Clarke Scott has re-posted a piece that he put up in response to this post by David Lemphers. The talk about the Microsoft MVP program, the nomination process and the general ethos of MVPdom. Before you read any further I would recommend going and reading both of these posts to get some context.

What makes someone an MVP?

According to directors, program managers and directors of the MVP program, it is a way of recognising outstanding members of technical communities for their community participation and willingness to help others.

Looking at that definition we can extrapolate the definition of an MVP as being someone who has some degree of technical skill (in a Microsoft product) and is willling to share their experience with others.

At certain times each year Microsoft searches for people that have made that contribution to the community and awards them restrospectively (meaning that the award doesn’t lock you into continued participation and contribution).

Before an award is given a process takes place to determine suitability of a candidate. For new MVPs nomination is required which may come from many different quarters including the local Microsoft office or subsiduary or other MVPs who that person deals with in online communities and user groups. The nomination process is pretty open and I have been asked several times to nominate someone or act as a reference (informally).

For MVPs who are being re-awarded the process is a little bit simpler, you don’t need to be nominated but everyones contribution is evaluated. One ways for existing MVPs to make sure that Microsoft knows about their community activities is keep an online profile up to date which points to things that you have been involved in (reminder – update my profile).

Historically evaluation of MVP status was based mostly on contribution in newsgroups but the field of view has expanded somewhat to include the other kinds of ways that you can contribute to community.

• Running and presenting at user groups.
• Blogging and other online community sites.
• Authoring a relevant book or magazine articles on the subject.

Inside the MVP community there has been a lot of discussion about what constitutes a valid reason for being awarded MVP status. Rather than it being a binary switch I tend to think of it as a set of scales. One one side you have the total measure of an MVP, and on the other you have the sum total of your contributions.

For the most part, to become an MVP you are going to need to contribute in multiple ways to get an award, and to be honest if you forget about the award and just focus on the community its a lot easier (and a lot more of a pleasant surprise if you get awarded or re-awarded).

The Cost and Benefits of Community

The community that surrounds any Microsoft product forms a balanced eco-system where every participant exists for a purpose and is compensated in some way for their contribution.

The cost of providing the award to MVPs is significant – all MVPs receive a free annual subscription to MSDN or TechNet and have access to a technical/ community lead who works for Microsoft. In addition to this MVPs are given opportunities to attend global and regional conferences where some of the transport and accomodation costs are covered by Microsoft.

I would not be surprised if the base costs of running the MVP program runs into the tens of millions of dollars.

On the other side, even though the award is retrospective – MVPs tend to make themselves available to talk at user groups, and go on tour at the local level as well as producing great content and tools for the entire world to use.

As an MVP of some four years I feel that the benefits of being an MVP are well worth the effort that I put into community – although like most MVPs getting the MVP award is not actually a goal but rather a consequence of these actions.

The MVP Subspace Communication System

One of the emergent behaviours of the MVP program is that there is a high speed communication network that exists below the public communication channels provided by Microsoft (newsgroups and mailing lists). This enables the MVPs to react quickly to issues that arise with Microsoft technology and this network has often been used not only to help solve a technical issue but also disseminate information broadly.

However – the network is young from an evolutionary point of view and hasn’t really had the opportunity to develop immunities to certain destructive forms of communication.

As a result its possible for one post (like Dave’s – which whilst radical was actually pretty tame) to completely clog up inboxes with introspective discussion about the MVP program. One recent thread that started that also happened to get exposed to the public Internet was this post by XL-Dennis.

XL-Dennis who is obviously an Excel MVP enumerated his concerns about the MVP program and if you look at the comments on the blog post you can see that many MVPs chimed in with a similar AND contradictory views. The really interesting thing about this post is that Sean O’Driscoll (MVP Program Director) chimed in with his views.

When I was awarded my MVP it was with a batch of nominees who were among the first to be accepted for contributions off the public Microsoft newsgroups. At the time this invoked the ire of existing MVPs who considered us to be lesser MVPs for some reason. Over time I think this view has changed and people now recognise that there are lots of different ways.

My Thoughts?

I’ve written a lot here without really explaining my thoughts so I thought I might just bash them out here so as not to leave anyone in doubt.

• Scope of community involvement; I think that the MVP program is richer now than it ever was before and I think that this is largely due to the expansion of the areas that the MVP program looks for contributors.
• Renewals; I beileve that the MVP program should be an annual award that can be renewed, but where renewal is by no means guaranteed.

That just about wraps it up for me - thanks for taking the time to read!