What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

moo — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 20:44:00 GMT

Glorified salesman.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

Alex Lowe — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 20:55:00 GMT

Why is a Developer Evangelist a glorified salesman?

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

moo — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 21:48:00 GMT

You can dress it up all you want but you are there to simply help sell products.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

moo — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 21:50:00 GMT

Tell you what, come on in waving your CV shouting "Envangelist" and we will laugh you all the way back to the door.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

moo — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 21:54:00 GMT

ASP.NET which basically means you are a web jockey. MVP which means you sit around all day at work browsing usenet posts rather than doing actual work.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

Alex Lowe — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 21:59:00 GMT

"You can dress it up all you want but you are there to simply help sell products." is a very profound statement.

Every employee at Microsoft (or any other software company for that matter) is there to help sell products in some manner.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

Alex Lowe — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 22:03:00 GMT

"ASP.NET which basically means you are a web jockey. MVP which means you sit around all day at work browsing usenet posts rather than doing actual work. "

It is clear that you have not worked with ASP.NET considering that web applications, just like desktop applications, can have a huge backend architecture to them.

No, MVP would mean that I sit around all day at work ANSWERING usenet posts rather than doing actual work.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

moo — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 22:04:00 GMT

Yes including the Janitor. I guess we should rename his job title to "Mop Envangelist".

Being called envangelist doesnt help your credability, people just laugh theyre nips off and think you are full of Bullshit Buzzword Bingo.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

Alex Lowe — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 22:09:00 GMT

I suppose you can call the Janitor what ever you want.

I didn't say it helped my credibility. People can laugh. I don't see what that has to do with anything.

Generally, my engagements with customers consist of more than simply providing my title. So, laughter or not, they get value in the information I provide. I'm positive I can deliver the same information whether my title has Evangelist in it or not.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

moo — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 22:09:00 GMT

I have no intention or desire to support ASP here. Here we use standardized protocols and formats.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

Alex Lowe — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 22:11:00 GMT

Great. What standardized protocols and formats does ASP not support?

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

moo — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 23:00:00 GMT

Great, show me the ASP specifications on W3C.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

moo — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 23:00:00 GMT

ISO? ECMA?

Pick a standardization body and show me the specs.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

Alex Moskalyuk — Sun, 08 Feb 2004 23:57:00 GMT

Moo seems to have an overly negative view of the Evangelist position. Let's not forget that at the early stages crucial reason for Microsoft dominance was the developer support. Programming for Microsoft platforms with the first editions of Visual Basic and C++ compilers was easier than doing the same things for any other platform.

Even today MSDN is one of the best developer resources out there, there's no match for that in Linux/Unix/Apple/Amiga/OS2 world as far as I've seen. Plus, I always go to MSDN events to pick up some new stuff even if it doesn't relate to my work. When was the last time a developer from Apache Foundation visited your friendly town to tell about upcoming features and listen to the requests?

Anyway, among the companies to develop for Microsoft still has the lowest barrier for entry with free .NET compilers with SDK and plenty of documentation, books, and access to the guys like Alex.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

Robert Scoble — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 00:09:00 GMT

If you work inside Microsoft, I'm keeping a site for Evangelists at http://evangelism -- let me know if you have resources that should be linked up.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

Ivonna Whackshaft — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 00:18:00 GMT

Evangelist? So are glass washers silicon dioxide maintenance technicians in your wold? Tardlicious!

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

Alex Lowe — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 01:40:00 GMT

Moo, I'm no expert on standards bodies but I can say with relative certainty that your environment is missing a great deal of technology that is not certified by ECMA, ISO, or W3C. You could be a lot more productive if you used things that weren't not certified by ECMA, ISO, or W3C!

I mean, most of the web oriented development languages are not certified (PHP, ASP.NET, Perl, JSP, etc.). You must not have the need for anything but static HTML since it is standardized by the W3C. I feel very sorry for you because you must be wasting a lot of time using antiquated web technologies.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

Malek — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 07:03:00 GMT

Well said Alex. I would love to hear what moo is using for his Web development (Accessing Data with JavaScript from the client?).
Basically, what standards are about is interoperability, which has nothing to do with the technology used on presentation layer at the server side (call it UI processing, or what you like), because it only needs to be at the layers boudaries, and on messages being exchanged (with client and with other layers)...

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

moo — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 11:25:00 GMT

I dont do web development on the front end, I do the backend if anything web related as I refuse to be stuck in boring web land. I would rather code COBOL and get a huge legacy fee than do web shit.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

moo — Mon, 09 Feb 2004 11:37:00 GMT

"Microsoft dominance" has that ring of evilness to it dont you think :D

I recall Dilbert had a funy strip piss taking Envangelists.

Take Outs: The Digital Doggy Bag of Blog Bits for 9 February 2004

Enjoy Every Sandwich — Tue, 10 Feb 2004 06:50:00 GMT

The daily list of stuff I found interesting while blogreading.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

Christophe Lauer — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 01:40:00 GMT

Moo, you're jaleous, aren't you?

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

Christophe Lauer — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 01:43:00 GMT

Hi Alex,

May be to complete your list of MS job desc, you could describe what is an ISV DE - which is actually my job. Pretty sure you'd do it much better than I would.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

moo — Wed, 11 Feb 2004 14:17:00 GMT

Jealous? Of what lol?

He can envangelise all he wants, but one just cant polish a turd.

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

moot — Thu, 12 Feb 2004 00:47:00 GMT

I like how moo behinds behind the Anonymous Shield. Come on out and play, moo!

What exactly is a

Forest Blog — Tue, 24 Feb 2004 20:53:00 GMT

What exactly is a

Forest Blog — Wed, 25 Feb 2004 10:23:00 GMT

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

Joe — Wed, 24 Mar 2004 10:03:00 GMT

After reading all these posts I could understand there is a few like "Moo" who still live in late 1950s and 60s and refuse to get down from trees!!!

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

SickOf — Wed, 05 May 2004 05:00:00 GMT

Honest to Jeebus, I am so completely sick of everything and everybody in this entire field. I wish I'd become a dentist, or an undertaker.

Back to Blogging

philweber.net — Fri, 21 May 2004 06:46:00 GMT

OK, nine months of radio silence is long enough. What have I been doing? The first big news is that I was laid off last October. The company was cool about it and called it a layoff (as far as...

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

rawCoder — Fri, 18 Jun 2004 10:35:00 GMT

Dear Alex,

I am a die hard fan of Microsoft Technologies an their help for the Developer community.

I was wondering what is the criteria for becoming a Developer Evangelist? How much coding skills get rusty due to lack of it after you become an Evangelist? How can i become an Evangelist .. do i need to be an MVP ?

Hope u'll answer.

rawCoder

re: What is an evangelist (Developer Evangelist in my case)?

Alex Lowe — Fri, 18 Jun 2004 19:07:00 GMT

There are many different types of Developer Evangelist jobs at Microsoft so I recommend that you check out the job descriptions/qualifications for the current openings at our career site:

Developer Evangelist: http://www.microsoft.com/careers/search/results.aspx?FromCP=Y&JobCategoryCodeID=&JobLocationCodeID=&JobProductCodeID=&JobTitleCodeID=10422&Divisions=&TargetLevels=&Keywords=&JobCode=&ManagerAlias=&Interval=10

That said, the qualifcations can be described at a high level as the following:

1) You need to be very technical and hands on (i.e. you can walk the talk when it comes to coding). Ideally, you'd have both an extensive .NET background and a Linux, J2EE, etc. background as well.

2) You need to have better than average public speaking/presentation skills. You will be interfacing with customers everyday and doing presentations most days.

3) You need to understand the importance of community and have the foresight to do what is necessary to build a bigger and better community in your local geography.

Those are the three core pillars I'd say you must have. Most developers fall short on item number 2 and many also don't quite understand the community dynamics.

If you feel that you meet those requirements then we'd love to have you apply for the jobs I linked to above.

Your coding skills don't become rusty. I think what becomes rusty is your ability to "hop" into the mindset that is required to work on "regular" applications versus your pet projects and demo applications you find yourself coding more often. Thankfully, we work with the largest customers in our geography so you wind up helping developers with the largest distributed .NET applications in existence.

No, you definitely do not need to be an MVP to get a Developer Evangelist job at Microsoft. It certainly doesn't hurt though. =)

What have I been doing?

philweber.net — Thu, 24 Jun 2004 03:58:00 GMT

Heather Hamilton wonders why bloggers keep falling off. I can’t speak for everyone, but here’s my story...When I went dark last August, I was in the final throes of a death-march project, one of those projects that seems like a...