Who is Tony Goodhew?

Who is Tony Goodhew and why is he important to you as a .NET developer? Well – Tony Goodhew is a Product Manager at Microsoft who is tasked with putting together the plan for Orcas and beyond.

Don’t know what Orcas is? Well its the version of Visual Studio that will ship after Whidbey – Whidbey is the absolute next version of Visual Studio that will ship some time this year.

When you talk about Orcas you aren’t talking about the bleeding edge, you are way beyond the edge and you’re free falling. Once you get used to the uncertainly its kind of fun!

So why on earth would you want to know about Orcas, you’re having trouble coming to grips with Whidbey right? Well – the reason is that building a major release of Visual Studio is A LOT of work and planning starts for it way out – so if you want to get your features in for consideration you have to express your opinion early.

So Tony – I’ve got a few questions for you:

1. Do you have the BIG vision yet?
2. Is Orcas going to be the Longhorn development tool?
3. Are we looking at any new application development models?
4. Are you going to include my Code Builders feature idea?
5. How much of a fanatic do you have to be to get on an SDR?

 

The Fallout: Readify Bloggers

Yesterday I posted up an entry about United States General James Cartwright starting a blog and used it as a platform to encourage several people at Readify to pick up the habit (if done well it can be more expensive than smoking).

Now, a common fear for bloggers is the backlash that can occur when they pick up a stick and poke the company they work for. I’m pleased to announce however that I don’t work for one of those companies, the response on the internal mailing list was excellent – so here is the fallout.

Kim Peacocke already has a blog over here. She started it last week and has already posted up an initial message. So Kim – whats next on your list of things to post about – want some ideas? Why don’t you tell us what your typical day at Readify is like, do you like midnight distress calls from consultants?

Graeme Armstrong (our four star General) has decided to start an internal blog and has been thinking about doing it for a while. But he also put it into context and outlined an internal communications strategy that he intends to execute upon. One of the first posts on the cards is about some internal connectivity requests that consultants have been making.

I think Graeme should also consider a public blog – baby steps however, we’ll get him addicted and then move him onto the hard stuff.

Jon Post didn’t reply as much as he passed on some feedback from “Claire” suggesting that we might not want to hear what he has to say. Au Contrare Claire! I’d be interested in anything Jon has to say. Hey Jon – just head on over to BlogSpot!

Dan Green contributed to an internal thread today but didn’t respond directly to my post. Actually we poke a little bit of fun at Dan about his blog – he cops it sweet though. Just one post Dan – just one . . .