Steve Ballmer's entire presentation is now available on video!

Attendees of Imagine 2011 had a chance to hear from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer on using technology to connect consumers. Given ever-changing technology, Ballmer spoke first about the need for innovation. How do we get there? We focus on Ever Changing Technology. The speed of innovation, if anything, is still accelerating even 60 years later in this industry. Ballmer notes, “If you wanted a business that changes slowly you chose the wrong career. You move forward or you die.”

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Ballmer highlighted eight components of this ever changing technology; specifically:

  1. Location: Geography is a fundamental function now with the smart phone. We need to constantly be thinking about how we serve customers by their location and what are the new apps permitted by location.
  2. Social Computing: The surface of social computing has barely been scratched. People want to come together to work and to play. This is just the beginning.
  3. Pervasive Displays: Screens themselves will be pervasive. Imagine entire wall surfaces or phones that unfold to larger displays. This will transform over the next few years.
  4. Ubiquitous Connectivity: Ballmer said, “pervasive displays will be transforming for us over next several years. Ubiquitous connectivity--almost there."
  5. Computers Everywhere: Computers are a part of everything that we do, any where we go.
  6. Cloud: These are the very, very early days of the cloud. It’s going to start getting faster, easier, and cheaper to build and construct.
  7. Data: Data isn’t new. But it still isn’t used to its full potential. Large amounts of data is an opportunity to better serve our customers.
  8. Natural User Interaction: There is a stream of technologies that we can put to use for the consumer, for example, the pen hasn’t been made very digital yet. The computer doesn’t yet understand user instruction yet.

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Microsoft’s products innovate around each of these components. Reena Karal from the Interactive Entertainment Business demoed the Avatar Kinect and Xbox Live Party feature that will be available later this year to showcase how users can interact through avatars. As Ballmer said, “when you want to interact with people, you don’t really want people to see you. But your avatar always looks beautiful on your behalf.” The notion of avatar is broader than just gaming.

To close, Ballmer spoke on the ever changing internet usage and seven corresponding components:

  1. Usability: There is a general desire to achieve a level of greater usability from the standpoint of the consumer.
  2. Tasks Orientation: We need to innovate to help the consumer achieve tasks. 
  3. People/Identity/Sharing: People need to know who others are and who to trust. 
  4. New Devices (mobile, tv): TV is a form of content and TV is a device in your living room. We need to be thinking about how these evolve.
  5. New content: There is an evolution of new content types like on Xbox, YouTube, etc.
  6. Commerce: Thinking about monetization with online stores like the Xbox marketplace and the iTunes store or small content providers who can now participate in a new way because of tools for monetizing content.
  7. Rapid extensibility and Content development: Marketers are hungry for tools they can use themselves to build marketing content. They want to do more themselves. 

Ballmer iterated that the success of digital is about everyone and everything-- Life. Work. Play. People. The opportunities that will come are numerous.

Thanks!

Kaila Lightner, Web Marketing Manager

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