Top Ten Tod -- `Bothell Boy' Nielsen Clicks At Microsoft

When Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates needed a "Top 10 Reasons Why I Love My PC" list for his recent Comdex keynote speech, he knew exactly where to go for ideas.

Over the past seven years, Tod Nielsen, Microsoft's high-octane developer-relations manager, has made practically a second career out of "Top 10" shticks at software events. Whether it's the cheesiest Web sites, the reasons Microsoft is responsible for everything bad on the Web or the weirdest home pages, Nielsen has found plenty of industry-related fodder.

"If people want a Top 10 list for anything around here, they come to the Todster," Nielsen said.

At the Microsoft mogul's request for his Comdex appearance, Nielsen put together 15 to 20 candidates. A team led by Gates winnowed it down to 10. Although many of the surviving Top 10 were his, Nielsen said, Gates gets credit for the one generating the biggest laugh: "In just one weekend, I can sit at my PC, collaborate with attorneys all over the world, comment on a 48-page legal brief, and e-mail it to the Department of Justice."

"Bill has an incredible sense of humor," Nielsen said.

Lately, Microsoft has found a sense of humor handy in combating the ogre image of the company perpetrated by competitors, particularly Silicon Valley-based Sun Microsystems and Oracle. Laugh, and the world laughs with you, seems to be the company motto. Around Microsoft, few are better at "lightening things up," as Nielsen's boss, Brad Chase, puts it, than the 32-year-old self-described "country boy from Bothell" whose job is to play to the toughest houses Microsoft faces: independent software developers.

No group is considered more strategic at Microsoft. For most of the company's history, Microsoft has relied on software developers to test, use and promote its products. Developers' embrace of MS-DOS, Windows and Office helped make those products industry standards.

"Developers are like the offensive line of a football team," said Nielsen. "No one gets excited about the glamour of the blockers. But the team can't win without them." Microsoft's job, he added, "is to make sure they have the best opportunity to succeed with our tools and platform."

As an example of the detail with which the company approaches developers, Nielsen cites a story from Microsoft's recent Professional Developers Conference in San Diego.

When a planned set of videos fell flat, Nielsen stepped in with daily Top 10 lists. One - the Top 10 dubious Web businesses Microsoft decided not to pursue - featured driveways.com, which includes still photographs of celebrity driveways. Noticing the site did not have Microsoft's Internet Explorer logo, Nielsen called its creator, John Cunningham, who told him he would put on the logo if he could include a picture of the Gates Medina mansion's driveway.

Deal, Nielsen said. Since photos of the Gates driveway were posted, along with interviews with a security guard and neighbor, the feature has become the site's most popular section, said Cunningham. The site today displays both Netscape's and Microsoft's browser logos.

Nielsen and Gates are not the only software executives touting Top 10 lists. Sun Microsystems chief executive officer Scott McNealy has long used the genre to warm up audiences at trade shows and industry events. More often than not, McNealy loads his list with barbs at Microsoft, as in a recent reference to the company's two top executives as "Ballmer and Butthead."

"A Scott McNealy keynote is an abuse session of slander of Microsoft," Nielsen said. He cites a developer's recent characterization of McNealy as "the Andrew `Dice' Clay of computer industry. You might laugh at some of his jokes but you feel dirty afterwards."

What did McNealy think of the Gates list?

"Tod did a great job," but the Gates delivery missed the mark, McNealy said, quoting an old proverb: "It ain't the arrow, it's the archer!" Gates should keep his day job, McNealy advised.

Nielsen said he prefers making fun of Microsoft to taking cheap shots at others. "Developers like to feel they're on the inside with Microsoft," he said, "and the Top 10 help them feel that."

To deflect attention away from personalities, Nielsen recently redecorated his office. After a Business Week photograph showed his cubicle with wall-to-wall photos of McNealy and Sun's logo for its programming language, Java, Nielsen decided to remove all trace of both.

Nielsen, who checked off a photo each time he figured Microsoft scored a win against Sun, said the wallpapering scheme was "for motivational focus. But taken out of context, people could paint it as what is this weird guy in Redmond (doing)?" he said.

Chase said the poster approach was not representative of Nielsen anyway: "He's competitive, but not hard-core like that."

As Microsoft's chief exponent of developer strategy, Nielsen has found himself in the Java spotlight. Nielsen's job is to persuade developers that Java is a good tool for accomplishing their work but hardly a replacement for Windows.

Sun, which last month filed suit against Microsoft's implementation of Java, has rallied developers around the notion that Microsoft is trying to alter Java so it will run better on Windows than on other computer platforms. Java's original allure was the promise that it would perform equally on all computers, including Windows, Macintosh and Unix.

McNealy compares the Microsoft campaign to "W.C. Fields giving moral advice to the Mormon Tabernacle Choir." But Nielsen said that developers are less interested in "a lot of rhetoric" than creating something customers will like and buy.

"Our approach is to really listen to what developers want, set aside emotions and find the facts," he said. When he outlined Microsoft's stance to Java developers recently, Nielsen said, "The response I got unanimously from folks was, `Oh, you're doing the right thing'."

Nielsen is well-suited to the Java hot seat, said colleague Chris Capossela, executive communications manager at Microsoft who helped set up Gates' Comdex speech. Not only does Nielsen's self-deprecating humor defuse a potentially tense situation with Java, Capossela said, "he keeps them (developers) laughing while still managing to address their concerns."

Nielsen took an unconventional path to Microsoft. After graduating in 1983 from Bothell High School, where he lettered in several sports and was class president, Nielsen went to the UW for two years, then transferred to Central Washington State in Ellensburg, graduating in business administration with a minor in information systems. After a short stint running his own business, he joined Microsoft in 1988.

"I always joke that the local equal opportunity commission said it was time to add another local boy from Bothell to the mix," Nielsen said.

Nielsen soon hooked up with Microsoft's Access, then a newborn database application effort. In those days, Borland's Paradox ruled the database market, and Borland founder Philippe Kahn's photo was on Nielsen's wall. In 1992, Microsoft entered the arena with a low-price version of Access and within weeks captured significant market share.

In 1993, Nielsen left to run part of Microsoft Exchange (e-mail and groupware) in Vancouver, B.C. Three years later, he was back in Redmond with the Developer Relations Group.

Chase, vice president for Internet marketing and developer relations, asked Nielsen to join the Developer Relations Group at Microsoft in late 1995, around the time the company began recasting itself as an Internet enterprise.

Microsoft not only was intent on broadening its relationships with traditional software developers interested in the Web, but the Redmond company also needed to expand its appeal to a whole new array of Web-specific programmers: site developers, content providers, multimedia developers and authors of Web components - features and programs that operate across networks and the Internet.

Nielsen's versatility as a software developer himself - he ran a database applications company before joining Microsoft - and his work in attracting database developers to Microsoft Access during the early 1990s made him right for the job, Chase said. It's not all Top 10 lists with Nielsen: "He brings real dedication and substance to the job," Chase said.

An avid golfer - his Microsoft team won the company tournament for six years running - and a musician who rates playing the violin at an Italian restaurant in Lynnwood "my worst job ever," Nielsen sees the Java dispute as a long-term challenge. Sun won a round last week when the International Organization for Standardization approved Sun's petition to act as custodian for Java, a role Microsoft opposes.

But Nielsen points out that several member nations assigned provisos to their vote. "Sun still needs to address the comments 13 of the countries coupled with their `yes' votes," Nielsen said. "There will be subsequent processes and votes necessary before Java is a standard."

Nielsen's mother, for one, would not like to be in Sun's shoes. Growing up, Tod was a strong-willed kid who demanded to be taught how to read all at once, on his first day of school, so his mother would buy him a sports magazine.

At age 12, Tod wore soccer kneepads for a year and a day in order to be in the Guinness Book of World Records, said Jacqueline Nielsen, corporate travel manager for Paccar. He would have worn them longer except they rotted off, she added.

"Once he puts his mind to something, there's no stopping Tod," added his mother, who calls herself the classic Microsoft mom. "He's always been that way."

Paul Andrews' phone message number is 206-464-2360. His e-mail address is: pand-new@seatimes.com