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Bio

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Saved by Tara Brown
on September 24, 2009 at 10:32:29 pm
 

Tara Brown has been managing and developing software since 1995. At Yaletown Technology she designed, built, and managed Group Health Cooperative's first Intranet. At BCAA she designed and built out an Intranet for their 24 service centers in addition to project managing one of the first web based auto insurance quoting systems.

 

For her 8 year tenure at Microsoft as a Senior Lead Program Manager, Tara worked on various software projects including Windows Live Calendar, Address Book, and Microsoft Office Outlook Connector (where she started working remotely with teams in Hyderabad, India). She moved over to a new team Office Live, to bring Office to the web and worked on Microsoft Office Live for Small Business and Microsoft Office Live Workspace focusing on a new concept - Social Productivity.

 

Wanting to work at a start up in the entertainment industry, for the past year Tara has been working as a Program Manager for Topspin, a technology platform for direct-to-fan, marketing, management and distribution. She specs and manages features and works with musicians to implement campaigns using Topspin technology.

In her spare time, Tara creates and produces projects like Cat Workout, and iPhun, a video review show and blog dedicated to the iPhone gamer.

 

LinkedIn Profile

 

 

The long of it:

It all started when I got my Pong Machine. From there I got an Intellivision, then a PC. Jr which gave me my first taste of social networking with Bulletin Boards and got all my tips for the Sierra’s Quest Series (esp. King’s Quest).  My uncle had Atari so I played Pole Position a lot and got my exercise with my Nintendo Power Pad.  Of course the rest of the consoles followed like SEGA, Playstation, Nintendo 64, etc.  In High School I played around a little with DOS and QBasic. The other day an old friend reminded me that we used to secretly trade floppy disks under the desk b/c it just wasn’t cool. 

 

In college, I got a taste of Gopher and Veronica but didn’t know how that was going to help me get a job, so I decided that consulting was where it was at and joined Yaletown Technology, a data warehousing consulting firm.  I was a sysadmin for email, time tracking system and also did project mgmt and dev’d some web applications for Group Health Cooperative.  I decided that I hated the company webpage and decided to re-build it and after quickly becoming tired of notepad, discovered Vermeer’s FrontPage. I had the fun experience of figuring out how to get Exchange up and running in the Vancouver and Kirkland offices and move the mail over from the Sun machine. After a couple of years I moved over to BCAA and built out an Intranet for their 24 service centers across the province of B.C. I also implemented their Document Management System and Project Managed their online insurance quoting system.  Then, one rainy day in May 2000, I got a call asking if I wanted to interview at Microsoft in sunny California. I looked outside and said “yes!”. 

 

I got the job at MSN Calendar down at SVC but actually started working on MSN Address Book. That project got transferred to Redmond and so I worked on MSN Calendar DAV for the MSN Client. I tried out Hailstorm for awhile then worked on Intellisync for MSN, and then got asked to work on Outlook Connector (OLC).   I was a bit homesick for Vancouver, B.C. and wanted to experience the mother ship so I moved to Redmond. I worked briefly on the MSN Messenger team focusing on the OLC and Small Business and then was asked if I wanted to join the MSN Small Business team.  From there Office Live was formed and I’ve been on Small Business for almost 3 years focusing on the Business Applications. In December 2007 I transitioned to Microsoft Office Live Workspace focusing on Social Productivity in Office. 

 

As of July 16th, 2008 I no longer work at Microsoft.  I decided after 8 years it was time to take my career in a new direction and I accepted the position of Program Manager at Topspin Media at their San Francisco office. 

 

New I married Sean Bonner on October 31, 2008. More on all those shenanigans here.

 

BTW: I AM CANADIAN from Langley, B.C. If you are also a Canuck or just love Canadians, be sure to let me know!! 

 

I uploaded my Insights Discovery profile which will give you a pretty accurate insight into my behavior!

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