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 was working in the Amsterdam offices for a few days last week (a longer trip than my unscheduled visit 2 weeks ago).  Schiphol airport is a great place to be if you have to wait for flights, there are a huge number of shops to choose from, a casino, a museum, restaurants, bars and even a spa.  However one of my favourite things about the airport is that it is a walk-able distance away from the new Microsoft offices…

The Amsterdam offices are unique due to the fact that the entire Dutch subsidiary effectively works from home, but uses the office as a social hub to meet colleagues and customers.  There are no offices, or even any assigned desk spaces, instead everyone simply turns up and finds a spot in one of the variety of different styled working areas around the two buildings. 

It is surprising to see how this environment makes everyone in the office naturally socialable and chatty (or perhaps that was because they are Dutch?!).  Everyone kept saying hello to me, which confused me at first because the first couple of times it happened I thought they were people who I had met, but forgotten.  Whether it was the receptionist (who perched on a random spot in the atrium with a laptop), women serving coffee in the common area, the random stranger in the lift or the people sitting around the area near us, everyone was constantly smiling, saying hello and never trying to avoid social interactions with those around them (unlike in other office buildings I have been in). 

The mix of funky decor, friendly Dutch people and a flexible working philosophy definitely seems to have worked in Amsterdam and creates a very dynamic working environment.  Here are a few of my favourite pics from around the office…

The atrium can be seen in the bottom of this pic, with a funky fabric wall above it on the 1st floor…

Here is a hot desk area with soothing low lighting, cool coat hangers and another fabric wall in the background…

And yet another style of working space, with yet another set of colours for the fabric wall (I loved those walls! )…

There is even an Asian style low table which can be used for meetings, lunch or anything else you like…

Definitely a new way of working, which REALLY works in my opinion.  I wonder when we will get the same  concepts in the rest of the world?!

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. . .