Microsoft Most Valuable Professional

Last updated
Microsoft MVP banner.png

The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award is given by Microsoft to "technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with the community". [1] They are awarded to people who "actively share their ... technical expertise with the different technology communities related directly, or indirectly to Microsoft". The MVP recognition lasts for a year and is awarded for a person's Microsoft related activity, contributions and influence over the previous year. [2]

Contents

The MVP program grew out of the software developer community. Some of the earliest MVPs were those most active in online peer support communities, such as Usenet and CompuServe. It has since grown to include other types of products, and other avenues of contribution. Steve Ballmer spoke to a group of Microsoft MVPs about Windows XP and Windows Vista. [3] [4]

A posting from Tamar Granor on the Universal Thread web site gives this account of the origin of the MVP program.

Way back in the dark ages, Microsoft provided a great deal of technical support on CompuServe. The CompuServe FoxPro forum was extremely busy and Calvin Hsia, then an independent developer, now Developer Lead on the Fox team, created what we called "Calvin's List". It was a listing of the number of postings by person, including info on both messages sent and received. Being in the top 10 on Calvin's List any month was an accomplishment, though we discussed whether it was a good thing or a bad thing." As the story goes, some of the Microsoft people jumped on Calvin's List as a way to identify high contributors, and thus was born the MVP program. [5]

Earning the Microsoft MVP Award

The rules and guidelines to getting awarded as a Microsoft MVP are not strictly defined. The reason for this is that every Microsoft MVP contributes to the community in different ways. However, the largest key indicator Microsoft looks for when considering someone for the Microsoft MVP Award is how much impact their activities over the last 12 months have on the community. [6]

Cancellation and reinstatement

On October 22, 1999, a Microsoft executive sent out a message announcing the cancellation of the MVP program. This may have been in response to a recent suit against AOL by its newsgroup leaders, who felt that they deserved to be paid for the time they put in online. After an outpouring of online support to the MVP program, including many emails sent directly to Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft announced three days later that the cancellation had been rescinded. [7] [8] This then led to discussions across the company about which division would own the expenses for this program. The program stayed in support, but additional investments were made - one of the original CompuServe engineers was brought in for a new position as Director of Community, reinvigorating the MVP program with a dedicated project coordinator, site resources and support engineers. The program became far more successful through these efforts, expanding its global footprint and receiving coverage with more than 100 independent press articles, eventually landing as one of Microsoft's Board of Director's 7 Big Bets for 2007.

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adware</span> Software with, often unwanted, adverts

Adware, often called advertising-supported software by its developers, is software that generates revenue for its developer by automatically generating online advertisements in the user interface of the software or on a screen presented to the user during the installation process. The software may generate two types of revenue: one is for the display of the advertisement and another on a "pay-per-click" basis, if the user clicks on the advertisement. Some advertisements also act as spyware, collecting and reporting data about the user, to be sold or used for targeted advertising or user profiling. The software may implement advertisements in a variety of ways, including a static box display, a banner display, full screen, a video, pop-up ad or in some other form. All forms of advertising carry health, ethical, privacy and security risks for users.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steve Ballmer</span> American businessman and investor

Steven Anthony Ballmer is an American business magnate and investor who served as the chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Association (NBA). As of September 2022, Bloomberg Billionaires Index estimates his personal wealth at around $91 billion, making him the ninth-richest person on Earth.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ZDNet</span> Business technology news website

ZDNET is a business technology news website owned and operated by Red Ventures. The brand was founded on April 1, 1991, as a general interest technology portal from Ziff Davis and evolved into an enterprise IT-focused online publication.

Mark Lucovsky is an American software developer who is now employed by Google after resigning his role as General Manager of Operating Systems at Facebook. Prior to this, he worked at Microsoft and VMware. He is noted for being a part of the team that designed and built the Windows NT operating system, which, after Windows XP, became the basis of all current Windows releases.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Windows Mobile</span> Discontinued family of mobile operating systems by Microsoft

Windows Mobile is a discontinued family of mobile operating systems developed by Microsoft for smartphones and personal digital assistants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Windows Live</span> Former brand name for Microsoft online services

Windows Live is a discontinued brand name for a set of web services and software products developed by Microsoft as part of its software-as-a-service platform. Chief components under the brand name included web services, several computer programs that interact with the services, and specialized web services for mobile devices.

Microsoft engineering groups are the operating divisions of Microsoft. Starting in April 2002, Microsoft organised itself into seven groups, each an independent financial entity. In September 2005, Microsoft announced a reorganization of its then seven groups into three. In July 2013, Microsoft announced another reorganization into five engineering groups and six corporate affairs groups. A year later, in June 2015, Microsoft reformed into three engineering groups. In September 2016, a new group was created to focus on artificial intelligence and research. On March 29, 2018, a new structure merged all of these into three.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Steven Sinofsky</span>

Steven Jay Sinofsky is a former president of the Windows Division at Microsoft from July 2009 until his resignation on November 13, 2012. He was responsible for the development and marketing of Windows, Internet Explorer, and online services such as Outlook.com and SkyDrive. Sinofsky is currently a board partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he serves on boards of investments.

Midori was the code name for a managed code operating system (OS) being developed by Microsoft with joint effort of Microsoft Research. It had been reported to be a possible commercial implementation of the OS Singularity, a research project begun in 2003 to build a highly dependable OS in which the kernel, device drivers, and application software are all written in managed code. It was designed for concurrency, and could run a program spread across multiple nodes at once. It also featured a security model that sandboxes applications for increased security. Microsoft had mapped out several possible migration paths from Windows to Midori. Midori was discontinued some time in 2015, though many of its concepts were used in other Microsoft projects.

Microsoft Azure, often referred to as Azure, is a cloud computing service operated by Microsoft for application management via Microsoft-managed data centers. It provides software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and supports many different programming languages, tools, and frameworks, including both Microsoft-specific and third-party software and systems.

AeroXperience is a Windows enthusiast blog/community cited numerous times for various Microsoft-related articles. As of May 8, 2009, AeroXperience ranks within the top 70,000 sites on the internet according to Netcraft. It is semi-frequently cited for information on upcoming Microsoft technologies and has a media presence at most Microsoft conventions. On November 20, 2009, it was renamed to winJade.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Windows Mobile 6.5</span> Mobile operating system by Microsoft

Windows Mobile 6.5 was a stopgap update to Windows Mobile 6.1 intended to bridge the gap between version 6.1, that arrived in 2008, and Windows Phone 7 that was released in 2010.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Windows Home Server 2011</span> Home server operating system by Microsoft released in 2011

Windows Home Server 2011, code named Vail, is a home server operating system by Microsoft designed for small office/home offices and homes with multiple connected PCs to offer protected file storage, file sharing, automated PC backup, remote access, and remote control of PC desktops. It was released on 6 April 2011 following the release of Power Pack 3 for its aging predecessor, Windows Home Server. Windows Home Server 2011 is the last Windows Home Server release and was succeeded by Windows Server 2012 Essentials.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Jo Foley</span>

Mary Jo Foley is an American freelance technology writer, author, podcaster and news editor. She regularly writes news, previews, and reviews for Microsoft's strategy, products and technology. Foley has been covering news on Microsoft Windows, and previously on Unix-related technology, since 1983, for publications including ZDNet, eWeek, Baseline, Redmond magazine and PC Magazine.

Universal Windows Platform (UWP) is a computing platform created by Microsoft and first introduced in Windows 10. The purpose of this platform is to help develop universal apps that run on Windows 10, Windows 10 Mobile, Windows 11, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S and HoloLens without the need to be rewritten for each. It supports Windows app development using C++, C#, VB.NET, and XAML. The API is implemented in C++, and supported in C++, VB.NET, C#, F# and JavaScript. Designed as an extension to the Windows Runtime (WinRT) platform first introduced in Windows Server 2012 and Windows 8, UWP allows developers to create apps that will potentially run on multiple types of devices.

John Shewchuk is an American technologist and executive. Shewchuk is a Microsoft Technical Fellow, a position which he was chosen for by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. He is the Host of the Decoded Show. Shewchuk is the founder of the .NET Services team and he was responsible for creating Azure AD.

Microsoft, a technology company historically known for its opposition to the open source software paradigm, turned to embrace the approach in the 2010s. From the 1970s through 2000s under CEOs Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft viewed the community creation and sharing of communal code, later to be known as free and open source software, as a threat to its business, and both executives spoke negatively against it. In the 2010s, as the industry turned towards cloud, embedded, and mobile computing—technologies powered by open source advances—CEO Satya Nadella led Microsoft towards open source adoption although Microsoft's traditional Windows business continued to grow throughout this period generating revenues of 26.8 billion in the third quarter of 2018, while Microsoft's Azure cloud revenues nearly doubled.

Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD), formerly known as Windows Virtual Desktop (WVD), is a Microsoft Azure-based system for virtualizing its Windows operating systems, providing virtualized desktops and applications securely in the cloud. It is aimed at enterprise customers rather than at individual users.

Windows App SDK is a software development kit (SDK) from Microsoft that targets the development of native desktop applications on Windows 11 and Windows 10 back to version 1809.

References

  1. ↑ "Microsoft MVP Overview". Microsoft. Retrieved 28 July 2017.
  2. ↑ Microsoft Archived 2007-03-03 at the Wayback Machine
  3. ↑ Edward Mendelson (2008-06-02). "Windows 7: What the Future Holds". PCMag. Retrieved 2011-06-08.
  4. ↑ Mary Jo Foley (2011-02-28). "Best of 2011 MVP Summit". ZDNET. Retrieved 2011-06-08.
  5. ↑ Granor, Tamar. "Re: Listing of 2003 VFP MVPs". Universal Thread. Archived from the original on 2007-09-28. Retrieved 2007-06-15. (free registration required)
  6. ↑ Pietschmann, Chris. "How to become a Microsoft MVP". Build5Nines.com. Retrieved 20 February 2018.
  7. ↑ Peterson, Karl. "MVP Program Abandoned Reinstated" . Retrieved 2007-06-15.
  8. ↑ Foley, Mary Jo. "MS revives MVP program". ZDNet. Archived from the original on 2000-12-15. Retrieved 2007-06-15.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.