My weblog has been picked up by a couple of fellow Regional Directors, Scott Hanselman and Clemens Vasters. Scott and I are co-authors on Pro Commerce Server 2000. Did Tim get you into this too Scott?
Clemens is one of the smartest guys I have met. He is can speak broad and deep on any subject. I used to say that if Don Box is doing a presentation you should attend whatever the topic. I have added Clemens to my very short list of excellent speakers. Clemens has been here in cold Norway quite frequently, last in December on the Architect tour [in Norwegian]. As always, he gets awesome feedback. Clemens also came to Norway do the .NET Extravaganza on April 9th last year, the day Germany invaded Norway in 1940...
He also describes very good what a Regional Director is. Here is what he says about why you should talk to your local "Microsoft Regional Director:
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We are typically quite well informed about what's coming from Redmond. While there's quite a few things we are not able to tell you, we can certainly tell you what makes sense for you to do strategically and where you should probably make technology choices or take architecture approaches that allow your stuff to become a bit more resilient against future change.
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Customers of companies lucky enough to have one of the few Regional Directors (it's a personal thing, not a company thing) on board, have a very good chance to become nominated for early-adopter programs and get their hands on bits before anybody else does and even influence the product direction.
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We're pretty well connected to the product groups and therefore we can help quite well with hard problems.
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We admit that we may be biased towards Microsoft products (because our knowledge of their stuff pays for our family breakfast), but we haven't sold our souls to them (and we get no pay). That means: If you ask for a honest opinion about product XYZ, you will very likely get it and it may be an answer that would surprise you. You'd probably be surprised how many of the RDs know their NDS, Oracle, Linux, Solaris and Java stuff very well.
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You need someone who gives you advice on whether or not to pick a certain technology. Again, because we're neither Microsoft marketing nor sales people, there is no automatic answer like "take Microsoft This'N'That 200x", but it may also be "don't use Microsoft This'N'That 200x in this case"
11:38:36 PM 
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