Jon Udell Joins Microsoft

Microsoft takes a big leap and hires Jon Udell, the well known name from Infoworld. John Udell announces that he is joining Microsoft. The leading edge alpha geek, says that he would continue to function pretty much as he is doing currently, Viz blogging, podcasting, and screencasting on topics that I think are interesting and important; it means doing the kinds of lightweight and agile R&D and it means brokering connections among people, software, information, and ideas.

Jon has over the years evangelized a bunch of things to the alpha-geek crowd: Internet groupware, blogging, syndication, tagging, web architecture, lightweight integration, microformats, structured search, screencasting, dynamic languages, geographic mapping, random-access audio, and more. The Purpose : in his own words, the augmentation of human capability in these sorts of ways isn't just some kind of geek chic. He adds that it's nothing less than a survival issue for our species faced as such with really serious challenges. His solution : To figure out how to work together in shared information spaces. His choice of Microsoft is owing to its scale, the resources, and the business incentive to help him empower a lot of people to learn how to do that. Jon Udell is amongst my favourite when it comes to technology evangelism – Microsoft as indeed got a prize catch. Jon is a straight shooter – see his earlier view on testing in windows before trying out Linux covered here. Now we should see Jon display the same zeal and enthusiasm. I am sure, he would. No doubt, a great find for Microsoft, both for its image make up and Jon can be a big asset in mashing alpha geeks & civilians.