Kevin Schofield - Inside Microsoft Research | TheChannel9Team

Kevin Schofield, general manager at Microsoft Research, has a unique job. He's responsible for helping move technologies out of Microsoft Research and into Microsoft's products.

Recently he invited Channel 9 to come over for a chat and a tour around to meet some interesting people inside Microsoft Research.

Over the next week you'll see the tour -- some really interesting people work at Microsoft, including the inventor of the laser printer.

Anyway, here's the interview with Kevin. If you want to hear more from Kevin, check out his weblog.

By the way, did you know that Research now is publishing RSS feeds so you can always be up to date on the latest that they are working on?

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pacelvi Phear

Jul 14, 2004 at 4:00 PM

This was interesting to watch and actually got very interesting right when it ended. It's probably the longest video I've seen here. Not a complaint.

Thanks.
scobleizer I'm the video guy

Jul 14, 2004 at 4:21 PM

Thanks, I think the really good stuff from this interview is yet to come!
AdamKinney Agent of Change

Jul 15, 2004 at 8:37 AM

This is great, I love the new "conversational" approach that MS Research is taking. Thanks a lot for the video.

SUBSCRIBED (to all 3 feeds)
ArSa HAL 9000

Jul 15, 2004 at 10:25 AM

the voice level in this video and in general audio quality is pretty low for ammount of talking this guy does
pretty interesting, only if i could hear it well...
Mazric

Jul 15, 2004 at 10:26 AM

This video was very interesting, it would be interesting to see some interviews for some of the other MS Research teams are working on
jsrfc58

Jul 15, 2004 at 10:52 AM

The Channel 9 Team wrote:

...some really interesting people work at Microsoft, including the inventor of the laser printer.

Side question: in order to get a job in Microsoft Research do you have to have a PhD or be the inventor of something like a laser printer? Just curious as to what the "bar" was set at for entry in that area. Great video, by the way...hope to see more soon.
scobleizer I'm the video guy

Jul 15, 2004 at 11:51 AM

ArSa: hmmm, sorry about the audio level. On my system I can turn up my speaker volume and hear it just fine. You might want to get a pair of powered speakers so you can adjust the volume up a bit.
The Channel 9 Team 5 guys from Redmond

Jul 15, 2004 at 12:04 PM

Mazric: more interviews coming soon. I spent a bit of time with research. Second part of the tour comes up today -- a look at the University Relations group.
Hollasch

Jul 15, 2004 at 1:21 PM

jsrfc58 wrote:

... in order to get a job in Microsoft Research do you have to have a PhD or be the inventor of something like a laser printer? Just curious as to what the "bar" was set at for entry in that area.

In general, you do indeed need to have a PhD or distinguished yourself in a research area. Lesser-qualified people can work in MSR, but they tend to be supporting developers, equivalent to grad students in academia. That's not to say that the RSDE's (Research Software Development Engineers) don't do any research -- they actually do get support for writing papers and so forth -- but they fill more of a supporting role in the research organization.
Hollasch

Jul 15, 2004 at 1:24 PM

.
ArSa HAL 9000

Jul 15, 2004 at 1:38 PM

it's fine, i have headphones and can hear well if i turn everything up. thank you
CRPietschmann Chris Pietschmann

Jul 15, 2004 at 4:10 PM

Can you really store a video recording of your entire life in a pedabyte? That is alot of video!! You wouldn't really need to remember things if you had that. You could literally search through your memories. That is really kind of scary if you think about it.
bobnicholls

Jul 16, 2004 at 3:28 PM

The problem is not the recording or storing of a video of an entire life, but how one would go about searching it. Neither voice nor video recognition is anywhere close to being able to offer a solution to this and that is not going to change in the foreseeable future.

In practice we will soon have the technology that will provide functionality analogous to a (digital)vcr with one long program of your life. You will be able to replay the events of a particular time but not much else. I expect it will be a pretty boring program to boot.

Bob
kevinsch

Jul 16, 2004 at 10:16 PM

Jim Gray is my source -- he was the one who told me that it takes a petabyte of storage. He is generally a source I would trust.
bobnicholls

Jul 17, 2004 at 1:31 AM

How about this calculation?

An average life has:

80 years * 365.25 days * 24 hours * 60 mins * 60 sec = 2,524,608,000 seconds

Recording at a reasonable quality:

@300K per sec = 757,382,400,000,000 bytes = 0.75 pedabytes