Regained faith in Microsoft? Maybe, Maybe not.
by cindy ~ November 19th, 2008. Filed under: WA Web Week 08, development.As I waited for Microsoft evangelist Nick Hodge to begin his talk at Edge of the Web on “Not your father’s Microsoft” I fully expected it to be a time when I could steal a little shut eye. Even though like most people I use a lot of MS products, I come from a predominantly Linux based atmosphere that is decidedly very much anti Microsoft. If something goes wrong with any of my software, the standard response is “its Microsoft, what do you expect”.
However, I was intrigued by Nicks passion with his subject matter. He made no apologies for the dodgy practices of Microsoft’s yesterday, and talked of better tomorrows & greater responsibilities. Nick has been a big supporter of open-source software for years & he envisions a huge future for the marriage of Microsoft & Open Source software which he admitted Microsoft was late to embrace.
Nick also spoke with enthusiasm on:
IronRuby - Ruby & the .Net platform
&
Silverlight tools for Eclipse - a more common framework for development
Nick was also very animated when discussing the uses of Microsoft on a Mac.
After watching Microsoft’s latest television commercial “I’m a PC”, I think they need to have a talk with Nick Hodge about the “right” way to market their product. I can almost guarantee that my neighbour wouldn’t even know what a PC was. Yet would they be excited by anything Nick discusses or writes on… maybe, maybe not … but at least it will involved intelligent conversation rather than mockery.
