Those of you who follow me here or somewhere like Twitter might know that I was invited to Microsoft yesterday for meetings. Apparently my name had been coming up in conversation and several people there wanted to see me. I thought I’d write up here about my experience at Microsoft’s UK campus and split this into a two-part story with our sister site Windows7News.
The campus is located in Reading, Berkshire in the south-east of England it consists of five huge office blocks set in extensive gardens with a lake and nature trail. This is lovely actually and the first place I headed for even before going to main reception. There is all manner of wildlife including some ducks that are clearly used to getting scraps of people’s lunch.
The gardens are also home to a summer house with free tea and coffee making facilities, juice and cola. This is a nice touch and there are free drinks all over the Microsoft campus along with bowls of fruit scattered around.
The five office buildings, which house around 1,800 staff are enormous and quite intimidating too in military grey. Main reception which is where I was headed is in building 2, but there are other receptions in different buildings for specific areas such as the customer centre. All of this though contributes to a very relaxed feeling and a very comfortable atmosphere in the offices themselves, that was very welcome.
I had several meetings, first with Ian Moulster, Product Manager on the Windows team and then lunch with Simon May an IT Pro Evangelist among other people. I’ll talk about some of the specific topics we discussed in part two of this write-up and show some of the technology I got to play with.
As for lunch, I ought to point out for anyone who’s ever been to Ikea that the Microsoft canteen made me feel I was back in the Swedish superstore, though there were no meatballs. They did have plenty of apples but when I asked about Penguin biscuits they admitted it’s not something they ever had available… hmm.
There are always lots of events going on at Microsoft’s UK headquarters and this day was no exception with the UK finals of the Imagine Cup, a worldwide student technology competition that we stopped in on while they were chilling out to a dance game on the Kinect.
It’s clear that this certainly won’t be my first visit here as there are plenty of other people I’m about to be introduced too so I’ll probably be back in Reading long before the end of the summer. I have to say that Microsoft’s UK campus is a genuinely friendly place to be. Everyone seems incredibly happy and they made me feel very welcome.
All told I spent a good portion of the day there in various meetings and on a tour. I’ll talk about this tour, about the meetings I had and more in part two of this write up on our sister site Windows7News.
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Hi Mike
Indeed its an impressive set of buildings and technology, I have been there a few times myself as a fellow Microsoft MVP at the Open Days they have.
The folk there are enthusiastic about all things technological and love hearing from those end users out in the community about their passion for tech, great story and nice pics.