How Microsoft Got Me Blogging (again)

Oh, I've blogged off and on since 2002.  I even remember my old friend Rick Bruner rightly stating that if I am to blog, I should blog consistently.  Of course, I sent one to many blog posts - in those days - to Mr. Bruner, waving the blogging flag as so to convince him of my dedication to the medium.

Patting myself on back, I celebrated my truism, only to revert to my old ways of blogging every now and then.  

Six years have passed and rather than count the long list of forgotten blog topics and nascent followers, I talk about the blogs I've developed, and marketed, on behalf of my clients.  While the list isn't long, many are worth recounting.

But, what draws me back to blogging today, isn't Rick's head peeking around the corner, or an audience that I have culled.  

It's Microsoft.

Today, I was invited by The Conversation Group to personally witness the launch of Microsoft Online Services, as a blogger. 

Here I was, sitting in the center of a press conference listening to Microsoft announce an exciting suite of online services.  You know, like anyone else, I hate to sound to silly, but I do have to tell you what it felt like having this experience.

The event took place at the St Regis Hotel in San Francisco.  It's a living piece of art.  The decor shot from the floor like a modern tech rainbow and carried attendees to the 2nd Floor.  The breakfast spread was the breakfast spread. They're all the same.  Though, the energy in the room could not be matched. 

Microsoft partners were scouting for conversations, and talking up the launch like it was one of the greatest film premieres of all time.  No joke.  I've been to my share of press conferences and user conferences to know that this feeling was not one in the same.

Partners asked when I heard the news, what I heard, what I thought, before we even walked into the auditorium. Microsoft employees were welcoming, talkative and even responsive to peers who had some very tough questions.  

Let's just say here that Microsoft didn't pay me a dime to attend, nor is right now...

Fast forward, post press conference a fellow blogger - and the guy sitting next to me - no names mentioned asked me, "So, what's new?"  And that in itself lit my lightblub.

Nothing, and everything, I responded.

Yes, so, for many of us, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint, are now online, exactly as they are offline, it's truly amazing (to me).  But, what my fellow scribe wasn't seeing is that now creativity is in our hands, the hands of IT.

The IT departments of yesterday are gone.  Microsoft is now truly a platforms Company and like in many years past, is looking to its partners to create applications which will integrate, easily (yes, easily) for users without having to call on IT.  I saw it with my own eyes...

Sure, IT budgets and jobs have and will shift.  Do I need to give you a history lesson on the printing press? Facts are facts, and the world is changing, again, and the creatives are being allowed to rise.  In 1984, Apple galvanized a revolution, and today that revolution, in the enterprise, is ripening with Microsoft.