Windows Phone 7

Coming to Microsoft, I didn’t really know what to expect.  I knew I wanted to work on something that people would use and something I could be proud of.  During the interview process I was convinced that a cool phone was being developed and that the people I interviewed with were excited about it.  It seemed to be a good move, so we did it and I accepted the position.

Not too long after my arrival everything changed.  What was being developed wasn’t working and needed a facelift.  There were some shifting around of teams and a new leadership team was brought in.  The new leadership team came in and created a vision.  Our new charter was to ship something new and with modern capabilities.  We would ship a phone what was reliable and delightful for the user.  There were a lot of nervous people, and admittedly I was one of them.

Now, here we are…a short 18 months later and we shipped.  This means we sent our final software build to the phone makers so they can work their magic and put phones out in the stores.  I use Windows Phone every day and really enjoy it. 

Last week we had quite a party and it was interesting to witness and walk in a parade of 16 floats and a marching band traveling around the Microsoft campus.  Can’t say that ever happened at Raytheon.  We had fun.  Some of the bloggers of the world took things completely out of context and reported that we were celebrating the downfall of other phones.  We weren’t.  We were celebrating the end of a long 18 months of work, including late nights and weekend work.  It was satisfying to know that we finished and that our product is something we can be proud of.

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Fun speech “recognition”

Genni called me this morning and failed to reach me at my desk.  Her resulting voice mail was transcribed to my email.  Can anyone figure out what she was trying to tell me?  Here is the text:

Hi honey.

They came in there Bradley and then I got sent certain partner when it needs tags -- noticed that eggs work gone and I know neighbors are all night -- hello my name is store now I'm in the mail or making that read. Bye Bye.

 

If I remember right, it was something about making banana bread and there were no eggs in the refrigerator and none of the neighbors were home so she had to go to the store.  Don’t believe everything you read.

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