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Fargo, North Dakota: I have arrived!

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I left Melbourne on the 10th and spent a week in Chicago and New York before arriving in Fargo on the 17th. The time in Chicago and New York was great. The buildings in Chicago were much bigger than I had anticipated and the subway in New York (I had been to NY before, but hadn't ridden the subway) was a lot safer than I had been led to believe :). The highlight had to be going to Madison Square Garden with my friend Kamil to watch the NY Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs and sitting just 14 rows away from the court!

After staying one night in Fargo at my temporary accomodation, arriving at work for the first time and getting my New Employee Orientation (NEO) out of the way, it was off to Seattle for a meeting of all the MBF PMs. It was a great way to start the week and I learnt a lot about the team, the product and the development process the team is using. The distributed (Fargo, Copenhagen and Redmond) nature of the team is fairly unique for Microsoft and the team has developed some excellent processes for dealing with the challenges and making the most of the advantages that this structure has provided.

I'm just getting settled in and finding my way around the internal Microsoft network. I'm currently swimming in a sea of Microsoft mailing lists and intranet pages. If I have subscribed to too many high-traffic lists I could drown in a flood of mail on Monday, but it is a risk I'm willing to take :).

All in all, it has been a great first week. The product looks great. There is still work to be done before we are ready to release, so we have to make sure we don't get people too excited too early. That, and the likelihood of me getting things wrong is very high at the moment, so I'll just learn the ropes for a couple of weeks and then maybe I'll be able to safely have open conversations again ;).

Comments

  • Anonymous
    October 25, 2004
    Hi, and congratulations on your new job!

    I'd be really intrested in hearing about the distubuted processes you guys are using. I'm working on setting up a team in 3 different cites (Reykjavik, Dublin and Copenhagen) and It would be great to get some pointer from you guys.

    - O.d.
  • Anonymous
    October 26, 2004
    I might be able to give you my opinions, but I don't think I'll be able to talk about the processes Microsoft uses. If this changes, I'll make a post about it. Go ahead and ask questions however, and I'll answer from my personal experience.
  • Anonymous
    October 26, 2004
    Hey! Welcome to North Dakota! Nice to hear of people moving into the the state instead of away from it.

    I Hope everying goes well for you and you enjoy our great state.