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Hoo-boy, things get dusty in the blogosphere pretty quickly. This is a pre-amble post to a regular post to kick things off again here. But in a different way.
While I will start moderating comments again, for most regular posts I'm going to create a shadow unmoderated comment stream post over at the Mini-Microsoft Cutting Room Floor blog (aka, the CRF). Given the comment freeze I put here, some regular commenters found that place pretty quickly. And, well, new readers over at the CRF naturally discovered the entropy that happens rather quickly within an unmoderated comment stream. Yeah, welcome to what I had to read everyday and discard.
Around moderation here:
- I'm going to boost up moderation. If you think your comment is the least bit iffy, you'd best post at least a copy over at the CRF, too, unless you want to see those bits disappear into the grand bit-bucket in the sky.
- I'm not going to be particularly predictable about when I get around to moderating.
For those that care, let me share where I am with respect to this small corner of cyberspace.
Soon to be five years ago, I started this blog up because I felt Microsoft was a train not only off-track but also heading straight for a cliff. We were massively expanding and incapable of dealing with the exponential complexity that a fast growing Microsoft required of us. It appeared as though we were growing for growth's sake and without a particular elegant plan in mind. So I spoke up within the public wilderness of the blogosphere to ask, "Err, isn't this crazy?"
And. We. Just. Kept. Growing.
Microsoft dramatically changed. The stock price remained flat, with the occasional plunge downwards when our CEO said something that spooked investors or when a surprise $2,000,000,000 investment popped up. We burned billions upon billions of dollars into a game console, to which people say, "At least it has improved Microsoft's image." Okay, step one: don't have a bad image.
Early 2009, we publically reached that cliff and went flying off. There were way too many people on the train to let it brake in time and we had to boot a bunch of them out, old-school layoff style. Folks asked me, "Well, aren't you happy now, Mini? Microsoft is finally cutting back on people!" and I just have to say, "Excuse me, I'm too busy screaming my fool head off as we fly off this cliff."
Now leadership can say, "You know, that multi-billion dollar budget growth year-over-year just wasn't sustainable. We all knew that." D'oh'pe slap for that. After this, I had a stark realization that for all the publicity this blog has garnered and the awkward questions it forced to be asked, none of it helped to avoid that cliff we've been steaming towards the last five years. My reality check has been cashed.
<<edit: cutting out a bunch of blah-blah-blah-me-me-me stuff>>
In what seems quite appropriate for now, I'm stepping back in medium-sized way and letting this be an occasional hobby vs. an initiative. For what it's worth, I'll pick up the Twitter-ing over at http://twitter.com/whodapunk (fingers crossed they are more enlightened than Facebook and don't get stealing what could be my new bucket). See you here and there.
