Hello Community Server Team

The last couple of weeks have been very busy and very different for me. Two weeks ago today I relinquished my hold on the ASP.NET Sites’ Team, where for nearly the last two years I have been working on www.asp.net, forums.asp.net, weblogs.asp.net and wiki.asp.net. I transitioned to the Telligent Product Team, specifically the Community Server Team. Joining the CS team was actually a goal of mine since I joined Telligent in September 2006. Since I started in the business (early ‘99) I’ve always been part of a services-based team, building and maintaining sites for clients. For a few years I’ve wanted to take a peek at the greener grass on the other side of the fence to see what working as part of a product-based team was like. I am not disappointed - it has been great. And the team that I work with is made up of unbelievably talented and hard-working individuals. They are really amazing and I am really amazed to be part of such a team.

While I’ve worked with Community Server nearly every day for the past two years (and some before that, and .Text and ASP.NET Forums before that) there has still been quite a learning curve for me. There is a big difference between working with Community Server and working on Community Server. I imagine the same can be said for nearly any product. I hope my never-ending barrage of email questions to the rest of the team isn’t growing tiring. But I think I see light at the end of the tunnel and I think I’m starting to get warmed up.

My petty personal feelings of inadequacy aside, I’m really pumped about the direction we are taking Community Server, the new features we are adding, and the glut of just really cool stuff that I am seeing showing up in the build each and every day. Josh just today posted a really good overview of what to expect from the Community Server 2008.1 release this fall. 

BTW, yes we’re still hiring. If you are a good SharePoint dev you could work hand-in-hand with this guy (pictured at right), who is inarguably the best SharePoint developer in the country - at least that’s what he tells me. Finally, if you live and breath Community Server then consider joining us for our 2nd Annual Conference, in.Telligent 2008, in Dallas in October.