Rane's World

Well, I am very behind in my blog so in November Greg's Mom and Dad came to visit us for 3 weeks.  We went to Istanbul and Alanya in Turkey for a week and then we ventured to Salzburg, Nurneburg, Ragensburg, to visit all the Christmas Markets in Germany and Austria.  We had many adventures in Turkey as we went with a German Tour Company so to the dismay of Pam, Gordon and I everything was in German.  Greg got to be the translator and I think we got about 20% of the story.  We visited all the attractions- many mosques, cistern, markets, leather shops, rug factories and were good little tourists and bought a lot of stuff we didn't need.  We saw many ruins and the vast amounts of history was the most amazing part of the trip.  Turkey was a great visit and glad we went but that was enough bartering for me for a few years- I felt like I was in Mexico.  A couple pictures of the trip there are more on my facebook page.  We enjoyed visiting all the Christmas markets with the family and Germany during the holidays is a very magical time.  I think I will miss the Christmas markets the most when we head back to the states. 

 

So I feel very lucky to have spent the last three days with some brilliant folks across Europe in Microsoft's High Potential Program.  It is an interesting program where Microsoft selects a certain number of individuals across the company world-wide that they think are the future leaders of the company.  Then these folks go through some leadership training, peer coaching, networking and on the job experiential leadership training.  All in all it has been one of the best trainings I have attended.  As part of the training we did 360 reviews where your manager, co-workers and direct reports rate you in five major leadership areas: Modeling the way, Inspring a Vision, Challenging the Process, Enabling Others and Encouraging the Heart.  It is always humbling to read how other perceive you and to understand the areas in which you need to develop more.  One of the best areas of this training is the learning circle we created in which 6 other future leaders help coach you through challenges you are currently facing.  It was a very intense three days, jammed packing and in the end quite draining but invigorating. 

 

We did get to have some fun in the evenings (of-course we were in London with Brits!) and enjoy some British pubs and a few good laughs.  I do love that British dry humor.  I look forward to my future meetings with my new British, Irish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Dutch and Middle Eastern/African friends.  A few photos below and in the album to the right. 

So its not all work, I do love to play.  When I was working in Barcelona my husband did join me for a nice weekend.  We had the opportunity to catch up with our dear friend Fela and learn to eat at 11pm and have drinks and good times at the late hours for us Americans.  We then got to attend a futbol match except Barcelona killed there competition 6-0.  Was great to be with 120,000 of our closest friends.  Some pictures below of one of our favorite cities in Europe.  maybe someday we can live there!

It has been a very busy H1 for me at Microsoft.  I have visited my teams in Slovakia, Greece, Hungary, and Poland.  Additionally, attended Leads meetings in Zurich and Barcelona.  Then I head to Ukraine and Russia before the year ends.  The thing I find so amazing is how much folks accomplish with so few people.  I think in my career the folks I work with now are more creative, think out of the box, push the limits and challenge me to think differently.  To learn the historic stories of these countries, to see where they are today and in many cases their technology adoption and implementation is light years ahead of many of my American customers I use to work with.  The understanding of the needs of the IT Professional and IT Manager and to ensure we don't do the marketing BS but provide value and deep technical information to make them successful is very refreshing.  I hope our customers see the dedication and passion of these great folks!  From great viral digital marketing ideas to the best technical trainings, support of community activities and students to have the necessary training and skills to be competitive today. 

 

First, I headed to Slovakia to spend time with Peter.  He has a great pulse on his business and love what he is doing to launch a new training Portal where Peter from Hungary shared all his code for the original site.  Peter and his girlfriend (very beautiful) took me to this amazing restaurant on the top of a bridge over the Danube.

 

Next, I visited Martha in Greece.  I know how lucky I am to have Greece as a country I support.  You wouldn't believe how she built no community to a busting community over 2000.  To see the passion of folks for the Microsoft Platform who aren't even Microsoft employees is remarkable- GREAT JOB MARTHA!

 

I also had the opportunity to spend time with my counterparts around the world and I am amazed to hear the stories and the different approaches that we can all learn from.  Instead of working so hard, the need to work smart and share the great ideas with each other.  I think I found my long lost sister Jacqueline from Singapore, never thought two people could think so much alike.  Thanks to my Western Europe buddy Marcel who kept echoing the same challenges I face in Central Eastern Europe to our support teams in Redmond. 

 

Next, I headed to Poland.   Maggie is a brand new lead and has got off the ground at a running pace!  Her understanding of what IT Pros and IT Managers expect in Poland is great!  She is tweaking the programs and working with our different internal teams to show how much Microsoft cares and the value of our platform as no other company offers all the free training, free deployment guides, free whitepapers to help IT Pros and IT Managers to be successful in their jobs and try to make their jobs easier.  Right after Poland I got to visit Peter.  Peter is one of the veterans on the team and his insight and ideas have really helped me be more of a support for the team.  I appreciate him willing to share his ideas and now we have scaled several of his projects across the region!

 

I then headed off to TechEd in Barcelona, what a huge event all focused on deep technical content for IT Professionals and IT Managers.  So many sessions, so many topics, so many people.  It was also a time I got to meet with my team to tackle our hard issues and figure out how to solve them.  I love how Renat, Anton, Peter, Volo, Martha, Peter and Loredana keep pushing me to think differently and to take off my American lens.  (Sorry Radim and Maggie you do this too but you missed the meeting!)

 

See pictures of my amazing team and amazing colleagues below.  I feel very lucky to work for a great company that has such amazing teams, people who are passionate about the success of our customers and people!  Keep up the great work team!

So I am very behind in my blog and missed my great adventure with my husband (Greg) and all of our Munich PHD friends.  Our Russian friend Yulia had this great idea to hike up a mountain in pitch black darkness to a hutte to listen to Irish music.  So it sounded like a great idea until we got there.  We believe she knew the way but after 3 hours going in several wrong directions we thought we may be sleeping on the rocks on the mountain side with no dinner for the night.  Thanks to our adventurous Peter finding our way to the hutte.  Once we got there- the hutte masters were amazing, the food great and music fabulous!  The whole town seemed to be in the tiny bar and later we found there was a paved road all the way to the hutte and we didn't need to scale the side of the rocky mountain.  For all the hard times we gave Yulia, when we awoke the next day it was absolutely amazing view and we could see Munich and the Alps and we all forgave her for our adventure and thanked her for such a great idea!  The hike the next day was great and I almost forgot the night before we met fellow American buddies working for GORE.  They were great and we hope they email us soon to hang-out.  To mine and Gregs suprise though when we headed down the hill was it should have only taken 45 minutes instead of 3 hours and there was a nice walking path trail all the way to the hutte instead of us taking the busy road the whole way and scaling the mountain side. We now will come back this summer to try the adventure again!  If you have time, we suggest you must take the DB to Brannenburg and hike up to the Brietenburghutte! follow the pedestrian path!  Great place, great people, great food and great music!  Couple pictures of the adventure.  We still love you Yulia and Alana we don't hate you for introducing us to Yulia-thanks for letting to Americans join the brilliant PHDs....

So I am a little behind in my blog.  Last week I was in Barcelona for our Microsoft TechEd Conference focused on delivering deep technical content to our IT Professionals and IT Managers to help ensure they are successful in their jobs and we are doing everything possible to help them with their careers on the Microsoft Platform.  During this week, we had many meetings in Central Eastern Europe with a IT Manager Security Roundtable, Community Event for all our MVPs and we had some side internal meetings.  While all this was happening our new President was elected- YEAH PRESIDENT OBAMA and the cheers cried out through out the city and through our event!  I am so proud to be an American again and my husband can remove the Canadian Flag off his backpack. 

 

Back to our meetings, offsites, and programs.  I am amazed at the creativity, solutions and activities our IT Pro Leads execute in our many countries in CEE.  The focus on how do we make our IT Professionals and IT Managers who made a bet on the Microsoft Platform succesful is so embodied by this team.  Below you will see them sharing best practices to help each other be better and our IT Manager Security Roundtable.  And of course some great team pictures of the IT Pro Team and also our CEE Headquarter Team.  I feel lucky to be part of such an energized group doing what is right for our customers and teams. 

 

Well folks its down to the wire now...  And one of my German friends, thanks Werner, shared this with me. I thought it was so funny-I had to share with everyone....  I have to hand one off to the Germans to be so witty!  Keep your fingers crossed and hopefully Tuesday will be President Obama. 

 

We've decided we're leaving. We intend to form our own country, and we're taking the other Blue States with us.  In case you aren't aware, that includes Hawaii, Oregon, Washington, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan,  Illinois and all the Northeast. We believe this split will be beneficial to the nation, and especially to the people of the new country of New California.

 

To sum up briefly: You get Texas, Oklahoma and all the slave states. We get stem cell research and the best beaches. You get Ken Lay.We get the Statue of Liberty. You get Dollywood. We get Intel, Apple and Microsoft. You get WorldCom. We get Harvard. You get Ole' Miss. We get 85 percent of America's venture capital and entrepreneurs. You get Alabama. We get two-thirds of the tax revenue, you get to make the red states pay their fair share.  Since our aggregate divorce rate is 22 percent lower than the Christian Coalition's, we get a bunch of happy families. You get a bunch of single moms.

Please be aware that Nuevo California will be pro-choice and antiwar, and we're going to want all our citizens back from Iraq at once. If you need people to fight, ask your evangelicals. They have kids they're apparently willing to send to their deaths for no purpose, and they don't care if you don't show pictures of their children's caskets coming home. We do wish you success in Iraq, and hope that the WMDs  turn up, but we're not willing to spend our resources in Bush's Quagmire.

With the Blue States in hand, we will have firm control of 80 percent of the country's fresh water, more than 90 percent of the pineapple and lettuce, 92 percent of the nation's fresh fruit, 95 percent of America's quality wines (you can serve French wines at state dinners), 90 percent of all cheese, 90 percent of the high tech iindustry, most of the US low-sulfur coal, all living redwoods, sequoias and condors, all the Ivy and Seven Sister schools, plus Harvard, Yale, Stanford, Cal Tech and MIT.

With the Red States, on the other hand, you will have to cope with 88 percent of all obese Americans (and their projected health care costs), 92 percent of all US mosquitoes, nearly 100 percent of the tornadoes, 90 percent of the hurricanes, 99 percent of all Southern Baptists, virtually 100 percent of all televangelists, Rush Limbaugh, Bob  Jones University, Clemson and the University of Georgia.

We get Hollywood and Yosemite, thank you.  Additionally, 38 percent of those in the Red states believe Jonah was actually swallowed by a whale, 62 percent believe life is sacred unless we're discussing the death penalty or gun laws,44 percent say that evolution is only a theory, 53 percent that Saddam was involved in 9/11 and 61 percent of you crazy bastards believe you are people with higher morals then we lefties.

By the way, we're taking the good pot, too. You can have that dirt weed they grow in Mexico .

            Peace out,   Blue States

So our first PuebloIngles Pals Clemi and Simon from New Zealand came for a visit.  Friday night we had a nice pleasant evening at our place with dinner and wine.  We can say the wine overflowed five bottles later and a couple bottles of Oktoberfest brew and Clemi and Simn had to make a made dash at 1:30AM for the last uBahn home.  The next day we all had nice hang-overs.  It seemed to be the coldest day of the year for our little bike tour.  Sunday we were a little more productive with breakfast at a local bakery and a bike ride to Odensplatz, the Royal Palace, Marienplatz, the English Garden, Chinese tower, surfers, the lake and a quick tour down the StreetLife Festival (sitting on the world's longest couch).  We had lunch at the Chinese tower when a bird tried to steal Clemi's lunch but nearby tourist decided to feed our little friend for us.  We ended the day with dome Grand Theft Auto on the Xbox before they headed to the airport to France.  A few pictures of the day will have to be posted at the end of the month as I have already reached my monthly allocation.

 

Well all I can say is I now have 48 new friends from around the world; twenty-five Spaniards/Portuguese from Madrid, Barcelona and Porto and another twenty-three Anglos from USA, Australia, South Africa, UK, New Zealand and Canada with a couple living in Madrid for fun.  So Greg sold me on this trip as, “WOW, honey we speak English 3 hours a day and get a free trip at a 4 star hotel in Spain near Madrid." I thought fabulous!  Well after over 100 hours of speaking English and only 1.5 hours of free time a day, I am still thinking fabulous of the amazing people I met but I am a little tired those Spaniards can wear you out!  Can you imagine eating lunch at 2pm and dinner at 9pm and then dancing and drinking all night and back to talking English at breakfast at 9am?  What a week!  I became known as the morning Yoga Master but pleased to have my dedicated 5 students daily with one day of 12 (that night the bar closed early). Greg being an English teacher in Germany made him a great fan of the Spaniards and easier to understand than most (I know show-off!). Jordi, one of my favorite Spaniard Pals, gave me his lovely cold and I was down for the count for 6 days.  I still love you Jordi...  We have invited everyone to come visit us in Munich and we already have our first visitors tonight our KIWI friends- Clemi and Simon will join us for dinner in our little Munich Flat.  We hope to see more of you soon.  Check out the pictures in the album, I have reached my monthly capacity so I can't add any below but will add a couple next month...