Over 130 people – half techies, half business folks – converged on Microsoft NERD this weekend to start their own companies, have some fun & make some noise.

Friday night, 50 of them stood up and pitched their ideas in quick 60 second spots, interrupted only for a quick game of multiplayer rock-paper-scissors.

Pitches ran the gamut from gamifying entrepreneurship to games to solve the world’s biggest problems. From help with dating to help finding babysitters. Investing help through forecasting small company returns to a game that lets you invest in twitter hashtags.

One pitched a joke “I’m going to create a double rainbow – I mean, a Double Game Layer around the world!”. Some just sounded like it – DidWeShag.com for sharing those vital date details. And a guy named Sting pitched something about the Police (PayYourTicketsOnline.com).

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I wrote the start of this post after returning from a full day of interviews, what Microsoft has endearingly termed Finals Day… I had no idea I’d actually get to post it now, 2 weeks later, as I get ready to start this awesome new job…

I just got back from my Finals Day with Microsoft. I’m interviewing for a Developer Evangelist position, which is beyond exciting. Not to mention a tad mind blowing. If anyone had told me a few months ago I’d be interviewing for this job I would have laughed them right out of the room.

And yet, here I am. So, in the spirit of fellow hax0r turned Microsoft Evangelist, Joey DeVilla (aka @AccordionGuy), I thought I’d blog about just WTF I’m thinking.

If you’ve read anything of mine, you probably know my shtick, I like to say:

"Java, C#, C/C++… it ain’t about the language but the wonderful things we build."

And this is true – for languages, platforms, technologies, practices… I pride myself on being technology agnostic and just picking the right tool for the right job.

So, how am I interviewing for a Microsoft Evangelist role?? Good question! Let’s step back into our WABAC machine…

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