It has been a very busy H1 for me at Microsoft.  I have visited my teams in Slovakia, Greece, Hungary, and Poland.  Additionally, attended Leads meetings in Zurich and Barcelona.  Then I head to Ukraine and Russia before the year ends.  The thing I find so amazing is how much folks accomplish with so few people.  I think in my career the folks I work with now are more creative, think out of the box, push the limits and challenge me to think differently.  To learn the historic stories of these countries, to see where they are today and in many cases their technology adoption and implementation is light years ahead of many of my American customers I use to work with.  The understanding of the needs of the IT Professional and IT Manager and to ensure we don’t do the marketing BS but provide value and deep technical information to make them successful is very refreshing.  I hope our customers see the dedication and passion of these great folks!  From great viral digital marketing ideas to the best technical trainings, support of community activities and students to have the necessary training and skills to be competitive today. 

 

First, I headed to Slovakia to spend time with Peter.  He has a great pulse on his business and love what he is doing to launch a new training Portal where Peter from Hungary shared all his code for the original site.  Peter and his girlfriend (very beautiful) took me to this amazing restaurant on the top of a bridge over the Danube.

 

Next, I visited Martha in Greece.  I know how lucky I am to have Greece as a country I support.  You wouldn’t believe how she built no community to a busting community over 2000.  To see the passion of folks for the Microsoft Platform who aren’t even Microsoft employees is remarkable- GREAT JOB MARTHA!

 

I also had the opportunity to spend time with my counterparts around the world and I am amazed to hear the stories and the different approaches that we can all learn from.  Instead of working so hard, the need to work smart and share the great ideas with each other.  I think I found my long lost sister Jacqueline from Singapore, never thought two people could think so much alike.  Thanks to my Western Europe buddy Marcel who kept echoing the same challenges I face in Central Eastern Europe to our support teams in Redmond. 

 

Next, I headed to Poland.   Maggie is a brand new lead and has got off the ground at a running pace!  Her understanding of what IT Pros and IT Managers expect in Poland is great!  She is tweaking the programs and working with our different internal teams to show how much Microsoft cares and the value of our platform as no other company offers all the free training, free deployment guides, free whitepapers to help IT Pros and IT Managers to be successful in their jobs and try to make their jobs easier.  Right after Poland I got to visit Peter.  Peter is one of the veterans on the team and his insight and ideas have really helped me be more of a support for the team.  I appreciate him willing to share his ideas and now we have scaled several of his projects across the region!

 

I then headed off to TechEd in Barcelona, what a huge event all focused on deep technical content for IT Professionals and IT Managers.  So many sessions, so many topics, so many people.  It was also a time I got to meet with my team to tackle our hard issues and figure out how to solve them.  I love how Renat, Anton, Peter, Volo, Martha, Peter and Loredana keep pushing me to think differently and to take off my American lens.  (Sorry Radim and Maggie you do this too but you missed the meeting!)

 

See pictures of my amazing team and amazing colleagues below.  I feel very lucky to work for a great company that has such amazing teams, people who are passionate about the success of our customers and people!  Keep up the great work team!

So I am very behind in my blog and missed my great adventure with my husband (Greg) and all of our Munich PHD friends.  Our Russian friend Yulia had this great idea to hike up a mountain in pitch black darkness to a hutte to listen to Irish music.  So it sounded like a great idea until we got there.  We believe she knew the way but after 3 hours going in several wrong directions we thought we may be sleeping on the rocks on the mountain side with no dinner for the night.  Thanks to our adventurous Peter finding our way to the hutte.  Once we got there- the hutte masters were amazing, the food great and music fabulous!  The whole town seemed to be in the tiny bar and later we found there was a paved road all the way to the hutte and we didn’t need to scale the side of the rocky mountain.  For all the hard times we gave Yulia, when we awoke the next day it was absolutely amazing view and we could see Munich and the Alps and we all forgave her for our adventure and thanked her for such a great idea!  The hike the next day was great and I almost forgot the night before we met fellow American buddies working for GORE.  They were great and we hope they email us soon to hang-out.  To mine and Gregs suprise though when we headed down the hill was it should have only taken 45 minutes instead of 3 hours and there was a nice walking path trail all the way to the hutte instead of us taking the busy road the whole way and scaling the mountain side. We now will come back this summer to try the adventure again!  If you have time, we suggest you must take the DB to Brannenburg and hike up to the Brietenburghutte! follow the pedestrian path!  Great place, great people, great food and great music!  Couple pictures of the adventure.  We still love you Yulia and Alana we don’t hate you for introducing us to Yulia-thanks for letting to Americans join the brilliant PHDs….

So I am a little behind in my blog.  Last week I was in Barcelona for our Microsoft TechEd Conference focused on delivering deep technical content to our IT Professionals and IT Managers to help ensure they are successful in their jobs and we are doing everything possible to help them with their careers on the Microsoft Platform.  During this week, we had many meetings in Central Eastern Europe with a IT Manager Security Roundtable, Community Event for all our MVPs and we had some side internal meetings.  While all this was happening our new President was elected- YEAH PRESIDENT OBAMA and the cheers cried out through out the city and through our event!  I am so proud to be an American again and my husband can remove the Canadian Flag off his backpack. 

 

Back to our meetings, offsites, and programs.  I am amazed at the creativity, solutions and activities our IT Pro Leads execute in our many countries in CEE.  The focus on how do we make our IT Professionals and IT Managers who made a bet on the Microsoft Platform succesful is so embodied by this team.  Below you will see them sharing best practices to help each other be better and our IT Manager Security Roundtable.  And of course some great team pictures of the IT Pro Team and also our CEE Headquarter Team.  I feel lucky to be part of such an energized group doing what is right for our customers and teams.