Office 2007 Enterprise blog office-offline-microsp

The geek in question: David Salaguinto The profession title: Senior Author for Office On the internet So, I realize you compose for Office On the internet — but you also have a comic strip called Workplace OFFline. How did that get started? It was almost a dare. In 2007, one of my coworkers sent out an article about using comics for instructional material. I thought it was kind of cool, and decided to make a little comic just for fun, and emailed it to a few folks. People laughed, so I made another one. Within a week I had like 30 people about the little distribution list who wanted to see the comic. At that point,Office 2007 Enterprise, I realized that maybe people besides Microsofties might find it humorous, so I started posting the comics on MSDN. When I first started doing it, we had these goals that we thought were outrageous — I was hoping to maybe get maybe a thousand views in a month. Nowadays I'm getting like a thousand a day, so it's way exceeded the expectations. So, is Office OFFline your occupation? No, no. It's a total side project. I think I worked it into my position commitments as a way to “experiment with alternative forms of communication, find ways to build engagement with readers,” those kind of business-y things. me a bit then about your real profession then. I create content for Workplace Internet — that used to mean articles, but now we’re finding that templates, training, clipart, and video especially are more popular. About half the content I’m doing these days is video. I’m writing and reviewing scripts for videos that haven't been published yet. So, you're a screenwriter now? A wannabe, maybe. What have you learned from Office OFFline that you're bringing into your real employment with Office On-line? Well, I’ve learned that humor is a great way to engage the reader. I’ve also learned from watching my net stats that the comic generates pretty strong loyalty. Something like 40 percent of my visitors are repeat visits. And then at least half the comics generate some sort of comment, which is another thing we're trying to do. So, the comic has become your sandbox? Right. It's also a great way to learn about humor and what people find funny and what resonates, and how to say certain things without sounding like a corporate PR person. Have you ever gotten feedback that you've pushed your humor too far? A lot of my comics are about jokes about bosses or about Microsoft or about our products, and you could maybe say it's pushing the edge, but I've never had any feedback that I was going too far. There are a couple comics that if in hindsight I had to do more than again I probably would, but I've never gotten in trouble. It's kind of a testament to our management — they sort of trust me. What’s surprised you about Workplace OFFline? The fact that people thought it was funny was sort of surprising. The favorite comment I get is, “I can't believe Microsoft is letting you do this.” The people I work with are hilarious. I forget that the outside world thinks of us as the evil empire or the evil Borg. Did you always want to work at Microsoft? Oh, no. I never wanted to work at Microsoft. I was one of those Mac fans — I was about anything but Microsoft. I was a diehard WordPerfect user. I wasn't going to use Word. Lotus 1-2-3 was my spreadsheet. I remember when Windows 95 came out. I was offended by the idea that Microsoft would try to make Windows pretty. But after I started working here, I started realizing how great the culture is. When I started doing my comic, I looked around to see if there was an Apple employee doing a comic, or an IBM employee, or somebody else in the industry. And there just wasn’t. I think it's awesome that at Microsoft, we can do stuff like this. The comic could have crashed and burned — all my old Mac friends could have come to my blog just to trash it. It hasn't happened, and people seem to sort of get a kick that it's from Microsoft. What was your response to the Google Chrome comic? I had a chance to meet Scott McCloud, the creator of that comic, which is a huge thing for me, because I've been a fan ever since I read his books, Making Comics and Understanding Comics. We were at a conference and he was the keynote speaker, and somebody actually asked Scott if he’d seen Office OFFline … and he hadn't. So, I took the opportunity to introduce myself afterwards. I actually wish I had done the Microsoft equivalent of the Chrome Comic — I sort of missed out by not pushing the edge farther. Let’s push the edge with some links! Office Over the internet: office.microsoft.com Office OFFline: blogs.msdn.com/officeoffline Workplace OFFline on Facebook: facebook.com/pages/Office-OFFline/24533016984 David's how-to on making a comic strip with Visio