Steve Ballmer yesterday at the Worldwide Partner Conference in Seattle.
It’s all about the cloud and ‘we’re all in!’
Impressive list of companies we’ve helped embrace cloud computing in a speech where Steve talks passionately about the opportunities and responsibilities of this new era of information technology.
Today marks my 5th year at Microsoft.
Here are some memories/highlights/milestones:
5 years ago – I got up early – 4am – dragged myself to Waterloo, and caught the train with the fabulous, and now newly married, Nitin Hegde, to Paris where I witnessed the first ever ad go live from adCenter on MSN.fr. I then spent the next 2 days working with my colleague Clea Blockey, to upload Expedia’s French PPC campaign, ad group by ad group, as we didn’t have a bulk upload tool back then. 😉
After 7…………..yes 7 interviews, I had joined Microsoft from 24/7 Real Media as the 1st account manager for adCenter based in London. For the next 9 months I’d work with my boss – Julie Warburton – on hiring and training the acclaimed customer service team we have today.
Very proud of Mark Richardson, Chris Wallington, Ravleen Beeston, Colm Bracken and Lee Blyth for the work they’ve done over the years with that crackpot team.
Dixon Jones – Not in Vegas For a Change
4 years ago – I’d just got the community manager role for adCenter in EMEA. Essentially, I was going to work with my fabulous Redmond-based social media partner – Carolyn Miller – writing PPC blog posts and managing the adCenter forum.
One of the requirements was to seek out authorities in the industry and try and help them understand our business a bit better, figure out where the pain-points were, and feedback any insight to our product teams so they use it to make our products and services better.
I remember calling up Andy Atkins-Kruger and telling him about the new job and he said, “Oh well you much come to Iceland!”
Getting Serious with Viking Kristjan
Now, I knew Iceland was not a top priority for adCenter at the time and there was no way way I’d get permission to go, but Andy said some chap called Kristjan would pay for my trip if I promised to do a cracking presentation. The rest, as far as I’m concerned, goes down as a little bit of career history.
Spending time with Dixon Jones, Anne Kennedy, Shari Thurow, Chris Sherman, Andy, Brian Clifton, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Sara Andersson and, of course, Kristjan, showed me just how amazing the search industry was, how smart everyone on was in it, and just how much work I had to do!
Dave Naylor – Drinking Chianti in San Jose
3 years ago – I was asked by Media Week to start writing a digital blog for them. I’d also started blogging from events and doing a lot of travel, talking about adCenter and search at conferences here and in the US. It was that year I got my British Airways Gold Card because I was piling on the points with trips to San Francisco, San Jose, New York, Toronto and Las Vegas.
Just loved Brett Tabke’s post on conference speaking tips. It inspired me to write one of my own.
Rand Fishkin and Dog about 100 ft from that Volcano!
2 years ago – I set up a Twitter account and Facebook page for me, adCenter and Microsoft Advertising. I had a built a case for us going “off piste” and using 3rd parties – which were sometimes competitor tools – in order to spread our news and insight a bit further.
Thankfully my boss – Jenny Leahy – was opened minded and now we have nearly 20K fans and followers across those accounts that “listen-in” anytime we have something to say.
Interesting to look back on what I said about my 3rd year working on adCenter too.
Can’t Think Who he Means!
1 year ago – I’d just got back from Cannes where we’d taken a full film crew to cover the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Jenny and I just picked up the microphone and went for it, interviewing folks in the street, Microsoft execs and agency folk about the event and blogging about their responses.
It was last year that I ran into a couple of my top 5 career highlights – interviewing Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter and of course Microsoft CEO, Steve Ballmer.
Can’t show you the last one, but it was showed internally and he didn’t disappoint!
Biz Stone in Cannes
In 5 years I’ve seen us go from MSN Search, to Windows Live Search, to Live Search and now to Bing – much better brand don’t you think?!
The part of the business I work for has gone from MSN to Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions to Microsoft Advertising.
Windows 7 was launched, Windows Phone 7 is just around the corner and Kinect for Xbox 360 means people like me with no thumb dexterity can now compete in the living room. I spent 2 hours with Blaise, the man behind Deep Zoom and Photosynth and worked with the TED guys on TED@Cannes getting exclusive back stage access to the speakers.
Thinking about it, I reckon I’ve been responsible for well over 1000 blog posts across various sites.
But, most importantly………………….. I got married to the wonderful Ashley!!
I’m immensely proud of my time here as Microsoft. I think the 2 minute wrap up video from this year’s Cannes Lions says it all about how well we are positioned in digital advertising, and long may it continue.
When people ask what I do for Microsoft, I tend to say that I do a lot of talking, either online or in person.
I couldn’t and wouldn’t have been able to do my job with out the hundreds of people that have sat and listened to what I’ve had to say.
There are swathes of people who have turned up at conferences I’ve organised, been interviewed by me or contributed guest blog posts, that have retweeted our stuff or helped promote what Microsoft Advertising is about and how we can help marketers reach huge audiences and get a great ROI.
To all those folks…………a huge thank you for helping me do my job!
I’ve singled out a few people below – I may have missed a few though as, Oil of Olay aside, I am getting old!
Dixon Jones, Dave Naylor, Rich Sutcliffe, Gordon MacMillan, Rand Fishkin and Geraldine Everywhereist, Danny Sullivan, Brett Tabke, Ciaran Norris, Will Critchlow, Steve Barrett, Tamar Weinberg, Lee Odden, Jane Copland, Will Cooper, Kieron Matthews, Jack Wallington, Emma App-Thomas, Rishi Lakhani, Richard Gregory, Shari Thurow, Anne Kennedy, Kristjan Mar Hauksson, Andy Atkins-Kruger, Andrew Goodman, Andrew Girdwood, Matt McGowan, Kevin Ryan, Chris Winfield, Dave Snyder, Greg Boser, Jon Myers, Lisa Myers, Bas Van Den Beld, Mike Grehan, Chris Sherman, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Brian Clifton, Sara Andersson, Eloi Cassali, Peter Young, Bill Hunt, Jim Sterne, Motoko Hunt, Ian Thomas, Joost de Valk, Joanna Lord and Kate Morris plus loads and loads of others!!!
Thanks again and here’s to the next 5 years!!
These fans were being given out outside Victoria Station yesterday, and there were queues of people lining up to get their hands on one of them.
Andrews Sykes Air Conditioning were using a very simple tactic of using a useful direct marketing vehicle.
When the weather is overbearing you need air-conditioning, so why not spread your message with the next best thing……a fan.
Pretty sure all the offices along Victoria Street aren’t blessed with the igloo-type conditions we have in ours, so think they’ve probably got some business out of it.
Shame there’s no social media efforts on their site though.
Would have liked to see some online continuity with this great offline effort….
Decided to do this more often as I now write for a number of sites and have different audiences on each.
When I added up last year’s blogs contributions, I worked out I’ve been responsible for over 450 posts on digital advertising over the past 12 months!
Check ‘em out:
Media Week:
Announcing Beware the Big Turn Off
Cannes Lions 2010 – Digital Insights, Videos and Interviews
The Wall UK:
Video: Behind the Scenes at TED@Cannes
Microsoft Advertising Blog:
Innovation in Mobile Experiences – Advertising and Windows Phone 7
Online Advertising in China Insight from Nokia and Procter and Gamble
Standing Room Only: The Rise of Rich TV at Cannes Lions 2010
More next week!
Great idea!
Nick Clegg’s crowd sourcing site has caused quite a stir in this Web 2.0 world.
“We’ve had an excellent response so far, with over 2,205 ideas, 7,419 comments and 18,000 votes in our first day.”
Would like to have found it in the search results instead of mining it through news articles so am doing my bit for SEO – Your Freedom!
Get on it and help make a change!
Last year I wrote about the Mix Online Archivist. A desktop app, it was one of the only quick solutions to download and archive tweets or hashtag info from Twitter.
Well yesterday the guys released a turbo version on the web.
The Archivist will let you save tweets on the go and provide some fab analysis in a quick and easy to read format.
Along with your profile you can save 3 archives right now and say whether they’re private or public.
Drilling in it’ll show tweets over time, top users, tweets v retweets, top associate words with the tweets, top urls thta have been clicks on and the sources of the tweets.
Drill in again and you can see great visualizations of who’s been most prolific or influential with those words.
Everything is downloadable to excel for easy data manipulation too!
Check it out here: The Archivist
That’s a wrap from down here at Cannes!
Other posts we’ve written on the Microsoft Advertising Blog:
Video: Interview with Carolyn Everson at Cannes Lions 2010
Yahoo! and Ben Stiller at Cannes Lions 2010
Video Interview: Mich Mathews on Underdogs & Overdogs at Cannes Lions 2010
Are You Contagious? – Cannes Lions 2010
Video: Darren Huston Keynote – Managing Transformation Through Innovation – Cannes Lions 2010
Now for a well earned weekend soaking up the sun!
Having a blast down here in the south of France at Cannes Lions 2010.
The video was a bit of fun but the guys at Cherry did a fab job in editing my journey to the event!
We got exclusive backstage access to the TED @ Cannes conference. Interviewing the speakers was prtty cool, as were all their talks.
See other posts and interviews with Microsoft and digital agency execs here:
Video Interview: Mich Mathews on Underdogs & Overdogs at Cannes Lions 2010
Video Interview with Darren Huston CVP at Microsoft at Cannes Lions 2010
Video Interview with Quentin George CDO at IPG Media Brands – Cannes Lions 2010
Video: Interview with Richard Dunmall – VP Microsoft Advertising Asia at Cannes Lions
Been very busy, but check out our Cannes Lions Photos too!
Setting off for Cannes via a weekend in Nice with my aunt and uncle which is handy.
It’s been a long week, hammering down the filming schedule which I hope will be as engaging as last year – check out the below interview with Biz Stone from Twitter.
To see what we’re up to, check out our dedicated Cannes Lions site, follow us on Twitter and fan us on our Facebook page.
Monday will be very cool as we’re hosting the TED @ Cannes conference. Looking forward to meeting those guys!
That’s it for now, gotta get to T5…
Impressive Photosynth implementation using Silverlight to bring fans of the hit TV show Stargate Universe deep inside the set of the show.
What’s clever here is as you navigate between each area of the set, a 5 second video is played to promote the DVDs they’re selling.
A short, sweet, unobtrusive tactic but nevertheless, very effective way of generating desire.
Check out this on-set interview with Lawrence Moroney on how Photosynth works and what it takes to create an experience like this.
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