Last week I came back from Redmond , after the MVP Summit 2005 held at the Microsoft Campus. Happened to be a quite interesting experience, and opportunity to meet and interact with lots of Energetic People and People who define directions to the rest of the world including Anders Heijlsberg – Father of C# , Dox Box et al…
Met some very interesting people right on the flight, during the long journey. Met Arun,Rajesh and Dhamay at the airport… On the way from Frankfurt to Seattle met Allen – A Marshall in U.S. Air Force and Greg Pidman – A scientist who had worked with IBM Research for 40 Yrs [Oh! My....] involved in lotsa interesting projects. Our interaction started when Allen shared his Cinnamon Mint, and he started narrating his experiences in Iraq . This man is very very proud of his country and his own achievements. Greg was involved in research of Semi-Conductor and AI Stuff… We happened to talk a lot about his experience in a robotics project which he was involved for 25 yrs in France . And he remembered some of his old friends from india, who had worked along with him long back…at one point we did have a differing opinion… he said “Most of the indians are good with theoritical knowledge, but lacks know-how in putting things to practice…”, I strongly denied but he still insisted it might take a couple of years… I just smiled and he switched and said these days he is travelling to meet his grand kids and now a farmer 
The MVP Summit was held at Microsoft Campus at Redmond . Being the first time visitor to the MSFT Campus, I should say, I was quite impressed with the Campus – Cool, Quite, Energetic, Fresh Greens, Trees…. a very peaceful environment.
The Summit kicked-off with a very energetic Keynote by Steve Ballmer – CEO of Microsoft, Boy… This man is stuffed with tons of energy and filled with optimism, and his slide on competitors in industry was quite a bold statement [Boy, I’m covered in NDA… so cannot reveal them 
] Really Impressive. It was surprising to see STEVE BALLMER taking out notes in a paper on feedback of himself, his company and his people… and as u guessed there was an instant question, why isn’t he using a mobile device…he frankly admitted that the practical difficulties and said he has asked his device folks to come up with stuff very close to the habit of human writing… this was Followed by other keynote sessions, Jim Allchin was playing around with latest bits of Vista, and when he upgraded his RAM with just a USB Drive, there was a silence in the hall for a moment… This is called as “Superfetch” Technology in Vista . Superfetch adds the memory on the USB key to the system’s virtual memory, which in turn is used to preload applications and data which the user accesses frequently. The USB option offers the ability to upgrade the system’s memory even if there are no physical memory slots, allowing laptop users to increase system speed, according to Alchin… Ah!Plug-n-Play RAM… also, he demoed other impressive stuff
Later we were separated based on our technology areas and me being C# MVP, we had sessions from the Language gurus themselves… Anders Heijlsberg spoke about the new “LINQ” feature in C# – Orcas Version, I Felt this adds lots of common sense to the language. The way he spoke was quite impressive, i.e. he never searched for words, or never thought… the whole stuff was within him, and just flowed out without thinking twice. And during the QA Session, before the questioner finishes and even before we understood the question he came out with the response… This man was just amazing… and later when I happened to speak to him in person, found he is quite humble and gentle than i ever thought, and when i expressed that LINQ adds lots common sense to the language and the language is evolving a lot,he replied – “We have just started this, we need to add more common sense to the language” I would say, Meeting Anders wrapped my objective of attending the summit
Later, We had whopping Don Box, who was in his full spirits and talked about “Indigo” in his own style, The Hall was filled with Laughter and he was quite great on explaining each of the topic in a very simplistic manner… [I Still remember his session on SOAP long back...] He didn’t have any fixed agenda, but created a Dynamic Agenda on what people wanted to hear from him… and spoke everything on those topics… quite dynamic isn’t he ?!
There were other sessions, and another notable session was on DLINQ, by Dinesh Kulkarni – Remember this name when ObjectSpaces was announced 2 years back… yep… these guys are back in action with DLINQ which dinesh called it as Object Spaces 2.0. Good Responsive Speaker, heard lots of inputs…
Rest of the other time was fully allocated for interaction with the Microsoft Product team, where they spoke about how MSFT builds software, and most of them were chalk-talk sessions, where every single feature of the language and IDE was analyzed and noted down inputs on feature by feature including keyboard shortcuts to Compiler improvements. It was surprising to see so much of attenention and importance was given to the MVP’s. I Think Mattias Sojourn is the person who have lotsa feedback, and his discussion on Good Vs Evil was interesting.
Also met Christian Nagel, Julie Ray and other people from around the world…
And the campus was very beautiful and as the Fall season has begun trees have started changing its colors and there was lots of Maple Trees…Spent around 3 Hrs walking all alone around the campus, still couldn’t cover up the whole area. But loved that 3 Hr Walk…
Another interesting person was a chauffer, actually Me and Anand returned on a early morning flight, and Anand booked the flight, when i came out early morning from the hotel, there was a Limousine for us and while going towards the airport, the chauffer started…
Chauffer : Which Country are you from, Sir ?
Me : {Enjoying Limo Ride, and Half – dozed off in morning sleep}
Anand : We are from India …
Chauffer: Oh! Do you know Infosys ?!
{Me & Anand looked at each other… A Chauffer in America asking about Infy !!}
Anand : Yes
Chauffer: Do you know Narayana Murthy ?
{Me… Whaat?! }
Anand: Of course, Yes
Chauffer: I know him very well [Me...{Whaaat.... ?}]
Chauffer: I was driving Narayana Murthy and Sudha Murthy for 5 days in this same car… When he came to Bill Gates at Microsoft…
{Me & Anand gave a look to each other… }
Chauffer: Nice Couple, He infact invited me to India …
Me: Ah… So, what do you think about this man…
Chauffer: Wonderful Person, Very Amazing…. and they are a very nice couple…perfect pair…perfect pair…
{Me… and Anand smiled and got off at the airport, Somehow I remembered Gred Pidman whom I met earlier on the flight…}
All in all it was quite good experience.
Only in Very few moments of life, I encounter with people who has the power to define the world and can set a direction for the rest of the world…SteveB, Anders, DonB are definitely one among them… and only very few things has the power to change your perceptions, attitudes and only in very few places the whole galactic energy gets within me and pushes me hard above the limits… this is definitely one such place…
A quite refreshing change and definitely a good memory…
Here are some photos from the event… http://photos.logukrishnan.net/redmond/
Logu Krishnan, a Technologist living at Bay Area, California.
