The Connected Show: Now With More Cowbell!

Three weeks ago I shared news of a new podcast started by one of my Microsoft colleagues, Dmitry Lyalin.  Since then, I’ve been collaborating with Dmitry on this effort, and now am happy to announce that I am going to be co-hosting the Connected Show with him!  Our first joint episode (Episode #5) went live last week.  Our second, “Episode #6 – Visual Studio 2010 & .NET 4.0 Beta” went live last night.

Getting into podcasting is something I’ve been wanting to do for quite some time now.  I have to give a HUGE THANKS to Dmitry for doing much of the logistical leg work in getting a show up and running and then inviting me to join him.  Let me tell you, it’s quite a bit of work!  We’ve already recorded about six interviews together, so we should have plenty of shows lined up for the next month or so.  It’s been a blast so far working on the editing, etc.

With me joining the show, we’ve made some slight changes and are adding more cowbell.  While Dmitry’s initial focus was to be on the Azure Services platform and Cloud Computing, we will now be broadening the show’s coverage to be on up & coming Microsoft developer technologies.  In keeping with the “connected” spirit, we will also be focusing on interoperability between Microsoft technologies and non-Microsoft technologies. 

For as long as I’ve been at Microsoft (going on 11 years), there’s been a perception that working with Microsoft technologies requires a homogeneous stack (all Microsoft) that doesn’t play well with others.  In the past, I probably couldn’t argue much with that perception.  However, reality has changed quite a bit over the past 5-6 years as the company has made lot of investments in, and commitments to, interoperability. 

When I was with Microsoft’s Consulting Service division in the early 2000s, I worked on the Microsoft Patterns & Practices .NET & Java Application Interoperability guide.  As you can probably guess, interoperability has been an area of interest for me for quite a some time now.  I hope through this show that we can educate folks on the many opportunities to work with Microsoft technologies without committing to a 100% Microsoft stack.  And perhaps we might change a perception or two along the way.

We’ll be tweaking the format as we go along.  For now, we’ll include some friendly banter before & after our interviews, along with discussion of current tech news stories in the Microsoft space.  We’ll be interviewing folks on the Microsoft product teams, as well as folks in the developer community working on interesting projects.  We may even try out the “panel” format every now and then if we get a good crowd together!

Thanks and inspiration for the show goes out to the many Microsoft focused podcasts already out there such as .NET Rocks, Herding Code, Thirsty Developer, Windows Weekly, and others!  We hope to be a new voice in the mix.  The show is new, and we’ll have to work hard to get past the “tree falling alone in the forest” stage. :)  The Connected Show is already available in both the iTunes & Zune podcast directories, as well as at: https://www.connectedshow.com.  Give the show a listen, please send us your feedback, and get connected!!!

Note: FYI, the Connected Show website is a custom developed ASP.NET site that is running on Windows Azure.  Dmitry is in the process of building out the features on it in order to showcase what is possible with Azure’s cloud services.  In the meantime, you may find some of the features/functionalities in a typical blog/podcasting site missing.  We’re cross linking each other’s blogs for now until we add the ability to host a regular blog-like feed with show notes, etc.