Zune Social: 1. What type of Zune do you currently own?
I own three Zune 30s: white, pink, and the special dark pink that was the team’s v1 ship gift. I own a pink Zune 8, and a black 80.
2. What have you learned from your friends at Zune Social?
I love getting recommendations from my friends – even the ones that don’t end up being my new favorites. Since I’m a Zune Insider I do spend time every week looking for new music, so off the top of my head I can’t think of a particular artist or album that my friends sent me that became a fave, but it definitely has happened.
3. Tell us about the origin of your ZuneTag?
So dumb! It was like 12 years ago, and a friend and I combined our names with the word “ethereal.” So I became “Jethereal” and she became “Esthereal” (her name is Esther). Then, when I was beta-testing something related to Xbox years ago, I used “Jethereal” as my gamertag, so it became un-usable when that feature went live. So I added the “Z” for my last name, and got “Jetherealz.” Like I said, DUMB.
4. What type of music do you listen to (name as many as necessary -- genres/groups)?
Almost entirely electronic dance music – sub-genres include trance, progressive, electro, and drum & bass. I prefer up-tempo, high energy music.
5. What's your favorite thing about Zune (favorite feature)?
Honestly? Zune Pass. I love that I have a humongous, legal music collection at my fingertips and I can share it with my family. And the keep 10 tracks thing forever just sweetens it that much more.
6. Tell us about some of your day-to-day duties at the Zune offices?
As a program manager, my job is to research and design features for future versions of the Zune Social. So I spend some time thinking, some time checking out other sites and features, I look at data (both our site’s and from researchers), and I write down specifications. At the same time, there are developers and testers working on code that I’ve already spec’ed, so depending on where we are in that process, I manage stuff like triaging bugs, making decisions when unexpected things come up, and making sure that the features are turning out as we wanted.
I also spend significant time in the forums, helping and talking to users, and then I synthesize that information into a report for the rest of the team – so even if you don’t see a ton of people in the forums, they are notified about issues.
7. What are some of your hobbies? What's your life like away from Zune Social?
I have a husband and two kids, so lots of my outside life obviously revolves around them. I also am blessed with a ton of friends, and my house is often the party house (it’s been dubbed the “Zahmune” – like Zahn plus commune, ha ha). So that’s tons of fun. The adults usually get out at least once a weekend – thank goodness for excellent babysitters – and our social life revolves around music. We can be found in the Seattle clubs – and on the occasional road or airplane trip to catch good electronic shows up and down the west coast.
[Editor's Note: Jessica wants to mention that she is also an Ironman and marathon runner when she's away from the office!]
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