I've been Tagged: Five Things You Might Not Know About Me

I've been tagged by Paul, so here are 5 things to share about me:

1) I was born in Michigan, lived for two years in California, and then spent a decade growing up in England.  I attended Duke University and graduated with a degree in Computer Science.

2) During college I also worked for Apple Computer.

3) I joined Microsoft straight out of school.  I was recruited by 5 different teams within Microsoft that were each trying to sell me on their group.  J Allard (who then ran the IIS team and later went on to create the XBOX and Zune) found out I'm a huge college basketball fan and somehow got Bill Gates to send me a basketball to help convince me to join his team:

 

Although the basketball wasn't actually the reason I picked the team, it didn't hurt. ;-)

4) I am a General Manager within the Microsoft Developer Division and manage the development teams that build several Microsoft products/technologies including: the CLR, .NET Compact Framework, ASP.NET, Windows Forms, WPF and WPF/E, IIS, Commerce Server, and the Visual Studio tool support for Web and WPF applications.  Although my blog is heavy on ASP.NET content, that is actually only one of the technologies I spend time on.

5) I write all of the blog posts and samples on my blog myself.  A lot of people often ask if I have help doing them - but I actually write all of the posts/tutorials entirely myself (hence the reason I usually post between 10pm and 2am at night <g>).  I've posted 217 blog posts over the last 12 months and have responded to ~6500 (non-spam) blog comments this year.  It has kept me busy, but I also find it a lot of fun.

Have a great New Year's celebration - see you in 2007!

Scott

36 Comments

  • Just incase you don't hear it enough Scott, all of your work is greatly appreciate!

  • Ditto. Keep up the excellent work!

  • I second that. I can't say it enough. It's people like you who make me proud I chose .net as my primary skillset. I was an linux guy before and during college. I was introduced to C# by a users group and I fell in love. (I still love linux too...dont get me wrong =])

  • It's good to hear that you do write everything your self. I'd bet that the effort you put into your blog has a very positive impact on your success as a manager (beyond the help they are to your readers).

    I'm basing that on my own experience with blogging - I've found that blogging forces me to really learn a feature inside and out. It's one thing to write some working code, but writing a post (especially with sample code) requires me to cover all your angles and often find some gotchas I might not have noticed otherwise. If a mistake does slip through, you can be sure a commenter will let you know about it.

    Secondly, the comments on you posts are an important feedback channel. They keep you in touch with problems or questions that your average user has, and prompt user feedback that might not normally be submitted through other official Microsoft channels.

    What did you do at Apple?

  • Hi Scott, Would like to all thank to its time and devotion with the community. I wait its visit to the Brazil.

  • You need to tag five more people Scott :)

  • Wow Scott, you have an amazing track of achievements. Your professional life is a great example of where I would like to get in the future. If some day you visit Ecuador please let me know to show you the best of our country.

  • what does General Manager mean? is that the BIG BOSS of your Microsoft Developer Division?

    :P

  • Thanks Scott for all the effort in explaining all the features of ASP.NET and related technology. Hope you´ll have a great 2007 and please keep going....

  • Just incase you don't hear it enough Scott, all of your work is greatly appreciated!

    Nikita Polyakov
    Micrsoft Student Partner
    MSA of the Year [2005-2006]

  • Scott your awesome! I can seriously say that you're blogs and your team made me get a bonus this year! I like your blogs because they are always things that I've wanted to do and you explain them simply and they are easy to follow. I think i get something out of every one.

    Thanks for a great year! I hope you keep it up next year!!

  • One thing we *do* know about you, is that you are an awfully nice guy.

  • happy new year to you as well and thanks for the blog which really helps us on our engagements with ms clients.

  • Scott - I've got an ASP.NET 1.1 application that was written without the assistance of Visual Studio. I'd like to convert the application to ASP.NET 2.0, but the migration wizard only launches when it sees an sln file from 2003. Since this project was never created in 2003 it doesn't have an sln file. Is there any way for me to manually force the conversion of this application? Thanks.

  • I honestly have no idea how you (and the Atlas Control toolkit team) find the time to do all that you do.

    It certainly puts my productivity to shame!

    Keep up the good work,

    Martin

  • Happy new year to you too scott. Its been great watching your blog, and truly this has been one of the few motivating facts to start my own blog. Although I started by blog in august this year and hence have only 110 blogs.

    Hope to see more great blogs from you in 2007

  • Scott the volume and quality of work you put out is second to none! "Impressive" is an understatement. I feel your passion in every post and that's what makes it so much fun to learn from you. I look forward to reading you in 2007. Thanks for sharing!

  • :-D

    I just was going to tag you before checking all my RSS feeds after 3 days :-P

  • Although I'm not a big Developer, but, whenever I see ScottGu's name over any stuff, I'm sure it has a great value to read. Thanks for all your efforsts and have another great year this year ;)

  • you know what, i learned alot from you.

    Keep on the Good work

  • Keep it up bro.
    When you need help out here on the court just say the word and we've got your back.
    (Microsoft Rocks!)

  • You worked for Apple? This is the last time I talk to you ;-)

    I lived in England as well what years?

  • Hey Scott,

    Not sure if you remember me, I worked with you and the team AGES ago and co-auhtored the Wrox Press booked "A preview of ASP+" which we released at PDC. I'm a VP for ADP now (www.adp.com) and I'm pleased to say the group I work in has a couple of enterprise apps built using asp.net (we provide the payroll web services for the office accounting team).

    I don't get my hands dirty with code that often these days but I really enjoy reading your blog as a way of at least staying aware of what cool things are going on in asp.net land.

    Your blog is truely exceptional, excellent high quality content and of huge value to the community, really nice job!!

    I'll probably be at PDC 07 and so I'll try and find you and say hello!

  • Duke '92 here (computer science too). It is great to hear a fellow Blue Devil is doing well at Microsoft!

  • Great, let us know something about apple technologies you've worked, also you have forgot to mention how old you are. :-)

    i am a regular reader of your blog, i like all your posts a lot , but can you tell, how you manage your time to write blog despite of being the General Manager of Asp.net Team.

  • you are the general manager of most of the things that have evolved more in .net world. And you have time to write one of the best blog in msdn. Tell me how can you do it!

    Although I am just a project leader and i am not the one that should evaluate you: Really good good work!

    ¡Feliz año nuevo!

  • Scott,
    Happy New Year!
    Thanks for your posts and keep up the good work.
    Please post your picture as well so that we can all see how our great guy looks like. :)

  • Hi David Mackey,

    How has your ASP.NET 1.1 application that you are trying to convert been written? Does it use code-behind and is compiles into an assembly? If so, then I'd recommend creating a new blank VS 2005 Web Application Project and then use the "add existing files" feature to add-in the pages and classes for your project. You can then right-click on the project root and choose the "convert to web application" to update these to the VS 2005 way of doing code-behind.

    If you were just using inline code, then you should be able to just choose File->Open Web Site within VS and point to the root of your project and be good to go.

    Hope this helps,

    Scott

  • I hope you have some time for other than computer programming!!!
    ;-)

    Thank Scott

  • Whats your secret Scott in achieving?

  • I've been reading your books and attending your talks for at least 8 years now. Keep up the great work. It is very much appreciated.

  • Can you copy that Gates signature to a blank check for me?

  • You are doing Great Job and helping the Community. Keep up the good work.

  • Thanks for keeping us uptodate on whats happening in the asp.net world. I've subscribed to the rss feed from your blog. It's one of the first things I check each morn. :-)

  • ok, so that answer a question people always ask me when I tell them the best ways to learn about new techonologies is to follow blogs (I always give this blog as an example). everybody always asks how could you possibly answer all those comments and still do your job...
    All I know is that in the few times I had a question that wasn't asked already, you answered very quickly, and that's on top of the great posts.

    so once again, thanks for doing the extra effort to help us .net developers

  • People like Scott are why I enjoy developing on the MSFT platform.

    (I'll try and forget that part about going to Duke, NC State grad here)

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