OrganizeFISH

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.