Caleb Jenkins | Developing UX

Last Week in Redmond, and French radio

December 13th, 2005 at 6:00 am (Microsoft)

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Today is my first day back in the office in over 8 days. You wouldn't believe how much email I have to catch up on! I spent last week in Redmond for an intro to Microsoft class. It was amazing. Out of 90 people over 60% of the attendees were not from the US. We truly are a global company! I met some amazing people from France (yes I know), Poland, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Portugal, Peru, Venezuela, and I'm sure some places that I have missed.

This is what I discovered. People from all over the world like to have fun. Karaoke, was fantastic. The people from France are fantastic, even when you disagree on politics, there are tons of things that you agree on. Check out this french radio station. I'm loving this music. I'm sure the words are all about having the government pay for everything or something, but I can't understand most of it... they played OPP the other day, that was cool.

Next time I get the chance to go skiing, I'm going. I had the chance, but I had left all of my “ski” stuff at home. Not that I have that much stuff, snow bib, jacket, ski hat, gloves... but still. I didn't think that buying all of that stuff AND paying for lift tickets for the day would be worth it, I was wrong.

Four hours north of Redmond in Canada is the most amazing skiing in the world (so they tell me). The 2010 winter Olympics are supposed to be there I guess. If I can go there some time... I'm there.

The only “let down” from the week; we got to go see the Microsoft Executive Briefing Center, that was absolutely amazing, but while we were there they showed us the DOOR to the MS Home that I have read so much about. He showed us the DOOR and told us about it. We couldn't go in because of some scheduling conflict or something, the guide was like “just schedule a tour” and we were like “this IS our tour!”... no dice. I really wanted to see that place.

A fantastic week... now back to my email.

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Caleb Jenkins is a Senior Consultant for Improving Enterprises, is a National Speaker for INETA, a Technical Editor for Wrox Press and is a Microsoft MVP. He lives in the Dallas, TX area where he continues to date his beautiful wife and busy himself playing Candy Land and xBox 360 with their four incredible children. Eventually he’ll post some of the gazillion interviews that he's recorded on CommunityCast.tv or blog more... or stop speaking of himself in the third person. more...