Especially happy to hear this one. Eric is on my INETA Committee (User Group Rleations Committee). He runs the Chatanooga .NET User Group. He is just relentless in trying to help out other developers and other user group leaders. We can’t hold this guy back he has so much energy and passion. His energy benefits user groups all over his region and all over the world.

Hooray for Kate. She’s just became an MVP too. Well, she has been most valuable and very professional for a long long time. But the award is new. Kate is an MSDN Regional Director out of Toronto, author of numerous books (including the new Visual C++.NET KickStart), very involved wtih the Toronto.NET user group, a popular conference speaker and INETA speaker and just an all round really nice person. I finally met her last May after having so many people ask me if I knew her. We didn’t even need an introduction. Just looked at each other and said “Kate?“ “Julie?“ 🙂

Here you can read more about what Kate does and has done…

Sorry if I’m drooling, but has become a good friend and I’m just thrilled that she got the MVP award.

Ken Getz has been an MVP since the program began in 1994.

Kathleen Dollard has been an MVP for years.

While we are all very busy congratulating the brand new MVPs (as we should be and I am doing it as well), don’t forget there are many who have been MVPs year after year for a long time. I think they should be offered continued congratulations as well. The MVP program is growing because there are just so many more people getting very actively involved in the community, which is exciting. But do remember it’s roots. MVP status does not roll over. These people have been earning it year after year. Also, there are MVPs for every area of Microsoft technologies : consumer applications, windows operating systems and server systems, office applications and developer applications. 

Here is the mvp website www.microsoftmvp.com

It’s Scott Hanselman. Absolutely well-deserved. Scott almost missed his “congrats” email since Outlook dumped it into his spam folder! That makes me laugh because I think this is what happened to a few other very important emails that I waited for from Microsoft about participation in some beta programs. Luckily I wandered over to BetaPlace, logged in and found them on my page.

hooray, it’s James Avery, who seems to be attempting to keep an updated list. Eventually there will be a full list from Microsoft, but there is a little due diligence to be done in between.

This keeps coming back to me. These bright stars in our industry. But everyone is afraid to ask them if they are available, affordable or interested. In fact, people probably assume that they are none of the above. I am going to figure out a way to make a bridge. Oh, another pet project, JUST what I need. (Not me by the way, INETA and blogging keep me way too busy :-))

little by little I’m finding these… I have never seen so many “I’m an MVP!” posts before!! This is really fun.

Sam Gentile 🙂

Wally McClure 

oh goody!

Jeff Julian

John Bristowe

DonXML

(and don’t know you but congrats to Daniel Cazzulino, too!)

This is fun!

It looks like the new (Scott Cate) MVP’s (Doug Reilly) are starting to be outted. (That’s all I’ve seen so far for the U.S. though I did catch Klaus’s award last week). I can’t wait to see the full list!

I just got an email from my MVP Lead, Rafael Munoz, who has been on leave for 6 weeks to get to know his new baby. Now that I have met Rafael and a number of the leads, it makes me smile to get his emails. These folks are MVP leads for a reason. They are really just the nicest people and they love what they are doing. I know that this sounds really gooey – but I swear it’s true. Being an MVP lead used to be a “side” task to a Microsoft employees regular job. But the program has been modified a great deal and now it is a full time dedicated position.