Well, the Summit was quite a bit of fun, and interesting both technically and culturally. Whenever you move into relationship with a corporate culture as consuming as Microsoft’s, you can actually spot strange phrases and ideas that are unique to that corporate culture. I’ll mention a few along the way, but let me spin this more as a narrative, ala Big Hop Steamy Mountain, with less steam (and gas). I’ll try to avoid actually talking about anything technical.

Having driven the 20 hours to Washington a day earlier and dropped the boys off at my in-laws, we were finally free to find our hotel in downtown Seattle and check in. We were booked at the W for three nights on Microsoft’s tab, and going into the lobby it felt like we were entering a nightclub. Everything was black, the lights were dim, and there was a lot of contemporary art on the walls. The staff were all hipsters, and the elevator antechamber and all the hallways were very, very dimly lit. It seemed geared to people who might be suffering from hangovers. Our 12th floor, north-facing room was of average size; it was the furnishings that made it a luxury. My favorite things were the window-seat/couch and the four heavy pillows that were on each queen-size bed. I’d brought a laptop but I wasn’t able to get the room ethernet to work, so later in the week I used the television set’s built-in internet access to check some mail.

My first “event” was the registration/reception at the Seattle convention center. That was sort of lame. I ate a lot of hors de ovres (mini quiches, empanadas, strawberries), drank a Beck’s, watched a tablet PC demo, collected swag. As far as swag, I got a kit that included a tire-pressure checker, a flashlight, and a pen, also a calculator/clock, standard promo materials. I also got something that would prove to be a bone of contention between Heather and I: a monogramed shirt. Now Heather hates shirts with any sort of event-specific information on them, anything that might mark oneself out as a member of a particular professional cadre. This shirt wasn’t over the top on the branding, but the shirt style was the humdinger. Polyester faux-hipster shirt, the kind that are a solid color (this one black) with a strategically placed pair of vertical racing stripes. I tried to find a good picture of someone wearing one, but none were quite good enough. Anyway, it’s the sort of thing that no one would bat an eye at if I wore it to work, but Heather wants to leave me every time she sees me put it on.

The only person I knew at the reception was someone I’d never actually met, but who I’d worked for five years earlier when I was a technical editor for New Riders press. One of the swag booths was the TechNet booth, which publishes a cd collection of technical documents. I saw an open binder on the table and on one corner was a sticker with my old editor’s name, Al Valvano, on it. I asked about it and was directed to him. I thought he would be a big, slightly balding Italian guy in his early 50’s (what would that name have led you to expect?), but he wasn’t. He was actually my size and perhaps a couple of years older than me. He’d started working for Microsoft a couple of years earlier and was the current head of the TechNet program. Very nice guy, and capable. Was good to hear from him about plans for making TechNet more than a red-headed stepson to the MSDN.

Two of the three days of the Summit were taken up by my group (all of us specializing in Exchange Server, which supports email systems for large companies) meeting with the programmers and project leads for different aspects of Exchange. Those included security, anti-spam, storage & backup, etc. I’m under a non-disclosure agreement, so I can’t give any details, but the give-and-take between the programmers and the MVPs was pretty energetic and seemed to be mutually helpful.

It was during these sessions that I was struck by a couple of linguistic peculiarities (that may be) unique to Microsoft’s culture. I noticed that all the Microsoft people used the term “story” frequently in an unusual way. It seemed to mean “the experiential side of the process” or “how it plays out” or something like that. Once example I wrote down was someone saying that they were pursuing “a simple upgrade story for customers.” Another product manager said “we’re trying to develop a good managibility story.” The indication that there is a narrative related to the experience of using the product makes a lot of sense, but the downside is that “story” is available as a reference to something fictitious. It might sound like something a defense lawyer might try to construct to alter perceptions. Another term I heard a few times was “blocking-and-tackling,” which was a reference to manhandling some kind of migration process in an inelegant way. Probably synonymous with “kludge,” but as a verb. The last thing I’ll share along this line was a frequent and disturbing use of the word “effort” as a verb. “We’re efforting to get this feature online by Q3″ might be a typical usage. Isn’t that gross?

The second night of the Summit, Microsoft threw a party for the MVPs on the Microsoft campus, and we went. At one point Heather and I were in the karaoke room talking to my MVP lead about the program and watching the performance. One faux-Beck, college-aged MVP hipster with naughty hair was singing “I Want Your Sex” with ironic flourish and understatement while a heavy-set fifty-something biker MVP was taking off his shirt a few feet in front of us to show off his full-body tattoo. A large landscape with mermaids, mountains, ocean and sunset. Quite striking. In the main banquet room there were six buffets set up, each with a different type of food: middle eastern, italian, mexican, breads&cheese, etc. Other different interests were being catered to: a couple of rooms with networked Xboxes, a very sparely populated room with stadium-seating in which three struggling comedy olympians whose schtick was circling downward for want of a laugh, a jam room in which MVP musicians could pick up instruments and jam together, and more.

Heather and I wandered upstairs to look through an art gallery that Microsoft hosted in their conference center. There was actually a lot of art in the whole center. Some was quite good, but a lot of it was just awful. Near the entrance there was a giant painting, perhaps 5 feet high and 20 feet wide, that was a candidate for MOBA. Down the hall from it were 5 larger-than life crude dresses, all made out of aluminum foil, strung together like paper dolls. That was another mediocre concept writ large. Actually, they look a bit better in the picture than in life.

The MVP culture can’t really be generalized about. At the Summit party, there were people ranging from 14 (Windows Security MVP Benjamin Johnstone-Anderson) to several 60+ women in the Office MVP pool. In addition there were MVPs from more than 50 different countries. When we left the party, 4/5ths of the bus we got on for the return trip to the hotels were Japanese. We went to hotel after hotel and no one got off. I knew we were at the last hotel, and didn’t remember seeing many Japanese staying at the W. When we got off, the driver got out too and I asked him where he was going next. He said we were his last stop and I said he’d better look back in the bus because it was still mostly full. “Well I’ll be damned, I wonder where they want to go?”

The Microsoft product managers themselves couldn’t easily be generalized about either. For my technical area, a husband-wife team with a new, 8-month-old baby were key managers. Both wonderful people–smart, easy-going, courteous. It was obvious that going above and beyond was a way of life for them. On the other (although not diametrically opposite) extreme, one product manager that led a session was a picture of a corporate warrior. Early 40’s, tall, muscular, nearly bald, and wearing all black, he looked out at everyone so intensely that his eyes seemed lidless. He was openly defensive with hints of anger at certain questions, surprisingly forceful in his responses to others. At one point he said “Users are made much more compliant when given the illusion of control,” in an ironyless way that immediately made me think of Machiavelli. He didn’t set the tone though; he was the exception.