The Friday Thing #873

Phew....what a week and it's not even over!

The Friday Thing 873 is a series of reflections on a week that more than most, combined work with passions/hobbies.

This time last week I was en-route to Miami to help launch the new Art Basel app, powered by Microsoft Copilot. I had the honour of participating on a panel with Pablo Rodriguez-Fraile, hosted by Laurie Rojas , to talk about the role of technology and AI in art - spanning collecting, researching, learning and provenance/economics of art. I found myself both out of my depth while enjoying swimming in a new pool where I am learning every day. And I got to explore some of the 280+ galleries showing their work at the fair and miraculously, came away with no new art. I did come away with some new stories though. Check.

Most of this week I have spent with 300+ communications professionals at Microsoft for our annual gathering. I got to share some of the work my team has been doing to build generative AI solutions for our team and dusted off my presentation building and demo skills. As I got ready to go on stage, my friend Kim asked me if I get nervous about these events given I have done quite a lot of them. Yep, I definitely get nervous I said. And what I have learned over the years is that if you don't, you're probably not doing it right. It reminded me of a quote I heard from James Corden recently at an event in London. He said, "Nerves mean you're doing something important". I like that.

On Tuesday evening, we hosted a book launch and reading with Sam Schillace for his book, No Prize for Pessimism and to celebrate the launch of our new Microsoft imprint, 8080 Books. Our editor, Greg Shaw, hosted the discussion and it was cool to sit and listen to Sam tell the story of his journey from Writely, to Box, Google and now Microsoft. One of the many things I love from Sam's book is how he talks about messiness as a crucible for growth. I'm in the middle of a lot of messiness right now, so it was reassuring to hear such an accomplished entrepreneur talk about this and remind me about the journey and how discomfort is inevitable. By the way, if you have not tried out Sam's GPT for the book, you really ought to. In the future, I hope all books may work this way. And yes, I did get asked about turning The Friday Thing in to a book. Maybe....

And then yesterday evening, I got to spend time talking about storytelling with a group of 100+ colleagues at an internal event for Microsofties who present to our customers almost every day. I talked about my storytelling journey and how I developed my storytelling skills and told a few stories along the way of course. There were a lot of great questions, including a new one for me as I was asked "how do I remember all the stories I tell?".

I answered it in the moment saying that I have trained myself (or at least developed an instinct) to spot when I am hearing a good story and to log it memory somehow. Even more so, I have tried to recognize when I am a participant in a great story and to raise my senses of the emotions, sights, sounds, smell and feel of the moment. Those elements are even more powerful for helping remember the story. The question stuck with me overnight too and this morning I drew this quick sketch to help articulate another way I could have answered it.

It's been a fabulous week of laughing, sharing and most of all learning - about new topics - but also about myself. Do I get nervous sharing the Friday Thing every week? Yes, I do. In fact I often spend as much time re-reading, editing and fact checking myself as I do writing these things because I'm putting something out into the world and asking for you to take your precious time to read it. Nerves mean you're doing something important. Time to hit send.

Music for this week is Lose Yourself by Eminem.

cheers & Happy Friday.

-Steve