I did wonder how long it would take for someone to question whether the number of MVPs working at Readify is good for the .NET community, especially since we have been steadily growing in that area for a little while now.

Kim Peacocke actually shot me an instant message this morning pointing to James’ post and there were a few little conversations between folks as a result – I’m sure others will chime in on their blogs but I definately wanted to post a reply with my perspective (what is the point of having a blog if you don’t express your point of view).

Let me start by saying that every organisation has its own culture and while you can write all the mission statements under the sun, at the end of the day the culture is defined by the type of people that work within the organisation. I like to believe that Graeme deliberately bootstrapped Readify very early on with community focused people which helped ensure that it was a key part of the company’s culture.

Now here is the interesting thing – if you have a community orientated company and you staff it with community orientated people (MVPs or otherwise) you’ll actually end up with a feedback loop where the organisation encourages and rewards community involvement which encourages community involvement which encourages community involvement which encourages community involvement – you get the picture.

So do I think having so many MVPs at Readify is bad for the .NET community? Absolutely not, in fact I think it provides an environment where people can maximise their involvement while not sacrificing the rewards demanded for their hard earned skills.

The other thing to remember is that MVP status is awarded annually and both the local DPE and the MVP program leaders in Redmond work together to decide who the new MVPs are and which MVPs won’t have their status renewed.

Given the general high quality of people in the Australian .NET developer community I think its fair to say that Frank and his team must have a really tough time deciding who gets selected as an MVP each year.

So in short, I think its a good thing, but I also think that if its not a good thing the MVP program will balance things out automatically since being re-awarded MVP status is never something that you can take for granted.

Finally – I had to laugh at one of James’ follow up posts about Frank’s music selection. I don’t think so James – by all accounts Frank is such a great guy to work for that he has to be surrounded by people that would take a bullet for him – why would he want to work anywhere else?