Kurt Shintaku's Blog

Have you ever sat down and found yourself so content & happy, you were at complete peace with everything in your life?

What you see to the right is a photo I took during an exceptionally elated moment this past Thursday evening when I concluded that in that moment – “it was all goooooood.”  [insert contented sigh here]

I’ve been tweeting the past week or so about the internal company training I’ve been attending at Microsoft, a week-long event somewhat similar in nature to what IT folks know as “TechEd North America” where training sessions are given 6 times a day, sometimes opening with keynotes from our executives. 

The difference however is that it’s held only for Microsoft employees and it’s consequently very “unplugged”.  It’s basically a Microsoft-focused IT professional’s dream.

THE PARTY
At the end of the event, to celebrate the success of the training and to begin the new year off right, we have a big party, and this party is held at the Microsoft Commons. (right next to Building 92, one of the reasons I have so many photos of Building 92)  I actually have a lot more photos but this is the only one that I think I can actually blog about.

The party was just… well… fantastic.  Here’s a small sample:  (Don’t know how much of this I can talk about so…)

• Food from oodles of vendors (the Microsoft Commons has something akin to a massive food court selling everything from All-America beef ribs, to chinese food like egg rolls, to prime rib sandwiches, to stir fried noodles, to meatballs & spaghetti to… my favorite, as depicted in the photo: SUSHI.  Lots and lots of SUSHI.)
• Xbox 360’s.  Everywhere.  With games, tourneys, and… “new stuff”. (Not gonna go into what “new stuff” means, but I’ll leave that for you to interpret.)
• Live music, Karaoke, Performance acts, Artists, etc.  (I’m not going to go into the details but it was all fun, fun, fun!)
• …and most importantly, all my friends/coworkers from around the globe.  Some folks I hadn’t seen in a year.  The opportunity to catch up with folks that are extremely smart, and share a similar role is invaluable.  I must have talked to one guy for 4 hours on just… “stuff” we needed to be successful this upcoming fiscal year.

Anyway, my point was that I took photo of one of the sushi hand rolls I’d liberated from the sushi restaurant at our training next to a can of ThinkWeek branded Talking Rain.

UH… “THINKWEEK”?
So, ThinkWeek is basically something that Microsoft prepares for for a couple months before it happens.  It’s a time when our executive management sits and reads through thoughtful papers that are submitted by Microsoft’s employees about ideas & concepts that we believe we as a company should be involved with.

People that submit ThinkWeek papers are usually the brightest minds in the company.  Our highest executives in the company including Steve Ballmer, Ray Ozzie, & Bill Gates (yes, he still reads them) read through ThinkWeek papers that are ‘accepted’:  You don’t want to submit a ThinkWeek paper if you’re an idiot.  Many of Microsoft’s best ideas have come from ThinkWeek submissions.  I’ve known a lot of guys that have submitted ThinkWeek papers.  (No, I myself have not done so.  I got started on one many years ago on the economics of portable gaming then concluded that there were people that were more insightful than me that were submitting papers on the same topic, so I bailed out.)

WHAT’S WITH THE “THINKWEEK” CAN?
You probably noticed that the word ThinkWeek” is plastered along the side of the can in the photo above.  That’s because we have this deal with a company called “Talking Rain”, our supplier of water to make aluminum cans with water in them. 

As a company, we’re big on recycling and we wanted water provided “in a can” because aluminum is the most recyclable material available for creating containers.  A long time ago, the story goes that when we made the declaration that campus-purchased beverage containers should be aluminum.  This company, “Talking Rain” stepped up to the plate and basically said that, instead of losing the contract as Microsoft’s supplier of water, they would custom-create cans of water just for us.

To date, Microsoft is the only recipient of “Talking Rain” water, as far as I know.  So the cans themselves can technically have anything on them and so sometimes, Talking Rain is contracted to create cans with special designs on them – hence the ThinkWeek “reminders” on them.