Hi All,
It’s just over a week now until I head off to Seattle again. I really enjoy my visits there, both from a work and personal perspective. It’s a great time to connect with people you deal with around the globe, make some new friends, as well as sink some suds and poison your liver. This time I’m staying at the Warwick which looks vastly superior to the Red Lion where' I’ve stayed the past two times. TechReady is run twice a year, typically in February and July, and it is THE event for technical Microsofties in the field. We are surrounded by the product groups and receive deep technical training on what is currently in the market as well as what is coming down the pipe.
I’ve have some excellent side meetings organised with the follow teams:
- Dinner with the Daylight Savings Team & Product Lifecycle Team to talk about our experiences in New Zealand with DST and the challenges we faced, as well as the challenges that Australia faced and continue to face as they trial the change of DST in various states.
- Dinner with Premier leads to provide feedback on behalf of the APAC region on Premier Workshops
- Catch-up with IE8 Product Team - (still to nail down..)
If you’re ever in Seattle, there are some excellent things to do, here’s a few:
Monday night is the night where a bunch of ex-pats and current kiwi employees with get together and enjoy a BBQ and a few beers ah Miha’s place (I worked with Miha when I lived in Auckland – the first vehicle he drove was a TANK, he’s eastern european (mad man!) from Slovenia). For me, this is one of the highlights of the trip. It’s fantastic to see how well we do off shore, and confirm the adage that Kiwis are hard workers and can and do contribute on the world scale.
Then there’s the shopping – North Bend is excellent for clothes/shoes etc and Frys for geek ‘stuff’!
So 9 days and counting until I fly out..
Nick.