The Freedom to Change

The Saros cycle is an eclipse cycle with a period of 18 years, 11 days and 8 hours . It was discovered by ancient Babylonian astronomers. One saros period after an eclipse, the Sun, Earth and Moon return to approximately the same relative geometry. I know this as I asked Bing chat to tell me about a natural phenomenon that takes 18 years to happen.

18 years is also the time it takes for most people to reach the end of their physical development.

After 18 years my symbiotic relationship with Microsoft is coming to an end.

However, you look at it, it is a long time. For me it is almost 40% of my life.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella sent a communication to employees acknowledging challenging times of change, where customers are optimising digital spend and exercising caution due to a global recession. He emphasised three priorities: aligning cost structure with revenue, investing in strategic areas, and treating people with dignity and respect. Nadella announced reducing the overall workforce by 10,000 jobs.

The disestablishment of my role leading Microsoft Customer Success in New Zealand happened back in July 2022 when the Partner , Strategic Sales and Customer Success teams merged across Australia and New Zealand. Since July I have been leading the office of the chief architect for Microsoft Customer Success across Australia and New Zealand working with our largest and most strategic customers as they move their workloads to the Microsoft cloud. Receiving the news that my role has been identified as one of the 10,000 jobs being disestablished has presented me with an opportunity to reflect and focus on what's next.

Ka pū te ruha, ka hao te rangatahi

Is a whakataukī with a literal translation "Once the old fishing net is worn, it is put aside to make way for the new fishing net". It is a metaphor for the succession of generations and the importance of the youth as future leaders.?One of the most rewarding parts of the mahi I have done at Microsoft in the last six years has been mentoring and coaching future technical leaders across Microsoft especially those from diverse backgrounds. I am excited to continue to follow their careers, cheering them on as they grow.

As I close this chapter it seems fitting to reflect on some of my happiest memories of my time working at Microsoft both in New Zealand and across the world. Like any mix tape, I may miss your favourite song but feel free to drop a comment below to share, reflect and remember the moments that impacted you.

• First and foremost, I'd like thank Anneliese Parker you have been my rock. You have supported me from the time I started at Microsoft and through all the travel and time away. I am so thankful for the support you have shown me. You are strong woman and an inspiring person who has bought our girls up to be strong independent women. Thank you!
• Carlos Miguel Martinez after working with you at AnswerView. You inspired and helped me to join Intergen in 2003 and Microsoft in 2005. For this I am forever grateful. I still have fond memories of the presentation that you and I gave with Nas Shannon in the expression around the clock event on designers and developers.
• I hosted Juha Saarinen and a group of kiwis in LA to attend the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC05). There Bill Gates shared his vision of the programmable web and discussed the challenge of meeting customer demand with enough software developers. I was there in person for all three of Steve Ballmer’s most famous moments . While progress has been made in making the industry more representative of society, and Satya has helped reset the culture there is still much mahi to do. I am a better person for my time at Microsoft and I leave as a champion for a more inclusive technology future.
• Bringing Tony Chor to NZ to speak at the inaugural Webstock in 2006.
• Foo Camp Feb 2007 w/ Nathan Torkington - video - Rod Drury / Rowan Simpson that Foo Camp was a big recruitment drive for Xero and the origin story for the Auckland Web Meetup .

• Speaking at Webstock on the risks of sharing personal information online in Feb 2008. I have so many fond memories of Webstock and the incredible community created by Mike and Tash and others.
• Building the interactive web experience for the?Louis Vuitton Pacific Series Feb 2009 with Ian Taylor , John Rendall and Clinton Rocksmith

• Auckland Web Meetup 2007-2013. I have fond memories of the mahi that john ballinger , Karl von Randow and Matthew Buchanan put into growing the community and building lasting friendships. My 20x20 is a surprising reflection on the shortening of attention spans and what impact social media may have on us in the future. I was still in the early days of developing and refining my craft of public presentations. Michelle Dickinson (MNZM) and Vaughan Fergusson have both been on a journey refining their craft as presenters. Michelle Dickinson (MNZM) shares how to overcome the fear of being an introvert to rock the stage to which she is now a master!

• Supporting john ballinger , Karl von Randow , Tim Heuer , Arturo Toledo by creating and delivering the NZsynth demo at WEB09 - there was some amazing projects that came out of this and Expression for Art's Sake especially from Tim Tait with The Mixing Room at Te Papa and Kura Pounamu . It also helped Keith Patton to go on to build Marker Metro (the world's first digital agency building apps exclusively for Windows) with Ben Gracewood and Nigel Sampson after that event.

• TechEd sold out every year in NZ with over 2,500 people attending 140+ sessions over three days, the event was NZ's biggest annual tech event and ran for 21 years. It was also a celebration of NZ music and entertainers, one of my favourite moments was Katchafire performing Three Little Birds in 2009. Through contributing to and then leading the team that delivered Microsoft TechEd/Ignite in NZ from 2006 to 2014 I got to meet some incredibly inspiring people. I talked Scott Guthrie into making his first trip to New Zealand to keynote with Rowan Simpson in 2006. Scott convinced Rowan to start a blog while I drove them both to the rugby . The Three Screens and a Cloud Keynote from 2010 remains one of the most ambitious live demos that I have taken on with John Papa . This was from a time when Microsoft surface was still a full-sized coffee table! Hat tip to Jordan Knight for your incredible skills building the code and being there behind the scenes to ensure it was a seamless delivery. It was great to also close the demo with the launch of the NZ Cricket video vault working with Gus Pickering , Zach Hitchcock and Nadia Maclaren . Other noteworthy demos that followed were the Ignite Dracula demo 2016 and AI on the Edge at NDC Sydney with David Glover in 2018 - this references the post I did on building a classification model using Custom Vision , thanks to Azadeh Khojandi and Micheleen Harris for their contribution to this work.
• It was through these keynotes that I got to bring a series of inspiring people to New Zealand including August de los Reyes (he/him) , Jer Thorp (I highly recommend his book where he talks about his time in NZ and Māori data sovereignty), Lou (Lewis) Carbone , Sean Gourley , James Whittaker , Laura Butler , Katharine Holdsworth , Dona Sarkar , Donovan Brown and Jennifer Marsman .
• I remember seeing Michelle Dickinson (MNZM) present at Codemania in 2014 . Michelle's presentation had a lasting impression on me. It was this along with Vaughan Fergusson 's presentation on Living Impossibly that inspired me to work with Michelle Dickinson (MNZM) to deliver the message of being an impossible person in the 2014 TechEd NZ keynote. I have written about the impossible goals I have set myself since 2014 .

I recall before the keynote sitting with Michelle and Vaughan sharing a beer and talking about their idea to start a technology museum on the waterfront that morphed into OMG Tech! I volunteered at multiple OMG Tech events, it was OMG Tech! and Michelle Dickinson (MNZM) who first inspired my daughter Indigo and my niece Greer to lead. It was through Imagine Cup and then OMGTech! that I met 林悦 and Tash Bettridge (two amazing and influential whāhine toa) who I would later hire into Microsoft New Zealand.

Indigo presented at a woman in tech event in Auckland with Angie Judge who I met through mentoring at Lightning Lab in Auckland. It was a proud Dad moment to have Indigo there cheering me on as Angie and I presented at TEDx in 2018.

• The Microsoft Green Button story from 2014 ( Dave Fellows , Scott Houston ) - I fondly remember the dinner in Wellington when we welcomed the Green Button team to Microsoft. I am even more impressed that this team morphed into the Azure Batch service and more recently focused on Azure Kubernetes Service with product engineers working across Aotearoa.
• A highlight was arranging for Sir Richard Hadlee to meet Satya Nadella in Auckland when he first came to New Zealand in 2016. Through an online auction I purchased a cricket bat that was signed by all the players of all six teams (NZ, Aus, South Africa, India, West Indies and Sri Lanka) that played cricket in NZ during the summer of 1995. The signatures included a young Sachin Tendulkar, Martin Crowe and Sir Richard Hadlee’s own signature prominently across the back of the bat. I reached out to Nick Hadlee to convince his father Sir Richard to fly up and meet Satya missing the first day of the Christchurch test between NZ and Pakistan. Needless to say, it was a highlight for Satya to meet his childhood hero.

Sir Richard is widely regarded as one of the finest cricketers in history, and to me, he will always be one of my first childhood heroes. I had a real dream come true recently, when I met Sir Richard during my travels to New Zealand.

• Jesus Aguilar opened my mind to immunotherapy through his work with Illumina. The book he gave me in 2018 sent me on a path of discovery and it is so great to see you now working for Microsoft Genomics. Thank you David Downs for your leadership sharing your story and the role you have played to get CAR T-cell therapy in New Zealand . It was an incredible highlight for me to meet Laurence Cooper and contribute to last year's biotech panel at the Bridgewest Ventures Impactful Innovation conference in Wellington. Thank you to Samar Alrayyes and John Robson for inviting me to participate and Saba Samiei ?? for making your dreams a reality.
• Tara W. , Azadeh Khojandi , Lace Lofranco , Swetha Sundar , Alyssa Ong , Abby-Junyi Shen , 林悦 , Tash , Amy Vo , Anu Kaw , Bia , Saba Samiei ?? , Kotomi , Silvia Wibowo , Kenny Singh , Hong Bu , Smita Vemulapalli , Minette Steynberg , Galina , Yingying (Myra) Ma , Tania , Samar Alrayyes , Tomomi Sako , Eunji Kim , Siliang , Ching Chen , Elena Terenzi , Chimène , Brenda Wallace , Jennifer Marsman , Sarah , Elizabeth S. , Heba E. , Laura Butler , Micheleen Harris , Mona Soliman Habib, PhD , Tracey Trewin , Sarah , Janine Chester , Helen Robinson, ONZM , Shiva Ford , Sara Williams Spalding , Michelle Arthars , Sacha Judd , Siouxsie Wiles , Dr Mahsa McCauley (Mohaghegh) , Leila Etaati and Michelle Dickinson (MNZM) you have all helped me to reflect on my privilege . You have helped me to focus on becoming a more effective and informed ally. I am on a journey to continue to improve every day. Thank You!
• Tara W. , Azadeh Khojandi , Lace Lofranco , Swetha Sundar , Mona Soliman Habib, PhD as principal engineers you have taught me so much. It has been a privilege to work with you on impactful customer projects and see the mahi you put in to inspire women to pursue their engineering potential.
• In March 2019 we lost a great New Zealand in Atta and I lost a friend in the Christchurch Mosque shooting. Thank you to Matt Pickering , Gus Pickering , Husain Al-Badry ???? , Elias Billeh , Hady Osman and Mike Choeung for the support you showed to Atta's family and the Radian team after this tragedy.

I have had many amazing managers over the years that have helped me to grow and develop as a coach and leader I'd like to acknowledge some of them here.

• Frank Arrigo - you taught me to stay curious and put myself out there.
• Sean McBreen / Ross Peat you both accelerated my career at Microsoft by nominating me for a circle of excellence platinum award for the work I was contributing to the web community in NZ. Thank you for that!
• Scott Wylie - you helped me discover a desire to mentor and grow others.
• Kevin Ackhurst - you showed me that you can lead without pretending to be someone that you are not.
• Paul Muckleston - you schooled me in business strategy and leadership.
• Barrie Sheers - you took the time to get to know me on a personal level and gave me a platform to share authentically across Microsoft NZ - I remember when you asked my permission to share a speech that I gave at Kristin School foundation day with Microsoft NZ on pink shirt day to stand up against bullying. That was a proud moment.
• David Miller - you gave me the courage to leave the leadership team in Microsoft New Zealand to take on a role focused on Southeast Asia and emerging markets ( Alyssa Ong , Wellington Perera I have fond memories of this time, thank you for the impact of your work in these developing markets where Microsoft didn't yet have a presence) - the DX without boarders work that we started together had great impact. Chris Auld I'm glad you found your path to Microsoft, Singapore and CSE. I have fond memories of working together from your time as a Microsoft regional director and after joining Microsoft. You can be very proud of your achievements with the global CSE team. Siriporn P. I have fond memories of meeting Princess Sirindhorn with you and David Miller along with the winning team from Thailand in the 2016 Microsoft Imagine Cup.

• Srikanth Raju (司瑞凯) - you gave me the opportunity to be the chief engineer for Microsoft CSE in Asia. Working with Tim Park , Beat Schwegler , Josh Holmes and Mike Hopcroft . Working as a team to establish the framework for engineering leadership across CSE worldwide taught me so much and helped form some incredible friendships.
• Steven Guggenheimer thank you for the stage that you gave me to share my quantified self story alongside Jennifer Marsman , Nuno Costa and Nicolas Gaume to the worldwide developer experience team at Microsoft. Dae Woo Kim , Lace Lofranco , Regan Murphy and Marcel Aldecoa I am inspired to see how each of you has embraced change in your health. Richard MacManus I loved reading your book documenting this movement in 2014. Steven Blackburn thank you for inspiring me to run further than I ever thought I could. Ben Kepes thank you for inspiring me to go even further and faster.
• Neil Hutson / Neil Leslie your combined tenure at Microsoft spans almost 59 years! Although I didn't work directly for either of you, I won't forget the impact you both have had on my career at Microsoft. Neil Hutson I have fond memories of our times in India and your trip to NZ where I took you to see all the developers that were embracing building games for the PC and apps for the iPhone. They were not using any Microsoft development technologies. Do you remember me taking you to visit Dave Frampton in his home office by the beach in Christchurch in the very early days of iPhone development? It was soon after this trip that we chose to create the UX Evangelist role for Microsoft. I helped to create a feature article in the NZ Sunday Star times many years later to tell the story of some of the successes Secrets of appiness . Neil Leslie , you have been at Microsoft for over 31 years and were a constant in my 18 years at the company. I have fond memories of sitting in your office in Redmond discussing what it would mean when DX was dissolved, and Commercial Software Engineering was coming into being.
• John Shewchuk - although I didn't work for you directly, I enjoyed being part of your extended leadership team in CSE. The time we spent together in person inspired me. Your vision for the CSE and ability to create an industry aligned global engineering team working with our largest customers is market making. I miss our debates on the virtues of Blockchain, I guess in reflection you were right, and I was wrong but don't tell Mat Velloso that.
• Sara Williams Spalding - the time we spent at Whistler with our daughters was the start of our friendship. The work you led to establish the global financial services engineering team was a highlight to be a part of. Although time zones were challenging it was inspiring for me to work for a principal engineer with your experience and the team in New York. I remember you cautioned me when I chose to leave CSE to come back to Microsoft NZ during the pandemic. I don't regret the choice I made but you certainly helped me think through the implications of leaving Microsoft engineering.
• Lara Rubbelke / Robin Cole - the time we spent in partnership as the global CSE strategic tech teams worked with your Redmond based teams. I have fond memories of our time in Tokyo together.
• Tracey Trewin - your experience as an engineering leader at Microsoft was legendary. I will never get tired of the story you told me of how Visual Studio Code came to be and the role that you played in its creation. A real highlight was hosting you along with my Asia LT including Daisuke Inoue , Daniel Rocha , Jordan Knight , Naomi Howard , Craig Rodger , Ian Chen and Rex Tang at Waiheke in Dec 2019.

• Mark Souza - I moved to be the NZ Customer Success lead in part due to your strong technical leadership and your experience working in engineering. You inspired me by being approachable and providing a customer voice back to the Microsoft product teams. Thank you for the partnership we had with the ASB.
• Matt Hendra - you are a great leader that built a team of customer success leaders across Asia. Thank you for the inclusive leadership approach you built us up and opened doors.
• Vanessa Sorenson - we didn't know each other very well before I chose to come back to lead the NZ Customer Success Team. You taught me that it is possible to lead with the heart through good times and through challenging times. What we accomplished together as a leadership team in two short years is incredible. Nobody can take this away from us. You built a strong team that made us all better leaders.

There are too many people to thank individually although I’d like to acknowledge and thank the team of 60 incredibly talented humans in the Customer Success Unit (CSU) in New Zealand. It was an absolute privilege and a career highlight for me to lead this team for just over two years, thank you to Ben Hasler , Mark Bosley and Antony Willis for making my onboarding so seamless. Seeing the care bear calendars distributed across the team last week gave me hope that the culture that we have built together is resilient to change. I have no doubt that this team will continue to lead our customers to the cloud and the Microsoft Azure Datacentre Region in NZ when it opens its doors. I will be cheering you on from the side-line.

Alessandro Loesch Jannuzzi , Aparna Gupta , Imane Jamal Eddine I am inspired by the growth in your careers and are privileged to have worked with you in Brazil, India and Singapore.

To the team of chief architects Shane Baldacchino , Chris Modica and Fabio Braga although we didn't get to work together for long, I have no doubt that you will be successful in helping the ANZ Customer Success team to become more industry aligned over the coming years. Thank you to Peter 'Dr Pete' Stanski , for the role you played in getting this established.

To the anchor tenants that I have been working closely with over the last two years.

Fonterra - Toby Granwal , Tristan Hunter , Scott Pyles , Vijay Reddy , Nigel Russell - it was a pleasure to work with you all on the data platform, project contexere and the bag sorting project.

ASB - Dhruv Dhir , Glenn Taylor , David Bullock , David Wills, MIL Johann Cooper , Adarsh Jupudi , Yogesh Shetty - thank you for the partnership. You have a great team working with you as you migrate to Azure, and I have no doubt that you will be successful in your journey. A special thank you to Dhruv Dhir , for the open and honest partnership that we have formed working together you can be proud of everything you have achieved. Also thank you to Keith Mayer , Tania Thornton and Mark Souza for your continued support of ASB.

I will give the final word to the Māori and Pacifica team at Microsoft Aotearoa.

Whāia te iti kahurangi, ki te tuohu koe, me he maunga teitei.

Seek the treasure that you value most dearly, if you bow your head, let it be to a lofty mountain.

Tēnā koutou? Dan Te Whenua Walker , Isaac Morunga , Teresa Otineru CA Sam Tangitau and Daniel Larsen . I will never forget the Haka that you performed for those of us leaving Microsoft New Zealand last week.

When I mentor people in the early stages of their careers, I help them to reflect on having the gift of time. As you advance through your career you gain more experiences and monetary reward, but you lose the gift of time. This change has provided me an opportunity that I'm not going to waste. I'm going to accept the gift of time and be open to following new pathways. I am grateful to Microsoft for providing me with this gift.