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by James Avery.
Original Post: Microsoft, Blogging, Transparency, and Me.
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Ok, I promised to write this post sometime ago... but I have finally gotten around to it. During the process of writing Visual Studio Hacks I think I had a pretty interesting experience working with Microsoft and I think it says something about the benefits of increased transparency through the use of blogs. So here is my story.
I first starting talking to O'Reilly about 2 years ago about doing a book on Visual Studio using the hacks format. They were receptive to the idea, and after working on the outline for the book for quite some time they recommended that I send it over to their contact at Microsoft. The acquisitions editor put me in contact with their contact and we sent the outline over. The outline came back with a lot of great comments, but there was also a problem. The Microsoft contact had a problem with something in the outline and it became a deal breaker. I talked to O'Reilly and they backed me up so we decided to go at it alone, we wanted to have Microsoft input but I was not ready to let them censor the topics.
Thankfully at around the same time I sent an email to Josh Ledgard through his blog contact form. I had noticed him promoting the Visual Studio power toys (which are covered throughout the book) and in general trying to promote the community around Visual Studio. Josh responded to my email and from that point was an invaluable asset while writing this book. Just a short list of some of the things Josh helped me with:
Reviewing the outline and providing valuable feedback and suggestions.
Reviewing a large portion of the book, providing corrections, feedback, and suggestions.
Answering every email I sent him, and if he didn't know the answer he referred me to another person who did.
One of the cool side effects of so many Microsoft people blogging is that Josh could point me to a blog instead of having to provide me with a direct email. Why does this matter? I know when I was in a large corporation I was always hesitant to pass other's email address out to external people... but with a blog I could use the contact form.
I was also able to use blogs to contact a large number of other Microsoft people, including Andy Pennell, Scott Nonnenberg, Sara Ford, Adam Nathan, and more. I can't tell you how valuable it was to be able to talk to the people who wrote the feature or tool I was covering, especially since some of the features I was writing about were still under development and changing. (One person sent me the one note notes from their meeting on upcoming changes, how cool is that?)
Even though my experience with Microsoft on this started out on a sour note, it ended very differently. The fact that these people were blogging made them available to me, without the blogs I would have struggled on and wrote the book without any of this support from Microsoft. So the next time someone asks me why it is good for companies like Microsoft blog I have a real answer.
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