CES: Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer Keynote Speech
Last night, I sat down and watched Steve Ballmer’s final keynote at CES. Steve took the stage with Ryan Seacrest for a chat. Below are the notes from the speech but I’ve also highlighted the 3 things that you need to know if you don’t have time to go through it all:
- Microsoft Windows 8 Public Beta will be ready in February 2012. This was announced in December but Microsoft is notorious for missing deadlines so it is nice to hear that they’re still on track.
- Microsoft is going to disrupt television. They are looking to make shows two-way interactions via Xbox. In other words, television will no longer be just a lean-back technology
- Kinect will be available for the PC in February 2012. In my mind, this is Microsoft’s admission that gaming can occur on any device, not just a specific console since NUI’s (natural user interfaces) are the wave of the future.
Full notes are below:
9:40 PM Ryan Seacrest taking the stage; explains partnership with MSFT Bing. Ballmer hugs him; Ryan makes fun of his height.
9:41 PM Ballmer to talk about innovations on phone, PC, Xbox, and TV’s. Cools to see Metro interface/ live tiles in the background.
9:43 PM Ballmer is showing it off on a Nokia device; says that Windows Phone is about putting people first and highlighting your relationships. Explains how easy it is bring information together.
9:45 PM Derek Snyder (Sr Product Manager, Windows Phone) comes onto stage. Shows off “People Hub” that brings information about favorite people together. Shows how he great it is to see information for a specific group. Talks about they’re using Facebook Chat and Window Messanger together. Can also dive into conversations across all communications with a specific user. Phone also has a voice recognition (app crash stirs audience!). Demo’s live tile that shows off critical data without forcing user to dive into an app. Showing off how apps share information.
There’s really nothing more irritating than lazy marketing. It’s when a marketer expects you to just hand over your money to them. The marketer is behaving lazily — they don’t invest their time researching and developing a compelling offer that drives consumers to purchase the product/service.
In my line of work, I have to keep track of time. I typically work on several concurrent projects while also leading or participating in multiple sales efforts. My time is further divided between internal and external projects tasks where I may be focused on project strategy, technology leadership, internal employee support, external client support, etc. I love what I do but my only point of frustration is that I spend extremely valuable time reassembling my Swiss cheese of a day in 15 minute increments in our time tracking system — a tasks that many of us have to complete on a daily basis.