This week is the MVP summit and it seemed an appropriate time to talk about why I love being an MVP. (This post is going to be full of not so humble brags.)
The MVP summit is probably one of the best things about being an MVP. We as MVPs get direct access to members of the product team (in person at the Microsoft campus) where they show us outsiders all sorts of stuff that they are working on, or thinking about working on (different groups do this to different amounts, with the SQL Server team being one of the most open AFAIK).
Because of this openness I’ve been able to make close personal relationships with various members of the product team, and I’d ever call several of them friends as we have talked about non-work things when we see each other on work trips to conferences and other events. Without being a Microsoft MVP I may have met some of the folks on the product team, but we wouldn’t have been stuck in the same room for a week allowing us the opportunity to get to know each other. As this is my 9th year as an MVP, and my 9th MVP summit I’ve had a good amount of time to get to know various members of the product team at this point, and hopefully I get to know more over future years (if I’m lucky enough to be renewed).
There are other great benefits of being an MVP such as the MVP email lists where you can interact with MVPs from all over the world, in just about every country, in just about any product group that you can think of. There’s the Product Group Interactions (PGIs) which are webcasts where the product group talks to the MVPs about some topic for an hour. And of course there’s the MSDN subscription. All of these are great things which the MVP program and the product group give to the MVPs. But by far the most important to me is the relationships which I’ve built up over the years which give me some amazing insight into Microsoft and how the products are made (for good or bad) and the level of trust that the members of the product group have in me to trust me with information about the future of products (what little they like to share, even with MVPs).
Denny
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