Sara Ford - the Microsoft open source leader who gives and gives

David M Williams
Thursday, 10 September 2009 19:32

IT People - Training

Ford grew up in Waveland, Mississippi where her parents continue to live. Seeing her hometown devastated by Hurricane Katrina moved Ford to action. She vowed that one day she would do something to make a difference.

That day came when Ford received her initial royalties cheque for the book. Armed with $12,000 and a pledge by Microsoft to match her donation she was able to make a significant donation to the Save Waveland Scholarship Fund. This Fund enables any resident of Waveland to attend Gulf Coast Community College. Ford later donated additional royalties that came after the advance.

This Fund was meaningful to her, Ford told iTWire, because the children beginning high school at the time of Katrina are now graduating and have lived with the aftermath of its devastation for their entire high school period.

As a result Gulf Coast College – which Sara Ford attended for a semester – named her “Alumni of the year” for 2009.

I asked Sara Ford what her absolute favourite tip is. She told iTWire it is a power user tip and that even the Principal Architect of Visual Studio was surprised and impressed when she showed it to him.

The “Find” dialog combo box actually permits commands to be executed, Ford explained. If you type “main” and then press F9 you can actually set a breakpoint on the “main()” method within your project, for instance. Other commands and keystrokes work with similar results.

Of course, being Sara Ford, she gave me a second favourite tip. Under the Tools menu Visual Studio permits configuration settings to be imported and exported. A macro can be used to automate this and then in turn be bound to a button with a customisable icon.

This means, Ford explained, it is possible to set up many different environments and then switch between them at the mere click of a button. For example, she has a regular coding environment and then another for presentations which hides toolbars, increases the font size and more. She can freely move between environments at a click.

I concluded my time with Sara Ford with no doubt as to why a Sara Ford fan club exists. She’s a lady of action with a heart well in excess of her size. The only problem I could imagine anyone ever having with Sara Ford is simply in being able to keep up with her.

Disclaimer: David M Williams is attending Microsoft Tech-Ed as a guest of Microsoft.