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.
