MVP Program
In April 2006 I have received the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award in the Visual C++ category that consequently granted me membership to the MVP program, a membership shared with other 2600 people from 81 countries, experts in one or more Microsoft products or technologies. An MVP is not a Microsoft employee and does not represent Microsoft in any way. I have been awarded for contribution to online communities focused on Microsoft products, especially the one at codeguru.com where I'm a moderator and reviewer. The membership to the program not only came with some particular benefits, but also allowed me to meet great people from Romania and around the world, who share the same passions and interests with me. My MVP membership is under the Romanian lead, which accounts for a group of 17 MVPs.
You can read more about the MVP program and award at the MVP official home page. My MVP profile is available here.
Events
Romanian MVP Open Days, 2006
In September 2006 the first Romanian MVP Open Days took place at Rusu in the Parang Mountains with 7 of the MVPs being present. Over a week-end we had a series of interesting discussions and activities, altogether with the students from the Microsoft Academic Program. Below you can see a picture of the MVP group and the members of DPE department of Microsoft Romania (you can see me on the left).
MVP Global Summit, 2007
During 12 to 15 of March 2007, I took part in the MVP Global Summit in Seattle and Microsoft's campus in Redmond, together with people from 95 countries around the world. It was a great experience that allowed me to meet people that I know for many years from online forums, as well as people from Microsoft, such as the developers of the VC++ team.
Meeting the real faces between the virtual avatars of people from CodeGuru, VBForums or MSDN forums was really great. Besides meeting Siddhartha Rao and Guido Stercken-Sorrenti that I already knew from Germany, I met with Brad Jones (manager of CodeGuru), John Czopowik, Raymond James "Arjay" Hawco, all seen in the bellow picture, as well as fellow Romanian now living in Canada, Alin Negru, Duncan Jones from Ireland, Brian Kramer from US, and several MVPs from Korea.
On the other hand I've been at Bill Gates keynote that basically opened the summit, and took part at the presentations Steven Sinofsky, Anders Hejlsberg, Don Box and Chris Anderson delivered. Most of the time however was spent in feedback and discussions with the developers of VC++, about the present and future of the product. Among the people I met there were Damien Watkins, Steve Teixeira, Nikola Dudar, Bill Dunlap, Mark Hall, Ayman Shoukry, who I knew from the MSDN forums, and two Romanians, Marian and Bogdan.
The only regret I have about the Summit is that I was not able to take part at the Thursday dinner with the other four Romanian MVPs present at the summit (Aurelian Popa, Gheorghe and Angela Dobrea and Hilde Corbu) and Romanians working at Microsoft.
With all that in mind I'm looking forward to be in Seattle next year in April for the next MVP Global Summit.
Romanian MVP Open Days, 2007
At the beginning of September the Romanian MVPs and MSPs gathered for several days near Sibiu (the European Cultural Capital in 2007) for common activities organized by Microsoft Romania. Bellow is a picture with the three founders of Codexpert.ro, Ovidiu Cucu, Dragos Cojocari and me.
MVP Global Summit, 2008
Between April 14 and 17 I took part at the MVP Global Summit, my second, consecutive, presence at Seattle & Redmond. It was was again really great to spend two days with the Visual C++ team with whom we had a great interaction. They presented us the features of the next version of VisualC++ and toook feedback from us.
On the other hand it was wolderful to meet people that I only had the chance to talk to online, as well as meeting others that I already knew. I spent most of the time in the compnay of my fellow CodeGuru MVPs, and this time we were 10.
On the other hand, the Romanian presence at the summit was doubled as in 2007. This time we were 8 MVPs plus our lead.
Below is a picture taken at the end of the summit, at WSCTC. You can see there, from right to left, (by CodeGuru user names) Arjay, Brad Jones, Marc G, gstercken, Siddhartha, me (aka Cilu), TheCPUWizard, ovidiucucu and VictorN.
MVP Global Summit, 2009
In 2009 the Global summit took place between March 1-4, with 1400 MVP and more than 700 sessions during those four days. Most of the time I spent with the Visual C++ team learning great things about the upcoming Visual Studio 2010. Lots of keynotes were delivered this year, including Steve Ballmer, Rich Kaplan, Mike Nash, S. Somasegar, with the participation of some technical fellows, Anders Hejlsberg, Brian Harry, Patrick Dussud and Mohsen Agsen. And, not the least, I had the chance to meet again old friends. Below is a picture during a break from the VC++ sessions.
