An email went out to our organization (Server & Tools Online) by one of our GMs that had a bullet (it was bullet #2 I believe) that said:
As community engagement and quality of resources are key goals for STO we are broadening the responsibility of the community PMs who today report to Simon Muzio by creating the STO Community Team led by Scott Hanselman. Tim Heuer, Joe Stagner, Jesse Liberty and Rob Conery will report to Scott, and in addition to their strategic roles of spreading the good word about the latest developer division products and platforms with our customers and the community at large, they will help STO understand how to interact with the community, drive buzz, interest, and excitement around Microsoft technologies. The team will also broaden its mission by taking on accountability around Developer Compete technologies. We need to engage the community in an effective real conversation at the competitive level and decide which competing technologies and communities to engage with. The team will also pilot a set of globally scalable approaches for community content contribution. This is about transitioning from Microsoft being the major content contributor on our sites to a community content contributor model.
This means I now have a team of 4 people and, as an aside, I've got reqs (requisitions or "headcount") for possibly two more. There's no extra pile of money for me but they do tack on "Lead" at the end of my name, I think. Or "Group" at the front. I'm still not sure which, but one of them.
I have called myself, both internally and externally, and only half-joking, "The People's Programmer." I have said "Developer Liaison" and "Community Concierge." They're all fun titles, but they are all true.
Our team's job is to make sure that you're having a good time developing with Microsoft tools. I want you to feel empowered to make cool stuff. If you're not, we'll try to make it better through articles, tutorials, walkthroughs, videos, presentations, books, and more. We're worldwide multimedia professors, but we're learning from you as much as we're teaching.
Now that we've got some autonomy, we're also going to try to figure out how to reconcile all the different kinds of community people there are at Microsoft (there's lots) and how we can best work together.
We also feel that there's a lot of great content out there that's been written by you, Dear Reader, that Microsoft doesn't promote or make easily available. I want to get your content on MSDN, on ASP.NET, on Silverlight.NET. If you've got good content, we're trying to understand what roadblocks at Microsoft are making it a hard for you to contribute.
I hope you've figured out by now that I'm open to feedback. A lot of you have commented here or emailed me and I hope you've seen how we try to advocate for you. ALWAYS feel free to talk to me or *ahem* my team (that'll take a while to get used to) if you have feedback on anything we do.
<cheesy> Thanks for being here for me Dear Reader, I really love being a part of this community. </cheesy>
-- ScottHa
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