Global Nerdy

And now, a few more hints about my next job. They’re all pictures:

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

And here we are: Friday, April 22nd, 2011, my last official day at Microsoft and also the last day of my week of tributes featuring videos of various versions of Europe’s big ‘80’s hair-metal hit, The Final Countdown.

For this last installment, how could I go with anything other than an accordion version? I would’ve loved to have recorded my own, but I’m a little too short time – the next fortnight promises to be a busy one rife with king-sized changes galore – so I’m leaving it to the UK’s Jimmy Blair Accordion Orchestra to give us the final Final Countdown. You will believe that this song was meant for accordion.

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

The time has come to reveal where I’m working next. I’ve been cast as the 12th incarnation of Doctor Who (he’s like a time-travelling Dalai Lama!), in which the show takes on a more urban ethnic feel to better reflect the demographics of modern-day Britain:

Oh, I kid. Here’s a better hint at what I’m doing next. I’ll be in Minneapolis from May 6th through 8th to help out with Minnebar, the Minnesota BarCamp event:

More later.

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

Officially, my last day as a Microsoft employee is tomorrow, Friday, April 22nd, 2011. However, that’s Good Friday, which means that today is effectively my last day on the job. After that, well…I’ll tell that story later.

I’m headed over to the Meadowvale office later this afternoon to meet with my fellow evangelist and Master of all Hardware Damir and drop off my Microsoft-assigned equipment, and wow, is there a lot of it! I’ll make sure to get a photo of it all and post it here for you to see.

I’ve been posting videos of various versions of Europe’s The Final Countdown all week in honour of my departure. Today’s version features a solo performer on the kazookeylele, a Frankenstein instrument that combines a toy piano, ukelele and kazoo. Enjoy!

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

It’s “Hump Day” in my final week at Microsoft, and in honour of these last days, I’m posting a different version of Europe’s classic ‘80s hair-rock hit, The Final Countdown, on each day. Hump Day calls for a hump-tastic cover of the song, and there isn’t a more hump-tastic one than this classic version by Deep Sunshine. You will not be able to un-hear it once heard.

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.

I may be leaving Microsoft’s Canada’s DPE (Developer and Platform Evangelism) team at the end of this week, but at the same time, we’ve got a great new addition to the team: Susan Ibach (she’s @HockeyGeekGirl on Twitter)! If you were at the TechDays conference in the past couple of years, you’ve probably seen her speak in one of the developer tracks, and if you were at TechEd New Orleans last year, you might have seen her infamous certification rap performed live.

Her gift is teaching. She’s been a Microsoft certified trainer for about a decade, she’s helped run hands-on labs at various Microsoft conferences, from PDC to the internal TechReady conference, she’s helped been heavily involved with our “Train the Trainer” events, explained the value of getting your Microsoft certification to countless devs and IT Pros and took part in the IT Grand Prix.

You can find out more about her in her inaugural post on Canadian Developer Connection. Welcome to the team, Susan!

This is my final week in my biggest, most influential, broadest-reaching job to date, and in its honour, I’m marking my last days with a different version of Europe’s classic ‘80s hair-rock hit, The Final Countdown. Today’s rendition: an orchestral version led by three cellos performed by an orchestra from Liepaja, Latvia, still with the head-bangin’.

This article also appears in The Adventures of Accordion Guy in the 21st Century.