First blog posts tend to be a bit awkward - something like a first date I suppose. There are all sorts of decisions to be made like deciding where to begin the conversation and how much information about yourself to share. Never having been much of a bashful person, I'm thinking I'll just jump right in. My name is Marc Orchant. I've been involved with the Curl team for about a month and a half now and, in my role as VP of Developer Relations, it's my happy task to help design and launch a new Developer Center, contribute to this blog, and get a web-wide conversation started with people who build great software solutions about how Curl might fit into their tool kit.

A little background might provide some context for why the folks at Curl thought I'd be a good choice for this job. My biography says that I've been building, testing, and sometimes breaking hardware and software for more than twenty-five years. I've been involved in just about every aspect of the software business from marketing to testing to training to documenting to designing - everything but actually coding.

That's right - I don't write code. I thought it was important to get that out in the open right away. Don't be too concerned about that. There are a number of folks at Curl joining me here on this blog who have helped to build the language, IDE, and RTE (run time engine) who will be keeping you generously supplied with insights into how the Curl language, development tools, and delivery mechanisms can support your application solutions.

My role is that of storyteller. It's been my title on my business card for nearly a decade and it's what I like to do best. Let me explain. I've been blogging professionally since 2002. I helped build the Weblogs, Inc. network and am currently a blogger for ZDNet where I'm the author a blog called Office Evolution. There I discuss the intersection of technology, productivity, mobility, and knowledge work. As part of that work, I have the opportunity to attend many industry events where I have the opportunity to engage with many established and start-up companies developing all manners of great new software and hardware products. I'm also the author of The Unofficial Guide to Microsoft Office Outlook 2007 published by Wiley in April 2007. Prior to the advent of blogs, I was a regular contributor to magazines and trade journals and a frequent participant and speaker at technology industry events.

I guess that makes me a "big picture" kind of guy - someone who has the opportunity to look at the macro trends influencing how software is built and distributed, how it's used, and what kinds of challenges and opportunities these trends present for people like you - the developers and designers who are intensely focused on building tools that help organizations and the people who make them run.

OK. So with that out of the way, let me give you some idea of what we will are building to provide you - the developers, designers, and information architects - with tools, resources, and information about developing Richer Internet Applications with Curl. There are three big initiatives underway that I'll be discussing in upcoming posts:

• The Developer Center: a new, highly interactive information site that will be launched this Fall.
• This blog which will act as a platform for us to engage you in conversations about what we're working on and to share information about what's going on in the enterprise rich internet application space.
• Open source initiatives we are undertaking to make critical parts of the Curl development and delivery framework open and accessible to this community to build upon.

I'll be posting on a frequent basis and encourage your feedback in the form of comments, questions, suggestions and... yes, criticisms (of the constructive variety) on how we can make these efforts as useful for you as posible. My e-mail address is mochant at curl dot com if you'd like to contact me directly.