Last week (10 Nov 2006) when I was in campus, J-K invited me to come along for the Vista RTM party held in B26 garages. It was a great party, 2 areas with live music, pool tables, massage areas, interesting demos (the Vista racer, and DirectX 10 "the clarity and realism are unbelievable) and unending amount of drinks and food.

 (L-R) J-K, Berno, Andre (Tablet Team SDET, ex Microsoft intern, now FTE)

Midway during the party, the focus shift to the main stage when Jim Allchin. co-President of the Platform & Services Division appeared. Vista was Jim’s baby, his labour of love. I can still recall the day when I saw Jim demoed Vista at the MVP Global Summit 2005. Jim was very hands on and demoed the entire presentation on his own. I didn’t expect a Div President dive deep into demoing a product in a presentation. When Jim was on stage (during the RTM party) recollecting all the major events throughout Vista development, I saw a man behind a product with nothing but pure genuine passion (love) behind Vista.

Midway, Jim mentioned about bringing someone onto the stage, someone who just flew in from Europe on that day, just to be at the RTM party. When the word “Europe” was mentioned, I knew it had to be – the man himself, Bill Gates :)

The loudest applause of the party was reserved for Bill went he came on stage. Bill was congratulating the team on the job well done, rallying the troops and how fundamentally it was important for us to create Vista from scratch and how the massive engineering efforts the dev teams made were so critical for positioning Windows into the future. In Bill We Trust!

Towards the end, Jim gave away some Windows Pearl decals which I managed to grab some. Mmm .. but I don't own a car yet ...

"The height of your accomplishments will equal the depth of your convictions." -- William F. Scolavino