James Marshall

I remember being at primary school some years ago when our head teacher at the time, Mr Francis, announced he was moving on to a place called Pastures New. “What an odd sounding place,” I thought “I wonder where that is?”.

Very soon I’m about to find out, for I too will be going there. I am exceptionally honoured, nervous and excited to have been offered a job with Microsoft’s UK education team as the Live@edu Deployment Specialist!

I am leaving my current role to build on the experiences and skills I gained while I worked in education - joining an amazing team of people to help academic institutions across the UK make the leap to using Live@edu – a hosted suite of email, productivity and collaboration tools offered to schools, colleges and universities for free.

This blog, my Twitter account and any other social outlet for my thoughts will still continue, but expect me to be a lot more vocal about the fantastic stories that tools like Live@edu enable people to tell.

Big shoes to fill!

My predecessor, Ben Nunney, is moving on to a role within Microsoft as an Academic Developer Evangelist – a job I know he’s going to be amazing at – but in leaving he has left some mighty big shoes for me to fill. He was the first-in-post and I feel that in recognition of his excellent work I may yet be known simply as “Ben 2.0”.