I am pretty sure that we talked about our trip to Seattle (TWO trips ago, now). But just in case that we missed it, the Microsoft Research News Feed sent over a great story talking about their new headquarters on Microsoft’s suburban Redmond, WA campus. Let me tell you, this building is absolutely incredible. Gorgeous architecture, beautiful materials, and the largest projection TV I have ever seen.

We went to Microsoft after learning that they had a Director of Scholarly Communication, housed in Microsoft Research’s Technical Computing Division. Lee Dirks, the Director, is charged with working with the vast array of Microsoft offerings to ensure those tools meet the needs of the scholarly community. Since both Pronetos and Microsoft care deeply about scholars and providing them tools for collaboration, we had a lot to talk about.

Our open source friends will probably hate me for saying, but we left Microsoft very impressed. Its Live@Edu offering is an amazing suite of products being rolled out to Universities world wide, and I have to admit it is a great platform, with obvious benefits for users. Truly a great step forward. In my opinion, they are ahead of rivals such as Google in putting together a true collaborative platform. Of course, the beauty of Pronetos is that is breaks down institutional and discipline based silos - something 20,000 installs of Live@Edu won’t do. But that platform in our hands (and some more $$$ in our pockets) would be revolutionary.

So thanks to Lee Dirks and his team for having LGM over to the new building. You guys have a lot of cool stuff going on over there and we will watch with great interest for new things coming forth.