Gotta love Global Warming, Dallas is 64 at 6 am and expected high of 83 in December.

I wanted to share something exciting with you as this marks the second time I stepped back from the fire, put down the napalm and the rocket launcher and restrained myself. You see, the other day I said the naughty 5 letter G word and the floodgates opened - partners, press, competitors, Microsoft… why Vlad? why not Office Live? what, why, how.. So I figured, let me sit down, explain myself, detail the 5 year plan and our statistics and KPI and..

.. and then I thought: who would this benefit? My competitors, who are at best three years behind us, guys with fiber and static IP in their garage with an eBay server in the colo, disaffected Microsoft partners who are too lazy to put up their own blog?

And as I sat there trying to tone down my post to the point that there still may be one Microsoft employee willing to talk to me, I looked at my constituency above. Then I looked at my feeds, who else is talking about this? And as I sat there puzzled on whether I a just a brilliant visionary who is seeing how all this will play out or just the dumbest guy to speak on behalf of those who choose not to speak out.

Then St. Bradley herself popped up, and St Dansey and reminded me of my post about the SMB needing a new messiah.

So I did nothing.

Welcome to the grownup world where opinions and guidance matter. I happen to run a company driven on feedback and my partners and customers tell us every time we make a mistake. I do not know how Microsoft disaffected you and frankly I dont care. If you say nothing, do nothing then nothing happens and you get exactly what you deserve - nothing.

But you are too busy to blog, right? Good news on that front. The world is changing, fast, and if you arent talking about it, you just might find yourself with a whole lot more time on your hands than you used to.

Remember, Microsoft people arent evil (except Dave Overton, who kills kittens and makes USB thumb drive holders out of their tails) but without the custmer guidance in the open they will continue down the path set by someone far up, or far out of touch. Just how do you think that company works? Do you really think some entry level person at Microsoft you talk to is going to march into their bosses boss and bitchslap them and tell them they got it all wrong and they should listen to some lamer that cant even figure out a blogger account but thinks he can dictate the direction of multibillion dollar product line?

Come on.

Yes, come on. You dont matter. But if you cant stand up for yourself you never will. Nobody else is gonna do it for you.

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