BigBlueBall Staffer Awarded Microsoft MVP

BigBlueBall staff member Doris Kenney–patndoris in the forums–has been officially recognized as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Windows Live Messenger (WLM).

The Microsoft MVP Award is an annual award that recognizes exceptional technology community leaders worldwide who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with users and Microsoft.

Rich Kaplan, VP Customer and Partner Advocacy at Microsoft said “It is with great pride we announce that Doris Kenney has been awarded as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). All of us at Microsoft recognize and appreciate Doris’s extraordinary contributions and want to take this opportunity to share our appreciation with you.

“As a recipient of this year’s Microsoft MVP award, Doris joins an exceptional group of individuals from around the world who have demonstrated a willingness to reach out, share their technical expertise with others and help individuals maximize their use of technology.”

Of course, we at BigBlueBall are especially proud of this honor, but we are not surprised. Doris has been actively involved in our forums for a long time, sharing her expertise and helping people every day.

Congratulations, Doris!

Related Links

• Doris Kenney’s MVP profile

BigBlueBall Featured at the StudioPress Showcase

Back on March 1st, we introduced an extensive redesign of BigBlueBall to make it easier for you to participate in our community. We revamped the front end of our site to leverage the powerful-but-flexible Wordpress back end. We made it possible to comment without registering, and made it possible for you to sign in using your Facebook account.  But best of all, we added a bold, fresh look based on the wonderful Lifestyle theme from StudioPress,

Now BigBlueBall is featured in the Lifestyle section of the StudioPress Showcase! I’d like extend a special thanks to Brian Gardner, head of StudioPress for the fine work he puts into each of their beautiful and functional WordPress themes.

If you’d like to use one of their themes for your web site, check them out. If you end up buying one, you’ll also be supporting BigBlueBall — proud affiliates of StudioPress. And if you need assistance customizing them or integrating with your forums, contact me. I’d love to help!

Become a BigBlueBall Fan on Facebook

I want to extend a personal thank you to all the Facebook users who joined our BigBlueBall Fan page. We quickly passed 100 fans, allowing us to register our own BigBlueBall Facebook URL: http://www.facebook.com/BigBlueBall

If you are a Facebook user and haven’t joined our fan page, please stop by and click the “Become a Fan” button at the top of the page. Then leave a comment on our wall and introduce yourself!

By the way, not long ago we added the ability for you to sign in to comment via Facebook, both here in our news section as well as in the BigBlueBall forums. Give it a try and let me know what you think.

If you have your own company or web site, did you know you can setup your own fan page? It allows you to separate your personal page from your company or web site. Once your page reaches 100 fans you can register your own Facebook URL, just like BigBlueBall.

The New BigBlueBall.com

We designed the new BigBlueBall.com with you in mind, making it easier to use, navigate, search and find the information you need. You no longer need to register to leave a comment, and you can easily subscribe to keep track of responses. If you use Facebook, you can sign-in directly using Facebook Connect. 

Here is an overview of the changes

We’re still putting the finishing touches on things, so if you find something that looks amiss, please let us know!

Ch-ch-ch-Changes at the BigBlueBall

I am currently preparing a major update to BigBlueBall. It’s been a long time coming, but it’s almost here. And you can get a sneak peek right here at blog.bigblueball.com!  The front-end of the site is moving to WordPress for content management. This new interface will be used fo all our news, tutorials and reference pages — the stuff currently found on the BigBlueBall homepage and in the various IM Centers (and very hard to find!). 

What you’re looking at right now is a work-in-progress. The logo, fonts and colors are still in flux, but the basic layout, site structure and the concept of featuring content on the home page is pretty well defined. My goal is to make the home page more informative, more visually appealing, more accessible for participation (no login required to post comments!), and just plain better! 

The stuff in the right column has not yet been defined, but the basic layout of the front page has. You will see that we have a new section where we an very clearly and vividly feature content. We also will show recent news from the three major categories: instant messaging, mobile communications and social networking. And we’ll have links that take you to everything else, including our most popular section, the forums. 

I’d like your feedback. Please leave a comment and let me know if you’ve got feedback or ideas. Love it? Hate it? I want to hear from you. Look around, and leave a comment below.

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