Michael Gartenberg joins Microsoft

Long-time industry analyst Michael Gartenberg has been keeping us informed about technology issues while working with Jupiter Research.  I had the pleasure of meeting Michael late last year at a conference in Boston and found him to be a witty, charming and knowledgeable fellow with interesting ideas about computing, technology and especially mobile technology.  Microsoft apparently thinks so too as Michael has announced he is leaving Jupiter and joining Microsoft as an “enthusiast evangelist”.  What is that exactly?  From Michael:

Our job is to find, engage and work with enthusiasts and other influencers and show them all the cool stuff that Microsoft is doing. In short, it’s our job to act as the bridge between Microsoft and end users. I’ll be based in NY but will have close ties to folks like Jeff Sandquist in Redmond.

Kudos to Microsoft for bringing Michael on board and kudos for creating this type of position to liase between the company and the end-user.  Good luck to Michael and I hope to run into him again soon.

Comments

[JR]

Sounds like a salesman to me. I don't understand why we need all these fancy job titles. I always look at a job description now as i don't understand what half of the titles are ment to mean :)

[Mike Cane]

Evangelist as a tech title was first used by Apple, IIRC, for Guy Kawasaki's position. It was, I think, a position that dealt with spreading the word more to *developers* than to bloggers and the press (none of the former at that time).

In MS's case, with Gartenberg, this is just icky creepy.

And it makes me now wonder if any of his writing for, say, the past year was done with an eye towards eventually joining MS!

This is why I am a rabid SOB and repeat over and over again on my blog that I *refuse* to shill for *anyone* and that I am NOT NOT NOT looking to be employed by any tech company -- or any company at all, for that matter. Goddammit, people have to be able to *trust* what someone writes.

Ptui!