Steve Ballmer Monkey Dance

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Steve Ballmer Monkey Dance refers to video footage of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer jumping around enthusiastically during the opening of his presentation at Microsoft's 25th Anniversary event in September 2000. Along with another conference footage of Ballmer repeatedly chanting the word “developers!” on stage, the video was uploaded onto YouTube in March 2006 and has since spawned a number of remixes and parodies mocking Ballmer’s over-the-top delivery.

Origin

On August 3rd, 2001, the newsletter NTK^[3] released a video of Ballmer jumping on stage and screaming at the audience at Microsoft's 25th Anniversary event in September of 2000 (shown below, left). At an unknown date, another video featuring Ballmer was added to a download page on NTK titled “NTK’s CEO of The Dance Page”^[5], which featured Ballmer chanting the word “developers” repeatedly at conference (shown below, right).

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On July 27th, 2005, the programming news blog Coding Horror^[4] published a post titled "Steve Ballmer: Sweatiest Billionaire Ever", which linked to the NTK video page and praised the CEO for his ability to "get up on stage and make a complete and utter ass out of himself." On August 21st, a YTMND page featuring the "developers" chant titled developers developers developers was submitted by user mrdelayer. On January 24th, 2006, YouTuber 1doony4u uploaded a musical remix video titled “Developers”, which featured footage from the two Ballmer videos originally released by NTK. Within seven years, the video accumulated over 2.2 million views and 14,000 comments.

On October 25th, 2007, the Linux operating system blog Linux Way^[6] published a post titled "Ten Absolutely Stupid Quotes by Steve Ballmer", which ranked the "developers" chant as the third quote on the list. On April 22nd, 2008, YouTuber mekintosz7 uploaded a video titled “The best of Steve Ballmer”, featuring both footage from the NTK newsletters and other videos depicting Ballmer's on-stage antics.

On January 7th, 2009, the tech news blog TechRadar^[7] published an article titled "10 Ballmer-isms You Won't See at Today's Microsoft Keynote", which cited the "developers" video as the second item on the list. On March 15th, 2010, the tech news blog Engadget^[1] published a post titled “Ballmer’s visage evoked for ‘developers, developers, developers’ demo app on Windows Phone 7 Series”, reporting on Microsoft's use of a Ballmer cartoon caricature shouting "developers" during its demo presentation of an Windows Phone 7 app. On May 3rd, 2011, the tech new blog TechCrunch^[8] published a post titled “Ballmer Developers Rap”, which highlighted a SoundCloud rap song featuring audio of Ballmer saying “developers.”