By Annette Lee, G12

On October 26, 2016, members of the WAB High School Geek Force, supervised by Madeline Brookes, eLearning Facilitator and Technology Integrator, Ray Gentleman, Middle School Design Technology Teacher and Jennifer Simon, MYP Digital Design, visited the Beijing Microsoft Office to take part in an exciting project.

When we arrived at the office, we were met by Michael Chang, Poonam Gupta, and Hongze Liu, all of whom were friendly and charismatic. Though Michael talked to us about various, equally important subjects, what stood out the most was his emphasis on collaboration in engineering. He talked about the importance of collaboration for engineers – after all, teamwork is key in a major, interactive company like Microsoft. Another interesting thing he said was also that, good engineers can solve today's problems, but great engineers can solve tomorrow's problems as well. To do this, we would need to get rid of assumptions when attempting to solve problems, and think creatively. He also mentioned the female-male ratio gap that is typical in an engineering workplace but not typical at Microsoft Office: Microsoft has a very high female-male ratio – 4.5:5 – and has continuously put in effort to get rid of gender discrimination in the workplace.

After Michael talked, we were given our project: to create a weather application with research and specifications all laid out. We would need to work in three different groups to achieve this, and return to the Microsoft office in a few weeks to present the resultant product. Presumably, this would give us experience in not only engineering, but also collaboration and research without assumptions. We worked on the weather applications for a short while, but then were brought to a special sector of Microsoft.

In this special sector, we saw a variety of different things that Microsoft had been developing. A lawyer was present as well – showing the seriousness of the situation! This was a whole new level of technology that none of us had every really experienced before. Things we saw included: age-detecting cameras, doors that opened when shown the right faces, refrigerators that utilized a touch screen and would show its contents as well as allow a user to order food, and an interactive virtual kitchen board.

The most memorable experience was when we each got to try on the Holo Lens and see a dinosaur appear in front of us as well as play Just Dance in a beautiful gaming room designed for the XBox!

We were all sad to leave the office – it was a coder's dream. But now, we have begun work on our weather applications in our designated teams to pitch to Michael, Hongze, and Poonam, for the next time we meet again. All in all, it was a great day and a great experience.