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There is a flattering blog post Microsoft Gets Blogging by Thomas Hawk. Some interesting quotes include:
I'm not sure when exactly or if it's ever been an official sort of thing, but it seems like Microsoft of all of the companies that I've seen out there interacting with bloggers consistently gets it right. And I read random stories and blog posts like the one above where it just seems like some Microsoft employee is hanging out reading some blog at random and takes the initiative to interact very personally with a blogger. Sometimes big blogs, sometimes small blogs, but interaction in personal ways.
I'm not sure when exactly or if it's ever been an official sort of thing, but it seems like Microsoft of all of the companies that I've seen out there interacting with bloggers consistently gets it right.
And I read random stories and blog posts like the one above where it just seems like some Microsoft employee is hanging out reading some blog at random and takes the initiative to interact very personally with a blogger. Sometimes big blogs, sometimes small blogs, but interaction in personal ways.
In addition to Microsoft employees interacting directly with bloggers, Microsoft of course has many employee bloggers out there talking about Microsoft and what they do there. This is smart. I think what Microsoft is doing by engaging bloggers is a good thing. From a PR perspective blogs are difficult animals and in some ways they are like herding cats, but the influence of blogs are here to stay.
In addition to Microsoft employees interacting directly with bloggers, Microsoft of course has many employee bloggers out there talking about Microsoft and what they do there. This is smart.
I think what Microsoft is doing by engaging bloggers is a good thing. From a PR perspective blogs are difficult animals and in some ways they are like herding cats, but the influence of blogs are here to stay.
We started the Access Team blog October 5th 2005. Lots have changed—before the blog I would get asked at least once a week if Access was dead—that question doesn’t surface much any more. Today the team blog is always in the top 5-8 blogs hosted on MSDN and Technet.
Blogging for us isn’t a marketing effort or part of a broader communication strategy for the team. There are few guidelines beyond “blog smart” and “don’t talk about unreleased vnext product information.” Posting on this blog isn’t part of our review goals and usually gets prioritized against urgent day job issues. A few of us on the team really enjoy the community interaction (most of the time :-) ) and the benefits of feedback. We have even hired some of our best people through relationships developed through blogging. Mostly, we love the product and enjoy sharing the helpful information that comes our way.
There are challenges associated with blogging, especially when some people have a different vision about product decisions. Typically the conversation stays open and respectful.
I’m still waiting for the day when one of my comments lands me on the home page of CNN or quoted by the Wall Street Journal—I just hope it isn’t about something stupid I wrote. Another challenge is the broad range of readership. I know from the email we get and comments that the readership of this blog spans people new to the product to the most seasoned Access expert. Overall, the dialog has been good and made us a better team. I expect the community has got quite a bit of value out of it as well.
Well—I got to get back to looking at 14 bugs and seeing if I can build a cool app with new bits. Wish me luck and have a great weekend.
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This blog has been super helpful and informative, and we really appreciate having the contact with you guys. It is so much better than the old 'blank wall' days, when Microsoft was a more or less opaque obelisk to most of us. I know for a fact that your only chance of getting on the front page of CNN and the WSJ is to restore our toolbars and improve the developer tools for working with SQL Server and other robust backends. (that's a joke )
Kudos! It's been fun to watch the various changes, growth and value. Nice progress...
We need to use Access to work with SQL Server more.
Clint, Love the blog....keep up the good work ! : )
No, Access isn't perfect, but it's given alot of us a very happy, healthy livelihood.... Obviously we hope Microsoft will continue to develop and push Access into the future. J. : )
Yes, this blog is very helpful ... but IMHO Access 14 will not take advantage from this area. Microsoft developers/P.Managers are very "strange" and doesn't like Access (and, in general, professional users - developers). Bye
"Obviously we hope Microsoft will continue to develop and push Access into the future."
Ditto. I also hope the idea floated in the past of splitting Microsoft gets shelved forever because IMHO that would adversely affect Access future as well. I can't help but notice the idea was floated and pushed forward during a Democratic presidency and put away in the following 8 GOP years. God forbid it should come up again were there another changeover at the top ;-)
Clint C.: Is it possible to let us know what will be new in Access 14 so that it will not be late for developers' feedback... so that things like navigation pain & ribbon & terrifying Access help system don't happen any more? Please.
This blog is one of the things I check first thing most days. There has been quite a lot of useful stuff posted on it, both ahead of the launch of Access 2007 and since then too. It was quite brave to launch it ahead of the launch of Access 2007, because people, myself included, are more likely to post a comment about something they disagree with than something they are pleased about. The ability to have a bit of a discussion with people at Microsoft who know the product well has been great and speeded up the change in my view about Access 2007 from being not very impressed to being very impressed indeed. Having a central place to see what is going on and having the personal touch has been most helpful. Long may it continue.
# clintc said : Sam, I'm curious... What if we added relational features and lowered the price of SharePoint--would it be useful to you? This Blog makes me have hope that we can have some influence on the next version of ACCESS.
I understand that MS ACCESS is moving towards being a front end to Sharepoint. In my opinion one of the reason that ACCESS is so popular is because it is installed on every computer. Better (and free!) than Sharepoint is SQL 2008 Server Express. Therefore I would also like to have the option to use SQL Express instead of Sharepoint with some form of Link table technology to SQL server - not ODBC . Thank you. Sam Caro.
Sam, I'm curious again... What about ODBC do you not like? Vladimir, I would love to talk publicly about Access 14 but right now our sales and marketing efforts are focused on telling the story of Office 2007. When we start talking publicly about the next version it will happen when all of Office starts unvailing plans. The product is still taking shape and we don't want to lead people to think we are doing somehting that gets cut. We have had a signficant amount of feedback from developers, leading authors, and Access MVPs. We have had end users and Access developers in our usability labs for quite some time. There has been more feedback from the community about this release than any previous release I have worked on. You don't see it because all the feedback has come under NDA.
There are things to like about odbc, for instance, what it does, it does in a fairly stable manner, and there are many odbc drivers available for different databases. But in the context of Access development, obdc's list of shortcomings is long and significant. Any serious Access developer knows about them and it's spooky that one of the primary Access Team developers has to ask...although maybe the question was posed just to draw out a fresh response? If you want to work with a backend like sql server, you want to use it's toolset. ADPs started on this, you can create stored procedures and so forth in an Access Project. With ODBC, you are limited to using pass-through queries. Managing the pass-through queries, and the code that manages the pass-through queries, and then the stored procedures themselves...that's a lot of extra noise. Yes very doable, but it's not in the normal cut to the chase modality that Access is typically so good at. Then any time you change a linked odbc table, you have to rebuild the link (if you're using linked tables). And some of the odbc properties are just dead, like the timeout property. Re sharepoint (and I'm not sure where Sam got that quote?) yes it'd be nice if sharepoint had relational features and was less expensive. Nothing wrong with another backend option. But the question that dogs all of us not-in-the-know Access developers is why would Microsoft deliberately neglect the most obvious and most requested pairing in the domain: Access and SQL Server? SQL Server is already a robust relational database; Access is already great front end for it despite the history of neglect. Why not embrace the reality that *all* your developer users have been asking for (to put it mildly) for all these years? I get the feeling that the mentality is something like: Sharepoint is a great list server, and Access is now a great list management tool. What else could be wanted? Well, relational databases are where it's at, for building applications. Lists are ok...but we Access developers are never going to go along with turning Access into a list toy. We've already done too much with the earlier versions of Access. Please help Access grow up; don't dumb it down.
In the past, before blogs and Channel 9, communication to the wider world was mostly done through marketing.
I think the 'candid' blogs and 'low-production-value' videos from Channel 9 have greatly contributed to change the perception and put a human face on MS.
Content trumps form and I am immensely grateful to be able to learn from these sources. Beside the products, being able to access and learn from all the smart people working there is the greatest thing coming out of MS.
Clint C.: Have you or anybody from Access developer team tested a CZ version of Access, especially help? I have already called MS CZ hot-line and recorded a complaint!
Clint "You don't see it because all the feedback has come under NDA" Well I hope those who do not 'blindly' sign NDAs (especially after Access 95) are also being listened to. Too many authors and lightweight developers seem to have the spare time to join Alpha and Beta testing others only get a chance to "Beta" test (vbg) after it has been RTMd.
Clint "There has been more feedback from the community about this release than any previous release I have worked on" I bet there has! (vbg)
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