The first team I met with as a part of my Imagine Cup 2011 Coverage was Team A41, a Software Design team from Puerto Rico. Team A41 consists of Francisco Fernández, Amarilys Méndez, Roberto Durand, and Juan Martí of Universidad Metropolitana in Puerto Rico. They are mentored by Pedro Maldonado.

The team has developed a project called All 4 One Solutions, which is a suite of software that would allow scientists and organizations to crowd source research for environmental issues. It’s a mobile and web based solution designed for collecting as much data as possible.

The team identified an issue in the local ecosystem, and developed their project with that in mind. They feel that the database of information created by the crowd sourced efforts can be used to help scientists who face wildlife that destroy ecosystems around the world. An example they gave me was Coral Reef Bleaching. The data gathered can be sent to scientists around the world, allowing them to work without being around.

You can follow and root Team A41 on Twitter and Facebook. You can also support them in the People’s Choice Voting here. Be sure to follow me on Twitter as I get ready to go to New York for the World Wide Imagine Cup Finals next week. And follow the MSPSMT Hashtag here.

Until next time,
Patrick Godwin

First, a little background about Frank Arrigo. He’s been an employee for Microsoft since 1991, and has had a substantial role in community relations since then. He’s essentially a social media whiz, having blogged since before I was born. As he put it, he was “blogging before it was called blogging”.

At the beginning of the meeting, Mr. Arrigo asked us each a very interesting question: What do you think of when you think about Microsoft? A truly interesting question. What is the Microsoft experience? I hadn’t given it much thought before that moment, so it caught me off guard. Each of us brought a unique answer, like Joe Osborne’s answer: he pictured Microsoft as a sort of behemoth Pentagon-esque building. Some of us thought of the developer culture, while others pictured a typical corporate environment with cubicles and white collar shirts.

This discussion allowed the conversation to move towards what it means to be a blogger. What is a bloggers job within a corporation. That brought us back to a point raised earlier: blogging allows employees to show that they aren’t drones, brainwashed to do what Mr. Ballmer commands. Microsoft isn’t some sort of machine, hell bent on the complete domination of the world. It’s a living, thriving community of developers, businessmen, and other professionals. And we use our blogs to convey that back to the people who are interested in the topic. That’s why we see blog posts about personal issues, family, and vacations. It show’s that developers are in fact human, and do have lives outside of work.

He then presented us with some interesting facts: roughly 5,000 to 10,000 Microsoft employees write on a blog. Wow. That’s a lot of articles. But how does this help the User? What do they gain from reading about the experiences of these employees? Simple: connections. Around 2000-2001, Mr. Arrigo realized that maintaining a blog with an active community allows users and developers to network, creating an environment in which developers could receive feedback, share knowledge, and build professional relationships that would provide jobs down the line.

Mr. Arrigo was also an early adopter of Twitter. This allowed him to take his networking abilities to a whole new level. Rather then relying on traditional forms of communication like email and blog comments, he could interact with his readers in real time. This allows a higher quality of feedback and a way to extend topics beyond the blog. This essentially transformed blogs, making them living discussion prompts rather than static editorials.

We concluded are meeting with a simple idea: Blog smart. Talk about topics you would want people to read and not be ashamed about. Don’t write incoherent rants, don’t write foolish stories about how trashed you were last weekend. Blogs are a powerful tool, they can either make or break your career depending on how you present yourself online.

I just want to conclude by thanking Mr. Arrigo for taking time out of his busy schedule to talk to us. It was a great experience, and I thank you for all of the useful information about social media.

Next I plan on writing a post about my meeting with CodePlex’s Sara Ford. Stay tuned!

Thanks for reading,
Patrick Godwin