Chicago

Everyone I know in the United States is already starting to feel maxed out on holiday. There are tons of things to do: buy a turkey, buy presents, plan festive seasonal parties, get a New Year’s Eve plan in place, take family photos and the list goes on. So, we thought maybe there is one thing we can do this year to decrease all the things on your plate – we’ll take your family photos (if you live in the US, Canada or France) and we’ll do it while you are already on the move.

Wow, yesterday was quite a day! We built a giant phone in Herald Square, and threw a killer party featuring Brooklyn punk-pop rockers, Matt and Kim. I posted some photos from the Night Out party below, take a gander.  Even with all that action yesterday, there is much, much more celebration to be had!

My family has 1 holiday photo that I can remember. While it would be easy to blame that on my parents, the fault probably rests entirely with us rambunctious kids. We simply could not bother to sit still long enough to get one! Think about it: 6 kids + 4 Dogs + 3 Cats = a recipe for disaster when it comes to photo taking.

I am sure most of you have seen the Windows Phone night parties that kick off on November 7. Well, today I have another exciting announcement – we’re bringing Windows Phone to 15 more cities across the country!

Over the past few years I have been very fortunate to meet so many of you face to face during my travels with the Springboard Series Tours. I have spent time in Finland and Rome talking MDT, ACT and MAP, London and Barcelona discussing AppCompat, and even sharing with you twenty Windows tools you did not know existed in Chicago, Boston and Toronto. Yet, I am constantly asked, when will I come to South America? I am very proud to announce that next month, I will do exactly that.

So where will I be and how can you attend?

Join us for one of our exclusive events across the U.S. and get a first look at the hottest new Windows Phones such as the HTC Titan, HTC Radar, Samsung Focus S and Samsung Focus Flash. You know Windows Phone is packed with killer social integration, a wide variety of games and apps, and a ton of other great features, now come see it all on cool new hardware.

Our third stop on the Springboard Series Tour took us to the city of big shoulders, Chicago, Illinois. I love Chicago. It’s an amazing city filled with great food, one of a kind architecture and of course, great IT pros. Check out the video see see the great time we had! Next stop, the home of the Indy 500, Indianapolis, Indiana.

Yesterday we kicked off our third Springboard Series Tour in Toronto, Canada. We had a great group of IT pros show up to hear all the sessions on Windows slates and managing 3rd party consumer devices in the workplace, as well as Windows Intune, IE 9, Office 365, MDOP, Office 2010 and Windows deployment. We did tons of demos, answered a lot of questions and met some amazing folks.

Couldn’t make to Miami to hang with us at the PC Showcase?  No problem! 

15 years ago today, Microsoft launched Windows 95. In 1995 I was 11 years old and in the 5th grade. At that time, I never thought that today I’d be working at Microsoft – let alone helping to tell the story of Windows. So this is a really fun and personal topic for me to recall my memories of Windows 95 – today has been a neat day.