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Heather's Virtual ScrapbookInside the mind of a MSFT'ie August 03 Nature walk photos now published...So I treated myself to a new Canon Rebel Xti Digital SLR last summer and yet I never really fully tried all the features on it to improve my photography skills. My friends at work (who are much more of the "SLR" experts than I) have been so kind to offer their time over the past year to take me on a series of photo walks so I could practice taking pictures with them and learn from their tips and tricks...
Well on Friday, we finally had our first "nature walk" to start practicing my photography. We walked around the Microsoft campus (aka "SVC" = Silicon Valley Campus) - if you're interested in seeing the results, click here and let me know if you have any feedback or suggestions for improvement.
The first skills I learned last week was how to use "P mode" on the camera which is essentially manual mode where I can control the speed of the aperture and the lightness of the pictures. The other skill they were trying to teach me was composition, basically what you choose to include and put into a picture when you're deciding what you're going to take a picture of. I still need to practice a lot more but I'm feeling OK about my initial photos  - they're not perfect but it's a start... I'm already looking forward to the next photo walk. June 11 What it sometimes feels like to work on Live QnA
Sometimes I wish the members of the QnA community could only see and hear how much we DO listen to their feedback and input - how much we discuss, research, and investigate their ideas to understand and prioritize the features and improvements we're going to release next to improve the QnA site. If only they knew how much time we all spend working on this site day-in and day-out... how many extra hours we put in late night (um... like right now that I'm blogging and QnA'ing at midnight on a weeknight) and on the weekends, trying to actively participate and reach out, to show them how much we truly care!! I can only say that we are learning, and adapting, and learning more, each day from the community, our most active and engaged users, and we're creatively brainstorming new ways to solve these problems technology-wise in the future. I only wish all of our ideas & technology problems were simple and straightforward to solve, unfortunately they're not. I wish I could fix each and every problem on the site tomorrow but some issues take a longer time to fix than others. All I can say to the QnA audience is to please keep the feedback coming but if I can ask nicely, can you all go easy on us? It's OK to criticize the QnA site - to tell us what's wrong, what needs to be improved, to be critical - this is exactly the great feedback to provide to a beta site such as Live QnA... but let's "keep it clean..." let's not attack specific team members of the QnA team nor call out other members in the community... You may be asking yourself - so big deal, it's your job, deal with it!! But it's funny (in an interesting way, not in a "ha ha funny" way) -- I've never had a job before where my "bosses" were constantly reviewing, debating, and pointing out all of my faults to me each day, day-in and day-out. Imagine if you came into work each day and had a sticky note left on your desk describing to you everything that went wrong in the past day ... then multiply that 1 sticky note by the sheer volume of members posting questions and issues reported in our QnA site and message boards each day. I think my whole office would be covered in sticky notes in about 1 week telling me everything we've done wrong!! That's a little bit of what it's like to work on QnA... All I can ask of our Live QnA loyal members is to continue being you... the great QnA community that is caring, that reaches out to one another to help in dire times, that provides great advice and information, and provides us with great feedback on what we need to do better... this is what differentiates QnA and makes it a great place to hang out. And in case I haven't said it enough lately, thank you to our great, loyal QnA community April 24 Coming soon: Updates to the Live QnA Beta web siteYesterday, we posted a new blog on the Live QnA team blog web site announcing that on Monday, April 28th, 2008, the Live QnA site will be down for the day to undergo some "remodelling" improvements.
While I can't say too much publicly about the April 28th release right now, I can say that I am super excited to finally ship this next release of Live QnA Beta. This has been in the works since I joined the team as Lead PM last fall and I'm just very proud of the extensive effort and teamwork that went into this release... all I can say is that there was a lot of blood, a lot of sweat, and a lot of tears. While we weren't able to add all the features into this particular release that we were pushing for, this release is going to be a great start towards the future of QnA and really getting it to the great, useful and fun community site that it should, and could, be.
I'm so excited and I can't wait until we ship, ship, ship!!!
April 03 Live QnA surprises, even me, sometimes...As many readers to my blog already know, I'm the Lead Program Manager of the Live QnA site. I started my position late in Fall 2007 and have learned a tremendous amount since then.
Despite the fact that Live QnA has been in beta since it released 1.5 years ago, it still has an amazingly vocal, dedicated and helpful set of users in the community that provide regular and ongoing feedback on the site. It's funny because at past projects I've been on at Microsoft, I've had to seek out end user feedback through support or a blog, or through other channels to understand what people are thinking and feeling about my software. Whereas on QnA, it's the exact opposite, there are *many* places where people can provide input and solicit feedback from the product team. If I spent all day, everyday, just reviewing feedback, we'd never be able to spend time working on the next generation of features and ideas around what we want to develop QnA to be in the future. But with that said, the community continues to challenge us to fix issues and as we fix those issues, they're great at having another set of new problems ready and waiting for us to solve next
 - that is what makes Live QnA such a great and interesting project to work on and makes me excited to come to work each day. Regardless, I'm digressing... I had an incredible experience yesterday on QnA that I had to blog about (I have many great experiences each day on QnA but this one was extraordinary for me). I tend not to blog much about my work here because I spend so much of my time at work, I figure my blog should be about other observations I have so I'm not blogging today as "Lead PM on Live QnA" rather I'm blogging as "an active and interested member of the Live QnA community."
 I bought and moved into a home in San Francisco last year. With our home purchase, the previous owner was super organized and saved all the related appliance instructions, manuals and documents related to all the electronics and appliances in the home... except the electronic timer switch that controls the ouside light. So while I somehow figured out how to set the time for when the light turns "on," I still hadn't figured out how to turn it off. The device had no brand name nor logo on it so there was no way for me to even look this up on the internet for assistance. Out of a mixture of desparation and frustration, I asked this question on QnA yesterday and voila, I found a pointer to my answer... within minutes... truly AMAZING!
Most of the answers I received to my question were relevant and helpful but when I clicked on the link that user "BMC" posted, it took me to a web site from device manufacturer "Intermatic" and while the actual link that BMC posted wasn't 100% what I needed, I clicked a few times and quickly identified the EXACT electronic timer device that's installed in our home.
EVEN BETTER... I was able to download the .pdf file with instructions for how to install and change the timer settings. When I got home last night, I couldn't stop talking about how cool and amazingly helpful this experience was to my husband. He quickly reviewed the documents and updated the timer settings. When I woke up this morning, for the first time ever, the outside light was off .... because it had turned itself off.
This is not a laughing matter, this was irritating me so much, for so long, and I finally asked QnA and within minutes of me posting the question, I had my exact answer... I wish everything in life was this easy.
 Thank you to the QnA community that continues to be passionate and helpful at helping others get answers and advice to answer their questions!!!
March 28 San Francisco & Bay Area "Earth Hour" tomorrow night from 8-9 pmInteresting event that's being organized in the Bay Area for tomorrow, Saturday 3/29, from 8-9pm in the evening. More info available here and a few snippets below...
Join thousands of your Bay Area friends, neighbors and businesses and millions of people around the world to make a bold statement about climate change on March 29, from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. Turn out your lights for one hour. Earth Hour. San Franciscans are often in the forefront of environmental responsibility and action. Earth Hour is another example of that commitment. Buildings from Nob Hill to the Embarcadero will go dark during Earth Hour. Iconic structures and office buildings will take part, as will homes and apartments throughout the Bay Area.
Even the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate Bridge will apparently turn their lights off during this time.
You can also find out more in San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s press release.
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