Steve Ballmer gave a lecture to Ukrainian students

On November 5, a lecture by the head of Microsoft in the first building of the Kiev Polytechnic Institute took place. Since this topic has not yet been covered in Habré, let me tell you about the typical makovod.

Further on in the text are personal impressions of the meeting with Steve, some photos, videos and Ballmer's nickname on Twitter, which he didn’t want to shoot ...
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Foreword

I learned about the lecture from my classmates, I registered on the same day through the Microsoft website. The entrance was, of course, free, but the number of places was strictly limited (they wrote about this almost in every corner of the site with registration). The first attempt ended in failure - in the “Place of work” field, as it turned out, it was necessary to indicate the place of study. I indicated the name of my newly created development studio. He received a refusal by mail, after which he had to send a couple of letters to support with a request to put him on a lecture (I am a student, after all!).

According to the information on the site, Ballmer should have covered the following topics:

- Cloud computing
- XBOX 360
- Windows Phone 7

The most interesting was the last point. Everywhere this vinfon managed to make some noise, even it was interesting for me to look at it live.

We are on the spot!

So, two geeks with macbooks received an invitation and came to the event 20 minutes before their intended start. At this point, a large queue has already gathered from the entrance to the building and to the wardrobe. According to the letter, they gave to the wardrobe jackets, bags, piercing and cutting objects, explosives, etc. All according to the instructions ...

We sit in the meeting room of the Academic Council, soak off jokes about Microsoft, look for an open Wi-Fi and wait for Ballmer. We wait for five minutes, ten, twenty ... As a result, after 35 minutes, he comes to the podium with the Rector of KPI, who thanks the head of Microsoft for the visit and great contribution to the development of modern technologies in Ukraine. Blah blah blah, pass the word to Steve.

To the point

Steve began his lecture with cloud computing. He spoke about the potential that cloud engineering has in literally any area of ​​life. Also drew attention to the technology (hardware and software), which should be used in such systems.

According to the head of Microsoft, cloud services have become one of the most successful solutions used by the company. At the time when the global economy began to fall, Ballmer ran into a problem: “Damn, I'm the CEO of Microsoft, I have tens of thousands of employees and I need to do something about it. Reduce the number of employees, increase their number, improve technology - I did not know what to choose. ”

When creating a search engine Bing! The key point was the lack of a huge number of system administrators to maintain stable operation of the system as a whole and each server in particular. Today is Bing! combines the power of more than 250 thousand (!) servers, which in essence can be managed without human intervention. “This is cloud technology. They allow you to maintain the system in working condition, quickly update software versions - and all this without unnecessary personnel intervention, ”said Steve.

The head of Microsoft said that these technologies are the future and that he is counting on the help of young specialists from Ukraine who will develop the “clouds”. “People need smarter devices for embracing cloud engineering. That's why we've built in HTML5 support in Internet Explorer 9 and created Windows Phone 7, ”Ballmer said and pulled the phone running this OS out of his pocket.

After that, a representative of Microsoft Russia Andrei Kalugin came on the scene to demonstrate the XBOX Kinect. Honestly, I had never heard of this technology before, so I immediately heard “XBOX Connect”. Another social network, I thought. Nope, it turned out to be a mega-gadget that connects to the X-box and that can recognize voice, faces, body parts, etc. In fact, they showed a funny arcade volleyball with colorful graphics, the name did not catch. But I was struck to the heels of this small box, which can be called "like a Wii without a Wiimote." All movements were practiced so perfectly that I was able to examine in detail the slightly wacky dance of the winner performed by a representative of Microsoft. Plus, in the karma of the company, I really liked this thing. I'm already thinking about buying boxing ...

After the demonstration of Kinect, Ballmer talked a little more about cloud computing and general innovations in IT. At the end of the lecture, the head of Microsoft was asked 3 questions. They could be set in free order by e-mail before the event. They promised to ask only the best, original and popular questions (about 140 questions were asked). Perhaps the most original question was the last one - “Steve, I wanted to follow you on Twitter, but I could not find your account anywhere. When will you finally start tweeting? ” The head of Microsoft did not lose his head and replied: “I actually have a Twitter account, it’s just like a private one. But I’ll write tweet i love kpi right now and send it from my phone. ” Then he took out Windows Phone, quickly scribbled a message on the keyboard and sent it. Quickly responded makovods calculated his account - @stevebmicrosoft . So follow the health.

Afterword

The lecture was over, there were no “developers-developers-developers-developers”, no psychoses and dances - at this event I saw a very clever and self-confident peasant who doesn’t look like that idiot from YouTube videos. I am impressed by his expressive presentation of the material (not everyone knows how to gesticulate and make sounds), as well as the subtle improvisation on which the whole “show” is built. Today I received an excellent charge of emotions, goals and motivation, and for that I will say thanks to Steve Ballmer.

The only thing that confused - all in the wardrobe. Well, about Windows Phone 7, so no one told.

Ballmer talks about today's lecture.
Some photos from the lecture

PS In the second row there was a guy who was filming what was happening on the iPhone 4. One of the (as I understood) Microsoft representatives sitting on the first row turned to him, poked his finger in his shoulder and said something to his ear. After that, the guy hid the apple device :)