In high school, Kristen Laird experienced terrible burns as a result of a lab experiment explosion. She struggled for years with fear of flames, and decided to turn it around by looking her fear straight in the face and becoming an EMT (emergency medical technician) and a volunteer fire fighter. Through this experience, she has learned to experiment, explore, and….
CONTINUE READING "This Microsoft Garage intern shares how she refused to let fear define her"
Just as the Microsoft Garage has created makerspaces around the world to give our employees and interns the opportunity to get hands-on with 3D printing and hardware-oriented projects, we have recently created several “Reality Rooms” at our Garage locations. These specialized spaces provide quick access to the latest in Augmented Reality, Virtual Reality, and Mixed Reality (collectively called “XR”) all….
Last week, I received some of the best news of my life. And the news came at a pretty exciting time. I received the phone call half an hour before the closing ceremony of Microsoft’s 2017 Hackathon, an event that my team puts on. For the Microsoft Garage, a team helping change the way the company works 52 weeks of….
CONTINUE READING "Seven hackathon lessons learned from my battle with lymphoma"
You’re too slow! Come on Designers — keep up! With new books out on Design Sprints and Lean UX, the dozens of rapid prototyping tools now available, and thousands of Designers who can code up their own ideas, you’d think that the Design community was moving faster than it ever has. But, that’s just not true. “Design is doing some stellar work….
What began in 2009 as an underground offshoot of Office Labs has mushroomed into a global program inspiring Microsoft employees, interns, and the industry to reconsider how cultural reinvention and innovation can indeed happen.
Step 1: Turn your passion into a project A mantra resonates throughout The Garage: Doers, not talkers. In the last two years, The Garage has evolved from a 24-hour idea factory to a program dedicated to encouraging all employees to take their ideas and bring them to life. The Garage provides resources such as expert advisors, maker spaces, hackathon tools,….
