New Year - Resolutions and Information Request for YOU!

I hope all is well with you, your family and your extended "IT family" so far this year. How were your holidays? That is to say - if you had some to take or if you were actually able to take them... I didn't get any support calls or requests from anyone over the holidays (except from family members of course) and I stayed relatively faithful to not checking mail. I like the new Outlook 2007 Out of Office feature that allows you to set yourself out for a scheduled period of time - instead of a binary ON or OFF option. Almost looks like I started bright and early at 8 AM today. :)

My mail has been cleaned up (Inbox < 20). My electronic house is in order (don't ask me about my physical house - three kids under 5 with all the relatives means a lot of boxes and presents to organize) and I can turn the attention back to the team BLOG for a bit.

Rodney Buike has been doing a stellar job since joining the team at keeping new ideas and content flowing into the blog and IT Community. I particularly like the "From the Trenches" and "Your Solutions" Tags / Categories that he's invoked. They are a great way for us to share stories back to you that we've come across in our travels or from our contacts. You can participate in them as well by contacting us.

Damir Bersinic has been busy podcasting and doing Launch stuff lately. You'll see some posts from him sprinkled here and there over the last while with many more to come.

Myself? I've been lagging recently in posts while on the road. That should change going forward. I've been dabbling in some video podcasts around Launch activities using our SoapBox MSN video service just to see what they were like to produce. I'm trying to find a good blend of text, audio and video content for the blog and what is appropriate to be consumed by you - the reader / listener / watcher.

My resolutions for this year...

  • I resolve to be more responsive to peoples comments on the blog
  • I resolve to be more responsive in any emails I get
  • I resolve to keep my inbox and schedule under control
  • I resolve to get back in shape and shed some pounds I gained from touring last year. 

(I'll let the other team members post theirs if they like).

Speaking of which - I hope our newest Team Member should be posting soon enough. I've emailed the internal support alias to grant her author access to the blog - stay tuned for more details.

The main purpose of this email is to ask you a couple of questions. I figure it's about time as this blog is just over a year old (ish) now and our readership has grown substantially.  Please comment this blog entry with your responses or use the Contact form found here.

  1. How are we doing? 
  2. What is your take on the Tags / Categories in use? Are they helpful or should they be trimmed down?
  3. What interests you more: Text, Audio Podcast or Video Podcast?
  4. What do you want to see MORE of?
  5. What do you want to see LESS of?

That's it for now. In an effort to STIMULATE some responses to this - I'll sweeten the pot. From the comments received in the comment stream AND from any lengthier CONTACT comments, I'll randomly draw for a prize of a snazzy limited edition Microsoft TechNet BackPack from Heys that you've probably seen us use to lug our gear to and from events. Comments and Contact emails will be taken from a pool of entries from NOW until the end of January 2007. 

What does the pack look like?  It's awesome with great straps, padded SIDE laptop storage compartment, pockets and pouches including a multimedia access port.

Snazzy TechNet backpack

So get creative and give us a moment of your time. Give us some Constructive feedback and possibly win yourself a cool backpack to lug your stuff around.