While Microsoft always brings out the Surfaces for their conferences, my strongest memory of the interactive coffee table happened at BlogHer09 with the Surface in the wild at the Sheraton.  (Have I mentioned how sad I am that I’m missing BlogHer10 because I’ll be  in final prep for my big move?)

I was preparing to leave the conference when Ed introduced her parents to the Tile game on the surface.  It’s a 1-6 player game that involves group like-colored tiles together to clear them from your pie slice / send a bomb to your opponents, while destroying bombs before they hit your stack of blocks.  And that’s the entire game.  However, it’s damn addicting, as others can attest.  In fact, I got quite antsy waiting for Ed’s family to declare themselves done, so I could make my bus.  Which could be the real reason why this sticks out to me, but still, it’s cause of that game!

I stopped by the Surface booth at WPC10 with Israel Arribas (Spain)and Steve Markovitch (US), where we had a casual conversation while Steve played with the Surface for the first time.  (He loved it, btw.)

The Surface was originally developed as a multi-user in-home gaming device.  While there are now some very advanced applications built for the device, the Surface team still finds people who will sit at it for incredibly long periods of time playing the Tile game.  One of the new demos is a space game that takes more strategy.  We all had to be walked through it.

Last year, Darren shared with me the insurance on moving these things is incredibly high (since the price is so high).  However, they are surprisingly durable.  There have been some that have broken during transit, but in these cases it was clear they weren’t handled “fragiley”.  In one case, they appeared as though they had been stacked about three high and had taken a tumble.  The thing still functioned, but there was a nice crack down the center of the screen.  As it is a big investment, Microsoft has worked with a Partner to create a screen protector that is used for high risk/usage areas such as casinos and bars.

The one thing that got me during our conversation was the point these things are hard to use in direct sunlight.  It shouldn’t come as a surprise that customers would want to place this collaborative device in a bright spot.  People love to bask in sunlight.  (I mean, c’mon, we need that Vitamin D to keep up our good moods.)  However, they cannot replace the projector with an LED screen because that would block the very cameras that read what is touching the screen.

There is an updated version that will be coming out at some point in the future, but the only info divulged was the screen will be skinner and the computer will be more like the width of a hand rather than the whole base.  If the price is also able to come down, I think that’d help encourage Partners to create new applications.  Although they offered a ton of information on the Surface to Partners last year, I haven’t noticed a big increase in general interest, and I’ve just assumed it’s due to the fact that only companies with a big budget afford to purchase them.

But hey, I can comprehend saving up for Kinect to navigate through my movies and video chat using my TV, so I’m good to go.  (Gaming, what?)

Thank you Twitter! I was sitting in a session on productivity, when the @WPCDC Twitter account tweeted:

@WPCDC: See Bill Buxton speak now at the #WPC10 Expo Theater – back of the Expo Hall by MPN Booth #484!

I up and left that session, and rushed over.  (I have got to figure out my way around this place. Went down a huge staircase and up another to get to the Expo.  Needless to say, I was out of breath.)

Kinect (formerly Project Natal), the new controller-less technology for Xbox, has been the center of a lot of hype since its first announcement.  Bill Buxton, a principal researcher at Microsoft,  fights against the notion that newer is better by presenting these two scenarios:

1. Kinect in the home.
2. Kinect on an airplane.

Clearly you can’t be jumping around in an airplane.

Similarly, conference calls are used to join people remotely, but on an airplane you could lose your job by sharing confidential information aloud.  The focus is what is appropriate technology for the situation.

The four watches above utilize “touch” technology.  The first allows you to swipe number on the screen, which then are shown on the display.  There is a touch screen keyboard on the second watch, and with the third you can touch different areas around the watch to activate a compass, thermometer, etc.  The final watch has a phyiscal keyboard.

Now which watch is the outlier?

The majority of engineers’ gut choice is the watch with the physical keyboard.  However, the instructions could be the same for both the watch with the physical keyboard and the watch with the touch screen keyboard.  The outlier is the watch that takes input via swipes.  When looking at the watch, you wouldn’t easily guess that’s how you input data.  Bill says there lies the difference between a designer and an engineer.  It’s a good point, and an instinct I have to fight myself on.

Finally, guess what year the watch with the swipe technology was developed.

Answer:  1984

Buxton has written columns for Business Week, and in October 2009, he wrote on this very topic.  Tomorrow, he returns to WPC during the A-List feature of the morning keynote.  You should be able to watch it live at Digital WPC starting at 9 AM ET.  (Bill Clinton is also keynoting tomorrow, and all cameras and video are banned, so if the live stream isn’t happening, that’s why.)

On that note, I return to the stage during the same feature with the rest of the S2B students to share our accomplishments with Partners.  (Students interested in the training and submitting their resume to potential employers, register with Experience, Inc.)  If you don’t catch it live, the recorded session of the keynote will be up later in the day.

Note to Bill Buxton:  My apologies for the awkwardness when I came after your presentation.  My intention was to tell you how much I appreciate your passion in fighting for the user, but I tripped up cause I was in “Tech celebrity!” awe.

A year ago, I was in New Orleans for the first time with Ed to attend Microsoft’s Worldwide Partner Conference.  While next month I’ll begin my job at Microsoft testing a Microsoft product, this conference is about the non-Microsoft folks that generate approximately 90% of Microsoft’s income.  (That percentage is so high, I feel like I’m remembering it wrong.)

Partners include consulting firms from those that employee under fifty such as my summer employer in 2009, Aptera Software, to those that employee thousands such as Avanade as well as big name companies such as Best Buy and HP.  Other examples of partners are web hosts and ISVs.  ISV stands for independent software vendors and is just a fancy way of saying a company that develops software products, such as DyKnow, which was developed at DePauw by Dave Berque.

While Ed and I were brought in to represent the Imagine Cup, Mihai Nadas (Romania) and Darren Doyle (Ireland) came as Microsoft Student Partners to talk up Microsoft’s Students to Business program.  I had an absolute blast working with these guys covering the event and letting partners know they can help themselves by helping today’s students.

In fact, we made such a splash that this year there are sixteen students attending from fourteen different countries.  We’ve created a blog planet to aggregate our posts, and you can find our tweets with the hashtag #S2BWPC.

Tomorrow morning, we are starting bright and early with an 8 AM keynote that anyone can watch.  I am actually excited to sit in on these keynotes to see how things have changed from last year.  Now my sleeping schedule is clearly wacked as I’m a night owl with the summer off who has been sorting through my belongings in the midst of the night for the past week, so it’s time for me to sign off.

Wish me luck tomorrow.

In January, I traveled to Microsoft’s Redmond campus for the Microsoft Student Insider Program Kick-Off.  What follows is a write-up of my interview with Kevin Grey, a Software Development Engineer on the Time Management team for Windows Phone.

Kevin Grey was initially attracted to Computer Science because the grade was clear cut:  either the code works or it doesn’t.  This was an environment he thrived in as it allowed him to distinguish himself without subjectivity.  He was able to focus on learning rather than worrying about the grade.  He also lucked out that he enjoyed programming, because if he’s not interested in the work, he won’t do it.

After working for a VOIP company, Grey moved to Boston and took a position with a consulting firm.  The Boston firm assigned him to work on Pocket PC applications, which was Grey’s first experience with mobile computing.  He was fascinated with programming for a computer with such tiny specifications.

Later, Grey moved to New Jersey and took a position with a different consulting firm located there.  While there he received a phone call out of the blue from Microsoft, who had gotten his name from his time at the VOIP company.  He interviewed for an architect position, which he didn’t get.  He hadn’t felt ready for that position, so three months later he interviewed for a Software Development Engineer in Test (SDET) on the Windows Mobile team.  He initially received a no hire decision, but was called back for a different SDET opening.  Although he was hired as an SDET, his goal was to become a developer.  Today, he successfully holds the title of Software Development Engineer.

Grey worked with Diane Curtis, who now runs the US Imagine Cup, when she was a Program Manager (PM) on the Windows Mobile team.  Diane asked Grey if he would like to be involved, and he hasn’t missed a year since.  He started as an interviewer when the competition format involved students competing individually.  Students would work their way through unit tests, and if they passed, they were interviewed.  He has also mentored a team.  (What follows is a scenario I would have LOVED.)  The process for that year involved creating an application over a week.  Students were flown in and mentored for a week and participated in a huge coding party.  Microsoft rented out the Courtyard Marriott for the geek out week, and since it took place in Bellevue, WA, the final judging was done by high level Microsoft employees from the Redmond campus.

As an experienced judge, Grey stresses that students be prepared to acknowledge and defend the weaknesses of their projects.  Many times there are a fair number of PMs judging.  While they may ask high level technical questions, Grey wants to know how much of the project is actually implemented.  The more a team has implemented, the more the team understands about the feasibility of their project.

The Imagine Cup matches perfectly with Grey’s advice that outside classroom experience is essential for success in the field of Computer Science.  You won’t learn everything you need for a job in your CS Courses and experiences such as the Imagine Cup and internships can help fill that gap.

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.

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.)

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.

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.)

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.