Addy and I had planned to meet with Tim of Loosely Coupled at “The Ginger Man”, but due to my work schedule a mis-understanding on time we didn't get to meet up. The cool thing is that I got to have dinner with Addy at a very tasty Vietnamese place called “Saigon Grill” on the upper west side on NYC. We talking about everything from the dizzying amount of knowledge sharing at Microsoft to living in New York. (I don't live in New York, I'm up here on a project... till April!)
The coolest thing about Addy's first month at Microsoft is that there are a pant-load of focused, smart (and willing to share) people at Microsoft, which creates a fantastic culture that makes you want to stay for life. I personally used to work for a smaller company with that same kind of mindset. That company was bought by a giant company and I'm not really seeing that culture yet. I guess I'm not looking in the right place. I have meet some very smart and nice folks from “across the pond” in our labs division however; that mindset has not yet infused itself throughout the rest of the company, yet.
The key to this kind of culture is that you have people that are interested in what they are doing, excited to talk or share about it and have a channel to share that information. That channel can be anything from a listserver, a blog, a wiki or even a quick HALO death-match. Addy says Microsoft has it, my old company had it. The other cool thing about this kind of culture is that it doesn't have to be a five year plan that's ticked off as a metric. If you have the items above, it will happen.
Sean