Steve Balmer Speaks

Say what you like about Steve Balmer, head honcho at Microsoft, but he can work an audience. We saw him in action today at the summit keynote. At the end of it I was left feeling that at the moment Microsoft doesn’t have all the answers, but it is certainly asking all the right questions.

In the evening we headed out to Jillian’s Billiards for some fun and games. The weather was dark and wet, something of a Seattle speciality it would seem. I got a bit carried away taking pictures of the traffic through the bus windows.

I think I was lucky to get this shot, which has the Space Needle in it – perhaps with a bit more post-processing I can actually make it visible….

We had a great time, I even managed to get a go at table tennis. And no, I didn’t fall off the table. On the way out to the taxi we were talking about business cards for some reason and I said that I thought it would be really cool to be able to whip out a playing card and say “The card you chose was the three of clubs” when someone gave me their business card. Well, I thought it was mildly amusing. Then Jeff produced this:

I think he had the other 51 cards with him as well.

Kudos to the Microsoft folks for a giving us such an interesting day and responding so constructively to the stuff that we said. Special shout out to Stephanie who is one of those organisers around whom the right things just seem to happen as though by magic.  Thanks for making everything work so well.