Channel 9 - What works, what sucks?

The Channel 9 team is going to unplug for a day next week and go do some hard thinking, discussing, and planning about where we go from here.  We are 4 months into this grand experiment and it is time for us to do some hard thinking about how we evolve Channel 9 from here.  So  rather than the 5 guys from Redmond sitting around throwing around our own opinions, we want to bring you to the table too. 

We need your help, because you made Channel 9 great.  So tell us:

1.) What is working on Channel 9?  What is most valuable to you about this site? The videos? The forums? The Wiki? What brings you back ?

2.) What needs some tweaking?  We have tried to keep up with your requests for usability and content improvements, but now is the time to let us know what doesn't work about the site.

3.) If you were king for a day what would be the first improvement you would make to Channel 9? 

Thanks again for everything, and keep on posting.

lenn

In normal view the Channel Subject should also be a link (not only in Edit view). I'm a link right-clicker

Video Record the meeting lenn.

What brings me back? The Videos!

But if I miss a few days and new videos have scrolled off the front page, I can't get a simple listing of the latest videos. The replies to some old videos bury the newer videos down on the list. If I were to change anything, it would be to be able to sort the list of videos by latest reply or by posting date.

Thanks for a great website.

Videos, videos, videos!  This is what brings me back everyday.  I also like to know what Mircosoft is looking to do in the future.

Eric

I think the videos are key to this site. In my opinion it's the best way to personalize Microsoft for its customers. It's also the best way to show the great work Microsoft is doing. Take for example the Photo Gallery video, just reading about it somewhere would never do it justice. You have to see it in action.

What is working on Channel 9? 

- the videos, without question are most interesting
- forums are great

What brings you back ?

- it's actually the RSS feed, so I drop by when something interesting happens

2.) What needs some tweaking?

- It's bad how the videos are organized, just terrible. The forum thread metaphor is *not* a good method to organize a video archive. Should be easy to fix, though!

3.) If you were king for a day what would be the first improvement you would make to Channel 9?

If I'd be "king" of Microsoft, I'd get even more microsofties to participate in discussions!

More than being interested in MS culture and thinking (which is very cool nonetheless), I'd like to hear more stuff about "how software gets done" (you can never learn enough from the big guys)


Anyway, thanks for all the work you have done!

lenn wrote:

What brings you back ?

lenn wrote:

If you were king for a day what would be the first improvement you would make to Channel 9?

OH if you do, in your infinite wisdom decide to add emoticons please can we have a :-/ :/ one . And maybe a like .

1. Videos are the core of the site. Keep them coming!
1a. I like the videos on who's who... and love the insight your microsofties give into topics such as languages, gui's, etc... more of those.

2. Wiki...maybe more explanation on why it's valuable.

3. I'd throw a themes engine on here with several color themes to choose from... The gold everywhere is a bit bright.   Blue and orange are good complimentary colors.

don't add emoticons.  the old skool stuff is so much better.

Jaz wrote:

don't add emoticons.  the old skool stuff is so much better.

lenn wrote:

What brings you back ?

lenn wrote:

What needs some tweaking?

• First of all, I usually don't have time to watch a full video at the time I get notified of it. There is no way to quickly sample a streamed video at a few spots to get a better impression of it and to decide if it is worth revisiting it at a later time. So I typically forget about them again.
• I hate to say this, but for many of the videos, the content would be much better served as text. The 'videoness' of the medium doesn't add anything for many of the clips. Also, some of the interviewees are not the clearest of speakers. And, once again, if there is a moment that you go what did he say?, you cannot rewind a few seconds to replay a segment. Because, for a streaming video, that means rebuffering. It would be possible if you had the file locally.
• Having a text transcript available would make it much easier to refer to particular segments of a video in the discussions. If there would be text, discussing the videos would be much easier, because you can refer to for example In this paragraph, the interviewee said 'foo blabla bar', ...  The video equivalent of that would be: At 03 minutes and 42 seconds, the interviewee said 'foo blabla bar', ... which is clumsy, and noone is going to bother to find a way to actually see the part of the video around 03:42...
• Text is much easier and faster to consume than video. While reading a transcript, you can look back at what was said in the previous paragraph/section/etc.
• Of course, everybody knows that Microsoft has too much money and they are more than happy to pay for wasting bandwidth. But doesn't it nag that the information conveyed by a 5 megabyte video could equally well be published as a 100 K web page (and that includes a few pictures with snapshots of the clip).
  

lenn wrote:

If you were king for a day what would be the first improvement you would make to Channel 9?

manip / lars...  the edit boxes on C9 rule!
Go to any web site - copy paste stuff in NO TYPING URLS!!!!!!!! 


The main thing id change would be prominance of Coffeehouse

it literally gets 4 times the traffic as its closest competing section.. yet no link on nav

There are still many times i find myself where the back button doesnt work - and there is no link to coffee house so i have to click forums / coffeehouse


Coffeehouse is my startpage - so i rarely see the videos.  if there was text of what they said id read it.. im not one for flash or media on the web

• We really need more people coming to this site, especially new members. To attract new members that want to actively participate channel 9 needs to be more interactive.
• A chatbox (only for members) is a good idea. If possible, a weekly chat with an employee from ms.
• More Chris Sells (dunno why, he always sounds happy)
• A new application project (not too big) and some dedicated programmers on it with the participation of the C9 community. Lot's of updates, releases and open code.
• Fast news directly from Microsoft (not press releases)
• More contests (express contest is already awesome)

I mostly use the threads we're watching and I ahve to echo what others have said the videos are what brings me back.