Live QnA

A common misconception is that we only have Program Managers (PM) working on Live Search QnA. That’s definitely not the case – we have an outstanding team that also includes Software Design Engineers (SDE), and Software Design Engineers in Test (SDET). However, some of our team members are just a bit more blog shy than others.  

Fortunately, we have two who aren’t so shy! Having introduced our PM interns last week, I’d like to introduce our other interns: Derrick (SDE) and Shreya (SDET)! 

Again, in alphabetical order, here’s what Derrick has to say about himself:

Hi everyone. My name is Derrick Isaacson and I am excited to be a part of the Search Communities team. I grew up in the mountain valley of Salt Lake City, UT and attended college nearby at Brigham Young University where I studied computer engineering.

I moved to Seattle, WA when I graduated to work as a software development engineer for Amazon.com and loved being in the Pacific Northwest. At Amazon I worked on a team that owned a tier one service for the website that provided “offering” data (seller Jane is offering 10 copies of Harry Potter for $9.99) to the site. I left Amazon and started a master’s program in computer science at Stanford University last fall.

I enjoy the outdoors including skiing, hiking, camping, fishing and cycling. I think The Office is hilarious. I also play percussion when I can find a low key concert band or symphony to play in. I look forward to learning and working with the QnA Team!

And Shreya:

Hi everyone I am Shreya, studying for my Masters at San Jose State University. I completed my bachelors of engineering and have also worked as a software engineer trainee for a year. During that time I have worked mostly with Visual C+++.  Along with my studies I also love to be involve in other technical activities. I am one of the active members of Society of Computer Engineering, SJSU.

My hobbies include Swimming, Playing Volleyball, Dancing and solving Puzzles. Along with Programming the thing I am most passionate about is Dancing. I have completed MA in Indian classical dance and I have given various performances also.

I am very excited to work with Microsoft Live Search QnA team as an SDET intern.

We’re super excited to have these folks on our team as they bring a fresh perspective and lots of energy. This is shaping up to be an excellent and exciting summer here at QnA HQ!

Have a happy Independence Day weekend!

-Dennis-QnA
Live Search QnA Program Manager and Intern Introducer

Summer is here, and so are our summer interns. Microsoft has a fantastic college internship program that lasts for 12 weeks where students get to experience what it’s like to work at a fantastic software and services company. There’s also a host of perks as well.

Chen and Peter joined the team recently and we have some pretty awesome projects for them to take ownership of. Our interns definitely don’t just pour coffee here! (Actually they can’t since our coffee machines are semi-robotic!) I am super excited to have them take a fresh look at QnA, and I have high hopes that their work will translate to cool features and experiences for the QnA Community. In alphabetical order, here’s what Chen has to say about himself:

Hey everyone. My name's Chen. I was born in China and moved to Nashville, Tennessee at age 7. In 7th grade, I transferred to a suburban public school near Philadelphia, where I finished my secondary education.

Presently, I am a rising Junior at Harvard College studying Econ/CS. Outside of school, I see myself as a social worker, an aspiring entrepreneur, but most importantly – an ardent tech enthusiast. My first experiences with technology date back to the night my dad brought home the first family computer in December 1996. That Compaq Presario altered the course of my life.

Thanks to this passion, I have followed several of today's most successful tech-based companies from the very beginning. These days, I live on TechCrunch, Mashable, SimpleSpark, and many other entrepreneurial sites in constant search for the next big thing. I enjoy analyzing successful web technologies, business and marketing strategies, figuring out why they work, and seeing whether these innovative techniques can be implemented elsewhere.

I see myself as a chill, kind of atypical Harvard student who take things seriously only when need be, but gets everything done - on time and in style. Some of my hobbies include, Halo 3, Super Smash Bros, swimming, Wendy's Junior Beacon Cheeseburgers, Bennigan's hot wings, programming, tennis, writing business proposals, running along The Charles, and spending quality time with friends.

I’m very excited about joining the Live Search QnA team and I look forward to becoming an active participant in the QnA community!

And here’s what Peter has to say:

Hi everyone! My name is Peter. I am a Finnish citizen, but haven’t actually lived there for more than a few months at a time. I spent most of my childhood in Saudi Arabia as an expatriate. Growing up in Saudi was a little strange, but was actually very good for me. As there wasn’t much to do, I spent most of my time studying. By the age of 16 I had developed a good work ethic, and I’m happy to say that so far it’s paid off!

After Saudi I moved to a boarding school in London. Two years later I graduated with an IB diploma and started studying electrical engineering at The University of California Santa Barbara (woohoo GO GAUCHOS!). I am currently a senior at UCSB.

As we all know though, all fun and no play make for some dull people. I actually enjoy skim boarding, and just throwing around a Frisbee. Some of you may be glad to hear that I am also a gaming dork. I love to play video games like the new Super Smash Bros., and epic titles such as MGS4, and Gears of War.

For the right here and now though, I am interning with Microsoft’s Live Search QnA team. It doesn’t take long to realize that the team working here is ambitious, and driven to help make QnA better every day. I look forward to working with them, and to hopefully bring you some new and exciting features!

These two have had so much excitement and energy for QnA, that they’ve already been posting Questions and Answers on the site. We’re glad to have them onboard. Keep an eye out for them!

-Dennis-QnA
Live Search QnA Program Manager

In March 2007, we introduced our first MVP (Most Valuable Professional) focused on QnA, Ron. Today we are proud to introduce our second MVP for QnA, Mindy who will be joining to assist Ron as another Windows Live MVP focused on Live Search QnA beta.

Some folks in our community will recognize Mindy as “Mission Jesus Mom” (her former QnA nickname). Mindy has been a fixture on the QnA site and the Boards. She has done a lot of work outside of QnA as well, advising users independently and pointing them to helpful technical online resources.  She is an MVP due to her continued support and direction that she provides to other members in the community in assisting them on using the QnA site, constantly escalating bugs and issues with the QnA beta site, and by providing guidance and direction on the QnA message boards.

Mindy has been with QnA since the September 2006 and consistently shows a lot of enthusiasm in helping to investigate problems and has been a positive influence on the QnA community. Here’s a bit more about Mindy in her own words:

“I am ‘pretty much’ an open book but for those who don’t know me, here are a few details about what I do when I am not on QnA. I am married with children whose ages range from 8 – 24. I enjoy motivational speaking and presentations in various public forums. I mentor/counsel people of all ages and backgrounds in various locations and organizations. I do a great deal of public speaking mostly on the topics of motivation, encouragement, joy, striving for excellence and ways to improve your life. I also hold a real estate license in the State of New York and volunteer in many organizations and for many charities.

I am pleased to be honored with the MVP designation and I am excited about serving this AWESOME QnA community in a more visible and tangible way.”

Welcome aboard Mindy!

In addition, over the past few months, we have noticed a lot of confusion around the role of the Microsoft MVP within the QnA community and we wanted to take a moment to provide some clarity around the Microsoft MVP program and also answer some of the FAQ’s we get on QnA around the role of the MVP:

Question: What is the role of the Microsoft MVP?

Answer: Microsoft MVPs are an amazing group of individuals. By sharing their knowledge and experiences and providing objective feedback, MVPs help people solve problems and discover new capabilities. Microsoft recognizes and awards MVPs as our way of saying thank you for their demonstrated commitment to helping others in technical communities worldwide.

Click here for frequently asked questions about Microsoft MVP’s.

Question: Why are MVP’s important to QnA?

As we continue to make QnA a better place for you to ask and provide great questions and answers, we find that we need more and more assistance welcoming new users, answering questions about the site, and posting responses in discussions in our message boards. MVP’s spend their own free time to help build the QnA community and support others. They provide the QnA product team with valuable constructive feedback around where we need to improve the site moving forward.

MVP’s are similar to other members of the QnA community but in addition to participating on the site and on our message boards, it’s their role to help evangelize QnA, the technology, welcome newcomers, and overall act as “model citizens” in the virtual QnA community. You will also find them providing tips and best practices on how to engage with others in the community.

Question: Are MVP’s moderators?

Answer: No. MVP’s are not moderators any more or less so than any other member on QnA, they have the ability to report abuse on the QnA web site like any other member of QnA. In addition, they often share technical suggestions, problems, bugs, or other feedback to help the product team understand the community perspective.

While it’s completely fine for those in our community to criticize the QnA site, to tell us what’s wrong, what needs to be improved, to be critical, to push the QnA Product team to provide a better experience on the Live QnA beta site, it’s not OK to harass or call out individual members of the QnA community, our MVP’s, or the QnA product team, nor make personal harassing remarks about each other – on QnA or in our Message Boards. The Code of Conduct applies equally to all members of the community.

Question: How do I reach an MVP if I need assistance?

Answer: If you have additional questions that you’d like to address to either Ron or Mindy, please use their Spaces accounts or the message boards (though because there are many more members in our community than MVP’s), we cannot promise that they will have time to respond to all inquiries. Another great way of reaching folks when you need assistance is tagging your question “qna” or “qna team,” on the Live Search QnA beta web site itself.

Question: How can I become an MVP for a different Microsoft product?

The MVP FAQ page provides you with more information about how to become a Microsoft MVP – here’s a quick snippet:

“Individuals are nominated for the MVP Award by their peers or by Microsoft, based on their contributions during the previous year to offline or online technical communities. Each nominee's contributions are then compared to the other candidates' contributions for the same year to determine who will receive the award.

Nominees are chosen from traditional and emerging community venues, including public news groups, forums, third-party Web sites, user groups, book authors, event speakers, Web boards, blogs, and wikis. Current MVPs reside in over 90 countries, write in 30 languages, and share their expertise in over 90 Microsoft technologies.”

Yesterday, as many of you know, the Firefox version 3 browser was released to the public. We wanted to proactively notify our community that the Live Search QnA beta site does not yet offer support for Firefox 3 so you will not be able to post a question or answer to QnA in the Firefox 3 web browser.

This was not intentional, but as with all new product and software releases, we need to test and evaluate this new web browser to understand the changes we need to make to QnA to support it.  In the meantime, we wanted to ask members of our community to either stay with Firefox 2 or use an alternative to Firefox such as Internet Explorer version 7 which are both supported browsers for the Live Search QnA beta site.

We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause and will update you once we have an update on our Firefox 3 support plans.

Thanks,

QnA Team

It’s almost summer again – only about a week left to go. Last summer, David posted about writing great questions and great answers. In the past year, many new members have joined the QnA community, so we’d like to summarize the main points again here:

Great questions

·         Are worded as questions (with a question mark at the end)

·         Contain details in the details section to explain more about the context of the question (though asking a good question and then providing your own answer in the question details doesn’t qualify )

·         Can be answered by anyone else in the community (including new members), and will find helpful (check out our featured questions for examples)

·         Summarize the essence of the question in the question title

·       Are formatted well and spelled correctly with standard capitalization (ALL CAPS LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE SHOUTING AND CAN SOLICIT ANNOYED RESPONSES FROM OTHERS IN THE COMMUNITY)

·       Abide by the QnA Code of Conduct

Great answers

·         Answer the question and are honest, thorough, and straightforward

·         Present a great summary of your thoughts and opinions with any supporting data, facts, or knowledge

·         Often include links to the page from which you used to help research your answer (this builds credibility for your answer and also provides a way for the question asker to learn more on his/her own)

·         Are formatted nicely

·         Are spelled correctly

·         Use standard capitalization (remember… ALL CAPS LOOKS LIKE YOU’RE SHOUTING )

·         Abide by the QnA Code of Conduct

Katarina-QnA

As you may have noticed, we are continually growing our QnA community through marketing promotions and links from other MSN and Windows Live web sites, we have many new users coming in to ask questions to our loyal QnA community.  As our QnA community is expanding, so is our product team.  We’d like to introduce our newest member of the QnA program management team, Katarina.  

Katarina-QnA, meet the QnA community and Community, meet Katarina-QnA!  Here’s a bit more about Katarina in her own words:

Hi everyone!

I’m really happy and enthusiastic about joining the QnA team, especially since I’ve been on QnA since 2006 and now I finally have the chance to get even more involved with the site! 

Prior to QnA, I worked on Windows Live Gallery and the Windows Live Toolbar web site. Community is important to me, so I also serve as the Programs Director on the Silicon Valley Women@Microsoft board (one of the diversity groups we have on campus), and am involved with recruiting , intern, and alumni events.  Another perk with these community groups is all the free food that seems to be available. (This includes the QnA team, which generously provides Tuesday morning bagels, complete with a few different kinds of cream cheese spreads.)

Finally, I have a bunch of hobbies like eating and dancing but most noticeably, I’m a language dork and enjoy studying languages for fun and in hopes of future world travel.

Welcome aboard, Katarina, and welcome to all our new community members!  And as usual, if you have feedback on this blog posting, please see our latest message board thread.

- Heather, Lead Program Manager, QnA