About William Smith (@meck)
[ I'll be attending Macworld 2010 in February. You can catch me at the Microsoft booth helping folks with Entourage questions and I'll even be participating in the Administrating Macs in Exchange 2007 or 2003 session on Thursday afternoon. Would enjoy folks stopping by and saying "hi"! ]
By day I am a technical analyst working in the Twin Cities where I support Macs in a Windows world. My company has Macs in about a dozen locations worldwide and I've even been privileged to travel halfway around the world to help set up our Chennai office in India.
At night I spend a lot of time online as a Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professional) helping folks with Mac and Windows problems and with Microsoft Entourage.
What's an MVP?
We're a group of people who have a history of helping others with computer problems. We hang out in newsgroups, publish blogs, create websites, speak at user groups and do many more things. Microsoft has found us and awarded us for what we do. That comes with some nice perks but first and foremost we're just volunteers.
I've been an MVP since April 2003 and was first awarded for helping folks with integrating Macs with Windows Server. Today I work more with Microsoft Entourage, which is similar to Outlook for Windows, and since early 2007 I've been co-authoring The Entourage Help Blog with fellow MVP, Diane Ross.
One of the best things about being an MVP is getting to attend the MVP Summit held every 12-18 months at Microsoft in Redmond, WA.
This room full of folks contains only eight MVPs. The rest are Microsoft Office for Mac developers, product managers, testers, marketers and more. This is when we get to speak for a few days with the folks at the Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU). We give tons of feedback and ideas for improving Office for Mac. In turn, they show us what they're working on and ask for our opinions. Some meetings are standing room only like this.
Global Deaf Connection
A few hours a week I also volunteer at Global Deaf Connection, a local Twin Cities charity.
During the past year I've helped them acquire a couple of new Mac desktops, laptop and even one of the new Mac Mini Servers. Managing their office has been a lot easier with a central directory server that allows them to do new things like blog and share a common calendar.
They still rely on donated Windows laptops for a lot of charitable work and I manage these as well.
Remember the human
One of the best compliments I ever received was from one of my users I used to support. She appreciated how I explained things in a calm tone and didn't use condescending language.
Later, as I advanced in my career I came to appreciate that compliment more and more. When I answer questions in the newsgroups I might roll my eyes or wonder why some folks are just dense. Then I think about the #1 rule of Netiquette:Remember the Human. Basically, never say anything to or about someone online that you wouldn't say directly to that person.
The phrase and its meaning sink deep with me. So much so that I named my blog Remember the Human.
A moose by any other name...
That leads me to the Talking Moose, my long-time Mac buddy. This was the first computer program that I ever purchased. It came on an 800k floppy disk in the back of Bob Levitus's book "Stupid Mac Tricks". That book and its applications were the first demonstration that computers could be fun as well as productive. The Talking Moose cinched my love for Macs back in the late 80s.
Today, I honor the Moose with my domain name and salute M. Uli Kusterer for his continued development for Mac OS X and Windows.
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