“You wanna switch seats?”
OK, I’ve been slow to post about this with everything going on, but some of you have already heard that Kasper has some exciting news.
You know that job at MS that I vacated back in February? Kasper is filling it.
When I met Kasper in person for the first time this summer, down at TechEd, I already knew how sharp and enthusiastic he was. But in person, surrounded by all the hints of what MS BI and SharePoint were planning for the next versions, I saw something else: Kasper has TONS of energy for building new software – passion for doing the sorts of things that you don’t get to do unless you work somewhere like MS.
You can’t teach someone to have that fire. You either have it, or you don’t. And Kasper definitely has it. I remarked casually, mostly to myself, that it was a shame he lived in Holland, because he belonged at MS.
Kasper recognized that, too, because about a week after he got back to Holland, he told me privately that he was going to interview for my old spot 🙂
It’s funny how things work out. The guy that co-authors this blog with me, from another continent, is coming over to work on PowerPivot and other BI stuff. Sometimes life is cooler than anything you can make up.
Kasper, you are going to do an amazing job in your role. And I am jealous of how many cool people you will be getting to interact with on a daily basis. Looking forward to seeing you at PASS next month. Hoops rematch?
Below is Kasper’s original post, from his personal blog:
By Kasper de Jonge, repost from PowerPivotblog.
I’m very proud and pleased to announce that I’ll be joining Microsoft as Program manager for the SSAS team as of November 1st. This means some big changes for me, first of all I’ll be moving from the Netherlands to Redmond to work at MS HQ.
In Redmond i’ll be joining the SSAS team to work on the next versions of PowerPivot and SSAS. I really love the concept of Self service BI and of course PowerPivot, this will give me the opportunity to help shape the future of Self Service BI. The funny thing is that I actually will fill the job opening that was created by Rob leaving the SSAS team.
What will this mean for my blogging?
Fortunately, nothing. This blog is a personal blog, paid for and maintained by me. I will try to stay very active not only on the current version but also in beta’s. We’ll see where I can find the time to blog. I love the sql/bi community so I want to keep that up while working for Microsoft, at what capacity we’ll have to find out.
What is a Program manager?
A program manager is a lot of functions combined in one, gathering information from partners, MVP’s and you guys, write functional specs, a project manager, working with the dev team, validating the product after the design and evangelize the product, and a bunch of other tasks, for more info see this blog post: How to be a program manager.
I’m looking forward to the exciting time ahead and be your voice on the product team!
