This is indeed a good question! I ponder this frequently. I would say that we need to keep the avenues of communication as open as possible. Microsoft is a very large organization, moving in many directions. I am a Sophmore MVP (Windows-Digital Media), and through my "Day job" at UCLA's school of medicine, I dabble in SQL Server 2000.
I have incredible access to so many things internally at Microsoft, but frequently I still have a really tough time getting a straight answer, and get conflicting information all the time. I doubt this will change significantly soon.
It is hard to get a consensus, and I imagine no matter how great the next version of information age office tools are, it will still be a tough issue.
I would say that MS needs to tighten their communications checklist, so that the appropriate community leaders (internal and external) get information that is reliable and worthy of being passed on to the public elements of the communities.
It drives me nu
Is it "Microsoft's communities"? Or more "the communities' Microsoft"?
(I'm not being facetious here... the shift is subtle, but significant.)
jd/mm
John D. makes a good point, Robert.
There are communities that MS maintains, like the newsgroups or GDN or Asp.net and communities that are run by non-MS ppl but are 'highlighted' by MS like codeproject.com or .net247 and then all the other communities that fly under the radar (for many reasons I'm sure: size, some anti-MS stances, whatever) like angrycoder, or orielly pubs, etc....
The MS grown commuinites are very nice, and provide a great service. I would suggest MORE of these, targeted at specific technologies and projects. How about a VSIP community for free and open/shared source VSIP projects? How about a Messenger Developer community for monkeys working on addins for IM, or a Media Player Developer community project for WMA and MP projects? The possibilities are great...
For the non-MS run communities, I would suggest more support and online advertising by MS, MSDN, MSDN Mag, etc.... These communities started because of fan support of MS products and because ther
(cont.: that cutoff is REALLY annoying, at least have some script warn you about your comment length while you are typing it.)
...MS products and because there was a need for them (hey, MS can't do everything).
These two types of communities both fill different business needs for MS but are both very valuable, as well as being fun to be a part of. (cue Steve Ballmer: "Developers, Developers, ...").
You're welcome to visit my Immobilien site.
koeln - krefeld
Commenting by HaloScan
