I still have a stack of my official business cards but I wanted something a little different to try and explain what I do as an evangelist.

I was thinking about using one of the Blue Monster images that Hugh MacLeod (Gaping Void) and Steve Clayton have done such a good job of unleashing on the world but while I love the message (“Microsoft - Change the world or go home”) I wanted something a little different.

Hugh talks about these conversation pieces as social objects so I felt it was important to find an image and a message that summed up how I feel about what I do.

Microsoft has some amazing job titles. But at the end of the day a title is a label that can be used to pigeon hole you and how people perceive your role and function. Sure, waving the Senior or Technical parts of the title, or the descriptive blurb that defines your role in 3 words can be useful in some situations, most of the time what I do is is evangelize. So my card just say “Evangelist”

One of my first presentation courses (besides pointing out you never learn anything by showing a Powerpoint) pointed out that I have two ears and only one mouth and in any conversation that’s the ratio I should use them in. Over the years I’ve also learnt that while you can sell someone something that’s not what they need you’ll have a much better relationship if you help them find what they need. Sometimes you’ll sell them something. Sometimes you’ll help them find a different solution. Sometimes you’ll help them realize they didn’t understand the problem. Whatever the outcome I want them to feel they can trust Microsoft a little bit more than they did before (and then do my best to make sure they continue to have that experience).

I’m not sure if the dinosaur and meteor metaphor is always right – I don’t want people I talk to thinking that I feel they are doomed – but I want to make sure whoever I talk to I’m helping them find the right solution. In the case of the dinosaur it was evolution.

A big “thank you” to Hugh for a great image that really appealed to me.

Thanks to a tweet from FrankArr I’ve been playing with Digsby, a fairly new combined IM, Email and Social Networking client.

So what does that all mean?

Essentially it provides a replacement to the Windows Live Messenger and GTalk clients I usually have running on my dekstop. In that role it’s much like Pidgin or AdiumX for Mac users and does the job at least as well as they do. It still needs a bit more polish to get it on par with more developed clients for things like smileys but it does what it says on the tin (and I get tabbed chat which I love!)

The it adds on a notified for Social Networking tools like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook to let you see messages, alerts, status changes and what have you. It saves me many a wasted moment in the browser checking these things. You can even respond to some things directly, or get taken straight to the relevant item to manipulate it however you want.

Finally it acts as a mail poller for Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, POP3 and IMAP accounts – letting you read, manage and reply to email.

If it continue to evolve and deliver a stable, reliable, light footprint (resources and screen real estate) client I think it’s going to be a keeper.

It’s not going to replace Outlook (or Communicator for Exchange based IM and phone control) any time soon, and it doesn’t support Skype or MagicJack to manage all my communications … but who knows what the next build will bring :)