Microsoft is clearly trying to market their more human side. In Office 2010 The Movie, Microsoft puts videos of the program managers, engineering team leads and even the director of program management for office up in Silverlight movies that are meant to display the actual people whose hard work went into creating the upcoming Office upgrade. They show some features, discuss the development process and even show you some garden gnomes. It’s like they’re trying to say that this is clearly a different Microsoft.
And for some time, Microsoft has been allowing for their employees to blog publicly. The Microsoft Office 2010 team is no different.
As for the technical aspects of what will be in Office 2010, this is why I went hunting around on Microsoft.com. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t violating any terms of use for the beta or anything. Everything I mentioned was posted somewhere on their site as well. BTW, a new feature I didn’t see until I was on the site is the Information page, where you can Prepare for distributing a doc (get rid of comments, revisions, add footers, etc and Versions, where you can roll back if needed. Cool stuff. Back to the point of this paragraph – Microsoft is putting the look, the feel and even the features of the software out there for all to see. Even their competitors…
This is a Microsoft comprised of people who have families and gardens. That’s part of an interactive marketing strategy aimed at making people hate Microsoft less. You can’t hate garden gnomes. But is Office 2010 + Windows 7 going to be a compelling story in the enterprise and in the home? I guess that’s what we’re all waiting to find out.