Sara Williams' blog

Goodbye Microsoft, Hello Boston!

SaraWilliams — Mon, 13 Jun 2005 22:43:00 GMT

Big changes for me… I've made the difficult decision to leave Microsoft. My husband and I are moving to Boston, and I’m taking the move as an opportunity to experience life outside of Microsoft. My last day here will be tomorrow, June 14th.

Of course, I'll really miss my friends and colleagues here, but I am excited about trying something new.

So, since I hate saying goodbye, I'll just say… See you later.

-Sara

News news news

SaraWilliams — Wed, 15 Sep 2004 22:50:00 GMT

Wow! There's a lot going on these days... 3 things of note today:

1. RSS brouhaha... Robert and I just had a nice chat about what we're doing with RSS on blogs.msdn.com. In a nutshell, our RSS traffic is neglible compared to all the traffic generated by Windows Update, MSN, downloads, and the rest of microsoft.com. We were motivated to reduce the size of the blogs.msdn.com home page primarily for operational efficiency's sake - why serve up 400k of content when we know that folks (except for Robert) don't read 400K of content on a web page. The truncation idea is borrowed straight from newspapers - read the first bit on the front page, turn to page 12 for the full story. We hear you that you don't want the aggregate feed to be truncated, so it's not. And we increased the limit from 500 to 1250 characters on blogs.msdn.com. We're also working on some smaller OPMLs, so that you can easily subscribe to a subset of our blogs - say, all the security blogs, or all the web services blogs. When we had 20 or so bloggers on MSDN, it made sense to have 1 opml. We've got 959 now, so a single OPML isn't as easy to deal with any more. Yes, RSS has room for improvement, but it's not bad today - you just have to understand what you're doing. At the same time, there's tons of headroom for improvements to the spec, improvements to the client software, and improvements in server implementations. Lots of room for innovation.

2. Check it out - we've unveiled a major new system on MSDN. Junfeng blogged about it first (we were holding off until we had some initial perf numbers in), but it's looking really good. My favorite features are URL aliases, the fact that it's all XML based, and most importantly, the fact that your links won't break any more when we reprop product documentation. Kudos to Tim, Kim, Craig (good description in his blog), and everyone else who worked so hard to make it happen.

3. I'm getting married and taking an extended vacation! So, from tomorrow until January 4th, I'll be getting married, honeymooning, hanging out w/ my family, learning to be a better sailor, and generally just relaxing and hanging out.

See you in January!

-Sara

A fun week and WMV

SaraWilliams — Fri, 02 Jul 2004 21:30:00 GMT

Shipping on Monday was followed up by more fun throughout the week. Our launch went pretty smoothly - our team is getting better and the launch gods were smiling on us. We did have some problems w/ downloads, but progress on those is underway.

My interviews on channel 9 went live. It's so weird to hear yourself recorded. I sound much better inside my own head!

Jon Udell's post today brings up a great point - MSDN doesn't make our .wmv files (for msdntv, the .net show and others) available for download directly. We bundle them up in .exes. I can theorize about why we do it, but the decision predates my arrival in MSDN. So we're investigating to see if we can make it happen. Doesn't seem unreasonable to me... Thanks Jon!

-Sara

Shipping at Midnight…

SaraWilliams — Tue, 29 Jun 2004 04:34:00 GMT

Shipping is one of the funnest (yep, it’s a word in my book) that I get to do at work. The sense of shared accomplishment is huge and enormously satisfying.

Shipping at midnight is even more fun. Something about the late hour and dark windows clarifies your focus and makes shipping even better. Of course, the caffeine, m&m’s, and lack of sleep help too.

Tonight, we're shipping a bunch o' new stuff in concert w/ the opening keynote at TechEd in Amsterdam (where it's daylight). I'll blog about more of our new stuff over the next few days, but for tonight, I’ll start off with the MSDN Product Feedback Center. In a nutshell, it’s our new public online bug and suggestion reporting system. It was born “ladybug”, because it helps to get rid of the bad bugs, and because I was tired of esoteric macho code names like Gladiator and Homer (I made one of those up.)

At the MSDN Product Feedback Center, you can submit bugs and suggestions. You can search through other people’s submitted bugs and suggestions. You can vote for your favorites. You can share workarounds. And, you can see feedback and details directly from folks on our product teams. Oh, and you can get notified when the status of an issue you’re interested in changes.

The big idea here is to help developers be more productive. I know that there’s nothing more frustrating than to bang your head on the wall chasing something that turns out to be someone else’s bug. So I wanted there to be a way to quickly and easily figure out if it's our bug or yours. Over time, I hope that more and more folks share workarounds, so when you come to report a bug or make a suggestion, you can also figure out how to work around it and get on with your work (or play). And I want Microsoft product teams to be more productive too. I want them to have a clear sense of which bugs and suggestions are most important to the most people, and I want them to minimize the time they have to spend wading through duplicate bugs.

I see this as our first step. There are still lots of features we’d like to implement, more products to add, and internal processes to refine. But I couldn’t be happier that we’ve taken the first step.

What’s next? You tell us…

-Sara

Worthy of a post of its own...

SaraWilliams — Fri, 28 May 2004 01:58:00 GMT

In an unprecendented act of serial blogging, I feel compelled to blog twice in the same evening...

Soma is in the house...

Soma runs the developer division at Microsoft - VS, the .NET Framework - all that good stuff. He's also been a great advisor to me personally - he's got great perspective on MSDN, and is super passionate about making sure developers are successful using Microsoft's technologies.

You can see him in the picture I included in my blog about our trip.

So give him a read and a big welcome!

-Sara

Highlights from TechEd

SaraWilliams — Fri, 28 May 2004 01:44:00 GMT

What a fun trip! I just got back to Seattle from Tech-Ed. My highlights:

Women in Technology Luncheon: I spoke on the panel and had a great time. It was exciting to see so many more women at Tech-Ed this year. I don't have official numbers, but several folks I spoke with agreed that it seemed like there were more of us around. One of the most important points that came up was the importance of networking and getting your name out there, especially if you want to be known as a technologist. Being active in newsgroups, forums, and of course, publishing, are all great ways to do that. I'll expand the offier I made during the session - both MSDN and TechNet magazine, as well as our website, are looking for contributors. Drop me a line (NOT a comment on my blog) and I'll get you connected with the folks who acquire... Get out there and share your smarts!

TechNet Magazine - the same great team who bring you the MSDN Magazine are launching a new magazine for IT Pros - TechNet Magazine. Watch for the first issue (on security) this fall. A big round of applause to Josh, Stephen, and the rest of the magazine team for doing this, along with their day jobs! Click here to get your own free copy.

Rory. Talking to Rory is always a highlight. It just is.

Don & Doug. There is only one program, and everyone has a different idea of what a car is. In his spare time, Don should teach a university course on the philosophy of technology.

Scott: I finally got to meet Scott Watermasysk in person, after conversing for months in mail. He's as nice (possibly even nicer) in person than he is in email!

And of course, hanging out w/ my new boss (more on that later), and the gang was great, and meeting customers continues to be the best part of any show, and this was no exception.

New search for MSDN

SaraWilliams — Wed, 28 Apr 2004 22:59:00 GMT

No, it isn't Google, but we have updated search on MSDN (and the rest of MSCOM).

Improvements include:

Stronger weighting for titles and keywords: this means that if you search for CreateWindow, the api reference for CreateWindow shows up first in the list.
KB integration: KB articles are now included in search results.
UI improvements: we show all results by default, and let the user filter from there. You can also modify your search from the top of the results page.

Check it out and let me know what you think. I'm particularly interested in hearing about bad result sets and suggestions for our next round of features.

Ever wonder what my office looks like?

SaraWilliams — Thu, 15 Apr 2004 21:59:00 GMT

No? I didn't think so. But just in case I've piqued your curiousity, check out this video clip on Channel 9. Chris Sells gives a tour of building 5, where most of us MSDN folk work (the magazine team is in NYC). He stops in at my staff meeting and checks in with some folks on our team. He also hangs out in my office, showing the world my clutter. Oh well. I hope my mom doesn't tune in.

People are often surprised when they come to my office. I have comfy chairs, and cheerfully striped rug, hanging rheostat-controlled lamps, and a lot of toys and gadgets. Yes, it's nice to work in a comfy (albeit messy) office, but I have a another motive:

Management trick #42: Have a comfy chair in your office.

If you've got a comfy chair, people come by and talk with you. It's much more inviting than leaning on the doorsill, or sitting in an industrial-strength guest chair. While folks sit in my comfy chair, they tell me what's on their mind, give me a sounding board for whatever issue I'm muddling over, and tell me things that I wouldn't necessarily get from email or a formal meeting. Of course I learn about social comings and goings, but I also hear about challenges and problems that I wouldn't hear about otherwise. Tim drops by to educate me about XML, our publishing infrastructure, and New England politics. Chris gives me the blow by blow on all things Longhorn, and Laura regularly reminds me that there is no more room in the schedule, and that we can't add any more features to our next release. Sure, I might learn about these things eventually, but the drop-in factor is powerful. Don espouses the same trick - he has very comfy chair/sofa thing in his office.

And, of course, there are some other nice side effects. I love kids, and toys are a kid magnet, so all the kids know to come play in my office when they come to visit their parents. :-)

Incidently, MSDN is looking for a dev manager. We haven't posted a job description yet, but if you are interested and qualified, send me email (NOT a comment), and perhaps you'll be able to drop in yourself!

On the road...

SaraWilliams — Wed, 14 Apr 2004 17:51:00 GMT

When I was an evangelist, I traveled about one or two weeks each month. I did this for about four years, and got pretty good at ignoring jet lag and time differences. My beau at the time (fiance now <g>) lived outside of Boston, so he served as powerful incentive for this west-coast girl to spend time out east.

I travel a lot less now, but I did get out recently. Soma and I went to Cambridge to give a talk at MIT about working at Microsoft. I'm biased, but I must say that Soma was a hit! He had some funny videos and his passion for software and making a difference was crystal clear. I gave a demo of some of the cool new winforms features in Whidbey. I'm not a naturally great demoer, so I was pleased that it didn't crash, I managed to hit all my key points, the audience laughed at appropriate spots, and I had some great discussions afterwards. It was really fun to talk to students about what they're working on at school, and how they view technology. It snowed (a lot) the evening we were there, but the promise of free pizza helped ensure us a packed house.

We also talked with the MIT chapter of the National Association of Black Engineers. They took a picture of us with the group, which I've included here. I'm the one on the far left, and Soma is seated in front on the right. Thanks to Adjoa for the photo, and to Duncan for posting for me.

They had some great questions about life at Microsoft, and great insights about where technology is going. We're hoping to see a few of these students on campus this summer!

The next day, we had brunch with Chris Pels and a bunch of other MVPs. Our conversation ranged from MSDN's site to Microsoft's position on open source to the economy in general. The thing that I was most impressed with was the breadth of knowledge that each of the MVPs demonstrated. Of course, each had his own niche, but they were all so conversant and insightful on a broad range of topics. At Microsoft, we tend to get pretty narrowly focused

Of course, I came back exhausted and with a nasty cold, but I was all fired up from talking to so many cool folks with such great ideas. Which reminded me why travelling is such fun.

Executive Motivation

SaraWilliams — Wed, 31 Mar 2004 22:37:00 GMT

Eric and I had a conversation about blogging, and I sheepishly had to admit that I've been woefully silent. So here goes again.

Highlights from my week:

An update to MSDN's ASP.NET dev center UI. Kent (whose blog name I LOVE) and Christine (and everyone else) did a nice job. Do let us know what you think about our “task bar”.
A new XML Dev Center. Dare Obasanjo waxes about the power of angle brackets.
An RSS feed for MSDN Subscriber Downloads. Be the first on your block to get the word about new product downloads.
A great ski trip to Whistler. The sun/snow combination is tough to beat. You can actually ski at Whistler/Blackcomb through August (yes, august), so the season has really just begun.

Cheers -

Sara

welcome to blogs.msdn.com

SaraWilliams — Fri, 09 Jan 2004 15:10:00 GMT

Happy New Year!

As blogs become more a part of daily life for developers, we wanted to make them more accessible to more developers and make it easier for devs to use blogs. So today I’m pleased to announce that MSDN is launching blogs.msdn.com. My new blogging home will be http://blogs.msdn.com/saraw. Maybe I'll even decorate soon. ;-)

We are using the same blogging infrastructure that powers weblogs.asp.net so you'll see MSFT bloggers listed in both places. It made good sense from an operational perspective for us, and it also provides better functionality for bloggers and readers.

On other fronts, I had a great meeting today with some of MSDN's site managers. One of the interesting things that they pointed out is that in general, the blog entries that we host on our dev centers get more click-throughs than our headlines. Now, headlines are the holy grail at lots of websites - we put lots of time and energy into thinking about what we headline. It's the topic of much (heated) debate, and it often takes several people several hours to decide on all the headlines for a week.

I think it's fascinating to think about the interpretations.

One is that people are just more interested in Duncan's New Year's resolution than they are in the VB resource kit (which is really cool, btw). Or that we're headlining the wrong stuff, or that the dev center bloggers are just really really. really compelling writers (it is "midyear career discussion" time at MSFT, so I'm sure that I'll be hearing that from a few folks.<g>) Or that people come to the dev center home pages when they are browsing or surfing, and that the format and style of a blog is more appealing when you're just out for a stroll around the net. Anyway, I thought that it was an interesting and definitely worthy of more thought.

-Sara

PDC Slides Available...

SaraWilliams — Thu, 30 Oct 2003 18:22:00 GMT

Slides from the PDC are posted on MSDN! Thanks to Jeff & Duncan for their legwork in getting them posted. Download your favorites here today.

Yippee... Annotations!

SaraWilliams — Thu, 30 Oct 2003 01:32:00 GMT

In Eric’s keynote yesterday, he talked briefly about a new thing we’re doing at MSDN – Annotations. We’ve been working on them for a while, so it was really awesome to have Eric and Ari talk about them. They were necessarily brief, so I thought I’d share the rest of the story.

Today, developers run hither and yon around the web to get the information they need. When you look at API references, you only get a small part of the story. There are KB articles, bug info, and errata; as well as perspective and experience from the broader community that you’d like to have, but are scattered all over the internet.

I think that there’s a better way.

With annotations, we use the docs on MSDN as a way to help organize all that other useful information into a single place, so it’s easier to find what you’re looking for. Go to the API reference, and you can also see errata, insight from the community, additional samples, and the like, all in one place. The information comes from lots of difference sources, but we can display it in a way that’ll make it easier for developers to find what they need.

So, how does it work?

Our basic idea was to add “feeds” of information to each API reference page. MS will provide an “official” feed where we’ll share late breaking information. There’s another feed where anyone can post comments and insight. Of course, comments often generate other comments, so we actually use discussion groups for this feed. And – now here’s the part that I think is most interesting – anyone can use RSS to provide a feed of their own. To consume those feeds, you just point the annotation client at the RSS feed.

These RSS feeds are the place where I think that things will get really fun. O’Reilly already has a feed up and running, and I think that other possibilities abound. A language vendor could provide a feed that served up sample code in their language. A corporation could provide an internal feed that provided their .coding guidelines. Consultants, or training companies could provide a feed that shared experience from the field. And so on.

We’ve got annotations up and running for all the documentation in the Longhorn SDK. Go check it out, and let me know what you think!

PDC Day 1

SaraWilliams — Tue, 28 Oct 2003 00:39:00 GMT

After being on vacation for a month, I figured that it was high time to blog again. And what better place to start than here at the PDC? I had a surprisingly easy time getting here. My flight was only about 20 minutes late; no cancelled flights, rerouting, or driving in from another state for me. I’ll presume that my good fortune cost me a large withdrawal from the travel karma bank, and I’ll be seated next to someone smelly and talkative on my flight home. Hillel’s WinFS demo was really thought provoking. Wouldn’t it be fun to have your own dev center – sorting, filtering, viewing content from MS and elsewhere, exactly how *you* want to see it? One of the things that we struggle with is trying to pick the sweet spot – the UI and view that’ll work for everyone. While it’ll still be important to pick a good default, the ability to customize with such flexibility will be a powerful thing. I want Longhorn NOW! When I worked on DHTML, I loved how quick and easy it was to get something up and running so quickly and easily. It was great if you liked notepad and writeln to debug, and wanted to run all your apps in a browser, but it kinda ended there. Watching Don (and Jim!) build a real app from XAML was so cool! Angle brackets are the wave of the future.  The Merck demo really hit home for me the idea that technology really does have the power to make people’s lives dramatically better. Sure, I can cruise the web and buy books without leaving my couch, but to think that a patient can share information w/ her doctor without having to go to the hospital is a great thing. We have a lot of work to do! Oh yeah – my vacation! All those people in the rest of the world who regularly take month-long vacations have something up on us Americans. A month of ice-cream for lunch, happy hour every afternoon, and at least 8 hours of sleep each night was pure luxury. I highly recommend it. Miscellaneous bits of trivia: Names Jim probably hasn’t been called before… VI Boy, girlfriend First MSDN mention: 9:50am First Matrix reference: 10:40a

ahh...

SaraWilliams — Sat, 30 Aug 2003 03:26:00 GMT

I'm off for an extended vacation - i'll be back on October 6th. I've never been away from work for so long. So, as much as I love my job, I'm very excited.

That said, I can't wait to see you all at the PDC, and to show you all the cool stuff the msdn team will be working on while I'm gone. :-)

-Sara