Adaptive Path Blog

Our friend Will Tschumy at Microsoft has extended an invitation for me to be a judge at their upcoming Express Yourself event here in San Francisco.

For those of you who know me, you’re scratching your heads wondering why I am taking part in a Microsoft event. It’s true, I have not been a Microsoft fan, nor am I an apologist for them in any way. But there is something about what they are trying to do right now that has caught my attention.

So why take part in this event? Well, two reasons. One, Will Tschumy. After speaking with him, I noticed a passion for actually making a change for good in Microsoft. This was not only refreshing, it was oddly exciting. If there are people who are fighting the good fight and trying to make a shift in thinking, then I want to be involved with those people. If the environment at Microsoft is able to support evangelists like Will and his associates, things may improve.

Second are the products. Microsoft’s new Expression Suite is interesting. While I’ve not yet heard anyone switching from Adobe’s offerings to Expression, there are some aspects about the products that are truly unique. Namely, Expression Web and the way it attempts to facilitate improved interaction between designer and developer. We’ve been experimenting internally with rapid prototyping and trying to ease the pain of the designer/developer conversation. Expression takes a decent stab at this. Though we haven’t employed it, I am curious to see if people find this useful, and how this sort of product type evolves.

But, to the point of this post…the event!

Microsoft is hosting “Express Yourself” at 111 Minna on June 22nd starting at 6pm. They have asked five design firms to send their best designer / developer pairs to compete. Each team will have already been trained on the new software and will come together to build a solution based on a design problem given to them on that day. The four judges are:

* Bill Scott of Yahoo!
* Andrew Crow of Adaptive Path (that’s me)
* A representative from Microsoft
* A representative from another major valley web firm (TBD)

Check out more here.

The ultimate prize for the winning designers is an Xbox 360 with a full complement of games. There will also be door prizes for attendees.

I’m not giving Microsoft a thumbs up just yet. But, provided there is no evil ulterior motive on their part, I might actually admit that I am intrigued by what they’re doing.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 29th, 2007 at 10:07 pm and is filed under Adaptive Path, Upcoming Events. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.