We are now no longer the Knights who say Ni.

So yes, obviously I've been away from the (work) twitter for a while mostly thanks to travel and indulging my personal interests in a startups (acting as an advisor) and independent web video (as an investor and fetcher of tea). 

But somewhere in the midst of taking a break I ended up at The Google and specifically working on Chrome and all things shiny and Chrome-like. That might seem a tad odd for someone who worked on Windows and other "proprietary" stuff for a long (long) time and well, you'd be right! I'll go on and on about why Google in future posts but in short it was about getting to work with some more very cool, crazy smart people, many of whom I've known in the industry for a long (long) time. Also, they have slides in their buildings.

As for Chrome specifically that's a little easier to explain. First, and I mean this with absolutely no disrespect to the wonderful people on IE, but I've been a HUGE Chrome fan for a long (long) time, pretty much since it launched back in 2008. Also, in looking for something new, I wanted to learn some new skills, be the "idiot in the room" and so started looking for things that were sort of the opposite of what I had been doing. Change being as good as a rest and all that. I looked at a number of different projects but becoming involved in web standards, open-source and community development seemed about as opposite as I could get without say, becoming a construction worker. Actually, I did do some construction work but that's for another post. Suffice to say I'm completely out of my depth and loving every minute of it.

Cheers,

Ian.

And now for something COMPLETELY different...and I mean it this time...

So, Friday was my last day at Microsoft. There was cake (the biggest cake you've ever seen!!!), there was Scotch (thanks to ScottGu) and there was a Sinclair ZX80 (?). The ZX80 in question was the first computer I ever owned and learned to program in Basic on. Not a copy, but the actual one thanks to my brother who, unbeknownst to me, had it brought over from my parents’ house in England. I had no idea they even still had it!

10 PRINT "Hello Ian "

20 GOTO 10

Those 2 lines were enough to get me interested in writing software for a living and after some completely crazy coincidences I ended up working for Microsoft in Seattle in July of 1990. The first project I ever worked on was with the famous Rico Mariani, helping out on a small corner of the editor for an IDE called “Sequoia”. 20 years later I found myself working on the editor for an IDE only this time one you might have heard of: “Visual Studio”. So yes, after 20 years at Microsoft I’d ended up back where I began :-)

This past year has been absolutely amazing for me with the completion of what I think are some truly epic products: the WPF based VS2010 (with a killer new version of “Cider”), Silverlight 4 (blowing past 60% adoption) and Windows Phone 7 with its Silverlight-focused developer platform. All in all it seemed like a good jumping off point for me.

No doubt the conspiracy bloggers will try to make something major out of me leaving but let me just try to head that off if I can. Me leaving Microsoft was an entirely personal decision that had very little to do with the company per se and a lot to do with me moving to California. While it would have been possible to continue working remotely or bounce up and down the west coast I decided that the move marks a good time in my life to take a bit of a break and then try my hand at something completely different, to learn some new skills and work with a new group of crazy-bright-people-who’ll-make-me-look-good-by-association-alone. I’ll talk about what I’m going to work on next when I can but for now I have to be a little stealthy so please forgive the hand wave. Come back in a month or two and I’ll share what I can.

So what about WPF, Silverlight et al?!?! Well rest assured they are in VERY good hands and indeed have been for a long long time (since long before I switched to being an architect). One of the first and best lessons I learned as a manager was to hire people who are way smarter than me and try to stay the heck out of their way as much as possible. The team now running WPF and Silverlight exemplify that philosophy perfectly, they are wicked smart and extremely driven. You’ll see some amazing things coming out of the team in the months and years ahead.

At the risk of this sounding like a eulogy I want to close by thanking everyone at Microsoft and outside who made my time at the company more fun than should be legal. I’d thank you all personally if I could but there have been just so many amazing people I’ve met over the past 20 years it’s impossible to know where to even begin! So, collectively, I thank you all, it's trully been an honor and a privilege.

Cheers,

Ian.

And now for something completely different...

As I think some of you know I’ve been the General Manager for WPF, Silverlight and the associated developer tools for a few years now and without a doubt it’s been an honor and a privilege to shepherd such an amazing team of engineers. Still, now that Dev10 and SL4 are done and SL Mobile is well on its way I’ve decided it’s time for a change and specifically to get back to my engineering roots a bit. Not that I haven’t loved being a GM but if I never see another budget spreadsheet again it will be too soon :-)

So starting, well, now really, I’m switching roles to become an architect full time and lead a small (but elite!) team of like architects for Silverlight\WPF\.Net and focusing almost exclusively on technical and design challenges. We'll be looking at many things, like performance, WPF\SL convergence, media, Metro, cloud-integration and whatever you lot think we should be working on! 

I said this was “something completely different” but that’s a bit of an exaggeration as I’m not leaving the division, my boss remains the same (ScottGu) and I’m not even moving offices (relief!). Mostly I just like using lines from Monty Python. Questions or comments: hit me up on twitter!