My US tour closes out with Ozzie

I’m writing this from Atlanta airport on the final leg of my US tour – over 2 weeks in the US at Worldwide Partner Conference, a short vacation in Miami and then on to our Global Sales Conference in Atlanta. Talk about heat!

I’ve been at the company getting on for 11 years now and I have to say after this two weeks I couldn’t be more excited about working here. At the Partner Conference I had huge fun as we formally announced the business model for Microsoft Online. The people I’ve had the fortune to work with on this are some of the hardest working, passionate and fun people I’ve worked with in the company. It was very rewarding to participate in this birth.

Miami was a great break and then on to Atlanta and I was back with some of the same folks having fun as we talked with lots of groups about Software plus Services and what it means for our company and the industry.

Then the BIG highlight – I got to work with Ray Ozzie and his team on a presentation have gave to our group and the next day saw him lay out our S+S plans to the company.

WOW. He blew me away. I write about Ray a lot on this blog and have huge admiration for him but the presentation he gave this weekend was astonishing. The constant stream of text messages I got from friends and colleagues during the session confirmed that they thought the same. Sadly I can’t tell you anything of the content of his talk but it confirmed to me that I truly have one of the best jobs in the company – helping to take this message out to Microsoft worldwide and getting to watch (albeit from a short distance) the work of Ray and his team. I’ve been to 11 of these global sales events and seen some amazing stuff. This weekend for the first time I decided to sit in row 2 where you can’t fall asleep and I had no need to. I beamed for almost an hour as Ray and the team laid out the future for the company with S+S. Breathtaking stuff.

For those who were there you will understand when I say “I believe - - - the world is about to see Microsoft v3”