Posted by scobleizer // Fri, Sep 9, 2005 5:15 AM
We just had a short chat with Steve Ballmer in his office (we filmed the interview today, July 7, at 1:30 p.m.)
Questions?
Why does Microsoft care about developers?
01:11 Why does Microsoft have an evangelism team?
01:48 What is your call to action for developers right now?
02:44 Microsoft is a leader in transparency and blogging. Why did you allow blogging?
03:38 Time for some tough questions. On the blogs there are those that say that Microsoft doesn't innovate, can you give us some examples of where Microsoft is innovating?
05:42 Coming up with tough questions for you is hard. If you were in my position what tough questions would you ask Microsoft's CEO?
07:22 Since a lot of Microsoft employees watch Channel 9, what would you say to all the Microsoft employees around the world?
08:48 What do you want to be remembered as?
Because this video is so short, the download is available in a high-resolution format.
Tags: MS+Personalities, MS+Execs
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| Video Length: 00:09:27
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Replies:
242
// Views:
177,614
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Beer28
I contend Channel9 is a covert research project
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Unbelievable, nice job Scoble, I'm downloading now.
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By the way, the lady who snuck behind Steve at the beginning of the interview is Katy Hunter, his assistant. She helped me arrange the interview, so owe her a debt of gratitude. Getting on his schedule is really tough!
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He is not only the head of a $300 billion organization, but is personally worth >$10 billion. Yet he really looks very passionate about what he's doing and the company. Maybe it's just his personality, but I'm astounded. He sits down and talks to the video camera just like any other guy.
http://ironyuppie.com
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Hang on, this is channel 9. What happened to the one hour long rambling interview? This is actually short, sharp and to the point. More like this please!
Congrats on the scoop though!
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Beer28
I contend Channel9 is a covert research project
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Wow, I only have 3 words after watching.
executives, Executives, EXECUTIVES!!!
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I'm sure Steve will monitor this thread & follow up on any question we might have  so here are mine:
How long will Longhorn take to go mainstream?
MS seems to be moving towards stadards more these days, has MS given up
on the "platform that wins" (obviously on the server side) and going
with platform that co-exists?
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m00n1: It was supposed to be longer but his schedule got cut so we only had 10 minutes. But, I'm getting feedback to make our videos shorter and tighter, so we'll work on that.
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10 minutes is great! Personally, I'd make all interviews 20 minutes max. IMHO it's very rare an interview is interesting for longer than 20 minutes (ironically ballmer would probably be one of those but I suspect getting an hour on his schedule would be harder than winning the lottery).
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hes pretty funny ill say that
you always read about the banging of fists and clapping of hands etc - but you never really see it (except for the famous dance routine)
good work steve - thanks for talking to scoble and channel 9
get a blog - or maybe Vloging would be better for you - so people can feel slightly uncomfortable wondering if your a brilliant ceo - or a raving lunatic haha
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Maurits
Hold ∞ in the palm of your hand [B̲̅l̲̅a̲̅k̲̅e̲̅]
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Very cool...
Some comments on this interview:
Good to see a CEO who trusts his employees!
What's with the whole "winning" thing? As a developer I am not so
much interested in a battle between competing vendors as I am in
evolving future-proofed standards. If I can write HTML I could
care less if the browser is Microsoft or Mozilla or Mac. I don't
want to worry about Microsoft-HTML vs. Mozilla-HTML vs. Mac-HTML.
Some suggestions for future videos:
Harder questions? You said the interview got cut short. What questions didn't you get to ask?
Transcripts will solve the long-interview problem - especially if they
have timestamps associated with them. Make it a volunteer project
if you don't want to assign staff.
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he's very energetic , what a surprise lol.. looks like a really cool guy, imagined him to be a serious charger type of guy.
I was astounished that he actually knew what avalon was lol..
shouldve asked him about Larry and his encounter with Steve..lol
btw keep the videos longgg..1 hour videos are the best.
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>What questions didn't you get to ask?
I got to ask most of them. I had another softball question about what his day was like.
I don't usually prepare a whole lot of questions in advance. Usually I come up with them in response to what's going on.
If I had more time, I'd ask him more about some of the famous software industry stories.
Like being told he was wrong by Larry Osterman and still hiring him anyway.
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I LOVE THIS GUY! He has a bunch of enthusiasm and energy, he's freaking hilarious too! Dude, YOU GUYS ROCKS! YEAHH!!
Steve Ballmer! Steve Ballmer! Steve Ballmer!
Steve Veselinovic! 
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I'm pretty sure Steve Ballmer asked MS employee's about the deck system
and hired him when he was told that larry was right..the deck system is
out of my era..first OS was win98 and beOS...<\3
try to get 30-1 hour videos of executives..these guys are cool, what about board members lolll
scoble : so you know we are shipping longhorn in 06, where do you see the product going in the next 10 years
board member : longhorn? we don't raise cattle...
there was a A&E Bio show on Bill Gates and had one of BG's lines..
"we might be friends but don't tell me stuff that I can use against
you" which was for Apple's strategy of not opening up to the outside
that Windows was.
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I didn't see 20 body guards dressed in suits with shaded glasses.
Steve.
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LOL, surprisingly , no1 wants to hurt Microsoft Executives..
"the Open source guy" lol , doubt any executives seen Linux..
he didnt mention firefox which took market share from the dead IE..
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I don't see a reason to do so.
Steve.
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Unfortunately in today's world there are security, but I'm not allowed to discuss those. We were even asked not to shoot through the windows because that could identify where his office was.
By the way, I wore my London Underground T-shirt to the Interview that I got a couple of weeks ago. Thought that would be appropriate because of this morning's events.
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scoble, you know there was a guy waiting with a label printer to make that tshirt ...
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I love the "Who are You?" you ask in the beginning Scoble
Lol.
Great work.
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can't wait to see the Bill Gates video..
So who are you?
bg: your boss
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Lol, what happend when you asked him about blogs. He gets this energy kick and then starts talking normal agian?
Anyway, great interview. But who is this guy? =)
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new intern loll
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erik_: Hmmm, I thought he kept his energy up the entire time! I wish I had that kind of energy and enthusiasm.
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