Jacques-Etienne Grandjean is the Senior Director, Comm Sector Western Europe of Microsoft. Jean-Etienne’s presentation title is “Are Desktop Applications the way of the past?”
Jacques-Etienne is unfortunately doing a sales job on Microsoft Live rather than addressing the actual title of his talk. Not once, even when discussing search, did he mention any of Microsoft’s competitors.
Shame really ‘cos, while Microsoft are behind in this space, a couple of their Live offerings are quite good but not mentioning the better products of their competitors, devalues all of Microsoft’s Live offerings.
I had much the same feeling. It didn’t work. Half way through it, while he was talking about the benefits of Search, mapping, desktop search etc., I thought “he’s inadvertently advertising Google here”.
Well done on helping to organise a terrific conference by the way.
Completely agree with all comments so far. He had an opportunity to enagage us and missed it. Lets face it, some of the reviews for MS Live products have been fairly good and there was real possibility that we could have engaged with the Client + Server discussion (i.e. yip, we have google desktop, google IM, etc. and guess what, google is leaving a footprint, yahoo are leaving a footprint, ms are leaving a footprint, so why are MS going to win?)
We know what the MS product set is….
I’m afraid I have to admit that I was pretty much responsible for Jacque-Etienne’s focus on Microsoft’s strategy on Software and Services. When I briefed Jacques-Etienne (based on our conversation), I told him you wanted Microsoft’s view on whether desktops were dead. I assumed you were looking for Microsoft’s take on SaaS trends and how those trends were affecting our strategies (and in particular our Live strategy and how it fits with our desktop strategy). It’s hard to get all that into 25 minutes and I figured that there would be lots of other speakers covering other services out there.
However, I do think the comments above make sense and actually are relevant to a lot of Microsoft presentations, not just yesterday’s – we can be too focused on sharing new developments within the company (and there are so many, we even find it hard to keep up to date). Perhaps we don’t spend enough time putting together more general commentaries on the market place that can generate better discussions. A good learning! Next time I’ll ask potential speakers to work directly with you to avoid confusion! 🙂
BTW, I thought the conference was really great, Tom – well done on getting a really great set of speakers! It’s conferences like this one that can spark the ideas and thought processes to help get more Irish folk participating in and contributing to Web 2.0 (or should I say the Live Web?).
Tom,I feel really sorry that you did not like the presentation. When preparing for the event, I received clear guidance to give a “strategic overview of MS Live’s plans – how we are adressing the Web 2.0 / Services world”. So this is what I did, with the sincere aim to deliver on what IT@Cork was expecting from me.
(Ironically, it has been quite an effort to put this presentation together, as I could not find an existing comprehensive presentation on MS Live’s plans! Would have been much easier to present more generic trends and market analysis)
Google certainly deserves immense respect for their amazing innovation in business models, technology, and user experience. And for their success.
Now, this is just the beginning of a new area, so there is still plenty of room for innovation on those 3 fronts.
I would be pleased to engage with you on a more personal basis, and discuss more broadly the Web 2.0 trends and dynamics, if you are interested. Feel free to contact me.
One of the most interesting questions in my view is whether people will continue to use rich user interface /local processing capabilities, alongwith services in the cloud – or will everyting converge into a browser experience. There are many opinions. One example of what technology can deliver today in a scenario that leverages local processing and cloud services is obviously GooglEarth. Another is the “Electronic Program Guide” developped as part of a project with BBC – quite cool interface (I’ll try to find a link to the video)
IT@@Cork was a great event – so congratulations and many thanks again to the organizers.
Jacques-Etienne,
thanks for responding to the post and sincere apologies if there was a miscommunication around what we wanted from your talk.
Thanks for taking the time out to develop the presentation and for coming to Cork.
I’ll drop you a mail in the next couple of days.