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.

A Have-to-See: “We Live in Public”

This looks slightly scary, yet hypnotically magnificent. I am going to have to go track down a theater in Seattle to go see this for sure… In watching the trailer, it reminds me a bit of the surreal environment I lived in right after college - San Francisco in early 2000s – the parties, the madness, the money… and then the fall. Wait – or is this a premonition for what we WILL experience? You tell me…

I think this is a must-see for this weekend. Especially since I am expecting this.

Enjoy – and if any of you have seen this – I welcome comments/feedback! /LC

 

 

“On the 40th anniversary of the Internet, WE LIVE IN PUBLIC tells the story of the effect it is having on our society as seen through the eyes of the greatest Internet pioneer you’ve never heard of, visionary Josh Harris. Award-winning director, Ondi Timoner (DIG!), documented his tumultuous life for more than a decade, to create a riveting, cautionary tale of what to expect as the virtual world inevitably takes control of our lives.”

Women-Only BarCamp - Who's up for It?

It's always interesting how good ideas come about. Today I spent the majority of my AM at the Microsoft Web Dev Summit, an event where Microsoft hosted several PHP rockstars for a few days to talk to them about what we're doing to advance PHP both inside and outside of MSFT (and then have them tell us what the hell we need to start doing). It was a great event, but when I looked around the room, there were only 2 women representing the community, to the 23 men that were in attendance.

This afternoon Debbie Moynihan(a good friend of mine from days WAY back at IBM and also countless OSCONs, ApacheCons, and JavaOnes) called to discuss some of MSFT's efforts around Open Source, and of course we ended up on the topic of... women in technology. We started talking about FooCamps, and BarCamps, and how women just weren't well represented at many of these events - not because organizers weren't inviting them, but purely because so often, I think women in technology are overlooked or possibly aren't as outspoken as many men that are in the field. (As my team at MSFT would say, this is probably not me :) ).

So THEN I get on Twitter later this evening, only to find that Andrew McAfee had sent me a linkabout how the women in CS is on the decrease. And this really got me - it is just a shame, across the board, how many women out there are either dropping out of CS or technical fields or purely not even entering them. Speaking for myself, I always did pretty well in both Math and Science courses (albeit Biology) but I never even got into computers until I moved to San Francisco and started working in VC and then literally fell into work in developer relations at BEA. Needless to say, the third hint's a charm, and so now I'm ready to take Debbie's and my plan into action...

I want to get a small group of women together to start organizing a Women's Only BarCamp. This is a technical BarCamp - I'm not talking about this lightweight type of Web 2.0 technology, unless you're actually building or really product managing a product out there.

I'm in the weeds of technology every day (Group PM of Web Platform & Standards at MSFT) - sorting out how to build solutions in different languages (and why one language over another is better based on solutions), figuring out how to support web developers at MSFT through Open Source apps, and digging into benefits of why one product over another. Oh, and not to mention making them all work together (or figuring out why they do or don't). And I want to bring together other women who are doing the same thing. Not only that, I am seeing a major shift in the focus of technology from the type of Web 2.0 ("I built a mashup so now I'm cool") stuff out there back to real basics of developing great software and a refocus on Open Source, and I really want this camp to reflect the women out there that are the great minds behind this.

So here's the deal:

- Microsoft has offered to donate some space - still TBD on if it will be in Redmond or Silicon Valley, but we DO have office space with WiFi (!!)

- If you're interested in becoming part of the core planning team, please email me directly at laurencooney@gmail.comwith the subject line "Women's BarCamp" - and please only contact me if (1) you're willing to donate your time and (2) you actually are involved in technology of some sort as outlined above.

- Stay tuned here for more information!

Oh, and FYI, I got my first LOLCat yesterday. I'm kind of proud :) thanks #MSWDS attendees for making it an awesome week!

Welcome Azure! Q&A from the Experts

Today at PDC we announced the new Azure Services Platform, Microsoft's cloud computing strategy and product platform.

I can't tell you how hard this team has been working to get this ready for PDC and into developers' hands. Although it's limited in release right now, we're working to get it to the users we can, gather the feedback, and make it even better going forward.

I met with some of these guys a few weeks back and hashed out some of the main questions around Azure, so check out the outcome of this session, below. I'm really focused on this part of the platform (around web development), but I tried to summarize what I thought folks would want to hear about.

If you have questions, please put them in the comment section, and I'm going to try to get the team to respond to them later this week, so stay posted here for more info. Also, there's a whitepaper available on the right sidebar here - for those interested.

Enjoy!/LC

________________________________________________________________________

Q: What is the Azure Services Platform?

A: The Azure™ Services Platform (Azure) is an internet-scale cloud services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services that can be used individually or together. Azure’s flexible and interoperable platform can be used to build new applications to run from the cloud or enhance existing applications with cloud-based capabilities. Its open architecture gives developers the choice to build web applications, applications running on connected devices, PCs, servers, or hybrid solutions offering the best of online and on-premises.

 

Q: Is the Azure Services Platform one, single product or several product offerings combined into one?

 A: The Azure Services Platform is a cohesive platform which consists of multiple technologies that can be used individually or in combination with other Azure Services Platform components, other Microsoft services-based Applications or technology that resides outside of Microsoft’s datacenter.

The Azure Services Platform provides multiple cloud services that can each be used independently or in combination. It is a new cloud computing platform that enables developers to build the next wave of applications spanning the PC, mobile devices and the Web. Powerful new Microsoft tools and technologies available to developers will bring to life rich user experiences across a broad range of both business and consumer scenarios.

 

Q: What are the different components and services that make up the Azure Services Platform?

 A: The Azure Services Platform is built on the Windows Azure foundational layer. Windows Azure is an operating system in the cloud. Windows Azure provides service hosting, service management, scalable storage and a development environment for the Azure Services Platform. The Azure Service Platform included:

-          SQL Services for relational data storage and querying

-          .NET Services for service-connectivity, workflow, and messaging

-          Live Services for application extension of the Windows Live platform

-          SharePoint Services which provide extensibility for SharePoint Server

-          Dynamics CRM Services which provide extensibility for Dynamics CRM

 

Q: Who should consider using the Azure Services Platform?

A: The Azure Services Platform is a great solution for anyone who wants to build highly scalable and available cloud-based solutions. Microsoft expects the Azure Service Platform to appeal particularly to:

-          Large enterprises and ISVs who need to extend existing on-premises applications to the cloud to increase scalability, reliability, and interoperability while reducing costs and management overhead.

-        Web 2.0 developers and small ISVs who want to take advantage of a rich, highly versatile Web-based platform to build scalable, available applications for the web.

-          Hobbyists and students who want a platform that provides an easy way to start developing Web-based applications.

Q. Why did you pick the name Azure for your new platform offering?

A. As a word, Azure offers the promise of a better experience. The sky is azure colored – which is open, limitless, etc. – so it supports the concept of vast capacity and flexibility. Azure is a vibrant and dynamic color. It’s uplifting. Azure is also linked to the image of the blue sky and, by extension, ‘the cloud.’ Before making the decision we spoke to broad range of software developers, IT managers consumers around the world to understand their associations with the word “azure” and the response was almost universally positive.

 

Q: How does virtualization play into the Azure Services Platform story?

 A: The Azure Services Platform is an inherently virtualized environment which enables Microsoft to offer capacity to customers that scales with the needs of the application or service. Cloud services, when employed alongside other core technology capabilities such as virtualization (for on-premises resource flexibility) and modeling (to speed up development and lower costs of maintenance), will result in dramatic benefits for IT.

 

Q: Will Microsoft employ standards to ensure portability across multiple clouds?

 A: Microsoft will consume, drive and promote standards in a variety of areas.

 

Q: How does Windows Azure ensure that the environment and services are always available?

 A: Windows Azure is designed from the ground up to be a fault-tolerant platform. Innovative technology called the Fabric Controller ensures that service availability is not affected even if individual servers fail. The Fabric Controller technology also makes it possible for developers to upgrade their application without any service interruption.

 

Q: How does Windows Azure scale?

 A: The innovative Fabric Controller technology in Windows Azure enables developers to scale applications seamlessly, as demand rises and falls.

 

Q: What is the Windows Azure Fabric Controller?

 A: The Windows Azure Fabric is a scalable hosting environment built on geographically distributed Microsoft data centers. The Windows Azure Fabric Controller manages resources, load balancing, and the service lifecycle based on requirements established by the developer. The Fabric Controller deploys the service and manages upgrades and failures to maintain availability.

 

Q: What are some of the innovations that Windows Azure is based on?

 A: The Windows Azure Hypervisor and the Fabric Controller technology are two examples of innovations surfacing in Windows Azure. Windows Azure’s hypervisor is an efficient hypervisor that has been tuned for optimal performance for the cloud design point. It utilizes hardware advances like SLAT to achieve great efficiencies. Based on our experience of running large datacenters, we developed the Fabric Controller technology that optimizes Windows Azure as a cloud services operating system. The Fabric Controller technology manages resources, load balancing, and the service lifecycle in the scalable hosting environment in Microsoft data centers. The Fabric Controller deploys the service and manages upgrades and failures to maintain availability.

Links for Today: Guy advice, Win your own Company, Oracle goes Web 2.0 (kinda)

• This article popped up on my radar yesterday, discussing how teens use "IMs" and "text messages" to communicate more frequently with their friends, especially to avoid embarrassing situations, like asking people out or on dates. I've been asked out by a 30 year old guy by text before - hate to admit it, but I have (I said no, talk about no game). Interesting to see the parallels here though between ourselves and teenagers... guys, take note :)
• There's an interesting contest out that launched earlier this week, where you could "Win your Own Start-up." It is being promoted as a VC/Web 2.0 sort of contest where judges pick a few ideas that are submitted via a website, and then let the community vote... this will be an interesting one...the VC world meets reality TV, perhaps?
• Oracle had it's OpenWorld Conference this past week in SF, where it launched 2 new Web 2.0 -like sites - Oracle Mix, and the "Official Oracle Wiki." Other than the *really* creative names that they gave these sites, I haven't seem much activity on either over the past few days... doesn't quite seem that Oracle has gotten the community thing yet... at least they're trying?

Going Green: Dopplr Offsetr

I recycle. I turn my lights off when I'm not using them. I support green efforts. But this really made me think again about the impact that travel can have on the environment.

For all of you who travel a decent amount for business this application is a must. It definitely opened my eyes about the impact we (as a group of frequent business flyers) have on the environment.

Brady Forrest from O'Reilly discussed this cool app on the Radar Blog, called Offsetr. It calculates the carbon and mileage totals for you and your Dopplr network. My totals for my entire network were:

• Total Carbon for my network: 569,601 lbs
• Total Miles for my network: 1,352,866

I have about 40 travelers on my Dopplr list, so for those of you have have more, this number will be much higher. If you submit your calculations, you can get the breakdown for each traveler on your list. For example, I have about 40 travelers on my dopplr list, and I ranked about 25th out of 40 (so, I feel kind of bad, but my friend Carlos travels the most, so... )

Something to think about.../LC

*Disclaimer: Carlos is in Manila right now, so I'm just a tad jealous...

Facebook - Annoyance #1

I am a fan of Facebook, just like most of you guys out there. And so far, I've been quite pleased with the networking opportunities there and the "self-managed" community that seem to have limited spam. But I guess signing up for different interest groups has taken it's toll, as I'm outlining here as my "Facebook Annoyance #1:

Tonight, I opened up my FB email to a spam email from the founder of this group I signed up for, which we'll call "Marketing Friends." He's written a book (great!) and is promoting it on the Facebook group he so smartly launched a few months ago... great timing, eh? I know "Duh, Lauren." And now he wants us to "pre-order" his book! Nope, not kidding.

I signed up for this group "Marketing Friends" awhile ago, figuring it would be some sort of community SIG where folks discussed interesting and creative methods or programs for delivering concrete, honest information to users. Here is the description of the group:

"The Marketing Friends" (name changed) group is for people who believe that marketing is about influence instead of interruption. That the role of marketing is to tell a compelling story based on truth that people can believe and connect with.

Authenticity is the new mantra for marketers who are embracing this new world. Social media is part of this, but not the whole story. The aim of this group is to discuss where marketing should be, how we get there and who is already well on their way.

Well, there have been a couple interesting posts (there are 655 members) but the Wall Posts only consist of people that are promoting themselves rather than any information they might have to offer - rather, folks are just posting their contact information and PR services they provide. I honestly think that some of these folks probably have good services to offer, but is this a group for people looking for jobs/contracts or is it a group that shares best practices for "people who believe that marketing is about influence instead of interruption?"

I guess am frustrated here for 2 reasons:

(1) I can't believe that the founder of this group sent out a mass email to all members to promote his new book without offering a discount to folks in his facebook group or something of that sort. I mean, if you start a group around how to influence people with marketing tactics, don't you think he would have at least used the "pull" method to get folks to purchase his book? I mean, obviously he mastered the "push" method through his mass email... Marketing 101 here, folks. And no chapter excerpt? Hmmm.

(2) Maybe it's just because I am a community person rather than a marketing person (although I know some of you folks don't think there's a difference here... but trust me, there is, as Anant will tell you from our weekly LAMP stack and Open Source debates) that I just don't think that this kind of stuff should be on Facebook. I know, I know - I just had a debate with a friend this weekend over the real "need" for Facebook and it's purpose, so I see holes in this argument, but still. Possibly I'm just jaded (or naive) from watching how Apache has done things and how its community has worked, but still. Sigh.

Well, I guess I'll post something relevant to this Facebook SIG list and see if this group will start to give back. If not, I'm out. And most definitely I'll be screening my interest groups a bit better next time. I'm sure this isn't the only one out there that is created for these purposes.

Watch out, I'm on a roll. :) Possibly I'll pull a Chris Anderson. I think his idea here was brilliant. Sometimes things just needed to be weeded out./LC

Open Innovation Continued - Is Google Really Playing Fair?

As you know from my posts on my other blog I am a huge fan of Open Innovation. I define open innovation basically as honest community building for the general advancement of a group of people or for the good of the technology. I usually think of the Apache Software Foundation as one of the best models for this. I know that some folks tend to get involved in ASF for the good of their company, but with Apache, if you do this, the members pretty much cite you on lists for not working for the good of the community, and your reputation is pretty much tarnished right there and then. Not only that, with the incubation process that Apache uses, it pretty much weeds out folks who might be doing just that.

I've been closely following the OpenSocial movement that Google has kicked off over the past few days. Initially I was really excited about it - with all of the freaking APIs out there, it's a terrific idea to create common APIs so that devs have less to learn when building for multiple sites. And what a roster of partners there - Salesforce, Ning, etc etc. Very cool.

That said, as I was reading my RSS this AM, little subtleties started popping up, like this nice entry from Bob Warfield's "SmoothSpan" blog talking about the authentication scheme of OpenSocial's APIs. From Bob's perspective, this is a "leaking" of information that Google will, in the end, be able to access and pull information from. He states:

The preferred approach (to be authenticated to the API) is to use your Google account, a mechanism they call AuthSub.  Can you see where this is going?  If everyone who uses an app has a Google account, and is logged in while they use the account, Google has the treasure map.  They know how all the names link up across all the Social Networks.  Pretty cool, eh?

Now, I haven't gone through this process, so as a disclaimer I have to note that this may not be 100% true, but it sounds pretty fishy to me, as a community person. Is this really how this works? Is Google in the end accessing all of this data? Google is pretty smart then, I'd say. Data is power, as we all know.

Now, a bunch of folks have picked up on this here, and there's been an onslaught of MSFTers posting on this (of course). But there are some other folks coming out and jumping to this conclusion as well, including Danny Ayers, Marshall Kirkpatrick, and a handful of others. I'm still waiting on the Redmonk guys to jump on this with their take.

I'm not a fan of control when it comes to community - I prefer to have a self-governing community. And I'm interested to see how Google and their new partners in the OpenSocial network respond to this. I for one wouldn't want all of my information accessible to vendors who have their own personal best interests at heart. In the end, I think it's a double-edged sword: you get the common APIs which mean easier development, but you might have to give up some privacy here as well. I guess we'll see which one wins in the ongoing debate on community v. vendor control. /LC

Links for today

Thoughtworks supports (and targets) women programmers: http://www.cbronline.com/article_news.asp?guid=9570B067-C860-4FEA-81DC-7A6C6517EBCD Very cool stuff.