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Interview with a Visual C# MVP Wiki Ninja - Sara Silva

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Welcome to our Monday interview with a Wiki Ninja!

This year I already had the pleasure to present to you a Portuguese Wiki Ninja: João Eduardo Sousa, and previously in 2013: André Lage. In my struggle to encourage and promote the Portuguese community to be more present and more Contribute with articles on TechNet Wiki I will try to find new members who deserve to be highlighted here… and today we're interviewing one of them... Sara Silva.

For me it’s a great pleasure to interview and, in a way, present to you my friend and Portuguese Visual C# MVP Sara Silva (you can follow her through her personal blog). Even if they don't know who exactly Sara Silva is, I am absolutely sure that all the MVPs will recognize her by the picture because she is on the cover of the MVP Award kit next to Paulo Morgado (also a Portuguese MVP)

And in the last two month she has won the Technical Guru award from Technet Wiki: June and May with two wiki articles:

Who are you, where are you, and what do you do? What are your specialty technologies?

Hello, my name is Sara Silva aka saramgsilva, I am from Portugal and I´m living in Lisbon, because I work here in a big Portuguese company, called Novabase, more specifically in Mobile Team.  

I have lived in other famous cities from Portugal, like Porto where I have worked almost 5 years in development related with Public Transports, at OPT, and in Coimbra where I studied and got my degree in Math. Nowadays, I work with Microsoft technologies and my focus is development for Windows Phone, Windows Store apps and more recently focused in Xamarin apps and Azure (Mobile Services and Notification hubs).

My main background is definitely C# and XAML.

How did you become an MVP of Visual C#? Do you have any suggestions for other community members who hope to eventually become MVPs?

Since 2010 I have been working for communities, I wrote to eMaganize Programar, is a technical Portuguese eMagazine, and I was a co-founder of NetPonto Community in Portugal for some time. Before Windows 8 was release, the RTM version, I started working on it and got some knowledge and with my experience in WPF (C# and XAML), I started to participate in MSDN forums, I wrote articles, I did some presentations and helped colleagues with doubts about this subject. Absolutely this helped me to become Microsoft MVP and the night before I become MVP I read some twittes about MVP renewal award and was sleeping thinking I will never become MVP. And the other day in the moment before I press clean SPAM folder I saw something about Microsoft in my SPAM folder, I couldn´t believe I received the email some hours before and then I fortunately did not deleted it, was a really nice moment and I will never forget it :)

Later in 2013, I was awarded with Nokia Developer Champion.

For who wants to be a Microsoft MVP, my suggestion is never give up and use social network and user groups to share their knowledge. There are a lot of ways to participate and the official website of the Microsoft MVP Award Program has the content to help on it.

What do you do with TechNet Wiki, and how does that fit into the rest of your job?

TechNet Wiki is interesting because I can share an article and any person can help me to improve it, updating the content and fixing my mistakes. For me it is the best thing in a Wiki.

With more or less 10-15 pages (in word) needs one day to be completed. Off course a small article do not need so much time… it depends of the content.

Each time I find an issue or a feature that I think there is not so much information or as mistakes, I try to write my version with the goal to show all steps I did to get the solution. Sometimes it is useful because I search for my articles to review a solution for something I did in past and need again but I do not remember.

What is it about TechNet Wiki that interests you?

Like I said before,I can share an article and any person can help me to getting it better, updating the content and fixing my mistakes. For me it is the best thing in a Wiki.

What are your favorite articles you’ve contributed?

My favorite article, wrote by me, is that about authentication in social network, in Windows Phone 8.0 apps.

Maybe because I got some prizes with this article and I felt this article/sample was used for a lot of devs, many developers reply to me about it.

On what articles have you collaborated with other community members on #TNWiki? What was that experience like?

I think in TechNet Wiki I did not participated in others articles with others members, but in Nokia Wiki, where I have a lot of articles I did and the experience was good, for keep the articles updated.

Who has impressed you in the Wiki community, and why?

Wiki community is very active and I find a good articles, sometimes the articles are not small or poor, they are good and useful. Normally these articles are complementary to the documentation or even have more details.

Do you have any tips for new Wiki contributors?

For the new contributors, I recommend to talk with others contributors that have experience for publish the articles in the best way and following the general rules for the wiki. 

Final words:

I think Microsoft should promote more the good articles, using the newsletters, social network and.... Today the internet is so big and is very easy the articles die in the immersive network.

Thanks Sara for the interview and your contributions for the TechNet Wiki Community and Portuguese Community whether these are in English or in Portuguese.

"Share your knowledge.It’s a way to achieve immortality. " - Dalai Lama

BizTalk Wiki Ninja Sandro Pereira (Blog, Wiki, Twitter, Profile)

Comments

  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2014
    Congratulation for the Interview..Good to know you
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2014
    thanks for the interview
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2014
    Congrats Sara!
    I love this impressive part of your interview:
    "...the night before I become MVP I read some twittes about MVP renewal award and was sleeping thinking I will never become MVP. And the other day in the moment before I press clean SPAM folder I saw something about Microsoft in my SPAM folder, I couldn´t believe I received the email some hours before and then I fortunately did not deleted it, was a really nice moment and I will never forget it :)"
    Thanks Sandro for this interesting interview!
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2014
    Thanks for the oportunity :)
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2014
    Thanks Saeid Hasani! It happened, in that night @mbcrump put some twittes about the program... :)
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2014
    Congratulation Sara!
    Great interview and very nice article (Authentication using Facebook... I commented there as well).
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2014
    Saeid, thanks for informing us on this Interview. This is exactly why I said that we need the Facebook group :-)
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2014
    Ronen, you're right about official FB page, Thanks!
    Sara, you expressed very well that great moments. Your article was awesome too!
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2014
    Wow! Congratulations Sara. :)
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2014
    Congratulation Sara ??
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2014
    The comment has been removed
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2014
    Congrats Sara! You deserv it!
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2014
    Thanks :D
  • Anonymous
    July 21, 2014
    Interesting Interview.... Congrats Sara and good to know about you.
  • Anonymous
    July 22, 2014
    Good interview ! and cool to now know who is on the pic from the MVP's award kit :-) Congrat to have been featured to cover that media.
  • Anonymous
    July 22, 2014
    thank you
  • Anonymous
    July 24, 2014
    Thank you Sara for all your contributions on TechNet Wiki!
  • Anonymous
    July 27, 2014
    Congratulations and good to know you Sara!
  • Anonymous
    July 06, 2015
    Good article. I have seen lots of Sara's work in the community. She is an inspiration for others.
  • Anonymous
    September 21, 2015
    Sara you rock!