And Then There Were Four

As many of us are gearing up for the new school year or rebooting various user groups following a summer hiatus, this seems like a good time to introduce the (mostly) new Technical Evangelist Team for the Northeast District. Although our mission remains the same – enable developer and student audiences to become successful mobile application developers – our numbers and “home bases” have increased, which will enable us as a team to reach more of you on a consistent basis.

	Michael Cummings has been on the team since January making his mark at multiple events in Boston, Farmington, and several of the State University of New York schools. Michael has a penchant for gaming (including the XNA, MonoGame, and Unity frameworks) and cross-platform mobile development via Xamarin.
	Steve Maier joined the team on July 1st and is based in the Rochester, New York area. For years he’s been a Microsoft community focal point in that area (and co-leads AppRochester) and is also an adjust professor at RIT. He’ll be the go-to guy for developers in the upstate/western New York area.
	The ink is just about dry on Josh Drew’s employment forms! Josh joined the team Monday and is based in southwestern Connecticut. He has deep experience in the digital agency realm, most recently as VP of Technology in Weld Media, and he’s the proud new owner of a Nokia 1020 to boot!
	Most of you already know me (you’re reading my blog after all!), and I’ve been with Microsoft for about 5 1/2 years all in my current role. I live in the western suburbs of Boston and will be spending most of my time at events in the Boston and Cambridge area along with Rhode Island, Southern Maine and New Hampshire.

Lest rumors start flying about my former colleagues, Chris Bowen and Edwin Guarin, congratulations versus goodbyes are in order. Both Chris and Edwin have moved on to new roles and new challenges at Microsoft, and I expect they won’t be strangers to the developers and students they’ve fostered over the years. After all, you can take the evangelist out of the community, but you can’t take the community out of the evangelist!