Flashback

It all started day before yesterday. Late in the evening, I got a call from my group's director to help him with a demo of Visual Studio for Devices. We sat together and brainstormed on what a good demo would be. He mentioned that the demo was just a couple of days away so I should probably do it. No sweat - I've done these demos so many times before that I can do them in my sleep.

After a bit more brainstorming, I casually asked him "So, what's this demo for anyway?". Demos like this are a part of life at Microsoft - you do them for everyone from prospective customers, conferences, partner teams, etc. I was expecting something along those lines.

And definitely not what he said next.

"The demo's for Ray Ozzie. He's visiting the IDC and he's doing a review of all the product teams"

Umm. Gulp.

Ray Ozzie? RAY OZZIE? The dude taking over BillG's job? Instantly, all my bravado went out the window and I was considering falling sick or getting abducted by aliens. Anything to get out of this.

Let me take a little detour and explain how these reviews go. For a background, search the net for 'BillG Review'. These are big meetings where BillG traditionally listens to your product's current status, vision, future plans and watches a demo and generally makes sure you're not doing something dumb. They are also legendary for people getting slaughtered by Bill (Joel's account is milder than many accounts I've heard internally). You can never be sure how true these stories are.

But still. :-)

Resigned to doing the demo, I worked at getting something good in shape. As time went on, I realized how a big a deal this is and how lucky I was - I've known people who've worked here for 10+ years and never met BillG. I was going to meet the man who's going to replace Bill. This was a *big* deal, even more so since I was huge fan of Ray's work.

Interestingly, this is not the first time I've interacted with Ray. I had sent him a long mail some time back about some of the things that I thought Microsoft should do and shouldn't do. I was blown away when he replied instantly, with an even longer reply. Here he was, the Chief Software Architect for Microsoft, responding to a random employee multiple levels below him. I'm sure that doesn't happen in too many other places.

The Big Day

...was today. I had a mental checklist that I kept reciting to myself. Things like "Don't start every sentence with the word 'So'". More importantly, things like "Don't crack stupid jokes. No stupid jokes. Remember - no stupid jokes". I was convinced that I would make a wisecrack that would get me into trouble (have a long history with those).

I made it a point to get to the meeting room way before the scheduled team. My laptop carried my demo, rehearsed a 1000 times over. Ray was already inside the crowded room reviewing one of the other teams. I peered inside and had the same feeling Joel had when he first saw BillG. Two legs...two hands...hey..this guy is not so different from me after all. :-)

Soon, I was inside, awaiting my turn. I watched Ray closely as he watched the teams come and strut their stuff. Unlike BillG, Ray didn't take any notes at all (though somebody with him did). When it was time to ask questions, I was stunned by Ray's depth of technical knowledge. He would go all guns blazing with questions like "Do you guys use technology X? What does it mean for Y? Have you guys thought about Z? Have you spoken to teams A, B and C who are doing a different form of X? ".

However, unlike Bill, Ray was always soft-spoken - even when he didn't like something, he was polite...but firm about it. I was impressed with his knowledge of the competitive landscape - he often knew of arcane features in some competitor's product - or in certain cases, competitors I hadn't heard of.

Before I knew it, my director was speaking. Soon I heard the magic words "Now, over to Sriram for the demo".

Showtime

I looked across the table and saw Ray gazing intently at me, with a statesmanly smile on his face.

Deep breath.

Another deep breath.

I launched enthusiastically into my prepared routine. I went through my demo, making sure I call out all the key things I wanted to. I was too scared to look at Ray, so I just kept looking at my laptop, walking through the demo I had practiced a hundred times before.

After building the app, I hit F5 to run the app on the emulator. Knowing this would take time, I kept talking. Soon, I had run out of things to say - I was painfully aware that the cursor was still spinning. Panic mode was starting to set in.

I was furiously thinking of what could be wrong. Did I make a mistake while building it? Had something bad happened? This definitely wasn't good.

Awkward silence in room

After the longest 6 seconds of my life, everything suddenly worked and the app showed up on the emulator, in all its glory. I don't think anyone in the room missed my sigh of relief.Ray quizzed us a bit (sorry - can't reveal what he asked us) and he was pretty happy with what we've been doing so far.

Day and career saved, I sunk back into my chair and watched the rest of the reviews. I was impressed with the mental effort he put into each of the reviews - it must be a tough job to sit through these reviews all day, knowing entire projects hinged on your comments.

What's the worst that could happen?

Soon, it was time for a break. This was my cue to leave the room and make room for the next set of presenters. I got a lot of people come and tell me that they loved my demo. Me - I was just relieved that it was over.

As I was walking back to the elevator, I turned back for something and spotted Ray alone near the coffee machine, getting a cup of coffee.

Do I dare?

What the heck! - what's the worst that could happen? :-)

I strode briskly over to where he was standing, thrust out my hand and introduced myself. What followed was a short but *really* interesting conversation. Ray remembered me well for my long mail to him. We spoke about multiple things - from Live to Zune to XBox to Microsoft as a whole. I covered a *lot* of ground in the short time we spoke.

I walked away from the conversation super impressed. When BillG announced his retirement, I was sure that no one could take his place. Maybe no one can - but I believe now that the company is in safe hands. I may never meet Ray Ozzie again in my career at Microsoft but the wheels he has set in motion is going to impact me and every other single employee we have.

And I mean that in a good way.

In a really good way. :-)


Random notes

1. Ray carries the coolest Windows Mobile phone I've ever seen. Someone told me that it was a pre-release device which is not on the market. The privileges of running Microsoft!

2. I had to leave out a lot of detail in this blog post as a lot of the things we spoke about and a lot of content in the reviews is stuff that is confidential or has not been revealed to the public yet. Perhaps 10 years later, I can come in and replace the Xs and Ys with their real names :-)

3. In the end, I forgot my rule and actually made a couple of wisecracks - which people laughed at, thankfully