When we began theSpoke, we wanted it to be a community for students built by students.  To enable that, one of the things that we've wanted to do was to enable people to experiment with the code that makes up theSpoke.  Sounds like a simple idea, but the execution hasn't been easy.

After many many many meetings and hours of work, we're happy today to launch the developer tab on theSpoke.  This is a beta of what I hope will be a popular feature for all the tinkerers out there -- a subset of theSpoke API is documented and available in that hub.  I hope that the APIs will spur on some creative features and extensions that the community can add to the site in the future...

Another thing that we've wanted to do is to give the community part of theSpoke to a student governing board.  Rather than us here at Microsoft designing features, I thought that it would be better for a community of students who are passionate about theSpoke to determine the new features of theSpoke and to own getting them built.  We would advise the board as necessary, but I think we would want to board to have the opportunity to gain insight and participate in the software engineering process.

Finally, as theSpoke continues to expand globally (Italian just launched yesterday), we've constructed the site in such a way so that most of the UI elements are in a string table.  This partly explains why we've been able to localize so quickly, but more importantly, opens the door for even the localization process to become a learning experience for students as well.

These are some of the things that we're doing.  We haven't done any of this before, so I'm curious as to what people think about our ideas.  As we're about to celebrate the 1st birthday of theSpoke in a month, I want to make sure that we're still on track towards supporting a community built for students and built by students.