On Monday we welcomed the winners of our Ultimate Bing Experience sweepstakes to the Microsoft campus. Tim and Sally joined us from Minneapolis along with Tina and Joe from Detroit. It was great to meet some Bing Rewards members in person, hear what they love about Bing and get their input on what they’d like to see in the future.
The day kicked off with a Bing editorial team meeting where our visitors helped select images for the homepage in January. Kristin Dean, managing editor at Bing, walked through what we look for in photos that we display on the homepage before asking our winners to choose photos for us to run for upcoming holidays and key dates in the new year. Other members of the team who joined us included Stephanie Horstmanshof, senior managing editor at Bing, and Kathleen Green of the media acquisitions group.
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Kristin Dean explains what goes in to selecting homepage images. |
Tina shares her thoughts on some of the photos we were considering. |
Tim jokes with Stephanie Horstmanshof |
Following a visit to the Microsoft Visitor Center, the employee store and lunch on the Microsoft Commons, we swung by the Xbox Studios user research facility to learn about what goes into making and improving its products, as well as to have a bit of fun. The Xbox team gave us a sneak preview of Forza Horizon prior to its launch and also set up rooms with Dance Central 3, Fable: The Journey, The Gunstringer and other recent titles.
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Our last stop for the day was the Windows Phone team, who showed off some of the new hardware our OEM partners have cooked up for the upcoming Windows Phone 8 launch. Ben “the PC Guy” Rudolph joined us along with David Chen. It turned out that in his part time, our winner Tim develops apps for Windows Phone and writes a blog about “all things ‘Windows’”. So he was even more excited to hear about what’s coming.
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Ben “the PC Guy” showing off some of the new handsets |
Tim and Joe, Dave and Ben, Sally and Tim |
The winners outside Bing HQ |
We want to hear if you’d like us to offer another chance at an Ultimate Bing Experience and if so, what else you’d like us to showcase at Microsoft. Leave a comment or send us a Tweet @BingRewards on Twitter to tell us.
Not a Bing Rewards member yet? It’s easy to join today by visiting http://www.bingrewards.com and following the instructions to create a Bing Rewards account.
- Alex Danskin, Marketing Communication Manager, Bing