Michael Slade: Editorials

Fri, 29 Aug 2003 03:11:36 GMT

While I have been helping a number of customers, a number of Microsoft employees volunteered to help Microsoft PSS support customers who had the MSBlast virus. I would like to thank Robert Scoble, Steven Makofsky, Chris Anderson and the other Microsoft employees who took the time to help. From their posts, it definitely was not in their job requirements to do this type of work. I know that they learned a lot. I know that they will take the lessons that they learned to heart and apply it to their current work assignments. I subscribe to a lot of RSS feeds of many Microsoft employees. The interesting thing I noted is that I did not see any entries about helping out in PSS from program managers, product managers, or marketing. These are the people that I wanted helping out. Why? Because they are ultimately responsible for determining which features get into the product, which bugs get fixed, which get delayed to the next version, etc. These are the type of people who need to walk in their customer's shoes. Robert has talked about how Microsoft executives are compensated based on many satisfied customers there are. I am just one developer, and in next year's performance review I will be judged on how I quickly I supported customers and my company's Tech Support, as well as how quickly I developed fixes or workarounds for those problems. Robert and the others at Microsoft had an eye-opening experience directly supporting end-users. For me, that is part of my everyday job. I hope that Microsoft makes it a part of everyone's everyday job.

Fri, 29 Aug 2003 02:41:35 GMT

One of the reasons that I have not been posting was that I was tied up doing a lot of customer support for several electric utilities. These support cases started well before the blackout. I do know that out Tech Support was called to help a number of power plants dump their respective data and logs as part of the investigation. My test system in the office can log nearly 2 million events and 10 million sensors readings per day. It will take some time to syncrhonize all the data from 100 power plants and determine the sequence of events that led to the blackout. It is interesting to live in Twinsburg, just a few miles from where several of the failed power lines are located. I also work a couple of miles from First Energy's Eastlake plant. Every day the local news and TV stations present some new piece of information or new video footage. Today, they had amateur footage from just before the blackout which showed a power line arcing to a tree.

Fri, 29 Aug 2003 01:06:43 GMT

I have not posted in while. I have been very busy doing a lot of customer support. Well it is time to start putting up some posts.

Wed, 13 Aug 2003 03:49:25 GMT

It was a busy day today. This morning, I attended the Technet Briefing put on by Marc Malotke from Microsoft. Marc always puts on a great session. The first half covered Debugging Active Directory and the second half covered Group Policy Management. It was tough for all of us to get going, since the briefing started at 8:00 AM, but Marc made the presentations fun, by demonstrating Group Policy management with sample users Good User, and Evil User. As a developer, I feel that it is important for developers to hear about the MIS side of things. Sometimes developers forget that our users are not just end-users, but the people that support the end-users. The afternoon Technical Sales Seminar (TS2) was put on by Sjonia Harper from Microsoft. Sjonia, like Marc, put on a great presentation about a number of tools and programs available to people who sell and service Microsoft software. It is interesting to listen to the questions from resellers and solution providers. Their questions usually deal with issues like licensing, Small Business Server, and how to present things to the client. This gets back to what John Porcaro was talking about needing to see things in your client’s shoes. I try to attend all the local seminars put on by Microsoft. I always learn a lot about the software business, beyond the typical developer arena.

The evening wrapped up with Cleveland’s .NET SIG meeting. Cleveland’s .NET SIG is sponsored by Microsoft, and Bennett Adelson Consulting. Today’s meeting was a blast. We played .NET Jeopardy. The attendees were divided into two teams, and we answered questions on a variety of .NET related subjects. The B team ended up winning. We wrapped up the meeting with pizza and pop and some networking. Monthly meetings typically have an hour and half presentation with demos and coding on a .NET subject. They are held the second Tuesday evening of each month, and start at 5:45 PM. Sign up at the Bennett Adelson Consulting website.

I know that a lot of people are complaining about the cost of the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference. The important thing is that there are a lot of resources that Microsoft provides to developers that are free. Besides the MSDN website and web casts, there are a lot of local resources and seminars that are available in your own city. If you live in the US, I recommend checking the Microsoft USA website to look for events and groups in your area. When you attend a seminar, besides learning something new, you might just meet your next customer or employer.

[Now listening to The Search by Pat Metheny Group from American Garage (04:55)]

Fri, 18 Jul 2003 02:58:16 GMT

The latest thing that I am working on at work is a best practices document for one of our products. This document will ship with the next release of the product. This got me to thinking. Best practices are the best ways to design, install, deploy, configure, and maintain an application for optimum performance. I look at this as this is the way the product was intended to be run. The old saying “when all else fails, read the directions” comes to mind. Aren’t best practices the directions that should be followed? Microsoft has a lot of best practices books (see http://shop.microsoft.com/practices/ and http://www.microsoft.com/resources/practices/). If my company includes a best practices document with their product, shouldn’t Microsoft? I think customer satisfaction would increase immensely if Microsoft included the best practices documents when a product ships.

Wed, 16 Jul 2003 13:16:26 GMT

There has been a lot of talk about the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) and its cost. Robert Scoble has two posts: one describing the cost of putting on a conference, and one on the value of attending. It is time that I added my 2 cents worth.

I have been attending the PDC since 1996. Some have been good, one had its outdoor party washed out by a Pacific hurricane, and one was barely fair. I also attended Microsoft’s TechEd 2001 conference as well. The best conference that I have attended: the Visual C Developers Conference (VCDC) in 2000 which Robert and a lot of other people from Fawcette put on. Thanks, Robert.

What made this conference great?

1) A great pre-conference tutorial put on by Richard Hale Shaw on XML and the DOM. It required a laptop with VS 6.0 and MSXML because it was hands-on. The assignment we worked on during the tutorial – write your own XML Notepad.

2) The conference was small; I think around 1200 attendees. This gave you the opportunity to actually have time talk with the MS program managers. I remember one evening in the hotel where a number of MS program managers and other big name industry speakers were gathered in the lobby lounge before they headed off to dinner. I got to spend an hour just talking with them about things in general, and it was not about computers or software.

3) Because the conference was small, you had the opportunity to spend time with the other attendees. I still see them today posting to newsgroups, and web logs.

So now that I have waxed rhapsodic about the VCDC, rather than complain about the cost of the PDC, I believe that I should add some value by making recommendations on what can be done to make the PDC an even greater value.

1) Add the capability to take MS certification exams, with some at a reduce price, just like at TechEd. Since the PDC starts with a pre-conference on Sunday and ends on Thursday, besides having the exams available during the conference, add Saturday, and the following Friday to take exams. Expand the hours that the exams are too. I don’t want to miss a couple of great breakouts because I am taking an exam. The result – I arrived at the TechEd 2001 not having ever taken an exam, and left an MCSD.

2) Improve the pre-conference tutorials. Make them more hands-on. Get the material for the pre-conference tutorials to the signed up attendees before the conference starts. Robert did this for me at the VCDC 2000. Since Friday is a free day, add some hands-on post-conference tutorials where you can spend time working with new stuff and get some of your questions answered before you head back home. At a minimum get the hands-on lab stuff to the attendees when they arrive. I liked the fact that at the PDC 2001 you got your conference CDs/DVDs at the start. It took me a day to unload the PDC version of VS.NET and then to load Beta 1, but I got to play with the stuff through the whole conference.

3) Have more of the program managers and presenters stay for the Ask the Experts night rather than jumping on a plane back to Redmond, and require them to attend. It is no fun when there are like 15-30 attendees per expert. If you can not get them all to stay for the one session, then have an Ask the Experts session every night.

4) Robert Scoble talked about playing Xbox with Don Box at a conference. Maybe there should be an Xbox game room where attendees can play games against each other.

5) I know that many MS people do not like giving out their business cards because their e-mail address suddenly ends up on a porn list. What each product/program group who has a representative attending the conference should do is set up an email alias where after conference questions can be sent to. When new e-mails come in, those e-mails can be directed to the person best able to answer, and replies sent back from the alias.

6) Robert has talked about community. I like the Terrarium example at the PDC 2001. Something like this should be done again for the PDC. And add public and personal conference web logs to it.

This is just a few of my thoughts on how to make the PDC a better value.

[Now Playing: Black Box - Dreamland - Strike It Up (05:16)]

Wed, 16 Jul 2003 02:28:22 GMT

One of the things that I have been thinking about with regard to the PSP tools is the ability to have a web log as part of the tool. I could use the web log as a journal to document project inspirations, project actions, as well as interruptions. The PSP process includes a time log which details the amount of time spent actually working on the project. SEI typically says that a software engineer only gets to work on their project for 15 hours out of the 40 hours in the week. This is based on the data they have collected from many PSP classes and many TSP projects that they have coached. The other 25 hours are spent on answering phones and e-mails, supporting customers, answering questions from other engineers who stop by, meetings, etc. The challenge to others: keep track of how all the time you spend during the day, and how much was actually spent on the one project that you are supposed to be working on.

[Now Playing: Swing Out Sister - The Best of Swing Out Sister - NOTGONNACHANGE [O'Duffy's 7' Single] (04:20)]

Wed, 16 Jul 2003 01:49:45 GMT

The challenge: What software process do you use when developing your own software versus developing software for a company? I am just starting the early planning stages of my PSP tool. Do I follow the standard development process that I use at work, or cut corners? I believe that whether you develop software for just your use or for a company, you should always follow the same process, without cutting corners. I am going to use the PSP development process to develop my PSP tool. The first step in the development process is to put together a conceptual design. I am going to put together some prototypes for the UI – a smart client, a Pocket PC client and a web client. I then will use the ORM capabilities of VS.NET to map out of the database design. I will maintain a time log and a defect log separately until the tool is ready.

[Now Playing: Swing Out Sister - The Best of Swing Out Sister - Now You're Not Here [Original Single Mix] (04:44)]

Mon, 14 Jul 2003 03:23:06 GMT

I just updated the About Me page on my website. Now that I have put up my credentials, I can start putting up editorials

[Now Playing: Pat Metheny Group - American Garage - The Search (04:55)]