Sunrise in Idaho and SDRs
On Monday night I met up with some colleagues from my old Microsoft team (Data Programmability) for a Software Design Review (SDR) on Tuesday along with a few others external to Microsoft - Dion Hinchcliffe, Phil Wainewright, John Musser, Michael Coté and Danny Ayers.
An SDR is part of a product's (or technology's) design process at Microsoft where external customers / subject matter experts are invited to preview (usually under NDA) designs, prototypes or early builds and provide feedback on those. It is an opportunity for the product teams to hear directly from the attendees on those designs and validate direction at a phase that is early enough to make 'course corrections'. I wish I could tell you what we were invited to preview, or even hint, but I (and the others) are sworn to secrecy :-). For now anyway. But rest assured, it's v.cool stuff. As soon as allowed I'll share my thoughts.
With the SDR wrapped up, I set off for a marathon drive from Seattle to my new home in Utah on Wednesday morning. What a drive. I wanted to make this trip by road to get a sense of perspective on the distance between these two points and get a sense of what was 'in between' these areas. For example, I know a lot of people who visit London and have only used the tube to get from A to B. I think they are missing out on the experience and the understanding of how two points relate. It's the same thing here. I won't do it every time, but just once for the experience. It also solved the practical matter of getting my car over to Utah. It was a long trip, broken down with an overnight stay in Boise, totaling over 900 miles in 24 hours.
Sunrise in Idaho was quite amazing. Pics obviously don't do it justice (taken on smartpone), but gives you an idea...
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I got in the office yesterday morning, where the Bungee team is putting final touches on our prep for Web 2.0 Expo. I'll be heading to San Francisco Sunday afternoon / early evening.