(Fair warning: I'm about to break one of my rules. I'm going to blog about blogging.)
This week something really cool and fun is happening: Bill Gates is going on his second College Tour. He's visiting six universities: Michigan, Wisconsin, Waterloo, Columbia, Princeton and Howard. At each school he's going to meet with faculty, give a talk to students (with a lengthy Q&A, and some rockin' demos) and talk to some local and campus media.
And fortunately for me, I get to go with him. And... I get to blog about it, from behind the scenes and from the front lines. We've been working since July on organizing this, and about a month ago I was asked if I'd be interested in blogging the tour as it was going on. To be honest, I was dumbfounded. After thinking it over, I said yes, but in the past few weeks I've personally struggled with the right way to do this.
This blog is my personal thing. It's written on my Tablet PC. I paid for the hosting service out of my own pocket. Microsoft has no control over it, and they have never told me what to write on it. Every word is mine and mine alone (except for the quoted parts :-). Regardless of whether you agree with what I say, it's still an honest reflection of what I think about a wide variety of things. So one of the first questions I struggled with was: where do I blog about the college tour? Because this is the first time I will officially be blogging as a Microsoft employee.
So you may ask, does that matter? I certainly asked that. It turns out, at least for me, it matters a great deal. The company asked me to blog about a Microsoft activity, from my perspective as a Microsoft employee taking part in it and observing. To be clear, the company hasn't told me what kind of tone to take, what kinds of things to write about, etc. They've given me no editorial guidance at all, which I appreciate, and I take that to mean that they like the way that I write honestly about things and want me to do just that. On the other had, there are real practical limits that are known and apparent. I can't, and won't compromise the security measures in place for Bill and the rest of us to travel. Let's face it: Bill is well known, rich, and there are people out there who would like misfortune to befall him. I, on the other hand, like Bill and don't want that; and as a Microsoft employee it would be irresponsible for me to do things that would compromise security.
I also want people to show up to Bill's talks, so I'm not going to talk about what he's going to say and do before it happens. Of course, we don't actually know everything he's going to say or do, or everything that's going to happen, which is what makes it fun and challenging to blog in the first place.
Finally, some of what we do on the tour is to have frank conversations and get honest feedback. I need that to do my job at Microsoft, to make sure that we're being a good partner with academia. I need to respect the privacy of those conversations when asked to do so.
So yeah, I'm a Microsoft employee, and there are rules when I do something like this. They're sensible, and unless I screw up horribly they're self-enforced. But I do want to make it clear that this is a different thing for me than what I normally do on this site -- and I want to err on the side of being very open and explicit about that.
So... I'm starting a new blog, parallel to this one, which begins with this college tour and will hopefully carry on to other things where I'm officially acting as a Microsoft employee. It's still me, and it's still going to be honest. You can be sure of that. But I am operating under a different set of rules, and everyone shouldl know that.
I leave tomorrow for the College tour, and the six visits will take place on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I may post a few tidbits and links here, but the main action this week will be over there.
Enjoy. And let me know if I'm getting this right. Oh, last note: these are LONG days and I'm at the whim of allowed connectivity for visitors on the campuses. So I actually have no idea how often I'll get to post updates.
9:58:56 PM 
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