What is a Microsoft MVP?
Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals are technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with the community. They are always on the “bleeding edge” and have an unstoppable urge to get their hands on new, exciting technologies. They have very deep knowledge of Microsoft products and services, while also being able to bring together diverse platforms, products and solutions, to solve real world problems.
There are over 4000 MVPs around the world in different categories and in the latest years there was an attention from Microsoft to give the award to the right person.
Be and MVP…
Be a Microsoft MVP is not a sport….first of all is a passion. Cannot be called job because who work into IT world can be considered lucky to do this so for a Microsoft’s Expert should be a pleasure collaborate with Product Group to give feedback, create scenarios to find issues and bug, discuss the future and know the roadmap.
Be an MVP means write technical articles, create video, talk during conferences, review content….so….dedicate your time for a passion. Share your knowledge is one of key-point of MVP Program.
Be an MVP means spend time to talk with different Product Group during the day and organize your time between work and personal life.
It’s hard….but it’s amazing!
Sometimes people say “The news are available first online than internally” but I can’t tell you that is not true….not at all. Depends by the technology and the level of project but is much easy find news before about Windows 11 than Azure Active Directory.
In 2017 I started to test the Beta of Windows Admin Center and Azure File Sync with few MVPs, month and months ago before the public release or news.
During an MVP Summit, me and other few MVPs were engaged to discuss a UI project….the New Azure Portal (aka Ibiza). The focus group was to discuss the logic about Resource Group, Subscription, ARM and more…..months ago the public release.
All of those products were under NDA and the first public news were released after months. So….depends by the technology but there are few opportunity to collaborate with Microsoft….like test the Shared Channels in Microsoft Teams months ago before the public release.
What I can say is that a lot of features were deployed and implemented in many Microsoft’s products are coming from us.
Another aspect to be an MVP is the possibility to collaborate with other MVPs….understand their experiences to take another point of view and receive feedback when you have a problem. The MVP Summit is the master-award: 5 days into the Microsoft’s Campus with several internal sessions, the possibility to meet in person Product Managers, Engineers or Rock Star like Mark Russinovich or Brad Andersson.
For who think that an MVP is a puppets I can tell you “No man!”. The majority of internal conversation are based to give our feedback and the tones are not always friendly because our business is based on Microsoft so we pretend the best for our customers. Who knows me know that I will never be a puppet or a “marketing man”….I prefer say “This is horrible” instead “Oh wow….this is great”.
Be yourself is the key to be a Microsoft MVP.
10 in a Row
This is my 10th year as Microsoft MVP and is not bad because sometimes I was not to much active. This last months were complicated from the conferences prospective because I prefer speak in public instead behind a monitor. The good news was the time to write articles and create public content like videos for my company.
Became MVP
“We want to award the best and brightest technical community leaders! To place yourself into consideration for the MVP Award, a nomination referral must be first submitted on your behalf by either a Microsoft Full Time Employee (FTE) or Microsoft MVP. Following this referral submission, a link to complete the award nomination will be sent to you. Once you have completed the nomination form, we will review your nomination. As you can imagine, sometimes we receive a lot of applications, this process can take up to 90 days. If you have any questions, please contact the MVP global support channel.“
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