Enhancing the C# Community
Hello, my name is Charlie Calvert, and on July 10, 2006 I started my new job as the Community Program Manager for the Visual C# group. This is my first blog here at Microsoft, and also my first message to the C# community.
My primary goal is to serve your needs by facilitating the creation of a vibrant and useful C# community. Along the way, I also want to foster open and honest communication. For this type of communication to succeed, I need to be able to connect people to people. Nothing should stand between those who create C# and those who use C#.
The C# team creates its product in conjunction with its customers. The team cannot and does not exist independently from the people who use Visual C#. Getting feedback from users is a vital part of planning and developing our product. We need to work with you. We need involvement from you when we are designing features, and we need to work with you while we are developing them.
One good way to encourage that kind of communication is to create a lively, active community of C# users. I have ideas about how to encourage that kind of community, but I want to let them simmer a little longer before I share them here in my blog. To do this right, I’m going to have to exercise both patience and care.
In the mean time, I would like to hear from you. Please add some comments to this blog if you have ideas about how we can help create a strong C# community. I’m open to any thoughts you would like to share, whether they involve the web, public events, product enhancements, or some entirely unique approach.
None of us can work alone. We are only as strong as the community we create together.
I’ll close this first post by writing a little about myself. I’ve been working with computers for about 20 years, and I’ve been in the industry proper since March of 1992, when I joined Borland.
I worked at Borland for about 8 years, spending most of that time in Developer Relations with David Intersimone. I wrote many books during those years, including a number on the C/C++ interface to the Windows API. I spent most of my time, however, writing books on Delphi, and traveling hither and yon, talking about Delphi technology at many conferences and user groups.
During my stay at Borland, I worked with many folks who now sit in the same building with me at Microsoft. Included in that number are Steve Teixeira, Blake Stone, and our own well beloved Anders Hejlsberg.
Over the coming weeks I will be adding to this blog. My long term goal will be try to work with the community and team to outline an ever evolving plan for creating a vibrant C# community. Along the way, I want to share more about what it is like to come to work at Microsoft, and to gossip with you about events in the computer industry. At the back of my mind, however, will always be the need to find ways to help you get the most out of Visual C#.
I’m very excited to be here at Microsoft as a Community Program Manager. Hopefully we can all work together to create something worth while, and to have as much fun as possible while doing it.
