Tuesday Afternoon, TechEd

Well, I lost my Monday afternoon post due to a network connection loss right after I hit the Publish button. I guess as long as I'm on the spotty wireless network that's in at least some places at the San Diego Convention Center, I'll drop a copy of the post into Notepad until I've actually posted.

I'm sitting in on a session on using PayPal via web services. It's a fairly interesting topic, although the presentation is a little slow. I didn't actually care about most of the history of PayPal section, and frankly already knew most of it. This is also being held in a "cabana", which means it's in a huge room with sound baffle walls on two sides. The acoustics are terrible.

I went to a session on the Microsoft CRM SDK yesterday. That one was very interesting and moved along just fine. What's particularly interesting to me is that the stuff I had set up for Gryphon, my association management system I'd sold to a few customers in Maryland and DC, was structure very similarly, although of course not taken as far, as I had nowhere near the resources that Great Plains has. That's twice I've been ahead of the game with an idea on how to build a technology solution, but was unable to be the one to cash in big on it. Granted, I cashed in some, so it's not all bad, and there's plenty of time to have more good ideas. Anyway, if I were to ever go back to developing solutions for small to medium size business, say a relaunch of Heatherstone Digital ("Building connections through technology"), I would probably rewrite Gryphon to use Microsoft CRM under the covers. Hmmm....

I was going to attend another session today on CRM, but it was cancelled. Instead, I just stayed in the same room where they had a presentation on Crystal Reports. It's come a long way since the last time I looked at it, and incorporating such reports into an online solutions seems like a good way to do it.

We held our focus group on community strategy last night, and I think it went very well. In fact, as I've been sitting in this session, one of the attendees from last night is also here, and as he passed by me, he shook my hand and told me it was a great session and he appreciated the opportunity to be a part of the discussion. That's pretty gratifying, exactly what makes me tick. The strategy as prepared and presented last night was very well received. I think we're on the right track. There were a couple points when a customer would bring up a point - for example, when one of them asked for us to take the ResKit and turn it into a community source or open source project - that exactly matched things that are currently proposed internally and merely await a go-ahead and funding. I couldn't have coached them to say it better.

We have another focus group tonight, this time on the Zephyr project, which is all about methods of receiving feedback. There's three pillars: verbatim product feedback (my area), feedback on content (also called documentation, although internally they for some reason insist on calling it content), and automated server feedback. That last is a beefing up of the Watson channel with data beyond crashes and hangs, including things like server roles and instrumentation. I'm interested to see how this goes.

I developed a new model last night of how customers go for help. First, they do a search. Almost always, this is via Google. No one seems to trust Microsoft's search, and I can't blame them - I don't either. Then, they go to loosely structured methods for getting help, such as posting to a newsgroup or web forum. [As an aside, the presenter just said, "We have about ten minutes left, so let's talk about PayPal Web Services," which was the advertised point of this session. Seems like poor planning.] I call this loosely structured, because it's basically just a post into some kind of threaded discussion with a subject and a block of body text. The information provided to the potential respondent is only whatever the person seeking help puts in without any particular prompting or guidance. If, after some period of time and assuming such a place is available, the customer would go to structured help, where they are prompted for particular types of information to make sure the request is complete. For example, a place like that would ask for things like OS, product, version, steps to reproduce, and so on. Finally, at some point, if no answer is forthcoming, they'll go to a fee-based solution, such as calling Microsoft PSS, where they have a very structured and interactive process for gathering needed information and a well-established and committed service level agreement. So again, that's search, loosely structured discussions, strongly structured discussions, and pay for help.

How customers submit ideas for improvement works the same way, except for the final step, as people don't pay to give suggestions. It sure would be great if they did, but let's get real.

So, community is the second step and the usual source for the first (search.) The verbatim product feedback pillar of Zephyr is an effort to provide the third step. Today, I think there is no strongly structured opportunity that includes Microsoft participation, and that's a step that's sorely needed.

I had some comments on a totally different subject, that is, what I think of the last couple of days of USA Today, which is delivered to my hotel room daily. I have a meeting shortly, though, so I'll save that one for later.