In my quest to post any and every little morsel of Windows 8 information I can scrounge up, the latest is something I unexpectedly ran across in an unlikely place.

Let me preface this with a bit of information as to how this whole, “presentation template” thing works internally. Basically, there are blank templates created for Microsoft employees to use for their presentations. Typically, these templates are in Powerpoint format. Templates, clip-art, etc. are all lying around on Microsoft’s intranet. So, let’s say I’m an employee and I want to slap together a quick presentation for a group I’m presenting to. I could go out, take a look at some of these templates, select which one I want and go to town. Alternately, let’s say I have one sitting around that I like from using previously. All I’d have to do is delete the content currently in it and start over.

Here’s the kicker: Most of the time, there are keywords and other properties stored in these templates. Sometimes, templates are created with a specific product in mind, so keywords related to that product will be stored in the document. In other words, I may be doing a presentation on Windows 7 that I put together using a template that was actually created for Office or something of the like. The only way anyone would know or care what a template was specifically created for is if it was either filled with product-specific graphics or if they checked the document properties.

Now, with all of that in mind, I ran across a presentation from a Microsoft Research conference held at the University of Washington from July 26-29 of this year. It’s titled, “What Could New-Era Corporate Systems Management Mean for the Home? And Vice Versa?” and was presented by Anders Vinberg, Technical Fellow in the Management and Services Division at Microsoft. Though the presentation itself is interesting, it’s what I found in the document properties that grabbed my attention:

(Click for the full template screenshot)

From those properties, we can glean two potential explanations:

1 – This is simply a template created for the Windows team to give presentations on Windows 8 but was used by Anders for this presentation. Obviously, the master slide is quite clean which could be analogous to Windows 8 not having much beyond planning completed at the point of the template’s creation.

2 – Prior to being presented at the MSR conference, this exact presentation was given internally with planning for Windows 8 in mind. That would mean this presentation sheds a bit of light on what Microsoft may specifically be focusing on in Windows 8; Security and Systems Management. Obviously security is always a focus, but the systems management information in this document is interesting if placed in the context of it being a focus in Windows 8.

Perhaps I’m reading too far into this, but hypothesizing is half the fun of this phase of development (for me, at least)! I’m even going so far as to say that the, “Windows 8 Waves” (that’s what I’m going to call that image, at least) is analogous to, “waves of change” or something like that. Or maybe not.

Windows 8 Waves

Anyway, that’s my take on this document! It’s linked below, so feel free to give it a go yourself and see what you think.

Source: UW MSR Institute 2009
Document: Anders Vinberg’s Presentation

-Stephen
http://msftkitchen.com

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