The first week for us (the interns) at Microsoft was called the induction week, this week consisted of ‘Death by PowerPoint’ from Monday to Wednesday, that is 3 full days of presentations from various senior members of MS UK. In all honesty these 3 days were full of some really interesting information about what various departments aimed to achieve and how they operated. Obviously not every department could present during the 3 day period but a good selection did.
On the Tuesday night of this week there was a social event for all of the new interns, organised by the current interns who were running the induction week. This however involved some good and bad news, the good news was that there would be plenty of FREE drinks as MS had put a nice sized tab behind the bar for us! The bad news was that, thanks to the current interns, in order for us to receive these free drinks we all had to go in fancy dress made out of up to 5 bin bags. However this wasn’t as bad as it sounds, like most other people I simply made a single garment using a bag. J I just cut the bottom off of a bag and made a nice cape out of it!
Thursday brought a change of pace in comparison to the previous 3 days, as it was the Microsoft UK Annual Conference. This year it was held at the newly built Wembley Stadium, so at about 11 we caught a coach from TVP along with about 1000 other MS employees. The conference started at about 1PM, after a buffet lunch, and finished around 5:30. The conference gave a good insight into the business and finance side of MSUK as well as some information on the aims of MSUK this coming year. After the conference there was another buffet and free drinks 
Friday was my, and all of the intern’s, first day with my department. This wasn’t actually the first day as it was only a half day with the afternoon left for people to find accommodation if they hadn’t already. The few hours I spent with my department on this day was mainly to meet and greet some of the main people in the MSTV department and to receive my laptop and other equipment. It however turned out that my laptop was broken (the screen had a 2inch white strip down the middle when turned on) and the desks we (me and Zach) were going to have were covered in hardware that had built up in the last few months since the desks had been empty. So in all nothing was achieved apart from meeting a few members of the department.
I’ve intentionally been sparse on details about the presentations and conference etc for 3 reasons. The first is I cant be bothered to type in great detail about them at the moment. The second is that I’m not sure whether I’m allowed to or not, some of the information (in particular a couple of points made in the Xbox presentation) wasn’t public at the time and so I thought it would be easier to just not write anything that may get me in trouble J. Thirdly if I wrote absolutely everything here I would have nothing to talk about if asked by any of the 3 (at the most) people who may read this.
