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:

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?

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 09, 2007
  The MSFT teams are doing an awesome community service on Codeplex, I salute everyone, with honors, for this.

• Anonymous
  March 09, 2007
  Source: Sara Ford's WebLog : Influencing the Microsoft culture one open source presentation at a time

• Anonymous
  March 09, 2007
  Great, now I'm trying to ID all the toys on your window ledge. Are plush toy collections covered by the "Nice Girls..." book? :-)

• Anonymous
  March 09, 2007
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 09, 2007
  This is awesome in so many ways -- keep up the good work.

• Anonymous
  March 09, 2007
  Hey Sara - I just sent your blog posting to the CodePlex Team. I Happened to find it by chance from my RSS feed to MSDN blogs.  Thanks for the shout out! :) Michael Greenleaf Microsoft CodePlex Team www.codeplex.com

• Anonymous
  March 12, 2007
  Good for you!  Your entire team's been terrific on this front -- and y'all build great tools, too.

• Anonymous
  March 12, 2007
  The open-source Java folks I know use CVS directly to projects on the net. CodePlex requires a download, change, upload.  It should allow access thru Team Explorer... unless I'm missing something. If CodePlex does have TFS integration across the net, it's not obvious how to set it up.  This one factor could make all the difference in promoting open source. Friction-free coding!  :)

• Anonymous
  March 12, 2007
  Hi Dave, Yes, you can connect to CodePlex via Team Explorer, provided you are a developer or coordinator on the project.  

• Anonymous
  March 14, 2007
  Today, a lighter post and link to Sara Ford's blog which talks about her recent presentation to Microsoft employees entitled, "Embracing Open Source on Codeplex." Sara, a developer/evangelist with Microsoft on the Visual Studio Powertoys team, has been

• Anonymous
  March 16, 2007
  Hey Sara, It was a pleasure speaking with you at the MVP Summit and in the Westin Lobby.  Keep up the great work and try to show a little excitement about what you do eh? (for those that haven't met Sara, if she was any more enthusiastic, I think she'd start shifting dimensions) Dave

• Anonymous
  March 19, 2007
  Did you go to college at UCF?

• Anonymous
  March 19, 2007
  No, although i once drove by University of Central Florida's campus.  I went to Miss State Univ.

• Anonymous
  May 11, 2007
  Just wanted to share with you some of the internal-facing work I’ve been doing as of late. Over the past