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Blogging at Microsoft

Shel Israel writes:

UK Microsoftie Darren Strange reports that Microsoft now has 4500 bloggers among its 71,000 employees.  Both numbers show significant growth.  As irecall, when Robert and I were writing our first chapter of naked Conversations there were 2500 bloggers among 56,000 employees.  By the time we finished the book in October 2005, the bloggers were topping the 3,000 mark. This would mean that the number of Microsoft bloggers has grown by over 50 percent in about a year and a half.
By percentage, I’m not sure whether Sun Microsystems or Microsoft has more bloggers, but both companies continue to grow and continue to extol the virtues of doing it.
One interesting aspect in Darren’s report is that there is no longer any controversy about it. When Joshua Allen, became Microsoft’s first blogger, the first call to fire him for blogging came just a few hours later, as we reported in Naked Conversations.
Now it is seems to me, blogging is normalizing at Microsoft and that is what should happen.

In contrast I think Novell has a couple of dozen prolific bloggers at most. That is way below par.

The now never-ending WordPress mill

WordPress

From the dev lists:

The target release date for WordPress 2.2 is less than a month away, April 23rd.

Phew. Patch and relax. Update and relax. Patch and relax.

When Matt and the others from Automattic said they’d be stepping up the frequency of updates – I didn’t expect this 🙂

It’s good though. Lots of new features promised for 2.2 and especially 2.3/2.4 and beyond.

Live from CeBIT

I am in Hannover for a couple of days; announcing a new product at CeBIT – the worlds largest IT and technology show.

It is my first time here – and the scale is unimaginable. I was warned by colleagues about the traffic, the remote hotels and the expense – but until this morning I was unprepared.

The Novell stand is huge; with product demos; a cinema and a cafe to talk to partners and customers.

Novell Cafe @ CeBIT

Two press meetings down; a press conference and a partner briefing to go.

Written at: Cebit. Hannover, Germany

Off to China

Tomorrow morning I’m heading off early for a week in Beijing, China. It’s the first time for me; and to be honest the first time I’ve travelled anywhere where I really don’t have any ability to speak some basic local language and read my way around.

I downloaded a Rapid Mandarin course by Earworms from Audible – and I at least know some phrases. (Well – it’s another language I can order beer and coffee in ..)

Hopefully internet won’t be too shoddy during the week – I’ll be there with Laurence so I’ll make sure we post some pics.