Welcome to my Blog

Published 02 May 08 10:55 AM

I am Dan Truax – General Manager at Microsoft for a few major online customer web sites including MSDN, TechNet, Expression, and CodePlex. If you would like to know more about me, click here.

 

I decided to start this blog because we are in the process of making some major changes to MSDN and TechNet. Going forward, and especially now, we want to have a much more direct and transparent discussion with you and make sure we have your feedback as we go along.

 

The biggest change I'm talking about is that we're beginning a process of re-inventing MSDN and TechNet as community-driven sites where customers are at the center of the experience, and social experiences enable their success.

 

Our vision is to be the largest and most vibrant online community for developers and IT professionals, enabling easy connections to the best resources and most knowledgeable people from Microsoft and the global community.

 

That means we're opening up the sites to much more direct participation and contribution from the global developer and IT community. Ultimately that means two significant changes:

 

1.       MSDN and TechNet will include content, samples, scripts and code that are created and contributed by our customers in addition to what is developed and authored by Microsoft.  

2.       Content, whether customer- or Microsoft-created, will be prioritized for placement and discoverable largely by customers through social activities such as tagging and rating.

 

Going forward, I will be using this blog to share more details on our direction and update you on the progress we are making. 

 

We want your input and feedback - here are two ways you can do that: First, is to respond to this blog.  The second is that we have created new forums to allow Q&A and discussion on the future of TechNet and MSDN.  You can access those forums on MSDN Forums and TechNet Forums.

 

by dantr
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Comments

# vikasgoyal77 said on May 10, 2008 12:55 PM:

Hi Dan,

That's a great initiative. MSDN is already considered to be the best content available for developers and IT professionals. All the non-Microsoft technologies developers always wish for such kind of content for their technologies. One of the best thing about MSDN content is the assurance that most of the time it will be accurate. I hope this will continue after opening the MSDN to other non-Microsoft content.

# karl1406 said on May 12, 2008 2:10 PM:

Dan,

I've been using Silverlight.net to upload my videos and notice that this site manages my Passport Account MUCH better than the MSDN sites.

Any chance of getting the same code on MSDN that the Silverlight.net site has.

It's a real pain to always have to type my password everytime I go to the forums page to help someone or review postings.

Silverlight.net has a very cool helper that remembers all your Passport accounts and with one click I'm logged in.

Thanks,

Karl Shifflett - MVP

# jamiet said on May 13, 2008 9:52 AM:

karl,

That is the Windows Live Sign-in Assistant. Its not provided by the Silverlight.net team, its just something that that team have chosen to leverage. I agree that MSDN should leverage it too.

-Jamie

# dantr said on May 13, 2008 4:07 PM:

Karl - send me mail at dantr@microsoft.com if you like.  We are shifting towards the Live ID Helper that I think you are referencing.  However, I am confused by the Silverlight.Net comment.  As far as I know they use Telligent Forms Authentication - not Live ID.  Checking though...

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