I live about 30 miles outside London in the UK. I am working for my own company as an Exchange and networking consultant (http://www.amset.co.uk). Outside of EE I am a keen photographer, cinema and theatre-goer. I also like to read — not just online but offline as well. I always have a book on the go.

I first became involved with computers when I was at school. No idea why. When I went to school, there wasn't even a computer for every classroom — they had to be shared.

My first computer that I owned myself was an Amiga A1200. First PC was a P166.

Current computer is a Dell Workstation - lots of RAM, high speed processor. I use it for running multiple virtual machines on. I don't play games on it.

Cannot remember — probably through a Google search like everyone else. I was actually signed up for two months before I started posting, and forgot I had an account.

All self-taught. I have been fortunate to be employed by people who have given me the time to learn things and I have had kit at home where I can try things out. I also seem to be a quick learner with Microsoft's applications.

Being in the UK, I am on a different time zone for most of the users, so I will often get up to find dozens of emails from EE that need attention. I will then plough through those during the day, depending on whether I have client commitments or not. Sometimes that can mean I haven't cleared all the questions until late evening. Then I will look at the new questions in the Exchange server topic area. As page editor I look at every question, although I don't always contribute.

Exposure to different problems that I may not see. Some of the articles I have written for my own web site (http://www.amset.info) or blog (http://www.sembee.co.uk) started life as an EE posting. I then took the original posting, cleaned it up, added references and other information and then put it on my own site.

Helping people, expanding my own knowledge.

Resisting the temptation to be lured in to the lounge. The lounge lizards keep trying...

Otherwise, not knowing the answers or running out of ideas. Not having people following up which can be frustrating. While I love the cleanup process as it closes the questions and generates the points, it means I don't know if the solution worked or not, particularly if it was something a little bit different.

That has to be the Exchange Server topic area.

Milestone — probably winning last year (2006) as it was a close run thing. I don't think I will win this year, I had a pretty poor start, plus I need to start looking at other areas of my life.

I have had a few clients come to me and say that they have seen my work on Experts Exchange, but not as many as you would think. I have to turn down lots of approaches because they are from outside of the UK, and I am only insured to work in the UK.

Please make sure that you provide all the relevant information. Experts can only work on what information you have provided them. This needs to include version and service pack information as well as anything else that could be relevant. Don't presume that we know what is happening. Also spell check and check your grammar. I use a tool called iespell (http://www.iespell.com/) to spell-check my postings before they are made.

Oh and experts — don't simply put some terms in to Google and post those as your answers. It isn't clever — treat the asker with some respect that they may have already tried Google. Copy and Paste from a KB article or other source isn't nice either.

As I wrote above, I don't think I will win again. It would nice to pull off a hat trick, but after a blinding start to the year from SirBounty and my own slow start, I would be hard pressed. Plus I think it is time to scale back, I spend too much time on EE and need to look at other areas of my life and concentrate on my business a bit more.