On IIS Team Blogging, Part 2

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Back in this blog entry, I mused about how nice it would be to have more bloggers from the IIS product team. One thing is for certain - the IIS team traditionally has never dialed up the volume when it comes to evangelizing what we are doing and its importance as the foundation of the entire Microsoft web platform. We tend to be treated like a cog that has to keep turning and no one notices it until it stops turning. :-P Yes, I know that Atlas is sexy and so is ASP.Net, but they go no where without some basic support from IIS and Windows.

Anyways, I got wind of some new IIS Bloggers coming... people who actually have review commitments to blog. Some have queried me quite a bit about how to approach blogging, so of course I gave them the summary of what I have concluded. I told them:

  1. Have a target audience in mind and write to it. Like a TV channel, do not try to appeal to everyone because you end up appealing to no one.
  2. Have a "point" and stick to it. Like a TV show, people naturally gravitate towards the type of material they like. Your audience will gather, so do not change your point to chase after the audience. You have a target audience in mind, remember?
  3. Blog often. If the content is not fresh or active, neither is your audience. This is not MSDN.

Of course, lately I have been pushing at the boundaries of the second "point" quite a bit by trying a variety of blog topics (like the Office Move, Lumiere, Blog Upgrade)... which bring in more of the human factors but still remain within myself and audience. As I see it, this is just an extension of an original goal... disseminating information about IIS as well as the people/process/circumstances around building IIS can be interesting. Hey, it certainly lightens things up a bit more for me. :-) You can tell me whether you want more or less of that, of course.

Hopefully in the near future, these new IIS bloggers will start and tell me about it so that I can link them in... and give them a good greeting. :-) Hehe... I'll just put them on the spot by giving names, job role, and short personal blurb:

  • Bill Staples, product unit manager for IIS. He's charged with shipping IIS7, amongst other things.
  • Dave Cox, test lead. He owns IIS7 Configuration, Stress, and Administration (excluding UI). He also has a lot of context on WebDAV and IIS6/UNC having owned those areas in IIS6. 
  • Oscar Omar Garza Santos, program manager. He owns IIS7 Configuration, Administration, and other loose ends. He can explain.

Unfortunately, I still cannot get a IIS developer to start a blog. They have quite the story to tell if they would only write it all down. I have some candidates in mind, but I won't bug them now; they are already crazy with developing features and fixing bugs.

//David