I was at a seminar yesterday with other attendees from various companies. Of course, introducing myself as a Microsoft employee, and compounded by the fact that the two instructors had worked with Microsoft in consulting capacities, I was automatically approached as an individual representative of the whole company. In this way, any reference that was made to Microsoft was addressed to me as if it was something personal. One of the instructors at one point asked my permission to tell a story about Microsoft that had nothing to do with me.

With this kind of response, which is just as true today as it was twenty years ago, I wondered if the same thing would happen if I was an employee of, say, Boeing. That is, would people expect me to be answerable or responsible for their experiences with a 737 in the same way they do about their experiences with a Windows PC? It didn't seem like it.

What I realized is that people approach Microsoft employees more personally because their own relationship to Microsoft is essentially a personal one--personal, daily, and often for-much-of-the-day interaction with a Windows computer of some kind. Their interaction with most other things, like a Boeing 737, is much more sporadic and much less personal (the airline owns and operates the airplane). And so the tendency is to then project that intimacy with one's computer--more speciifcally, the software--to a personal representative of the company that makes it.

It's also that 90% of computer users are on Windows, so any group that contains professionals--which are the kinds of people you meet in such seminars contains probably 90% Microsoft customers. And those who aren't probably have a strong opinion as to why, because of their intimate relationship with another computer system.

I have a hard time thinking of any other technological relationship that gets projected in this way. With automobiles, there is much more of a mixture--many manufacturers, many different models, so a representative from, say, Chevrolet, wouldn't have the same experience unless they were specifically attending a meeting of Chevrolet owners.

Personally, I'm not bothered by how people respond to learning that I'm employed by Microsoft. I'm not in the least way shamed by the relationship and, in fact, deeply honor it. Indeed, when I attend such seminars and hear some of what people experience in other workplaces, I'm increasingly grateful for the fabulous environment in which I'm blessed to spend my professional hours.

The teams at Microsoft working on the ADO.NET Entity Framework and WCF (ADO.NET) Data Services are wrapping up work for .NET Framework 4, and are ready to kick off the next round of features. This is really part of their open design processes, and they're right looking for your input on new features.

Here's where you want to go:

http://blogs.msdn.com/adonet/archive/2010/02/10/vote-for-future-entity-framework-and-data-services-features.aspx 

Data Services Page: https://connect.microsoft.com/dataplatform/content/content.aspx?ContentID=15540 
Entity Framework Page: https://connect.microsoft.com/dataplatform/content/content.aspx?ContentID=15541   

I know it's been a while (almost three months now) since I wrote anything about the Microsoft technologies I work with, and haven't reported anything more on the ModelCalc project that I started on last summer. Priorities do change, and throughout most of the fall I was very much focused on merging two MSDN Developer Centers, specifically Data and "Oslo" (now SQL Server Modeling). Both of these live on www.msdn.com/data, and I wrote a post on the Data team blog to tell that story. A big piece I wrote as part of this effort is Data Development Technologies: Past, Present, and Future, a piece that's been very well received (e.g. by Douglas Purdy, for whom I'm now working). I very much encourage anyone working with data development to give that one a read.

That merger was also timed with the Microsoft Professional Developer's Conference in Los Angeles in late November, which was the first conference I've attended in quite a few years. What worked great about the timing of the conference was that we immediately went into the holiday season after that, which was for me mostly a time to catch up with everything I'd been neglecting while focused on the other tasks, and to clean out all kinds of old data, emails, etc., to get a fresher start here in 2010. (I also spent some time figuring out how to combat comment spam on my blog here.)

That said, as my reality rapidly expanded last fall to include various data development technologies like ADO.NET, Entity Framework, and WCF Data Services, I've been focusing lately on projects to get myself up to speed on those goodies. In particular, I'm working up some samples around my personal reading history. I've been keeping this data first in a Word document and then in an Excel spreadsheet since I got out of college in 1990. The list of unique titles (that I've actually) is up now to 497, which is a nice set of data to work with. Eventually that whole set will be accessible through my personal website through WCF Data Services; before then I'll have some portions of the data out with the schema as part of other samples. In fact, the first piece I'm working on has to do with different ways to define and deploy database schema, as I've been working through the different options that Microsoft has to offer.

Any thoughts on such projects are welcome here in the comments, of course. (And I look at the comments before approving them, since most of them are garbage. But I do look and approve the real ones!)

As Microsoft's program manager in charge of the "Oslo" Developer Center on MSDN (since merged with the Data Developer Center http://msdn.microsoft.com/data), you'd naturally have every reason to expect that I wholly "get" what all this "Oslo" stuff is about. After all, I acquire, publish, and manage the DevCenter content that's intended to tell the "Oslo" story. [It's now called SQL Server Modeling, by the way, as we've retired the "Oslo" name.]

I must confess that this is actually not the case, at least not yet. Frankly, I still ask myself—quite often, in fact—just what's it's all for and what, in fact, someone really does with it--with the whole of it. Like many people, I can see how certain pieces like the "M" toolchain are useful in and of themselves (writing nifty languages and such), but when you start talking CLR and UML domains or "middle-tier" applications, I'll listen politely while trying to pretend my eyes aren't going glassy.

To my credit, this state of affairs is actually by design, which gives me a perfect opportunity to bore you with the backstory of how, after a hiatus of around 12 years, I found myself back at Microsoft and eventually working on "Oslo." People are going to ask about this anyway, so…well, OK, originally I wrote that whole section right here, conveniently forcing you to indulge my penchant for storytelling. But charity won out in the end and I moved it into its own piece.

So like I was saying, this present state of affairs is intentional. Since the beginning of February, when I officially began this role and could at least differentiate between Microsoft code name "Oslo" and a city in Norway, much of my time has been consumed in just getting my bearings on the project while keeping the DevCenter reasonably fresh. Combined with the demands of the "Oslo" May CTP and my wife's recovery from abdominal surgery, it was only in late summer that I was able to delve into a serious learning project of my own.

My hope is that this effort will lift me out of the slums of ignorance, so to speak, and in the process lay a path for other developers (and mind you, this particular post is just a start, not the complete story). For as much as being embedded in a team that eats middle-tier for breakfast (and effortlessly speaks of app servers, repositories, and domain-specific languages with every breath) makes me at times feel quite alone, it's certain that I'm not. Many developers are surely wanting to slake their thirst for understanding, even while they skillfully feign competence. (But that's OK. We're friends and I promise I won't rat on you.)

More...

After publishing Mystic Microsoft in 2007 I gave a couple of interviews that are available online.

7/15/2007: Appeared as a guest on Pathways, a show on the public radio station KBOO in Portland, OR. Available as audio.

11/26/2008: Appeared on Present! with Mel van Dusen on KMTV in Mountain View, CA. Video on YouTube.

Written June 30^th, 2009

This is meant to be an insert within a forthcoming "What Exactly Does One Do With 'Oslo'?" article; originally it was part of that piece but tended to make the whole thing somewhat lengthy!

Some of you may remember the work I did in my "version 1.0" career at Microsoft, which spanned the years between 1990 and 1996. During most of that time I worked as a software engineer in the Developer Relations Group (which eventually turned into Developer & Platform Evangelism) with the purpose of helping developers outside of Microsoft understand and apply our technologies. In this capacity I ended up as the industry expert on the OLE and COM technologies. This put me on stage at many developer conferences and saw the publication of Inside OLE 2 (1993) and Inside OLE 2^nd Edition (1995).

At that time, the focus was pretty much on desktop applications; client-server applications were really just starting to hit the mainstream, including web applications. And that was the very point at which I retired from the high-tech scene altogether. (For the complete story of my first career, which many people tell me isn't actually boring at all, see my book, Mystic Microsoft.)

Thus I completely missed out on the evolution of Microsoft's component technologies beyond the desktop. While people like my friend Don Box were circling the globe talking about DCOM, .NET, and all kinds of new middle-tier and enterprise-level stuff like Microsoft Transaction Server, App Server, BizTalk Server, and what have you, I was off doing completely different things (see www.kraigbrockschmidt.com). To what extent I fiddled with technology, it was pretty much still limited to client apps, managing a few Access databases, and putting together some simple websites. What I learned of .NET was pretty slim, just enough to be mildly confused.

Ironically, the chap who was my direct manager when I wrote this, the very visible Chris Sells, got started in all this shortly before my exit. Having started his path with COM at one of my presentations, he eventually worked with Don Box at DevelopMentor where he earned his living, as he puts it, "telling people how to minimize round-trips in DCOM." Since then he's been pretty deeply immersed in the heart of efforts like Microsoft code name "Oslo."

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[These are just pointers into articles that already exist on my website, apart from this blog.]

The Hidden Messages of Music - Regardless of the external or "explicit" messages of any piece of music, as expressed by its lyrics, there is also a hidden or implicit message that's communicated through its qualities of feeling, our own emotional response to the music, its quality of energy, and its consciousness, which is to say its inherent resonance with our subtle energy bodies. What's communicated in these dimensions is the real message of the music. February 2005; Updated June 2009

Instruments for Positive Change - To be an instrument for positive change, the most important step is to keep yourself positive and uplifted. This is the first responsibility of anyone wishing to serve the world. Written as a handout for a talk to a group of Americorps*VISTA Volunteers. April 2003

Questions and Answers on Popular Conceptions of "Simple Living" - Simple living is about moving to the country, making your own clothes, growing your own food, and chucking away technology, right? May 2002/July 2007

The Power of Thoughts and Words - Even the smallest decision between love and anger can affect the entire world, as shown by the story of an email battle that erupted within Microsoft in 1996 but was resolved by a simple act of courageous love. February 1996/March 2007

It's been a long time coming for me to finally get a blog going. That I've done it was pretty much motivated by the need to post materials related to my work at Microsoft, which will likely form the bulk of the first entries. But I'll also be using this space for non-Microsoft stuff too, things that aren't lengthy or polished enough to warrant being an article on my main website.

I've actually hesitated for a long time to create a blog because of the whole commenting business. Yes, I know this is a big part of the democratic information/web 2.0/social bit, but fact of the matter is that most comments on blog posts leave much to be desired where thoughfulness is concerned (and sometimes prove that the commenter didn't actually read the post). The last thing I really want when I post a carefully thought-out article is to have oft-random comments and rants carelessly negate the points I'm trying to communicate. In other words, I believe that an article should carry more weight than the comments, and that an article should be presented in its own context without the distraction of comments.

This way, the main part of kraigbrockschmidt.com is a resource for people who are interested in what I, individually, am sharing with them. Thus anything produced in that spirit will continue to go on that part of the site. I'll make a reference to that piece on this blog and invite comments here; that way, there is still a space for discussion that won't othewise interfere with the presentation of the work itself.

Most of my Microsoft-related stuff, on the other had, will go directly here because obtaining feedback is one of the primary reasons for writing such pieces in the first place. (A curious side-note is that at Microsoft I'm part of a group that's focused on 'modeling' where software engineering is concerned, while 'modeling' has another place in my life in terms of model rockets and trains, thanks to my almost three-year-old son.)

In any case, this blog is up and running now using BlogEngine.NET, which is an easy system to work with on an ASP.NET-oriented website.

For more about my intentions for the blog (any the name I chose for it), see the About "Luminarity" page.