I’ve said it before. Robert Scoble has a hard job. He’s got the corporate muck as well as way different times when yours truly was roaming the halls of Redmond.
Consider for a moment the freedom we had. You think any of those Microsoft kids today could get away with wearing this T-Shirt and the ol campus watering holes?
Uh huh, right.. The marketing/logo cops would be swarming like a pack of wild dogs on a juicy hunk of roadkill! You wouldn't survive 5 minutes.
Or how about this logo'd shirt. A nice core piece of technology happily dumped on by all concerned. Given away to all who so asked. Again, no chance you could pull this off today.
But the real secret to the world of yesterday? The real reason why the legions of Visual Basic/C++ animals coded their way all over the landscape? Why Direct-X, Active-X, MAPI, OLE, DDE, and millions of other letter combos raced across the programming globe without equal? OS/2? Plzzz..
The actual reason why no amount of fire in the fox or feeding the penguin would have helped?
Everybody was coming to our fun events and drinking this:
Oh yeah. Taste good and good for ya…
I'm inviting the Head Lemur over to kick back a few.
(Yeah, we really did make this stuff and really did give it away and really pissed off so many internal people, I lost count.)
Hard job? Wander around campus sticking cameras at people, defending MFST in blogger forums, supplanting PR - Wagged as his slave, worldwide junket and jaunting all over and attending all the cool tech conferences known to mankind (for free), eat at thousands of blogger dinners, become a cyber-celebrity with a big microphone, get in tons of newspapers, mags and press bits (while not having to write a lick of code), get invited to lots of insider parties, and other big events, get advance cuts on new software. Talk with VIPs, dine with Gates, wander around campus bigger than God, as HR can't really touch him. Gosh, unsurmountable amount of heavy toil there.
Posted by: Christopher Coulter | July 05, 2005 at 09:31
Thanks Rick, for making my year.
That MAPI T-shirt is still one of my most prized possessions from my time in Redmond.
Posted by: Vince Perriello | July 05, 2005 at 15:11