WLast week I was in Washington state, for my 2nd summit in as many weeks (the first being the MVP Summit).  Rather than hosting it on campus, our wonderful leadership team decided to hold the event at the Tulalip Casino resort. 

I must admit that I was a little sceptical about the quality of the hotel, since I had previously been to the casino which is situated next to a shopping centre, with little else around and is frequented by people who I would not consider typical to the affluent population of Seattle, Bellevue and other areas around Redmond which have an established above average middle class due to the size of Microsoft and other high tech companies.  My expectations of the quality and service at the resort were FAR from the reality. 

As soon as we arrived, we were greeted by super friendly and eager staff (OK, that’s not exactly unusual in the U.S. service industry) and were handed card keys to BEAUTIFUL and luxurious rooms!  I have stayed in a fair number of nice hotels in the past 10 years (including the amazing Bellagio in Las Vegas), however I consider the room I had at Tulalip to be one of the most luxurious I have stayed in…

Considering I was in a standard room, I would rate the quality as superb and way above my expectations.  As a person who is currently going through the process of renovating his ensuite, I really appreciated the spec of that beautiful bathroom (which was a little elongated, so is not represented well in this photo), which included a three head shower to make sure you truly do get a full body wash every morning.  I couldn’t resist a cheesy pose…

So, I was totally impressed by the room! And then there was the event itself!  With 400 people, we had practically the whole hotel to ourselves and exclusive use of the 4 enormous ballrooms for our meetings.  As with most offsite meetings, we are fed generously, with a variety of buffet style meals with food to suite all tastes (pretty essential considering the 40+ countries represented at the event).  We even had a ‘special’ meal on the Wednesday evening where we served a preset menu of deliciously  petite sized courses, at set table places along with some smart thought leaders from Microsoft…

Our Microsoft admins along with the hotel staff organised an incredibly motivating and original event, with lots of activities to keep everyone amused day and night.  An artist was hired to draw cartoons portraits of anyone who was patient enough to wait in queue for their turn (I was not).  Some clever person had the idea of also pointing a video camera at the artists work area so that everyone could watch their colleagues being sketched whilst they ate dinner.  I’m going to copy this idea at my wedding (need to fall in love first)…

Whilst we spent most of the day time in the ballrooms, we also had one event hosted in the cabaret rooms.  Whilst the ability to plug in a laptop was lacking (we ended up watching a video from a camera which aimed at a laptop screen for demos), it was a nice change to be sitting in a night spot venue with a band playing random songs in between presenters.

The band was even made up of Microsoft PQO employees! Great stuff…

Bjorn Rettig, our General Manager delivered an inspirational talk about work culture for the first 30 mins of the cabaret session.  We then were treated to Bjorn interviewing his direct reports to discuss business, and have a bit of fun at the same  time.  Here is a video of Jaydeep (one of our Product Unit Managers) demonstrating how to wrap Bjorn in a turban, just after he explained to the regionally diverse audience the meaning and history behind his head piece…

I have many more great memories from the offsite, but do not want to make this blog post too long (not even sure if anyone will read this far! Congratulations if you did!).  Since we work in a global team, the opportunity to get everyone in a relaxed environment, face to face, where they can discuss work, have fun and engage in random conversations which are not structured around a meeting or goal, is for me invaluable!  I lost count of the number of people I met/saw again and the variety of topics which I discussed or overheard.  I certainly walked away feeling energised, motivated and keen to expand on the connections made and the ideas discussed.  The sessions delivered by the management team were informational, motivational and perhaps most importantly during a full week’s worth of conference (including the 2 day leadership meetings) – FUN!

I have so many great memories from the week including the buffet and bar next to the hotel swimming pool on the first night, the Microsoft illuminated posters in the hotel lifts, the team building activity on the first day which had us running around the hotel completing mini missions (may do a blog post about that on it’s own), Bjorn’s dinner with private bar and delicious food, familiar faces dotted around the casino black jack and poker tables at every hour of the day, relaxed light night conversations in the hotel lobby next to the beautiful Indian artwork, fireplaces and waterfall and the challenge of getting all 400+ PQO employees in to a group photo in the hotel lobby!

When an even such as this goes as smoothly as it did, it’s SO easy to take for granted the incredibly hard work of our Microsoft teams, along with that of the hotel.  We even had our own Microsoft branded rooms keys!…

Great job to everyone involved! I hope you are reading this blog post

The new Microsoft Commons campus is one of my favourite places to work.  I spent the afternoon in the Mixer, listening to music and working on my slide deck for the SEO presentation tomorrow at the Microsoft MVP summit.

I left just as the sun was about to disappear and managed to catch the lovely light to dark blue sky, with the moon shining down over the empty campus…

I went to the Seattle Science Fiction Museum for the first time today (which is surprising considering the number of times I have been to Seattle).  Unfortunately we were not allowed to use cameras inside, so I only have exterior building shots and a floor plan (see below).

The museum is hosted over 2 floors and features props, books, quotes, videos and lots more interesting (to geeks) bits to browse from a variety of sci-fi spanning well over 150 years.

I have never actually read a sci-fi fiction book, but was fascinated to read some of the extracts from novels dating back to the mid 19th century.  Despite the fact that mind twisted realities and space time continuum defying storylines have only become mainstream thanks to television, the concepts and storylines have been around for hundreds of years!  Whilst Hollywood has done a great job of translating the concepts on to the big screen, I am in no doubt that the real pioneers of today’s science fiction plots lived way before television was even invented!

An interesting fact which I was surprised to learn (especially considering I have a Czech girlfriend), was that the word ‘robot’ was actually adapted from the Czech word ‘robota’ which actually translates as ‘hard work’ or ‘drudgery’ in Czech and Slovak.  Wikipedia provides some more information stating that ‘robota’ was a work period a serf had to give for his lord, typically 6 months or a year.  So in other words, robots literally are slaves!  Let’s hope that they never figure that one out for themselves when they get smarter! (Insert Terminator 2 theme music)

Some other highlights from the exhibition included…

1. A scale model of the Start Trek (Original series) film set which was apparantly used to plan how each scene would be filmed
2. A life size (I assume) model of Yoda
3. A giant cinema screen showing the world of the Jetsons, which eventually gets consumed by black smoke and turns in to the dark world of Blade Runner.
4. A model of the Death Star, which has a bass speaker mounted under the floor to rumble as you stand near it – subtle, but effective
5. The Pit Bull hover board from Back to the Future
6. Various phasers from Star Trek

Definitely a great hour or two for a sci-fi fan! My one recommendation for future expansion (just in case Paul Allen or a colleague happens to read this) is to have a section dedicated to time travel. 

I was at the annual Bumbershoot festival in Seattle today.  AWESOME day!  One of the best things about the festival is that on top of the scheduled stage acts, there are lots of random performers who start dancing and singing on the street every now and again. 

The Match Fours acappella group were there to promote the Washington Lottery.  I’m not sure if they helped sell lottery tickets, but they certainly entertained the crowd!  Check out this awesome version of ‘I can see clearly now’. . .

These guys worked great together and sounded like they could perform pretty much any song without using a single musical instrument.  I was on my way to see another act, but ended up standing outside the lottery stand for about 15 minutes whilst these guys pulled in the crowds.  On top of sounding great, they had lots of fun, check out this (perhaps slightly clichéd acappella) version of ‘The lion sleeps tonight’. . .

The guy on the right is the bass man – it was amazing how he keeps the constant tone whilst the others are singing and chatting to the crowd.  They also sang ‘Four Little Numbers’, which is apparently the Washington state lottery song (not that I would have known). . .

And one last clip of an unexpected Blondie vs. The Bangles mashup . . .

I wanted to do a little gadget shopping today, so headed off to Fry’s Electronics in Renton, Washington.  The place is ENOURMOUS! They sell pretty much ANYTHING you can imagine which is powered by electricity.  It was a cross between PC World, Currys and Maplins x 10. 

With the current exchange rate (about 1.64 dollars to the British pound), I estimate that you will save between 15 and 30% on UK prices.  Hardware is closer to the15%, software has more savings.

If you want to shop for gadgets in the U.S., Fry’s is the place to do it.  To get an idea of how BIG the store is, just take a look at the 32 checkouts available!!…

I was sitting in a meeting room at the Microsoft Commons campus in Redmond today and was shocked to see a glowing image of Kirk, McCoy and Spoke in the lobby.

The images were made up of hundreds of small lights hanging in strips from the ceiling.  The result was a rather spooky, ghostly image of the three Star Trek characters, perhaps deliberately looking like they were ‘beaming’ in to reception   VERY COOL!

Here is a video. . .