6 Nov 2008 Liberation Day - A new dawn for developers with the freedom of Software + Services

Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft Corporation

Variously described as ebullient, focused, funny, passionate, sincere, hard charging and dynamic, Ballmer has infused Microsoft with his own brand of energetic leadership, vision and spirit over the years. Ballmer joined Microsoft in 1980 and was the first business manager hired by Bill Gates. Since then, Ballmer's leadership and passion have become hallmarks of his tenure at the company.

Together with Gates and the company's other business and technical leaders, Ballmer is focused on continuing Microsoft's innovation and leadership across the company's seven businesses.

Ballmer was born in March 1956, and grew up near Detroit, where his father worked as a manager at Ford Motor Co. He graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in mathematics and economics. While in college, Ballmer managed the football team, worked on the Harvard Crimson newspaper as well as the university literary magazine, and lived down the hall from fellow sophomore Bill Gates. After college, he worked for two years at Procter & Gamble Co. as an assistant product manager and, before joining Microsoft, attended Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Gianpaolo Carraro', Senior Director, Microsoft Corporation

Gianpaolo has spent the last several years with his head in the clouds, thinking, writing, developing cloud solutions. Prior to Microsoft, Gianpaolo was co-founder and CEO of a SaaS startup. Gianpaolo started his career in Research where he was looking for random ideas that could be patented or discussed in academic circles as a member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories. He spends a lot of his free time trying to explain to his two daughters that there was a time when the Internet did not exist, TV was interrupted by commercials, and music records were actually bought in a store, but of course they don't believe him. You can learn more about him through his blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/gianpaolo

Tim Sneath, Director, Microsoft Corporation

Tim directs the Windows and Silverlight technical evangelism team, based out of Microsoft's corporate headquarters in Redmond. His mission is to see developers create stunning applications built on the Microsoft platform, and to persuade his mother that computers aren't out to get her. Amongst other strange obsessions, Tim collects vintage releases of Windows, and has a near-complete set of shrink-wrapped copies that date back to the late 80s, as well as a 'museum' of Virtual PC images from Windows 1.0 to the present. Tim spent the first thirty years of his life in the UK, and his occasional attempts to speak English with an American accent for ease of comprehension cause much hilarity amongst his colleagues. His popular blog covers client platform technologies, and can be found at http://blogs.msdn.com/tims