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The Journey Begins

Anankin Skywalker leaves home as his mother Shmi Skywalker watches.It’s Monday, October 20th, which means that it’s Day 1 of my new job at Microsoft. Of course, if you’re a mathematician or a programmer — or Harry Belafonte — you might be inclined to call it Day 0. If you’re thinking in terms of old-school, pre-.Net Visual Basic, you can go with either Day 0 or Day 1, depending on the circumstances.

Developer Advisor

My business card, when it comes, will read “Joey deVilla, Developer Advisor“. Despite the fact that the group to which I belong is called Developer and Platform Evangelism (DPE for short), Microsoft Canada prefers advisor to evangelist. The word “Evangelist” is seen as coming with some particularly unpleasant baggage: a certain inflexible, intolerant, dickish, “yes, we’re doing bad things, but it’s for the greater good!” kind of attitude. Hence “advisor”, a kinder, gentler, more Canadian term.

Mr. Mackey from "South Park": "FUD is bad, mmmkay?"While I understand the rationale behind “advisor”, I’m having a little trouble getting behind it. The word doesn’t have the same gusto that “evangelist” does. To my mind, “Developer Advisor” has the same ring as “Gudiance Counselor”. The title makes me feel as if I should be wearing an ugly tie, end my sentences with “Mmmmmkay?” and say things like “Have you thought about what programming tools you’d like to be using next year?” and that most famous of guidance counselor lines, “Remember, my door is always open.”

There’s also the fact that “technical evangelist” or “developer evangelist” is already a term in common use in the industry. There are also a number of people in who’ve brought great honour to the title through their actions: people like Mike Boich, Guy Kawasaki, Robert Scoble, Geoffrey “Crossing the Chasm” Moore, Don Box, Alex St. John and David Intersimone.

(I have to give David Intersimone special mention because he had the most Sisyphean of evangelism tasks: evangelizing Borland’s — then CodeGear’s, now Embarcadero Technologies’ — perenially under-appreciated tools. I was once cold-called by Borland HR back in 2002 to become an evangelist for them; I didn’t have the heart to say “I think you guys are screwed without Anders, and I’m not sure you guys could market immortality.”)

You’ll probably find me using “evangelist” when referring to my position in casual conversation unless the boss is around. Maybe even then, as he’s a pretty cool guy.

What I’ll Be Doing

As a Microsoft Developer Evan– er, I mean Advisor — let me tell you what my job is not about first. My job is not about selling Microsoft developer tools. My hope is that you’ll eventually buy some Microsoft developer tools, of course, but when it comes times for the annual review, my work is not tied to the number of units moved or market share.

The creepy-eyed guy from the Visual Studio installer.What my job is about is getting programmers excited about programming using Microsoft’s technologies. It doesn’t matter to me whether you’re a True Believer who develops on Windows using Visual Studio, SQL Server and SharePoint with a Microsoft keyboard and mouse in a little shrine to Bill Gates or if the most you’ll ever venture towards the Dark Side is to use Internet Explorer for user experience testing. It also doesn’t matter whether you eat, sleep and breathe computer programming and know your monads from your closures or if you refuse to think about programming after five p.m.. As long as you’re doing development and there’s a chance that a Microsoft developer tool might be what you need, you’re one of the people I’m reaching out to.

They’ll still be measuring my performance, but the metric they’ll be using is satisfaction rather than sales. If developers find value in my writing, presentations, demonstrations, tutorials, example code, meetups and accordion playing, then I’m doing my job right.

Drinking from the Firehose

Scene from "UHF": "You get to drink from the firehose!"

I’m told that freshly-recruited Microsofters (‘Softies? Microserfs? Ozzie’s Army?) spend the first few months feeling as though they’re drinking from a firehose. Microsoft’s Evan — er, Advisor — for western Canada, John Bristowe, has used the term in conversation, and Program Manager Phil “Haacked” Haack used it in a blog entry during his first days at the company. Microsoft has cranked out a lot of technology in the thirty-odd years since Bill Gates was schlepping around in a blue van with his BASIC interpreter on paper tape.

I’ve already started to immerse myself in Microsoft developer stuff. I’ve already been issued my “developer” laptop, the first of two (two!) that are standard issue for Developer Evan — er, Advisors. It’s a Dell Precision M6300 with a Core Duo T7800 running at 2.6GHz and with 4 gigs of RAM. It’s loaded with the “Big Daddy” editions of Windows and developer tools and is meant for me to run demonstrations, write tutorials and build applications to inspire other developers. It’s a hefty, solid laptop; the only more solid-feeling laptop I’ve ever held is my deadbeat ex-housemate’s old Sparctop, which handily doubles as a bludgeon.

The next couple of weeks are going to be interesting for me, as I’ll be:

  • Poring over books and hacking out example code in my efforts to get up to speed with Microsoft’s development tools, which I haven’t used in a good long time
  • Going through whatever orientation process Microsoft Canada has, which may or may not involved getting Borg implants installed
  • Attending PDC2008, the conference where Microsoft’s tech kahunas will be introducing new tech and announcing the company’s technological direction for the next little while
  • Enjoying working with old friends already at the company, such as David Crow and John Bristowe
  • Getting to know my new co-workers, who are a pretty cool and very smart bunch

Let Me be Your Sexy Tour Guide

Sexy tour guide in a leopard-fur miniskirt.(If it makes you feel more comfortable, I can just be your plain old tour guide.)

Although I have a lot of ground to cover in my self-immersion into Microsoft tech, I’m not doing my job if I’m not communicating. In my interviews, I said that it would be a terrible waste if this were to happen. They liked my suggestion to have me treat my first days with Microsoft as a journey and my blog entries (and yes, I’m getting paid to write Global Nerdy!) as a travelogue. Perhaps a better way to think of me is not as your sexy tour guide, but as the late great Steve Irwin, Crocodile Hunter.

(Maybe I can shoot some video at PDC2008 where I wear a pith helmet and try to pin down Steve Ballmer and rub his belly.)

A good chunk of this blog will cover my exploration of Microsoft and its developer goodies, both the serious and not-so-serious stuff. I’ll probably talk a lot of developer tools, but I’m equally likely to do a photo essay on the fridges full of free pop at Microsoft headquarters. My mission is to out-Scoble Scoble, who was probably Microsoft’s best-known and most prolific tech evangelist.

But it won’t be “all Microsoft, all the time”, either. There’s a big wide world of development beyond Microsoft’s borders — I should know; I came from that world, after all. Even if you never ever intend to use Microsoft development tools, I think you’ll still find articles and info in this blog that you’ll like and fine useful.

And so the journey begins. I hope you come along for the ride; I promise to make it fun.

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California Bound (or: I’m Going to PDC2008)

The original "90210" cast, with Steve Ballmer's head on Luke Perry's body

Brain in a jar: "PDC2008: Capture the brainpower"My job/conference timing is uncannily good this year. Back in March, my first day on the job at b5media was spent flying to the South by Southwest Interactive Conference in Austin, where I spent the better part of the week conferencing, carousing and establishing accordion-powered bona fides on b5’s dime.

It’s happening again: a week after my first day at Microsoft (which is tomorrow, by the way), I’ll be flying down to Los Angeles to attend Microsoft’s 2008 Professional Developer Conference, a.k.a. PDC2008.

What is PDC?

The PDC is a Microsoft developer conference where they announce major new tools and technologies. It’s been held only when there’s major, bet-the-company stuff to announce. PDCs from previous years were used to announce and provide information on things like:

  • The Win32 API
  • “Chicago”, which grew up to become Windows 95
  • “Windows NT 5.0”, which you might know better as Windows 2000
  • .NET
  • C#
  • Windows XP
  • “Longhorn”, which grew up to become Windows Vista
  • Aero

The last PDC was held in 2005 and it was where they introduced LINQ, Silverlight and ASP.NET Ajax (as well as things that got put on the back burner, such as Hailstorm and WinFS). This PDC will be the first one of the post-Gates era, and it promises to be interesting one.

What’s PDC2008 Going to be About?

Mike Swanson, “Content Owner” for PDC2008, describes it as the “Software Plus Services PDC”. A lot of the announcements that will be made at this PDC will revolve around the apparent “sea change” at Microsoft in the way they think about software, how it’s built and where it runs.

CloudsAmong the things that I expect to see announced and/or covered at PDC2008 are:

  • “A comprehensive services platform”, as Mike Swanson puts it
  • “Red Dog”, which is supposed to be Microsoft’s cloud computing platform
  • Windows 7
  • “Oslo”
  • Silverlight 2
  • The next version of Visual Studio
  • Possibly some stuff about the DLR

(Keep in mind that these are educated guesses and that the last item is my own personal wish. I haven’t been briefed on any of the goodies that Microsoft has up its sleeve; in fact, I don’t even have my @microsoft.com email address, passcard or Borg implants yet.)

When is PDC 2008?

Los Angeles Convention Center with PDC05 banner

PDC2008 starts on Monday. October 27th and runs to the end of Thursday, October 30th and takes place at the Los Angeles Convention Center. I’m going to catch most, but not all if it — I’ll be at Cory Doctorow’s wedding the night before and will miss the Monday morning keynote, where Ray Ozzie is expected to make some pretty big announcements. I land at LAX at 11:00 a.m. and will report from the conference (and the extracurricular activities!) from Monday afternoon onward with stories, photos and probably some audio and video as well, with my trusty new travelling accordion by my side.

More Information on PDC2008

For more information about PDC2008, check out these sites:

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Sign of the Day

Yes, you could simply secure your wireless access point, but the truly paranoid like to back it up with a sign:

"No parking near my house - Get your own wireless network"
Photo courtesy of ImagePoop.com

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Microsoft Web Application Installer is Full of Open Source Surprises

Logos of apps installed by Microsoft's web app installer

Maybe today’s the day for surprising announcements. Scott Hanselman has written an article about the beta for Microsoft’s Web Application Installer, an app that can set up the following open source applications:

It won’t install prerequisites, but it will tell you which prerequisites you’re missing and give you the links where you can get them:

"Prerequisites" screen for the web app installer
Click to see the screenshot at full size.

The Web Application Installer is currently in beta. To find out more or to download the beta, check out the Microsoft Web Application Installer site.

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Company Man (or: The New Job)

A couple of knapsacks and an old accordion
The last of my stuff at the b5 office.

Since I announced that was laid off about three weeks ago, I’ve received a lot of invitations from people to talk about job opportunities at their companies. There were so many invitations, and a lot of them turned into interviews. I ended up being far busier as an unemployed guy than I was during the last weeks of my employment. I want to thank those people for thinking of me, and also for thinking that I might be a good person to work with.

"Credit Crunch" cereal

It’s a strange thing to say given that the headlines seem to be all economic doom and gloom, but I had plenty of choices and decided to be really picky. This will be my third company this year. The first imploded under pathologically clueless management. The second, seeing rough times ahead in the internet advertising market, downsized me. I had to make sure that the third time was the charm.

On my first day off the job, I went to my local cafe armed with a printout of my updated resume and a pad of paper. Computers are wonderful things, but sometimes a situation calls for the distraction-free purity of your thoughts and an old-school writing instrument. Reviewing my resume, I made notes based on my recollections from all those jobs, all in order to answer a simple but important question:

What do I want to do?

What I Want to Do

Joey deVilla and his accordion with Linus Torvalds
Me and Linus at LinuxWorld Expo NYC 2000.

I want to get back to the work I loved most and did best. It most often goes by names like “developer relations” and “technical evangelist”, positions I held at OpenCola and Tucows. I loved that sort of work because it combined some of the things I love to do most: computer programming, talking to people, explaining complex ideas, writing, public speaking and yes, rocking out on the accordion.

Eiffel Tower plans

I want to work on projects with substance. I want my work to reach, influence and benefit a very wide audience. I want opportunities to make a significant contribution to my field. I want to make a big splash.

Cover of E.F. Schumacher's book, "Small is Beautiful"

And finally, I want a change.

My long-held career strategy has been to pick small companies. Over the past thirteen years, I’ve worked mostly with start-ups or small independent software shops.

I’ve learned a lot working in that mode, being small, scrappy and living off penny budgets and meager resources. It gives you a wide range of experiences from having to play many roles, you make significant contributions even if you’re a newbie and you can effectively define your job.

Woodcut of Archimedes and his lever moving a globe

That got me thinking: What if I switched strategies? I’d like to see what I could do, given an environment of plenitude: bigger budgets, lots of resources to draw upon, a really big platform and an audience to match. To borrow a line from Archimedes, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

The Decision

Radio Shack's old "Executive Decision Maker" electronic toy

I decided to sign up with the firm who offered me the kind of work I described above. They also seemed to be the most eager to take me on, and offered some of the biggest learning opportunities and challenges. Perhaps you’ve heard of them:

Microsoft logo, enhanced with an accordion

Some of you might need a moment to process this. (If you’re the type to do a spit-take, now is an appropriate time.)

Monday, October 20th, will be my first day as Microsoft’s newest Developer Advisor. Microsoft Canada prefers the term “Advisor” over “Evangelist”, but the job description’s the same. I’ll be part of the Developer and Platform Evangelism group, of which my friends John Bristowe and David Crow are members. The group is headed by Mark Relph, VP Developer and Platform Evangelism, and I’ll be reporting to John Oxley, Director Community Evangelism.

My evangelism work will be focused primarily on using Microsoft technologies to build stuff for the Web. It’s an area where I feel that Microsoft has dropped the ball in the past, but where they’re beginning to show signs of progress and promise.

The position is classified as “mobile”. Sometimes, I’ll work out of my home office. Other times, I’ll be working at a wifi-equipped cafe, either in my home neighbourhood of High Park or downtown. I’ll make regular appearances at Microsoft Canada’s HQ deep in the burbs or the “hotelling” office in the Ernst and Young tower of the TD Centre in the heart of the financial district. I’ll also be on the road, doing demos, presentations and accordion rock and roll for business, academia and user groups.

It seems that no “I’m joining Microsoft” blog entry written by someone who’s been living nearly exclusively in the world of Apple and open source is complete without a long, tortured justification. I’m going to skip all that and simply say that joining Microsoft will allow me to:

  1. Do great work.
  2. Have that work spread far and wide.
  3. Earn a fair reward for my effort.

The Journey Continues

"Curve right" sign

It’s been nearly a year since Assrockets and Opportunities (or: Why I Changed Jobs) (an article you really should read if you haven’t already). Since then, I’ve had to make a couple of changes to my plans, but the journey — and the reason for the journey — continues.

I’m going to be living the Chinese curse for the next little while. Working for a company with the size, scope and reach of Microsoft is terra incognita for me, as are its technologies. I’ve already been told by a couple of people on my team that it’s going to feel like “drinking from the firehose” for the next little while, what with getting up to speed with the current stuff and hearing about what’s coming soon at the Professional Developers Conference in L.A. (which I’ll be attending).

These are going to be interesting, exciting and challenging times. I’m looking forward to them.

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Terminated, Part 10: It’s Contagious!

Hazmat suit (head / mask detail)

Ever since I announced that I’d been laid off, I’ve had a lot of kind offers from people who wanted to take me out for a beer. I was IM’ing with one of those people yesterday.

“Sorry to hear about the job,” he said. “Did you get my email offering to take you out for a beer sometime? I was wondering if it ended up in your spam folder.”

“Thanks, and yeah, I got your mail,” I replied. “Sorry for not getting back to you sooner. I’ve been busy with interviews, and I’ve accepted an offer. I’ll announce it on the blog on Friday.”

“Cool,” he said, and we both went back to work.

About ten minutes later, he IM’d me again.

“Holy crap. You’re not going to believe this. I just got laid off.”

“What?”

“I got called into ‘the meeting’, and they started talking about my severance.”

“Just after we were talking about me getting laid off?”

“Yeah. Weird, huh?”

“You know what? I will now buy you that beer.”

The timing of our conversation and his getting laid off were incredibly weird. It’s one of those things that makes you wonder if you’re not really alive, but just a character in a novel whose author has a mild sadistic streak.

Perhaps the new job will help me help him.

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Radiohead’s “In Rainbows” Experiment was a Success

"My Little Pony" version of the cover for Radiohead's "In Rainbows" albumCNN/Fortune hated the idea so much that they listed it in their 101 Dumbest Moments in Business article. In 2007, Radiohead made their album In Rainbows available for download before physical copies were available in stores. You could choose to simply download the album or voluntary pay an amount of your choice. Radiohead didn’t reveal any statistics related to the download; the known data comes from comScore, who reported that:

  • 62% of the downloaders chose to pay nothing
  • The remaining 38% voluntarily paid an average of $6 for the album

Based on these numbers and Radiohead’s silence, the CNN/Fortune article inlcuded the sneering line “Can’t wait for the follow-up album, In Debt.”

The real cover of Radiohead's "In Rainbows" albumIt turns out that Radiohead’s experiment was actually a success. Techdirt points to a report on Music Ally that says that Radiohead’s publisher Warner Chappell will tell all about the In Rainbows experiment at the “You are in Control” music conference now taking place in Iceland.

The “success” of which they speak isn’t the hand-wavy “artistic”, “critical” or “proving a point” kind, but the sort of success that bottom-line thinkers like: In Rainbows made more money before the the album was physically released than the total sales for the previous album, Hail to the Thief. Even when preceded by a free or “pay what you can” downloads, In Rainbows has still sold 1.75 million copies of the CD to date, and it’s still in the top 200 selling CDs in the U.S. and U.K..

The Music Ally article has more details and includes these statistics:

  • After being made available online for free for 3 months, In Rainbows hit number one on both U.S. and U.K. charts.
  • 30,000 copies were sold on iTunes in its first week.
  • 1.75 million CDs of the album have been sold since its release.
  • 100,000 box sets have been sold through Radiohead’s sales and merchandising site, W.A.S.T.E..
  • 17 million plays on last.fm.
  • 1.2 million fans will see their tour.
  • The digital income from the experiment made a material difference to Warner Chappell Music’s UK digital revenue this year.