One year of The .NET Sweatshop v2

Well, it was a year ago that I finally moved from blogspot to the world of MSDN bloggers. While I haven't reached the status of "blog diva" (as Betsy Aoki describes them), I think 50 posts are a pretty impressive # (that puts me somewhere between Robert Scoble and Eric Rudder). I've been Scoblized, quoted by the Seattle Times, cited in a college term paper, and (on several occasions) been referred to as a woman (the curse of being named "Sandy"--sorry to burst your bubble guys, but I am a dude). Seems fitting that after a year of blogging, I am now moving into a much more community-focused role. At my going away party thrown by the p&p (in which they gave me an amazing enormous frame with several of my accomplishments put together in collage-fashion as well as a slighly-embarrasing cake with my picture on it), Peter Provost asked me what I would I rename the subtitle of my blog. Well, if you see it now, that should give you a hint of what I am on the hook for. And I can pretty much bet it'll still be a "sweatshop" to do what my team is beinga asked to do. My next post will cover more of the details of my new job (many of you will find my new role very interesting--maybe even moreso than the p&p role). BTW, I will still be at the p&p Summit. It's my "farewell" summit and it is featuring Alan Cooper, the "father of VB", as a keynote speaker (yes, you VBers out there can laugh at the irony of a VB guy spearking at a p&p event :->). I gotta be honest--it's things like this that make me love working on Microsoft. Alan's books on UI design are great and he has a such a pragmatic approach to the customer exerpience that while everything he say seems obvious, 99% of the product designers ignore those principles and we end up with convoluted products that are anything but intuitive. I know he has started focusing more on the software development methodologies, but I'm sure he still has passion around usability. I plan on re-reading his books before heading down to the bay area for the conference so that I can badger him and learn a thing or two. Maybe some of his mojo will rub off on my next project...

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