do most consistently), uploading photos to Flickr, blogging (since that’s my “job” and all), and most importantly to me, video blogging with Ed!  Yup, she’ll be joining me, and we will be shooting episodes of Ed & Ashley’s 5 Minute Show.  Perhaps we can also get our first video chat interview recorded this week as well.  That would be exciting.

Looks like I won’t be connecting with my Microsoft contact before my flight. Now I gotta run and grab some Auntie Anne’s.  I can’t resist.

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