So here's the thing: I've been at Microsoft for 15 years and I've produced thousands of videos that have reached millions of developers. I've helped build online communities, spun some up, shut some down, run live events, shipped weekly shows, and basically lived inside a studio for over a decade. And somehow, through all of that, I never actually wrote any of it down.

That changes now.

A Little About Me

I run DevRel Studios (you might know us from our Channel 9 days). We're an in-house video production studio that creates video content for developers. Our whole mission is to engage, educate, and entertain our technical communities with visual media. Think tutorials, weekly shows, live events, and the stories behind the people building the products you use.

My job is basically showrunner meets studio manager meets community storyteller. I direct, I switch, I obsess over post, and I spend a lot of time thinking about how to take one idea and scale it to reach millions of people without losing the thing that made it feel real in the first place.

If you've ever watched Microsoft Developer on YouTube, you've seen what my team ships. But honestly, our content lives all over the internet across various channels because I've never been about gatekeeping. Just keep the content flowing and keep putting the people behind the product front and center.

Why "RoughCut"?

If you've ever worked in video production, you know a rough cut is that first pass of an edit. It's not polished. It's not final. But it's where you can see the story before everything gets smoothed over and versioned to death.

That's what I want this space to be. Backstage notes. The messy middle. The stuff that actually happens when you're trying to ship creative work at scale. I've spent my whole career believing that authenticity wins, that developers can smell marketing speak from a mile away, and that the best content comes from being transparent and raw about how things get made.

So RoughCut just felt right. It's a filmmaker term, it signals process and iteration and craft, and it's basically how I've approached everything for the last 15 years.

Why Now?

Honestly? AI changed everything. Again.

I've watched AI reshape how we script, plan, edit, localize, and scale content from inside one of the largest organizations in tech. The lessons are coming fast. Some of what I'm learning will hold up, some of it won't, but I'd rather share it now while it's still useful than wait until it's perfectly polished and irrelevant.

And here's the thing: AI also gave me the courage to finally start writing.

I built this entire blog using GitHub Copilot agent mode with Claude in VS Code. No web development experience, no spending weeks learning HTML and CSS, no excuses. I just described what I wanted, iterated on it in conversation, and shipped it. The same technology I've been watching transform video production just helped me launch a website in an afternoon. If that's not a sign that we're living in a different era, I don't know what is.

Also, and this is the real reason, I want to make the ladder easier to climb for whoever comes next.

Fifteen years ago, I was figuring all of this out with no playbook. I learned by doing, by failing, by watching people who were generous enough to show me how things worked. Now it's my turn. This blog is my way of staying accountable to actually distilling what I've learned and putting it somewhere people can find it.

What I'll Be Writing About

Expect posts on:

  • Story as a lever because narrative drives change. Not as fluff, but as an actual tool for clarity and momentum.
  • The craft behind shipping including production systems, run of show docs, content programming, and all the processes that nobody talks about because it's "just how it's done."
  • AI in the edit bay covering what's actually working, what's hype, and how to stay human in the process.

It won't be perfect. That's kind of the point. It's a rough cut.

Let's go. 🎬