Approximately three years ago, Robert wrote the first entry in his blog. Since then many more have followed and as a developer evangelist at Microsoft Sweden he’s pretty much setup never to run out of things to blog about.

Just like his co-worker Johan Lindfors, Robert spends a lot of time on the road, travelling from city to city, all around the year, brining the information to customers and partners.

Robert is also a regular co-host of the Swedish MSDN Radio podcast and author on the swedish MSDN website. You can also check out interviews, by Robert, on the swedish MSND TV section of Channel 9

What got you into blogging?

I started blogging after realizing how much other blogs helped me in my daily work. I wanted to share some of the ideas I had, and also write about solutions to different problems I stumbled upon, working as a system integrator and consultant at the time. That and being bit of a exhibitionist is what got me started.

What keeps you motivated as a blogger?

Once in a while someone spins up a new comment thread on the blog and that’s always nice. I get more contact mails from the blog than comments though. I often get mails with comments and questions on the things I write about in the blog which I find a bit odd. Why not put it in a comment so more people can take part in the discussion?

What profile do you try and give your blog?

I have a very technical profile on my blog, focusing on news, tips and tricks, code examples and other useful resources - on development In general and the Microsoft platform in particular. It is also a repository for various material that I produce, like slide decks and demo code from our road shows and seminars. From time to time I write about more personal stuff, but I really don’t want to make my blog too personal (although I think I have a personal way of writing about technical stuff).

How has blogging affected the way you work?

Before I joined Microsoft blogging was mostly a personal interest. Although my employer at the time did host my blog on their site and also used my blog in marketing, I didn’t have an outspoken commitment to write blog posts as part of my work role. That changed when I joined Microsoft .

It is now part of what I do in my daily work so I can set aside time to do research and write up posts. It sometimes takes more time than you plan to write the longer, a bit meatier posts. Especially when writing about security I like to double and triple check on things before I publish.

How has blogging affected the developer community?

I think it has had an tremendous affect on the community. Blogs are now the most important way of getting information and finding ways to tackle different challenges in the daily work as a developer. It has also become an important source when looking for more deeper technical stuff, best practices and experiences from the field - as well as an enormous repository for code sharing.

I think this has speeded up the flow of knowledge through the community, as code and examples on how to accomplish new things get spread really fast. It’s also a way for the community to have a direct open dialog with people at Microsoft about specific technologies in a way that wasn’t possible before the blogs.

How has blogging affected the software companies?

Blogging has made many companies much more transparent and has led to a greater visibility in how the work is being planned and what the roadmaps looks like. Blogging has also affected software companies in a sense that bloggers in the community can raise their voices when they see things they think is not right, and the vendors listen and adjust accordingly if the reactions are strong enough.

This has changed how development frameworks and platforms evolve today, beyond the old ‘get feedback during alpha test’ way of finding out a community opinion.

Should employers encourage their developers to blog?

I think blogging ideally should come from a personal interest and a wish to express yourself and share information and ideas. Corporate blogs with people hired to blog professionally tend to be quite boring where the lack of enthusiasm shines through. That said, I definitely think companies in general have lots to gain in allowing and encouraging their employees to blog I they want to.

If nurtured right it can really help the company gain visibility and also position their employees as cunning professionals in their areas.

How do you think blogging will evolve over the next couple of years as a tool for developers?

Hmmm… that’s a tough one. In a near future I hope we will see Microformats being used by bloggers more and in creative ways to exchange data between blogs and various programs and services. The micro blogging trend will pass (I think so just because I don’t get it myself :-)

We will probably see even more of a mashup between traditional blogs and social networking sites.

Do you have any success stories where blogging helped you in a project?

Absolutely – one of the more recent ones is a blog post I wrote about a new customer program called ‘BizSpark’ from Microsoft, aiming to help get startups that build applications on our platform up to speed by providing them with free software. Since the posting I’ve helped numerous people from different startups in Sweden to get in contact with the right people to get them into the program, which hopefully helped some of them off to a good start for their business.

Thank you Robert, for taking the time to answer my questions. Stop by Roberts blog to find out more on the things he’s passionate about.

This interview is part of a series of interviews I’ve conducted on the subject of blogging and software development. You can read more about it here

I could tell you that Rob’s a Senior Program Manager at Microsoft, or I could tell you that he’s been blogging for an impressive 6 years now. I could, but wouldn’t you rather know of the cool things Rob’s been doing for the developer community?

Back in the day Rob created the Commerce Starter Kit, now know as dashCommerce and lead by Chris Cyvas of Mettle Systems, a great source of information on how to build e-Commerce applications. He also heads the team which is developing SubSonic, which is described as a “Super High-fidelity Batman Utility Belt” on their website or more commonly known as an open-source data access layer generator with a cool feature set :)

But that’s not all! For the past 9 months Rob’s been working on a new open source commerce application, known as the MCV Storefront. This time Rob decided to screencast the development process, starting from day 1.

It’s being built on the new ASP.NET MVC framework and Rob set out to learn TDD by bravely exposing himself to the community, fully aware that his progress would be monitored by the TDD purists. The series is an awesome project and currently stands at 25 recoded episodes and he frequently has guest appearances by experts in their fields, may times the authors of the frameworks he uses. If you want to learn ASP.NET MVC, you definitely should check it out!

What got you into blogging?

Not sure really. I liked the idea of being able to write ideas online and to also keep a "journal" of sorts. Eventually I realized that if I blogged my ideas and discoveries, I would have a really nice place to look at how I did things before- which has worked out pretty nicely. It happens pretty often where I look up an old blog post to see how I wrote a query or LINQ statement :)

What keeps you motivated as a blogger?

People let me know that what I write occasionally helps them - that's pretty good motivation. I also like to write and it gives me an excuse to be creative.

What profile do you try and give your blog?

I try to entertain and inform, mostly entertain though. Writing is tough and I realize people are giving me some minutes out of their day and it better be worth it, so I pay a lot of attention to style and substance.

How has blogging affected the way you work?

A lot. I have my current job due to my blog :)

How has blogging affected the developer community?

If you're asking about my blog - hard to say really. Blogging in general, however, has been tremendously helpful to the developer community. 9 times out of 10 I find answers to technical challenges in blogs - almost never MSDN :) which I think is funny.

How has blogging affected the software companies?

It really helps them support their products, and as you can see companies like Microsoft really benefit from high profile bloggers like Dare Obasanjo, Phil Haack, and Scott Hanselman. Oh yah - and ScottGu :)

Should employers encourage their developers to blog?

Absolutely. But they also need to recognize the freedom of the blogger. Microsoft is great in this regard - I can write whatever I want to write about - they're quite tolerant. You can't say that about a lot of tech companies :). If you stifle what the person is capable of writing, you sound like a mouthpiece, which is boring.

How do you think blogging will evolve over the next couple of years as a tool for developers?

Bigger and more important.

Do you have any success stories where blogging helped you in a project?

Sure - the MVC Storefront is based on the foundation of blogging. So far it's been a very big success!

I’ve been tracking the MVC Storefront project for a long time now and it was fantastic to get the opportunity to have Rob participate in my interview series, thank you Rob!

This interview is part of a series of interviews I’ve conducted on the subject of blogging and software development. You can read more about it here

Professionally Sara’s the CodePlex evangelist, a program manager at Microsoft who is responsible for the feature development and scheduling for codeplex.com, Microsoft’s open source project hosting site. She’s been a blogger for over 5 years now and for the past 16 months she’s been running a Visual Studio 2008 Tip of the Day series.

Knowing how to get the most out of the tools which you use in your daily work is a sure way of increasing your over all productivity. The goal of Sara’s blog is to help you get the most out of Visual Studio by sharing an endless stream of Tips & Tricks on how to perform the daily tasks in a more efficient way.

Do you, for example, know the keyboard shortcut for bringing up the Quick Watch window? Or d0 you know how to disable the “Script Debugging Disabled” warning message that you get in VS2008 when you try to debug JavaScript and script debugging is disabled in IE? Or perhaps you’ve had a need to edit your project file and couldn’t figure out how to do it from inside of Visual Studio?

This is the sort of stuff Sara teaches you to do in her blog! By the way the answers can be fund here, here and here (in the order of the questions asked above).

Sara’s also the author of the book Microsoft Visual Studio Tips – 251 Ways to Improve Your Productivity, the paper version of here blog. She generously donates all the proceeds from the book to a scholarship fund to send people from her hometown to collage, with Microsoft marching the donation!

What got you into blogging?

Back in 2003, I was driving the effort to make Visual Studio accessible to developers who are blind or have low vision. My manager at the time suggested starting a blog to share some of my accessibility knowledge. My first post was on how to do accessibility testing, which was well received. So, that was all it really took, and I was hooked. I was blogger #300ish on what would later become blogs.msdn.com.

What keeps you motivated as a blogger?

Being able to share what I’m learning internally at Microsoft with the outside world. Blogging is very an effective tool for sharing knowledge. Also, I’m a very outgoing, talkative introvert, so blogging allows me to talk to my heart’s content without that “draining” feeling afterwards. =)

What profile do you try and give your blog?

Absolutely no politics or religion. My mom is Catholic, and my dad is Jewish and served on my hometown’s city council for most of my childhood. I figured if that policy worked for me growing up, it’ll work for me now. But beyond that, anything is fair game, provided there’s something that readers could benefit from it.

How has blogging affected the way you work?

There’s always the question in my head of “Should I blog this?” The question is just a part of the way I work, just like responding to email or using a mouse. It’s become second nature for me to question whether there’s a benefit to sharing this information with others.

How has blogging affected the developer community?

Personally, I think the best thing that blogging has done is given the developer community a voice to express their thoughts and feelings about Microsoft products, especially when changes are made based on that feedback.

How has blogging affected the software companies?

This question makes me wonder how many people nowadays check whether the software company has a blog when making a purchasing decision. Of course, there are numerous factors that go into deciding whether to make a purchase. But in my opinion, an active blog that is taking into account customer feedback would indicate to me a company that values its customers’ satisfaction.

Should employers encourage their developers to blog?

No. I think employers should support their developers if they choose to blog and maybe even ask their developers to consider it, but “encouraging” might be taking it a single step too far. Blogging isn’t for everyone, and not everyone will be comfortable doing it. And that’s totally cool. To me, encouraging means to gently push someone in a direction that you know they will benefit from, like trying a new cuisine or studying hard for an exam. Since not everyone benefits from the same activities in the same manner, it’s best for employers to support blogging activities, and encourage their bloggers to keep going.

How do you think blogging will evolve over the next couple of years as a tool for developers?

Given the rise of twitter and facebook, it will be interesting to see what happens to the amount of personal content on blogs. Maybe blogs will turn into purely How To or Do It Yourself content, like a virtual notebook that anyone is able to read, and sites like facebook become the person’s primary portal for all information, including personal info. To me at least, this is what seems to be happening with my blog. But then again, writing a daily series on your blog for 16 months makes you want to blog as little as possible outside of it. =)

Do you have any success stories where blogging helped you in a project?

There are way too many to share! But obviously there’s the scholarship fund. Then there was the time I blogged about what the conditions were like in my hometown immediately following Hurricane Katrina, which people still to this day thank me for doing, as (little did I know) it was their only source of info about the area. But getting back to a more developer focus, there’s the Tip of the Day which now no one should ever have to wonder “hmm, I can’t figure out what this option is supposed to do?” I could go on for hours, but fortunately it is past my bedtime.

And there you have it folk, Sara’s take on blogging! Thank you for sharing your thoughts on blogging with me. If you like Sara’s blog then why not buy a copy of her book and give it someone for Christmas? I hope Santa brings me a copy :)

Make sure to stop by her blog for a great Visual Studio Tips & Tricks resource!

This interview is part of a series of interviews I’ve conducted on the subject of blogging and software development. You can read more about it here.

If you’ve been reading up on the upcoming ASP.NET MVC framework by Microsoft then I’m confident to say that you’ve probably come across Phil’s name at least once. If you haven’t you’ve not done enough research on the framework!

Phil join Microsoft little more than a year ago as  a senior program manager, responsible for the ASP.NET MVC framework project. He’s managed to get an impressive 7 (!) years of blogging behind him and is still going strong – a prime candidate for this interview series.

On his spare time he leads the development of the popular blogging platform Subtext, which is based on a fork of the .TEXT blogging platform source code (you can read more about the forking here). Of course Phil powers his own blog using subtext and if I ever do get the opportunity to host my own blog I will definitely be trying it out, until then blogspot will just have to do ;)

What got you into blogging?

Originally, blogging was just a way to keep friends back home in Alaska (as well as those in Los Angeles) up to speed with what I was up to and as a way of keeping my coding skills sharp. I started a simple classic ASP blog back in 2001, but it wasn’t until when ASP.NET came out that I really got into blogging in a big way. That was when I discovered .TEXT. By then, I was really passionate about software and wanted to share that passion with others.

What keeps you motivated as a blogger?

Commenters and other bloggers, mostly. I love getting insightful interesting feedback from commenters as well as responses from other bloggers to the things I write about. It really creates this feeling that I’m part of a larger community of like minded developers all striving to move the craft forward and better ourselves. I love hearing stories about how someone tried to solve a difficult problem and found a blog post of mine that helped them through it.

Of course, even without other people reading my blog, I’d probably still write because I enjoy the process of writing. It often helps me to cement my thinking on topics and the act of explaining something often helps one to really grok it.

What profile do you try and give your blog?

My blog covers software development and technology in general, though I obviously tend to focus on .NET and ASP.NET topics. I try to keep a light tone in which I don’t take myself, nor the topics I write about, too seriously. After all, it’s not life or death matter we deal with on a day to day basis. I do share personal items and other issues of broader interest once in a while.

How has blogging affected the way you work?

As I work on items I’m constantly thinking of a blogging angle. “Oh, is that interesting enough to write about? Would this be unfamiliar to many? Can I make it interesting?” I kind of get obnoxious about it where I have too many ideas and I don’t know what to write next. On the flip side, when I’m stuck on a problem, or learning some new technology, I can usually find blog posts that provide very good coverage.

How has blogging affected the developer community?

I think it’s had a tremendous impact. Whenever I’m searching for answers on how to perform a particular task with code, I almost always find the answer in a blog post, not in official documentation etc... It’s created a culture of sharing that is really valuable in that we all lift each other up and make our jobs better for it.

How has blogging affected the software companies?

I don’t think software companies realize just how much they gain from blogging. Sure, there are many companies who use it as a marketing tool or a way to interact with customers, and that’s great. But companies are also deriving value from the fact that these blogs are helping to train their developers in learning new technologies and solving difficult tasks that might have taken many hours of research to figure out.

Note that reading a blog post is no substitute for actually trying things out and gaining experience with techniques and technologies, but it can often provide the nugget of information that gets you over the hump on a particular problem you’re trying to solve when you just need to get it working.Of course that productivity gain is slightly offset by the time spent just reading blogs at work. ;)

Should employers encourage their developers to blog?

Yes. Absolutely. Writing code is not the only important task that developers do in their jobs. They need to be able to write and communicate well. Blogging helps that. Also, many employers often have small development teams. Blogging and feeling a part of a larger community is a morale boost. At least it was for me. Not to mention all the other benefits I mentioned earlier. I would never force anyone to blog, but encouraging it is well worth it.

How do you think blogging will evolve over the next couple of years as a tool for developers?

I hate trying to predict the future because I’m always wrong. ;)

Do you have any success stories where blogging helped you in a project?

Just recently I was learning more about jQuery plugins and found many examples on blogs on how to integrate various plugins together.

Blogging has definitely affected the evolution of the ASP.NET MVC framework. We have several feedback avenues, forums, blogs, emails, stack overflow. Of these, I think blogging tends to be most impactful in the sense that when someone takes the time to blog an issue, they generally have spent more time thinking about the problem than a quick forum post. So very often, a forum post is a question that’s easily answered, while a blog post seems more likely to point out a flaw that needs addressing.

Thank you to Phil for helping me out with this interview. Check out his blog at haacked.com for a great source of information about the ASP.NET MVC framework and other developer related material.

This interview is part of a series of interviews I’ve conducted on the subject of blogging and software development. You can read more about it here

If you’ve ever looked into the field of O/R mappers and code generators for the .NET platform, chances are high that you’ve stumbled upon Frans’ popular tool LLBLGen Pro. With 6 years behind it, far longer than the average piece of software, LLBLGen Pro has grown to be one of the market leading tools for O/R mapping and has found it’s way into an impressive customer base.

Frans is the Senior Software Engineer at Solutions Design, a software company he founded in 1996 with the focus on database driven web-application development and the continued evolution of LLBLGen Pro.

He’s been blogging for the past 5½ years and 5 of those he’s been awarded the MVP reward for his community efforts.

What got you into blogging?

Mostly an urge to express my thoughts on software engineering principles and the material we've to work with. A blog is an excellent way to do that, as it's easier to write a blog entry than an article for a magazine.

What keeps you motivated as a blogger?

There's still so much left to talk about :)

What profile do you try and give your blog?

Down-to-earth, no nonsense thoughts about software engineering principles and tools.

How has blogging affected the way you work?

Not much, as in: I'm not doing my work differently because I write on my blog. Reading blogs from others obviously has influenced my way of thinking.

How has blogging affected the developer community?

For the people who have great interest in what others have to say, how they can get better etc., so in general the people who regularly visit conferences like Tech Ed and local user group meetings, who read software engineering magazines and articles: it has changed the community, as it has made the community bigger I think: everybody can start a blog and start contributing.

However, the majority of the developers aren't reading blogs, magazines and aren't visiting user group meetings. So I think the real influence is really minor because of that.

How has blogging affected the software companies?

If a software company has made it mandatory for developers to write blogs for internal feeds, it has influenced them to be more able to share knowledge and information. To the outside world, I don't think a lot has changed. Sure, some bloggers seem to have some influence on for example some decisions Microsoft is making, but frankly I think that's just PR.

Should employers encourage their developers to blog?

Employers should encourage their developers at least to read blogs. After that, developers should be encouraged to write about the things they learned on internal blogs so colleagues can learn from that and knowledge is shared.

I don't see why employers should encourage developers to write blogs for the outside world, and this might sound a little weird. The thing is that the employer is paying the developer to do work, not to write blog posts for non-employees.

A developer who writes blogs for everyone to read should be careful what's written: it can be great PR for the company, and for the developer, but it can also be very bad PR and can hurt the company the developer works for. So a developer writing blogs should always be aware of that.

So for a company it's not that logical to have every developer write blogs for the outside world, as not every developer is capable of writing blogs which are good PR and good value for the company.

How do you think blogging will evolve over the next couple of years as a tool for developers?

Blogging is an easy way to write articles without having to wait till an editor of a magazine approves it: you can fire up the blog editor, type in your thought, hit post and it's done. I don't think that will change much. What will change is that to start a blog which is read by many people will be more difficult because there are so many bloggers out there.

Do you have any success stories where blogging helped you in a project?

I've worked on one project for 6 years now (LLBLGen Pro) and blogging has helped getting it in the picture, to tell the world about it. Others writing blogs about my work has helped us as well, and in that light it has helped us a great deal.

A great big thank you to Frans for taking the time to answer my questions even though, I know, his work keeps him more than busy. Please visit his blog where you’ll find more than one post that will catch your attention!

This interview is part of a series of interviews I’ve conducted on the subject of blogging and software development. You can read more about it here.

Beth is an Online Content and Community Program Manager on the Visual Studio Community Team at Microsoft. She is responsible for producing content for business application developers and driving community features onto MSDN Developer Centers, more specifically the Visual Basic Developer Center and the Office Development in Visual Studio Developer Center.

When she’s not spending time on her own blog she tries to encourage and motivate people on her team to blog on the VB Team Blog and the VSTO Team Blog. If you are a Channel 9 follower, chances are you may have watched one of Beth’s around 30 interviews and if you haven’t, it’s worth the time.

To some that would be more than enough, but Beth also manages to find the time to appear at a large number of speaking arrangements as well, so make sure to check out if she’s heading your way anytime soon!

She’s been an active blogger for over 4 years now with a focus on the Visual Basic.NET language. There’s pretty much always something interesting to read on her blog and she's not one to shy away from providing extensive code samples and take the time to dissect them.

What got you into blogging?

I love mentoring people, especially on .NET development and architecture. I did a lot of mentoring throughout my career, mostly as a consultant or by speaking at conferences. When I started blogging, it was about issues and resolutions to software problems I encountered at my last company.

We built software for the healthcare field so there were a lot of interesting things to talk about. I figured if I was struggling to find answers then others may be struggling as well. So I made it a point to start blogging about solutions I found to our software problems. I quickly realized that this was an easy way to mentor and interact with the community. This was part of the reason I was recognized as a Microsoft MVP starting in 2005.

What keeps you motivated as a blogger?

I enjoy mentoring people and sharing my opinions on software development and life in general. I’ve made many acquaintances completely online through my blog – and have never even spoke to them in person. That’s a very powerful way to interact with the community and I love it.

What profile do you try and give your blog?

Anytime I’m trying to figure something out myself I consider writing a blog post about it so that others can learn from my experience.

How has blogging affected the way you work?

See the answer above.

How has blogging affected the developer community?

I think it’s had a huge impact by helping the way developers work. Typically we search for answers on the web when we need them and a lot of the time the answer is in someone’s blog post.

Blogging is great because you help the larger developer community through search, and you can also build up a following via people who subscribe to you via the RSS. So it works well for both reactive research-style development as well as a proactive learning-style. Plus people who subscribe to you can learn about your personality as well, and that’s important to build trust.

How has blogging affected the software companies?

I think it’s helped much more than hurt software companies because the more content about how to solve problems by using their products the better. Look at how much content is available for SQL Server, for instance. The more helpful content out there on a product the more inclined people are to use it.

At Microsoft we are highly encouraged to blog and be transparent to the community. Sometimes this makes people overwhelmed at what seems like a tidal wave of technology coming out from Microsoft. But blogging by the teams that actually build the products not only helps developers find solutions to tricky problems, it also makes them feel more connected and satisfied with them.

Should employers encourage their developers to blog?

I think it depends on the type of software company. For instance, I can see government employees not being encouraged because of security risks. But for general consumer and business software I think it’s a very helpful thing to drive satisfaction with their products and get recognized as leaders in the developer community.

How do you think blogging will evolve over the next couple of years as a tool for developers?

I think developers will expect much more social interaction just like we see on the popular social sites today. This will become the norm. Being able to interact, rate, and network with people and content in a natural and easy way.

Do you have any success stories where blogging helped you in a project?

Since blogging has really taken off I don’t think I have had a project where I didn’t find at least part of an answer on someone’s blog or on a forum. It’s amazing how similar developer’s problems building software can be.

There are a lot of people out there blogging that have “done X before” and are there to offer help via their blog. It’s why I love the developer community, there’s a lot of people out there on blogs and forums ready to help you out. You’re not alone!

I would like to thank Beth for taking the time out of her busy schedule to participate in this interview! Make sure you visit her blog at Beth Massi - Sharing the goodness that is VB.

This interview is part of a series of interviews I’ve conducted on the subject of blogging and software development. You can read more about it here.

Johan Lindfors is Technical Evangelism Manager at Microsoft, in Sweden, and is responsible for the technical evangelism which is bestowed upon the developers all around Sweden, including the swedish version of the MSDN website.

He’s known face to many developers in Sweden, not only for having been an active blogger for 5 years, but first and foremost from his eager touring around the nation with the MSDN Live road show, reaching out to thousands of people each year, to spread the gospel.

What got you into blogging?

During the PDC in 2003 I realized that blogging was an additional way in reaching out to developers with suggestions and ideas. My first posts discussed Web Services and Security and made me quickly realize that despite the tremendous amount of information available on the internet, the information was rarely rated or moderated other than by the publisher. That’s also why most of my posts are actually some sort of “filtering” others content, and especially information being published by Microsoft.

What keeps you motivated as a blogger?

If a post gets a lot of attention and especially comments, I feel proud and encouraged to continue posting. Naturally reading good posts and commenting can also motivate me to write own posts with associations to others.

What profile do you try and give your blog?

A personal opinion on the Microsoft Developer Platform.

How has blogging affected the way you work?

It’s now a natural day of the business. I’m trying to include my blog in presentations and other communications to give the intended audience a channel of communication and a possibility to comment on the resources we provide. It’s also my own primary way of communication broadly to the developer audience in Sweden.

How has blogging affected the developer community?

I think that the primary resource of information and problem solving is currently blogs and similar RSS-enabled resources. We still need to improve our understanding of search engines and the optimizations we can do in our posts to provide accurate and resourceful posts.

How has blogging affected the software companies?

A lot of companies are considered more open with their communication, more personal in the style and also interested to having more people visible in the cloud. This is both a positive and negative aspect to consider for a company. Having more people visible is naturally a positive side (as long as these people behave correctly and in accordance to the companies values and overall regulations) but also means that more resources are spent on people appearance and brands than on the overall company brand.

I think it’s actually possible that subscribers to a blog can be extremely satisfied with the blogger but in the same time be dissatisfied with the bloggers company (or the company he or she represents) but I do think that the blogger will decrease dissatisfaction in the long run in being more personal, direct and humble in the information provided.

Should employers encourage their developers to blog?

Absolutely, I also believe that if someone is disallowed to blog on the work time he or she will still blog in the spare time, and when being personal in the touch, how satisfied are you with a company that doesn’t allow you to do what you want (if you believe it’s a good thing naturally).

How do you think blogging will evolve over the next couple of years as a tool for developers?

I’d like to see more “team-blogging” when building resources for specific technologies and products. Instead of spreading the resources all over the internet and giving the value to the search engines, I’d like to give this value back to the bloggers and simplify the discussion ‘round common challenges and solutions.

Do you have any success stories where blogging helped you in a project?

I’d like to consider our transformation from sending out invitations to events and activities to now leveraging blogs and occasional newsletters instead as a success story for our blogging efforts. Also, I more often stumble upon developers that mention having found a solution or some interesting information through or even on my blog and that keeps me satisfied!

I’d like to thank Johan for taking the time to participate in this interview! If you’d like to read more from Johan, please visit his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/johanl where he writes about a broad spectrum of subjects related to software development.

This interview is part of a series of interviews I’ve conducted on the subject of blogging and software development. You can read more about it here.

One of the first posts I ever made as a blogger was entitled Is blogging the newest member of the Extreme Programming methodology? and after that I started thinking a bit more on the impact blogging has had on the development community and process.

I decided it would be interesting to hear what established bloggers had to say on the subject so I set out to find some bloggers to ask. I wanted to approach bloggers whom I follow and respect for their work, and ask if they wanted to participate so I pulled up the list of blogs I’m following.

After picking a selection from a (too) long list of bloggers, I’m subscribed to, I sent out the initial request and proceeded to work on the questions. By the time they were done I had gotten back the replies and the final result was amazing.

The following people will be participating

• Johan Lindfors (Microsoft)
• Beth Massi (Microsoft)
• Phil Haack (Microsoft)
• Jeffrey Palermo (Headsprings Systems)
• Rob Conery (Microsoft)
• Frans Bouma (Solutions Design b.v.)
• Sara Ford (Microsoft)
• Robert Folkesson (Microsoft)

They have all been given the same questionnaire and the result will be posted in individual posts, each being released on a different dates. I will update this thread with the link to the interviews (they will of course appear under the normal threads as well under the blogging tag as well) as they are published, so make sure to subscribe to my feed :-)

I hope you find their answers as interesting as I have and I would like to extend a huge Thank you! to all of them for helping me out with this!