More Thoughts on the Microsoft Technology Summit
The summit’s ended and we had a closing session with Sam Ramji. Some issues about the format were brought up and there were lots of other great comments and questions. Here was my question:
What did Microsoft learn from this?
I want Microsoft to somehow publish, with consent from participants, what they got out this summit. What was useful to them, what was confirmed, what did they already know about, what did they not know, and maybe how they will proceed with this information.
An MS employee who was one of the event managers quickly suggested that if we, the attendees, posted back what Microsoft told us, then our audience would learn from us instead of MS publishing this themselves, and that this would make it “seem more believable and legitimate if it came from the community than if it came from Microsoft”. Ok, put aside how creepy that sounds. I doubt, also, that there was a sinister motive behind that.
Anyway, putting those things aside, here’s what my response to this suggestion is: If Microsoft wants to be involved in the community, then Microsoft *should* be part of the community. That includes dialog. I want for others who see my blog to be able to go to a response or blog post I linked to and compare and decide themselves if what MS believes matches up with what I believe or if there’s a huge difference.
So, I suggest MS put up a site that aggregates the blogs, twitters, and other digital artifacts from attendees, presenters, and maybe others, that reflect the thoughts, discussions, and conclusions of these summits. MS has held these summits in previous years, but when I googled to find out what they were about, why I was invited, I saw a list of results that didn’t synthesize what happened. The trail ended abruptly. So, I have little idea what happened before and what happened in response.
Before this summit I couldn’t care less about Microsoft. Now I’m aware of them.
Update:
Something else I learned about! The vimperator! The vimperator is an awesome Firefox plugin that gives you VIM like keys and UI for using firefox. It’s awesome.
March 31st, 2008 at 1:39 pm
Last year too, many people asked MS to put up their reactions to the summit, and they said they would do it. People also asked for more discussions, less didactic presentations. Seems like this year was the same. Doesn’t seem like MS wants to listen.