Name:
Steve Guttman
sguttman@microsoft.com

Title/Product:
Product Unit Manager, Expression Web

What inspires you?
I still love seeing amazing products and features. Having been in the industry for 20+ years, I still get a charge out of seeing really great software. Sometime a product is amazing because it stretches the bounds of what everyone thought was technically possible—like Photoshop did in the early days. Sometimes the product is not technically too exciting, but because of the way it was conceived, it opens up new markets and introduces people to a new way of doing things. I remember being on a panel with Ev Williams in 2000. Ev created Blogger, and almost went out of business a number of times before his company was purchased by Google. Blogger was not a particularly exciting piece of software, but it was one of the first products that made web authoring accessible to the masses, and jumpstarted the blogging revolution.

How did you choose to work on this team with this product?
I came to join my old friends Eric Zocher and Doug Olson. Eric, Doug and I worked at Adobe back in the early '90's, where we helped create the early generations of Adobe's graphics tools. I joined them at Microsoft because I saw a great opportunity to build a new set of tools for authoring and interactivity.

What’s your favorite feature? Why?
There's a lot I can say about Expression Web SuperPreview—which is a tool we beta’d at Mix09. SuperPreview let you do cross-browser debugging of web page layouts, and it does it in a fashion that goes way beyond current approaches. But, I also continue to be impressed by Expression Web's CSS capabilities. It's like having Firebug (the debugger for Firefox) built into your authoring environment. You can really see how the CSS cascade affects your style properties.

How long have you been a Microsoftie?
A little less than 2 years.

What does your typical workday look like?
About half the stuff I focus on has to do with the relationship between Expression Web and other groups like Blend, IIS, SharePoint, etc. These are mostly meetings and associated follow-up. About half of my work is making sure things are on-track with the product. And, the last half is individual contributions to specs, strategies, presentations, etc.

How do you like to spend your time outside of work?
I have 3 kids in public school. So, I get to find out that I'm not as smart as a fifth grader on a regular basis. I've also been enjoying the many miles of bike trails in the Seattle area.