Reflections on Ray

I arrived back in San Francisco last night after a great conference in Atlanta, and despite being a little drained (totally my own choice) I couldn’t help be excited by two particular keynotes I saw. 

Firstly Craig Mundie gave some insight into some of the advances we are making in Surface and showed how it can provide truly unique and immersive experiences to enhance the way we interact with the world.  He also touched on the work that Microsoft Research are doing in the search for a vaccine for AIDS and how new ways of interacting with computers are on the horizon.  Some of the stuff that was showed off reminded me of science fiction movies from a few years back – and whilst the technology needs a bit of polishing it’s great to see we are nearly there.

Ray Ozzie then eclipsed all that and gave one of the best speeches I have ever seen.  Over the past three years Ray has been steadily building confidence and trust between Microsofties and is obviously conscious of the history that has come before him, but rather than trying to out hit Bill, he is clearly focused on creating the next Microsoft (Version 3 as he calls it) and a new legacy that builds on the work of the past 30 years.  He has often talked – some would argue ambiguously – about what software he is working on, but during his keynote the pieces started to fall into place.  Where Ray has often talked about the vision future, on Saturday he started to show some of what that vision looked like – and it looked well architected, solid and connected.

This year is going to be extremely exciting for Microsoft, moons are going to align and we are going to make some huge waves online.  It’s something that can’t come soon enough in my opinion and beyond the technology, it’ll be interesting to see how business models both from a Microsoft and Partner perspective adapt. 

During Ray’s speech I finally think he achieved what he has been trying to do for the last three years – connect with and gain absolute trust with Microsoft itself and in the vision he has for the company.  I felt like the thousands of people in that room had their epiphany all at once.  An epiphany that Microsoft is evolving, ready to compete and grow in new markets with new product delivered in different ways.