Thursday, September 08, 2005

Blogging and the PDC

Generally I hate meta-blogging, but this is only a little bit of that.

While it wasn't a really in-depth interview, I enjoyed how comfortable Scoble's interview with Bill Gates felt. I was impressed that Bill appreciated the blogging by Scoble, the Channel 9 team, and other Microsoft employees, and really understood why it was so important. I believe they changed the way a lot of people outside of Microsoft view the company. A big piece of this for me is how approachable they are as people. Read some posts on blogs.msdn.com and you really see the people behind the company.

So this leads into the second topic, the PDC. We leave is less than 4 days for LA. The last PDC (2003) was the first I'd been too, and I can't wait to be back. Some people complain that it's all marketing and fireworks, and perhaps lots of it is. I believe it's really what you make of it. Sure I love to get to see the new roadmaps and technology, but the other parts are just as important.

I like interacting with people that enjoy shipping software.

I'm not talking just about the Microsoft employees, but also other attendees. Most of these people are there because they are excited about what they do. They want to produce new things and have people use it. Then they want those people to be excited and tell more people. There's an incredible high during (and coming off of) the PDC that I really believe helps push software forward.

I think that a lot of the Microsoft blogging has helped keep some of this energy up year-round, but I'm looking forward to a recharge next week.