Microsoft For A Day | The Coffeehouse

pugsley0502

If you could be given the chance to run Microsoft for just one day, and by run i mean run as in be in charge of absolutely EVERYTHING, do exactly what you want, go where you want and see what you want what would you do?

I think I would probably take the chance to go see some of those new things that they have in there that nobody outside of the labs knows about, and I would probably have a good look round bill g's office and find out what he is up to right now Big Smile

SlackmasterK
I write my OWN blogging engines

In addition to liquidating stock? I'd order some changes...

1. Research creation a 3D version of Virtual Earth that resembles Google Earth, but incorporates the spiffitude of the aerial photos. Begin research on a 3D CAD version of the entire world so said 3D views can be freeley rotated. This one's gonna be a b!tch. I'd oversee the project, but it's only one day; therefore, I can only order the research project started.

2. More funding, publicity, research, and product lines from the VIBE lab. Sexy stuff coming out of that area.

3. Channel9 would have more resources - Primarily people on the project. If we added a second "video guy" we could have more frequent videos, as Scoble is undoubtedly busy with tons of other stuff. Also, videos would be converted to different bitrates and possibly a Divx/AVI format. After all, DivX was spawned by a Cinepak hack, and Cinepak is a MSFT codec. Also, the C9 homepage would have one-click links to Videos, Techoff and Coffeehouse. Mouseovering a menu item consumes valuable seconds, and I'm always tempted to click 'forums' or 'media' and get redirected to yet another gateway page. Sigh. Also, in addition to Coffeehouse and Techoff (i.e., general chat and advanced coding stuff), there would be a new forum section added for beginning .NET programming. Not quite the highly technical discussion of TechOff, but not really the archaic miscellanea that is the Coffeehouse Smiley

4. All downloads from Microsoft will be available via download stub as well as redistributable. IE7 would have a download auto-resume feature, rather than deleting aborted downloads. This would work hopefully even better than bite-size file chunks. Genuine Windows Check will go away, since pirates need support too. All files will be available via FTP.

5. All areas of all Microsoft domains will be scripted with RSS feeds. They will not be called "webfeeds", as this is a marketing euphamism and a distortion of a term we already know. The orange feed icon button discussed in the MSN blog can stay, but it must be accompanied by the term "RSS" so people know what the hell that icon means. Download areas will also be RSS-enabled.

6. Companies to buy, in no particular order:
- Yahoo!
- AOL (not TW; buy AOL from them)
- Symantec

You might ask, "how would you do all that in a day?". Well, that's what we call delegating authority. My lackeys will do the dirty work; that's why I'm on top.

[EDIT]: Oh yes, and I'd have pictures of my nice mountain-embedded house made into motivational posters for any employees with stock options.

jmacdonagh

Make an executive decision to throw away all existing NT code after Vista and unveil Singularity as a consumer OS. Complete with WPF as the graphics engine, a OS managed application / driver / library install routine, and a kernel thats big enough and scalable enough to use in supercomputers, but small enough and efficient enough to use in SPOT watches.

Then I'd allocate some of Micrsoft's resources to convince people to port their apps to .NET (thereby making Singularity useful).

rjdohnert
You will never know success until you know failure

I would Open Source Windows and promote Charles, Scoble and the rest of the C9 team. I would put Bill Hilf in charge of PR

AdityaG
OMG VISTA FTW LOLZ!!1one

1. Eliminate using whatever means neccessary whomever has silly ideas of open sourcing windows and such.

2. Make microsoft a bit more visible to the consumer. I see very little advertisement for upcoming vista and such. They did it for the 360, why not for vista? It's just as sexy, maybe even more.

3. Get Mr.Scoble more time and an editor so he cant use the excuse of not having time to edit and put up the movies he has already shot Wink

4. Go out to campuses with things like channel 9 paraphernalia and more geeky stuff than just recruiters. People need to know of all the awesome stuff like express versions of visual studio and live.com etc. A lot of people just associate MS right now with crashes and random old quibbles with 95.

5. Use company funds to buy myself a large apple cinema display, and build a windows box with a giant vista logo on it (and run vista beta of course) and take a pic of me dressed as a penguin using them side by side and post it on the net (maybe even slashdot). I am sure SOME zealots will explode at this sight and let this world be a better place.

6. Wait for more channel 9 videos

Meh, seriously though? I would sit in the big comfy chair, then get up, shake bill's hand and give him back the spot. I love where MS is going today. Lots of those misjudged notions are slowly dissapearing thanks to some active efforts from the company. Good luck. God speed and er.. hmm.. I need to watch more movies.. forget the third one.. if there is one.

Cheers,
Aditya

bikini
(bloop)

Well, to save face, I would spend the day tendering my resignation. Wink

SlackmasterK
I write my OWN blogging engines

rjdohnert wrote:
I would Open Source Windows and promote Charles, Scoble and the rest of the C9 team. I would put Bill Hilf in charge of PR

Oh, beautiful idea. They got this place running more or less smoothly, now you're gonna replace the crew with people who are entirely unfamiliar with its setup? It could work, but they'd have to be phased in gradually, not replaced all in a day.

reinux

Have Anders Hejlsberg sign me an autograph Big Smile