In a previous post, I mentioned Darren Strange and his online demo. I got a nice comment back which is always appreciated.
In his comments, he says:
"Just think what it would cost to do that via "conventional" marketing channels. What would you do? Do a road trip of events? That would cost a fortune in time and money."
This got me to thinking about the days of doing roadshows and developer tours. For the Messaging API (MAPI), we started at one end of the country and, chasing time zones, raced to 10+ cities to get in front of developers. It was time and dollar intensive. Plus, if you couldn't get there, it was tough for you to get the information.
Fast forward to today. Apart from Darren and 1000s of other bloggers in Microsoft pouring out tons of information in blogs, online demos, etc, we have the grand ol lady, MSDN.
MSDN (and her cousin TechNet) are huge piles of developer information that you can subscribe ($$$) to in order to keep up with Microsoft's technologies. As of now, you can now download, for free, the full developer library here.
Then, on August 29th, Microsoft has a webcast with respect to using Microsoft Expression, the web developer tools. And you can get the tools and try them for free, here.
This is, on top of the new ecosystem around Windows Live Writer (free) and the Xbox ecosystem starting up. (not free, I know).
What excites me as a Venture Capitalist are the unlimited possibilities with all of these opportunities. The sheer number of "new new" things that will get created are because the core knowledge, the starting points are becoming easier and easier for everyone who wants to take a shot.
I read with interest Don Dodge's commentary on the failure of Web 2.0 Kiko. While there are lots of lessons learned in here, my view remains the same. There are a ton of opportunities, lots of willing customers and many many ways to solve problems. The teams at Kiko and other "oops" are giving you lots of war stories. Those combined with tools, tricks, tips, etc, make for exciting times.
Drop by with your stuff.
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