The Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award is presented annually to a group of people who “are technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with the community”. There are approximately 4,000 people awarded globally, both technical experts and community leaders. For over 20 years the award has been a “Thank you” from Microsoft for “The contributions MVPs make to the community, ranging from speaking engagements, to social media posts, to writing books, to helping others in online communities”.
People can become an MVP in three ways, with an emphasis on #2:
- Be an expert
- Do lots of what you love
- Let us know.
My nomination and acceptance
So how does one become an MVP? Microsoft explains: “To place yourself into consideration for the MVP Award, a nomination referral must be first submitted on your behalf by either a Microsoft Full Time Employee (FTE) or Microsoft MVP .”
I was lucky to be nominated by a Microsoft FTE, and I then went through a process and interview, and was finally accepted to receive the coveted MVP Award. You can see my profile on the MVP section of Microsoft’s website.
Every year, every MVP has to re-apply and attest to the work in the community that they have accomplished – and hopefully they’ll get accepted again and get to add a ‘year disc’ to their award. This is to keep the standards to the extremely high level that Microsoft sets for people. So, I’ll have to do all this again in 2025.
Why I was nominated and what I need to do to maintain the award and the benefits
I was nominated mainly from my contributions into the public Microsoft forums around Microsoft Sentinel and Azure Monitor over many years. I’m sure many of you have searched for answers and often found them on the Microsoft Community Hub or the Microsoft Q&A website. Well, these are my Community Hub statistics for the last two or so years.
As you can see, I’ve answered a lot of questions, or shared my knowledge or opinions to help others (I do the same on LinkedIn and a few other places). Often, this can be a simple “Ah, I know that” and a short reply is needed, but often it may be a question where I think “Hmmm that’s interesting, I wonder how you resolve that?” It was the latter questions that got me started on this journey, I was fascinated with the questions being asked and they often prompted me to learn about a topic or product.
A lot of my early replies were at the beginning of the Kusto Query Language (KQL) and then Microsoft Sentinel, where people were all new to the products and searching for how to do things and real-life examples. I tend to learn best when doing something or being challenged (classroom or video training often doesn’t work well for me), so this has been a valuable way of skilling up over the years and often means I have got involved in products or areas that I wouldn’t normally. Often, this pays back later as I’ve worked on something for others that invariably becomes useful to myself or a customer down the line. Typically, I spend about 15 minutes a day triaging these questions and about the same on the answers – however, some took much longer to reply to fully!
The benefits
There are a wealth of benefits for anyone who is fortunate enough to become an MVP. According to Microsoft, “Key benefits to MVPs include early access to Microsoft products, direct communication channels with our product teams and an invitation to the Global MVP Summit, an exclusive annual event hosted in our global HQ in Redmond. They also have a very close relationship with the local Microsoft teams in their area, who are there to support and empower MVPs to address needs and opportunities in the local ecosystem. Other benefits include an executive recognition letter, a Visual Studio technical subscription, and an Office 365 subscription.”
For me the best benefit is the early product access and channels of communication, which help me do my job better and mean I can be better informed to help our customers (and the wider community where possible – non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) allowing). There is also a vibrant MVP community where we chat and share, sometimes in person (like the sessions in Redmond) but often virtually.
Find out more and get in touch
You can learn more about Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals on Microsoft’s dedicated website. If you have any questions about the MVP process, please contact me at [email protected] or via LinkedIn.
