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One Man Shouting

Trying to change the world, one thought at a time

Impressions and Observations from PDC08October 31

I just finished up my first time attending Microsoft's Professional Developers Conference and wanted to capture a few random observations.

This conference is beyond huge!  I was trying to unit-ize my perception of the size, and all I could come up with is "several football fields" worth of people.

The conference was run very well.  The event staff did an amazing job.  I did notice that they held some pretty strict people-routing rules and some of the attendees would get upset when they were told to go to the center doors of the Big Room in order to get to a meal that was in hall G or K.  If you've ever been responsible for maintaining order with a large gaggle of people you would recognize that they were doing it right.  If you wait until the line becomes a problem, it's too late to fix it.  You have to send people along the path that a long line would take in order to keep this from becoming a problem.

The Cloud is coming.  Microsoft's Azure has a ton of promise and it'll be interesting to see how it rolls out over the next decade.  I've always been a big fan of Amazon's S3 and EC2, and it's awesome to see Microsoft hit this space with a coherent broad strategy that covers not just silo'd implementations of stora

One Man's Over-Simplified View of the Stock MarketOctober 11

It's a bit troubling to watch investments freefall like they did last week.  It seems like everyone is expecting the government to be able to pull some sort of brake to stop the freefall, but in actuality there's very little that the government can do that will have an immediate effect on the stock market. 

In my mind, I have over-simplified the pricing of stocks to this:

[Stock Price] = α[intrinsic value] x ß[extrinsic value multiplier]

Every stock valuation equation that I've ever seen ends up being some derivative of the above, where the intrinsic value is pretty constant and is related to the company's holdings and it's ability to generate consistent profits. The extrinsic value is subjective and can vary widely and can be seen more as a measure of the confidence that the pubic has in a company.

Over the last few weeks, the real inherent value of the companies that make of the DJIA, the S&P, and the market as a whole has not really changed.  What has changed it the perception of the extrinsic value, i.e. the potential for continued growth in value and earnings, and the ability of the company to weather a slump in the economy.

Now the interesting dilemma facing those in power right now is that everyone is screaming that they need to fix ß when the only way to fix ß is to set up a system that protects α, and that gives confidence to the public that you will continue to support α in the future.

As much as I am ins

Minor Changes for One Man ShoutingSeptember 13

It's been a pretty long time since I blogged regularly.  A lot of great stuff has happened over the last two years, and I've found that I don't have a lot of time or energy left for blogging, and it's pretty easy to let it slide.  I still stand by my "No apologies needed" stance for taking a break from blogging, but I've been thinking that I'm going to start blogging more regularly, but it might not be quite the same as before.  I figured that it was worth a post to kind of let subscribers know where I'm thinking I'll be taking this blog in the future.

My previous style was mostly commentary on the technology industry and transitional media (blogging, podcasts, online video), mobile technology, and pretty much anything else I read online and had an opinion on.  I never talked about work, steered clear of politics, and pretty much just stuck with technology. 

In the future, I might talk a bit about work (although anything related directly to the work I do will likely be over at my work blog). I might touch on social issues (not "political" social issues, but broader topics like productivity, communication, motivation, etc.), and I'll probably still talk about technology, but just keep in mind that I work for a big company and that puts some practical limits on the types of speculation that I can do, and migh

Piling on: Our team rocks, and they're hiring...December 21 2007

 

Matt and Patrick have both posted recently that our team is still looking for more full-time hires.  Patrick points out many of the perks, and Matt highlights how working for Microsoft in Charlotte can be a great opportunity.

I just wanted to add my thoughts into the mix.  I've only actually worked 2 weeks, and now I'm out on "ICL" which is how they refer to Infant Care Leave at Microsoft.  In addition to all the stuff Patrick highlights, this ICL thing is by far my favorite benefit so far.  Even though my youngest son was born before I joined Microsoft, they allowed me to take the same 4 weeks off that any new Microsoft dad gets.  (I'll refer any questions about how this works to someone in HR, I believe you just have to take it within 6 months of the child's birth.)

In the first two weeks, the team has been awesome, helping me get machines set up the right way, teaching me the tools that we use to manage workload, bringing me up to speed on the messaging technologies we support.  I'm very psyched to get back to work, but for now I'm making the best use of my ICL by getting the family moved down to Charlotte.  The truck le

Media UtopiaNovember 3 2007

(Warning, semi-rambling post ahead...)

Lately I’ve been thinking about how we use media.  A little over a year ago, we joined the DVR revolution with DirecTv’s DVR option, and this taste of flexibility has highlighted exactly how far behind technology we’re lagging in consumer experience.  The DVR is a nice little island utopia.  As long as we’re at the TV with the DVR, the kids have their pick of their favorite shows.  My wife and I can watch a show that we missed, or that we recorded because it was too late for us to stay up.  Unfortanely as soon as you sail away from the island, all is lost.  The DVD player in the car can only serve up movies that we have physical discs for (what an archaic concept!).  My Zune only holds music, videos and pictures that I explicitly put onto is (I don’t keep a lot of media on my computer, so I have to go out of my way to sync stuff.)  My family pictures, home movies, and other digital media mostly lives on our Windows Home Server, which makes it very accessible to our home computers, but not very useful on the road.

What would utopia look like?  Media shared everywhere. If my family owns it, I want it available wherever.

In practice, it’s not this simple.  How would data get from the DVR to the server?  How do you deal with devices with limited storage (come to think of it, every device has some sort of limit)?  How does data get onto the Zune, into the car, etc.

I’m thinking that