This is to all the MVPs on this forum I am just wondering, what exactly do you have to do to earn this title? I know the question is kinda silly, but it is a goal of mine, and probably most of the people working with Microsoft Products, like Dynamics thank you for your replies and stories about how you became a MVP
Hi,
Well the MVP is an award that Microsoft gives to members of the user communities who are doing an extra ordinary effort for the community.
This could be by creating and running this site (me), or being on of the most active users helping other users by answering their questions.
I guess it could also be by developing small tools and helpers for the product you work with and provide them for free for the community (via the downloads here on this site of cause! [;)]). Others have written a book on the product, making speaches, writting in magazines etc.
You just have to be as active to make someone point you out to Microsoft. Then they will evaluate your contributions to the community and once or twice a year then appoint new MVP’s.
Stories about “became a MVP?”
It is easy, try to help others as you can, share knowledge you have (and you are allowed to share), have some influence to the community (it can be local thing not just global). If you are good in it, may be you will be MVP for one year… But do not take it as your goal. Goal is to help others, MVP is just “side-effect”.
In fact there are no “public” rules about how to go about this. Microsoft make it very clear that its an award they give because they feel that the person deserves it. By specifically aiming to become an MVP is a good reason NOT to get the award [:O]
Microsoft offer the MVP award as a way of showing thanks for the efforts that a person has made to help users of Microsoft products. And this is a combination of different activities that you might do. You could easily do everythign that other MVPs have done, and never get the award.
No one of us knows why we got our award, we are actually just guessing. But basically I will confirm what the others have said. … Make an honest effort to help your fellow Dynamics users. Work in pubilic where you are seen to be active. But do it with an honest desire to help users, don’t do it just because of a desire to win an award. It will be pretty obvious to Microsoft if you are doing that.
I got rewarded 2 months ago, I started posting about 8 months prior to that, but I am active offline with navision for many years.
The mail I got about the award said there is no correspondence about how you got awarded. [:O]
Fact is that you need to be nominated. Guess someone nominated me [;)]
Personally I’ve nominated many of the most active members of the user group. Most of them have gotten the award, some I’ve been told would not get it this period but the next (they have some quota’s on how many new they may award). When I nominate I’m not only looking at the number of posts, but more on the kind of posts (quality). And I know that they are then looking into this also.
But it should never just be your goal to become an MVP. Being an MVP is an hounor, but you can’t use it to that much more!
Make it your goal to help others!
When I started posting I had not heard of the MVP program.
I started posting for the fun and because it gives you a great learning opportunity especialy when you think you know it all.[:)]
When I got the first message announcing that that I had been awarded, I was about to discharge it as spam - you know, like the kind of message saying “Congratulation! You just won 1,000,000.00 USD. In order to receive it, just send 10,000.00 to me.” [:P]
Vanya, you may or may not get the MVP award, but you surely earned a lot of points by this post! [:D]
As far as I know, none of the MVP’s have ever been ‘in it for the MVP award’, I know I wasn’t. in fact it was a shock to me when I got the award, because there are so many ‘MVP caliber’ people helping out on this forum as well as on mibuso.com.
MSFT will not tell us what it is that makes someone an MVP, specifically because they want to prevent a situation in which they say ‘you have to do 1, 2 and 3’, so you go out and do 1, 2 and 3 but you don’t get the award and you start sending out angry emails.
Well, I wasn’t going for the points, that’s for sure. Actually this points system seems kinda weird. What do I make of the amount I have? Does it award me a special status after a certain amount or something like that? And about the MVP as a goal - it’s just a quick way of saying - of course, I understand that it wouldn’t give me anything except possibly honor, ( I mean that there is no cash reward). But to my understanding - to get an MVP you have to become a real specialist in many things in Axapta, for example. And that is what my goal is - to study what is there to study. And by helping others I may achieve just that - because, as you probably all know, it’s amazing, but you start understanding something completely after you explain it to somebody, who doesn’t understand it at all. Thank you all for your stories. It was surprising to find out that none of you knew about the award beforehand. And it’s nice noone even wanted it that much. 
The points here will not get you an MVP, especially points gained about asking how to win an MVP award.
Make a decision, do you want to share your knowledge, and help others to become proficient with your chosen product. Do you want to do this for free, with no reward, but do it just for the enjoyment of helping. If the answer is yes, then do it, don’t warry about rewards and points, just do what you enjoy doing. If you don’t enjoy helping others, don’t do it.
Its as simple as that, but don’t do it just because you want to be an MVP.
I agree with David on this. [;)]
You don’t get the award just by becoming an expert. it’s not about how much you know, it’s about your role in the online community. I agree with David, you should only post here if you enjoy it, if you like sharing your knowledge and helping out other people. Don’t even think about any awards that you might get.
I remember getting an email from Mark from Microsoft. My first thought was who is this guy & why is he bothering me with emails. I never heard of the MVP award and even if I did I wasn’t into the big two forums just to get it. I don’t know who even nominated me , If it was Erik then thanks and to everyone else - It’s his fault! [D]