Hero Worship

One of the cool things about working at Microsoft is that when you have a question, you can pick from an array of really smart people to get an answer. Want to know why C# does whatever strange thing that annoys you? Ask Anders. Want to know when Windows Live Spaces will have feature X? Ask Mike or Jay. And when you have one of those open-ended questions like, "Is <this strange concept> even a good idea?" you can ask a host of people. My current project is one of those strange concepts.

So previously I asked Jon Udell to look at my project. Even though I've known Jon for years, I was nervous. Today, on the advice of Peter O'Kelly, I demoed to J.J. Allaire. I was 15 minutes late and wound up taking up 15 minutes at the end of the meeting gushing about Windows Live Writer and asking questions about when it will have some changes. I'm afraid I probably came across as a bit of a star-struck kid, not a mature (ahem) GPM.

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 10, 2007
  It wasn't the case for my friend, who was an adash, when he emailed rayo and jpincus to ask a couple of questions about search technology. He never received any response, although he later followed up with them a few times. I realize that they were probably very busy at the time, but they seemed to be a million lightyears away from my friend. It's really hard to approach these people.