Wednesday, May 31, 2006 1:25 PM
Kevin Beares
So, what have I learned so far.....
I plan to provide a lot more data later, but I thought everyone would appreciate the preliminary results.
Now, this is still preliminary data as the respondent count to the SBS Community Survey is only 400, but from what I have seen as the results have been coming in, the percentages/ratios have stayed pretty much the same. What is amazing is that if you look at the answers to the two questions below and combine the results, over 50% of the respondents listed third party sites/ web forums / blogs as their number one or two resource. All of the MS owned sites were very low comparitively. Now, this is not to say that the respondents do not value these MS Sites and resources, just that they do not rate them as their number one or two resources. I think this is very eye opening.
Thanks,
Kevin
|
From the following list of Windows SBS User Community resources, which is the number one resource that you use?
|
|
|
Microsoft owned Blogs |
13 |
|
Microsoft Product Support Services |
6 |
|
Microsoft.com Support Knowledge Base |
56 |
|
The Windows Small Business Server Page on www.microsoft.com |
6 |
|
Third Party Sites / Web Forums / Blogs |
130 |
|
Windows SBS 2003 on Microsoft TechNet (offline and online) |
16 |
|
Windows SBS Newsgroups |
75 |
|
Windows SBS Training / Web Casts / Events / Chats |
10 |
|
Windows SBS User Groups |
82 |
|
From the following list of Windows SBS User Community resources, which is the number two resource that you use? |
|
|
Microsoft owned Blogs |
28 |
|
Microsoft Product Support Services |
12 |
|
Microsoft.com Support Knowledge Base |
79 |
|
The Windows Small Business Server Page on www.microsoft.com |
18 |
|
Third Party Sites / Web Forums / Blogs |
96 |
|
Windows SBS 2003 on Microsoft TechNet (offline and online) |
29 |
|
Windows SBS Newsgroups |
75 |
|
Windows SBS Training / Web Casts / Events / Chats |
21 |
|
Windows SBS User Groups |
36 |
About Kevin Beares
Kevin Beares joined Microsoft in July 2001 as a Product Support Team Manager and has been in the Community Lead role for over 5 years. Before joining Microsoft Kevin worked at Webridge, Inc based out of Portland, OR running their support operations. Kevin started out in 1991 as a Quality Assurance engineer for Micro Focus, Inc. providing technical assistant to VP of R&D coordinating and building testing programs for their DB2 compatible XDB Database Server product as well as running their beta program. Kevin quickly moved into a Customer Support role supporting the latest XDB Database Server product. In 1994, Kevin moved to Portland, OR to work with Serena Software, Inc as a support engineer and later as a Support Manager providing advanced technical support, on-site consulting and training for over 750,000 customers in the continental US, Canada & Europe with product support team of 40. Kevin then moved on to a start up, Webridge Inc. in 1999 to create a support team from ground up to support a new fully transactional Microsoft COM-based object application server for rapid development of Enterprise level intra and extranet Web Portal solutions called the Webridge Framework.
While at Microsoft, Kevin started as a Product Support Team Manager supporting the Visual Studio Data Access Components. Kevin then moved over to manage one of the five US Based Solution Integration Engineering (SIE) teams. SIE was an Elite Escalation Team dedicated to providing support to the most critical customer cross-product integration issues. In 2003, Kevin moved over to the Microsoft Operations Manager team as a community Lead and finally moved to the Windows Server Solutions (WSSG) team to be the community lead for the three products that they were developing, Windows Home Server, Small Business Server, and Essential Business Server. High Performance Computing was added in early 2008. As a community lead, Kevin drives the community engagement strategy for the WSSG Product teams, running the Feedback, Influencer, Online communities, and outbound communication plans.
Kevin graduated from the University of Maryland at College Park in 1989 with a Bachelor's of Arts in Sociology.
