Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer had nothing but high hopes ahead of his visits in Central and Eastern Europe that were scheduled to debut in Budapest, Hungary on May 19, 2008. But a less traditional reception awaited the CEO of Microsoft in the final stage of his Hungary
visit. Ballmer participated at the Windows Server 2008 executive launch event, then attended a press conference for the launch of Hungarian Employability Alliance, in an online chat, and was scheduled to finish the day with a keynote address at the Entrepreneurship Forum at Corvinus University, where it all went bad for the CEO. During what appeared to be nothing more than a regular speech, Ballmer was egged by a protester, and the otherwise anodyne event managed to make video history.
The video fragment embedded at the bottom of this article offers a far better perspective over the incident than words can describe. An unsuspecting and relaxed Steve Ballmer is interrupted during his speech by a local protester, who screamed a few demands and went on to throw eggs at Microsoft's Chief Executive Officer. Ballmer scrambled for cover behind a desk as it was clear that he found the raw egg omelette hurled at him a tad hard to swallow, and to dodge for that matter.
The egg-thrower who came armed with three projectiles apparently wanted Microsoft to return the Hungarian taxpayers dollars the company had "stolen." His aim proved to be just as inconsistent as his incoherent demand, as none of the eggs actually hit Ballmer. After the protester was removed, Microsoft's CEO resumed the keynote address joking that the incident "was a friendly disruption," but admitting that it had broken his train of thought.
Ahead of setting the first step in the CEE, Ballmer was praising the region. "Central and Eastern Europe is the world's fastest-growing region and most economists anticipate that this will be the case for the next few years, at least. Right now, it is Microsoft's fastest-growing market, as well. Today, we have 23 subsidiary offices across the region, and we employ around 2,000 people. We operate significant development, technical support and innovation centres in cities such as Bucharest, Belgrade and Prague, and we continue to invest in the region because we are seeing a lot of growth and opportunity," he stated.
Hungarians mostly don't wish to be recognized to be Hungarians, when they get the chance to be in company of admired, rich, western countries citizens. If they are not accepted by them, most turn offensive. That's a national habit accompanied by social envy and self rejection.
Most of them think of America like: "Try to be a part of it, if they reject you, offend it." (That's why Hungary joined the EU.)
This is a justified reaction, but with wrong actions taken. I think, the cake remains delicious even if one's been denied to get a slice of it.
If Ballmer would have stopped the "inquisition", then to force the guy to give statement of his opinions and a chance to dazzle the audience with his highly developed IT and business skills during their conversation, I guess, the guy would have licked up the yolk from Ballmer's head, if he would've hit.
This poor guy simply realized that nobody joined him, or at least boooh-ed with him at Ballmer after the first egg, so he went on with the second and third to save his concept, but then he got confused. (I think he was even thankful for getting stopped. He also might have seen some scenes on Youtube and tried to sample them.) However, finally his "revolution" has been set back.
Nonetheless the guy's been absolutely right with his opinion: the Hungarian state hasn't got the funds to buy the "unreliable" IT stuff from Microsoft, and the only reason they do is, that Microsoft tries to force the whole world, - using their shady business practices - to buy their products.
Some Hungarian businesses also suffered outrageous prosecutions of the local BSA. But this is a more complex situation than to discuss about here.
Besides: Hungary is one of those "new" European states, that gives the most capable IT technicians, and engineers as a result of the countries excellent higher education. LINUX developers are very talented and skilled here, and even the system itself is very popular.
This might even be the reason of Ballmer's visit (or should we rather call it "audit"?!)
I'm sure: Steve Jobs would've enjoyed a warm welcome!
