I’m a content designer at Microsoft. Read more in About.
I got my start in writing with 200 blog posts. Between 2006 and 2016, I wrote an average of 2 technology posts a month, mostly about SharePoint. I'm the co-author of two books published by Microsoft Press.
Update 3/7/20: Added Oregon State’s Online Bachelor’s in Computer Science Update 5/22/17: Added Techbridge girls in the list of other resources In more than 20 years in technology, I’ve met plenty of great women developers. And yet, men outnumber women in tech by a large margin. Major tech companies are being challenged to increase diversity and inclusiveness. Learning coding is a big opportunity for people of all types. With the help of a female friend, I’ve compiled a list of
Read more →
Have you ever noticed that the default SharePoint page type shares its homepage title with the site? I was just asked today how to change the title on the homepage of a team site today. It took me a few minutes to make the connection. Home Let’s say you created a new team site called test. The homepage will have a title of “Home”. Site Settings Drop Down To change the title of the page, start with the gear icon in the
Read more →
If you could talk to you Amazon Echo about SharePoint, what would you discuss? Conversation as a Platform (CaaP) is a hot topic in technology in 2016. The Echo device just celebrated it’s second birthday, Facebook Messenger just launched a new commerce model and millions in China are using messaging apps to transfer money every day. My Story with Personal Digital Agents I’ve been exploring conversations with personal digital agents like Alexa, Siri and Cortana for more than 2 years
Read more →
I grabbed Pokemon GO from the App Store on my iPhone last night to check out what all the buzz was about. It’s actually a very interesting use of the smartphone. Here are some insights I gained from 20 minutes of game play. Augmented Reality Pokemon Go is a mobile app from Nintendo available for iPhone and Android. To play, you have to move around IRL (in the real world.) When you move, your character moves in the Go world.
Read more →
Jeff Teper’s tweet “Happy 5th Birthday” to Office 365 caught me a little by surprise yesterday. Has it really been that long? What was I doing June 28th, 2011? I was probably working on a SharePoint 2010 deployment. I know I wasn’t giving a ton of thought to Microsoft’s plans for SharePoint Online in my day to day. Look at how much has changed, since! I’ll join the others with a Happy Birthday wish. Another thing to note in Mr. Teper’s
Read more →
I’m closing in on my 4th week as a Microsoft employee. It’s been great meeting new people, reconnecting with others and generally learning about and exploring this vast place and my new role. Some highlights so far have been watching The Future of SharePoint event live on-campus with product team members, receiving my first big assignment of documenting the SharePoint mobile app and participating in the Collab 365 Summit which had a live segment filmed about a mile from my office. Collab
Read more →
3 years ago, SharePoint Apps were a development topic. Last year, the “app model” name was changed to the “add-in model.” May 4th, 2016, with the announcement of “the SharePoint mobile app,” last year’s change seems more appropriate. I’ve always thought “the app model” suggested mobile app development. The change to “the add-in model” has been kind of hard to explain to developers. Whether or not the change in name was necessary to introduce the SharePoint mobile app, the mobile app
Read more →
My first week as a Microsoft employee is complete and I’m excited! Not only has it been a dream of mine to work for Microsoft, but it’s also a great time to be at Microsoft. I expect I’ll write more about that in the coming months. For now, I’m focused on SharePoint End User Content. The Future of SharePoint If you haven’t heard, Jeff Teper is streaming a live event on The Future of SharePoint on May 4th. Register for free
Read more →
I’m happy to announce I’ve accepted an offer to work for Microsoft full-time! Starting in April, I’ll be a Senior Content Publisher in the Modern Assistance and Support Experience (MAX) group. We’re moving to Seattle! For me, this is really the culmination of a dream I’ve had for a long time. The first time I applied to work at Microsoft was in 1997, as a senior in Computer Science at Northwestern. If I recall correctly, the only response to my application
Read more →
Aerodynamic in Sonic Pi sounds great. There’s just one thing that bugged me. The bells. The walk-through, featured on Hacker News, Techcrunch, Twitter and more, explains the code for the song in detail. And, the author writes that the sound, or timbre, of the bells in the intro isn’t quite right. Working on this project takes me back to my college days. Back when I was a Music Performance and Computer Science double major at Northwestern, I would get questions.
Read more →