Meet 'Morgan Skinner', he's an ADC.

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 Continuing on the theme of things here is the second post in the Meet an ADC series, meet Morgan Skinner.

 

1 - Hello Morgan, who are you?

 

I’m Morgan Skinner, originally from Cornwall but have been living in and around Manchester for the past 20 years. I’m married and have one son, Sam.

 

2 - Have you always worked in the ADC Team?

 

I joined Microsoft in 2001 as an ADC and prior to that I was a Development Manager at a small software house in Cheshire. I’d been there nearly 13 years – it was a great job. I’ve been at Microsoft nearly 7 years now and the same is true.

 

3 - What sort of technologies do you use as an ADC?

 

My primary focus at present is Windows Workflow Foundation, but I get to use many parts of the .NET framework and I’m currently working with a pre-PDC build of Visual Studio 2010 and the .NET framework 4. It’s great working on the bleeding edge. I started at Microsoft prior to the release of .NET 1.0 and have used most parts of the framework over the years.

 

4 - What do you enjoy about working at Microsoft?

 

The quality of my colleagues is second to none, I feel very privileged to work with them all. It would be hard if not impossible to meet a bunch of more passionate and capable people. It’s also a great place to feed your thirst for knowledge – indeed it can be overwhelming the sheer amount of information you have access to. It’s a very open place to work.

 

5 - How do you keep skills up to date with the latest technologies?

 

I primarily use self study, and we can often get access to new technologies some time before they are released to our customers in beta form.

 

6 - What software do you use as part of your role?

 

I mainly use Visual Studio, and my other favourite tool is Reflector. Quite how I would get by without Reflector I don’t know.

 

7 - How would you describe a typical day as an ADC?

 

That one’s quite easy – there is no typical day. Some days I’m on customer sites troubleshooting, others I’ll be discussing architecture and design, and often I get to help customers write code which I love.

 

8 - What’s your technology of the moment?

 

The same as it’s been for 3 years – Windows Workflow. I view it as a huge enabler in creating extensible applications, and the new version shortly to be announced at the PDC has some fantastic improvements.

 

9 - What’s your best and worst moment as an ADC?

 

My best moment was when I sabotaged a colleagues presentation material during a customer briefing session, where I replaced the images he was using with some that I had doctored (to add his face to a ballerina in one, and a pumpkin in another). That was a truly memorable session. My worst moment isn’t publishable!

 

10 - Thanks for your time; do you have a closing comment?

 

Yes – the singular form of Pasties is not Pastie, it’s Pasty. And it’s pronounced Paaaaaaaaaasty.