ASP.NET Forums 1.0 >> 2.0 = Community Server :: Forums

Rob Howard of Telligent Systems (and former caching guru from the ASP.NET team at Microsoft) and Scott Watermasysk (creator of .Text) have announced major upgrade to v1.0 of ASP.NET Forums.

They've taken this opportunity to rename ASP.NET Forums 2.0 to Community Server :: Forums.

There are number of things that make all this of interest to me:

Firstly, Rob Howard is a Microsoft Regional Director.  Regional Directors aren't Microsoft employees - they're "independent developers, architects, trainers, and other professionals who provide a vital link between Microsoft and the developer community". I know about MVPs, but I didn't know about Regional Directors.

Secondly, at Microsoft UK we've built our community platform based on ASP.NET Forums. From what I can see so far, 2.0 version (now Community Server :: Forums) looks like a huge improvement (usability, RSS [yum], and plenty more I'll need to dig into). The great news (naturally) is there is full migration support from 1.0 to 2.0...we'll be getting on with this...

Thirdly, Community Server :: Forums is an open source project. Managed and developed primarily by Telligent Systems, anyone is able to contribute to the code base: full source code and a non-restrictive license.

All good stuff.