S. Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Developer Division, celebrated the MVPs of the Year at a special dinner last week during the MVP Global Summit. This is a tremendous community honor: the 30 MVPs were selected by their MVP peers and members of Microsoft. And two of the MVPs—Visual Basic MVP Alessandro Del Sole and C++ MVP Peter Ritchie— have made this prestigious list for the last three years!

Alessandro has distinguished himself as community leader for the Italian "Visual Basic Tips & Tricks" user group, home to more than 42,600 Visual Basic developers. He also recently co-founded the Italian "WPF Tips & Tricks" and "LightSwitch Tips & Tricks" user groups.

But what may be even more impressive about Alessandro is that he is a self-taught developer who originally turned to community to hone his expertise. By trade and training, Alessandro started his career in one of the Italian government’s organizations. By day, he worked in a department entirely separate from IT, and at night he was a passionate programmer.

In addition to his leadership in user groups, Alessandro is a prolific technical writer and records webcasts and instructional videos. He also has published five books, including the recently released Microsoft Visual Studio LightSwitch Unleashed.

Microsoft first recognized Alessandro as an MVP in 2008. After ten years spent in a different department, his technical expertise as a writer and speaker gained him recognition in the Italian government and for the last few years he has been able to bring his passion to his everyday work.

Peter has been working professionally in software development for more than 16 years.  But he's been working with computer software far longer—since his first computer, an Atari 800.

Starting in C, Peter progressed to C++ not too long after its adoption by the major compilers.  With a strong background in C++, Peter has been writing, designing, and architecting Windows-based software and solutions for over 13 years.

Most recently, Peter has gotten involved in the .NET movement, concentrating on C# and making an effort to try and transfer his knowledge to the community--resulting in becoming an MVP C#.

Peter is an active contributor to the MSDN Forums and .NET newsgroups and also an active moderator of MSDN Forums. Peter’s prolific and carefully considered contributions to the C# forums provide a high standard and a valued resource to members of the community. Year after year, he has given expert guidance and support to customers who seek help on the forums, establishing himself as an expert whose opinions are highly valued.

Peter is president of Peter Ritchie Inc. Software Consulting Co, where he provides Windows-based software development services in Canada's national capital region.

In addition, there are three returning winners from last year: Richards Seroter, in the category Connected Systems Development/BizTalk; Meinoff Weber for Top Answerer on MSDN Forums; Reed Copsey for Top Answerer on StackOverflow,

Please join us in congratulating all the MVPs of the Year!