About Helen FeddemaHelen Feddema grew up in New York City. She was ready for computers when she was 12, but computers were not ready for her yet, so she got a B.S. in Philosophy from Columbia and an M.T.S. in Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity School, while working at various office jobs. It was at Harvard that she got her first computer, an Osborne, and soon computers were her primary interest. She started with word processing and spreadsheets, went on to learn dBASE, and did dBASE development for six years, part of this time as a corporate developer. After being laid off in a flurry of corporate downsizing, she started doing independent consulting and development, using dBASE, ObjectVision, WordPerfect and Paradox.
Always looking for something new and better, Helen beta tested Access 1.0, and she soon recognized that this was the database she had been looking for ever since Windows 3.0 was introduced and she saw the gap waiting to be filled by a great Windows database. Since then she has worked as a developer of Microsoft Office applications, concentrating on Access, Word and (since 1996) Microsoft Outlook®.
Helen coauthored Inside Microsoft Access, (New Riders, 1992), and wrote two books for Pinnacle’s “The Pros Talk Access” series, Power Forms and Power Reports (1994). She also coauthored Access How-Tos for the Waite Group Press (1995), and contributed to The Microsoft Outlook Handbook (Osborne-McGraw-Hill), Que's Special Edition: Using Microsoft Outlook 97 (1997), and Office Annoyances (O'Reilly, 1997). She also contributed a chapter to Que’s Special Edition: Using Microsoft Project 98 (1997). More recently, Helen contributed five chapters on Outlook programming to Que's Special Edition: Using Microsoft Outlook 2000 (1999), and wrote DAO Object Model: The Definitive Reference for O'Reilly (2000). She is currently working on a book on the Outlook object model for O'Reilly. Helen has been a regular contributor to Pinnacle’s Smart Access and Office Developer journals, Woody’s Underground Office newsletter, PC Magazine's Undocumented Office and the MS Office and VBA Journal (now OfficePro). She wrote the Access Archon column for Woody's Office Watch (a weekly ezine) for several years; this column now appears in Woody's Access Watch, a bi-weekly ezine (Helen is the editor).
Helen is a big-time beta tester, sometimes having 7 or 8 betas running at once, mostly Microsoft, but with some from other vendors as well. |