About two weeks ago I had the good fortune to spend some time at an offsite where I met Gary Flake.  I remember reading the Wired Magazine cover piece on Gary a few years back, but didn’t didn’t have any idea who he was when I was introduced to him at the offsite.  As one of Microsoft’s Technical Fellows, he’s basically one of the 20 or so smartest engineers in the company.  Spending time with a guy like that is a treat, and this guy thinks about stuff that gets me excited.  Data and systems.

It’s a good thing Gary is so good at his job, because when he gave me the initial pitch for Pivot I thought it sounded about as interesting as a new sorting algorithm [NOTE: the downloads are restricted to token holders, so if you are interested in getting Pivot, hit me up on Twitter and I will get you one].  It wasn’t a great pitch.  Only after I saw the software in action, and lifting my jaw off the floor, did I run back over to Gary and offer to rewrite his 25 word pitch.  My motives were not all together altruistic.  I wanted access to the software, but more importantly I wanted access to the tools to create my own data sets.

The unofficial, not blessed by Microsoft, but how I would talk about Pivot is: a client application to explore user created data sets along multiple criteria in a rich, visual way.  In short, it’s Pivot Tables + Crack + WPF.  The demo datasets that Gary was showing were interesting, but nothing about the data was actionable.  It was informational, but not insight generating.  My brain jumped to dumping CRM data into Pivot…or a bug database…or a customer evidence set.  Things that were actionable, traditionally hard to search, and would benefit from a visual metaphor.  Then, like a ton of bricks, it hit me.  What about Crunchbase?

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About 1 year ago I was fortunate to be working on the launch of Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform.  With the start of our new fiscal year, I was asked to take over a team which was responsible for the technical marketing for our developer platform product management team.  It’s been quite a journey, and I have been able to expand the scope of the products on which I am working.

Today, we are announcing the availability of the beta bits for Windows Server AppFabric, our platform for deploying and managing servers in the enterprise.  The needs of the enterprise developer now require that they think about not just deploying on the servers that they own, but also to servers that are running in the cloud.  The AppFabric technology is also integrated with the Windows Azure platform, allowing for the easy transport of workloads between your servers on-premises and to the cloud.

The functionality around hosting and managing services is critical when deploying new projects.  The AppFabric platform makes it easy to get a handle on what is running, and how it’s performing.  Additional functionality, which I believe will get lost in the press coverage, is the distributed, high availability cache.  Like memcached, our cache enables better performance for data intensive apps.  The high availability bit is new and could prove to be a game changer.

If you are already developing services and applications using the .NET stack, you are ready to go.  Head on over to the site and get the beta bits.  If you want to chat more about AppFabric, feel free to reach out to me.

Here in the developer platform product management team, we have kicked off a new campaign about the .NET Framework.  There are so many people doing so many amazing things with .NET, and we want to hear from you.  The site linked to above has stories from some of our customers doing some very unexpected things with the .NET Framework.

Those stories were submitted by our field, but now we’re asking you directly.  Are you a .NET developer?  Have you done something cool you want the world to know about?  Great, come share your story and get featured on the wall of fame.  Free traffic and visibility is never a bad thing.

For those of you willing to create a demo of your product using DemoMate from Impresys, you could win a car or a 12-day Galapagos Islands trip.  You heard me…Bob Barker says “come on down!”  We’re looking for interesting and unique solutions build on top of our stack.  Bonus points if you interop with non-MSFT technologies.  We have a distinguished panel of judges who will select the winner.

Last, if you are going to be at PDC, come to our party.  We’re working in conjunction with the great guys at .NET Rocks (who, incidentally, have a great dev focused podcast) to throw a party at 8pm in the Visual Studio/.NET Lounge Theater.  Free food, drinks, prizes…good times to be had by all.

In an effort to bolster the economy one job at a time, I have a position on my team that I need to fill.  We’re looking for smart, capable people who know how to get shit done, and have fun doing it.  You must have a passionate desire to make the lives of developers easier, and help get our products to market, and make them the best option for developers.  If you know anyone who might fit the bill, let me know.  If I hire someone you refer, I will personally get you a copy of Windows7 (when it ships of course).

Standard Job Title: Product Manager

Job Category: Marketing

Product: Developer Platforms

Division: Server & Tools Business

This week I have been spending time at a corporate offsite.  It’s been a pretty amazing experience, and I have seen/learned a ton of things about which I cannot speak.  That’s a bummer, because I was blown away by some of the stuff I have seen, but it’s internal only for now.  However, should you want to see some of this stuff, you might want to consider being at our Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles in a couple of weeks.

That said, one thing I can share is a story from a partner.  The presenter was awesome, and shared some interesting pivots on things that his company was doing with data.  It wasn’t data, but rather how they approached their customer support that really inspired me.  To make his point, he showed us a video of a storm chaser – the implicit statement was that for anyone who has ever been on a call with a Fortune100 customer when the service offering goes down, it was very much like being a storm chaser.  Just about the scariest thing you can do.  I would argue that it’s not the scariest environment imaginable, but that’s just me.

In order to think through how they were going to tackle customer support on a go-forward basis they decided that they would talk to the experts.  They arranged meetings with firefighters and emergency & disaster site workers.  They wanted to get into the heads of the very people who have to manage the crisis, calm the locals, and solve the problem.  How ingenious!

I don’t want to give away too much of what they shared, but I will share this tid-bit.  The best plan of action for learning how to handle support of irate, and expensive-to-lose customers?  Drill often.  Think about that for a minute.  How often do you drill your customer support team?  This reminds me of the movie Apollo 13, when Jack Swigert is getting a run in the simulator and blows it, and Lovell makes a joke along the lines of “if I had a nickel for every time I was killed in the simulator.”  The point here is that if you drill for it, you can solve the crisis when it arises with calm and focused effort.

What are you doing to train and audit your customer support?