The New Microsoft, or How to Add Value to the Microsoft Development Community

re: The New Microsoft, or How to Add Value to the Microsoft Development Community

Julie Lerman — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 20:54:00 GMT

Randy- This is a fantastic post. We all know MS is making a huge effort to engage with the community - and sometimes it is almost aggressive. But I also remember the day when I posted a question to a web services forum and Keith Ballinger answered it and I ran into the kitchen to tell my [still] bewildered husband. I had NOT thought of the effect it has on the non-MS people who have been otherwise the experts we rely on for information via articles books conferences. With the MS "stars" suddenly being so accessible, everyone wants access to them and I can see how that can play out negatively to others in the community. But from the perspective of someone reading those magazine articles, buying those books and attending the conferences, I don't think other people are being pushed out (I'm not suggesting push as an active or planned thing). I actually think that as more and more developers look for information, the pool of answer-givers can be really big and therefore accomodate a variety of experts. I don't know if I'm making any sense. But anyway - great great post!

re: The New Microsoft, or How to Add Value to the Microsoft Development Community

Randy H. — Tue, 04 Nov 2003 22:08:00 GMT

Julie, thanks very much for your comments. I'm glad to have you reading and I greatly appreciate your input. I think you may be right also- perhaps the demand for the writing and speaking and other things will continue to grow in light of the growth of the community as a whole.

People like you and I, and many of our friends, will still go to the PDC, if for no other reason than to get to interact with a lot of great people face to face. But between the printed works are going to suffer in this new world I think. My best guess is that the magazine market will be hurt the most in light of what is going on with weblogs and how thorough some of the content is, Chris Brumme for example.

Thinking In .NET

TrackBack — Wed, 05 Nov 2003 01:12:00 GMT

Thinking In .NET

re: The New Microsoft, or How to Add Value to the Microsoft Development Community

David Nicholson — Sat, 08 Nov 2003 15:02:00 GMT

Think of it like computers, we always need more of them. The pool of unanswered questions is unending, and more people answering must be good.

Your blog, like many, is valuable because it adds your perspective to what is happening. It adds your view of how things fit together and your experience. I find that these are as useful as the extra depth we now get from key developers.

It is only the medium that is changing. I used to get computer industry news from monthly magazines! Not any more, but I still need the news.

re: The New Microsoft, or How to Add Value to the Microsoft Development Community

milbertus — Sun, 09 Nov 2003 15:42:00 GMT

I definitely have to agree with you. Being able to read posts written by the very people who write the tools that we work with every day is a great resource. It helps me to understand where they are coming from, and the reasons that they chose to go a certain way.

Where I work, which in part is a software development house, I sadly have to say that it isn't doing anything similar to what MS is doing. It's more of the traditional way of doing things - there are technical support people around to handle customer comments, bug reports, etc., and they occassionally need assistance from development to properly handle the customer's response.

It would definitely be a very good thing for the rest of the software industry to follow MS's lead. That can only lead to good things for the software industry as a whole.

re: The New Microsoft, or How to Add Value to the Microsoft Development Community

Jay Bazuzi @ Microsoft — Tue, 11 Nov 2003 23:21:00 GMT

This is pretty cool to read. We've been working had all around the company to reach out to customers. Posts like yours are reassuring - we're doing the right thing.

I'm going to step up my efforts to connect with customers directly.

-Jay Bazuzi
Visual C# IDE Development

re: The New Microsoft, or How to Add Value to the Microsoft Development Community

Scott McCollum — Sat, 22 Nov 2003 08:46:00 GMT

I'd like to ask everyone a question about Microsoft and blogging: There's an increasing amount of evidence to support the need for blogs in the software development community, but what about the HARDWARE development community?

I see the benefits blogs have within the community of software devs wanting to share their ideas: it's a collaborative, academic exercise on a global scale -- Devs inside Microsoft can bounce ideas off devs outside Redmond (and vice versa) through blogs.

Applying this to Windows device development looks a little trickier: Specs and standards are open, but the shrewd execution of those standards is what can give AMD the advantage over Intel, ATI over NVIDIA, and Dell over everyone...

Windows apps are amazing and it's a great business for a lot of people. Windows devices and the drivers that power them make an extremely competitive business with microscopic margins these days. Of course without all that great hardware, Windows and it's millions of apps are about as useful as a space heaters and wool coats in Costa Rica.

Seriously, I'm wondering:

-Does anyone have ideas on how Microsoft can get blogs going about Windows hardware device development without giving away their intellectual property?

-Would anyone care to have blogs containing information about how to make cool devices with stable Windows drivers that have consistent installation experiences?

-Can this even be done without alienating the OEMs and ODMs that Microsoft partners with on all these hardware devices?

re: The New Microsoft, or How to Add Value to the Microsoft Development Community

Randy H. — Tue, 25 Nov 2003 00:16:00 GMT

Let's see what Scoble (http://scoble.weblogs.com) has to say about this. I haven't seen any blogging from the hardware community to date, but since I'm only reading 150 sites and he's reading over 600, he might be the better person to answer.

re: The New Microsoft, or How to Add Value to the Microsoft Development Community

Robert Scoble — Thu, 27 Nov 2003 05:27:00 GMT

I've been wondering this myself. But, the hardware community is far more scared of "leaks" than the software community is. Why? Because with software if you know something new is coming out, you'll just ask the vendor for a free or low-cost upgrade. But with hardware that's not possible. So, you'll probably just hold off on your purchase.

Also, at the driver dev con that was on campus, I talked with Dana Epp about this, and there are only a small circle of hardware developers (far fewer than software developers) and they tend to be older (less likely to get into online communities) and more introverted (less likely to see value in weblogging).

But, I still think someone will eventually break in and start one and show the others the value in doing it.

I Work for Microsoft

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