Name:
Dante Gagné (Yes, my name has the accent. It means “Winner” in French, which is why I haven’t Americanized it to “Gag-Knee”).

Title/Product:
I am a Senior Software Design Engineer in Test on Expression Blend. That’s a fancy way of saying that I’m a developer who doesn’t write the code that makes Blend, but instead writes code that tests Blend

What inspires you?
I’m a game and a puzzle person. I don’t want to see how someone else solves the puzzle, I want to sit and work out my own solution... THEN see how other people solve it. I’m inspired by a challenge.

How did you choose to work on this team with this product?
I don’t have the world’s greatest artistic talent, but I’ve always been fascinated with making things look cool. When I first found Sparkle (original code name for Expression Blend), it was the first time people seemed to be trying to cross the gap between making something functional and making it LOOK cool. I was hooked right off the bat.

What’s your favorite feature? Why?
It probably sounds very geeky, but I like resources. I think in terms of words, not concepts. So, when I can take something like a color or how a rectangle looks and turn that into a word, it works with how I think. Blend makes it easy to create those resources and use them. I’m also fascinated with ink, although ink is more of a WPF feature than Blend.

How long have you been a Microsoftie?
I joined Microsoft in November of 2002 as a junior Software Design Engineer in Test on the Sparkle team. Sparkle eventually became Expression Blend, so yes, I’ve been with the same team that entire time. I just can’t bring myself to leave the product I have so much passion for.

What does your typical workday look like?
The two things I do the most are spec reviews and writing automation for the Blend testing stack. In other words, I read the documents that say how Blend is supposed to work, or work on our tools that make sure it KEEPS working. I do get to spend a fair amount of time working in Blend itself. I also tend to work on Blog posts, and lately, I’ve been giving training classes and presentations for Blend. I like to get out and meet the people who are actually using Blend, and speaking at conferences and doing training events helps me do that.

How do you like to spend your time outside of work?
I spend a lot of my time playing games. There’s nothing better to me then a handful of friends, a deck of cards and hours to chat and have fun. I also love travelling, and I’m a sucker for cruises. I also like designing games, whether on the computer or on a board.

Anything else you’d like to share with the community?
A small bit of trivia that I’ve always been proud of. When Blend 1 released, one of the samples was an “Animation Studio” that used Ink to simulate an animation flip book. I designed that, and together with a developer friend, Eric Stolnitz, we wrote it in a single day. Our UX designers got a hold of it and cleaned up the appearance, but I’ve always been proud of it.

Links
Blog: http://blogs.msdn.com/DanteG