MVP Summit 2013 Report

Actually this would not be true report from MVP Summit 2013 because all information that we as MVP can hear at the summit can’t be shared to anyone because of NDA (Non-disclosure agreement). But I can share all the other info that are not releated strictly to Microsoft and NDA. So, first things first. What is MVP, what is MVP Global Summit and where it takes place?

Microsoft every year (four times)  give an award to exceptional people who voluntarily shared their knowledge on Microsoft products. Whether it’s an online forum or a technical speech, the Microsoft MVPs are independent people who gained the trust of their peers by facts. It’s about communities, it’s about sharing the personal/professional experience they acquired on the field (excerpt from MVP lead for CEE & Italy – Alessandro Teglia).

MVP Global Summit is annual MVP meeting where MVPs from all over the world participate in specific conference where Microsoft Development teams for various products (mostly product manager are speakers) receive feedback from MVPs and also provide information close to Microsoft products to MVPs. Exchange of information are at sessions that Microsoft speaker held and at parties and side session activities.  This year, MVP Summit was hosted in Bellevue (10 minutes from Redmond and about 30 minutes from Seattle using bus) and at Microsoft headquarters in Redmond, Washington, USA from 17th to 21st February.

As part of Bosnian MVP team (Bahrudin Hrnjica – C#, Adis Jugo – SharePoint;  and I – Spaso Lazarevic – C#) I was able to attend MVP Summit for the first time. Luckily, I have a lot of useful information from previous summit from my dear friends from Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia. As time to flight was approaching, excitement was rising from day to day. Finally, after a long trip over Frankfurt (Germany) and 10 hours flight with Lufthansa we came to the United States of America. Also, need to mention that we have a lot of MVPs from Germany in the plane (a lot of Geeks in one plane). And when we land on the USA soil, I wasn’t stop to be thrilled from day to day with organization of all aspect of life in USA, but really. That is land where even cleaning stuff has headset (microphone and headphone) when doing their job (I was asking myself why, probably they got right information that there is a tiny speck of dust to be removed urgently from the sector 1345.125 – well this is my version).

In America everything is BIG. Besides Big Mac, everything is big, buildings, highways, number of people, number of cars. So much things that someone who came from Europe wasn’t accustomed to. For instance, imagine situation that because of jet lag you can’t sleep anymore, say at 4.00 a.m. And if you look outside the window of your hotel room you can find that a lot of people have some sort of exercises in the gym hall across the hotel. Strange, isn’t it? In USA, activities never stop even in that early hours.

Picture 1 and 2: Bellevue

Ex Yu countries (Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Croatia, Macedonia and Slovenia) have four MVPs for C# and on the summit there are only three (Bahrudin Hrnjica left, Bernandin Katić in the middle and me on the right).

Picture 3: C# MVP

MVP summit is really great place to meet other MVPs and also to have contact with IT celebrities such as Beth Massi, Scott Hanselman and Scott Guthrie:

Picture 4: Beth Massi; Picture 5: Scott Hanselman: Picture 6: Scott Guthrie

I was really happy, and hard to explain how happy I was, for having the opportunity to be close with these IT experts that I admire and which work I follow during these years. Opportunity to be close to these people is tremendously precious for me. Also, that feeling when you are talking with product manager for some Microsoft products about your experiences using that products is really strange. Meeting people who are activally involved in creating that product is almost unreal for me until summit event.

Picture 7: MVPs from CEE & Italy region

Yes, it was hard but worth it every penny (some of the expenses are covered by Microsoft but some are not).  Networking is really what you need if you want to stay live in this hard IT job.

There are a lot of good memories that are still fresh but these are that come out of me right now. That good memories would not be so good that I didn’t have so good friends (they now who they are) who share with me all interesting things at the summit.

Note 1: My report wouldn’t be complete without details that explain my good friend Romeo Mlinar on his blog post MVP Global Summit 2013 – It was nice, it was good!

Note 2: I’m really proud and happy that Microsoft choose this blog post and publish it into famous MVP Friday Five blog posts on The Microsoft MVP Award Program Blog – Friday Five – 2013 MVP Summit Report.