Kathy Kam : Community

My new role... Silverlight Community PM

KathyKam — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 03:03:00 GMT

I haven't blogged in a while and like always.. I have plenty of excuses but I won't bore you with them. :) So what have I been up to?

Well, like all products, once you've shipped there is a standard amount of churn in the organization. Anyways, the dust has mostly settled now and I've taken on the new role of Silverlight Community PM.

Ok... but what exactly does a Silverlight Community PM do? There are external and internal parts of the job, but things non-Microsoftie will see me do are stuff like.. I own the Silverlight MVP track. (If you are a Silverlight MVP, you've probably interacted with me already.) I will also be driving the Silverlight Toolkit project. Besides those, I'll also work closely with our Evangelists (Adam and Tim) to help drive events with the Silverlight Insiders and Silverlight EAP groups as well as work closely with Tim and Jesse to see how the product team can help contribute to the awseome content on Silverlight.NET. Of course, I'll also look to you guys, our dedicated Silverlight customers, to let me know how you'd like to better interact with the product team and help better drive your feedback directly into our product.

Right now, I'm working to get our PDC ducks in a row and make sure we have a splash at PDC. Stay tuned!

A day at TechEd North America 2008

KathyKam — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 22:05:00 GMT

There has been quite a few write ups on TechEd North America and I have yet to see a photoblog of it. Since PhotoBlogs are quite a hit lately, I decided to do my first photoblog on TechEd! If you didn't make it to TechEd, hopefully this will give you a flavor of what's its like! Here is my photoblog of my day at Microsoft TechEd and what I see as I walk to do my booth duty.


1) The chartered bus that takes me from my hotel to the Orange County Convention Center where TechEd is held. This bus was the beginning and the end of my daily journey to TechEd.h	2) My fellow bus rider as we walk to the entrance. I actually met a lot of people and networked on the bus. I met the marketing team of Infragistics on the bus ride the next day!

3) This is the entrance of TechEd.	4) We even have a shoeshine guy at the front in case your shoes got dirty from the walk between the bus and the front door. Talk about service!

5) Before you can go anywhere, you have to pass the security guards. She was nice enough to let me take a photograph of her for this blog. :)	6) Ta-da... you are now inside! The green structure in front is registration. It might look empty now, but on Tuesday morning, they have processed over a thousand people within an hour.

7) This is the TechEd store. For all your emergency speaker shirt needs. :)	8) The "TLC" area (where the booths are) is opposite the Hands on Lab area. So I walk by these rows and rows of computer as far as the eye can see every day.

9) My station, the ASP.NET booth. Here is Scott Hunter (left) and Clay Compton (center) with one of our customers.	10) John Dundon (left) was also at the ASP.NET booth to represent web tools.

11) My other station, the Silverlight booth. Here is Matt Powell and Seema Ramchandani.	12) Before I do my booth duty, I need to sign off with these lovely ladies.

13) After a couple hours of booth duty, Seema, Beatrix and I head off to lunch. Can you see the rows & rows of tables behind us? Oh...btw.. who said there are no females in computing?	14) Delicious lunch is provided

15) We found ourselves a table with other customers.	16) After lunch I headed back to the booth area and noticed a huge crowd. Standing in the middle is a guy giving away T-shirts.

17) What is a conference without some mascot? Here is the Microsoft Virtual Labs guy (left), the Windows Server 2008 man (center), and Visual Studio 2008 punk (right)? (Does anyone actually know the names of these mascots?)	18) After a long day of work, Krzysztof Cwalina, Pat Helland and I hung out at Disney Downtown for dinner.

I'm going to end this Photoblog with the most awesome ad. :) This was at the Orlando Airport (MCO).

Did you like the photoblog? I have never done one before. Hopes this give you a flavor of what's its like at TechEd.

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See you all @ TechEd '08!

KathyKam — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:00:00 GMT

Just bought my tickets and booked my hotel to TechEd '08! Can't wait to see everyone in Orlando again this year!!

Here is my schedule:

Tuesday 6/3: 8:30am to 6:00pm - TLC Booth Dev Area

Thursday 6/5: 8:15am to 2:45pm- TLC Booth Dev Area

Friday 6/6: 11:30pm to 2:45pm - TLC Booth Dev Area

4:30pm to 5:45pm - Chalk Talk

My Chalk talk is titled: "Tips, Tricks, and Techniques for Building a Great Microsoft Silverlight Application"

I will demonstrate how to use all the latest set of controls for Silverlight 2 focusing on the ones that are not available to WPF.
I will give you a set of Tips & Tricks when building Silverlight application with these controls
Demonstrate step by step on how you can style & retemplate these existing controls

I know it is late in the conference, but come join me and learn how to build a great Silverlight 2 application!

MVP Summit 2008

KathyKam — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:24:43 GMT

The 2008 MVP Summit started today. I hope everyone has been enjoying the sessions so far! I am really looking forward to chatting with all my MVPs tomorrow. The MVP summit has always been one of my favourite conference, because all the MVPs are under Microsoft NDAs so we get share and get feedback on brand new plans and technologies that are still "Microsoft Confidential". (Another good thing about it is that I get to go home and sleep in my own bed! :) )

This year, I owned coordinating the "CAD and RIA" track, and we have some awesome sessions lined up, and tomorrow is an exciting day for the "CAD & RIA" MVPs.

First off, we have a keynote by ScottGu to kick off the day. Next we have a bunch of sessions that has lots of brand new content. (i.e. this is not a MIX re-run or a TechEd preview) After a long day of sessions, we end the day with the "CAD & RIA" product group dinner.

This year, we're doing a combined dinner with the ASP.NET MVPs and product group members across WPF, Silverlight, Windows Forms and ASP.NET (like Scott Guthrie, Brad Abrams, Pat Helland and myself just to name a few!) will be hanging out with our MVPs to learn about what they've been up to.

For those of you who'd like to chat about Silverlight controls with me, I'll be spending my entire day at MSCC / Hood tomorrow where all the CAD & RIA sessions are being held. I will be there to answer any questions from MVPs and help connect them to the right Microsoft folks (I am the official Product group person assigned to the "CAD & RIA" MVPs on Tuesday, and TedHu will be there on Wednesday.) I am also doing a session with Karen Corby on the Silverlight controls and will share with you our latest plans and what changes you can expect to see in Silverlight RTW!

So if any MVPs out there would like to learn more about our controls, want to give us feedback or just to chat. You know where to find me! :)

Oh and if you are not an MVP and wish you could come to our MVP summit, there is always next year, but first you'll need to be a MVP. For more information, check it out here. MVP is not an easy Microsoft "award" to get, but it is well worth it!

Return from Tech Ed

KathyKam — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 01:45:00 GMT

Hello all,

It's been two months since I last posted. I have been kept pretty busy during this time. I spoke at Tech Ed Australia, Tech Ed NZ, and Tech Ed South East Asia. When I got back, I got piles of email to get back to!

I want to thank everyone who attended my session. It's been a real learning experience for me. Visiting each of the Tech Eds around the world has been most educational, speaking is only half of my duties there. The other half is getting to meet each and everyone of you. I find speaking with my customers one on one during "Ask the Expert" session and individually scheduled meetings were useful. I have taken all your feedback back to Redmond and continue to use it to drive requirements here. Thank you for taking your time to talk to me. I truly enjoyed meeting everyone. It's amazing the energy in technology we have out there! :)

Oh... and here is the deck I used: http://kkam.members.winisp.net/deck/Acropolis_teched07_kam.pptx

Let me know if you have any questions!

Acropolis on Virtual TechEd

KathyKam — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 09:30:00 GMT

Come see me interview David Hill and Scott Morrison on Acropolis here. As the community PM, I interview David and Scott on some of the most frequently asked questions about the "Acropolis" project. This was my first real experience in being an "interviewer". I had a lot of fun doing it. Let me know what yout think! :)

http://www.virtualteched.com/pages/videos.aspx

Welcome to Acropolis

Members from the Acropolis Team—Kathy Kam, David Hill, and Scott Morrison—explain the hype behind this new technology. What is Acropolis? It’s a set of components and tools that make it easier for you to build modular, business-focused applications on the .NET framework, and is part of the “.NET Client Futures” wave of releases, Microsoft’s preview of upcoming technologies for Windows client development. Blog Acropolis here.

P.S. To those of you downunder, I am writing this blog at TechEd AU in the Gold Coast Convention Center. If you are interested in talking about Acropolis, swing by the "Ask the Expert" session on Wednesday or simply stop me at teh exhibition hall. (Though I'll probably be spending a lot of time at the speaker room - Room #5)

"Acropolis" at TechEd Orlando 2007

KathyKam — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:00:00 GMT

I just want to let everyone know all the Code Name "Acropolis" related content at Tech Ed.

If you are in Orlando attending TechEd, please come and attend our session or meet the team at the TLC (Blue Area). We have a booth with all our latest demos!

Sessions:
DEV 302    David Hill   Windows .NET Client: Introducing the “Acropolis” Client Application Framework
DEV 318    Kathy Kam Windows .NET Client: Building Rich Client UI with the “Acropolis” Framework
DEV13-TLC David Hill / Kathy Kam Windows .NET Client: “Acropolis” Client Application Framework

Hands On Lab:
DEV16 "Acropolis" Lab - available at the North HOL area in the BLUE section

We love to hear your feedback on our product! Let us know in our forums:

http://forums.microsoft.com/MSDN/ShowForum.aspx?ForumID=1638&SiteID=1

MVP Summit 2007

KathyKam — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 10:43:00 GMT

Wow.. time flies. I still remember the MVP summit from last year. I attended it 2 weeks before my job as a new PM even started! This year, I truly enjoyed the event. I got to meet some great MVPs that really brings an interesting insight to our customers.

Thank you to all the MVPs who makes this year's summit so worthwhile and interesting! I think I even got onto some webcast. I'll post a link to it once it publishes!