Matt Calder

Most importantly, I’m having a great summer in Seattle with my wife Jane and my dog Watson, reading, listening to music, cooking, playing bridge, and hopefully getting some more hiking in soon. I’m taking time out from working to enjoy a sabbatical, and doing quite a bit of self directed learning. This blog is a tool for focusing that work. The rule is that I don’t post any of my notes I haven’t rewritten at least twice. There’s a lot that I read that won’t receive a single post here because there’s a lot that I read that doesn’t make it through that filter.

As far as career goes, I’m spending more time thinking about where I want to be a few years from now than a few months from now. I left Microsoft in January after going through 4 managers in a year, and I needed to get off the merry go round and get some perspective. Since the majority of my time in the corporate world had been spent within the Microsoft bubble, stepping back has been a great experience.

While at Microsoft the most exciting times I had were working with the Windows Media team, managing a portfolio of Web sites while maintaining rapport with folks in the community like Movie Maker guru PapaJohn, telling the PR folks they need to trust bloggers and do things like getting a pre-release Portable Media Center in Phil Torrone’s hands, and sponsoring The Chris Pirillo Show so we’d have some format presence in podcasting.

Before discovering my passion for the Internet, I’d been pursuing a PhD in Comparative Literature at University of Washington. If you’re in the neighborhood and curious about Renaissance comedy (particularly the dirty jokes), my Master’s thesis on Castiglione, commedia dell’arte and Ben Jonson is tucked away in a corner of Suzzalo somewhere.