It is a pleasure to announce that we have recently released Visual Studio .NET (which, of course, means Visual Basic .NET) to manufacturing. It is available immediately for MSDN subscribers on the MSDN subscription site (http://msdn.microsoft.com/subscription).

Thank you for all of your support during this long product cycle. We depend on feedback and input from you to help us build the best product. While this product cycle has been long (for everyone) and at times trying, we're shipping the best version of Visual Basic to date.

Visual Basic.NET is a first-class product on the new, premier Microsoft platform. We've added many features that our customers have been asking for over the years. And, we've embraced the world of distributed computing and XML web services in a first-class way. Again, thank you for all of your feedback and support during this cycle. We could not have produced such a great product without you.

One thing that has become clear during this product cycle is that we can do an even better job at involving our users, the VB community, in what we do. That includes finding ways to create a better feedback loop with the community earlier in the product cycle and building a community that provides even more assistance, information, and interactions with other users.

In the past, this effort has been driven largely from our marketing team (Ari Bixhorn and Mike Iem). While they will continue to do the great things that they do, we’ve added to our team with an even more pronounced focus on our customers.

Therefore, it is my pleasure to announce that Yair Alan Griver (“yag” to many) has joined the Visual Basic product team and will be focusing on the VB community along with Ari and Mike. Alan has been involved in Visual Basic and Visual FoxPro for many years and brings a wealth of not only community experience, but also real-world product usage.

Alan will be working to:
• Improve the VB development team’s interaction with the VB community
• Create a better forum for feature requests
• Find ways to incorporate early feedback from the community
• Help the community grow, both in numbers and usefulness, by making sure technical information is more readily available, and community sites are more easily found

In addition to these responsibilities, Alan will be directly involved in the design of Visual Basic. He will work closely with the community and development team to:
• Ensure the continuing evolution of Visual Basic as the easiest way to build .NET applications
• Make sure that Visual Basic continues to target today’s and tomorrow’s real-world problems
• Bring the information that he, and the rest of the team, gathers from the community into the design process

It's very exciting to have Alan as part of the Visual Basic team. Please join me in welcoming him. You can contact him at yag@microsoft.com. Alan will be sending more details of his plans soon.

Thanks,
-Rob Copeland
Product Unit Manager, Visual Basic
Microsoft Corporation
robertco@microsoft.com