Last Thursday Microsoft held its annual company meeting at Safeco Field in Seattle.  This is when Microsoft comes together to talk about the different business groups, show demos of future releases, and talk about where we’re going as a company. 

To help explain what it’s like being there, it reminds me of a high school pep rally in a way.  (Can you tell I was a cheerleader?  :)  Most teams have something that will unite them as a group.  What I mean by this is one group had green hats on, another had red scarves, and our HR team had blue seat cushions.  When a specific team’s product is mentioned, the group goes crazy with screaming and clapping.  It is really fun to watch and participate in.

This year we had Rainn Wilson as our host, and he was quite hysterical!  Not to mention that pyrotechnics were involved which scared me and my co-worker every time that loud BOOM went off.   It made everyone around us laugh when we jumped.   I do want to thank the Live Experiences team for creating the Buzzword Bingo cards.  We happened to get our hands on one, and it was entertaining trying to make a bingo with the words the speakers might say.  :)  And the last bit is that we set a world record at our meeting!  We had the most number of paper airplanes in the air at one time.  That was a sight to see!

The demos were amazing and although I can’t talk specifics since it’s confidential, I am really looking forward to the next Outlook release.  That will definitely help streamline my day to day work.  I’m excited about where Microsoft is going in the future.  There are so many opened opportunities for us to make an impact on everyone’s daily life.  The door is wide opened!

If you attended your first company meeting this year, I would love to hear about your experience.  Just remember to keep it general since a lot of what we say is top secret.