It
was five years ago that Microsoft launched Channel 9, a community for
developers. Jeff Sandquist, Senior Director of Evangelism at Microsoft,
discussed how the company took the first steps to open up and build a
vibrant community, at a time when Microsoft would be described as
anything *but* open.
Channel 9
was developed as a way for developers to interact with Microsoft
engineers as well as with each other. The core content was videos of
engineers talking about their products, supported by comments, forums,
and wikis that facilitated communications and community building.
Jeff
shared that the night before the launch of Channel 9, Microsoft
executives downplayed expectations, telling the Channel 9 team that it
would be OK if not that many people showed up on the first day. The
next morning, the visitor counter quickly reached 20,000 people and
media outlets were pounding down the door ask what Microsoft was doing.
“What
we realized was, it was a really special thing that we did … people
really didn’t get to see inside our hallways, so it was a chance to see
inside the walls,” he said. “Channel 9 allowed us to do that, to show
the people that the people making the software at our company really
care about what they are doing.”
When Channel 9 launched, it was
seen as revolutionary, but I asked Jeff if it really was. He said that
Microsoft’s roots were to use technology to connect with customers,
ranging from news groups to blogging. “Doing [Channel 9] wasn’t that
different, but it scales massively.”
When asked about the need to
give up control, Jeff said that customers will always say things about
your products that you don’t like. The only thing you can really
control is to decide if you want to participate or not in that
conversation. Microsoft already had a thick skin and was ready to have
tough conversations — after all, building software is a difficult
challenge.
Jeff closed by sharing, “Doing anything public opens
you up for feedback. Sometimes it’s hard not to take it personally.”
But clearly, the success of Channel 9 shows that Microsoft was ready to
jump in, and jump in with both feet to hear directly from developers
about what they were doing right, and where they should change.
