Anybody who attended Dev Days 2004 (in Bangalore, India – don’t know about other locations) and was willing to stay till the end, would have seen the Microsoft MVP spoof video that was played.
The intent of writing this entry is to remove any misconceptions about the program that the video might have caused, after hearing a few other attendees talk about certain things today.
Microsoft Most Valuable Professional Program has been running for years now and is Microsoft’s way of awarding the MVP title to professionals in the software industry (who might be Microsoft employees or non-Microsoft employees) as recognition to their contributions to community and their expertise in certain Microsoft technologies. Period. After this, since Microsoft expects them to keep their good work going, they are given previews and BETAs of Microsoft products, invites to attend Microsoft technology summits and access to some information on internal Microsoft happenings – so that they are kept updated of their technology areas.
I have quite a few MVP friends now (thanks to the Bangalore .NET User Group circuit) and I respect them for their technology know-how, contributions to community and their active participation in trying to help the Microsoft community by sharing knowledge. Though some might argue that these are done by many other people too, you need to do it at a certain selfless level of participation and with a passion for technology – only the combination of which can make you a Microsoft MVP.
With that introduction to the MVP program done, it was quite a funny and shocking video that I got to see at the end of Dev Days 2004. The introduction to the program was not done with a sense of dignity that surrounds the coveted title. Rather, it was a mockery kind of video. Let me try to describe. There is this guy who gets a big “Congratulations! You are now a MVP!” on his screen. He runs around the office (full of weird looking characters) and tells many people that he’s a MVP. The moment they hear that, they treat him like God (with some following him, some wanting to marry him, etc.) and it ends with him telling another guy that he’ll see him in the global MVP summit.
Probably good for a video to be sent around to all MVPs for a good laugh. Definitely, not something that you would want to show to a developer crowd of around 600 people – more than 75% of whom might have no clue to what the MVP program is about and at least 25% of whom might now have a totally different idea!
MVPs globally are highly respected individuals for their technical expertise and community development work. Making it seem to a bunch of people that it is something you can earn by “writing a couple of articles” and doing “a couple of presentations at UG meets” was surely not the idea that had to be conveyed. Added to this, creating a mockery of the whole thing by portraying MVPs as some kind of an elite species was even more demeaning to the way they blend with community and people and share their knowledge.
My two cents worth.