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Blake Irving Retirement BashOne of my favorite leaders at Microsoft, Blake Irving (Corp Vice President for Live Platform), had his retirement bash today. Blake's an avid golf player and holds an annual golf tournament, so it was fitting that his party was at the Newcastle Golf Club (incredible views over Bellevue and Seattle) where we played an 18 hole round of "best ball" in teams. My team score of 18 over par was not one to be proud off, but it was great fun nonetheless. Blake will be leaving officially next month and then set off for a round the world trip with his wife and two sons. One of the reasons Blake says he is leaving is to spend more time with his family who live in California.
I first met Blake when I worked in business development, working on deals ranging from Yahoo/MSN IM interoperability to closure of MSN Adult Groups. When I moved on to Spaces, I got to see more of Blake in strategy and business reviews and as his in house go-to-person for Spaces business and marketing questions. When we re-organized and Blake stopped being in my reporting chain, I kept in touch with Blake as an informal mentor. He really had an impact on me as an employee and I started to think why.
I think it's because Blake is one of those rare leaders that maintains a truly human touch, deeply caring for the people around him, even as he progressed throug the corporate ranks. He is one of those guys that makes you feel like you are important and I appreciated that a lot as someone new starting in MSN. Blake was also able to get much deeper into understanding details of the business and product than many other leaders I have seen. I don't expect senior execs to know every aspect of a product in detail, but generally Blake showed more of an aptitude for understanding the product than most. That made it easier for him to get respect from his organization who saw him as more than just a title. The other and may be most important thing is his desire to maintain work-life balance. Blake commuted from California every week but still managed to run his organization effectively. He struggled to find enough time to give to his kids as they grew older and ultimately, always put his family first. I really respect that and it's a factor that I know is going to be important in my life.
I wish Blake all the best in the future, hope to emulate many of his great traits and to meet other leaders like him that I can work with and learn from. Interesting Article on Naming at MicrosoftThere is often a tension between more fuzzy marketers coming wanting to launch names like PopFly, Silverlight and Surface and the more platform centric view that tries to consolidate around single brands. It's a healthy tension with the right motives in mind but is an interesting problem to think about. How do you balance "brand" proliferation with shared bets when it comes to naming. This article touches on some of these issues. Quote http://news.com.com/Microsoft+looks+to+improve+its+name+game/2100-1024_3-6196967.html?tag=cd.lede Search Results Leading to MeI don't get that many page views on this blog (78,560 according to the tool) but was curious to see how people find me. The Statistics feature in Spaces shows the referring URLs so I decided to check some of these out who the referrers were. It appears that the vast majority of traffic comes from Google search. But what got me curious were some of the searches themselves. I seem to appear in top ten Google listings for the following searches:
How bizarre. The searches are from all over the place .... a lot from China, UK and Mexico for some reason. It just makes you think about how visible you are as even a small time blogger on the Internet. Try it out on your site and you never know what you may find! Leaving Spaces Team and Last Team EventWell, after almost three years as Product Manager, Product Planner and Product Marketer for Windows Live Spaces (nee MSN Spaces on December 1st 2004), it's time for me to move to a new role. I'll be heading to the Microsoft Business Division as Director of Technical Product Management for our Office Communications Server 2007, Office Communicator 2007 and VOIP Devices portfolio. This is an exciting opportunity for Microsoft overall (check out the press release) and one that allows me to get to know the “other side of the business” more deeply. But I'll be sad to leave the team, especially after events like the last one Pooja organized. Each team member had been organizing events that represent their passions ... we've had Charlotte teaching a step aerobics class, Ali on snowboarding, me on Indian cooking, Marty on biking and finally Pooja on painting. We got together at Pooja's place to paint a mural on canvass, with everyone taking a section each. We then headed to do a wine mixing class (after a lazy game of Trivial Pursuit to kill time) where we used the mural as the wine label (a Bordeaux blend called "Purple Lounge" :-)). Check out these pictures!
This is one of the best teams I have ever worked with and I wish them all the best of luck. I will miss them, but will have a few lasting keepsakes - the mural on my wall, a bottle of wine and a CD I am making with each team members favorite songs and pick me up songs. Just to embarrass them, this is what I have!
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