I live and work in the state of Maryland in the U.S. which is classified as the Microsoft Mid-Atlantic district. If you want to get information and help at a local level from Microsoft, you need to know the local players. And the level of support and engagement you get is often very subjective and dependent on the perspectives of the local representatives of the Empire.

Unfortunately, all too often what you run into is a pure sales driven attitude with no thought given to any type of long term relationship building.  Even though there is more transparency at the Home Office (Redmond) level, I personally do not believe that Microsoft, especially at the local level, really get relationship management and long term relationship building. But that is a topic for another day. 

Fortunately, there are exceptions to every rule and we in the Mid-Atlantic district are fortunate that we have TWO exceptions to the rule. And those exceptions go by the name of Geoff Snowman, our local Developer Community Champion and G. Andrew Duthie, our local Developer Evangelist. 

These guys DO get it and are simply awesome!

Together, their responsibilities cover everything from User Group Support to Enterprise Customer Support.  With the wide variety of technologies and products that I've been looking at recently, there have often been questions that I needed answered and these guys have come through every time with information or pointers to resources who have the information. I just wanted to take this opportunity to say a very public "Thank You" to both Geoff and Andrew.