Lauren Cooney's Reality Check

Fighting the Good Fight (for the Community)

I love this term. Yes, it tends to be overused and sometimes misused, but essentially for me, it means one thing: doing what’s best for developer communities. I’m not talking just about the Microsoft developer community, but the community as a whole – all developers with lots of different programming backgrounds – from HTML and CCS to PHP, ASP.NET to Java – and more. And usually I find that if we can do what’s right for the community, it’s a win-win for both organizations and communities out there.

At Microsoft I find it’s sometimes a mixed bag. The terminology that I use is that we’re a huge ship – and it takes awhile to get people in line to move that ship in the right direction. Cal Evans outlined this beautifully in a blog entry recently – and I think he gives a fair assessment of where we’re at and some of the things we could do to improve. 

That said, our teams that are driving the Microsoft Web Platform are really working to nail this. We started out with a vision – a very simple statement with lots of work that goes on behind the scenes.

 

 

It’s been 10 months since we kicked off this effort, but we have seen some amazing results to date, including:

- The introduction of the Web Platform Installer (WebPI), which streamlines the download/install process of our web stack (no more 10 websites to visit – only one!)

- The delivery of the Windows Web Application Gallery with the most popular open source applications out there – for installation on top of the Microsoft Web Platform (no more configuration pain!) – and, if you have an application you’d like to showcase – we’ll do it – marketing & distribution included :)

- The inclusion of PHP into the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (we do listen, I promise)

And the community is responding – we’ve had over 1.5 million downloads of our products through the WebPI since January of this year (!!) and almost 150,000 applications from the Windows Web Application Gallery downloaded since March 17th.

But let me get to the point that I’m trying to make here about the success of what we’ve done:

With greater success comes greater responsibility. And we want to deliver to you a better, more interoperable community-driven platform going forward.

What does this mean? Well, for starters it means that we’re going to be looking into the broader community to create guidance around certain things – such as OpenID (yes Chris Messina, we’re getting there) and other standards-based efforts. We’re also going to be continuing to work closely with the PHP community on different things we could do better for PHP developers working on Windows. We also want to include various tooling options that help developers build web projects faster and better – even if these don’t come from our own engineering teams.

That said though, as my team embarks on planning out our next steps – we need your help. What do you want to see? How would you like to participate?

Some of the things we’re looking for specifically are:

- Feedback on the WebPI: What’s missing? What would you like to see included?

- Feedback on the Windows Web App Gallery: What apps would you like to see? Could we improve this experience?

- On the Microsoft Web Platform as a whole: how can we make this better? What products do you want to see better integrated? We’re planning on integrating more with Azure, but are there other products out there we could provide guidance for and/or include?

- Guidance: What tutorials would you like to see?

So the action item here? Let us know what you want to see. We’ve been pushing hard to make this happen internally at Microsoft, but the community feedback is absolutely critical for us to take the next steps to make this a true community platform.

So on that note – you know how to get a hold of me – lcooney@microsoft.com or www.twitter.com/lcooney – or even better, let’s discuss here on my blog. We’re open for business. /LC

 

(photo credit: Jim Grisanzio, Sun Microsystems) http://www.flickr.com/photos/jimgris/542408040/

Tips and Tricks for Building your Personal Brand: An Insider’s Perspective

Last week I presented to Women@Microsoft, a group of about 100 or so women that hold monthly meetings down at the Microsoft campus in Silicon Valley. It was an awesome group, and I thought I’d post the presentation here.

As a side note – I got called from one of the General Managers at Microsoft to take this job almost based entirely on my blog and also on my twitter account… so you never know what can come from something as simple as building your own personal brand. :)

 

Brand-ology:Tips and Tricks for Personal Branding

View more presentations from laurencooney.

Brand-ology: Tips & Tricks on Branding Yourself from a Chick who Lives It!

Building your own personal brand used to be about a logo, or a tagline. Today it’s changed – now it’s about the picture you have posted on your Facebook account, or the Tweets you send via Twitter during your workday (and sometimes in your off-hours!). Can something this simple make you successful – personally and professionally? How do you build your own personal brand both internally and externally through these Web 2.0 communities? Thought you’d never start a blog? Well, time to think again.

Lauren Cooney will be discussing her adventures on Facebook, Twitter, in blogging, and also in building her internal and external brand at Microsoft. Come prepared for some great (and easy) tips you can use to build out your network, some laughable stories that you can learn from, and great takeaways and suggestions for building your own personal brand.

TweetClouds, Twubble, & a FB/Twitter App

For any twitter folks out there, here are a few links that are pretty cool.

(1) TweetCloud: This creates a cloud of all your twitters - See HERE for mine.

(2) Bob Lee (better known as Crazy Bob) from Google created Twubble, an app that can help you find more folks you may know on Twitter based on your friends. I am pretty sure it maps off of Google's Social Graph, which is pretty neat.

What I'd like to see? An app that utilizes the Open APIs that Facebook and Twitter have so that I can figure out which of my 500 FB friends use Twitter. Anyone interested in building this for Web 2.0 Expo? If so, I'll buy you a beer next week. If you use Social Graph to build it too, that would be pretty neat... is it possible? /LC

Be a part of our Web 2.0 Expo Talk - you ask, we'll answer. Anything. Yep, Really.

I'm moderating a discussion (debate!) between Stephen O'Grady and Anant Jhingran at Web 2.0 Expo next Thursday, April 24th, titled, "Creativity v. Control: The Debate Continues - Can Enterprises Have Both?"

Background here: Anant thinks that enterprise customers need more control in their Web 2.0 products (which I too, have witnessed w/ customer visits) and Steve believes that more focus needs to be on the creativity that each individual brings to the enterprise through new Web 2.0 style tools, and that the benefits really lies here (which I also am a firm believer of). That said, I'm not giving justice to either stance w. this, so ck out the links below for more detail.

Anant's stand is here.

Steve's is here.

I evidently get to hold the gavel (or the mic) for this debate (which is usually a show in itself, pls laugh at my jokes, but forewarning, I can be pretty damn sarcastic) but before I create my questions, I wanted to ask you guys - what are the tough questions you want to ask? Anything goes here, so let me know - how does this work in your company? Do you think it should be more focused on the creativity new tools have brought to the table, or control that IT wants over this data? Will this affect how data is freed up to be used in mashup and situational apps? If you're a CIO or IT leader, what is your stance on this?

Here's a quick session abstract:

Creativity is at the heart of Web 2.0, and has been the key factor in growing this phenomenon on the Web and throughout the enterprise for the past four years. With enterprise organizations adopting Web 2.0 (coined Enterprise 2.0), there is a new level of “control” that customers and users may want to include in their applications, while preserving the creativity of the application users and creators. But the question remains: is control stifling creativity? Will Enterprise 2.0 succeed if employees are forced to comply with certain rules and regulations of the enterprise? Who wins here, and is it possible for both to live within the enterprise ecosystem?

This topic will be presented by Anant Jhingran, CTO of Information Management at IBM, and Stephen O’Grady, a top industry analyst with Redmonk. Topics include specific enterprise and customer scenarios, examples of emerging creativity with Enterprise 2.0, and views on specific ideas around control with Web 2.0 in the enterprise. Also included in this discussion will be security, governance, and other key issues that are related to this debate. The audience will be asked to voice their opinions on this topics at the end of the presentation.

/LC

IBM Mashup Center: Insider Details Revealed... (shhh)

Yes, I know you can't download IBM Mashup Center yet, but you will be able to very soon, I promise. I've been heads-down working with our awesome dev teams getting this ready for beta, but unfortunately, we're just not ready for a public beta _quite_ yet. So, here's a deck that I pulled together that I just got clearance to blog about today that reveals some additional details of Mashup Center, Lotus Mashups, and InfoSphere MashupHub -

Yesterday we formally announced "IBM Mashup Center," an end-to-end solution for organizations looking to Web 2.0-enable their existing infrastructure as well as build mashups and situational apps for internal and external use. The key here is that the product is actually simple enough for business users to utilize... (I, for example, have built a few "HelloWorld" apps in my day, and I can use the transformation capabilities, which is probably the most difficult - if you want to call it that - feature).

Here's a brief deck that overviews IBM Mashup Center (with some details in here that weren't revealed in yesterday's PR or the IMPACT presentation) for you guys to check out. Specifically, this digs into a lot of the features that InfoSphere MashupHub has - like transformation capabilities, connectors to existing systems, catalog features, etc. It also digs a bit into Lotus Mashups, which is another key product we partnered with to create Mashup Center.

If you recall from my previous posts, MashupHub is not only built with an APP based open API structure, but it was also built with the idea that not only mashups could consume the information created in the Hub, but things like mobile devices, other apps, etc can consume this information as well. More on that later...

With no further ado, here's the deck. Questions? Find me on Twitter or ping me direct.

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I love it when people "Get it." Mike Ferguson, you are my new hero.

I love that feeling, when you are talking to someone and the light bulb finally goes on. Even if it's something you have been talking about and feel like no one gets, and then finally, BAM. You literally can see it happen.

Today was one of those days. We've been talking about MashupHub (officially it's IBM InfoSphere MashupHub now, but we'll forgo the corporate garb here) for awhile and its capabilities, but to be honest we've really been limiting its capabilities to what it will be able to do with Lotus Mashups and a few other products out there - which is awesome stuff, don't get me wrong. But we've got additional plans, right? We do have plans to release a standalone MashupHub (can't comment on that date yet, sorry). And man, Mike Ferguson just nailed them today. He gets it, and I LOVE IT.

Mike has been writing an ongoing article I've been following on mashup technologies, titled, "Web 2.0 and Business Intelligence: How do they fit together?" Now, I've never met Mike (I don't think...) and I opened my reader today to see his article, focusing on mashup products, but specifically calling out MashupHub, and the product formerly known as QEDWiki (these capabilities will be available in Lotus Mashups VERY soon).

Mike writes about MashupHub capabilities here, and says (I have highlighted the important parts):

This server [MashupHub]takes data feeds and mashes them together to provide richer information. Note here that mashups separate the mashing of data from the presentation of data. Therefore, the data can be presented using a variety of mechanisms once it has been mashed.... Various output formats can be rendered by a mashup server (e.g., RSS, ATOM or even XML, which can be passed to browser side JavaScript and XSLT). I see no reason why this output could not be made available to portals, Office applications (e.g., Microsoft Outlook 2007 RSS feeds), wikis and other applications. Therefore, this means that business intelligence can be combined with other information without any programming and made available on-demand to offer up even more valuable information.

There are a few key points here that Mike hits on that we've been thinking a lot about:

(1) The separation of the mashing of data and the presentation of the mashed data, which relates to how the information can be output.

(2) The different applications and devices that can consume this mashed data.

(3) Information can be combined together without any programming and made available on-demand to offer up even more valuable information.

(4) Also relevant here is our Open API strategy, which David Boloker and I spoke about in March.

Below is the diagram and an excerpt from Mike's article, but be sure to read it as well. It's a terrific read, end to end, but kudos to you Mike. You made my day. /LC

_________________________________________________________________________________________

The other way to create mashups is the buy option (i.e., to buy a mashup server from vendors like Kapow and IBM). Other mashup editors include Microsoft PopFly, Yahoo Pipes and Google Mashup Editor. Also, EII vendors such as Denodo are also pushing into this space. Figure 3 shows an example of the IBM Mashup Hub. This server takes data feeds and mashes them together to provide richer information. Note here that mashups separate the mashing of data from the presentation of data. Therefore, the data can be presented using a variety of mechanisms once it has been mashed. In the case of the IBM Mashup Server shown in Figure 3, the data is presented to the user using a presentation component called QEDWiki. When I first looked at this product all I could think about was that it looked similar to ETL workflows. Essentially, data such as RSS feeds and XML data from remote web services is taken in by the mashup server, any necessary filters applied, and the ‘mashed’ output made available for presentation.

 

Various output formats can be rendered by a mashup server (e.g., RSS, ATOM or even XML, which can be passed to browser side JavaScript and XSLT). I see no reason why this output could not be made available to portals, Office applications (e.g., Microsoft Outlook 2007 RSS feeds), wikis and other applications. Therefore, this means that business intelligence can be combined with other information without any programming and made available on-demand to offer up even more valuable information.

(http://www.b-eye-network.com/view/7168)

Why Should I Twitter? Clue me in!

I signed up for Twitter quite awhile ago (to grab the user name "laurencooney") but I rarely use it. Recently I've had a lot of people (well, about 20) add me as someone they are following on Twitter. I'm not quite sure why, but I'm willing to take a stab at Twittering if someone can give me some good reasons to why I should use it... I get the part about following conversations, or asking questions that you need answered at that moment, and it *seems* like it might be convenient...

Can someone clue me in? Am I missing something here? I feel like the last person invited to the biggest party of the year... help! :) /LC

Info 2.0 API Strategy: Presentation with David Boloker

This week I'm in New York City - on Monday I attended and presented at Mashery's "Business of API's" Conference at the Yale Club, and Tuesday I presented with Mark Heid at AjaxWorld on Info 2.0.

It's been a great week so far - from getting stuck in the middle of the largest St. Patrick's Day parade in the WORLD (which was actually pretty darn fun - pics to come) to chatting with the folks from Nexaweb and Appcelerator today at AjaxWorld, all who have pretty interesting (and perhaps complimentary, in some ways) solutions. I'll have more about AjaxWorld a bit later, but I wanted to give you guys the presentation that David and I delivered to about 200 folks at the Mashery conference on Monday.

In summary, we discussed Info 2.0's API strategy and delivered an overview of some of our current plans in the works. Our engineering teams put some great thought into this - essentially the history of it is that a few years ago when we started building out this product, our guys recognized that it's pretty difficult to access disparate enterprise systems, so we built our product around the APP (or Atom Pub, from what I hear the "new lingo" is) so folks could access our API to build plugins to their systems (if we didn't offer it in the product). So, we're Atom based, we've got a slew of programming interfaces, and we focus on REST. We're offering up several connectors, to DB2 (given), Oracle, MySQL; we have an excel plugin we're working on, and there are more coming. It's only a short time now until we get the beta out there, and I've got lots more to talk about - so stay tuned here for further info.

Enough of me jabbering - check out the deck below, and let me know what you think. Open for questions... Oh, and this is my first time using SlideShare too, so let me know how it works for you./LC

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SMash donated to OpenAjax Alliance

For those of you who haven't heard, we announced SMash yesterday (secure mashup technology), and donated it to the OpenAjax Alliance. The net-net of SMash is that it allows information from different sources to communicate with each other, but the sources are kept separate to prevent the spread of malicious code. It essentially keeps code and data from each of the sources separated while allowing controlled sharing of data through a secure communication channel - easing worries about security when building mashup apps.

(a) This is a very cool technology, and I'm excited about that but...

(b) I am *really* happy that this landed in the OpenAjax Alliance. I always like to see good technology being used and adopted by the community, and I think this especially makes sense for OpenAjax, as this is a great fit - essentially enabling safer client side cross-domain access to multiple sites - allowing for easier, secure mixing of different technologies. Let's just say it will help a lot of devs sleep better at night knowing their stuff is secure :)

This is exciting too, as we head into AjaxWorld next week in NYC. I'll be there talking about Info 2.0, as will David Boloker, Mark Heid, and Dan Gisolfi - and a few others from IBM. And if you're in NYC early, David and I will also be speaking at the Mashery.com API conference - so swing on by...

/LC

Yep, I got hacked. On Facebook.

I woke up at 7am on Friday morning to about 10 pop-ups on my computer screen from Sametime (IBM's internal messaging service) and YIM - telling me the same thing: my Facebook had been hacked (Rob Wunderlich even had a blog posting up about this one before I got out of bed - gotta love the blogosphere!).

Evidently, someone had hacked, or, "phished" (as the facebook team calls it) my password from some sort of link that I clicked on off of Facebook. They then accessed all my contacts with last names beginning with A, B, and C, and spammed the following note and link to my friends' walls:

I feel awful about it - but it was just spam, and luckily it looks like it's not one of those things that forwards on if you click it. And the spam message? Brilliant. I mean, if I was going to message my friends, I definitely would start out with "YO." And then include words like "wanna." These guys know me all too well... (note sarcasm)

That said, it was an awful experience trying to figure out how to get all of this sorted out. I emailed the facebook team several times, and spent the better part of an hour trying to track down a customer service number (there isn't one, FYI). You would think that a company that collects that much data on their users would consider having a customer service number. Nope. And the email response time? NINE HOURS. I don't know, maybe that's how they cut costs. Interesting given their executive indulgences.

Here are a few easy tips on how NOT to get hacked on FB, and, if you do, what steps to take:

- Avoid clicking on any links/URLs within Facebook that don't start with www.facebook.com. These are not authorized by the FB team.

- If you do get hacked, immediately sign out of FB. Then email privacy@facebook.com. Someone will get back to you (give them at least 9 hours :) )

- I would recommend *not* immediately changing your PW or trying to contact your friends to let them know (by Facebook, that is). This could lead to additional spam, etc - since you don't know the extent of the damage done, best not to accelerate anything that might already be doing damage. Also, the FB team will automatically reset your PW for you when you contact them, once they know everything is okay with your account.

- Update your PROFILE message by your cell phone to let folks know not to click on the link you may have sent them. Also email which ones you can via something different than FB.

- If you get a random posting on your wall from someone you know - and it doesn't sound like something they would be say - don't click on it. It's probably spam.