Jeff Sandquist of Microsoft talks about how the software giant opened up It was five years ago that Microsoft launched Channel 9, a community for developers. Jeff Sandquist, Senior Director of Evangelism at Microsoft, discussed how the company took the first steps to open up and build a vibrant community, at a time when Microsoft would be described as anything *but* open.Channel 9 was developed as a way for developers to interact with Microsoft engineers as well as with each other. The core content was videos of engineers talking about their products, supported by comments, forums, and wikis that facilitated communications and community building.Jeff shared that the night before the launch of Channel 9, Microsoft executives downplayed expectations, telling the Channel 9 team that it would be OK if not that many ...   [ Read more ]