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by Randy Holloway.
Original Post: Microsoft Openness?
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Mark Cliggett asks, “[H]as the openness (what Randy called The New Microsoft) been uniformly positive, or have there been unintended/unforeseen negative consequences?“ First, I'm glad Mark dug up this old post. I'm definitely interested to meet with him and talk more about this when I come to Redmond in June. Also, I'm not sure if my opinion counts anymore since I work for Microsoft, but I'm only two weeks removed from being a customer/author/community member so I'll take a stab at this one.
My answer is that there have been negative consequences to individuals, but the community as a whole has benefited. For example, there are some community members that may have not contributed as much as others, but they managed to find themselves in the group of “special” folks that Mark referred to. As members of that group, they received access to information that others had to wait for. As a result of gaining this access, they may have been able to gain in stature based on their ability to write about these topics, and also may have gained financially through their writing (it is rare, but it does happen) or by promoting their personal businesses in training, consulting, etc.
So now that this information is available to a broader audience earlier than it used to be, some folks in the “special” groups may not have the advantages that they once had. But I don't think this openness and availability of information will make a difference to the really active members of the writing, speaking, blogging communities. Those folks will build relationships with people inside of Microsoft and out, and will leverage those relationships along with their own intellectual capacity to make the most of the information they have access to. Through that process, they will continue to provide value to other people and will get the recognition they deserve.
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