FY12 Plans and The Almost Nearly Last Book Update for Now

Well folks, vacation is over for most of us and it’s time to get back to work.  As most of you know I took a “blogcation” to spend some time finishing up the book (more on that later) and we were successful.  Beginning next week the posts start up again and I’m thinking of taking another swing at videos when vNext comes out.  I’m not sure how much you know about Microsoft but our fiscal year runs from July-June.  We are in the early stages of our FY12 and, today, we are finalizing commitments for the year, etc…  This year, in the interest of transparency, I am considering sharing some of the commitments with all of you.  I’m not sure if that is interesting or just boring so I’ll experiment and adjust based on your feedback.

Now on to the book.  This is a tough one for me.  I’ve never kept anything back from you all when it comes to the book and, I have to admit, I was seriously considering it recently.  Sometimes you just want to eat the sausage not see how it is made.  But you have been with me every step of the way whether it was  pointing out technical errors in the content, helping with the title of the book, or just letting me vent to some of you privately.  It goes against my nature and the spirit of this blog to keep things in the dark so here is what is happening with the book:

The book is scheduled to (finally) be on shelves just before the BUILD conference (https://www.buildwindows.com/).  Sara and I will actually be doing a book signing at the event and we are pretty pumped up about it.  With that said we seem to have overcome some of the delays that occurred and are on track to actually have the book out this time.  The single biggest issue to cause the delay was a problem the publisher missed that required Sara and I to reshoot every image in the book (about 2000 images).  Not fun.  If that was all it might have not been so bad but there were some formatting changes that were also missed by the publisher that needed adjusting.  We managed to get all the issues corrected and have just finished QC1 which means there is only one more set of minor edits (QC2) until we go to print.  In book writing, as in life, nobody gets everything they want and this book was no exception.  I had to sacrifice my beloved tables in favor of a more simplified format for the summary information this time around. As it stands now there are no serious impediments to getting the book on the shelves as planned.

So…The blog posts are starting up again, the new year for Microsoft is beginning, and the book will be out before BUILD.  All in all it looks like it was a productive (although somewhat frustrating) Summer and everything is back on track.  I want to add a special thanks to everyone for being so patient and appreciate all the support folks have been giving as we work through all the weirdness with the book. 

Zain