Rob Farley

Rob Rob Farley has been consulting in IT since completing a Computer Science degree with first class honours in 1997. Before moving to Adelaide, he worked in consultancies in Melbourne and London. He runs the development department in one of Australia's leading IT firms, as well as doing database application consultancy and training. He heads up the Adelaide SQL Server User Group, and holds several Microsoft certifications.

Rob has been involved with Microsoft technologies for most of his career, but has also done significant work with Oracle and Unix systems. His preferred database is SQL Server and his preferred language is C#. Recently he has been involved with Microsoft Learning in the US, creating and reviewing new content for the next generation of Microsoft exams.

Over the years, Rob's clients have included BP Oil, OneLink Transit, Accenture, Avanade, Australian Electorial Commission, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the Royal Borough of Kingston, Help The Aged, Unisys, Department of Treasury and Finance (Vic), National Mutual, the Bible Society and others.

Did you mean to come here? My blog is now at http://msmvps.com/blogs/robfarley



28 September 2005

VP responsiveness

One of the things I really like about the community aspect of Microsoft is that it's given hooks a long way into Microsoft.

For example... some of you might've watched the video from Channel 9 featuring Chris Jones. Chris Jones is a corporate vice-president. He's in the Executives list. But in the video, he said something like "If you have any feedback about Vista, then drop me a line..." So I did. I said there should be a really obvious way of activating Vista (proactively, rather than just reacting to a popup in the taskbar), and a really obvious way of telling if Vista has been activated (like in the "Registered to:" section of System Properties).

And he got back to me within a day, and now we've exchanged a couple of emails about it, and he's suggested a new feature to one of the guys in his team.

I'm sure that a couple of years ago, this wouldn't've been nearly so possible. I'm not on any beta-testing list or anything - it was just that I had watched a video (well, had it on in the background while I was doing other stuff), and decided that I should give a bit of feedback. I could've gone hunting for an official beta-feedback address - but this was easy. Chris could've just pointed me at an address, or could've just ignored me. But he didn't. I like that. :)

Posted by Rob Farley at 1:47 pm