About Tip o’ the Week

This project started as an internal communications exercise within Microsoft, in December 2009. The thinking was that everyone has a few short cuts or quick tips on how to find certain information, how to use particular tools, and that sharing that info would help their immediate colleagues.

The goal for Tip o’ the Week was to send a short tip every week, to a group of about 50 people. It quickly snowballed and we found that lots of people outside of our group were adding themselves to the email distribution – which in turn altered the focus of the tips as to be not just about one department’s view, but to be on more general topics. The tips tended to grow in length, too. Sorry about that.

The original goal of Tip o’ the Week was for people to contribute their own content, but as time went on it became more of a solo exercise, with most feedback saying how useful it was, or contributing not solutions to a problem but asking if I could write a tip on <foo>.

There’s a particular style to the content – it’s unapologetically British (colour, customise, aluminium, etc etc) and somewhat irreverent, with quite a few pop cultural references, links to funny stuff on YouTube etc along the way. I hope you enjoy reading it; just don’t take it too seriously.

Opinions are all my own.

— EwanD

The tipoweek emails were sent every Friday morning until 30th June 2023.

As well as appearing on this blog, they also were posted to LinkedIn, which offers an easier way for many people to consume them, even if it provides more constrained layout options for the author. At least the content is readable on a phone, unlike the way Outlook mobile handles the original emails…