Mark Cliggett's WebLog

It’s been a year since I’ve posted, so I should provide a little context. In my previous job, I ran a team in the Developer Division that was focused on increasing the flow and quality of communication between our customers (developers) and our product...

AKA "I’m not dead yet!" Thanks to androidi for prompting action on one of my New Year’s Resolutions. See the end of this post for some introspective blather on why I haven’t posted since June. The real reason is that I’m lame. I’m still at work on customer...

As many of you know, late last week we sent mail out to Whidbey alpha participants alerting to them to the announcement this week. I was particularly excited to send that mail because we had some real news in the mail about the Express skus - not tons...

Stuart commented on my last post - explaining how in the long run people will adjust to the new way and we'll still get to have our cake (be much more transparent) and eat it (get some bang around milestones like beta release) too. What he said is key...

Eeesh, more than a month since I last posted. I got feedback in the past couple days ago that while the community drops/more frequent builds are nice, what many people (especially non-MSDN subscribers) want is access to any build period. The feedback...

Thanks for the comments/feedback I received. A few additional comments (I'll try to keep this one short, or at least shorter). Josh Ledgard questioned the need for every/daily builds . I use the word “every” to make a couple points, one...

I was forwarded a great email thread from VB customers. Here are some excerpts (from multiple people): "I'm beginning to think "Community Editions" of products as large and complicated as Whidbey are NOT a good idea. Yes I said, NOT. Reason?...

I just happened across this blog post from Randy Holloway ( http://weblogs.asp.net/rholloway/archive/2003/11/04/35707.aspx ) I’ve been thinking about this from a slightly different perspective. As we do a better job in being open with information...

I had the following exchange with a customer via email earlier today. I thought it would be of general interest (thanks to Richard for letting me post this). It explains some of the behind-the-scenes thinking around the Tech Preview, how it relates to...

A couple people suggested p2p mechanisms as a way to enable downloads for anyone, and asked about restrictions on copying in the EULA. Offhand, P2P seems like a great solution here, and I've started a thread with our legal department about making it so...

I received a question asking how/if people who aren't MSDN subscribers can get this build. Unfortunately, we do not yet have a way to enable this. The issue is really one of not figuring out the logistics yet - we want to do this. There are two (obvious...

... also known as Whidbey. People are starting to get this - some got it at VSLive/MDC, MSDN subscribers can download it now, and we're in the process of manufacturing and shipping media to alpha participants, MVPs and PDC attendees (should start showing...

(Warning: This is squishy and abstract and has nothing to do with developer technology.) I just came back from a management development course called “Values-based Leadership”. The premise of the course is that by understanding one's personal...

I got this beta timing question a few days back. I'm sure you've heard this before, but we don't announce beta/release dates mostly because we don't know exactly when the development/testing stars will line up. While I can't tell you when the beta...

There's a fair amount of interest in wikis in the Developer Division. Several of us have been bouncing ideas around for where we could experiment with wikis in our interactions with people outside the company. I wanted to put one idea out and see if there...

Thanks to all who commented on my question about distributing Whidbey builds on CDs or DVDs - I wanted to get back to you. For the frequent updates, we're going to go with DVDs and downloads as the distribution media. This provides a decent balance between...

Thanks to all who commented on my question about distributing Whidbey builds on CDs or DVDs - I wanted to get back to you. For the frequent updates, we're going to go with DVDs and downloads as the distribution media. This provides a decent balance between...

One of the questions that came up when talking about delivering Whidbey builds more frequently is distribution medium. DVDs are a lot more convenient for everyone (and cheaper for us). Suppose we made these DVD only? I imagine at certain quality milestones...

A number of people are asking whether PDC attendees will get new updates of Whidbey bits. The simple answer is yes - when we make new versions of Whidbey available either in beta form or the interim builds that Ari Bixhorn was recently quoted on, we will...

A number of people are asking whether PDC attendees will get new updates of Whidbey bits. The simple answer is yes - when we make new versions of Whidbey available either in beta form or the interim builds that Ari Bixhorn was recently quoted on, we will...

This past week was a blur - lots and lots going on. A few highlights: I had lunch with Robert Scoble and had a great talk about the power of blogs in building community. We're in the midst of planning more frequent drops of Whidbey bits, and two of...

Robert Scoble's blog asked the “how do I get the Whidbey beta?” question. I can't answer that yet, but I can tell you about the direction we're headed in for betas in the Tools division. There are 3 areas that we want to improve: - broad...

A week ago I took a new job running the team that is driving the Developer Division's community efforts for Visual Studio and the .NET Framework. (I planned to write this in my first day in the job, but promptly got pretty sick and just returned to the...