Monday and Tuesday this week, MSR held its fifth annual Faculty Summit, put on by my University Relations team. Rick Rashid, the head of MSR, spoke; so did Bill Gates. We got a fair amount of press coverage; Todd Bishop from the Seattle P-I wrote an article about the event and blogged about a number of technologies we were showing that were either things we helped to sponsor in academia, or projects were were doing in order to enable advancement of research and curriculum in academia.
The entire University Relations team deserves a big pat on the back for organizing a fantastic event. You can tell that you've created a success when there is a whole ecosystem growing up around an event, and we find ourselves in that situation now, with workshops and other side meetings taking place the end of last week, over the weekend and through the rest of this week. I also take it as a healthy sign that we're making progress in improving the partnerships between Microsoft Research and academia in mutually beneficial ways.
Now that the "big event" is done, I'm taking a short vacation in Friday Harbor with my daughters. The weather up here is wonderful; the only downside is that they are doing major construction on the ferry dock -- which I live right next to. Here's the view out my window. The crew is working Monday through Friday, 7am to 5pm. It's a little weird (not to mention unnerving) to watch a crane move large pieces of metal right in front of my window. And it's noisy at 7 o'clock in the morning. But on the other hand, I'm glad that they are taking care of the ferry dock, because without it the whole community would be screwed.
12:07:11 AM  ; ;
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