The Innovations of Microsoft’s New Research Building
Over the past two years Microsoft has been building a new building to house all of its Redmond, WA-based researchers. The researchers themselves helped design the building and Kevin Schofield, General Manager of Microsoft Research, gives us a tour. Along the tour you meet:
1. Martha Clarkson, workspace design manager, who helped design parts of the building. She gives us some insights into what makes it special.
2. Jennifer Chayes, managing director, Microsoft Research New England. She, along with Christian Borgs, deputy managing director, are building a new research group in New England and are using many of the same innovations in the new office in New England.
3. Phil Chou, principal research in the signal processing group, who shows how they are using a sound-proof room to study and build new devices like a conferencing camera.
4. Andy Wilson, researcher, who give us a look inside his lab. He’s the guy who created many of the technologies that you see in Microsoft’s Surface touch table system.
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Nice make-up Robert! Shame the blending isn't done too well and you've got a line down your the side of your neck! On a less trivial side of things; great to see the inside of such a building. I wonder when you'll get permission to film inside apple's ;-)!
Is this a place you can tour? If so, could you just walk in to ask or a tour, or would you have to make an appointment?
To us in micro-businesses it interesting to see how the big end of town operates. I must admit the things i see in these videos we take back into our own business (okay so maybe not the surface computing stuff (but i would love one of those globes)) but workspace design etc. Robert keep up the great work. You are just on the up and up.
Microsoft Research is breaking out of the Redmond centric focus. While this new building does not represent the "bleeding edge" of workplace innovation - it is a very large step in the right direction. This effort represents breaking from a comfortable "formula" and I predict will be the springboard for significant cultural and organizational transformation.
Time will be the judge - I am optimistic
Honestly, Cant see anything special...most new buildings have these...this could be a financial services company if it dint say it was MS Research
great vid Robert!
Sorry for not having the download capability yet. That will be turned on this week. If you can't wait for the weekend, you can subscribe to my feed on Scobleizer.tv in iTunes or some other podcasting software and download the files there.
Robert
Im lost how do I download your film to watch offline?
Any chance we can get the video's downloadable for offline viewing?
Wavy orange wall decorations, raised floors and 'daylight' hardly make an innovative building. Microsoft kids themselves into thinking they are innovative - large company cognitive dissonance.
We'll have downloads soon, sorry about that. If you subscribe to the feed on ScobleizerTV you'll get the downloads. I have this video on my iPhone that way.
thxs for this..much interesting..
Maybe you should use something like the TED web video interface. It gives you the main phases of the video. That way you could provide access to the atom of your molecule !
Robert,
I agree with Patrick. If your video isn't an attachment to your RSS feed, then your video doesn't exist. Even if I didn't have WebSense blocking "streaming media" in my office, which I get around by downloading at home to my portable media player so I can watch from any computer at any time. Why would I ever want to watch a video in my browser? That's what Media Player is for, so I can watch in the background while I'm doing other things. Still waiting for fastcompany.tv to publish some consumable video.
Why is the download link only available in the html source code? You should really let the people download your "documentaries".
Jut my 2 cents
Very interesting video... but too long... is not an interview is a documentary.
I wrote up what happens in this video here: http://scobleizer.com/2008/03/20/tour-and-interviews-at-microsoft-resear...
Jon Biddell: that's not true. They are doing similar research, yes, but Microsoft and Andy Wilson did most of this work years ago. I remember seeing demos of it before Jeff Han showed off his work. Jeff is doing similar stuff, but not the table style computer.
Re: Sufrace - most of that technology was developed by Jeff Han and presented at TED a couple of years ago.
Fantastic Tour - I think we will see more raised floors systems in the very near future for huge cost savings over long periods of time.