Channel 9 has an interview with Nabil Pike, Lead Program Manager for Zune Supportability talking about the concepts of supporting the whole Zune platform. The conversation goes back to the beginning of Pike's career in Microsoft, his involvement with the Zune project and his experience so far calling it "a rollercoaster ride". Referring to the Zune's future he says it will be "surprising to everybody"...
Nabil Pike's interview on channel 9 is the 11th part of "The Voice of Support" podcasts series. In this one the man leading the customer support effort of Zune Software, Player and Marketplace explains how they've been working with the support model and the strategy behind it, almost as long as Zune had been in the development process.
Q: How was those 5 months to work for Zune?
A: It's been a rollercoaster ride! An amazing product to work on. I've been at Microsoft about 7.5 years on different roles and this has to be one of the most fun times that I've had since I've joined. We started with the team back in about May of last year, so we are around from the fairly early stages of the product development; we were figuring out what was gonna come to market, whats in the longer term strategies. It felt a lot like working in the small companies, and some of a startup experiences, that I had before I join Microsoft. Just amazing amount of energy, I've never been this locked in with a product team since I've been at Microsoft.
For someone like him, who has a passion for music, he can't imagine for a better place to be in the company. Describing how things were when he had different roles in Microsoft since his mid-20s, he says now in the Zune team there is a different culture than any other Microsoft product because of the music and the connected entertainment concept.
The fast Zune release put some pressure on the support team but managed in 2.5 months of continues work to prepare the majority of the information, available both to the support agents and the Knowledge Database (KB articles) online.
But Nabil Pike doesn't only talk about the past and the present:
You'll see new services, you'll see new hardware, you'll see new ideas coming out of the Zune team. I can't really talk about a time-frame yet but, you know the upcoming announcements, I think will be surprising to everybody. I think will keep people pretty excited about what's going on and about some of the new ideas that will bring to the music and the entertainment experience.
Download the podcast on MP3 or WMA , of the full interview on MSDN.