The title is a bit misleading as I have been in role for close to two years, but Windows Phone has been in market for a year.  During the course of the past year, I learned quite a few things, and have been asked a number of questions from the community.  I wanted to take this time to share some of those learnings, and answer a variant of the most common question I get (both internally and externally): “how are you guys doing this?”

Upon starting in role, the person who recruited me for the position (Charlie Kindel) walked me through what he calls the 5Ps.  This served as a very useful framework for thinking through how our team was going to tackle the very real problem of being in last place for developer ecosystems, and building excitement and driving recruitment for a pre-released mobile OS.

When we first met as a team, we sought to lay out what we though were the foundational principles for our work.  This is essential, as it makes it very easy to say “NO” to things when you have clear principles.  Since our fiscal year runs Jul to Jun, we have refactored our team principles for our current fiscal year.  We did this based on the experience of the year we had behind us.  With that in mind, I wanted to share some of the principles from the last fiscal year.  No real corporate secrets here, and in fact, some people will say that this is just common sense.  Maybe so, but the results have been building, with the new IDC/Appcelerator report out (expected press coverage), and it looks like interest in Windows Phone development is at an all time high.  Awesome.

Inspire Developers

The problem facing our team was essentially one of a cold start reboot.  We had to start with a completely new dev platform, new tooling, and the fallout of a clean break from Windows Mobile 6.x, making many of those developers angry.  The bottom line message for the team, and our extended team in our DPE org (Developer & Platform Evangelism), was to build the message and demonstrate the clear opportunity of building on Windows Phone.  For the first year, this involved heavy upselling of our investment in the long term success of Windows Phone.  However, it also necessitated that we have improved reach and effectiveness with our outbound communications.  This meant landing our stories with the press, but also engaging with developers on a 1:1 basis where possible.  An impossibility to execute with our team alone, the partnership with our DPE org led to the creation of our mobile champs program.  Having local feet on the street in the countries where we were selling phones was critical for developer support.

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Subject: Ms. Muffet would run scared from you.

Why Miss Muffet? Because we are looking for someone who has unbelievable _web_ skills.  Get it?  Web…Spider? No? #facepalm

Befitting our desire to stand out with our job postings, I give you one rendered in tweets:

Our team has a serious bunch of people who take #winning very seriously…but we have no tigers’ blood #ImportTariff

Specifically, we are on the Windows Phone Apps org, and we are responsible for the App Plat and the breadth dev ecosystem #WhupAppsForShort

We are looking for an amazing web technologist who wants to advance to state of the web on mobile devices #LovesWindowsPhone

Our purpose is clear: “Cultivate a developer ecosystem that delivers outstanding mobile experiences.”  #TopThatGoogle

You will have broad responsibility: ensuring top 20 web sites look great on WP & educating breadth web devs about the same #YouAreABeautician

You will find those places where WindowsPhone web stands out against the competition, and shine a light on it #CompeteToWin

You must have the mind of a genius but the heart of a teacher, because we have to reach loads of web devs #ScaleItUp

This will be an incredibly challenging position, requiring lots of cross group collaboration #TheWhatAndTheHow

There are 2 screening questions: 1) do you code as a hobby & 2) have you successfully marketed a dev platform before? #HardToFind

The person who thinks they can and the person who thinks they can’t are both right #WhichOneAreYou

You can read about the job here: #WhatAreYouWaitingFor

So I’m sick.  Sick and travel are never fun.  Recycled air on the plane is usually the culprit.  Sick sucks.  In particular, it sucks when you are out of your element.  Travelling in the US usually affords you the ability to walk into any familiar looking pharmacy and choose the appropriate cold medicine from the dizzying array of choices.

International travel comes with its challenges, but most of my travel for the last few years has been to familiar western culture countries.  When you get sick, you can at least understand some of what you are seeing in the store.  Identifying the cold medicine in Barcelona, even with Catalan, was doable.  My Spanish is passable enough that I can get by in most western European countries.  Well, Finland was challenging, but they speak very good English.

China is an all together different problem.  First, the character set is foreign to me.  Second, Beijing is huge.  HUGE.  I am having trouble orienting myself because no matter what direction I look, there are buildings.  Lots of buildings.  This is the first city I have ever been in where I didn’t immediately know where I could walk from my hotel to get basic snacks/soda.  I’m staying in a relatively nice hotel too, but there is no shop in the hotel.  Oh, and English is not a first class language here, so good luck when you have to deal with the local shop owner.  Hit or miss.

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