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So my outstandingly good friend and brother from another, but English, mother (or would that be Mum) Dean Wells has moved on from one job and onto another. This will likely shock the heck out of some people and others will say wow that makes sense, about time. I know I was shocked at first and later said, “This really makes a lot of sense for you Dean.”

So anyway, Dean has left MSETechnology, the company he was co-founder of… to join… wait for it…. The Dark Side… Yes, friends, Dean Wells now works for Microsoft as a Full Time Microsoft Employee on the XBOX 360 Game Pad Controller User Experience Team. You all know Dean as that fun loving Directory Services “know it all” and “speaks in a funny accent” guy but what you don’t know is that he spends inordinate amounts of time at home, on planes, on trains, on taxis, at the back of his training classes, and yes, even on double-decker buses, playing XBOX 360 and he has some serious comments on how the Game Pad does and should work. He could take it no more when he started playing “Karaoke Revolution Presents American Idol Encore 2” and his wife beat him and he said, “This isn’t right, the game pad didn’t do what I wanted it to do…. Someone has to do something!!!!” 

Again some people will be like “WTF…. No way, Dean is an MVP, he is outside of MSFT and helps point out where MSFT isn’t doing things right and debates with them to get things right.” Others will say “This is perfectly logical and good and now he can continue that fight but from inside the walls with his little pretty blue badge.”

Again, to be honest, when Dean told me a while back I was pretty shocked…  I said, “Dude, wtf, why now?” He said, “I was just waiting for that damned Bill Gates to leave…” and well, now Bill has moved on to bigger and better things and is off doing Shoe commercials so I guess Dean felt it was time to make his move.

I first “met” Dean in the newsgroups and email when Microsoft first offered me my MVP award back in 2000 or 2001. After I became an MVP I started chatting with Dean because he was newly minted as an MVP as well and he told me he nominated me (Along with Roger Abell) so of course I immediately liked Dean and Roger for their obvious levels of intelligence. 🙂

Dean and I chatted in email and the newsgroups fairly regularly and eventually after a couple of years he actually talked me into going to Seattle for a Microsoft MVP Summit. I got off the plane at SEATAC and went to luggage and he (with Jimmy the Swede) met me there by the luggage carousel and history started being made. 😉 

Seriously, we got along right off and although we[1] were silly enough to let Jimmy drive us back to the hotel (and we actually survived) we talked in person and realized that we were each people we could talk to in a way that we don’t often get to talk to others. We could assume understanding at all sorts of various levels and learned that while we were very similar we were also quite different in areas but instead of that being divisive, it was extremely complimentary. We could insult each other as a matter of course and we would laugh instead of get insulted. It was and still is all good.

Over the years we learned more and more about each other even, and this was always a point of oddness to me, on a plane ride to Vancouver for DEC one year we learned that our birthdays are 2 days apart. Same year, same month, separated by two days. Now this wouldn’t normally be odd to me because I am sure there are at least 3 people in the world who have a birthday within 2 days of mine. What was odd was that we were both up in the higher middle levels of the same field along very similar tracks and were born in different countries and became very good friends due to our similarities and we had a birthday within 2 days of each other. So who is the older one? That would be me of course, you can tell from my far superior intelligence and maturity, however in person you will think it is Dean because he is the one with all the gray hair. 🙂

I am very happy and excited for Dean and the new opportunities that lie before him and his family. I think this was an outstanding move for him and his family. I wish him all the luck and love in the world to accomplish what he has set out to accomplish and realizes that he doesn’t need the luck because he is just that good. If he wants to accomplish something, he will just go and do it. Luck doesn’t play into it. But I wish it anyway. 🙂

One of the big questions that comes up is what happens to the Dean and joe Show? The answer is… We don’t know. It may be possible we will speak together again in the future, a MSFT guy up on stage with a non-MSFT guy isn’t unheard of, I mean Bill Gates has presented with Steve Jobs in the past and that went ok… But again we don’t know. Certainly the tone would change a little bit, I don’t see how it couldn’t change, Dean and I have never had a problem being a little irreverent towards MSFT in our chats but now that Dean *IS* MSFT well that tone is very likely going to change a little. My thoughts are NEVER SAY NEVER but at the same time, don’t be placing bets on us speaking either. What will be will be. 

To wrap this up…. My main words of advice for my friend Dean is this… Have fun and laugh a lot and spend a lot of time with the family enjoying life. 🙂

   joe

P.S. He isn’t really working on the XBOX 360 Game Pad User Experience team, he applied, they rejected him, said his hands were too small (size does matter) and too soft. His backup plan of getting on the Directory Services team did pan out for him though so he will be on the Directory Services team doing who knows what kind of damage with several of my other friends that work there. 😉

[1] And by “We”, I, of course, mean Dean. I didn’t know Jimmy at the time and didn’t know my life was in danger until AFTER we were racing down the freeway and Jimmy spent more time turned around in the seat with his hands on the head rest looking in the backseat at me than at the road. I mentioned it and he told me, seriously, that cruise control was on so everything was fine…