posted on Tuesday, November 16, 2004 1:00 PM by DougSeven

Codezone WW Platform Vision

The following is a draft document that is still being written. This information is provided in an effort to make the design and development of the WW Codezone Platform transparent and community driven. Feedback is always welcome.

 

GOALS

From a very high view, the goals of Codezone are to connect people in the community with other people in the community and with third-party community content, and to identify the best community contributors. This is achieved through various community connections, as diagramed below:

Connect Individual Contributors to third-party communities and third-party community Content

The platform should provide tools to enable an Individual Contributor to easily find content or threaded discussions in third-party communities that match the criteria the Individual Contributor has specified.

Metric

Track the number of times an Individual Contributor follows a search for content to a third-party community – essentially a CTR for third-party community content.

Connect Individual Contributors to User Groups and UG Events

The platform should provide tools to enable an Individual Contributor to easily connect with the User Groups in their region.

Metric

Track number of Individual Contributors that search for User Groups and follow the search through to the UG Web site – essentially a CTR for UG Web sites or events.

Connect User Groups to Individual Contributors

The platform should provide tools to enable an UG leader to easily connect with the Individual Contributors in their region who have expressed and interest in the technologies or topIndividual Contributors the UG is engaged in.

Metric

Track the number of messages broadcast to Individual Contributors by a UG Leader.

Connect Individual Contributors to Influencers

The platform should provide tools to enable an Individual Contributor to find a community Influencer and “watch” or monitor that Influencer’s activity, including content contributions, discussion thread activity, and UG events.

Metric

Track the number of watched Influencers.

Connect third-party communities to Influencers

The platform should provide tools to enable a third-party community to easily find Influencers who can create content based on technology and topic.

Metric

Track the number of third-party communities that source Influencers.

Identify Current and Future Influencers

The platform should provide a mechanism for tracking the community activity of all Individual Contributors to assist in identifying the best community contributors. This goal maps to the MVP and Regional Directors program, as well as future community rewards programs need to easily identify the best community contributors.

Metric

Validate the identified influencers against non-Codezone data.

 

 

NON-GOALS & METRICS FOR SUCCESS

The Codezone platform will not require third-party communities or User Groups to implement a single-sign-on mechanism; however, to adhere to PII guidelines, the Codezone Web sites may implement Passport.

 

While Microsoft will maintain Individual Contributor user profiles, and track Individual Contributor community activity and participation, we will not provide any form of centralized authentication or membership database.

 

Microsoft will not provide a centralized reward system or clearing house. We will provide the metrics, tools, and guidelines for a reward system, but each region will have the option of implementing it on their own.

 

BUSINESS REQUIREMENTS

User Profile / Registration – Pri1

A user profile is a collection of information about a single user. The profile is used to identify a single user across multiple third-party communities and User Groups. The User Profile must be PII compliant. Individual Contributors (including UG leaders, influencers, third-party community owners, etc.) will be able to register with Codezone using either their email and a password, or using Passport.

 

User

Benefit

Individual contributor

Allows the user to identify themselves across all activities that they participate in throughout the community.

Influencer

Allows them to maintain a user profile that can be used by Microsoft influencer programs to track community engagement activity. This can be used as a metric for determining their continuation in the programs.

User Group

User groups can search the profiles that have been made public to find potential users in their area and notify them of upcoming events.

 

(CodeWise) Federated Search – Pri1

The CodeWise Federated Search will be integrated into the Codezone platform. CodeWise Federated Search collects and aggregates third-party community content metadata through exposed XML Web Services implemented by third-party communities.

 

User

Benefit

Third-party communities

Third-party communities benefit by having their published content aggregated into the Federated Store, where it can be exposed to users worldwide through search tools in other community Web sites, and in the help content of the developer tools, like Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005.

 

Federated Search RSS – Pri1

Similar to the CodeWise Federated Search, Federated Search RSS will collect and aggregate third-party community content metadata through exposed RSS feeds implemented by third-party communities.

User

Benefit

Third-party communities

Third-party communities benefit by having their published content aggregated into the Federated Store, where it can be exposed to users worldwide through search tools in other community Web sites, and in the help content of the developer tools, like Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005.

 

(CodeWise) Publishing – Pri1

CodeWise Publishing exposes the content metadata collected by the Federated Search in Visual Studio 2005, SQL Server 2005, as well as future tools.

 

User

Benefit

Third-party communities

Third-party communities benefit by having their published content exposed to users worldwide through search tools in other community Web sites, and in the help content of the developer tools, like Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. The indirect benefit is increased traffic as more users see their content.

Individual Contributors

Individual contributors directly benefit by having more content exposed through search tools than just MSDN content, which gives them a great chance of finding the information, sample, or documentation they need.

 

Content Search – Pri1

Content Search is a utility that enables searching of all content in the Codezone database. This includes searching the content metadata collected by the Federated Search.

 

User

Benefit

Third-party communities

Third-party communities benefit by having their published content exposed to users worldwide through search tools in other community Web sites, and in the help content of the developer tools, like Visual Studio 2005 and SQL Server 2005. The indirect benefit is increased traffic as more users see their content.

Individual Contributors

Individual contributors directly benefit by having more content exposed through search tools than just MSDN content, which gives them a great chance of finding the information, sample, or documentation they need.

 

Content Rating – Pri1

All content collected in the Codezone database can be rated (articles, Web Casts, chats, discussions, events, and even people). The rating system is used to help refine searches and ensure the correct results are being provided to the user. Additionally, the rating is a means of identifying future influencers – a combination of number of contributions combine with the rating (or perceived value) or the contributions will be used to “bubble up” the best community contributors.

 

User

Benefit

Individual Contributors

Individual contributors benefit in two ways:
1. They get to active in identifying good or poor content available in the community;

2. They can identify better or more appropriate content by using the community ratings to filter up the best content.

Third-party Communities

Third-party communities get feedback on their content from the community, helping them identify what is good, and what is poor, enabling them to focus on developing higher quality content, and drawing more traffic.

Influencers

Influencers g