Year 8 Scholars Visit Microsoft Headquarters

On the 9th June 2016, the 8 boys of 8EHL roared off to visit the Microsoft headquarters in Reading. On arrival we were warmly greeted by many interesting machines. Having scrutinised some of these technological wonders we set off for a pastry filled breakfast and some gaming.

We then set off for a series of lectures given by Microsoft employees. The first boasted several interesting facts regarding office 365. During this we also learnt that Microsoft is pretty much run off one note. A quote was ‘If email went down for the afternoon it wouldn’t matter but if one note crashed then Microsoft grinds to a halt.’

Then we listened to someone talking about data. During this he gave us stats such as, on average we see 3000 adverts per day but remember only 5-10 of them. Next we had someone who made Microsoft adverts. He was the person who decided which microsft advert should be shown to the public. A Canadian woman then talked to us about Hololens, a product that allows for holograms. Lastly before lunch someone showed us many £20,000 products such as the surface hub, a big 84inch TV screen that connected to the app store and had Google earth on it. Next we ate some pizza and “investigated” some Xboxs before our last talk which was about marketing. He showed a few very interesting videos. At the end of this extremely entertaining day we had to sadly leave to return to Elstree.

Luke Compton-Burnett and Ivar Bullen, Year 8