Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Heroes happened in Nashville!

I happened to be in Nashville last week for a Microsoft conference HEROES happen {here} (if I put the correct name maybe I get indexed nicely by Google). I accidentally got in the middle of the geekiest crowd I will ever get caught, talking about Windows Servers, Visual Studio and SQL Server 2008. Because I actually went to Nashville for the 70 kinds of beer, Jack Daniels (who lives there, I was told) and the live country music. Instead I got about 8 hours of talking and a bunch of free software. Neat!

I am no programmer or anything as dangerous and I still had lots of fun. Watching the whole event as an outsider I came to think about what this Microsoft phenomenon is about. Everybody present there hates their products. But they are there, even though mostly for the free software. It’s very interesting Microsoft relationship with their most important customers. The conferences Microsoft organizes for any reason all over the country (and probably around the world) targeted towards IT professionals, developers, and such. They are the early adopters and the influencers; they ultimately decide who’s going to use which program. They set the trend. So they get the free software. They will get the crack somewhere on the Internet anyway...

The other thing that makes me like Microsoft is how natural and genuine they brag about their new breakthrough and breathtaking new technology that is not new at all. Their tactic of rebranding stuff that’s been around for awhile and more importantly to convince the world to buy that stuff amazes me again and again. To paraphrase one of the speakers during a Visual Studio demonstration: It’s magical, it works!

Speaking of Visual Studio, Microsoft says that the next generation of web apps will be faster and easier to develop, more efficient, and a damn-awesome user experience. My friend who’s not only a computer genius but a wise computer genius stated that what Microsoft wants is to make everybody programming without writing any code.

I don’t know much about computers, I ain’t no Master of Windows, but I think Microsoft has a marketing strategy to look up to and take notes from. Their software? Maybe the geeky speaker was right commenting his colleague demonstration: I think you just proved your code sucks?

2 comments:

James Moore said...

Interesting view on series of interesting dichotomies.

Unknown said...

I couldn't agree more! I think you forgot to mention a little something about how Microsoft prepares us for the future of programming without writing code: The D&D (Drag & Drop) Way.

After all, aren't they the ones who really put the Mouse in the hands of computer users, and put the Keyboard to shame (with it's only 3 relevant keys: Ctrl, Alt & Delete)

Anyways, you should check out Joel Spolsky's Architecture Astronauts post!


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