Microsoft Tech Summit Keynote Notes

(This post originally appeared at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/microsoft-tech-summit-keynote-notes-duncan-k-g-campbell )

Today I attended the Microsoft Tech Summit held at the Marina Bay Sands Convention Centre in Singapore. The Tech Summit stands out compared to the last conference-like event I attended at Marina Bay Sands, unfortunately it does not stand out for the right reasons.

The first thing to stand out was the event’s code of conduct.  This code was displayed at the registration counter and consisted of several paragraphs of good intentions and exhortations that attendees should basically behave themselves like civilized adults.  It is disappointing both that people should be asked to behave civilly and for someone to think that people need to be asked to behave civilly.

The second thing to stand out was the keynote.

If there was ever a keynote to leave me in dread of the rest of event then this was it.  Someone had decided in their wisdom that some level of theatrics was in order:

• thumping music (I hope nobody had come to the event with a sore head)
• coloured spotlights
• ushers with illuminated batons squeezing everyone down into the front so that we might sit like packed sardines (or simply cattle class airline passengers) in the chairs that are always arranged too close together
• once we were all squeezed into our seats the announcement was made that “Our shown is about to begin”, which only caused my heart to sink further.

The “show” started with a ghastly promotional video of carefully selected representatives with their corporate messages booming out over the PA system. Once this was over Mr Jacket-and-Jeans appeared on the stage and spoke at a bearable volume to introduce things and present some meaningless statistics.

Next on the stage was was the main act, Mr Jacket-and-Jeans-2, a marketing person. For a “tech” summit the keynote was pretty low on tech. He even cited Über as an example adopter of Microsoft solutions – does one really want to be associated with Travis Kalanick’s pet and its toxic culture?

Some people with unknown roles were brought up to demonstrate various things. Fortunately amongst them was Mr Jacket-and-Jeans-3 who looked like he’d done this sort of thing before and so did something interesting, despite his talk being replete with marketing buzz-phrases he did at least work through something in front of the audience and interacted with it in an interesting way.

Was the keynote a ploy to make one think that nothing that happened afterwards could be as bad as it?  It was certainly a relief when it ended.

There was no conference booklet with the details of the sessions, so I relented and downloaded the app, resigning myself to not being able to quickly browse the programme of events nor to being able to make notes or other annotations.  Having downloaded the Tech Summit app it took me several attempts before I remembered my LinkedIn password so that I might log in.  Once successfully logged in the app appeared to be stuck on LinkedIn.  Each time I opened the Tech Summit app I was faced with my LinkedIn home page – what to do?  Like all good IT folk I closed the app and started it again.  This time the app decided that it would show the actual event app instead of my LinkedIn home page.

Whoever designed the app likes scrolling.  After spending quite some time scrolling through the programme I tapped the appropriate buttons to add my favoured sessions to my own schedule, but when viewing my own schedule I found none of my selected sessions have been added.  Still, the trusty tactic of closing the app and starting it again solved that problem, where “solve” in this case means scrolling through the list of sessions again whilst trying to remember what caught my eye then adding those that did and checking that they had appeared in my schedule.

Fortunately, the technical talks which followed were well presented by people who knew their subject and those sessions contained interesting material.

I am yet again presented with the question: why do conference name badges on lanyards always reverse themselves? Are they linked somehow to buttered toast (which always lands butter-side-down when dropped) and cats (which always land on their feet)? Would buttered toast attached to the reverse of a conference name badge on a lanyard force the name badge to face forwards? Would a slight spin be induced? Would the propensity for the buttered toast to seek one’s shirt be the stronger force?

 (It was also noteworthy that there are no Microsoft data centres in Africa and only one in South America.)