With Risman's announcement looking for a DE and Norman's announcement replacing Risman, I kinda feel itchy to follow the same thing... in a relay-race, a person who drops the baton will make the team lose, and I don't want to drop the baton and jeopardize the greatness of the DPE Indonesia Team. Thus, I'm looking for a runner who can run faster than me and has more stamina to stand the heat while running, a person I can pass my baton to...
Ok, good stuff first: this job will make your travel dreams come true. With this job, I have travelled to almost all major islands in Indonesia: Sumatra, Jawa (all the big cities), Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Bali. Papua was in plan this year, but my plane seems to have run out of fuel :) Depending on budget, you may travel outside the country once a year (PDC, TechEd, etc.) for technical update. But you will most likely travel to wherever Imagine Cup is hosted....
Your main job will be evangelizing Imagine Cup. You have to make everybody know about Imagine Cup. You have to try hard and make Indonesia get into the Top 6 Software Design and encourage other students to explore other categories than Software Design (Embedded, Game Development, Photography, Short Film, etc.).
- Imagine Cup 2006: India
- Imagine Cup 2007: Korea
- Imagine Cup 2008: France
- Imagine Cup 2009: Egypt
So, you think you have all the good technical skills to do Visual Studio, WPF, WCF, WF, CardSpace, Silverlight, Robotics Studio, XNA, ASP.NET, Ajax Evangelization? But wait, good technical skills are not enough... you may even be disappointed with the job if your focus is coding, coding, and only coding... Dude, you gotta meet people and talk. You gotta organize events and invite people. Then you gotta need to build the demos (usually within 2-3 days timeframe... hehehe).
I'm gonna borrow my colleague's job description about ADE (Academic Developer Evangelist), adding a twist to make it real-life in DPE Indonesia:
| Component | % of Role |
Technology Evangelism
- Redelivery of existing demos and presentations on developer tools and technologies to student audiences. (in other words: borrow other people's demos and present it again... not so original. I, myself, don't like this much as it's better to understand your code than other people's code :P )
- Development of presentations/training content relating to developer tools and the Microsoft development platform. (in other words: you gotta have the skills to build your own demos and deliver workshops)
- Preparing for sessions to be delivered to students. (in other words: event organizing, but you will get help from your friendly Microsoft Student Partners for this)
|
30%
|
Program Management
- Recruitment, mentoring and support of Microsoft Student Partners (on campus students who assist in delivering our technology story to students).
- Promote and mentor teams that have entered in the Imagine Cup Competition (a global technology competition for students).
- Reporting on progress on other activities.
|
30%
|
Issue Management and Other Projects
- Help system administrators within academic institutions realize the benefits of their Microsoft software through assisting them in the deployment of software into labs, on staff machines and to students. (in other words: you gotta promote MSDNAA - Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance)
- Assist in the execution other activities within the team
- Taking care of Microsoft Innovation Center
- Taking care of future super top-secret projects :)
|
40%
|
Okay, I don't want to disappoint people by creating the assumption that this is a super-cool technical job:
- You have 5+ years coding experience: So what? In Microsoft, we can always borrow other people's codes and demos. You gotta state why you're different from the others :)
- You have a PhD: Don't bother joining if you think you can be close to Microsoft Research or you want to keep on writing papers. Yes, you can use your PhD to talk to other senior faculty members who also have PhD, but remember, the ADE's main audience are students.
- You have an MSc / MS: Don't bother joining if you think you can save up some money for your PhD. Same rule with PhD above apply.
- You have an MBA: Cools, you probably have better insight on how to manage and run things around, especially with so many people and projects under you, you gotta have some business skills here.
- GENERAL IMPORTANT RULE: You think you are great? Well, my 52 Microsoft Student Partners (MSPs) can probably do all the above job, and most of them are students still studying in college. I've witnessed MSPs building their own great demos (and games too!), I've seen MSPs organize events which seem impossible at first, I've sen MSPs take care of MSDNAA and held MSDNAA Install Fests (give away Microsoft software for students). So, I need to know why you're better than them and why they should be managed under you? Freshgrad or experienced, it doesn't matter as long as you have the passion and determination :)
If you think you're brave enough to take my warning above and feel upbeat to take the challenge, I suggest you send your super-cool complete Curriculum Vitae (pls make it interesting to read, else we'll just throw it away) to Risman Adnan (rismana at microsoft dot com) or Narenda Wicaksono (i-narenw at microsoft dot com), whichever one you feel you're closer to, so they can give you good recommendations or bad recommendations :)
Are you ready grasshopper? I hope to see you when I come back from Imagine Cup 2008, France.