New People Posting to the Access Blog

You've likely noticed that Zac is now posting to the blog and that posts are more frequent (thanks Zac!).  Now that Access has been in the market for some time, it is time to broaden the scope of the blog from "new stuff in Access 12" to be more of a general Access community.  To help do that, we've recruited 4 more folks who will post to the blog and answer comments.  This will mean more frequent posts on a broader range of topics.  At the same time, we'll change the tone a bit to hopefully be more casual.  I'll still be posting and commenting as well.  At some point, we'll be able to re-focus the blog on "new stuff in the next version of Access" but that will be a while.  At this point, all we can say is there's a whole lot of great work going on.  So, with that, here are the new folks to the Access blog and what they have to say about themselves:

 Zac

Hale greetings all!  My name is Zac Woodall and I’m one of the Program Managers for the Access team.  I’ve been working here at Microsoft for about 8 years, 4.5 of which I’ve been on Access.  For 2007 I did much of the design work for our new reporting features, including Layout View, Stacked and Tabular Layouts, the new Grouping Pane, and export to PDF/XPS.  I’m also the author of a new book by Rational Press on Access 2007 Templates, which are much improved and use an entirely new technology.  Other than Access, my passions include my family, well designed software, operating environments, and pretty much anything that happens outdoors: snowboarding, hiking, backpacking, fishing, mountain biking, etc…

One other thing: I love hearing constructive feedback, so please keep the comments coming on our posts. I do read these, even if I don’t always respond, and this is a great way for you all to let us on the Access team know what you think is really important.

Rob

Hi! My name is Rob Cooper and I’m one of the Test Leads on the Access team. I’ve been at Microsoft for about 9 years, all of which on Access. I started out in Access product support in Charlotte, NC and then moved to Redmond to join the test team in 2001. For Access 2007, I worked on the new Grouping Pane for Reports, and security features such as Database Encryption and Disabled Mode. I’m passionate about programmability and recently worked on two books for Wrox related to programming in Access 2007.

Other than Access, I enjoy spending time with my family, working in the yard, watching movies playing guitar, travelling, and playing in the snow with my kids as much as possible.

I also spend time on www.utteraccess.com reading and answering questions. As a tester, I really enjoy interacting with people such as you who use Access on a regular basis.

Clint

Cheers Access readers! My name is Clint Covington—most of you all ready know me from my blog and frequent in this blog. I use to be a lead on the Access 2007 team. Since I joined Microsoft 10 years ago I have worked on Access 2000 setup, Access 2002 Data Access Pages (learned some good things not to do), 2003 SharePoint Web Part Framework, Access 2007 filtering/templates/general ease of use, and now work on Excel and SharePoint Services. Outside of work, I enjoy spending time with my two daughters, playing basketball, billiards, reading history, and travel.

I have enjoyed the great relationship I have developed with the Access community over the years and look forward to posting the majority of my Access related posts on the team blog. I will continue to babble about random stuff on my personal blog.

Mor

Howdy Access blog readers!  My name is Mor Hezi. While some of you may know me from events or from having worked with me directly, I thought it would be good to get introduced to this wider community. I am a senior product manager on the Office Client marketing team and among my responsibilities is Access marketing. I have been terribly enjoying working with Erik, Clint, Zac and the rest of the Access team for almost three years and the rest of the Office marketing organization thinks I am a walking billboard of Access. I have been fortunate to launch to the market Access 2007 and have become an avid Access user myself, although I don’t really know how to write a single line of code (despite my electrical engineering background J). Before joining Microsoft I worked in the semiconductor field in Southern California and before that in an internet startup in the Silicon Valley, right after getting my graduate degree. I have a beautiful wife, and tiny little baby daughter and one little boy on the way to join us in few more months. With the little free time, I try to be very active playing soccer, wakeboarding, hiking, skiing, etc. (in between each sports injury, which unfortunately happens quite often, since I am way past my twenties).

So, how does a product manager spends his time? Well, unfortunately, I don’t get the luxury of creating Access advertising (so you haven’t seen any of those), as we tend to promote the Office suite (and not single apps), but I do get to think about the differentiated value in the product, who should care about it and how best to reach them. Most of the content you find on the Access main home page (www.microsoft.com/access) probably went through me.

So, here you go, a quick introduction to me and to the world of Access product management.