Just like last year, the year 2012 just started on a good note. I have been recognized and rewarded as Microsoft most Valuable Professional again. This time as well I have been awarded in Windows Expert – Consumer Category. This is the third consecutive time I have been awarded this award from Microsoft. This award is a recognition of contributions of a the awardee in Microsoft communities offline and/or online.

Here is the screenshot of the mail I got in my inbox @ 8:59 PM (IST) on 1st of January 2012.

Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Awardees, are exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who foster the free and objective exchange of knowledge by actively sharing their real world expertise with users and Microsoft. MVP expertise is expansive and impressive, covering more than 90 technologies that range from Windows and Silverlight to PowerPoint and Dynamics CRM.

Not everyday you got to see such mails. It’s a great moment for me. Would be updating the MVP Award Kit Unboxing Images Soon. Also I hope I can be awarded in different category next time.

About MVP Award Program

Benefits of a MVP Award Program : MVP Benefits

MVP SouthAsia Blog

Stay connected with MVP Award Program on Twitter, Facebook and join the conversation with #mvpbuzzin.

                          

The year 2011 just started and what a way to start the year with. I have been recognized and rewarded as Microsoft most Valuable Professional again. However, this time I have been awarded in Windows Expert – Consumer Category instead of Last year’s category Windows Desktop Experience.

Here is the mail I got in my inbox @ 8:40 PM (IST) on 1st of January 2011.

Not everyday you got to see such mails. It’s a great moment for me. Would be updating the MVP Award Kit Unboxing Images Soon.

About MVP Award Program

Benefits of a MVP Award Program : MVP Benefits

MVP SouthAsia Blog

                          

MVP’s for Quarter 2 of Year 2010 has been recently announced. MVP is a recognition by Microsoft to the community leaders who believes in sharing and caring. Microsoft recognizes the best and brightest from technology communities around the world with the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award for an Year. An MVP can enjoy a lot of Benefits which are provided to him by Microsoft.

Benefits of a MVP

As an MVP, a host of benefits that are available:

• Welcome letter/ Mail Directly from Microsoft, announcing the new MVP’s and welcoming you in the group.
• MSDN subscription (Online) Worth 2499$ . A 12-month subscription provide access to the latest information about Microsoft technology and products.

• TechNet Subscription (Online) Worth 349$ . A 12-month subscription provide access to the latest information about Microsoft technology and products.

• MVP Trophy A beautiful Trophy together with a Tie Pin and MVP Id card. And it includes a Certificate as well.

• Employee Recognition Letter You may avail 4 of such letters which can be sent to your Dean, Principle or Employer. The ERL provides broad recognition of your expert participation and outlines the impact of the MVP program and the significance of the MVP Award.
• MVP Summit and MVP Open day are exclusive MVP events conducted by Microsoft

• Technical Support free assistance on three technical support incidents during an MVP’s award year.

• My MVP Profile Create a personal profile to share with other MVPs, all of Microsoft, or all Microsoft customers on Microsoft.com product Web pages. Profile page can be used to promote speaking engagements, books, white papers, and other activities. This increased exposure across Microsoft.com highlights you as an expert and an important member of the technical communities in which you participate. https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/profile/Vasu.Jain

• MVP Leads MVP’s receive the special benefit of a dedicated Microsoft advocate as direct connection to Microsoft. MVP Lead keep MVP’s informed of product news, events, and opportunities that are available to you. MVP Lead can help connect with Microsoft team members in Redmond, Washington and in your region.
• Networking & Learning opportunities from other MVPs : Interactions with MVPs & Microsoft Employees. Direct connection to people with other expertise to help out in community.
• MVP Source Licensing Program gives eligible MVPs access to Microsoft source code.
• Knowledge Base Resources enables MVPs to view articles on pre-release products and issues, and extend rights to republish Knowledge Base articles to the Web.
• MVP Private Newsgroups are a Product Feedback events in MVP Connect Services enables MVPs the option to participate in Product Improvement Opportunity events and postmortems (PIOs), Product Group Interaction events (PGI’s), maintain an events Communication profile, and to send Microsoft Early Warning Signals (EWS) from Technical Communities. Newsgroups venue for MVPs from around the world to share their ideas about Microsoft products and technologies with other MVPs and with Microsoft.
• Third party benefits like free Tutorials, Software’s exclusively for MVP’s.
• MVP Mail digest that bridges communication between MVP’s and provide latest product news, events & Opportunities.
• Technical training & resources
• Exclusive Invitation to Microsoft Beta Products.
• Exclusive Reservations in Microsoft events.
• There are some indirect benefits too, including Reputation in your community .

More Info about MVP Award program here : https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/

                          

20th January 2009

Due to some Telangana issues in the city, i caught up the venue bit late, and when i reached Hotel ISTA it was almost lunch time. After registration i met my roommate Pawan Kumar, MVP-Consumer Security. Followed by Ashish Mohta & Hima Binduvejella. Discussed some MVP future related issues with Hima like we have shared earlier on the MVP portal.

Lunch was followed by IT Pro Roundtable with Ravi Sankar who discussed about communities and a DPE Roundtable with Stuti Shukla, Director (Marketing), DPE where we were divided into teams and asked to discuss on a few topics :
1. Top5 Challenges faced by individual developers & How Microsoft should address them
2. How Microsoft most effectively address Application Development needs of the small and medium organizations in India.
3. Winning Microsoft against Open Source in the web application space.

I was teamed with Vijay Raj, Md. Reza (Academic Advisor whom i have met earlier too in a seminar conducted by my University in 2008) 7 few more. We were with the topic “Winning Microsoft against Open Source in the web application space” where we compared LAMP, Linux (operating system), Apache (web server), MySQL (database) and PHP (scripting language) & WISA, Windows (operating system), Internet Information Services (web server), Microsoft SQL Server (database) and ASP (scripting language). Further we discussed some suggestions what Microsoft is doing and what it must do. Abhishek Kant (MVP-Lead, India) made the things more intersting by introducing Karma points for every recognizable activity by a team or an individual. And the person woth highest number of Karma points could take a XBOX home followed by some WinMo, External HDD, Mouse & Wireless headphone.

After Round table it was time for Karoke Party which featured fun games in which we have to provide an egg cushion using the given material so that it wont break down when thrown from height, making a bridge using newspaper that can hold a number of glasses full of water and few more .

Met a lot of MVP’s in Windows Desktop Experience including Anand Khanse, Shantanu Kaushik, Manan, Shyam Lal.  After dinner we had Open session which was kind of “Graveyard Sessions” which were optional and continued till 2 AM in the night. The open session featured a Google vs Microsoft war and some great blogging & SEO tips by Amit Agarwal. Various topics were discussed. It was a knowledgeable, and an interesting Discussion session.

21th January 2009

After an exhaustive first day, i was bit tired for the day 2. Day two started with Windows 7 Deployment Roundtable @ Hotel ISTA. Discussion on deployment enhancements, deployment tools for windows like MAP,MDT etc was done. The very next thing was a Technical Opening Session by Srini Koppolu (CVP & MD, MSIDC) at MSIDC. The very first thing i noticed @MSIDC was a huge poster of Windows 7 is here on the MSIDC building. Office campus was quite good which reminded me of Adobe’s office in Noida, although not as huge. Srini spoke about various Microsoft technologies & products, some NDA stuff, Missions to increase computing penetration in India. He patiently answered most of the queries too. After the keynote it was time for Group Photo “a Kodak moment”.

Next were 3 sessions parallel for Developers, Consumers, and ITPros. I choose the one with consumers where we had a Session on Win7 and the way forward for Windows by Suryanarayana Shastri, Senior PM, WWLG. He discussed about new features of Windows 7 like taskbar, federated search, libraries & more, most of which were already known to me and other MVP’s too. This session was followed by an interesting session on Troubleshooting and Debugging – an Holistic approach by Nischay Anikar, GTSC. He discussed approaches and workarounds for troubleshooting. Tools like XPerf, Debugging tools, SysInternal tools like Process monitor, process explorer and how they can help in troubleshooting and finding the root cause of the problem. Later on i came to know that this 2 hour packed session was just a glimpse of what is a Week full of In-detail training of Troubleshooting is.Finally we had last session of the day How to deliver Media Services with IIS 7.x by Punit Shah, Technical Lead, GTSC. He demonstrated use of IIS media services to stream videos flawlessly using Bit Rate Throttling, an IIS Media Services extension  over the internet, no more waiting for a video to buffer now.

Sessions over it was time to checkout the company store @ MSIDC. Not a lot of products were available but a few were catchy and i picked up a Microsoft T, M$ Metal Business card holder & a Win7 bottle.A Hyderabad Outing was planned for us guys and it was Golconda fort where we had a light & sound show narrating the history of Golconda fort.

There was no Graveyard session for the night, so after an edible dinner we guys just sit for some casual chat related to the forums and technology and soon it turned out to be another unofficial graveyard session where Windows mobile was discussed as well.

22nd January 2009

We have Office 2010 round table, a lot of features of office 2010 were discussed which i did already in a session at DelhiITpro. It was followed by Technical Opening Session by Rajiv Kumar, GM, MBD, MSIDC.

Next Session was on SharePoint 2010 – Improved Experiences for Small Organisations by Rao Korupolu & Sanjay Manghnani. I was really amazed to see how web solutions can be easily managed with Sharepoint. Next were FEEDBACK Chalk Talks with Windows Desktop Experience where we discussed various issues, topics, suggestions with Windows development team. The topics we discussed and talked about included Virtualization, Windows XP mode and futur of Windows. Again a lots of NDA stuff.

There was an offtrack session, Self Development Training Media Ready by Tushar Makkar, SMSG which discussed on dealing with the print media.

In the evening there was an attendee party where we all were treated like Nizams, we were showered with Rose petals, Rosewater, we could dress up like a Nizam and get our pic, it included loads of Qawalis, contests for Karma Coupons, and Hookas too.

Meanwhile there were Xbox consoles outside the party hall and you could win a Xbox Goodie by beating the opponent of yours (on Xbox). And i won a Microsoft-T & a Xbox-Cap this time.

23rd January 2009

Final day for MVP open day @ MSIDC started with a Keynote by Chandrasekar Gopalan, Director (Dev Support), GTSC where he discussed on Support and Post Deployment Support and Services available. This was followed by Addressing by MVP Lead, Abhishek Kant. Up next we had live demos of

• BizTalk RFID
• Microsoft Phone Data Manager : Backup your mobile phone data with Phone data Manager
• Microsoft Indic langauge tool
• Windows XP Mode
• Bing Demo
• SQL server Demo

A loads of interesting demos were followed by winner of Xbox with max Karma coupons. Overall a great experience. A lot of interactions & networking with people. Usefulness of each day @ mvpopenday had progressively increased. Learned a lot of new things and enjoyed every bit of it. A suggestion which i included in my Video too was frequency of such event to be increased. Such in-person events to be conducted more than once an year.

Events Photographs are uploaded

• http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=145750&id=762174369
• http://www.flickr.com/photos/greatfriendsbiz/sets/72157623243710576/
• http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=150358&id=729361840&l=af46bf88ef
• http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=195413&id=502148097&ref=mf

P.S. although i have made sure i am not including any NDA stuff, incase i have do notify me.

                          

MVP Open Day is an annual event where all MVPs from different regions meet & share their technical expertise. Apart from it various technical sessions are being conducted to enrich the MVP’s. MVP Open day @ MSIDC invites MVPs from Australia, New Zealand , India & Nepal.

The MVP Open Day is a three day invitation-only event that is hosted at MSIDC. The event will feature a roster of keynotes and deep dive technical sessions delivered by experts from the product group as well as a variety of social networking opportunities to enable MVPs to network and socialize with their technical peers, build new relationships with Microsoft Development Centre teams, and share real world feedback. This is a great opportunity for MVPs to connect with each other; with Microsoft Development Centre, and visiting Redmond Product Group as well as MVP team staff.

Who can attend the MVP Open Day at MSIDC?

The MVP Open Day is an exclusive event for Asia Pacific & Greater China MVPs. For this event, MVPs from the 3 regions – Australia & New Zealand, India, Nepal, Bangladesh and Southeast Asia are invited.

When & where is MVP Open Day 2010 ?

MVP Open Day will be held from 20-23 January 2010at the Microsoft India Development Center at Hyderabad, India.

Microsoft India Development Center (MSIDC)

Microsoft India Development Center (MSIDC) is one of Microsoft’s  largest development centers outside the headquarters in Redmond. Set up in 1998 by Srini Koppolu, Corporate Vice-President & Managing Director, along with a group of 20 people, MSIDC has grown over the last 11 years to 1500 plus employees.

MVP Open day was last conducted in Dec 2008 @ Goa. Check out more about last MVPOpenDay here : http://www.mvpopenday.com/ #mvpopenday

                          

Dear Vasu Jain,
Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2010 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Windows Desktop Experience technical communities during the past year.
The Microsoft MVP Award provides us the unique opportunity to celebrate and honor your significant contributions and say “Thank you for your technical leadership.”
Toby Richards
General Manager
Community & Online Support

About MVP Award Program

MVP SouthAsia Blog

                          

Picture Credit – Vision Australia

MVP Kenny Johar was recently awarded the Microsoft MVP Award, for his contributions towards Internet Explorer. He has carved out a successful IT career by helping to make technology, more accessible to Australia’s visually impaired. News of his Award, was also picked up by The Australian newspaper and you can read an excerpt of the interview below.

Kenny was diagnosed with problems to his eyesight during the final years of high school, and had intended to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor. The news that he had retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative sight condition, came as a crushing blow.

“It’s like a domino effect,” he said. “When I started there were lots of obstacles for people with vision impairment to get into the IT industry, and I take a huge sense of achievement from the fact I am opening a floodgate for others to follow”.

“I had strong aspirations to be a neurologist,” he recalled. “I was very interested in the human brain, and then I learned that no matter how hard I worked I was never going to be able to get there, so I had to change the direction of my career”.

Everything changed when he got a laptop computer with a screen reader that allowed the information in programs and on web pages to be read aloud to him.

“Suddenly the world opened up again for me,” he said. “To have something come into my life and give me such a strong ray of hope for the future made me realise how powerful a tool technology was”.

Kenny is now helping to roll out a new software package that will assist vision-impaired people to go online. He remains optimistic that the IT industry will offer more opportunities to blind people. “It’s not about a disability, it’s about your attitude, and I think for people who come after me it’s not going to be a big deal; it won’t be a taboo anymore”.

You can read Kenny’s full interview with The Australian here.