Hi everybody. My name is Kirk Gregersen and I’m what we call a product manager. My team actually covers both Office Live Workspace and our Office desktop suites for small businesses and people at home. Being a product manager across Office and Office Live Workspace gives me a great chance to talk with people about how they’d like the service to work with Office on their desktop, laptop and, eventually, mobile phone. There are about 500 million people using Office around the world, so it’s tough to talk with everyone, but we’re hoping that the community that Bob is setting up will be a good place to start.
If you use Office on your PC, you should think of Workspace as just another part of Office. If you don’t use Office, the online storage and collaboration features will still be pretty interesting – just not as unique as if you were using Office. Either way, when Workspace goes live in the next month or so, don’t hesitate to tell us what you like, beat us up if we deserve it and let us know how you’re using the service (or Office for that matter). It’s amazing to see the things people create that we’d never thought about (like the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show ballot and the Excel music synthesizer).
You’ll get to know a bunch of us product managers in this blog and community forums. Guy Gilbert (he's Belgian so it's pronounced "Gee") has spent a ton of time with Office and early Workspace users. He just had his 10th anniversary with the Office team and has some great stories he’ll share. Guy’s a DJ so he might even demonstrate the Excel music synthesizer.
Another person you’ll hear from frequently is Eric Gilmore. He’s been spending most of his time these days working with 12 great early adopter colleges and universities who are helping us make sure that we do the right things for students and faculty.
And Evan Lew will be one of the people updating you on pre-registration progress. He’s also responsible for a lot of the tips and tricks you’ll see once you start using Workspace. Others from our team will join them here as well (hi Christy and Kate).
Anyway, we’re excited to hear from you and to share some of what we’re learning from people as the beta begins to open up.