This is a copy of the email that I sent to the teams about the updated beta.silverlight site. As we prepare to move out of beta and into the production release, it seemed appropriate to have some of the background information posted. My work on MSDN, has really forced me to look at the workflow of many different types of developers. Broadly, more and more folks are learning to do development as part of their secondary and post secondary education – even though their primary area of focus is not software or computer science. Increasingly the tools and cost of the hardware make this technology accessible to broader swaths of people. The more interesting factor, is the set of pro and non pro developers that see (or at least believe) that there is an exciting financial opportunity in writing applications for phone devices. Given the increased accessibility and motivation to engage in development by a diverse audience, the need for a curriculum that supports diverse skill levels and learning styles is important to any technology owner. As such, my team and I have engaged in driving curriculum development and platform support in the development centers on MSDN.
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<originally posted 4/22/2011>
<edited for corporate confidentiality>
The MSDN developer centers are one of the interaction points where they form their opinion. Creating an exciting, positive experience within which we increase the efficiency of our audience will substantively improve their satisfaction and their productivity.
Over the past two months, the MSDN team has designed and built an experience and platform that would address the customer, the product team and Microsoft information ecosystem needs.
Problem Statement
The Customer Problem
From Blogs and Forum Posts..
- Hard to find the right content quickly (Discoverability)
- Each developer site at Microsoft has its own look and feel – which makes it harder to find content (Discoverability)
- Once at the wrong content, few facilities are available for me to get to the right content (Refinement)
- Difficult to learn a new technology from scratch (Get Started + Curriculum)
- MS Sites don’t incorporate the community enough (Focus on the community)
- My primary learning style is {code, articles, books, videos} and you don’t support that type on your site (Multiple Learning Styles)
- Some of the best content is written off Microsoft properties – but are rarely reference from MS in their overall treatment of any topic (Curriculum)
Welcome beta.Silverlight.net
The combination of the right content strategy, a simplified publishing path for non-and improved experience can drive an inflection point toward increased satisfaction and productivity.
The first iteration of the platform and experience has been delivered in beta form on beta.silverlight.net.
Customer Value
Site | Team | ||
Beta.silverlight.net | Site Team |
What’s next?
In the wake of the MIX release for Silverlight, we saw 45k visitors by the end of the day and lots of feedback from the community (e.g. “Wow, there’s a lot of content”, “I miss the blue from the old site”, “Community page is great – can we customize it more”). This, however was only the beta release and we have more work to complete the core feature set (e.g. integrated feedback throughout the site, voting, better video integration and more). Our goal was to show what is possible and to get your feedback on the site experience so that we could start a conversation with you.
Cyra Richardson
Principal Group Program Manager MSDN
Microsoft Corporation
425-703-4035