Community Credit Forums

hi,
What best we can do to become MVP? Also to whome we have to give the nomination form .

A very good question and a common one for folks who are very active in the development community.  For starters, you can not apply, an existing MVP has to nominate you.  It is good to discuss it with somebody like a regional director or MVP Lead or another MVP in your area so that folks know you are interested in becoming nominated.  They can also give you advice on the kind of things you can work on, based on your personal background.  One of the responsibilities of MVPs is to nominate other qualified potential MVPs.  However, they have to be qualified, otherwise it is considered as a bit of a black mark if somebody nominates a friend who may not be very active.   On the flipside, if somebody nominates somebody who has a lot of qualifications, it makes them look good.

There are two areas that are very important for becoming an MVP.  One of them is to be very active.  People that are awarded the designation of MVP are very active in the development community.  They blog alot, give alot of presentations, answer questions on discussion boards, have websites, etc.    They clearly do things that put them a cut above the rest.  I am guessing that the first area is pretty self evident.  I think that it is pretty much assumed that you have to get your name out there to be considered for an MVP.  What is a bit lesser known is that it is important for you to have a wide variety of activities as well.  For example, if you run a successful .NET website and it takes up all of your time, it will probably not be enough.  It might seem like it should be, especially if it is a community oriented site and you invest alot of your into running it.   However, the MVP program looks for people that are active in a number of other areas as well.  They like to see well rounded contributions, such as blogging regularly and speaking at conferences or user groups.  So, it is important to blog if you are not currently blogging, try to speak at events if you don't have many presentations under your belt, answer alot of questions on discussion boards, etc.

I hope that this helps and I will try to give more advice if you have any other questions.  One of my goals of Community Credit is to create a tool to allow you to show off your contributions for a potential MPV application.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi silver LIGHT

its really very very great to give such a big descriptive reply to a very active beginner

cheers

chandu

Hello Chandu,

     Happy to help.  I have been an MVP for the past 4 years and I really enjoy holding that designation.  It is something held with pride and I am happy to offer insight on helping others reach the same point.  Feel free to follow up with any other questions that you may have on the topic. 

Hi SilverLight,

First of all Thanks for your reply.Its nice to see a response and that too descriptive.
I think you can have one separate section related to tips where everybody can share and ask their doubts.Or may be something like FAQ.

Regards
Jyoti

Hi Sister

Just do these

• try to answer 10 questions per day in discussions
• try to write one article of medium length per month initially
• try to blog
• try to give small lectures to small groups (try to get speaker qualities)
• try to write small books (pdfs even)
• try to update u r skills on latest microsoft technologies
• just keep in mind to be helpful to as many people as u come across in communities
• finally mvp is not a small task .... working hard and helping others is only way

all the best and hope to see u in our team

cheers

chandu      

Hi Chandu,
Nice to see your response.
Just wanted to know if there are any specific discussion forums which gives more credit to become MVP or its like we can participate in any forum.
Thanks
Jyoti

There are other locations you can gain MVP status in. For instance, Code Project www.codeproject.com offers members status of MVP based on how helpful they've been over the year and how much they have contributed to Code Project in general. The important thing is to question why you want to be an MVP - do you want it because of bragging rights or do you want it because you enjoy helping others? If it's the former, I would suggest that you are going to have problems getting the status. You have to develop the attitude that you want to give something back to the community.

One other lesser known, but very important way to help gain an MVP status is to help volunteer in organizations like INETA.  If you volunteer to help with the website, for example, you will have a chance to work with MVPs and wil gain exposure to folks who can potentially nominate you.  Your willingness to volunteer your time for  a good developer related cause is a good credential to have when justifying your MVP nomination.

"One other lesser known, but very important way to help gain an MVP status is to help volunteer in organizations like INETA. "

David - that's very interesting. I wasn't aware of that. Unfortunately though, for a lot of people, INETA is an unknown quantity. It really needs to improve the message that it sends out about what it actually is. In one of my articles, I talk about how you should be able to distill your company message down to 20 seconds - so far it's hard to tell what INETA's message is. It possibly needs that extra bit push to get this message out.

Hey Pete,

     That is a very good point.  In fact, it just so happens that I was recently elected to the Board of Directors for INETA.  I am actually away at my very first Board Meeting in Las Vegas right now and we are discussing that among other things.  The Board is composed of a really good group of people that are extremely dedicated and very involved in the development community so I am expecting some very good things in this upcoming year.   You can expect to hear alot more about INETA from me as well.

Well congratulations on the directorship David. I expect to hear big things over the coming year having just joined INETA. As a matter of interest what would you say the 20 second message was?

"You can expect to hear alot more about INETA from me as well."

I don't suppose you need any help with the website do you?

Absolutely.  The new website is going to be launched pretty shortly and we can definitely use more help, especially with somebody of your caliber.  The team is a really good team and it is a fun project to work on.  Why don't you drop me an email about it and I will fill you in on the details.