While not really developer focused I can't help but attribute some of our high scores to the overall shift towards community engagement at Microsoft. The article does specifically mention transparency though and I'm not sure I can think of another group...

Last week I spent three days app building. ( Day 1 , Day 2 , Day 3 ) My goal was to port the VSCmdShell project to Whidbey, finish some feature work, fix bugs, and release both a VS 2003 and VS 2005 0.8 version of the add-in. I accomplished most of what...

Here is a great example why we encourage teams to make sure questions are being answered in their newsgroups. ( Link ) After answering a question for another user, Steve McLellan had this to say: “these newsgroups are a great resource, and...

VS Core IDE QA team member, Sara Ford , was recently highlighted in a business week article entitled “ Blogging with the Boss's Blessing ”. Click here to see what billg had to say.

Blogs, Blogs and More Blogs The Microsoft.com community team now has a team blog . I’ve been working a lot with Olivier Ribet and his team of late on the newsgroup/forum replacement project I’ve references. I have a lot of respect...

Today my inbox was flooded with opinions about the VS Data team status post that was inspired by the MSBuild status post . These come to me because a large portion of my job currently revolves around figuring out and encouraging how Devdiv participates...

I personally missed the opportunity to see Dr Weinberger live and will have to settle for our internal video recording. From the blogs it sounded like a memorable talk. [Via Network-Centric Advocacy ] I am having lots of fun playing with a talk...

As of this moment I've collected $430 for the MSBaseball Challenge charities. I'll thank everyone who has contributed again and extend a most recent thanks to Marko, William, Brian, Joseph, and Matthew. All of whom should be getting their g-mail invites...

11:15 Non-Late Arrival: I seem to get a later start each day. Today I had a 9am meeting that I arrived @ 8:59 for and then my weekly 1:1 with Mark that lasted until 11. I discovered my autocomplete window doesn’t know when VS itself loses focus...

10:44 Shut Down Outlook: I’ve been here since 9 working on “immediate attention required” e-mails. I can finally start coding again. I’m looking forward to making progress today with Phish kicking off the coding. 11:12 Suggestions...

Thanks to a bunch of Gmail invite donations I'm going to open up my offer again. Donate at least $10 and I'll make sure you get an invite. I'm up to $271 collected so far for the MSbaseball Challenge charities . Sal, Marko, and David were the most...

Today kicks off the first of three “PM App Building” days on the VSCore team. As a tester I remember laughing at the concept since it was apparent there were PM ’s that clearly hadn’t actually used the product they helped design...

This morning I threw Jeremy's gmail invites up for grabs to the first 5 people to donate $10 or more to the MSBaseball Challenge fund I'm collecting. So far Chris, Marko, Troy, and Ryan have qualified and helped raise $85 for the charities. You guys ROCK...

I have Gmail invites to give out to the next five people who donate $10 or more to the MSBaseball Challenge charities through me. Jeremy , in addition to his own monetary donation and suggestion to post to the Channel9 forums, has donated these to the...

Kudos for Alex Kipman and the MSBuild team for starting to publish the project status publicly. From the comments on their first post: I love this kind of transparency. Keep it up! I wish every PM did this. I just couldn't help thinking if you...

Alex is experimenting with posting the MSBuild weekly project status directly to his blog rather than just sending it around internally. I’ve wanted to do this, but he beat me to it. In truth, I haven’t been sending a status mail internally...

Some people have noticed that over time my blogging style has changed. Stephane says “Take a break, you are scobleizing yourself. I don't want the guy who once posted great inspiring posts to become another low budget spitter. ;-)” My own...

(Google searches that led to my blog in bold) Ahhhh, the same Red Sox that lost to the yankees in game 7 (thanks for the reminder) are losing big today to the Dodgers. What better time to look through my referral logs from the last few weeks for...

I got to hear the whole story from the link below on the car ride home yesterday and it sounded really cool. I wonder how many other projects like this one are going on here that no one ever hears about. http://blogs.msdn.com/JobsBlog/archive/2004...

It has taken me way to long to respond to this comment from Scott . re: For Testers: Nihit Kaul Talks Up Model Based Testing It appears that model based testing forces you to define the various actions your application can take (add, edit, delete...

Zoe and Leah from recruiting have donated. Today I also received my first donation via paypal from Shaunt! From these three I'm very grateful to be @ $110 dollar collected for Ronald Mcdonald House and the Baseball Challenge. Thank you! So far recruiting...

My wife and I seem to have both come down with some sort of virus so I'm officially going to call today a sick day. I haven't read anything yet that said we've lost that benifit. :-) So, its a good time to catch up and blog some things I wanted to comment...

Well, at least the posts that are scobelized . :-) I was hoping that some 3rd party lawyers might actually chime in once I posted my opinions . As far as I know Kevin @ techlawadvisor.com is the first. Check out this post . He also suggests adding some...

I was forwarded this feedback today. The introduction it came with says it all. Keep the wins coming. I was on IM with an MVP today, and he mentioned he was on the VS 2005 Real World Users Usability Study. I thought you would like his comment, I think...

Dennis Cheung posted a brief look at reality versus perception of Microsoft Support services around Mac Office. Some customers have pointed out the quality of support seems to depend on the specific product and region. Have you used MS support for...