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Bear and the berries

I talked to a Really Smart GuyTM at Microsoft yesterday about community and Microsoft's efforts in the community.

The question I was trying to get answered was--is Microsoft approaching community in the right way? Would a Microsoft employee's time in the community be best spent connecting directly with the customer via blogs or newsgroup postings, or would it be better for a Microsoft employee to establish a closer working relationship with the top external people in the community--MVP's and other top question answerer type people in the community? The idea is that if I spent say two hours of my time with an MVP or other leader in the community that is already answering a lot of questions and helping a lot of people, I can have my two hours greatly leveraged as that community leader goes out and spreads any information I've given him or her to the broader community.

The analogy he came up with was a bear and the berries analogy. MVPs and other top question answering people are the bears of the community. They go along picking the berries off the bushes, answering questions and resolving issues, and the ecosystem is happy. But if a Microsoft person comes in and starts picking all those berries off the bushes instead, the bear is unhappy and moves to a different ecosystem. If instead, I point the bear at the right bushes but let him go harvest those bushes, the bear is happy and stays in the ecosystem.

What do you think? Are Microsoft people in their desire to participate in the community actually hurting existing ecosystems?

Comments

  • Anonymous
    April 10, 2004
    I think this issue varies per MVP. Some MVPs may feel that indeed their toes are being stepped on, while others see it as a huge help to them.

    Take me for example in the WMP newsgroups. I am the only MVP who posts there. So I see a few hundred posts a day. Seeing as I can not always make time to reply to every post it’s nice to have someone from MS to come and pick up the slack from posts I skipped or whatever.

    On the other hand I have seen a few MVPs who would like to reply to the posts in there own way. They don’t seem to imply that the MS employee is wrong in any way, but they just like to know that their opinion/suggestion is getting out there.

    Either way MS employees should get involved with the community, and they should learn what the MVPs who are helping support there product what. Whether it’s direct postings in the newsgroups or if they would just like to bounce idea/suggestions off of the employees via there Lead.
  • Anonymous
    April 10, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    April 12, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    April 12, 2004
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  • Anonymous
    April 12, 2004
    To be clear--I'm not proposing that Microsoft people aren't involved in the question-answering ecosystem. I'm just wondering if maybe the way they get involved is by teaching and interacting one on one with key people in their communities. For example, would it be more effective for you to spend two hours every week blogging about script issues, or two hours of 1:1 time with an MVP in the script area every week?
  • Anonymous
    April 13, 2004
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    April 13, 2004
    > Would a Microsoft employee's time in the community be best spent connecting directly with the customer via blogs or newsgroup postings, or would it be better for a Microsoft employee to establish a closer working relationship with the top external people in the community--MVP's and other top question answerer type people in the community?<

    Although there's never enough time to fit everything in, I'd appreciate both.

    I think MS employees would benefit from seeing the kinds of questions that come up in the newsgroups, even if they didn't post answers. It's hard to get a good view of customers' concerns from a statistical summary, or even from asking MVPs what kinds of things they see regularly. You have to jump in every once in a while and have a look for yourself.

    There are some questions that can't be answered with authority unless you know what the code is doing, and usually even the MVPs can only guess what that is... Just don't get bogged down in the ten-thousandth repetition of "I lost my product ID and now I can't reinstall." :-)

    On the other side, most MVPs would take what they learn in an hour or two of conversation with a developer or PM and spread it to dozens or hundreds of people. Sometimes it would be "what does the product really do?" and sometimes it would be "when can we expect feature x?" or "why is that bug still around after three versions?" Of course, some things would have to be under NDA, but we can handle that.
  • Anonymous
    April 13, 2004
    Blogs vs. Newsgroups vs. 1:1 time with an MVP are all different ways of working in the community, and they are all valuable.

    I can blog about stuff I think is cool (like the latest fashions in tin-foil hats) and that nobody would ever think to ask about. And I could do the same thing 1:1 with an MVP, or answer some of their general questions about the product, etc.

    But newsgroups are very targeted -- people post on usenet because they have this one very specific problem and they typically want to know the shortest possible answer without any theory or background -- just the facts, ma'am.

    So even though you could help increase the overall awareness of the product, etc. by talking to MVPs, there are still going to be posts in newsgroups that relate to obscure bugs or esoteric design details that only the product group would know about.
  • Anonymous
    April 13, 2004
    I don't think he is right, but MS people should not really involve themselves too much in the newsgroups. They should monitor the groups and use the observations as as inputs to the design process.

    What sort of problems do we (the users) have?
    Can something be done to reduce the problems people have?
    Is the documentation done right? Is it readable? Can people learn from it?

    My point of view is tainted by trying to do Word VBA and VB Script programming. I'm not happy with the Microsoft documentation, but VERY happy with the help I've been getting from the MVPs and the Scripting Guys.

    Another point for Microsoft would be: more "finished what you have started" and less "new fancy ways of doing what we have done before".

    BTW. It is quite possible that MVPs use their newsgroup work as advertising. It might be an effective way of drumming up business.

    greetings,

  • Anonymous
    April 14, 2004
    I, too, believe that all three avenues have their important aspects. I started as an MVP during the CompuServe days, when MS employees were always present, monitoring the forums and picking up on the tough questions. This was great, because we were always learning something new that we hadn't discovered, yet, and wasn't documented (publicly). We took this tidbits and ran with them: answering similar questions as they came up, and deducting things from them that helped us better understand the product, and solve new problems.

    Yes, I think MS people should not only monitor the newgroups, to see what's being asked. They should also jump in where they KNOW an answer, and no one else seems to. Everyone would profit.

    As to the blogs: I've just discovered them, and I'm learning a lot. This series on VSTO 2.0 is especially useful for me :-)