Hi Guys, A quick introduction

Hi everyone, some of you already know me from around the community, I'm the silent one who sits and makes the occasional stealth post now and then over at the Green Button. My nick name is Lindz, so don't be surprised if I sign emails with it sometimes :)

 I am a Microsoft employee and technical enthusiast, I am involved in a program called the Microsoft Champion program and I have volunteered to evangelize, promote and support different areas of Microsoft's technologies with the relevant communities. Within Microsoft as a day job I work as a developer in a small tools and infrastructure group for a product called Microsoft Forefront (www.Microsoft.com/Forefront), which deals with server side virus security for a host of Microsoft products. My main passion in life is development, with Media Center and Home Server coming a close second. These two things often mix for me also, more on that later...

 Prior to working at Microsoft I've always been a complete Media Center addict, I've been running my only source of TV through Media Center for years since the first version. I've been coming to many of the community sites I now want to be involved with for a long time and know many of you already even though many of you don't know who I am :)

 I have a blog over on on10.net as well as this one, you can see it here: http://www.on10.net/blogs/EnglishBloke/Default.aspx, I also did a video interview with on10.net a little while ago about my setup at home (which has since grown and changed a lot, you can see this original video here : http://www.on10.net/blogs/Brianjo/Amazing-Media-Center-Setup/Default.aspx

 I would encourage everyone here to take a look at on10, and to help us build up the forums over there also. The forum's there are very visible to Microsoft and you are likely to be heard very well over there on pertinent topics :)

 Now, why am I here? Well I've been taking with several community leaders such as Ian lately and I've volunteered to 'Champion' Media Center and Home Server for several communities, TheDigitalLifestyle.com being one of them, on10.net is another and I'll announce a few others on my blog later once the details have been confirmed.

 So what does 'Champion' mean?, it means that I will be helping you guys in any way I can as well as trying to help new adopters or potential adopters of Media Center and Home Server have a comfortable ride, and help introduce you to features and things you can do with technologies which perhaps you didn't know.

These actions will primarily be through the forums, I will be responding to every post I can on the forums. This blog will also be a way of delivering information to everyone here at the site and also to new potential users at one time. In addition as I'm primarily a developer, you can be sure I'll have lots of MCML tips and tricks and general development techniques you can use to help with your ride through the world of Media Center.

One of the first things I'll be doing here is releasing my source code for a plug-in I wrote recently for Media Center, the plug-in is called 'Stage6 DivX for Media Center', which delivers content subscription from the DivX Stage6 site to your main MCE pc and to v2 extenders (not 360's, although hey you'll have the source ;)). I'll also be talking a little about the design strategy for the application and pieces of code within it.

So I think that's enough for this intro, basically I'm here for you and I'm listening, if you want some answers, I may be able to help. Bear in mind I don't work directly for the Media Center team; however I do have a lot of good contacts in the Media Center teams and across Microsoft as a whole.... Will I be able to answer them burning issue questions you have which no one is answering? Maybe, maybe not. Can I help you with MCE/WHS development; yep I should be able to. Can I help you with general coding questions to help your development on your Media Center apps, absolutely :)

 Thanks Guys, Media Center and Windows Home Server are great technologies and I hope to be able to help introduce more people to the cool features we have in the products and really enthuse people to grow their digital homes. The next 5 years will show a lot of really great activity in these areas, and this site and its members are definitely on the cutting edge of that :) 

Lindz.

(Steve Lindsay - Microsoft)