I thought I will spend one artical talking about my formative years in Microsoft as I had the immense pleasure of spending more than half of my career there, about 9 years. It was one of the best experiences I could ever ask for. When I joined in 1996, there were only about 30 of us. Now there are more than 200 not counting the interns and contract folks. There were many cool stuff that MS offered and provided me but the most enjoyable was the encouragement to face our fears and stand on stage. At that time, due to resource constraints, we were needed to present on stage, demo or even be media savvy at a drop of the hat.
Microsoft made us all presenters, DJs, talk show hosts, used car sales persons, emcees and Demo God n Godesses. If we left MS, any of these could have been our second calling.
In my many years in MS, I was able to experience different roles but nothing was more enjoyable then my first role in MS. We were part of the unit called End User Customer Unit (EUCU) which focused on desktop applications and retail experience. Of course our biggest money earner was MS Office 95. My first title was MOLP Manager (you'd think that with all their creativity, they could think of a heck of a lot better name) which stood for Microsoft Open License Program. That title lasted for 6 hours as it took that long to whine, beg and threaten my manager to change it to something else. Our unit not only looked after MS Office but also games like Monster Trucks and Mech Warrior and my team mate had the coolest job of demoing games and assessing retail space. Of course we took turns demoing those games. Alex and I usually won. We will take our show on the road almost every quarter as we travel to Penang, JB, Kuching and KK. We met business partners who were very friendly towards us and took us everywhere and I mean everywhere. We were actually taken to a super seedy pub called "Papaya Farm" and they were not serving fruits. I leave it to your imagination.
The most amazing was how we all took to the stage and become better than average presenters. That is no mean feat because an average person's number one fear is speaking in public and no 2 is death. That means at a funeral, an average person would rather be in the casket than giving the eulogy. We had many memorable moments and my first major event was launching Office 97 at the Renaissance to about 800 people. Office 2000 was launched at PWTC to 2000 people!!! We had different pairs of MS folks going up on mechanized platform behind the backdrop to demo different business scenarios. I remember going up with a Chindian brother Patrick and hoping he didnt make sudden moves and get us both tumbling from the 3x3 feet platform in front of 2000 people. We put a lot of first timers on stage and it was kinda hilarious to see them making a fool of themselves (or so they thought). These launches are really addictive to the point that I even missed my flight to Seattle during the Windows 98 launch.
There was ground breaking and trend setting launch of Windows XP where we book the location in front of Star Hill, had Deanna Yusuf sing for us and had pretty dancers lead pedestrians to do the Para-Para. It was rumoured that we had a bomoh hold the rain off for 6 hours. When the drizzle finally came, we still had people dancing and buying off our booths. It was also the first time I auditioned "talent" to peddle our product for the midnight sale. Yep we had a midnight sale on the night before where my very good friend KT was going around literally shouting into people's faces in his New York accent to take advantage of the low price at midnight on Bukit Bintang. Now THAT'S entertainment.
Fast forward to the launch of Windows Server 2003, we got a whole bunch of us and put on a skit for the launch where we depicted a life of a IT Manager with and without Windows Server 2003. The skit included me as a gravity-defying teh-tarik-making mamak, Alex and the big fat boss (didn't need to put too much costume there) my Chindian brothers Joseph as the Virus and Patrick as the IT Manager (lead role la). You had to see it to enjoy it. For the first time we had a boom stick to catch it all on tape. (Boom stick is there they put a camera at the end of a moving gantry gate-like stick so that you can capture the movie on high angles). It was played out to almost 3000 people.
I am very glad and it was heart warming that after some years away from MS, I still have folks coming up to me and mentioning how enjoyable it was. Some colleagues and I also had the good fortune to be media trained (so we know how to talk to press la) and we made videos and even appeared on TV. I will share more of our event - behind the scenes later. Right now, I gotta debug my Windows Vista...geez!!!
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