Shoutbox

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Originally posted by Juzzi
(You can copy it to this forum if you want).

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quote:

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Originally posted by Juzzi

This evening I went to Amsterdam to meet a few famous people from the MSN Messenger community, and some official people from the MSN Messenger team.

Who where there?
Microsoft Redmond (USA):
Scott Swanson: Group Product Planner for the MSN Messenger Platform. He admitted his title doesn't say anything, and explained he manages all stuff regarding to API's et cetera. He seems to be the one who's in charge of the World's Best App contest and the Messenger API forum.
Todd Biggs: MSN Product Manager, nice guy who's on the same team as Scott

Microsoft Holland:
Joost Bon: Manager of the Microsoft Network in the Netherlands if I got it right.
The goodies guy (I forgot his name ): He tests all Dutch MSN products before they're released. He's in charge of the Dutch MSN/WLM beta's, and therefor he's called the goodies guy .

Then there were two people of a Dutch company Oberon Medialab, they made the 'Nieuwskraker' bot for the Dutch newspaper 'Volkskrant'.

Messenger Community
Juzzi That's me
The Blasphemer creator of the popular Stuffplug plugin for Messenger Plus!
CookieRevised very active member of the Messenger Plus! community (and the Dutch Msgplus translator).
Inky Creator of BOT2K3
ZoRoNaX Introduced himself as a "Protocol hacker"
Speedy Kevin Creator of Speedy Messenger
Unfortunately Timothy (mess.be) wasn't able to come to Amsterdam.

How did it go?
I met TB & Kevin 5 minutes after my arrival at the Amsterdam railroad station. Because Inky didn't pick up his phone it took a little while untill we found him joined by ZoRoNaX. Cookie told us he'd come later. After our visit to the burger king we were heading for the cafe we'd meet the Microsoft people. It took a while until we found it (even though it was near the station), but this wasn't a problem, since the MSN people were running late as well. Cookie arrived shortly after us.

When Scott, Todd, and Joost arrived the interesting & fun stuff started. At start we all received our own 128 MB MSN Messenger USB stick . After everyone introduced himself and we ordered our drinks we started talking about... MSN/Windows Live Messenger! We discussed all the projects we're doing, and of course everything they're working on. We discussed Windows Live, Messenger, the World's Best App contest, and a lot more!

What did we get to know?
Here's a list some interesting, sometimes obvious things they told us about:

• The Windows Live Messenger public beta will start at the beginning of 2006
  
• Microsoft hopes to release Windows Live Messenger in Spring 2006
  
• Joost Bon visits Msgweb.nl on a regular basis
  
• Windows Live will be all about combining different Microsoft products. For example Windows Live Messenger, Live Mail, Spaces, and an Orkut/friendster like product will all combine contact information.
  
• All six of us will get an invite for the Windows Live Messenger beta, and we'll be able to invite 5-10 others.
  
• To be continued..

All by all, I had a lovely evening. I'd like to stress that I think Microsoft is doing a really great job with it's 'new strategy' to pay more attention to us, the community, and especially to developers. Scott's team has been set up for this only a year ago. Most of the new Microsoft products seem to fit in this 'new strategy', especially the Windows Live products (Microsoft Gadgets, MSN Search API, Virtual Earth API, etc).

I'll update this article ASAP, but I'm going to catch some sleep now

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