I realized that I never came back to post the second part of the message! My apology.... Also realized that I never draw a closure to this blog space. I guess no one really reads this blog anymore, anyhow, new space for MS related blogs look here: http://blogs.msdn.com/ljchiu

So this place has officially become my old archive. Hope everyone's doing good and see you when I see you in my other blog spaces!

I've been quite busy, specially because I've started doing my thesis -- conceptualization phase has ended, now it's real work. Apologies for the delay for the second part of the Messages from the MSRA Forum. I'll post it soon. There are really lots of things to blog about, I just don't have the time.... Hay...

Anyway, those aside, Ber has done a little interview with Justin, the current manager of theSpoke after Mario's departure (we missed you Mario!!!). Ber asked Justin some questions that most of theSpokers have in mind. So, do check it out here!

As I mentioned in my previous blog that I'm going to share the messages I got from the MSRA Forum I attended. So, here it goes:

1) Dan Ling and  Hsiao-Wuen Hon was asked about their vision about IT in 5 years.

Dan Ling said, despite the global decline for interest in IT nowadays, he see that the demand for IT professional will rise. But there might be a shift. This shift is becoming more and more obvious. It is the focus on cross disciplinary technologies. Pure software experts will be expected to participate largely in this.  Hsiao-Wuen Hon goes to add that therefore we need people that has global views and brains that can create solutions tailoring to the local community. He also said that it is always his belief that students should have the following skills as thier fundamental skill set:

• Math / Logical thinking 
• Programmingg skills
• Team player

(I'm sure this is not the first time we hear people saying this, but I think it's quite important to reinforce the message)

2) Why Beijing for MSRA?

It began with Dan Ling's vision of the rise of Asia for the IT industry. And it is also their belief that you can only get the best from a "talent pool" -- which is now in China. [LJ: it's not hard to understand. Just think about statistics. Assuming God is fair (He is anyway!), He'd place a proportional number of "bright" people in a place. Therefor if China has the biggest population, it's natural that it would contain more number of bright people as compare to other places in Asia.] This is not to say that we do not have talens in the US, Europe or other continents. But people do not come to you anymore in the US. It's because there are too many research institutions and good companies that are all very attractive.

3) Then they are asked about their strategy in penetrating China

Hsiao-Wuen Hon said, well, hire the best minds and integrate with the local facilities and institutudes.[LJ: The answer is rather simple. Or maybe there is something more that cannot be revealed. But we can see that from the frequent coorporation between MSRA and universities in China and Hong Kong lately]

4) Their comment about the issues between China and Taiwan (if we put it more directly, I think they want to ask how about a research lab in Taiwan?)

Dr. Tzeng said that there are also many talents in Taiwan. And one of the major difference between people in China and Taiwan is that people here embrace diversities, which is something you need to be innovative. Being skilled is only one, but we need to be more than simply skilled. Dr. Tzeng himself is into brain science research. And he thinks that Microsoft might want to tap into that too. Hsiao-Wuen Hon and Dan Ling responded to that. They say, having MSRA in China is just the start and it means something beyond having it build in a "country". What they intended to do really is to attack the "mass" first (there are A LOT of people) and then spread the initiative outwards to other countries / region -- outside of Beijing, Hong Kong, Taiwan then down to the South East. They say, that is one of the primary reasons why they wanted to visit Taiwan! (laugh)

5) Opinion on Education Policy. How can an Education institude be ready for the emerging challenges?

Dr. Tzeng was asked about this question because he is the former Head of the Department of Education. He goes to say that it is important to get students aware of the global competition. There is also the need to continue to lessen the gap between the academe and the industry. Another thing that is particularly true for Taiwan is that people have the tendency to all dive into the same area / field when they see light in it. There are 150 universities. All are making themselves to become type A; there is one single mode for teaching. Dr. Tzeng said, it is good to be agile about the need of the world, we cannot afford to put all the eggs in the same basket. The government has to guide the schools. Try to make diversities of talents (rounding back the need that we have in the future -- diversities and cross disciplinary knowledge)

 

Ok, so the above is half of what's on my notes. Let me post the rest later on.

I had the chance to tag along with Carrie to the Microsoft Research Forum today. It is an exclusive event for the professors. Carrie and Tim Pan invited Daniel Ling (Corporate Vice-President for Research), Hsiao-Wuen Hon (Assistant Director of MSRA), Dr. Ovid JL Tzeng (Assistant Director of Academia Sinica, Taiwan; former head of the Department of Education), Dr. Chao-Han Liu (President of the University Systems of Taiwan), and  Wei-Tsun Jin (Producer of the Business Weekly) to a panel discussion with the academia. It was quite inspiring. I will try to post some messages I got from the forum along with some pictures later on (after I prepare for my seminar on Saturday).

Here is an article from Business Weekly about the four Taiwanese senior research manager in Microsoft Research Asia (MSRA) -- WeiYing Ma , Hsiao-Wuen Hon, Feng-Hsiung Hsu, and Frank Soong.

Since the article is in Chinese I'll try to summarize it here:

WeiYing Ma is the one man that leads the Web Search and Data Mining Group. Out of Bill G's 6 hours for for listening to technological update from all the Microsoft research centers per year, WeiYing Ma always take away 20 minutes of his time. In the Bill G Review this May, WeiYing Ma made Bill jump out of his chair and went to hold his hand and said, "It's super super exciting!" Right, WeiYing Ma is coming up with the Microsoft search technology that will beat Google in the future.

Hsiao-Wuen Hong, is the Assistant Managing Director of MSRA. The Microsoft Speach technology was made out of his hands.

Feng-Hsiung Hsu was the creator of DeepBlue. He is currently leading the Platforms and Devices Center at MSRA. One of the research focus of Microsoft now is the Embedded Systems, wchich is under his care.

Frank Soong was the man who created the mobile communication standards that is being used globally now. He is currently leading the Speech Technology Group of MSRA.

Here is the English lyrics:

[1st  part]

customers who just keep demanding,
my neck that gets as stiff as a piece of wood,
the owner who keeps telling us to work until morning with no sleep,
and, gosh, just leaves the office as soon as he finishes his talk,
a junior colleague who says, "i found a better place to work."
all in all, my work gets doubled,
my boss who blames me for not understanding what he says,
my heart, which gets crushed one more time,

we developers who keep living a hard life all the time,
coworkers ask me, "do you see any future by working your ass off everyday?"
i wonder if i will ever be the one who finishes laughing.

my only wish, my only wish is,
By now, I need to have a life
as perfect as the software I created.

I will arm myself, because that is the only way to put an end to this boring life.
I will invest in myself, because that is the only way
that I can refresh myself and be ahead of others.

[2nd part]

I have lots of stuff I put off, even though I wanted to complete.
However, the damn "coding" stopped me from doing it.
The hunger that I tormented me while working nights.
The desperation that I got after knowing I lost all the coding work that I put in.

Now, things have changed.
Take the opportunity for taking my idea to fly high.
The VS 2005 is finally reborn,
as the beacon for software developers dreaming freedom.
You do not call me a coder any more for god's sake,
because we keep striving to be part of a larger world.
Since I have a brand-new design right here in my hand,

I can now embrace the whole future, using my whole body,
for you and me
for you and me.
We are proud of being developers leading this world.
And We will take the flowers of hope to fruition, even bigger than ever before.

[Bridge x 4]
Visual / Studio / Team / System

[Chorus]
I will arm myself, because that is the only way to put an end to this boring life.
I will invest in myself, because that is the only way
that I can refresh myself and be ahead of others.

[Outro]
"Are you done for the day? Then, how about have some beer?"
"This looks fantastic! Why don't we stick with this?
"Which program do you use, sir?"

This is funny. Although I can't understand. I find it really cool! Enjoy the VS Team System song from MS Korea:

http://www.microsoft.com/korea/events/ready2005/vs_song.asp

 

ps. Keon, if you're reading theSpoke -- I have to say you look hilarious there. You got me there, great job! (hahahahaha)

 

 

Since Mark has too little time to blog (or he is simply being lazy). I will take the honor of announcing his winning in ACM-ICPC this year. Mark and his team got 3rd place in the regional competition held in Ateneo de Manila last week. As you all have read about the competition form Didith's blog, the event was a success. There were indeed a lot of efforts put into organizing such international event. It's been a while since they have been working so hard for this. It's really great to see that all has paid off. Congratulations to Mark and his team, and DISCS!! Maybe Christine or Didith can post some pictures for us to see. :)

"Apple is the new IBM, Googole is the new Netscape, only wiser, and M$ hasn't changed its ways."

This is what I saw from my friend's MSN status. I know every MS enthusiast would feel negatively towards this when they first saw it. But I think it's good that we sit down and think about it.

 

These are pictures taken by Jay, one of my best buds in the Philippines. Jay is also my thesismate. He is a really talented and gifted guy -- best friend, best workmate, best counselor.

One day, I will steal him from Unilever for my secret mission! Bwahahaha.

 

That's Anna, Jay's sister, in the picture.

 

 

Edit: I realized that the blog title has nothing to do with what I wrote in this blog entry!

I'm having insomnia now. Argh... can't sleep. I got up twice and went back to bed twice alreay, but I just can't sleep. :(

What caused it? Here are the possible options:

1. Coffee
2. Too much sleep last night
3. The good news I got tonight
4. The bad news I got from a friend tonight

What do you think?

Happy belated birthday to Taiwan, as well as to Howard!

What a race!

Excerpt:

• Kimi started from the 17th place as the penalty for engine change
• Safety car out after the 1st lap, due to Montoya's crash in the opening lap; leaving Kimi alone in the battle field
• Kimi worked his way up and then got stucked behind Schumi and Alonso.
• Schumi trying hard to keep Alonso and Kimi behind him. It took Alonso quite a while before he could overtake Schumi; leaving Kimi behind Schumi (I have to admit that Schumi is a skilled driver!)
• Schumi and Kimi entered the pit for refueling at the same time. Kimi attempted to overtake him in the pit. No luck.
• Schumi ate up some 5 laps from Kimi after they exit the pit.
• Kimi continue to work his way to the front
• Made a splash and dash refueling of 4.2 seconds; exit right behind Fisichella, the leading driver.
• Kimi overtook Fisichella in the final lap

Beat that! Kimi made no mistake, not a single one!

But despite Kimi's victory, McLaren is two points behind Renault now, because Montoya didn't score, and Fisichella and Alonso scored 8 and 6 points respectively. We'll see who wins the constructor's championship in Shanghai!

TechEd 2005 Taiwan ended yesturday. It was a huge success. Lots of people registered for the event forcing Teresa, the owner of TechEd, to stop the online registration and disallowed walk-ins during TechEd. Despite the number of guests, things seems to be all under control. Another good thing that I observed is that dev sessions are always jam-packed -- till the very last session! Unlike the events in the Philippines, we do not have any raffle at the end, so that's fantastic. It's really nice to see how intereted people are in the developement tools and related technologies of Microsoft. Congratulations to Jason (our Developer Evangelist) for a job well done! After the event, all the people behind TechEd were treated to a really good restaurant. It was eat-all-you-can and there were so much good food to choose from! I especially loved the cookies and the Hagen-Daz ice cream! Didn't get to try all the food though. Everyone here that knows me personally know that I have small appetite, so it is practially impossible for me to try all of them. Aside from that, Jason and I were going to play badminton with some other colleagues after dinner, so I couldn't really fill my stomach. I didn't, but I think I still overate -- it's the fault of the ice cream! Anyhow, that was a great finale for TechEd 2005. Next big event in line is the launch for VS2005 and SQL Server 2005. ;)

It's the second day of TechEd today. As usual, I attended most of the DEV sessions. Most of the things for VSTS I've already heard of., but I did get some new stuff from Bobby's security session (still vs2005 related though) and the ADO.NET 2.0 session. But, nothing beats the "face-to-face-open-discussion-with-the-MS-employee" session. All the DPE peeps plus Julius (Dev Tool PM) and Bobby (MTC's Senior Consultant; previous AE and DPE's PMM) were there. I didn't expect the Taiwan audience to ask that much questions; that's quite interesting. And it just seems to me that most developers are still anxious about the big leap MS has made -- from VS2003 to VS2005 and VSTS, and from XP to Windows Vista. Majority of the questions revolve around whether the areas of their concern will still be given support as MS moves forward. The discussions went quite well, so after the session Tom (our AE) treated all of us to dinner in one of the restaurants in Taipei 101. Had lots of fun at the dinner, and not the mention the food was good.

I'm sure tomorrow's session will be great too. I'm looking forward to Steve Riley and Jesper Johansson's session, as well as Robert's (DPE's IT Consultant). But, since Steve and Jesper's session is the first one in the morning, I have to wake up early for me to catch it. Waking up at 7 is really a pain, so I better go to sleep now! More to come tomorrow.