Shawn’s Thoughts

Based on the news over the weekend, I’ve come up with the idea for a fun new show that only CW could love, called Gossip Geek.  The setting is a high school somewhere in Silicon Valley.  The primary actors are:

Male Leads

Microsoft – the creepy guy who graduated from high school five years ago, but still hangs on at the high school.  Microsoft was the star quarterback when he was a senior, and suffered a career-ending knee injury in the last game of the season.  Microsoft drives a Trans Am.  Microsoft tries to impress the other high schoolers with his money (he works at the local car wash), and most ignore him.  Microsoft’s arch enemy at school is Google. 

Google.  The brainiac at school, who also is a black-belt in multiple Eastern combat techniques.  Google was a quiet sophomore and junior, and became one of the “popular” kids over the summer between his junior and senior years.  Every girl at the school wants to date Google, except for Apple.  Apple is a distant cousin with Google.  Google drives a hybrid car that has been hacked and tuned so aggressively that he can  kick Microsoft’s ass in the high school drag races every time.  Microsoft has sworn to spend whatever it takes to win the race this year, and no one is sure his Trans Am can handle the necessary modifications.

Female Leads

Apple – the high school model who only dates college guys.  Doesn’t talk to anyone else at the school.  Comes into a scene, completely distracts everyone, then leaves.  Every other character, including the females, desperately want to sleep with Apple.

Yahoo – the cute high school sophomore that all the guys ask to the prom.  Yahoo is book-wise and street-ignorant.  She means well, but gets confused and overwhelmed easily.  The latest guy trying to win her attention is Microsoft.  Unfortunately, over the weekend Microsoft ran his Trans Am into a pole at the local A&W, so he’s not focusing as much attention on Yahoo…

Facebook – the new kid who just moved into the neighborhood.  Joined the cheerleading team over the summer, and attended every party she found out about.  Facebook is totally fixated on growing her circle of friends, and claims to know everyone at the school, as well as their friends who attend other schools.

Supporting Characters

Carl Icahn – Yahoo’s alcoholic, dominating father.  Doesn’t approve of any of Yahoo’s suitors.  Always threatening to send Yahoo to a private Catholic girls’ school far, far away.  Other parents avoid Yahoo’s father.

AOL – the stoner.  Everyone likes AOL, and nobody takes her seriously anymore.  Wears black outfits, and listens to goth music.  Hates the two popular cheerleaders – Yahoo and Facebook.

Flickr – Yahoo’s little brother.  Flickr is the school newspaper’s photographer.

The “Cheer Squad” – not part of the cheerleaders, and typically are sophomores and juniors.  The characters in this group are constantly changing, and currently include Twitter, Jaiku, Brightkite, and several others that no one else at school can remember…

So these are the characters.  I’m sure there are some other fun characters – the single mom dating the same boys as her daughter, for one. The crazy lunch lady could be a fun one.  Feel free to leave your ideas for other interesting characters.  I’m working on the season opener’s plot now…  and yes, this should be considered an attempt at humor. 

A couple of the folks I had the pleasure of interviewing down at Stanford wanted me to update this post to include the questions I asked them.  I’m not going to give them all away, and a couple of the more entertaining questions were:

• Which of Microsoft’s seven businesses would you sell?  Why?
• You’re now the product manager for Fortran.NET.  What are the top three features you want to add? (This one was a LOT of fun!).

—– original post —

I had the wonderful opportunity earlier this week to travel to Philadelphia, PA, and visit some first-year MBA candidates at UPenn’s Wharton School of Business.  What a brain vault!  I was asked to help interview candidates for our MBA Intern program here at Microsoft.  I was surprised how much Wharton has internalized blogging – there’s even some “officially-sanctioned” blogging going on over there.  I’ve already asked them to add an RSS feed – we’ll see what happens.