For the longest time I have been avoiding Microsoft’s staff blogs. Whether they are team leaders or simply evangelists, I’ve been trying to avoid them like the plague. Not for any real reason, I just didn’t see the value to me.
But, you know what? I’m sick of the status quo. And the only way I can be heard is to listen. So I’ve subscribed to about 20 of them, and I’m commenting in areas where I have something to say.
And you know what’s become really clear to me, really quickly?
With the exception of the Longhorn / .NET / VS.NET teams, none of the teams are communicating in any real way, nevermind in an effective way.
Until today I didn’t know there was an IE team. A large IE team. An IE team who does use other browsers, does want standards and are working their butts off to give developers what they want.
I remember Steve-O’s “Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!” speech.
You know what? “Communication! Communication! Communication! Communication! Communication! Communication! Communication!!!”
I’m a blogger, so I like blogs. Interviews and so on isn’t communication. Sending me ad packs in the mail isn’t communication. The “one to one” power of blogging is communication. All the team members don’t have to do it. Heck, if even one person from each team blogged, and the team was simply aware of trying to be proactively communicating with bloggers it would make a world of difference.
What about the Windows Media teams? XBox teams? SQL Server, ISA, Commerce Server, AD teams? Not to mention Biztalk, the useless SMS, etc? Office?
Where is the communication from these groups (with the exception of when they’re launching something)?
Give me something to eat, and you know what I’ll tell people. Lots of people. If I’d heard even half of the changes to IE in XP SP2 a year ago, hundreds of people would have heard “things will get better” from me instead of “IE won’t change anytime soon”.
Prove me wrong. Communicate.
…
And, no, one team member starting a blog each week and then abandoning it doesn’t count. I’ve seen that happen too many times and that’s just this week.
January 15th, 2004 at 4:25 am
I’m not sure about the Windows Media teams or XBox, but SQL Server has a few bloggers (http://sqlblogs.com) and IE has a developer talking about some of the XP SP2 changes (http://blogs.msdn.com/jeffdav). Office has a group of bloggers at http://www.officezealot.com. Also, a lot of the technologies you list that don’t have blogs do have very active newsgroup communities. Newsgroups are a widely recognized “communication” outlet to keep in mind.
January 15th, 2004 at 10:23 am
BlogRoll updated with these, so thanks.
However I’d definitely disagree with the point that Newsgroups are an effective communication outlet.
The biggest newsgroups have 10-50K regular readers. And in order for your post to be viewed each of those have to actually find it and choose to read it.
It requires equal amounts of pro-action for users as well as luck to actually find any decent information.
Blogs, on the other hand, have rather large readerships. Ensight isn’t really very big, but has 10-20K readers. Many of these are daily. Blogs like Scoble’s have far more than that.
Bloggers spread the message farther, faster because it allows users to be passive: to only read what they want to read (through RSS). Therefore it requires less luck, but more than that bloggers self-propagate important information.
Within a week of it opening, every .NET blogger in the world knew about TheServerSide.NET. Post that on a newsgroup though…
I’m not dismissing the value of newsgroups. Being involved in a community is very important, but a great example is HostRocket.
They have 5 employees whose roles include spending at least 10 hours per week in newsgroups. But you know what? Their reach and image isn’t improved at all by this. If they had even one “Scoble” it would change the way the public viewed the image. If they had 10 employees who had to spend 5 hours a week blogging it would make a massive difference.
I’m not normally a blog proponent, but I’ve lead, owned and been involved in some massive newsgroups (up to 50K members). The amount of reach you have within the Internet, nevermind within the newsgroup itself is limited. Very limited.
The reach I get with one blog post is now greater than with 20 newsgroups posts.
March 11th, 2004 at 2:03 am
http://blogs.msdn.com/jonathanh/archive/2004/03/10/87746.aspx
March 11th, 2004 at 2:04 am
http://blogs.msdn.com/jonathanh/archive/0001/01/01/87746.aspx
December 7th, 2004 at 1:09 am
[...] siness Blog Advertising Isn’t Evil Again, Blog Advertising Isn’t Evil Pricing Models Microsoft: Communicate Or Die IT Healthcare Does NOT Need to Grow Up Ste [...]