My new role in Office interoperability

Brian Jones mentioned on his blog yesterday that he’s going to be pretty focused on Office 14 going forward and people should look over here on my blog for information about Office’s approach to interoperability and file formats going forward. I’d like to add a few more details regarding my own plans.

Over the next few weeks, I'll be transitioning to a PM position on our Office interoperability team, and I'm going to get much more involved in a variety of standards groups and activities including Ecma TC45 and the OASIS ODF TC, as well as INCITS V1 (the US SC34 mirror, where I've been an active member since January 2007).

Here's an overview of what I'll be doing:

  • Through Ecma TC45, I'll be involved in Ecma's ongoing role in SC34's maintenance of the IS29500 spec.
  • As implementers of ODF, we're getting involved in the ODF TC to stay on top of the latest changes to ODF and to help improve interoperability. I'll be our representative in that group, which I joined three weeks ago.
  • I'll continue to be active in INCITS V1, where I'm looking forward to learning more about topic maps and other emerging standards.
  • I'll be working with my colleagues to put on interop workshops and related events, to help developers create solutions that interoperate with Office and related Microsoft products.
  • Here on my blog, Open XML will continue to be a major focus, but I'll also be covering our work with ODF, XPS, the binary formats, and related technologies.

It's exciting to be part of Office's commitment to interoperability, and I'm looking forward to working with the people I've met through the IS29500 process and many other interesting people I'll be meeting as we move forward. There are so many smart and passionate members of the standards groups I'm getting involved with, and we also have many smart and passionate people working on future versions of Office here at Microsoft. It’s an exciting time to be part of this great work.