Will Students Design the Future of Office?

Will Students Design the Future of Office
Microsoft this week will host 15 university students from around the world at its Redmond, Washington, headquarters to pick their brains on what the Office productivity suite should look like 10 years from now.

The students, all between the ages of 19 and 24 and from 14 different countries, for one week will form the "Microsoft Office Information Worker Board of the Future." The agenda includes group work and brainstorming sessions on the Microsoft campus, as well as a visit to a local elementary school.

At the end of the week, the students will present their findings to Microsoft executives, including Jeff Raikes, who as group vice president of Productivity and Business Services is responsible for the Office products.

By asking the students about the workplace and the role technology plays in their countries today as well as in the future, Microsoft thinks it can better prepare for Office releases in 2010 and 2014, when these young people will be part of the workforce, says Dan Rasmus, director of Information Work Vision at Microsoft.

Microsoft calls today's students the "Internet generation," because they have never known a world without the Web, e-mail, and computers. "My own computing experience coming out of high school and going in to college was sending a message to a mainframe using a teletype machine," says