InnerWorkings Blogs

Microsoft’s MVP network of technology specialists has always struck me as a good idea. According to the MVP site, Microsoft created the Most Valuable Professional designation to “thank individuals for their exceptional contributions to technical communities worldwide”. With about 3,500 MVPs around the globe, it’s a small but extremely influential group of independent technical community leaders. My good friend Wikipedia has some juicy history on the ups and downs of the MVP program, including its near demise in 1999. Live and learn…

Despite their dependence on Microsoft for existence, MVPs are not an homogenous or orderly group. In fact, part of their appeal is the sheer diversity and no nonsense commitment to the developer community and software ecosystem. Numerous incidents in the past point to the group’s objective nature and the weight of their collective opinions — anyone remember the Classic VB petition incident for example? Not a group to be trifled with by anyone, I’d say!

At InnerWorkings, we’ve been looking at ways to recognize the MVP group for their positive influence on the .NET development community for some time. Last December, a gregarious MVP by the name of Justin-Josef Angel contacted us. Justin proposed the excellent idea of putting together a special offer from InnerWorkings exclusively for MVPs – it took us about 5 seconds to decide this was an idea worth pursuing.

In the guiding hands of our whizz website team, the idea took shape quickly and appeared as a prominent story in our most recent iteration schedule. Justin promised to advertise the MVP offer to his network on a dedicated MVP newsgroup. Already we’ve had dozens of MVPs sign up for the free subscription, so kudos to Justin for spreading the word.

All this preamble is my long-winded way of saying that I have a nice public announcement for all MVPs. InnerWorkings is pleased to offer all MVPs a free subscription to our entire catalog of .NET learning challenges. Valued at $1,500 USD per annum, this free subscription offers MVPs access to 500+ hours of .NET training at no charge while MVP status is maintained.

Our catalog includes coding challenges on AJAX, ASP.NET, C# 3.0, CSS, Enterprise Library, LINQ, OO, Silverlight, SQL, VB 9.0, VSTS, WCF, WF, WPF, and more. Each MVP subscription includes access to our code checking engine, dedicated Personal Tutor service, and Safari Books Online to support each individual’s learning needs.

To view this offer, MVPs should visit our website at http://www.innerworkings.com/mvp. We ask all MVPs to include a link to your MVP profile page for authentication purposes. Once approved, MVP access to our catalog involves a simple self registration process and takes about 24 hours. One final note, please tell your MVP colleagues about this offer — we think they’ll appreciate it!

Rest assured that we haven’t forgotten all the other influential community groups out there. Let me know if you think we should run a similar program for Regional Directors, INETA user group leaders, or whomever. I can promise that we’ll consider each developer community group on its merits.

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