Microsoft NZ's 'evangelist' thought leader

By ADAM GIFFORD

Anywhere else, Craig Dewar's new job as chief technologist for Microsoft New Zealand would be done by several people.

In the United States, he would be called a technology evangelist - someone who provides "thought leadership", which is encouraging a potential customer to adopt their company's new and emerging technologies.

"People with this role in bigger places are more focused on specialist areas and have eight people each doing a slice of it, but no one getting the big picture," he says.

"They're gurus in their respective field, but ask them anything outside of that and they can't answer."

Mr Dewar is part of the New Zealand tradition of multiple specialisation where, "if you talk to a specialist here about something outside their field, they'll say, 'I don't know, but I'll find out and do it for you.' "

The 31-year-old has spent five years at Microsoft. He started as a systems engineer, then moved up to technical marketing manager.

That involved "keeping the marketing guys honest - of being a technical resource to make sure they aren't saying things that aren't true."

While he continues to head up the pre-sales technical team, the new role allows him to keep abreast of the new technologies Microsoft is developing in its laboratories.

"There's a lot of interesting research which is not in the traditional areas. It doesn't fit with existing product marketing streams, it might not even result in products, but it needs thought leadership," Mr Dewar says.

Does that mean selling vapourware?

"No, vision," says Mr Dewar emphatically. It means talking with customers about how devices like pocket PCs or personal digital assistants (PDAs) can integrate with wireless technology to create new business applications and opportunities.

"I think wireless will take off quickly. Customers find it attractive having the development skills in-house: if they have people who know how to program-in Visual Basic or C, it can be leveraged for CE [the stripped-down Windows operating system Microsoft developed for PDAs]."

Mr Dewar did a physics degree at Victoria, graduating without being sure what to do for a career. Because his degree involved electronics, he started work with Alcatel, building equipment for Telecom.

"I became a test engineer and therefore had to build software to test systems. I decided the software side was more fun.

"My father was a radio technician and, in his day, hardware was more fun: he built his own television and things like that. Today, software is where it is at - where things are innovated. Hardware is just something to run it on."

In 1992, he took a job as IT manager for law firm Buddle Finlay in Wellington which required administration of Unix systems and setting up Windows NT networks and the sophisticated document management systems which won the firm ISO 9001 certification.

"A lot of people who start their careers working for sellers don't have empathy for customers. I'm still passionate about customer needs," Mr Dewar says.