Although I blog internally at Microsoft and kept up a family web site with regular updates going since our first boy arrived in the late 90’s (a barn burner of bits), I thought it would be interesting to kick a blog off on MSDN.
I’ve titled the blog “Satisfy Me” more as a reference to the movie of a similar name, where the star/director spends a month overeating fast food. Not that I’m going to live on a diet of burgers and fries for a 30 days to prove a point. About a year and a half ago I took on a new role at MS to work with our business groups (aka as our “product families”) on their efforts to improve satisfaction with our customers and partners to “ensure that customers and partners have positive experiences with Microsoft,” as noted on MS.com. As part of Engineering Excellence, we coordinate cross-group efforts with the Sales, Marketing, and Service Group (SMSG).
Coming to this initiative from the Windows Client group around WinHEC 2004, I explained my new role to a friend in Silicon Valley what I was doing day to day. “That’s such an oxymoron, ‘product satisfaction’ and ‘Microsoft’ in the same sentence. Did you know one of the top oxymorons on the web is ‘Microsoft Works’?”
For what it’s worth, I hope that you get something out of these musings. (And I vow to eliminate the terms ‘cross-group’ and ‘strategic initiative’ from my vocabulary.)
We’ll see how long it takes the monkeys to type out the blog entries.