Perpetual Learning

Build 2015: My first //Build

Ivan R. Judson -

Over the course of time I've worked for and with a great many enterprises. Some public, some private, some "key players", some "boutique" -- almost every one of those collaborations was driven by a purpose: A project to complete, software to write, a device to build -- stories to be told.

A decade ago, I attended WWDC. I helped found (the now defunct) maclearning and macresearch communities to round out the (then thriving) macenterprise community. All before the epic changes we've seen in Apple.

I was in the keynote when Steve announced Mac OS X. I was there for Universal binaries (we actually registered phatbinary.org just for fun - during the keynote).

Nothing prepared me for my first //build.

I work for John Shewchuk in a team named Strategic Engagements. What you saw in the keynotes of this conference were but a glimpse of the awesome I get to experience every day. I'm only 11 months at Microsoft, but let me share some highpoints of my time already:

  1. Joined a newly forming team as member #5ish - nobody actually knows anymore.
  2. Paris for a week learning about AllJoyn, later, we announce Windows 10 support for AllJoyn.
  3. Lots of hackathons helping startups and companies solve problems. A few interesting ones (go check them out!):
    A. Heatworks Model1
    B. WallFlower
    C. Chai Energy
    D. Scanalytics
    E. Sensorberg
    F. Unnamed companies doing awesomenes.
  4. Going on the talk circuit, giving talks on AllJoyn, Hadoop, The Internet of Things, Innovation, and Microsoft.
  5. Attending //Build 2015.

At this point, I'm going to hide in a tech cave and work on a set of cool projects that we can use to launch next years assault on your notion of what Microsoft is.

This is not your dad's Microsoft. We have a leader. With a Vision.

We have the band. We have windows10. We have HoloLens.

More importantly, we have a deep bench. Keep your eyes open. It's going to be a wild ride!