New Team - New Role
After about six years at MSDN, I've moved to a new position on the Web Platform and Tools Marketing Team at Microsoft. But although I am working in a different group, many of the things we are delving into are the same. For instance I am still working on Content Strategy, but now with a wider view than just MSDN. The vision is that the effort that we used to do Content Strategy at MSDN can be leveraged to also manage content on our other Web properties as well as for things like field communications, events, and so forth. There are still a lot of questions to be worked out as the role is defined, but I am excited about the opportunity and look forward to working on the Web Platform and Tools team.
What is the Web Platform and Tools team? This is the team that is on the hook for the adoption of Microsoft technologies in the world of the Web. We focus mostly on developers but also on the IT Pro side of the Web world as well. Another big part of the audience we are worried about are Web hosters. And don't forget Web adoption on corporate networks too. The technologies that fall into our team include ASP.NET, IIS, Visual Web Developer, Commerce Server and the developer side of Internet Explorer. This is a pretty fun time for this group since Microsoft rolled out ASP.NET 2.0 a little while ago, we have upcoming technogies like Atlas (Ajax for the Microsoft tools and platform), Vista with IE 7, Commerce Server 2007, WPF, the IIS 7 release of IIS, and the Orcas release of Visual Studio. Needless to say, folks are very busy around here trying to make sure those of you outside Microsoft know what is going on.
Among other things, I will be trying to make sure that there is technical information on MSDN and microsoft.com in general that support the various product releases and events that the team is involved in. We are just getting started in this regard and we have a ways to go, but I think the end result will be some great information for those of you who are trying to stay on top of what Microsoft is doing for you in the world of the Web.
-Matt