As we get closer to the New Year, the Mac Mojo bloggers will be taking a moment to look back at the MacBU stories and accomplishments of 2008. It's been a banner year for our team, starting with the Office 2008 launch, by far the strongest launch of Office for Mac ever. Since then we've delivered continued updates to the suite and we're hard at work shaping future releases. This has also been an amazing year for me personally. As a charter member of the MacBU I'm proud of everything this team has accomplished, and in the last few months I'm honored to have the opportunity to lead the MacBU as the General Manager.

Just recently I got to lead one of my favorite MacBU events: once a year we get all of our engineering and marketing teams together for an "All Hands" meeting. With attendees from Redmond, Mountain View, and Beijing, we filled a theater with almost 200 people- a majority of our team. We celebrated the accomplishments of 2008, shared our plans for 2009 and beyond (can't wait 'til Macworld!), and built the personal connections amongst the team that make it possible to build Office for Mac in three places at once.  Our teams are separated by distance but united in their commitment to build great software and bring Microsoft productivity to Mac customers. I'm especially glad that our Beijing team was able to visit Redmond, building connections with their MacBU coworkers and the other Microsoft teams we work with closely. I'll also take the opportunity to say thanks to our globalization and localization teams in Dublin and Tokyo, who couldn't make the meeting but contributed mightily to the MacBU's worldwide success in 2008. The meeting wasn't all business, though- after 3 hours of slides, demos, and a little home-grown entertainment, we went bowling. Watch for the MacBU team to defend its title at MacBowl in January!

Over the next few weeks, we will be updating Mac Mojo with reflections of our year and a few tidbits on what's to come. Stay tuned!

-Eric

Here we are at the All Hands meeting: