Steve Ballmer’s Speechwriter Speaks Steve-O

Posted By: Charles | Dec 6th, 2005 @ 11:32 AM | 69,503 Views | 34 Comments
Did you know that Steve Ballmer gives between 125 and 150 talks a year?  Do you know what it’s like to write, coordinate, organize, compose, direct and manage those 125+ speeches a year for one of the busiest CEO’s in the world?  Watch this video with Katy Hunter who does this job every day for Steve Ballmer and find out why she loves working for Microsoft in another edition of our new show featuring cool women with cool jobs, WM_IN.  (And you thought you knew what death by PowerPoint meant . . . not as much as Katy! Smiley
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#Dec 6th, 2005 @ 12:41 PM
Charles
Charles
Welcome Change
Beer28 wrote:
I'm going to watch this in a bit, but if I had to prepare for a job where I had to write speeches for Steve Ballmer, I'd get plenty of vinyls that skip to prepare for the job.

"move the needle on the turntable beer, that's annoying", no, no, I'm working on Steve Ballmer's speech......



Beer, I'm afraid this post makes little sense. What?

Also, how about watching the video first, then commenting on it? Seems like a logical pattern.

C
#Dec 6th, 2005 @ 12:49 PM
mwirth
mwirth
i think as he does once in a while, beer is critisizing something Wink maybe he's referring to ballmer's style of repeating words in his sentences as a means of emphasis (which i like). i remember that my only preparation for an english test once has been watching an internet broadcast of one of ballmer's keynotes.. it worked out quite well Wink

regards,
martin.
#Dec 6th, 2005 @ 12:57 PM
DuNuNuBatman
DuNuNuBatman
One word... "Developers, developers, developers, developers..."

On the other hand, it is good to know that not all CEO's are cookie cutter business types.
#Dec 6th, 2005 @ 1:40 PM
Minh
Minh
WOOH! WOOH!
Speaking of hating your computer but loving a font, there is definitely a emotional component to your computer that I think MS has long ignored -- or couldn't fullfil because of one reason or another. XP was supposed to be about the user eXPerience, and it's a good first step. Vista is supposed to be the user experience promise land -- I don't really have a question about a non-existant product, I guess. Just hoping 2006 will be the year the UX matures. Whether from the Apple or MS side, I don't care.
#Dec 6th, 2005 @ 6:13 PM
reinux
reinux
Beer28 wrote:

At any rate, it was a nice video, but not in my field.

Yet you were the first to comment...
#Dec 6th, 2005 @ 6:24 PM
Charles
Charles
Welcome Change
Doesn't anybody find it rather amazing that Ballmer gives 125-150 speeches per year? Can you imagine doing that? I can't... Wow.

C
#Dec 6th, 2005 @ 6:38 PM
DevilsRejection
DevilsRejection
addicted to rss
Charles wrote:
Doesn't anybody find it rather amazing that Ballmer gives 125-150 speeches per year? Can you imagine doing that? I can't... Wow.

C


I usually love C9 videos, but for some strange reason.... this feels like a PR video. I can't put my finger on it, but it sounds like a 23 minute 47 second commercial. You do much better interviewing the devs then the marketing people.

Some people like marketing... not me lol.

I guess to be fair the PR people are probably just as important as the product developers, that's the sad part of the world today.
#Dec 6th, 2005 @ 7:02 PM
Minh
Minh
WOOH! WOOH!
DevilsRejection wrote:

I guess to be fair the PR people are probably just as important as the product developers, that's the sad part of the world today.
Why is that sad?
#Dec 6th, 2005 @ 7:06 PM
Charles
Charles
Welcome Change
We don't do "PR" videos on C9!!!

We are trying to paint an accurate picture of Microsoft. And, as you must know, Microsoft employs more non-developers than developers. We have some of the most talented marketing people in the business, you know. Smiley

We are increasing the the breadth of what we cover on C9. This doesn't mean we will decrease the number of technical interviews. I promise!

Marketing has no place on Channel 9 (from our Doctrine). This means, that we don't use Channel 9 as a way to market our products. It does NOT mean that we can't interview interesting people who work in Marketing. Make sense?

Channel 9: It's about people too.

C
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