New on his blog today Brian Swan has an interview with Zach Owens, a technical evangelist with Microsoft, about his involvement in Microsoft's SQL Server, Azure, IIS and PHP projects.

I work closely with the product groups developing SQL Server, SQL Azure and IIS understanding what features and changes are coming the next versions and what impact this may have on developers. Then I get share what I've learned by blogging, presenting at conferences, building demos and labs, and by working directly with developers.

Zach talks about how he got started working with PHP on a project for a local business - a database for a non-profit organization and what he learned from the experience.