I have a new job

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In January 1998, I joined Microsoft as the ship PM for Access 97 SP1. My career has gone on to include working on Access and 2002 data access pages, SharePoint extensibility and the Web Part Framework, and most recently, Access 2007. IMHO Access 2007 is the most innovative release in years, and lays the foundation for the future as people create better and more manageable applications. Furthermore, the release team is what I believe to be the most talented, dedicated, and passionate about technology in all of Office.

At the end of every release cycle, Microsoft encourages employees to talk with new teams and to think about career development. Cross pollination of talent between teams is a vital ingredient to how we build products that work together. During this process, I have concluded that it is time for me to grow in new ways and have joined a new team in the same Office organization. The team includes server technologies that involve Excel Services, SharePoint, and Office Live. I can't discuss much of what we will be doing, but can let you know that I will spend lots of time with the Excel Service that ships today in Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS). I will also work to improve scenarios where data is hosted by Office Live and consumed inside Access and Excel. My Access background will be useful as we continue to make our products work better together and allow people to build useful data applications.

Working with the Access community has been lots of fun. One thing is for sure—Access developers are passionate about the product. I want to thank everyone for the friendship and constructive feedback and input over the years. It sure is rewarding to see people do amazing things with the product.

The future of Access is very bright. The team has lots of great ideas that will excite end users, power users, and serve developers. Nearly all members of the team elected to stay on for the next release—which is really a great thing for the product. Internally, there is lots of excitement about the future of Access and enabling developers to build better applications.

I will continue to blog about UI design, application development, Access, and other topics but likely less often for the next few months as my new team finishes prototypes, the vision, and begin writing specs.

Again, thanks for the friendship and contribution to what makes Access so great today!