Influencing the Microsoft culture one open source presentation at a time

The thing I love most about my job is being creative in how I’m trying to get an idea or message across, especially when it comes down to challenging the Microsoft culture.   So, it’s probably a safe bet that no one has ever seen a sign like this before on Redmond campus:

Embrace Open Source on CodePlex Weds at 1pm sign

view of sign from within the office

Yep, that’s my office.  Surprisingly, it wasn’t that difficult to write backwards, but the ‘s’ gave me trouble.  I knew i was spelling things right because people downstairs at lunch were mouthing the words, trying to figure out what i was writing.  =)

For you MSFT internals wondering if you can see the on-demand version, I’m on the Engineering Excellence Talk circuit for May 15 (ironically the 1 year anniversary of the power toys) called  “Lessons Learned Going Open with the Power Toys”.  So make sure to sign up when the next newsletter goes out…

And for those of you who attended, there’s nothing like having a fever (didn’t get sick until the night before – too late to postpone) while giving a presentation on embracing open source at Microsoft, hence the 3 bottles of water I shotgun down during the hour.  Now, the question I’m wondering is if I had fainted during the Q&A (yes, the white dots were getting quite annoying), would that have helped my cause or hindered it?