Professional Developers Conference 2009 Technical Leaders Panel 3

Don Box is a former

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

Technical Fellow. Before joining Microsoft in 2002, Box was a contributing editor and columnist at ''Microsoft Systems Journal'', which later became ''

MSDN Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) was the division of Microsoft responsible for managing the firm's relationship with developers and testers, such as hardware developers interested in the operating system (OS), and software developers developing ...

Magazine'', and was one of the founders of DevelopMentor, a software training company; he left DevelopMentor to join Microsoft. Box led the

Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third console in the Xbox#Consoles, Xbox series. It was first released in North America, parts of Europe, Austra ...

platform development team from its inception through launch on November 22, 2013. Prior to that, Box led the development team that produced the Xbox SmartGlass platform (which was the basis for what is now known as Project Rome), worked on Brad Lovering's team working on model-driven runtime and tool support at Microsoft including "Oslo", and was an architect on

Windows Communication Foundation The Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), previously known as Indigo, is a free and open-source runtime and a set of APIs in the .NET Framework for building connected, service-oriented applications. .NET Core 1.0, released 2016, did not s ...

(formerly known as "Indigo") and related technologies. In 2017–2021, Box was Vice President of Engineering for Mixed Reality, where he led the engineering team that builds

HoloLens Microsoft HoloLens is an augmented reality (AR)/ mixed reality (MR) headset developed and manufactured by Microsoft. HoloLens runs the Windows Mixed Reality platform under the Windows 10 operating system. Some of the positional tracking tech ...

Windows Mixed Reality Windows Mixed Reality (WMR) is a discontinued platform by Microsoft which provides augmented reality and virtual reality experiences with compatible head-mounted displays. WMR supports a number of virtual and augmented reality headsets, includin ...

Windows Hello Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 29, 2015. Windows 10 was made available for download vi ...

, and other initiatives that live at the edge of the physical and digital worlds. In 2014–2017, he led the Silicon, Graphics and Media development team in the Windows and Devices Group, and was responsible for driving silicon/hardware/software co-engineering across the Windows product line. Leading up to the launch of

Windows 10 Windows 10 is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. The successor to Windows 8.1, it was Software release cycle#Release to manufacturing (RTM), released to manufacturing on July 15, 2015, and later to retail on July 2 ...

, Box drove the initiative to converge

Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Windows Phone Windows Phone (WP) is a discontinued mobile operating system developed by Microsoft Mobile for smartphones as the replacement successor to Windows Mobile and Zune. Windows Phone featured a new user interface derived from the Metro design languag ...

Xbox Xbox is a video gaming brand that consists of four main home video game console lines, as well as application software, applications (games), the streaming media, streaming service Xbox Cloud Gaming, and online services such as the Xbox networ ...

, and

onto a common set of components known as OneCore. On March 31, 2021, Box announced that he would be leaving Microsoft in May. On May 3, 2021, Box joined Meta as VP of Engineering, AR Glasses. Along with Bob Atkinson, Mohsen Al-Ghosein, and

Dave Winer Dave Winer (born May 2, 1955, in Queens, New York City) is an American software developer, entrepreneur, and writer who resides in New York City. Winer is noted for his contributions to outliners, scripting, content management, and web service ...

, Box was one of the original four designers of

SOAP Soap is a salt (chemistry), salt of a fatty acid (sometimes other carboxylic acids) used for cleaning and lubricating products as well as other applications. In a domestic setting, soaps, specifically "toilet soaps", are surfactants usually u ...

, a basic messaging layer for

web service A web service (WS) is either: * a service offered by an electronic device to another electronic device, communicating with each other via the Internet, or * a server running on a computer device, listening for requests at a particular port over a n ...

s. At 2001 TechEd Europe, Box performed a talk about XML and SOAP from a bathtub. Box was a conspicuous figure in the

Component Object Model Component Object Model (COM) is a binary-interface technology for software components from Microsoft that enables using objects in a language-neutral way between different programming languages, programming contexts, processes and machines ...

(COM) community, where he coined the phrase "COM is love". He is also a series editor for

Addison Wesley Addison–Wesley is an American publisher of textbooks and computer literature. It is an imprint of Pearson plc, a global publishing and education company. In addition to publishing books, Addison–Wesley also distributes its technical titles ...

where he launched two successful series targeting the Microsoft developer audience.

Books

* ''Essential .NET, Volume I: The Common Language Runtime'', with Chris Sells * ''Essential COM'' * ''Essential XML: Beyond MarkUp'' * ''Effective COM: 50 Ways to Improve Your COM and MTS-based Applications'', with Keith Brown, Tim Ewald and Chris Sells

References

External links

*
Biographical interview with Don Box

NET Rocks! interview, Don Box and Chris Sells talk to Carl and Richard
Microsoft employees Microsoft technical fellows Microsoft evangelists Living people Year of birth missing (living people) Place of birth missing (living people) {{compu-bio-stub