Announcing the new "Silverlight" Expertise for the MVP Program

At the MVP summit on Monday 3/2, ScottGu announced the new "Silverlight" Expertise for the MVP program. I am very excited about having this dedicated expertise for Silverlight. This will allow the Silverlight Product Groups (the runtime teams, VS, and Blend) to interact directly with the MVPs. We are looking forward to your insightful feedback and hope we can continue the excitement Silverlight has generated so far!!

Recruitment

The first order of business for our expertise is recruitment. Not much of an expertise if we don't have anyone :) As of last week, we have 1 MVP in the new Silverlight expertise. Congrats Bill Reiss for being the first Silverlight MVP!

For the rest of you....

• Already an MVP

If you are already an MVP and your primarily focus is on Silverlight, you are welcome to change your expertise to the "Silverlight track" by working through your MVP lead. (That said, I want to emphasis that all expertise are valuable!) If you need any help, please feel free to let me know.

I know there were some concerns about separating the WPF and Silverlight track and it is hard for some MVPs to choose. Not to worry! The new "Silverlight" expertise will work closely with the Client Application Developer (CAD) track. It is very similar to how the languages (VB, C#..etc.) tracks are closely aligned. For example, in this year's MVP summit, CAD and Silverlight track shared a day of sessions together. So staying in the "CAD" track is equally valuable!

• Not an MVP

If you are not an MVP, and you'd like to become one. Please review the information on this site.

Activities

When we (Justin, Ted and I) first submitted this expertise to the MVP program, they want us to make sure we are interacting with the MVPs beyond the MVP Summit.

MVPs, What type of engagement would you like to see? Live Meetings?

What does "Bifocals" and "NDAs" have in common?

My final request to all MVPs, is to follow the advice from the inventor of the bifocal.

When in doubt, don't. - Benjamin Franklin

Sorry for those who has heard me say this many many times already. I know I am being a broken record.

When planning the MVP summit, I pushed very hard for each team and their speakers to have a good percentage of NDA content. (I recommended 25% to 50% of the content needs to be NDA.) I even emphasis that we need to have NDA content for beyond MIX, so that the information gained in the MVP summit can last longer than 2 weeks. :)

Unfortunately, I got a little burned from this. It is really unfortunate how a few bad apples has ruined this for everyone else. I am sad about the lost of trust on the MVP NDA this may create. The Product Group reps are still dealing with the fall out today. Hopefully, we can have this resolved soon.

<Editorial Comment>

Ben Franklin.. This is what happens when you blog while watching the History Channel. What show would you like me to watch next time I blog? Note: It has to be rated PG-13 or below. :P

</Editorial Comment>

Comments

• Anonymous
  March 08, 2009
  Hi Kathy, As one of the CAD MVPs that was contacted to join the new expertise (I accepted, by the way), I gave this some thoughts. What you mention about Silverlight MVPs staying close to the CAD MVPs is very important to me, as you know. However, one of the key points to my decision to accept the offer is that working with a small dedicated group of MVPs and very close to the product group, moreover on a very new technology seems really interesting. Yes, LiveMeetings with the product group seems fantastic. Any other interaction idea sounds fantastic. I am looking forward to helping make Silverlight even better ;) Cheers, Laurent

• Anonymous
  March 08, 2009
  Hey Laurent, Great to hear you've accepted! :) Ted is the owner of the CAD MVP track, and I'll work closely with him to make sure the two tracks are closely aligned and sharing as much as possible. That's one of our key goals. It is the .NET continuum afterall! FYI, We'll also stay close w/ the ASP.NET folks. Cheers, Kathy

• Anonymous
  March 08, 2009
  Kathy, Wow I didn't know I was the first Silverlight MVP, I'm honored :) It really is a shame the some MVPs can't seem to keep quiet on NDA material, and I've noticed that the amount of this material has declined over the past couple of years. Thank you for your efforts to give us this content and I'm sorry it has come back to bite you.

• Anonymous
  March 08, 2009
  Last week, Scott Guthrie announced the addition of a Silverlight expertise for the Microsoft MVP program

• Anonymous
  March 08, 2009
  It puts you in a tough position... It's valuable for everyone to share this NDA stuff with the MVPs, but when they leak it, it ruins it for everyone. Good luck trying to work it out, I don't envy you :( And boo to those naughty MVPs.

• Anonymous
  March 08, 2009
  Hi Kathy, I work closely on both (WPF and SL) technologies so for me, as MVP, it is very important to have access to both PGs. Please (!) keep both specialities as close as possible.

• Anonymous
  March 08, 2009
  Hi Corrado, Definitely! Keeping the two tracks close is definitely a goal. Cheers, Kathy

• Anonymous
  March 09, 2009
  The comment has been removed

• Anonymous
  March 09, 2009
  Hi, I was thrilled to hear ScottGu mentioning the new Silverlight  expertise for MVPs! First because Silverlight has become my main focus since MVP Summit 2007 (WPF/E...). Second, because ASP.NET (my current expertise) is a large group and I think I could bring more impact and work closely with product team in the Silverlight field. Ideally dealing with Silverlight, WPF and Expression would be great! Laurent

• Anonymous
  March 17, 2009
  This is great news for us sole Silverlight designer/developers, I've been developing on Silverlight since version 1, and I think the coming together of Silverlight/Expression and the new VS will be the perfect partnership for us experts to showcase our skills. Very interested in this more,