ASP Insiders - Does the community need that ?

A lot of interesting comments are coming on the ASP Insiders story.

I think Rob Howard gave a good idea about what is it. So I am still not convinced , like Frans Bouma, Scott Galloway  and others.

But this morning, G Andrew Duthie (also member of ASP Insider and person I respect a lot by the way) come back, and strangely with a different approach than Rob Howard (also memeber of the cult) !!?

I inserted my own modest comments in the comment:

OK, as a board member of the ASPInsiders, let me see if I can address some of the concerns expressed here.

The short answer to the question "ASP Insiders - Do we need that ?" is that ASPInsiders wasn't founded to serve the community directly, but rather to serve the community indirectly by providing feedback to the ASP.NET team on upcoming versions of their software.

What is the point to create a hierarchy in the community ? Does it mean that if we want to talk to god, we need to address the apostles.
If I want to mention a bug or feature to be included in Whidbey, I will certainly not going to ASP Insiders, but rather blog to any ASP.Net member I can found now in the blogsphere. We have to move on, and not ging backward. For me, a pyramid of thoughts is the worst that could happen to .Net community.
And you prove there that this group is not independant from Microsoft. How are you going to explain to MVPs that now they have another official voice ?

ASPInsiders is NOT meant as "another MVP program" or anything like it. The criteria by which we select members does include community activity, but what we primarily look for is people who would be good candidates to provide feedback to the ASP.NET team (and potentially other vendors) on their products. Most of the people who formed the current board and membership are people who have been involved in the Whidbey alpha programs and have provided valuable feedback to the ASP.NET team on the early builds.

To give feedback to the vendors, we have now a plethoria of good websites, like 123aspx, to test and review their products.OK here we go again with the elite. How this group formed ? I am sure from a Microsoft ground.

And with all due respect to Rob, I disagree that the ASPInsiders isn't exclusive. Of necessity it is exclusive to some degree. Not everyone can be a member, as we simply cannot open membership to just anyone and have the group perform its function(s) efficiently. Members are selected based on nominations from current members who recommend people with solid expertise in ASP/ASP.NET and who have a good track record of activity of some kind within the community. Once a candidate has received a specified number of nominations, they are presented to the board for a vote. If passed, they are invited to become members. It's as simple as that. Nothing sinister or secretive about it. s whe

This is where goes the confusion. Your are not able to have a clear shared thought with your own fellow members. So for Rob, it's not an elite, for you it is. LOL. And the members who recommend others, sounds like masonry for me, or worst kind of satanic cult.

I can sympathize with your questions about whether another "community group" is necessary, but I hope that understanding the purpose of the group will make it clearer why the ASPInsiders group exists. And I'll be honest with you that we are still, as a group, trying to work out how to present the group to the public in such a way as to minimize confusion about where we fit, or why we're here. Hopefully my comments will reduce, rather than increase, any confusion.

Sorry but nothing in your post has changed my mind. On the contrary, more confusion and uselessness are the words I can think for now. And the word 'public' sounds for me like the minions.
Yes I welcome any community group but not built on top of each other, like a giant tasteless pancake.

Please note that while I am a board member of the ASPInsiders, my statements here are my own, and not necessarily the official position of the ASPInsiders or its board.

Well the last line sounds like a disclaimer that we already found from Microsoft.

So my point is still valid, and a lot of developers are surely agree that we don't need this at all. Anyway I will certainly continue to use the voice that blogging give to me, and continue to help the community.

And , as Scott suggested, if we want, we can start an ASP Outsiders group from now ;-)

 

9 Comments

  • With all due respect, Paschal, my intent was not to change your mind, but to offer my feedback on the concerns you expressed.



    You are certainly welcome to your opinions. I would only repeat my point that it's really not a matter of whether you or "a lot of developers" agree about the need for ASPInsiders. It would be nice if you understood what we're doing, but that's really not necessary.



    If you're really interested in understanding what the group is about and why it's deemed necessary, why don't you drop me an email via the contact link on my blog, and I'll be happy to discuss it with you further. As it is, the tone of your posts seems somewhat confrontational, and not oriented towards productive discussion. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding, in which case you have my apologies.

  • No confrontation there ! No it's absolutely not the point. And yes I will be happy to discuss, but not in private if it's regarding this post. After all your opinion and mine can be discussed by others.

    I respect your ideas anyway. But proving that Insiders will be useful for the community, let me please express my doubts. Did you see also that I am not alone thinking the same. So nohing personal there just maybe a bit of ranting ;-))

  • And IMHO, if you say is right I will not welcome this group being the official voice for the .Net team. After all, like now, we can talk directly about .Net without any barriers, and this is really a big plus.

  • The MVP program has some very serious flaws IMHO, the main one being communication with product teams, the insiders group gives it's members that inside track, whereas the MVP program is slow to get responses with "Middle Men" (Group Leads) inbetween MVP's and the Product Teams.



    The members are all people that are helping the community, and sometimes that help needs some interaction with the teams - the insiders provides this.



    As has already been said Blogs are a direct line too, but often they are flooded with rubbish and for the right people to spot the posts they need to reply to, is difficult at best.



    I am an MVP and an Insider, and I think that the latter of the two is far more benificial to both myself and the people in the ASP.NET community I help.



    This is of course my opinion :-) And I expect you to read what I have said and form your own on the matter.



    Regardless, I will still help the community in the best way that I can do, and at the moment that's by being a member of the ASP Insiders.

  • Phil et. al. I hope you don't think I was attacking you in any way (or other members of either the MVP of

    or ASPInsider groups), I wasn't. The vast majority of both of these groups (for ASP.NET at least) do provide extremely valuable contributions to the community (with one or two pretty obvious exceptions :-)). The only thing I took issue with was the attempt to 'spin' the function of this group as some sort of inclusive group representing the comunity at large - to put it simply, it isn't - it seems to be an attempt to rework the MVP program specifically for ASP.NET which is fair enough. What would be nice is if this group were made more transparent, allowing nominations for members from the actual community instead of a closed group of MVPs, book authors and user group organisers.

  • I think any group who wants to get together (elite or non-elite) to make the products we use better, then let them do it. It in no way will harm anyone outside of the group. I am not an ASPInsider, but I welcome the ideas of the group. Whether their program works or not, I don't see the point of anyone saying they need them or don't need them.

  • Paschal wrote:



    "And IMHO, if you say is right I will not welcome this group being the official voice for the .Net team."



    The ASPInsiders is absolutely NOT intended to be an "official voice for the .Net team", nor is it intended as a communication channel from the community to the ASP.NET team. If you have direct contacts with Scott or Rob, or whoever, that's great...go for it. We don't want, and won't accept, the role of go-between for that kind of communication. That's not our role.



    Scott wrote:



    "The only thing I took issue with was the attempt to 'spin' the function of this group as some sort of inclusive group representing the comunity at large - to put it simply, it isn't"



    You're right, and that's exactly what I pointed out in my initial comments. ASPInsiders is not inclusive, and cannot be, if it is to function efficiently and effectively, so you're right to protest an attempt to make it sound like the group is all-inclusive. That said, we do, as a group, do our best to include as many people as we can, and from as varied backgrounds as we can. We're not perfect, so it's possible that some people who would be terrific candidates for providing the kind of feedback that is our main raison d'etre will get passed over or left out. I regret that, but it's a reality with any membership group.



    "it seems to be an attempt to rework the MVP program specifically for ASP.NET which is fair enough"



    ASPInsiders is categorically NOT about reworking or reinventing the MVP progra. To be clear...the MVP program's main purpose is to reward community involvement and assistance to Microsoft's customers. The MVP program does NOT exist primarily to provide feedback to the dev teams within Microsoft, although some dev teams have used MVPs for such feedback.



    The ASPInsiders, by contrast, exists primarily to provide solid, reliable, and prompt feedback to the ASP.NET team on their ongoing development efforts. As such, our members must be experts in the technology, and must be both willing to take the time to evaluate new versions of the technologies, and must be able to effectively communicate their experiences, both good and bad, to the team. They also must be trustworthy (all members must sign NDAs), both so that Microsoft is willing to share advance information with them, but also so that members feel comfortable sharing their own proprietary information with one another.



    I would not argue that there is no overlap between the MVPs and the ASPInsiders. However, any overlap is incidental, not intentional. The two groups serve very different purposes.



    "What would be nice is if this group were made more transparent, allowing nominations for members from the actual community instead of a closed group of MVPs, book authors and user group organisers."



    Perhaps that would be "nice", but it's not realistic, for one reason. Trust. The only way to keep a high likelihood that only trustworthy candidates are put forth for membership is to only allow members (who presumably have already gained the trust of the organization) to nominate new members). If we allowed members to be nominated from the community at large, we would need considerably more resources than we have available to vet new candidates and ensure that they meet the groups membership requirements. For a relatively small volunteer group, that's just not practical.

  • GAD has said essentially what I came here to say, but I'll say it anyway: the MVP program is sponsored by product support; MVPs are recognized for the work they do in assisting MS customers, which indirectly benefits the product support teams.



    ASPInsiders, on the other hand, are sponsored by the ASP.NET team, and are recognized for the work they do in assisting the team to develop better products, and to educate ASP.NET users.



    Does that make matters any clearer?

  • With regard to Andrew's comment on exclusivity:



    "Not everyone can be a member, as we simply cannot open membership to just anyone and have the group perform its function(s) efficiently"



    I believe Andrew and I are making different points based on how we view the exclusivity of membership.



    From my point of view exclusivity means membership can only come from being annointed by a specific individual or from Microsoft - several people made the point that they didn't understand how MVPs were selected - or other groups that have existed in the past.



    The ASPInsiders have very clear rules and guidelines for how membership can be obtained. Furthermore, membership is determined by a group of peers - in my opinion - a very important distinction rather than one individual or by a group here at Microsoft.



    As both Phil and Andres pointed out too: it's not an attempt to rework the MVP program, but rather a group of people who provide us with feedback - and hence are all under a Microsoft NDA - and communicate directly back to us vs. an intermediate group (as with the MVP program).

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