I frequently bad-mouth a number of MS products on my blog (notably Office, and, Office), so it's only fair that I spout off when I see good things too. (That, and the fact that despite the fact that I bad-mouth Office, I'm really an MS fanboy when it comes down to it.)

I recently attended a Dev Lab on the Redmond campus for VSIP (Visual Studio Integration Partners) goodness. It was very similar to the ASP.NET 2.0 preview I attended some years ago in manner and tone. What impresses me most about these types of 'events' is the transparency.

The best way to describe these events is to describe them as MS teams very enthusiastically showing off where they hope their products are heading - and realizing, in the middle of their efforts to make things awesome, that they should probably lift their heads up from the computer where they're typing furiously to code the next app that will take over the world (in its spherer), and take a look around to see if they're still on track. And to do that they show off where they're headed, and solicit feedback from customers/experts. And what's killer is that they LISTEN. As a CHEESHY example,  the button in the Solution Explorer for Visual Web Developer that launches the ASP.NET Configuration Wizard was MY idea - I suggested it during the 2.0 preview a few years ago. Now, I can't be sure that somebody else(s) didn't think of it too, but when I suggested it, they stopped the presentation for a second, wrote it down on paper, and then moved on - and now it's in VS.NET 2005. That's a pimbly example though (though, it DID make sense to provide a link to your web from within VS.NET if you're going to have all sorts of wizardy-goodness, etc.).

Far more important than that simple example is the fact that they do tend to listen architectural concerns, and beefs from people when attendees think that MS is missing the mark. Sometimes they're not able to move on concerns, and they're quite transparent about it - "Well, we won't be able to do that because of... " etc. But the point is that, for the most-part, they're brutally honest with their constraints and foregone conclusions and how that impacts suggestions.

I guess what I really appreciate is how transparent everything is. That's really something you don't get with a LOT of companies, especially from one as big as MS, and one that is frequently labeled the Evil Empire. So, I say kudos for: Transparency, candor, and ZEAL.