The Spotlight is on Curt Frye Mr. Frye authored our Excel questions.

RN: Please tell us a little about yourself.

FRYE: I'm a full-time freelance writer and part-time professional improvisational comedian living and working in Portland, Oregon. Yes, I write to support my acting habit. I earned my B.A. in political science at Syracuse in 1990, after which I moved to Washington, DC, to begin a career as a defense trade analyst for a firm in McLean, VA. I worked there for four years, took twelve graduate school classes at George Mason University on everything from operations research to database design to Japanese technology development strategies. Needless to say, I didn't fit into any one program and didn't get my M.A. After a year as the sales director for an Internet service provider in Vienna, VA, I moved to Portland, started writing full-time, and learned to relax.

RN: What interested you in writing ReviewNet tests?

FRYE: Hiring based on "personality" interviews is dangerous...you may end up hiring someone who knows enough about a subject to talk a good game, but doesn't have the knowledge to use a technology effectively. When you test for ability, you verify the person you hire knows their stuff and you can judge their interpersonal skills in a traditional sit-down interview.

RN: What did you enjoy most about writing your Excel test?

FRYE: Frankly, I like the editing process. The questions didn't jump fully-formed from my forehead and onto the screen; they were checked by a team of reviewers who made sure I covered everything that needed covering, that the questions were neither too hard nor too easy, and that the answer choices were fair. The give-and-take between myself, the other Excel professionals, and the staff editors from ReviewNet made me a stronger writer and ensured a quality product.

RN: How did you first get involved in writing technical books?

FRYE: I've always been a writer and story teller, but my first foray into technical writing was in DC. After five years at the bottom of every major hierarchy in town, I was desperate for a change. I'd been exposed to various forms of information technology through work and school, so I started writing articles on the political implications of technologies such as cryptography. I moved to Portland and joined an electronic mailing list run by Studio B, an agency that represents me and many other technical authors. Someone asked for a critique of a book idea they had on genetic algorithms and I did everything except put "bait" in the subject line of my response. My analysis caught the interest of a publisher and things snowballed from there.

RN: Outside of working with ReviewNet, what do you feel is your biggest professional accomplishment?

FRYE: I'm particularly proud of my book Privacy-Enhanced Business, published by Quorum Books in 2000. That book is intended as a briefing book for executives who need an in-depth look at how technology and privacy intersect. I also edit Technology and Society Book Reviews, published weekly on the Web at http://www.techsoc.com, which I fund out of my other writing proceeds.

RN: Tell us about your latest book.

FRYE: It's a tie between Microsoft Office Excel 2003 Step By Step (MicrosoftPress) and Excel Pocket Guide (O'Reilly) for the "latest". The Microsoft Press book is meant for individuals who want self-paced instruction to pass the user and expert Microsoft Office Specialist exams for Excel, though the book has also been used as a text in some courses. The Excel Pocket Guide is a quick run-down of tasks in every version of Excel from 97 to 2003. On the "works in progress" front, I'm the lead author of a book on Excel programming due out early next year, also for Microsoft Press.

RN: How do you keep up with changing technologies and the latest trends in the IT industry?

FRYE: I graze in the vast fields that are the Web, following my nose and where my colleagues point me. I also pick a new subject every year and read the popular literature and accessible professional works on the topic. Subjects so far include quantum mechanics, natural language processing, and genetic algorithms.

RN: Tell us a little about your ReviewNet test.

FRYE: My Excel test reflects the requirements of the expert-level Excel MOUS test. If an applicant can pass the expert Excel test, they can pass mine. I did pay attention to the office environment, though...to do very well on the test will require knowledge of how an office works and what sorts of problems users face in that milieu.

RN: What advice would you give to someone learning your discipline? Are there significant barriers to learning about this subject?

FRYE: If you can do basic math, you can handle Excel. The trick is knowing what to do when you fire up the program and you're faced with a blank worksheet. In my opinion, the biggest barrier to folks who want to learn Excel is a lack of context during the learning process. Why are you doing what you're doing? The Step By Step series focuses on a business scenario that motivates the tasks readers perform using the included practice files, providing that elusive framework for learning.

RN: What do you see as the future of Excel? Where would you like to see it go?

FRYE: That's a tough question to answer. Excel is a mature program with a rich feature set, but I'm interested in how Excel can be used in conjunction with databases. There are a lot of database functions built into Excel, but there are quite a few tasks that are easier to perform when you combine Excel and a database program instead of using Excel by itself. The magic of any program is in how it relates to other programs, not how it operates on its own.