32 years at Microsoft - Oh how time flies...

Reflecting on the passage of time, it has been 32 years since I commenced my journey with Microsoft. At that time, I often referred to my employment as being with 'a small software company in the Pacific Northwest', which was definitely true at the time. I made the decision to depart from Digital Equipment Corporation and the mini-computer industry to join a personal computing software company, unaware of the significant changes that lay ahead.

For those too young to know, like my sons (Philip Falco & Nick Fay ) - this was before the internet, before Wi-Fi, before smartphones, even before LED screens, 4K TVs let alone HDTV :-) This was the time of Windows 3.1. It's been amazing to see the incredible changes in this industry and technology and how it's become a central part of business, education, and personal life.

My first day was the beginning of a lot of firsts – showed up to find I was ‘re-org’d’ to a new team – Premier Support and handling a product, Microsoft Mail I didn’t know anything about, and a desk – without a computer.? To fill my time before my Gateway computer showed up, I was supposed to dig into the Microsoft C++ SDK – who remembers it and how it took up most of a bookshelf and included all those 5 ? disks.?

From Premier Support, I joined the Developer Relations Group (DRG) as the Evangelist for MAPI, then Exchange/collaboration, and later Windows 95. FYI - while I wrote the forward to the Inside MAPI book – I wasn’t the architect.?

It was incredible experience to work with and present to ISVs worldwide. Those sure were different times, back then we had to rent projectors and screens and be careful not to lose the Compaq Luggable during our travels.

In 1998 I transitioned to Microsoft Research to join the University Relations team, and join two colleagues Todd Needham & Dave Ladd, where I engaged with various universities and researchers.? Although the name of the group evolved over the years—from University Relations to MSR Connections, Outreach, Accelerator, and more—our mission remained consistent: fostering connections between the research conducted at Microsoft and academic researchers worldwide. Additionally, we collaborated with researchers and scientists in fields and technologies that were not within Microsoft's scope at the time, such as high-performance computing (HPC) and the physical sciences.

Working with researchers and scientific domains allowed me to recognize the potential of integrating technology into these areas, aiming to 'reduce the time to insight.' ?To facilitate the sciences' transition to computing technologies, I organized the first SciData 2004 workshop, which later became the Microsoft eScience Workshop series, a name influenced by Tony Hey . By persuading Tom Barclay to incorporate SOAP into Microsoft TerraServer, we likely developed one of the earliest web services on the Internet — ?TerraService.NET .? Collaborating with the small WorldWide Telescope team ( Jonathan Fay & Curtis Wong ) we introduced innovative methods view and experience data – even bringing it to SXSW 2013 with the JWST thanks to Alberto Conti, PhD .

Recognizing Cloud Computing as another paradigm shift, I realized sat down with Daron Green while we were travelling in Brazil and designed the Microsoft Azure for Research program , to make cloud computing available to academics around the world.?

With AI now at the forefront, it has become evident that this technology can do more than just automate tasks; it can assist humans in developing novel solutions to complex problems. This led to an emphasis on AI in Creativity and Design . Although the external effort will not continue, there is anticipation for the progress that the MSR Tools for Thought project will achieve.

Over the past 26 years, I have had the privilege of meeting and working with notable figures such as Turing Award winners Jim Gray & Jack Dongarra , industry icons like Gordon Bell , Burton Smith, Werner Vogels , and many others, as well as various inspiring scientists from different fields, Alex Szalay , S. George Djorgovski , Alyssa Goodman , Mark Abbott , Jeff Dozier , May Dongmei Wang , and many more. These interactions have helped me understand and envision how computing technology can aid in achieving research goals.

In addition to all these notable individuals, I had the distinct pleasure of working with numerous exceptional people during my tenure at Microsoft and Microsoft Research. While all these colleagues and experiences were significant, one encounter stands out above the rest. On my first day, I had the fortunate chance to meet my future wife, Teresa. She was just ahead of me in line to receive our badges, and our badge numbers were consecutively issued—30757 and 30758.?