scellini's WebLog : PDC05

It's on, Baby!

scellini — Wed, 14 Sep 2005 19:40:00 GMT

A feeble attempt to close a long gap in posts... with some "easy" news: In case anyone didn't know... PDC05 started yesterday with a bang :-)

You can follow the blogosphere buzz at PDC Bloggers 2005, on http://pdcbloggers.net. We'll also be posting new content to Channel 9 every day. RSS feeds (which are consumed by a really cool Vista-based RSS app which is driving the house monitors here at the event) are available on the PDC info site, http://commnet.microsoftpdc.com. Lots of attendees are posting lots of pictures of the event (244 as of this post) and things vaguely related to the event, here.

The PDC05 team is exhausted, ecstatic, elated, and in awe of the community, all at once. So if you run into one of us, that would explain the confused but happy looks on our faces.

THANK YOU to everyone who's here in LA at PDC05 and to the community at large for supporting this event. And THANKS to the best event team in the business...

As if I need to be reminded...

scellini — Thu, 07 Jul 2005 09:58:00 GMT

Brendan Tompkins made my day - if anyone cares - when he offered up a PDC Countdown image on his blog (best tagline I've seen in a while: "Blog First. Ask Questions Later."). Here it is:

69 days! Yikes!

PS: Now, don't lets get to be thinking that I'm indicating preferences for Brendan's "Blog'n my way to the PDC" contest entry. Because I'm sure that Jeff won't allow me to vote.

If you build it (part 2)...

scellini — Wed, 22 Jun 2005 07:14:00 GMT

OK, we can't keep a secret. Check it out here.

If you build it...

scellini — Tue, 21 Jun 2005 06:46:00 GMT

... then someone might just do something wierd with it...

PDC05 Vision (Three Different Ones)

scellini — Mon, 20 Jun 2005 07:57:00 GMT

A couple of us (Jeff Sandquist, Jeremy Mazner, Michael Lehman, and me) recorded a show for .NET Rocks on Friday, with PDC05 as the topic. It'll be available on Monday, 6/20. We had fun with this show.

Someone (Carl?) asked us what the "vision" for PDC05 is... we more or less answered / rambled about that PDC is guided by "vision" on several levels:

Platform strategy
Content strategy / plan
Community aspirations

"Platform" strategy: as seen at the PDC, mostly comes about as you might expect: top-down, from our senior executives. However, there's obviously a pretty strong influence as well from innovation at the individual / product team level... sometimes those people might see the forest (as opposed to the trees) better or differently from our execs. At the confluence of these two forces it can get pretty interesting at times.

As part of the "Platform" part of PDC05 planning, we sat down this week with a couple of VPs we happened to find around :-) and reviewed many aspects of PDC05, some in more detail than others.For instance, we lightly touched on aspects of our overall creative style for the PDC (you may have noticed it, we call it "string theory" :-) and the latest Community plans, including the 2 contests. We spent most of the meeting discussing how we'll communicate our strategy for the "Longhorn Wave" of the platform, and which topics should get covered in which keynotes. I'm not going to get into the details of that keynote planning... not only because we want it to be a surprise :-) but also because things will undoubtedly change & be refined in the coming months.

A goal for the "platform" strategy is to yield a framework that can be used to guide the content process. We want everyone involved to be able to answer the question, "What is this PDC about?" and "Where is the platform going"?

(A note here about how to prepare for a VP-level review... it's a 5-step process:

In the week leading up to the review, you should attempt to anticipate alll possible questions and prepare answers in advance
The day before the review, you should frantically look for notes from the last review because you seem to remember a really important follow-up with someone who, you just found out, is, like, on vacation for 5 weeks without access to email
The night before the review, you should mistakenly overwrite the latest version of the powerpoint deck with one from the previous week, when all you had going for you was a nice template
The morning of the review, you should find the notes from the last review and realize that you got it all wrong
The hour before the review, every printer in the building (and perhaps the entire campus) will have run out of paper, ink, be jammed, or be in the middle of yearly servicing.

If you don't follow these steps, you just won't be in the right frame of mind when you sit down with your VPs. And remember, it's imperative that you follow these steps in the stated order)

"Content" strategy or plan: Jeremy has blogged a bit about how, among other things, we're "rededicating" this PDC to deep drill-downs and strategic "inspections" that could only be delivered at the PDC. This thinking came about by reviewing feedback from previous PDCs, and by conducting not a few interviews with people around the company, people who've been around for a while and know the "heritage" of the PDC. The thinking here has evolved a bit since January, as the Track Advisors / Owners have internalized it in the face of hard decisions about sessions and topic coverage. One line of thinking has the track owners being very consciencious about how many sessions should be dedicated to "Longhorn Wave" technologies, and how many should be focused on stuff beyond that (answer: very heavily weighted towards the Longhorn Wave stuff). Another line of thinking has the trackowners thinking hard about having too many "onesie" sessions, where we try to cover an entire technology / product is a single breakout session... we're worried that it's hard to go deep or otherwise do the product / technology justice in a single session.

Compared to PDC03, when I was content owner, it's clear to me that for this PDC the thinking and process is a bit sharper. While I think we did a pretty good job in '03 :-) I'm thinking that attendees will benefit from the extra focus this time around.

Community aspirations: I'm using the word "aspirations" here because I think one should be careful when using the word "strategy" when it comes to the Community. I think Channel 9 can maybe be thought of as being strategic in its influence, but it really was an experiment when it launched. At PDC03, we tried out a number of Community-oriented things that were new at the time, but with 2 years distance now, they seem quite natural (or even quaint :-). For '05 we will try to incrementally improve on these things; I say "incremental" because "Community" has a life of its own... we want to be respectful of that. Jeff and the Channel 9 team have engineered a new PDC-focused area on Channel 9, and plan videos, podcasts, forums, and some fun contests. Those guys have some add'l things planned, but we're not sure of our ability to pull 'em off, so we're not ready to share yet. :-)

For the first time in a while - I think - we also had what amounts to a top-down vision for "Demand Generation" (term used to describe the marketing activities focused on PDC registration) and for the "Creative Style". The "String Theory" creative style, for instance, was inspired by the abstract notion of how developers "see things differently" than other people, and the power of Community when developers interact with each other. Thus the "Developer Powered" tagline.

Obviously the key reason for executing well on the Platform, Content, and Community vision-things is that we think it'll result in a more useful & valuable PDC for attendees. When it comes to the demand generation and creative style work... well, we've been having fun with all this and we hope you enjoy it and that the PDC is a more fun experience as a result.

Just what you needed: a PDC05 Crossword Puzzle (updated)

scellini — Sat, 18 Jun 2005 10:09:00 GMT

I just posted a PDC05 Crossword Puzzle to the sandbox on Channel 9. Just seemed like something that had to be done. I'm sure that all of you out there won't find it much of a challenge :-)

Update: 6/18: fixed a small bug. New outline and .ZIP file.

There's a ZIP file there that contains the clues, in a .doc file, and a higher-fidelity version of the layout.

Here are the clues, in case you're wondering if it would be worth your time :-)

Across

1.         One of the PDC05 Tracks.

6.         First name of a really "sharp" .NET wizard

8.         National park and a new great version of a great database system

9.         Last name of a guy who’s been known to take a bath on stage

10.        That other great Microsoft conference where you can go deep on today's technology

11.        First name of one of the guys who coded up a storm with Jim Allchin at PDC03

12.        This person kicked off PDC03

14.        A unified model for components, text, graphics, video

15.        Longest island in the continental US and next version of killer developer tools

19.        Tags that hold the 411 for Microsoft employees that are so large you can’t miss them

21.        Host of the .NET Show

22.        Try the code yourself

24.        The next version of this system offers a new XML-based document format

28.        Last name of Microsoft Group VP who keynotes and plays a mean guitar

29.        Wrote a reference book on the .NET Framework Standard Library with Anders

31.        The two words that were on the front cover of the PDC03 Bits Disc package.

32.        First name of an ASP.NET wizard

33.        PDC05 Content Owner

34.        It's not Windows SP3

Down

2.         PDC05 is *-powered

3.         Number of the channel where you can join the conversation

4.         Ask questions of Microsoft experts in this evening event

5.         The last word of the tagline from the last PDC

7.         It's what was in the air at PDC03

11.        Acronym for the engine in the .NET Framework

13.        PDC05 Community Owner

16.        Unified programming model for building connected systems

17.        A blogger's blogger

18.        Rhymes with Camel, a way to build UI in Avalon

20.        It's what happens when people join the conversation

23.        Number of PDC05 Tracks

25.        Location for PDC03 and PDC01

26.        Last name of a blogger who thought that PDC05 had been canceled

27.        346k sq-ft nucleus of PDC05

30.        Few, if any, attendees to these sessions like worms

I'll provide the answers on request (after you register for PDC05) (Just kidding!!!)

What makes PDC05 special?

scellini — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 07:45:00 GMT

Listen to PDC BuzzCast #2, hosted by Michael Lehman, a technical evangelist on Jeff Sandquist's team. Michael is working up a great series of podcasts on the way to PDC05; they're in the new PDC area on Channel 9.

This time, Michael (who has a truly authenic radio voice, doesn't he?) interviewed Jeremy Mazner, PDC content owner. In this podcast, Jeremy paints some details on the process and adds his sense of why PDC is special and who should attend. I think he hits all the right points.

I was content owner for PDC03 so I can say with some authority that Jeremy is doing a great job "riding herd" over the track {advisors | owners | drivers} that he meets with every week for 4+ hours (this week it was 6 hours, over 3 meetings).

PDC is a unique "occurrence" where very senior and yet hands-on people in the product teams come together on a regular basis and subject their technologies, world-views, and developer perspectives to very intense scrutiny, analysis, discussion, and argument, with the goal of distilling the platform news into strategically-targeted overviews and deep-dives for people (architects, developers) who need to understand the future of the platform. It's not training, it's grokking the future.

PDC on .NET Rocks, airing on 6/20

scellini — Fri, 17 Jun 2005 00:24:00 GMT

We're recording a show tomorrow about PDC05 on the .NET Rocks show, to be "aired" on Monday, 6/20. Check it out here on Monday!

This shouldn't be too hard...

scellini — Thu, 16 Jun 2005 08:03:00 GMT

Registration for PDC05 opened last week, and we all sighed great sighs of relief; since then it's been fun to watch the community buzz ramp up about it.

To get here, a lot of people put in some pretty good hours and not a little bit of sweat: content, community, marketing and demand generation, logistics, and business. I've written about Content and Community in this blog already, and in the end, those are what the PDC are about.

For instance, today at Track Meeting #7, the track owners met for 3 hours and plan to meet again on Thursday and Friday to scub every session. This is the kind of effort that yields - we hope - a coherent breakout session experience at PDC05.

Also, today, a couple of us dragged what seemed to be a small yellow rectangular body / structure into Jeff's office. It was (mostly) under wraps so I may be mistaken about what I saw. At any rate, I'm not going to say more, except: It's entirely possible that some things/people are getting out of hand. Jeff wasn't there, as he's on the road this week as you may have read, but I'd like to think that he would have welcomed "it" into his office if he had indeed been there.

Beyond content and community, it's worth touching base on some of those other areas that are less visible but still very important. I've already hinted at some of the magic that the Logistics folks pull off, lead by our fearless Logistics Owner, Rob. If you come to the PDC - and obviously we really hope you do - try to notice all those people walking around with walkie-talkies, especially during one of the keynotes. They have a funny way of disappearing into hidden doors and passage ways when you happen to look their way. They make the event happen.

The marketing and demand generation effort has been amazing, especially given the really short runway after we changed demand generation firms. We're hoping that you notice a different feel to the marketing campaign for PDC05. We're trying to be a little more "cool" and have some fun, perhaps in a maybe, say, self-deprecating way, while also not losing sight of what we believe are the main reasons people come to the PDC: deep developer content, a view of the future of the platform, and community. I should point out that the whacky marketing team is also mostly composed of the whacky community team and the whacky content team. We're a small group here.

On the business side... it's best summed up this way: at PDC, we try to not lose too much money. There's obviously more to be said here, especially since our Business Owner is, in my opinion, the best in the business and has been involved in every PDC there is. Joan helps keep the right traditions in place, and keeps us sane, but that's a relative thing and a moving target at that.

Where does the time go?

scellini — Sun, 15 May 2005 08:52:00 GMT

Yes, it's been a while since my last post. I wish I could say that since then I've learned to play a musical instrument, or a new language. But no.

I did find myself standing at the front door to my house looking for the cardreader. "They" say that the purpose of time is to keep everything from happening at once, so maybe my excuse is that lots has been going on? Does that work for you???

Whatever. Since January PDC'05 has gathered lots of internal momentum, which is only partially visible from the outside. Believe me, it's bustin' to get out. Soon enough: registration for PDC'05 will open on June 7th.

Some quick glimpses of what we've been up to, PDC'05-wise:

As noted earlier, Jeremy Mazner is the Content Owner for this PDC. He's cranked up the "Track Process", the most visible aspect of which is a weekly gathering of senior product team folks from around the company. Their goal, under Jeremy's guidance, is to figure out how to describe to PDC attendees where their respective parts of the platform are going. A lot of the startup cost in this is figuring out the rules of engagement... for instance, what are the criteria by which a specific product or technology should get airtime at the PDC? How much airtime? In what form (breakout session, Hands-on Lab, lunch session, etc)?

These meetings are typically fun since everyone is excited to talk about their stuff. But it's definitely not all fun. PDC has a finite number of session timeslots, and, frankly, there are limitations on what the typical attendee's head can hold. A key value-add of the folks participating in the Track Process is to provide focus and weighting to the PDC content.

I did my best to make sure that Track Meeting #1 kicked off by bringing 4 dozen Krispy Kreme donuts. Which, it turned out, no one ate. I tried.

This excellent Track Process team has cranked out the 6 tracks we will focus on at the PDC. You can see the 1-line descriptions of those tracks here. From here we'll generate sessions, HOLs, and other structured content around that track structure. We will publish session details as soon as we can so you can see what you'll be missing if you don't come to this PDC :-)

We spent much more time that you would expect coming up with the tagline for PDC'05: Developer Powered.

Why did it take so long to come up with those 2 words? We talked to a lot of people, internal and external, about what the PDC means to them. We talked to ourselves, a lot, about what the PDC means to us, and how to express that in a silly tagline that no one will remember anyway? At no point, I swear, did it get Dilbert-ish, but I was on the watch for it.

You'd be suprised how much people inside this company care about that tagline. It's actually reassuring, in a way... to me it shows how vital (alive) the PDC is for this company. However, for the poor soul who has the job of delivering a tagline (more proof of how special the PDC is... it's run by a bunch of technical types), the result is careening adventure (get people in a room, brainstorm, write the results down, rinse, repeat, try it out on innocent bystanders). In the end, the whole process helped to make sure that we're all on the same page re: what this event is about.

I'm not going to reveal how "Developer Powered" actually came about, but we all like it because it conveys the strong sense of Developer Community that exists at PDC, and the central focus of the content at PDC: the developer platform. While stuck in traffic on 520 I also work on triple- and quadruple-overloadings for "Developer Powered", which I won't impress on you, dear reader, just yet.

Astute observers may also notice the kinda-out there Creative Style for this PDC:

We're really excited about this, too... but that's for another post.

Jeff Sandquist (just love his tagline) has signed up to be Community Owner for PDC'05. This wasn't a case of Jeff not running away fast enough, even though he's on my team... Jeff did this role for PDC'03 and he's the perfect fit for it. This wasn't a suprise to anyone :-) Jeff has a lot of ideas on how to "iterate forward" on the community concepts introduced at PDC'03. There's "online community", which involves blogs, etc, and "offline community", which happens in meatspace. The B-A-R is one manifestation of "offline community".

Much more than the above has been going on... lots of discussions with individuals and teams and assorted execs, etc. But I wanted to provide a glimpse into the biggest moving pieces (content, community) and some of the other more subtle things that are getting us warmed up for the week of September 12, 2005. It takes a lot to make something like this happen. My experience as content owner for PDC'03 was that it brought out the best in the company...

PS: the title of this post is most assuredly not a lame throw-away that I thought up in, say, 5 seconds late on a Saturday night. Rather, it reflects my deep commitment to do my part for science.

Jeremy is in the House

scellini — Wed, 26 Jan 2005 08:34:00 GMT

More pieces are falling into place as we begin to this baby up on the centerline of the runway. Jeremy Mazner has signed on (he’s on my team, so I pulled a Vic on him) as Content Owner, the role I played at the last PDC. Jeremy’s head is exploding as we speak, but he’ll be OK.

At the last PDC, Jeremy drove the Panel Sessions that were held on Day 4. That was a big experiment for us... would love to hear what you thought of them!

Soon we’ll start to get other folks on the team to "volunteer" to drive things like the Hands-on Labs, Ask The Experts, and Birds of Feather, who will start by reviewing the post-mortems from PDC’03.

The B-A Room

scellini — Sat, 22 Jan 2005 23:05:00 GMT

Seems like only yesterday that we were down at the LA Convention Center, closing up after the panel sessions, enjoying one last espresso at the embedded Starbucks, wondering one more time what the “Wondrous Guy” (the guy on the PDC banners who is staring skyward) was thinking, and then we were all jetting off in different directions into the particulate-enhanced sunset.

But we were back this week! You’d think that we would have the layout and appearance of the place permanently imprinted in our brains by now, but it really is helpful to wander the halls, rooms, and other spaces as you contemplate new ideas and improvements.

Jeff was there, looking for the Community Angle, as were as the “Business Owner” and the “Logistics Owner”, our logistics contractor, and a designer from the Shell team...

We almost had the whole place to ourselves… the “California Gift Show” was setting up in the “South Exhibit Hall” where, during PDC’03, attendees scarfed-down meals and visited exhibitors, sponsors, and Microsoft product booths. Instead of ISVs stocking booths with brochures and evaluation CDs and filling bowls with hard candy and pens that light up, you had an infinite variety of vendors arranging an infinite variety of… “gifts”. If you’re in LA this weekend you might check it out and let me know what you bought.

We spent a lot of time contemplating the “South Exhibit Hall”. Despite the chaotic scene created by hundreds of “gift” vendors setting up, it was very helpful to see the space again. We have great hopes that we’ll be able to execute on some ideas we have for that space this time around, making it a community hub for the show. The one-liner is that we’re considering physically aggregating the Hands-on Labs, Track Lounges, Ask the Experts, Exhibitors, Sponsors, Product Pavilions, and meal “features” as elements in a single structured area. If you’re not in a breakout, you might be drawn to this area to connect up with someone, relax and eat a donut, talk to an exhibitor, try out some code, find someone who knows something you want to know, etc.

As a software guy, I’m used to the easy symbolic manipulation of abstractions, but that won’t do for the PDC when you’re aiming to turn a 346k sq-ft space (we took to calling it the "Big A** Room") into a comfy living room. You need to see it and walk it. Fortunately, these musings are backed by a very experienced logistics team at Microsoft, who are in turn backed by a really really experienced logistics company, Realtime Productions. Ok, it’s probably not on the same scale as, say, hitting a 1 second launch window for launching a comet probe, but it’s complicated enough that you need to and smooth execution requires you to be “hands-on” enough that you just can’t throw lots of people at the problem… if you know what I mean.

About those Resource Cards (Part I: Theory)

scellini — Fri, 24 Dec 2004 06:46:00 GMT

Robert has asked (publicly, in fact) to be released from the tyranny of the PDC Resource Card. Before we do that - IF we do that - it's probably worth explaining just what we were thinking back then. It made sense at the time, I'm sure.

Some background first: A goal for PDC'03 was to "increase the surface area" of MSFT attendees as seen by non-MSFT attendees... that's a clunky way of saying that we wanted to make sure that attendees could find & identify the Microsoft folks in the PDC crowd *and* make sure that attendees would feel that they could approach those Microsoft attendees to ask questions, chat things up, and in general "Make The Connection" (nothing to see there, just working in the tagline for the '03 show) for future correspondence, etc.

This was all part of a still larger goal of making the PDC a genuine facet of the Microsoft developer community. (So maybe the Resource Cards were actually just a tactic in the Community strategy.) Anyway, Lenn Pyror, who was my immediate manager at the time (this was before Channel 9) and who really understands the "Community Thing", and Jeff Sandquist (who was on Robert Hess's team at the time) and who also has a solid take on the "Community Thing", and I (who was still learning about the C.T.) spent an inordinate amount of time thinking about Community in the context of the PDC.

SO how to make Microsoft folks stand out in a crowd? <insert wisecrack here> We considered all sorts of ideas, including some from Scoble, who's been to quite a few conferences. Funny hats? Well, maybe, except that since the event is typically held indoors, it might be too much to ask and might actually weird-out some people. How about T-SHIRTS? That's never been done before, right? Despite not being that original, you soon start thinking about logistical issues, like: how many T-shirts should you give to each Microsoft person? Which leads the naturally curious to questions involving hygiene: should we offer guidance re: how often the average Microsoft person should put on a new T-shirt? Every day? Every two days?? Every THREE days??? (Can we even talk to employees about that sort of thing, from a legal/HR-perspective?). Ok, then, enought of that... how about innocuous little lighted pins? Special backpacks? Flags on poles attached to special backpacks?

AND if there are 500 or more Microsoft people there, how do you know WHICH one(s) you want to talk about? After all, if you have some deep Q's about, say, the CLR and garbage collection, you want to be pretty picky about who you talk to, right? And then, if you do have a great discussion, what's the closer? Do you exchange business cards? What if the Microsoft person is supposed to get back to you with some answers? Where does that get written down (and if it's not written down, it's definitely not going to get followed up-on)?

Skipping ahead quite a bit, we settled on the idea of a large card to be inserted into each Microsoft attendee's badge holder. In one fell swoop, we had something that would (i) identify the MSFT attendee and (ii) identify his/her specific team, since the team name would be printed in large font at the top (i.e., "ASP.NET" or "SQL Server") and (iii) have handy URLs and other info printed on 'em for quick reference and (iv) have lots of room on the back for taking notes, writing down email addresses, or jotting down ideas. Each Microsoft attendee would be given a stack of his/her team's cards at the start of the conference, with the idea that s/he would be handing these out left & right (think: surface area). Attendees would want to collect them like baseball cards; back in the office, the Attendee would show off a nice stack of Resoucre Cards to to jealous coworkers, and those notes & URLs and email addresses on the back would also come in handy.

That was the thinking.

Next time, in Part 2: the difference between theory and execution, including an account of our "discussion" with the "Security Team", who had a few pertinent things to say about our plans to cover up critical expanses of The Badgeholder with our stupid Resource Cards.

A Gripping Tale

scellini — Mon, 20 Dec 2004 06:52:00 GMT

About 2 years ago my boss, Vic Gundotra, walked in my office and in a manner one might use to, say, borrow a spare power adapter told me that he'd volunteered me to be content owner for PDC'03. Given that the PDC has always been run out of his org, "assigned" is probably a better word than "volunteered", but Vic is a gracious guy and he used "volunteered". Anyway, it worked out OK, I think, and so I'm in for it again with PDC'05.

I run a team in the platform evangelism organization. "It's like Marketing, but it's not". Besides the PDC, we "evangelize" Whidbey and WinFX.

A few of us were sitting at lunch around a while ago and not for the first time I wondered aloud whether I should blog about the "how" of PDC'03... and, as before, no one dropped his/her plastic cutlery in dread but no one grabbed me by the shoulders and said "GREAT IDEA", either. And some of these folks were people on my team, who, you know, you might expect to maybe, suck up a bit. But I'm lucky to have a great team and one reason I love 'em is that they tell it like it is. Or sometimes they just don't say anything.

So, anyway, here it is: an occasional* blog about HOW we put together a PDC... and maybe a little WHY and maybe also a little WHAT (but my guess is that you'll hear a lot more about the WHAT as we get closer to the event, from the real stars: the program managers, devs, and testers on the product teams who actually build the stuff). But the HOW is something that I (and with any luck, others working on the event from the process side) would like to share as we sort through the parts bin and figure out what worked well last time (Panels? Track Lounges?), understand what didn't quite work as intended (Anyone remember PDC’03 "Resource Cards"? I bet Scoble and maybe a dozen other people do…), ponder new ideas, and in general do everything we can to ensure that the people who fork over substantial $$ and a week of their time find the experience as useful, educational, intense, enlightening, relevant, productive, "communicative" (i.e., sense of having participated in a Community) and fun as possible.

Thanks for listening - Steve Cellini

* Regarding the use of word "occasional": it does have a ring of plausible deniability to it, doesn't it? How does "once a week" sound, then?