On Microsoft, WinHEC
My last two entries were originally mistitled, and as such, garnered responses that were largely misdirected. I take no issue with the negative comments, but if you think I was lambasting either Microsoft or WinHEC, you might care to brush up on your reading comprehension skills.
Few people actually understood what I was saying… that I was trying to point out a fact that going to WinHEC made me realize (and subsequently verbalize). WinHEC, itself, is not a problem – and I have no problem with WinHEC (or its auxiliary, PDC). I even went as far as to write that I am *NOT* a developer! Everything I wrote still stands – but depending on which side of the table you sit on, you're going to respond to any of my “Microsoft” assertions differently.
Try this: write something (ANYTHING) about Microsoft. Half of your readers will slap you around for being too supportive of the company, and the other half will slap you around for being too critical of the company… BASED ON THE SAME POST! It's not so much what I write, it's how you project yourself onto what I write.
There are gaping holes in Microsoft's user engagement strategies. If I didn't care, I wouldn't say anything about it. If I didn't want to help, I wouldn't say anything about it. If I didn't think it mattered, I wouldn't say anything about it.
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2 Comments
Anonymous
April 27th, 2005
at 1:38pm
Precisely Chris, That was my take on your post. Which I may or may not have gotten across in my post. They keep showing Longhorn to developers and they aren't showing anything really for the users. Before I would show the developers XAML, I'd build a kick ass application in XAML and show it to the users. Maybe an Amazon.com based application that uses the desktop search to look for eBooks or music you currently own and provides recommendations. Say a program that notices that I have 40 or so songs by Dick Dale and shows me a new album that's been released on Amazon. If you get the users interested, trust me the developers will want to know how to build whatever the users are interested in. CES would have been a good time. Again, not a big 'power users' conference, but at least it's consumer oriented instead of developer oriented.
I just took the opprtunity to rant a little on my own about my perception that there isn't much for the users in Longhorn.
Anonymous
April 28th, 2005
at 5:25pm
They showed a preview of Longhorn, thats it! WinHEC is not about average user engagement, its a hardcore technical conference, not for grandmothers. If Chris wanted to judge Longhorn he should have at least wait until beta 1.