I’ve had the pleasure of leveraging two great people at TechNet Magazine, Joshua Hoffman, ex-editor in chief and Matthew Graven, ex -senior editor to publish on green IT and data centers. I use the term “ex-“ because both of these people were hit in latest rounds of cuts at Microsoft as Microsoft shut down the TechNet staff in the NY office.

Joshua and Matthew were both helpful in crafting content that would work for the IT pro audience and providing valuable input as I tried to write content that would make sense and resonate with their audience of IT pros. It was a huge difference to have people who cared about the Green IT topic and think about what to publish vs. most of the vendor sponsored content published in other areas.

I’ll miss the brainstorming of new content as i would throw out many ideas, and Joshua and Matthew would help prioritize.

If you aren’t familiar with TechNet Magazine here is the site with 480,000 unique visitors per month.

Why would Microsoft shut down the NY TechNet Staff? Probably because they want to outsource the work and reduce costs.

But, I think Microsoft just gave up being the leader of the Windows IT pro tribe. For an explanation of the tribe, see this blog post by Seth Godin.

Tribe management is a whole different way of looking at the world.

It starts with permission, the understanding that the real asset most organizations can build isn't an amorphous brand but is in fact the privilege of delivering anticipated, personal and relevant messages to people who want to get them.

It adds to that the fact that what people really want is the ability to connect to each other, not to companies. So the permission is used to build a tribe, to build people who want to hear from the company because it helps them connect, it helps them find each other, it gives them a story to tell and something to talk about.

And of course, since this is so important, product development and manufacturing and the CFO work for the tribal manager. Everything the organization does is to feed and grow and satisfy the tribe.

Instead of looking for customers for your products, you seek out products (and services) for the tribe. Jerry Garcia understood this. Do you?

If you look at TechNet mag as a traditional publication it is expensive. If you look at as leader of a tribe of 480,000 IT pros, how much is that worth?

If anyone is looking for people who know how to publish to the technical audience, send me e-mail and I can connect you with Joshua and Matthew.