Thrive for Developers launched earlier this week, and I wanted to make sure _everyone_ heard about it. Why do I care so much? Is it because the content is good, unique, and valuable? No, not really (though the content is good, unique, and valuable; more on that in a moment). It is because three of my teammates, Brian Prince, Clint Edmonson, and Zain Naboulsi, helped build some of the content, and I worked with a great team of Microsoft evangelists (G. Andrew Duthie, Brian Hitney, and Mike Benkovich) to build the Silverlight-enabled user group/event map on the Connecting with Your Community page. So I have some personal stake in the the Thrive for Developers effort.

In addition to my personal stake, there are three areas to Thrive for Developers – Advance Your Career, Enhance Your Skills, and Connect with Your Community – each with valuable content and information.

Advance Your Career
This area features information on free and paid training options, print and e-books options (and opportunities to buy at discounted rates), as well as career resources. This area also links to resources on CareerBuilder and Dice. The career resources section features some of that new content from Brian, Clint and Zain I mentioned. Here are some details on what they've built for Thrive…

Brian has created a 32-week series of audio podcasts on developing soft skills.

Driving Your Career - Soft Skills to Move You Forward
Sit shotgun with Brian Prince in "Driving Your Career" – a 32-week screencast series that explores the new skills developers need to thrive. Brian will tackle relevant topics including quick learning techniques, how to manage your career, how to build consensus, and the always-tricky task of talking to humans. Brian will share his expertise of being a manager, a consultant, and many other roles over his career, to help you succeed in yours.

Clint has produced a three-part screencast series on organizational politics (all in MWV: part 1, part 2, and part 3).

Organizational Politics: A Survival Guide
You're smart. You deliver. What more could your company want from you? Why don't they come to you for the big technical decisions? Why won't they listen to your proposals? It seems like everyone has an agenda and they're doing everything they can to kill your great ideas. This series examines the dynamic nature of large organizations – their structures, decision making processes, and political landscapes. We'll discuss the goals of key business and technical decision makers and their influence on architects and software projects.

Zain is host of a series of webcasts on getting a job in the current economy.

Getting a Development Job in the Current Economy
Given the current state of the economy, how can you find a job? Join us for this webcast discussion with recruiters from across the country, and find out what it takes to get a job in today's market. We cover the top five things every developer needs to know when looking for a job, and then we have an open question and answer session so you can ask questions that are important to you. The discussion is moderated by Microsoft developer evangelist Zain Naboulsi, and it is one webcast you don't want to miss.

Enhance Your Skills
This area features a series of learning resources for web development and Windows client development. The both offer task-oriented approaches to learning more about building web or Windows-based applications, such as building web site security or getting the most out of your VB6-based applications. Each task-oriented topic contains several step-by-step resources, aggregating resources from the MSDN Library, webcasts, podcasts, and more.

Connect with Your Community
Not only does this area contain the very clever Silverlight application I mentioned above, it also links to features blogs from Microsoft evangelists from across the US (by state, no less!) as well as blogs from people in the Microsoft product groups. There is also a special podcast series by the .NET Rocks team called "Development in a Downturn" as well as resources to connect with your local user groups.

In Conclusion ('cause I have a compulsive need for a closing header)
So go check out Thrive for Developers. Not only are some of my colleagues featured, but there are also a load of great resources. And I have a personal stake in people seeing all this great material.