Communities are Music Festivals

People throw the “community” word around a lot at Microsoft and throughout the industry.  To be honest it is not one of my most favorite words or phrases even though my team’s mission is creating places like Channel 9 and 10.

I like to think of the end goal for sites like Channel 9 and 10 is to have something that resembles a music festival.  If you attend a music festival like Bumbershoot or Farm Aid what you notice right away is that often the most interesting aspects of the event aren’t always happening on mainstage.  The people who are attending and the things they do often are more interesting than the performers on stage.  From the folks selling food, people juggling or the children getting their faces painted. 

With Channel 9 and 10 this is what we aspire to create.  We dream of a day where the participation by our members either rivals our outshines the content that’s happening on the mainstage.

It takes a long time to get there but if I look at things like Channel 9 park, Minh’s recent Brokeback Redmond video and the depth of content on the Channel 9 wiki it makes me believe that this is a reasonable dream.  We will ship this week what we’re calling 10 Version 1.0 which our hope is that 10 V1.0 is a baby step for creating a place that enthusiasts will cherish as much as the Niners do Channel 9.

technorati tags: Community, Channel9, on10