Channel 9 - Entries tagged with communication

Tony Goodhew: VC++ Developer Communication - Questions and Answers

Charles — Tue, 01 Mar 2011 23:11:04 GMT

Tony Goodhew is a Microsoft veteran in the developer tools division and has returned home to his roots in VC++. He was a product manager on VC6 back in the day. One of Tony's priorities is effectively communicating with developer customers who expect open and honest answers to ALL of their questions. How does this process work? How can you effectively communicate your plan if your plan is still being created?

Developers want answers. Period. Tony and team have the responsibility of ensuring that the answers they give to developers regarding VC++ are in fact accurate and unequivocal. Developers ask, "OK. So, what's the plan for the next version of VC++? Why did you decide to not support C++ feature x? What about y++? What's going on here? When are you guys going to wake up?" Welcome to Tony's world (and the world of many other product managers across the company and industry).

I brought my camera to Tony's office to talk about C++, VC++, developer dark matter, the C++ Renaissance at Microsoft, VC++ versus GCC, and much more. This is a very candid conversation about developer-oriented public communication and the delicate balance between promising too much and promising too little. At the end of the day, it's all about what you deliver.

So, how do you decide how and when you will tell developers what your plans really are? How did you come to the decisions you make and execute on? Did you get enough feedback from the community to ensure you give developers what they most want? Have you implemented the things native developers have been asking you to do for years? When do you say yes and when do you say no? Tony, talk to us, man. What's going on here? How does it really work inside VC++ world?

Nice to have you back on C9, Tony! It's been a while.

Tune in. Enjoy.

Microsoft Vine: A Tool to Connect People in Crisis (or Any Other Time, Too)

Sarah Perez — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 14:31:00 GMT

Microsoft has just launched a new product called Vine into private beta. The service connects Facebook, Twitter, text messages, phone calls, email, and other forms of communication into one system for the purpose of keeping people connected during a crisis situation. The idea came to Microsoft manager Tammy Savage back after Hurricane Katrina hit the U.S. She realized we needed more tools that would allow communities and people to communicate with each other during emergencies. After spending years on its development, the end result is Vine, although today the application’s current status is private beta because they’re now hoping to get feedback on the product while improvements are still being made.

How Vine Works

What Vine does is gather news from 20,000 local and national sources, including public safety announcements from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. It then displays those news items to you on a map of your area.

In addition, Vine displays the Facebook status updates of your friends and family, including their location if they permit that info to be shared. Twitter and other social networking sites will be added as well, but are not currently present at launch time. Also planned for the future is traditional phone integration. Once added, people will be able to send and receive messages using automated voice technology.

In the event of an emergency, a Vine user could send out an alert to a specific contact list (e.g. “Family,” “Friends,” etc.). Those receiving the alert would do so using whatever format they had chosen – an email or text message for example. Another option for sharing alerts involves linking Vine to Facebook to send the alerts as a Facebook status updates that everyone can see. There’s also a desktop software component that could be used – it currently works on Vista or XP computers, but future integrations are planned, including Mac and Silverlight platforms. Recipients can then reply to the alert using that same format, if desired.

Users can also post longer reports than the simple alerts described above. At launch time, there are four pre-designated report types available: check in safe and well, report upcoming plans, report a situation, or general information. These reports are posted to the dashboards of the contacts you shared with.

Although originally designed for sharing critical information in a crisis, Vine would not be limited to just that. It’s easy to imagine how it could be used for non-emergency types of information sharing, too. For example, a team coach could alert team members of the date and time of their next practice. A parent could alert other family members that they had to work late that day.

Vine is Not a New Form of Twitter

The new service isn’t being designed to compete with the social networks that are already in place – it’s designed to augment and embrace them by connecting them all together for communication purposes.

While in beta, Seattle area organizations including Citizen Corps, AmeriCorps, Neighborhood Watch groups and others will help test the system. Security departments at Boeing and Microsoft will be involved in the private beta, too.

Beatbots: An experiment in social development and interaction

Laura Foy — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 17:49:00 GMT

Not only are these dancing robots adorable and fun to play with, but they are also a research tool. The BeatBots team joined forces with Hideki Kozima to study how children, specifically children with autism, interact and communicate. In a world with so much stimuli coming at us non-stop, the beatbots are non-threatening, simpler and easier for kids to relate to.