MVP

So here’s how it works, for those who are curious: every year on one of four quarterly intervals, Microsoft chooses a bunch of people to give a shiny award to, some of for the first time, some of them who are backing up from previous awards. Much discussion and analysis goes into who should get these (as far as I understand it), but in a nutshell, this is what it’s all about [http://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/overview.aspx]: > The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award is our way of say...

Despite the anniversary continually falling on that most foolish of days, it appears I have indeed been renewed and will now go into my third year of MVP’dom. For those of you not familiar with the process, every year as an MVP’s renewal date approaches, the powers that be at Microsoft look at what you’ve done and work out if you’ve aligned closely enough with the MVP ethos [http://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/becoming-an-mvp.aspx] to deserve a renewal. As part of the process, MVPs keep track of t...

Around this time last year I was talking about becoming an accidental MVP [https://www.troyhunt.com/2011/04/accidental-mvp.html]. Not this year; instead of it sneaking up on me, I – like many I know – was counting down the days. My now annual April Fool’s Day email made its way through last night: > Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2012 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world e...

Being awarded an MVP title and attending the annual summit is a little like getting your hands on one of these: Suddenly you feel all Charlie Bucket [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_and_the_Chocolate_Factory], ready to gorge on the wonders that exist behind the doors of the mysterious Ballmer Wonka chocolate factory. Whilst an extensive amount of the information shared remains under NDA (more on that shortly), I’d like to share some insight from the program and the event which might shed...

Well this was a very nice email to receive: > Congratulations on being awarded MVP of the Year based on your contributions in 2011! It seems I must have done something(s) pretty right in my first year of MVPdom and word has it that my free OWASP Top 10 for .NET devs eBook [https://www.troyhunt.com/2011/12/free-ebook-owasp-top-10-for-net.html] tilted the voting in my favour. So for everyone who downloaded, RT’d, +1’d, liked, emailed and otherwise said nice things about my work, a heartfelt “t...

An unexpected email was waiting for me when I got off the plane from a recent work trip to Thailand on Saturday: > Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2011 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Developer Security technical communities during the past year. Given this was sent out on April 1st, one could be...