Scott Blomquist

As it often goes, I managed to get really busy with things other than my blog, and I began to neglect my favorite t-shirt series. The good news is that I had my wife help me take a bunch of t-shirt photos this morning, so I’ll be able to queue up enough to hold us over for a few months.

Today’s shirt is another Microsoft shirt. It’s actually one of my most-worn t-shirts of all time. For some reason I just like wearing it. I think it’s because it goes over well both with my colleagues from my days at Microsoft (“more free swag—wonder where he got it”) as well as with the crowds that don’t tend to like Microsoft so much (“his intent must be irony, right?”). For example, it went over quite well as a humor piece the day I wore it to Open Source Bridge a couple months ago.

The story of how I got it is even a little entertaining. When the Windows Genuine Advantage campaign launched back in the Windows XP days, their marketing team asked for stories on how Windows Genuine Advantage helped me in exchange for a t-shirt. I knew I wanted the t-shirt, but I couldn’t think of any times it actually helped with anything, but despite that I dusted off my creative writing pencil and scribbled up a few sentences. It arrived in inter-office mail a week or two later, and I’ve worn it proudly ever since.

I was at lunch today with Chris Messina and some others from Vidoop, and somehow as often happens with me, we got into a very interesting discussion about the way Microsoft does things. In particular, Chris indicated some frustration with a lack of traction that he’s gotten with Microsoft in the past regarding technologies that he and others advocate. He cited a long string of press releases and public appearances supporting the technologies that will make up the open web and an equally long string of failures to deliver any level of support in actual code. He’s definitely right–what gives?

Being the Microsoft fanboi devil’s advocate that I am, I claimed that the Microsoft that exists today isn’t the same Microsoft as we all know from 10 years ago (or even 5). I admit that there are a tremendous number of things that Microsoft doesn’t yet demonstrate a deep organizational understanding for, including Open Source, Open Standards, the consumer Internet, etc., but the one thing that I do know from my 7.5 years with the company is that they’re nothing if not self-critical, especially when they’re not winning the game.

I challenged Chris to name some things that he thinks he’s learned about Microsoft over the last few years and give me a chance to argue that some of them have changed. He threatened graciously offered to write up a blog post with at least 5 misguided things of which he would accuse Microsoft along with examples of how they could prove him wrong by speaking with code. I think that sounds like a great idea. I can’t wait for the conversation to begin!