Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, came to give a talk at the LSEthis morning. Nothing that unusual about that, perhaps, from the institution whose public events programme have included Bill Gates senior, Nelson Mandella, Bill Clinton and a host of other heads of state and global figures. Slightly unusual was that the ticketed (but free) event was hugely oversubscribed. Even more unusual was that it started at 8.30am in the morning, with students and others (myself included) queuing for ‘returns’ well before 8.00am. And I don’t think it was just the offer of LSE free coffee that drew them in (no, I know that’s not the case.. have you ever tried LSE coffee?!). Alas, I didn’t get to see Steve in person. I was herded into an adjacent lecture theatre and watched him via a video link.
So what did Steve talk about? Well, his presentation was entitled"Seizing the Opportunity of the Cloud: the Next Wave of Business Growth." But what did he really say? In truth, not a lot. He only spoke for 35 minutes and he was light on content. The slides sucked (though that might just be their rendition via the video link). Having talked about the evolution of IT, he tried to describe the “Cloud” and failed, though he did manage to plug Microsoft’s Azure. Then he moved onto Microsoft’s soon to be launched (next month in the UK no less) Xbox Kinetic. A short video clip showed kids enjoying the “full body experience” but I just got the feeling that it’s yet another Microsoft remake of someone else’s innovation (in this case the Wii). I don’t really see anything original coming out of Redmond.
But Steve was much more animated than I expected and he really opened up with the 30 minutes of Q and A towards the end. There were, of course, the usual media questions: Microsoft’s position, its competitors etc. More interesting were the questions that Steve didn’t answer. One was a question on Stuxnet, a Windows-specific worm described byKaspersky Labs as "a working and fearsome prototype of a cyber-weapon that will lead to the creation of a new arms race in the world” from a journalist (Grant Somebody who couldn’t even get his publication right.. was he from Computing or Computer Weekly? An easy mistake… didn’t the editor of one become the editor of the other just recently…?!). It really sounded like Steve hadn’t heard of Stuxnet at all. The other on the impact of Google’s ChromeOS. “Sorry,” said Steve, “I didn’t quite catch that.” The audience laughed but after repeating the question three times and commenting on the acoustics, I really don’t think he heard the question at all. He certainly chose to avoid an answer.
What got him animated most? He was asked what his favourite Xbox game was. “Beach Volleyball, Baby!" he yells. "My kids would tell you that's a lot of air under your feet, daddy!" He wasn’t going to be drawn on losses in the Cloud, Windows 8, iPads and those “competitor phones” and retorted that Microsoft must be doing something right, “we made 26billion dollars, with only one company doing better…”
There were some good questions on patent law and the impact of piracy in China. But it was the final question that stole the show. Asked by an LSE student, “what would bring about the demise of Microsoft?” Apparently, the direct actions of Microsoft itself. Let’s hope that Xbox Kinetic lives up to Steve’s expectations and the quiet pulling of their last big launch (anyone remember the Kin…?!) isn’t anything to go by. Now all we need is Steve Jobs at the LSE (LSE Public Events are you reading this…?)
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