IStandWithAhmed…

…My bosses, not so much.

Last night, after a few drinks, I mailed someone more sober than I that I felt we, as the curators of the Microsoft Developer ecosystem’s social media channels, should be doing something around Ahmed because tearing apart a clock and playing with its innards and building a new clock is the exact ethos that we should encourage.

This is the future. It is a young person, interested in technology, willing to explore it, and willing to build; to not just be a user, but to be a creator, an explorer, and a builder.

For that, he was arrested. If they hadn’t walked him out of the school in handcuffs, I’d be willing to bet this would have just disappeared from history. But they did, and it won’t.

Now, as I said, I mailed. And waited. And waited.

The response came.

To paraphrase..

I see where you’re coming from and you’re right, this would be in our wheelhouse, but, see, all the decision makers are at an offsite so I don’t think we could get anything done with any speed, so we’ll just skip this one. Any other week, sure.

Once twitter offered him an internship, I knew we were too late for that front, but hey, we still got a great research group and I’m sure we could do something. But fine, fine, fine.

And then, at 6p Pacific, our CEO announced a 75 million dollar investment in YouthSpark.

What is YouthSpark, you ask? “Microsoft YouthSpark expands youth programs for computer science education”

So to say I want to flip a table… That’s an understatement.