It's Official- OCS 2007 Is Now Out and People Centricity is King

Tuesday, Steve Ballmer and Bill Gates launched OCS 2007. While unable to attend the big event in SF (Nortel was there big time as was our new UC partner Dell), I did attend the concurrent Microsoft Canada press event, under the Innovative Communications Alliance and as sole networking platinum sponsor of OCS events being rolled out in some 50 countries. I then participated in a Microsoft-sponsored panel podcast including Microsoft and CNIB (what was the Canadian National Institute for The Blind). CNIB experienced a lot of value from UC, particularly from the ease of use and adaptability of the advanced speech features of Exchange UM- many of their users are legally blind. The personal highlight of the day was spending some time with Bill Buxton, a Principal Researcher at Microsoft, concerned with human aspects of technology. One of the journalist I spoke to called him a Renaissance Man. Technology transparency was clearly his passion, as was mountaineering and music, his first degree. His recently released book "Sketching Human Experience" should be a great read. To illustrate the importance of human design, he referenced the (usually negative) experience many of us have with telephony area codes splitting. It's not a technology issue but a human one. We all talk of the UC user experience, but Microsoft is in a somewhat unique position to really deliver, leveraging the work done by Bill's group.