It’s been so far a fantastic experience for me attending MIX10. Apart from the fact it’s held in Las Vegas, Nevada :), it’s been very interesting for me since this is my first MIX ever. Being a regular attendee at traditional developer conferences like TechEd and PDC, MIX strikes me as an amazing combination of developers, designers, and media-connected persons. Not the usual gang I was used to meet at Microsoft conferences. On top of that, I have to admit I’ve never seen such an abundance of Macs per square meter :) at a Microsoft conference.
Besides the obvious differences I’ve noticed, and perhaps in an unexpected kind of way, one thing strikes me more than ever: a sense of freshness in the air. Being seriously involved with Microsoft technologies via the Microsoft Regional Director Program, I dare to say I’m more or less in the loop with most developments originating from the Redmond giant. This enabled me during the last say 5 years to have a front-row seat to Microsoft’s change in terms of corporate culture and technological vision. These days, seeing stuff like Windows Phone with its amazing user experience and free (yes, no mistake here) developer tools, Silverlight 4, OData, and many more, I fully realized this is not the Microsoft I’ve used to know for decades anymore. The company that used to do things like implementing proprietary protocols when ubiquitous and proven ones were available or hiding God knows what kind of knowledge behind binary, proprietary file formats in Office, is now a thing of the past. Today’s Microsoft is and plays a whole different ball game. It’s open, capable of leaving hypocrisy aside, and what’s the most important thing for me, more innovative than ever. So the question popped up in my mind: what was the catalyst of this amazing transformation?
The answer became apparent and obvious to me during a meeting that we, Regional Directors, had yesterday with Bill Buxton, Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research. On a personal note, meeting Bill was one of the few enlightening experiences I’ve ever had during my professional career. The guy is plain and simple, nothing short of amazing. But let me get back to the point. We discussed a lot about how amazing technologies like the mouse, multi-touch, and many others went below the radar for many years until surfacing as life-changing “novelties”. It’s amazing how the most important, ground-breaking products we’ve seen in past years express nothing more than innovative ways of putting together existing (sometimes already mature) technologies. The first thing that comes to my mind is the iPhone. Well, I digress … again …
Windows Phone is fantastic. It’s very very very late, true. But it manages to zero out all the competitive advantage held by its competitors, iPhone and Android. On top of that, it comes with a truly amazing developer experience unfolding within the boundaries of free developer tools. Windows 7 is the embodiment of what I’ve always wanted an operating system to be. Yes, it comes after that thing we called Vista :), but still, it just rocks. Silverlight is by far the brightest star on the horizon. And the list goes on with Bing, Visual Studio, XBOX, and many more.
So, back to my question. Windows 7, Windows Phone, Silverlight, Bing, Visual Studio 2010, and XBOX are all technologies that are not just good, they are truly inspiring. Some of them are already proven and some have yet to prove their potential. Some might even fail on the long run. Still, how come Microsoft did manage to stay or get into all these games? There is only one word in the answer: competition. Without Linux being what it is, i dare to say we wouldn’t have today Windows 7. We’d still be stuck with the cozy and rather mediocre user experience of Windows Mobile had the iPhone never been invented. Probably no Silverlight without Flash, no Bing without Google, no XBOX Project Natal without Wii, and so on. Every single time, Microsoft proved this amazing capability of either leading the game, or getting back in the game with a vengeance.
The amazing part is that pressure from Linux, iPhone, Safari, Firefox, and Google (and others obviously) had a spectacular side-effect: not only did they change Microsoft’s products, but they did change Microsoft itself. And that’s never been so obvious as these days at MIX10.
This why I honestly think that, besides being some its most fierce competitors, Linux, iPhone, Safari, Firefox, and Google prove to be also Microsoft’s best friends. Long live competition!
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