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What do you think of when you hear the word “Champ”? Someone who is the best? A sports champion? How about someone who fights for a cause? Here at Microsoft we have employees called “Developer Evangelists”. Part of their job is to help get the word out about Microsoft products and technologies. The other part of their job is to champion our developers.
Here in Windows Phone we call our evangelists “Phone Champs”. Champs ensure our developers get exactly the help & support they need and are the voice of the developer community. They are all experts on our platform and serve as local resources to answer questions from current or prospective developers. Champs can help you troubleshoot a problem in your app and can help you get your hands on a phone for testing. Oh, and some of our Champs are really funny and can tell you a good joke or two.
So how do you find one of our great Phone Champs? Today I’m happy to announce a new application to help you find them. We originally wanted to call the app “Champ Acquisition and Discovery 1.0 for Workgroups Windows Phone Edition.” Luckily cooler heads prevailed and we’re calling it “Find My Champ”.
The app was a team effort and I thank two of our Phone Champs for their help: Jerry Nixon and Max Zilberman.
Quick Look at Find My Champ
As you can see above, there are two main pivots: all & local. The first picture shows the “local” pivot, as someone in Paris would see it. We see that there are three Phone Champs within 250km of the phone’s current location.
Next we see what happens when the phone is rotated. A map comes up and shows all the Phone Champs as pushpins. Tapping a Phone Champ’s pushpin (or on their name in the list in the first image) reveals the contact info that a Phone Champ has chosen to share:
Get the App
Go download the app’s source code. Compile the code in our dev tools and side-load Find My Champ onto your developer device or into the emulator. The app will also be in the Marketplace soon for you to download. Find your local Phone Champ and get in touch with them. Ask them for help with your app or to let you know about events or hackathons in your area.
We’d love to get your feedback on the Find My Champ application. Tell us what we can do to make it more useful. You can also come help us improve the app on Codeplex. Additionally, I suspect that many of you will have creative ideas for how to use the Champs OData feed in other applications, mashups, etc. Please let me know what you create!
Ben
@benlower | phoneninja@microsoft.com | +1 (206) 659-NINJA (6465)
Ben....we need some DownUnder Champs please !!!!
Nearest to my location is 7,000km - with ~13,000 being the average for people listed in the App LOL :D
@Strider We are looking into this. We have peeps Down Under and I think this is a data problem. We will get the feed updated.
Does anyone know how to do this.
I have a Nokia Lumia 800 with Windows 7 on it.
My service provider has an option (like most do) *111#
When I enter it on the dialer, I get the following options menu.
1. Balance
2. Airtime/Bundle Transfer
3. Device Setup
4. Passwords
5. Content Management
6. M-PESA
7. Email
On my old phone I can then reply 1 (or anything else) to access that option.
On my new WP7, I cannot seem to reply.
The only option I have when this menu appear is (OK). When I click on that, the whole menu disappears.
Does anyone know how to do this?
I would appreciate your help on this.
(fixing this comment since I failed to mention USSD Phase 2) @JoeSteyn137 The capability you are referring to is called "USSD Phase 2". While we do support USSD, we don't currently support USSD Phase 2 in Windows Phone 7.5 but it is something that the team is evaluating for the future. I'm sorry that we don't have this option for you today. Is it possible that your carrier has other codes (e.g. *Balance) that would allow you to get this info? I realize it's not as convenient but might allow you to get your balance, etc.
Hi. I installed the Silverlight SDK, but I can't add a reference to the Microsoft.Phone.Controls.Toolkit.dll..... I can't find it anywhere. What am I doing wrong?
Cheers for your help
Chris
@chaensel did you install the Silverlight Toolkit or the Silverlight for Windows Phone toolkit? Both are on the silverlight.codeplex.com site. Make sure you grab the latter. Then, install the SL toolkit first. Then start up VStudio and open the FMC project. That should do the trick. If not, please let me know.
Ben, is this exclusive to Microsoft employees?
I've been a Microsoft Student Partner for 4 years and I'm a Windows Phone enthusiast. I'd love to be one of the Windows Phone developer evangelists.
Best regards,
@JulianoNunes
This app is sick! When I get my windows phone, i'm totally gonna be giving these champs props and gratitude whenever I can for all of their hard work!
@Juliano: thanks for your continued support! right now we've scoped this to only be focused on the MSFT employees who work as Champs. i love the idea of broadening it to include other folks like you...in fact there have been other people who have asked me if they can be in there. i won't promise anything more right now than to say that we will think this thru and consider what broadening would look like. i truly appreciate your desire to be a resource to help developers!
@Chinedu: thanks!
Hi Ben! Nice app, but it stuck on splashscreen when I started it first time. Also why this guy is missing https://twitter.com/#!/mixen ?
@apxapob did you get it to work? shouldn't hang on the splashscreen.
Yeah, Mik should be in there but our OData feed is still missing a few folks. We are working to get them all added. Did you ask Mik why he's not there? You should :-)
@Ben Yeah the app works fine, and I can't reproduce this bug again. Mik said the same thing as you=)
@Ben I see your post about the possibility of including Non-Microsofties in this list in the future. I would love to be a part of it. I am a Windows Phone fanatic/developer/ninja/champ and already help other developers with this wonderful platform :)
--
Paras Wadehra
www.twitter.com/ParasWadehra
Wow, this app looks awesome! ;)
How can we create incentives for developers to focus towards the Windows Phone OS? I feel like WP lacks a community of normal people who advocate for its OS/UI/Handsets. Honestly the only place that I've seen a true WP is on twitter following a handle called @MobieChick. The people chatting with this handle love talking about new cool stuff with WP, and this is one of the few handles that doesn't get overwhelmed by IT related questions. This person doesn't even have 600 followers though! We need a WP community so we can create demand for developers!!
Hi,
I want to add events to Google calendar by a WP7 App. I am able to do this by adding a class library of 2.0 framework to the WP7 app. But now I want to remove the class library. If there is any other way then please tell me. Thanks.
Got a question about a champ, is there another windows phone champ in the south central area for Louisiana, the one that I currently have can't assist me and I don't want to name names on an open forum because I am not trying to embarrass anyone or put them down I am just trying to find one that could help.