Small Fry
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Late last year, my pal Mel Carson dropped me a line and asked if I fancied showing Stephen Fry some of our technology. Naturally I leapt at the chance and a month or so later, Mel and I spent a thoroughly enjoyable 90 minutes with Stephen and I toured him through Worldwide Telescope, Seadragon, Pivot, Bing Maps, Windows Live Photo Gallery, my Vaio X running Windows 7 and an Asus tablet PC. I knew of Stephen’s fondness for all things Apple and was pleased to hear him talk about a need for biodiversity in the technology ecosystem – essentially saying competition was great for everyone as it meant greater innovation.
As we sipped the of our tea and biscuits, Stephen admitted to being disappointed in having to leave for a lunch engagement and as he walked out of the door he turned to Mel and uttered a sentence I’ll not forget in a while. It was a fun 90 minutes in the company of Lord Melchett and Mel and I sat back afterwards and wondered if it has all just happened. We’d spent a good while with a thoroughly decent, funny and tech loving chap and been delighted in his response.
Fast forward several months and another friend James Tutt picked up the baton and asked Stephen if he’s like to join us for the Windows Phone 7 launch. What followed was covered admirably last week by folks like Rory Cellan Jones, Charles Arthur and Jemima Kiss and Stephen cracked a few memorable one liners. Hats off to James for pursuing a somewhat risky strategy and to Mel for getting Stephen in to our offices in the first place. Definitely one of my more memorable days at Microsoft.
What I enjoyed most about this whole episode Stephen’s approach – his ears, literally and figuratively, are bigger than his mouth. He’s clearly a technology enthusiast and contrary my own impression that he’d be bloody hard to shift from a world of Apple he was remarkably open, charming, fun and intrigued with everything we had to say. He displayed no bias, no need for an angle or an axe to grind. Just honest-to-goodness enthusiasm for tech and an ability to make it of interest to the average person.
I have much to learn.
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- Anonymous
October 17, 2010
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October 17, 2010
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