My 2nd meeting with Steve Ballmer
I had my 1st meeting with Steve Ballmer about 12 years ago as a Microsoft customer during an executive briefing session. The way I remember it was that Steve, who at the time was Microsoft’s head of worldwide sales and marketing, came (no, barged) in as a surprise speaker, said something about how Microsoft was very serious about the enterprise space and would do whatever it took to win my company over, and then he left in a hurry. Two years later, as my company was well on its way towards adopting Microsoft Windows and Office as standards for desktop computers and Windows NT 3.51 for servers, I joined Microsoft. J
Yesterday, I had my 2nd meeting with Steve Ballmer, and this time, I was one of the presenters! And instead of being at the Executive Briefing Center, the meeting was on the “executive floor” of the building that Steve, Bill, and our CFO have their offices. My first impression -- very nice paintings and art pieces along the walls! Steve and several of our VPs were meeting with a customer’s CEO and his lieutenants about a possible strategic partnership, so the purpose of my presentation and the demo that would follow was to highlight the tremendous significance of the upcoming “Wave 12” release of our products and technologies and to spur ideas and conversation about how Microsoft and the visiting company could partner to create some “game changing” solutions in the marketplace.
My colleagues and I had spent a few hours in the morning getting the demo ready, and to our collective relief, everything went off without any problems. And I only had to speak to 3 slides to preface the demo -- any longer and my voice would have started to quiver from my rapidly increasing heartrate. J Overall, it was a great experience, and I’m very happy to have been given the opportunity.
