An ancient Chinese proverb says, “The best teachers are excelled by their students.”
In this book, I am named as a teacher and mentor of Microsoft’s “Technology Evangelists.” That fact had been previously established in the public records of more than one anti-trust case against Microsoft. However, reading those records is not fun, whereas reading this book is. ;-)
This book is not about me. My exploits (notably, seducing Mac developers to switch to Windows, and opening up the .NET Runtime and Visual Studio to all programming languages) are undocumented, and are likely to remain so.
Furthermore, I do not claim to have invented any of the strategies and tactics described herein. Who could patent “divide and conquer”? Who was the first to attack the enemy’s weaknesses, instead of its strengths? Sun Tzu wrote “The Art of War” over a hundred generations ago. Every strategist since then has cited him (sometimes ascribing new ideas to “Master Sun,” to give them greater credibility).
Similarly, it was already well-established, by the time I arrived at Microsoft in 1992, that increasing miniaturization (Moore’s Law) made each new generation of computers more powerful and less expensive. Likewise, by 1995, Harvard professor Clayton Christensen’s seminal paper on “disruptive technology” was the talk of the industry, showing how waves of technological change disrupted entire industries. Also, the idea was “in the air” from many sources that the pace of technological change was, itself, accelerating. Finally, the concept of “network effects” had been worked out by the early 1990s.
The only contribution to the state of the art that I can claim as my own is twofold: First, I saw that each new wave of technological competition created an experiment, in which we Microsoft’s Technology Evangelists (TE’s) could determine the effectiveness of different combinations of evangelism strategies and tactics. Second, I realized that evangelizing technologies *efficiently* must become one of Microsoft’s core competencies, due to the acceleration of technological change, and the increasing importance of network effects (especially later, due to the Internet).
It is true, as the book states, that I trained Microsoft’s newly-hired TE’s on the strategy and tactics of technology evangelism. More importantly, though, I consulted on the development of their evangelism plans, mentored them on those plans’ execution, and de-briefed them on the results afterwards. (Each evangelism campaign lasted a year, give or take, and there were a dozen or so campaigns ongoing at all times.) Each campaign was designed to test a different combination of strategies, tactics, and situations. Within a few years, we had tested and verified the most effective combinations (just in time for Microsoft’s TE’s to be re-orged into Marketing, throwing my work down the crapper…but that’s a different story).
The key take-away of my research was this: speed was everything.
Which brings me back to Alex and DirectX.
Alex and his team were often criticized, as you will read herein, for being overly-aggressive and internally combative. The fact is, however, that they had no time to play nice. Windows 95 was to be followed by Windows NT, and every single engineering trade-off in Windows NT was harmful to gaming. As I write this in 2017, it is 100% clear to me that if DirectX hadn’t gotten its hooks into Windows 95, the XBox never would have happened, and Windows would STILL suck for games. So, yes, as you will read, his team did not play nice. They played rough, and they played dirty, because speed was everything…and the payoff was an industry worth billions every year.
Nonetheless…when Alex cites me, in this book, as Wise Old Master of Technology Evangelism, take that with a grain of salt. He cites the Wise Old Master the way many strategists have “cited” Sun Tzu with new ideas, and the way I cited the phony Chinese proverb that started this Forward: to lend credibility to a statement that is obviously true, but which cannot be otherwise supported. It’s a rhetorical trick.
I taught him that.
Yet today, I am confident that, from him, I would have much to learn about Technology Evangelism. Because, whether the ancient Chinese ever said it or not, “the best teachers are excelled by their students.”
Hoping that you will enjoy reading Rusel’s excellent book, I am
Yours,
James L. Plamondon
Phnom Penh, Cambodia
Foreword
It is a strange thing to be asked on more than one occasion in the course of one’s life to write a foreword to a book that is, in part, about you. Of course, it’s a tremendous honor and very flattering when somebody finds your career activities worthy of documenting … especially while you are still alive. Although I am proud of the many achievements associated with the creation of DirectX, I am not entirely proud of all of the means by which they were accomplished.
We were ruthless at pursuing our vision for real-time gaming on Windows. Microsoft was a very competitive environment full of very intelligent competitive people. We definitely found that we had to raise our game to a very high level to accomplish our objectives. The early DirectX team of Eric Engstrom, Craig Eisler and I were all trained by James Plamondon to be extremely effective at influencing markets and industries. Cameron Myhrvold, who hired all of us, told us our job was to influence Microsoft itself to do the right things to dominate the computing industry. We turned the tools James taught us on our own company.
I supported Rusel DeMaria to the best of my ability in producing as much accurate history as possible even when it didn’t always reflect positively on myself. I believe that this is a very important account of events that, among other things, led to Microsoft creating the first successful US game console since the Atari 2600, and the creation of the general purpose GPU architecture as an alternative to CPU based computing. Personally I believe that GPU computing will displace CPU’s over the coming years. Rusel has done a phenomenal amount of research and brought to light emails, documents and stories that were taking place all around me that I had forgotten or had no idea were happening at the same time. Reading the book was like reliving the events from many more perspectives than my own.
I would like to take the opportunity Rusel has presented me with to make a few relevant points:
1. I was young and raised by wolves.
2. I feel remorse for crushing people who stood in our way, I was just following orders.
3. I am eternally grateful to Microsoft and the people I worked with and sometimes against, for the incredible lifetime experience I had in that era. I’ve dedicated the remainder of my working career to trying to pay it forward to a new generation of entrepreneurial kids who deserve the opportunity and patience that my greatest mentors afforded me.
4. I apologize to the folks we treated as “crushies” in this narrative. With old age and introspection I have slowly come to the discovery of better, subtler tools to achieve the same ends with somewhat less bloodshed.
Finally, you’re about to read a story that includes some very crazy and aggressive people doing highly unprofessional things to overcome insurmountable odds. I feel compelled to share how it worked out for many of us 25 years later and what lessons I learned, if any, that I would presume to pass on.
Crazy and aggressive really works. In retrospect, probably 95% of it was completely unnecessary but I couldn’t tell you exactly which 5% was utterly essential to success. I just know that some was. There were definitely better social tools available to accomplish most of what we did.
Facing and overcoming insurmountable hardship is the only way anybody becomes great. It’s hard, it’s painful, it demands unreasonable personal sacrifices, and it can come with a significant measure of personal tragedy. There were 20,000 young engineers at Microsoft in those days, twenty five years later nearly all of them either retired rich or went on to phenomenal career achievements on the backs of the incredible and intense experience we all had at Microsoft. The people I knew from that era who went on to become titans of the technology industry would tell you that they wouldn’t trade any of those sacrifices for anything. The few, brief moments when the world stops for half a second and you realize that you have accomplished something timeless and significant beyond the span of your years is worth every drop of sweat, blood and tears that got you there. All of the people I know who have experienced such a moment in life, have dedicated the rest of their lives to recapturing that fleeting experience.
If people don’t hate you, you’re not challenging them enough. People who can’t be shaken out of their comfort zone never grow and never accomplish anything extraordinary. A great many talented people waste the potential of their lives in balanced pursuits. They squander the gifts and potential they were born with to avoid discomfort or conflict. Once you’ve learned what fearless ambition can accomplish, it’s impossible to go back to reasonable expectations about anything.
There are very few great things you can accomplish in technology alone today. Founding companies is not a rational pursuit for reasonable people. When entrepreneurs and Venture Capitalists talk about creating “disruptive technologies” they generally selectively avoid addressing how disruption is really accomplished. It takes irrational zealots and relentless fanatics to cause disruption and face the unpopular backlash that comes with disrupting people’s livelihoods and world views. Nobody likes being forced to learn new things and adapt to change involuntarily, but it turns out that the people who hated you and opposed your ideas most adamantly when you started are often the ones who remember you most fondly with respect when the dust has settled and revolutionary change has been embraced.
Twenty five years later, I still work over 100 hours a week, I still found companies and despite knowing that I can make more money and live a more “balanced lifestyle,” I just don’t care. I can’t get visions of the future out of my mind and I can’t forget that I know firsthand how to render those visions into reality. I can’t think of anything I would rather consume my fleeting moments alive pursuing than those rare, flashes of achievement that make all the sacrifices worthwhile.
This book is an amazing achievement by an author dedicated to find the stories, the characters, and events that took Microsoft from DOS to Xbox, warts and all. Once again, I’m honored to be a part of that story.
-The Saint
(Alex St. John)