No, I haven’t been “Working on a Dream” a la Tjeerd, but I have been spending a lot of my time working on our Get On The Bus trip across the US. Let me be clear, I’m just one of the people working on this. The whole team plus a bunch of other people have been spending a lot of time figuring this thing out.
The idea started when Bill Chapman sent out an email about a “Magic Bus Ride” about 4 weeks ago.
Apparently he and Ken had been doing some drugs er, brainstorming and decided that it would be really cool if we connected with the community in person and wove together all of the initiatives and events (Microsoft Skills Week, Elevate America, Career Assist, Thrive and TechEd) MS has going right now. And they thought it would be really super-cool if we planned it all to happen within 2 months or so.
Just an aside, we usually like to plan things a bit further out than that, say, a year.
On top of the short turn-around, just like you, we’re in an economic environment right now that has us looking at every dollar we’re planning to spend and asking, “is this the right thing to spend this on?” So, we had no budget.
When I got the email, I thought it was cool, but it just might be a joke. Turns out, Ken and Bill were serious. So, we were off and running. We’ve got the bus scheduled. We’ve got the bus named – the Career Express. We’ve got the contest logistics worked out – a special shout out to our partners in Legal for being so helpful. We’ve even got a (small) budget.
Right now I’m working on getting the word out, so I’ve been writing web copy, emails (you MCPs and MCTs should have read about Get On The Bus in your last newsletter) and creating mini-presentations (but it feels like many presentations).
I’m also working on the content programming for the trip. Basically, this is figuring out what we’re going to do all along the route and where we’re going to do it. So far, I’ve got rounds of Get On The Bus game show planned for Atlanta, Philadelphia, Kansas City, Denver, Phoenix and Las Vegas. I’m also planning community cook-outs, study breaks at Universities, an MS Press author book signing event and exam crams. Got any other ideas for events you’d like to see? I’m interested in finding out what you think we should do in your town.
While planning this event is a lot of work, we’re all excited about the prospect of hanging out and getting all geeky with you. Join our Facebook page, follow our progress on Twitter and keep watching Born to Learn for updates.
Here’s hoping Ken and Bill don’t throw me under the bus for implying that they were on something when they came up with the idea for this trip!
***DLC
Posted by Dana