Being a Windows Student Ambassador

As of yesterday, my term as a Windows Student Ambassador at York has come to an end – an absolutely fantastic experience to see me through my final academic year. I had applied through the “Windows Access All Areas” Facebook page in June 2012, and was told I’d been selected after a couple of interviews during the summer holiday.

My first task was to man a stall at York’s Freshers Fair with Bethan, my York partner ambassador. For the duration, we invited passing students to play a game of “high-low” with some MASSIVE playing cards (lugging them over was quite a task), with the incentive that they could win DVD boxsets or decks of (normal-sized) cards. An added challenge was balancing the rickety tripods that didn’t seem to like the weight of the cards, but we managed in the end and got a lot of people signed up to the WAAA Facebook page.

Fast forward to November, and I had my first glimpse of Microsoft’s London offices in Victoria, for an intense day of Windows 8 training. Here would be my first hands-on experience with the new OS, and after being introduced to the BMB Neon marketing team (our supervisors), we were given an in-depth run-through of the Metro interface alongside some great Windows apps.

As there were supply issues, we couldn’t get our hands on our Acer Iconia W510 tablets until the new year, so our task for the first couple of months was to demo Windows 8’s main features and Skydrive to family and friends. Come January 2013, we had a Windows Phone training day, where I was given a Nokia Lumia 820 (I was more than happy to replace my Blackberry Bold) as well as the long-awaited tablet, allowing for demos to be carried out properly this time.

By March we were demoing Office 365, which is a huge improvement over its previous iteration. The students I demoed to loved the Skydrive integration alongside the cleaner interface. April was “Windows Apps Month”, and via great timing, the official Windows 8 Twitter app was released for Metro making the task a lot easier. Besides this, personal favourites such as Fresh Paint, Netflix, Xbox Smartglass and Wikipedia, were of great interest to those new to Windows 8.

Internet Explorer was perhaps one of the tougher ones to demo, but those that were interested were shown a great HTML5 app called MixShape (which reorganises Spotify playlists depending on the situation one finds oneself in) alongside the Windows 8 integration (snap-to-side and pin-to-start). Bethan and I managed to squeeze in a local partnership with Derwent’s Carnival-D as well, having Windows 8 sponsor a charity festival featuring headliners Dusky, Fenech-Soler and Ms. Dynamite.

As a final send-off to the year, we were taken out to the West End this week for lunch at Browns near Leicester Square, and to a musical of our choice – I went with The Book of Mormon. It was my first experience of a musical and an absolutely fantastic show. I think it’s fair to say we were all in stitches throughout. We all met up again back at The Verve bar, where we had some after-show food and drinks, and gave a great send-off to the program.

It’s been a roller-coaster year and an absolutely fantastic experience. Now all that’s left is to man another stall at Carnival-D later this month if everything goes to plan, and that’s that! A huge thanks to BMB Neon and the guys at Microsoft for giving me the opportunity!