Your advice needed – what should I do with this devx site?

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Hi folks – I need your help. My extended team looks after the UK MSDN site and delivers you the MSDN Flash every two weeks (for which I am the new technical editor – and slowly finding my way). This has been our only “vehicles" for sometime now to help UK developers explore our technology.

However prior to my joining in July, the team was dabbling with a “sponsored site” over on DevX – Microsoft Developer Tools and Technologies. As it stands, there are 3 Microsoft sponsored sites. Two from the USA (RIA and Destination .NET – which is the US ISV team) and ours from the UK. The UK site apparently gets targeted at … folks from the UK :-)

I have been asked to take over as Technical Editor of the devx site BUT I am just unsure what to do with it. Things I am kicking around include:

  • Rename it to something catchy?
  • Brand it more clearly as UK?
  • Make it more like a magazine/newspaper column – every 2 weeks I dig into a different theme or topic as a short article and at the same time significantly change the linkage on the page for additional resources etc?
  • Simply make it a doorway to MSDN – for folks who prefer to surf around devx to be enticed over to MSDN?
  • Make it a snazzier version of the MSDN Flash – hence update every 2 weeks with the Flash content with a little more detail etc.?
  • Narrow the focus (e.g. as the RIA site does). Maybe data- LINQ, Data Services, SQL 2008 etc?
  • Narrow the focus onto interop as devx has a wider audience?
  • Make it a showcase for all the content my team produces – links to video, ppts, best blog posts etc?
  • Something completely different…

Ultimately I like the idea that we have another way of talking to UK devs and in some ways it is easier to get content on DevX site than our own MSDN (don’t ask). Hence it is great that we piloted it. Now…what next…

Thoughts?