After two years of managing theSpoke community here at Microsoft, I’ve decided to move on to the next chapter in my career.  This means I will be stepping down as the product manager for theSpoke. 

However, I am extremely pleased to announce that we’ve already got someone awesome on board to take over managing theSpoke community here at Microsoft.  Say hello to Justin Barsotti.  He’s a member of the academic team here and will be taking over my responsibilities on theSpoke moving forward.  Justin is a smart and talented guy and he is ready to take theSpoke into the future.  Over the past few weeks, he and I have been meeting to ensure a successful and smooth transition.  (He also just got married, so wish him congratulations!)

The last two years have been a blast, building v1 and v2 of the site, seeing the community grow into many different countries and languages, interacting with theSpoke community members and the Student Advisory Board, working late nights and early mornings with the dev teams, and getting to meet some of theSpoke members offline and in person!  I think that theSpoke has come a long way from its beginning, especially when you remember that it’s not even two years old yet.  I also think that there are many new directions it can head in the future, and I’m excited to see what’s next.

As for me, you can still expect to see me on the site every now and then, so I hope you’ll keep in touch.  A big thank you to all of you – our founding community members – and best wishes to Justin as he takes over this exciting role.

Mario

This is a test of me cutting and pasting a picture from my gallery into a blog entry.

Well, we’ve been on the new version of theSpoke for almost two weeks now and I wanted to post an update here in my blog so everyone knows what’s going on.  This is going to be a little long but it should answer many of the questions that are out there.

First of all, thanks to everyone in theSpoke community for your patience with us during this process.  We wanted this to be as easy of a migration as possible, and for many of you it was, but we recognize that there have also been problems.  Please realize that we are committed to the success of theSpoke and are 100% committed to making this an awesome community that works for you.  If you continue to have questions or problems, please let us know about them by posting in the Bugs & Feedback forum or by sending me email.

Secondly, I wanted to let everyone know exactly what has happened with theSpoke v2 (in comparison to theSpoke v1) because I think it’s pretty cool, and because it might shed some light on the complexity of our data migration to this site.  When we relaunched two weeks ago, we took user, profile, blog, and comment data from 15 separate localized language sites and databases and moved it all into one database and one site.  The new site is running on top of the .NET Framework 2.0, and you can see some of the cool stuff from ASP.NET 2.0 on the site (such as the web parts on hubs). 

While there was some complexity, the good news is that we’re more global than we were before.  “How are we more global?” you ask?  Well let me tell you :)

How we’re more global than before
Since everyone from across the world is now participating on the same site, you can make your experience as far-reaching as you like.  If you go to your profile, there are two options regarding language:  Main Language and Other Languages.  Main Language is the language you want to see theSpoke’s interface in and the language you want to see posts in.  This should most likely be your native language.  If that’s all you want to see, then that’s all you need to fill out in your profile.  However, we have many users who want so see content in their native language AND one or more other languages.  This is what the Other Languages option is for.  If you check any of the Other Languages boxes in your profile you will see blog posts, forum posts, gallery updates, etc. in both your Main Language and all of the Other Languages you have checked.  Your UI will still render in your Main Language, but posts will appear in all languages you have checked.  So if you want to learn another language, check one of the boxes and start talking to others in that language – I’m sure they’ll help you out.

One other related point is the anonymous (not logged in) experience on theSpoke.  The site renders in the language specified in your browser’s culture settings.  So if your culture settings are Brazilian Portuguese, that’s the language you’ll see the UI and posts in prior to login.  In Internet Explorer, you can see your culture settings by going to the “Tools” menu, clicking “Internet Options” and then clicking the “Languages…” button at the bottom of the “General Tab”.

Testing and Current Status
I’ve seen a few posts about this, so I just want to make it clear that we did serious testing on the site before we migrated data over, but it’s just not possible to predict everything that’s going to happen when you move tens of thousands of accounts from 15 different languages over to a brand new site.  Things didn’t go perfectly (and I have sleepless nights to prove it!) but the good news is that we’re all here and communicating with one another, and I think that’s great.  Your help in finding remaining bugs and posting about them will help us continue to make improvements.

A special thanks to the guys on our dev team who have been posting updates to the forums, and more importantly, fixing bugs and issues:  Terry Denham, Scott Dockendorf, and Rob Howard.  And another special thanks to all of the Student Advisory Board members who have been posting updates as well.

Ok, so with that, here’s an update on the fixes we’ve made, the fixes that are coming, and what’s next.

What’s been fixed since launch
- Blog and RSS feed redirection – your old blog and RSS URL (like http://www.thespoke.net/myblog/mario/myblog.aspx) now redirect to your new blog URL.  This works across all of the old localized sites (so if your blog URL was http://fr.thespoke.net/... that redirects too.)
- Performance – we’ve been working with users to find out where the site is speedy and where it’s really slow.  What we’ve heard is that it’s pretty slow over dialup, but over broadband it’s faster than theSpoke v1 in most places.  In some places it continues to be slow regardless of connection speed.  We have some enhancements coming that we hope will make it faster for everyone regardless of connection speed (see below).
- Image and file migration – images and files from my space are now working in blog posts across the site.
- Critical errors with the Gallery and Forums – error pages in loading galleries and inability to see forums in certain languages have been resolved
- Forgot your Password and Password reset problems – some users were not receiving the “Forgot your Password” emails.  This is now working, but you have to enter the email address that's actually in your profile.  Otherwise we have no way of knowing the email address is associated with your account.
- Culture specific calendar control – the calendars on theSpoke now render in the specific localized languages.

What we’re still working on
- Performance – at the beginning of next week we’ll be making some configuration changes on theSpoke servers to improve DB performance.
- Getting everybody here – there's still a small number of users out there who are having trouble accessing their old account on the new site.  If you are still having trouble, email comment@thespoke.net and we will resolve the issue for you.
- Timezone error – Posts are showing up 4 hours ahead of the timezone specified in the user profile.

What’s next?
- Article publishing – the Articles page is lacking articles (and this is my fault!).  The Student Advisory Board has authored some awesome articles to post here.  I just need to set up their accounts as authors so that they can publish them.  We’ll get to this next week.  If you would like to write a an article series on theSpoke, send me mail and we can set up your account too.
- Blog Roll / Blogs I Read – We’ve heard from everyone that we need a blog roll or a list of “Blogs I Read” on theSpoke as it’s an easy way to check on all of your subscribed blogs.  I’m talking with the dev team on this next week. 
- Lightweight skin – The team that designed the UI for theSpoke v2 also designed a very lightweight skin for theSpoke that contains few graphics.  We’re looking to get that put on the site in the coming weeks for those of you who are accessing the site over dialup.
- Your suggestions and ideas!  Please keep them coming and we’ll consider everything we hear.

Again, thanks for your support and patience during these past few weeks.  You guys are the foundation of this community and your feedback, comments, and constructive criticism :) have been really helpful.  As many of our members from the Philippines say, more power!

Mario

Welcome to theSpoke v2.  Over the past few months, we’ve worked with students from all around the world to build a new version of theSpoke that is more global, more connected, and will take theSpoke community into the future.

theSpoke is a online community for students who are into technology.  It’s a place to discuss and share ideas, to post and answer technology questions, to get access to software, and to meet others from all around the world.

If you’re here as a member of theSpoke v1, we’re glad that you made it over to the new site and hope that your account is working just fine.  If you’re just visiting or heard about the site from a friend or colleague – welcome – and please sign up for an account and join the community (it’s free).

I expect there are a few questions out there about the new site and everything else – I’ve tried to answer the most common ones about account migration below.  We also have an updated FAQ page.  If you have a question that is not listed here or in the FAQs, please post it into the Bugs & Feedback forum and we’ll see that it gets answered.

Also, even though we’ve tested, debugged, and tried our best to make sure everything is working great, a new web site will always have a few bugs and issues to work out, so we ask that you be patient with us as we continue to improve it.  If you find a bug or have a question about how something works, please post to the Bugs and Feedback forum.

If you are having problems accessing your old account, please email me at mario@thespoke.net and we’ll get everything resolved for you.

Finally, a huge thank you to everyone who has been involved in the relaunch of the site:
- theSpoke’s first student advisory board.  These are 45 dedicated guys and girls from 26 different countries.  They have been extremely helpful in the entire process.  Hats off to all of you guys!
- the academic team at Microsoft, both in Redmond and all over the world.
- our technical and creative vendors – Telligent Systems, AvenueA-Razorfish, and MaximumASP

Again, welcome to theSpoke’s new home.

Mario

After a few more weeks of development and tweaking, theSpoke will officially move from this site to the new site (currently at www.thespoke2.net) this weekend.  Specifically, the site will go offline around midnight GMT on Friday August 26.  The site will come back online by Monday morning GMT, and we will all be moved over to the new site.  At this time, www.thespoke.net will take you to the new version of theSpoke.

Please remember that your blog posts and profile information will be moved over to the new site if you have logged on to theSpoke during the last 4 months (120 days).  After the migration has occurred, you will receive an email with a temporary password to access your account on the new site.  You can then access your blog and change your password as you wish.  (theSpoke v2 does not use Passport for authentication, so you will need to create a new password.).  Your username will remain the same.

Please make sure the email specified in your current profile on theSpoke is active and correct so that you receive the email to migrate.

If you have questions or problems during the migration, please email me at mario@thespoke.net and we’ll help you out right away.

A big thanks to everyone who has made this possible: the Student Advisory Board, the MS Academic team in Redmond and around the world, and the dev team at Telligent Systems.  See you on the new site J

Yes, it’s the news you’ve all been waiting for.  In just a few weeks we will be re-launching theSpoke with a new UI, some enhanced features, and a technical platform that will take us into the future.

Think of the new version of theSpoke as a bigger, better house for our community that will enable theSpoke to continue to grow, to become more global, and to connect members with one another in cool new ways.

You can see a beta version of the new site at http://www.thespoke2.net.  We’re still finishing up development so there are still some bug fixes, UI cleanups, and enhancements that will be done over the next 1-2 weeks, but you can get an idea for what the new site will be like.  If you find bugs or have comments overall, post them in the forums on the new site.

What does this mean for all of the existing members of theSpoke?  Well, we’ll be sending you an email in a few weeks with instructions on activating your account on the new version.  Don’t worry -- you will get to keep your existing username, and your blog posts, comments, and avatar will all come over as well.  The one thing we are not migrating is the existing forum posts.  The forums on theSpoke v2 will be organized differently on theSpoke v2 so trying to guess which existing forums belong in which new forums will be a challenge.  Therefore the new forums will begin with no posts.  Think of the new forums as a blank slate on which to start some vibrant discussions!   

What’s cool about the new site?