Fons posted a review of Wangjianshuo’s blog on Chinaherald.net. It is the first formal and long review of my site. I guess I am the most interested person in the world to read this article. It gives me some feedback of the site from another point of view.

Feedbacks are always encouraging. I am very happy to see people posting comments on my articles; I will be happier if I see an incoming link; then you know how happy I was when I saw a review for my blog. Thanks, Fons. (I am not very sure whether the review was written by Ann Arbor, as signed at the end of the article, or Fons, who notified me of the review, or the two names are the same person. Let me assume Fons is the author. Correct me if I am wrong here, Fons.)

The IT-engineer Wang Jian Shuo is one of very few English language web logs that does not have the overly pretentious approach like most English language weblogs on China – including the China Herald. Here is Jian Shuo, telling about the daily worries of a Shanghainese citizen. Read on… (quoted in courtesy of chinaherald.net)

I don’t Mention my Employer Anymore

In the review, Fons observed that “The only thing he does not mention anymore is his employer.” Fons guessed “that they (the employer) called him in and had a talk. Companies do not like it when their employees blog about them. They might easy lose control.”

“Called me in and Have a Talk?”

Well. It was a reasonable guess. I would draw the same conclusion if I were an outsider. However, the real story behind that is just the opposite.

I never wanted to hide the fact that I am working for Microsoft, which I am very proud of. Microsoft is very open to blogging, more open than I could imagine. There are dedicated people within the company to drive the community effort, including newsgroups, online chat, web forums, and blogs. As you may know, I was the team lead for the Asia Community Support Team responsible to drive Microsoft employee in Asia (every single person within Microsoft) to join the newsgroups or local communities to help customers and listen to customers. The effort is continuing.

Regarding blogs, Microsoft encourages its employees to setup blogs and share his/her work “in a personalized, influential way, and to read about what (the) community is doing”. Check http://blogs.msdn.com/ to get a list of Microsoft guys who just started a technical blog. They are there to share what they are working on in a “personalized, influential way”.

More Microsoft bloggers are not on the http://blogs.msdn.com list than those on the list. For example, we have energetic and influential bloggers like Robert Scoble. He has made big impact with his blog.

In short, no body called me in and had a talk. If there will be some talk, there must be someone call me in and ask me to put more Microsoft information onto this blog. You know, it is the style of a Microsoft manager: “Hey. Do you think by sharing your knowledge on technology will help our customers? So just go ahead to do it!”

As an insider of the company, I observe so many changes inside the company that strike for better customer and partner experience. That is the reason I am still so passionate about this company after working here for 5 years.

The Real Reason

The real reason is simple. I just want to be known as a normal person, “telling about the daily worries of a Shanghainese citizen” (as Fons commented). Talking about job related stuff is out of the topic of this site. Actually, I am seriously thinking of creating another blog (not hosted on this site. Maybe another business oriented domain) and share my job related stuff with people who do business with my team outside Microsoft. Blogging is a better tool of effective communicating, then email, even website.

Back to Topic

OK. It is enough about the reason why I didn’t mention the little M in my blog in the recent one year). Thanks Fons for giving an opportunity to talk a little bit about the topic. Please be sure I am not defensive at all. If you give me a chance, I will tell you the happy life I am leading in business hours as I did for my personal hours.

I didn’t put the employers name because I don’t want the visitor to ignore that fact that I am just a normal citizen in this big city with 16,000,000,000+16,000,000+ people. (Thanks for Xu’s correction.)

P.S. another short correction: I rent cars and don’t own one yet. :)