MVP Summit: 'till Friday

Once a year Microsoft gathers the people that it's awarded as Most Valuable Professional (MVP) into Seattle. Worldwide there are about 5,000. Each person has a specialty that they are awarded for and it maps to one of the many products that Microsoft makes: Everything from Office to XBox. In my award category there are 2 in the USA and 22 outside of the USA.

I'll be spending this week meeting with the developers, marketing and sustained engineering teams for Small Business Server and Essential Business Server. I'll also be meeting with Response Point, One Care and Forefront employees.

I'll be in a small room of MVP's and Microsoft staff totaling, maybe 20 people. They'll give a quick description of what they are doing, what they plan to do and then explain why they are doing it. We, the MVP's, then tell them what we think, how they should change, what our client reaction is going to be, what the consultant reaction is going to be, we make suggestions, etc. They then take back this information and it is used to shape the future of Microsoft products.

The great thing for Harbor Computer Services and you are the contacts that I make. Microsoft may be a big company but it boils down to individuals doing a job and when you know that person, our influence can be heard. Sometimes we're overruled, usually by marketing. "Sorry that can't be changed, market research says...." But usually the developers are busy taking notes and making changes right then. They want to get it right.

One of the most fun things for me in the process of being an MVP was seeing ideas for SBS 2008 literally scrawled on sheet of paper. We hashed out which ideas were good ones and which were not. That's where the team was 2 years ago. Today it's a real product almost ready for release. Last year it was Home Server and something they were not even ready to give a name. Now that something has a code name and it's going to be great for very small businesses. Hopefully after this Summit I'll be able to tell you more about what that something is.

Summit starts at 8am and the last scheduled event ends at Mid-night every day for a full week. I don't think that anyone in Seattle has seen me without bloodshot eyes, but I wouldn't miss it for the world. :-)