I received Microsoft's MVP Award yesterday. I tried blogging about the experience at the end of the day but I didn't feel that I was ready to do it. The MVP Award is an unusual and very different kind of designation in the professional world. Many professional awards are about recognizing accomplishment. But the Microsoft MVP Award is about recognizing service. When you are singled out in this way, it's the community's method of saying, "Keep up the good work."

I've achieved many certifications in my career. I've held certifications from Sun, Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, HP, Siemens, Cisco and a few others. But I've never advertised them publicly because they were all my doing. I studied. I worked hard. I passed the certification exams. And I was a better developer and software architect for doing it. But, as a professional, I think those things are expected of me. So there was really no sense in wearing those certifications on my sleeve, in my opinion. To paraphrase the old adage, the proof is IN the pudding, not ON it, if you know what I mean.

The MVP Award, based on community and industry service, is not something you apply for. You get nominated by other MVPs and you go through a process of demonstrating what you've been up to for the past year. A review board checks you out (you can't hide from the search engines) and determines which MVP area of expertise you would fit into. Then, they determine among the other candidates in your group if your contributions to the community are exemplary. My MVP area of expertise is Visual C#, by the way. I think they picked the correct area for me because I know, love and promote the dickens out of C#. It's my favorite programming language in my career of 25 years so far.

It's a bit overwhelming to get the kind of support you need to win the MVP Award. When you receive "the magical e-mail" as some have called it, there's a stark moment of realization that you're standing on the shoulders of so many others who contributed to it. No MVP has ever achieved the title on his own. And I'm certainly no different. That's the way communities work. We lift each other up. I want to recognize a few folks who have lifted me up and encouraged me along the way to serve better within the Microsoft developer community:

• Kevin Israel
• Robin Edwards
• Darrell Norton
• Frank La Vigne
• Andrew Duthie
• Justin Etheredge

These folks are my role models. In particular, I want to recognize Andy Leonard. If we weren't about the same age, I'd call Andy my techno-Dad. He's a father figure to all of us in the mid-Atlantic user group community, I believe. Andy is humble and brilliant, a rare combination. He's also the hardest working person I know. If I could follow Andy's lead to 50% efficiency, I know I would be successful, too. We are sorry to be losing him to Atlanta soon but he's leaving us in great shape. Thank you, Andy.

I send out a heartfelt thanks to these folks and the cast of hundreds who pour their time and energy into making the user groups, Code Camps and DevCamps throughout the mid-Atlantic region great successes. My profession would be just a job if it weren't for all of you. I look forward to serving you all in the year to come.

I just read Andy Leonard's Five Bugs blog post concerning the Entity Famework Vote of No Confidence. You should read it, too.

That's the right approach Andy. As I said in my earlier blog post, this is not the Continental Congress facing off against King George. There are already plenty of alternatives to any technology that Microsoft makes available today. And yet, Microsoft's strategy of continual improvement works and they almost always gain market share.
 
Most good developers have the patience and foresight to use this strategy to their advantage. The weaknesses in a Microsoft technology early in the game create all sorts of opportunities for developers and architects to show off their prowess in closing those gaps. We build tools and techniques. We write about our experiences. We speak about issues in public, constructively. We build trust and support in our spheres of influence.
 
These actions are like a rising tide. Broad support for the right ways of serving our clients has the effect of lifting everyone's boat, including Microsoft's. Sharp attacks like the ones we've seen in recent days are more akin to using torpedoes instead. It just doesn't work. Look at Scott Bellware's tweets over the last day or two. There's a sample of them below. There's no professionalism in that vitriol. I agree with Andy. There's something else going on here. This can't be about making Microsoft better.
 
Here are some of Scott Bellware's tweets from yesterday and today with a few <snip>s to protect the innocent:

• @<snip> petty sabotage in this community is done because it's implicitly permissible by the towering gods of tech ed
• Lean Microsoft... for real... i would work myself to the bone for a software company that behaves like Toyota rather than Boris and Natasha
• imagine a microsoft that believed getting it right the first time was an imperative
• so much potential, so little will to transform it into betterment
• people, it's ok to say in public those things you say in email and in person. the more courages voices, the better things get for all
• we somehow got convinced that it's not ok to dissent to microsoft. when it's impolitic to hold a corporation to account, it has impunity.
• the tech ed crowd and rd crowd has the power to change .net mainstream culture. it appears too busy protecting its own interests to care
• dreaming of a .net community where integrity, courage, and diversity were unassailable values that everyone defends at all cost
• if only a high-profile blogger or podcaster in mainstream .net community had the integrity to talk about this problem. yeah. dreaming.
• THE hallmark of microsoft community is the drive to limit free speach
• mainstream .net's answer to the ef letter is to continue to spam the list. this is the clearest indicator of how shallow this segment is
• after years of dumbing down customer community, and taking input from that community, microsoft is itself a victim of its own craven ways
• the movie idiocracy is an allegory for the results of microsoft holding its customer community back from the advances it can't afford
• the long tail of fear, uncertainty, and doubt entrenched into ms culture by microsoft has limited its own community's intellectual potential
• alt.net: i think you could benefit from some OO design fundamentals / mainstream: nyah, nyah, nyah, i know you are but what am i
• even arguments that call people out by name are valuable when accurate and substantial, but name calling is what we get from ms community
• the mainstream .net community is always ready willing, willing, and able to be petty in its opposition to alt.net
• @<snip> other dev communities think the .net community is so primitive that they barely think it's worth paying attention to
• <snip> signed the ef letter. i think it's a hoax. can someone at ms confirm? if it's a fake, i'll delete it
• is there a magazine in the microsoft space that isn't on microsoft's payrol?
• the continued quoting of roger jennings' stilted characterization of the ef letter in microsoft media shows how corrupt microsoft media is

Read anything in there that makes you feel like a professional? Not me.