The PowerPoint Team Blog : MVPs

When Most Valuable Professionals Gather

RicB — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 07:18:35 GMT

In the first two parts of this series we explored what MVPs do, how they are chosen, and how this fantastic team of PowerPoint MVPs can help you with your PowerPoint problems.

This time we’ll look at the yearly summit conference where MVPs all over the world gather on the Microsoft Redmond Campus.

Up to the Summit!

Every year, thousands of Microsoft MVPs travel from around the globe to gather in Seattle Washington for the annual MVP Summit. Microsoft hosts the summit as an opportunity to provide information on current and future activities, product releases, and MVP coordinating information. Over the last few years the amount of time the MVPs spend with their product groups has grown from a single question-and-answer style meeting, to deep dives with the teams lasting a couple of days. Presentations begin preparation months in advance, special guests from related teams or technology representatives are tasked to present. The team contact has become a rigorously scheduled two full days of presentations, feedback sessions, demos and social gatherings.

Of the PowerPoint MVPs, about half were able to come this year. For some the state of the world economy made attendance a hardship. However, we still had representatives from as far away as Germany, Korea, Great Britain, India, and of course the Americas. We do have a regular monthly phone call where all are invited to attend and discuss the state of the application, but it's always great to have face-to-face contact.

The MVPs start arriving on Sunday, as things get going early on Monday and they need the extra time to get registered, badged, and settle in. A Meet and Greet reception is held for all the teams at the Washington State Convention & Trade Center. It’s a huge crowd. They do get to sit in on a few presentations, just to warm up, in the main hall. Microsoft execs talking about the MVP program, what’s ahead for the rest of the conference, and other orientation stuff. Then it’s off to a huge hall where thousands of MVPs gather to drink, dine, and catch up with old friends. Members of the Microsoft MVP coordination group get the product-specific MVPs gathered in signed areas, and a few of the product team make it in to catch up as well.

Here’s a quick look at the gathering, with some close-ups of the PowerPoint folks at the end:

PowerPoint Breakouts

While we’ll focus on the PowerPoint MVPs activities here, it’s worth noting that their contact was not exclusively with the PowerPoint development team. As mentioned above, our team has a lot of regular contact with the MVPs, from a regular world-wide phone conference to e-mails and individual phone calls about issues that spring up on the MVPs radar (see MVPs and Escalation from the earlier post in this series.)

In preparation for the summit, we poll the MVPs to determine what they want to see in the team sessions. High on those lists are face-to-face sessions with the teams that add to PowerPoint’s function through Office shared code. The Excel team, who provides Charting function, sat down to discuss problems and requests. A programmability session was the focus for MVPs who spend time creating add-ins and tools for other PowerPoint users. The Office Graphics team provided insights into work that was going into the Office SP2 release, as well as the upcoming Office 2010 product. And we had a couple of surprises, new groups whose names would give away a little too much about yet-unreleased Office plans.

Two ninety-minute sessions on Monday and Tuesday highlighted work being done for PowerPoint in Office 2010. It would be great to be able to tell you all about those sessions, and we dearly want to! However, they’re still not public and so we’ll have to leave you with the news that the MVPs were ecstatic about the work we’re currently doing and can’t wait to get their hands on it.

Just so we’re not totally teasing here, we promise that once we can start talking about the next PowerPoint release, the whole team will be writing about their features, right here in the PowerPoint Team Blog.

The PowerPoint MVPs get to see behind the scenes at the Microsoft MVP Summit.

Fun and Relaxation

Monday night all of the Office MVPs joined with the product teams for a dinner catered in our Redmond campus office cafeteria. You’ll recall that most of the PowerPoint team is located in Mountain View California, on the Silicon Valley Campus. However, many were able to attend the Redmond dinner, and were joined by our close peers in the Office Graphics team and others.

Tuesday night was the big event, as the whole of the MVP program bussed across the bridge into the shadow of the Space Needle to attend an event at the EMP: Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum. This is the perfect place for technology focused professionals to let their hair down and do live Karaoke or browse the history of popular music or the fantastic visions of the future.

MVPs and Softies Gather for a group photo at the 2009 MVP Conference

Rounding Out the Week

Wednesday morning finds the MVPs back in large sessions with the Microsoft executives, giving more organizational insights and collecting feedback from the MVPs. There were no official product group activities on Wednesday, but the PowerPoint MVPs are notorious self-starters and have for the last few years organized their own farewell dinner gathering. It’s one last time to chat, praise, and promise the best is yet to come.

Thank you PowerPoint MPVs!

- Ric Bretschneider May 4th, 2009

Where Do Most Valuable Professionals Hang Out?

RicB — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 09:27:48 GMT

In the first part of this series we explored what MVPs do, how they are chosen, and a little introduction to the fantastic team that makes up the PowerPoint MVPs. This time we’ll cover where to find them, and what they can do for you once you do.

Of course you can find your MVPs by coming to conferences where they speak, or visiting their workplaces (with permission of course), or even sometimes at Microsoft events like TechNet or Tech-Ed. But more importantly, you can get help from almost all of the PowerPoint MVPs without even leaving your chair.

Where are the MVPs?

I’ll tell you up front, the PowerPoint MVPs are a terrific group of people just to hang out with and share a laugh over random PowerPoint trivia or experiences. But you’ll most likely to want to talk to them when you’ve run into a problem you can’t solve, need advice on approaching the use of a specific feature, or just need someone to walk you through some basic PowerPoint features. Once you start these conversations you may find it hard to stop, because there’s really nothing as satisfying as free advice from a professional.

A world of MVPs gather at the Annual Microsoft MVP Summit in Washington

Newsgroups

One of the most expedient ways of getting help for all of your questions is to make your way to the Microsoft PowerPoint newsgroups. What’s a newsgroup? Well, newsgroups are not a Microsoft invention, they’ve been around about as long as computer telecommunications has existed. They are collections of conversations between individuals on any subject, from Star Trek to Shakespeare, from auto racing to oceanography; if it’s a topic for discussion there’s a newsgroup for it.

Microsoft sponsors sets of news groups that support our products. We learn a lot watching user conversations, both about how our products are used in the field from news conversations. Because their content is automatically archived and searchable, they provide an always expanding base of information and answers.

Getting The News

If you’re already familiar with newsgroups, all you need to know is that the PowerPoint group is located at microsoft.public.powerpoint. If that doesn’t make any sense to you, you’ll need to do a little investigation into the use of news readers. Here are two places you can go for help there:

The Microsoft Newsgroups is the official web page listing of all the product news groups with additional articles on how to navigate and read the online threaded discussions.

PPTFAQ: How do I join the PowerPoint newsgroup? is an MVP-written set of links and notes on how to join and use the newsgroups.

While you’re in this second page, check out the larger PPTFAQ web site. Guess what? It’s written and maintained by Steve Rindsberg, a PowerPoint MVP, with the help and contributions of many other MVPs. PPTFAQ is a great place to go and just search for answers to your PowerPoint questions.

However you get to the newsgroups, you’ll find them a wealth of information and assistance Over the years many questions asked and answered in the newsgroups have been archived here.

Lurking and Participating

Once you get to the PowerPoint newsgroups, don’t feel you need to start asking questions right away. Go ahead if you want, but it’s a time honored tradition to “lurk” in the sites for a while, getting a feel for how the conversations go and who knows what about what, before you actually post a question or comment yourself. Remember, everything will be fine as long as everyone communicates respectfully and productively. Believe me, this is one of the best newsgroups you would ever want to spend time in; it’s like an extended family.

Web Sites

Almost all of the PowerPoint MVPs have web sites. Not surprisingly, most of the content on these sites is about PowerPoint. You can browse these at your leisure, and if you’re still lurking in the newsgroups you can read up on the various players while you’re getting your footing.

The MVP organization keeps this list of MVP sites: MVP Web Sites: PowerPoint. It is a little dated but still quite useful: As you might guess by now, just browsing these sites may answer your immediate questions, and will likely provide you with answers you don’t even know you need yet.

MVPs and Escalation

The PowerPoint development team keeps in regular touch with our MVPs. They have a history of providing us with good information on both the products in the field as well as providing feedback on areas we want to deal with in future versions of PowerPoint. It’s easy to run a quick questionnaire past the MVPs, and they use their contact with customers to provide valuable insights.

The MVPs occasionally escalate issues from that same customer experience directly to the PowerPoint team when they can’t find the answers elsewhere, or they believe there may be a problem we aren’t already aware of. Both regular phone conferences and mail passed back and forth strengthen this relationship creating value on both ends. If you’re talking to an MVP, you’re talking to someone who has the ear of the PowerPoint development team.

While we can’t talk about future products and what improvements and advancements are currently in development, you can be sure that feedback given to MVPs does make it back to us.

Next Up: March is the annual MVP Summit at Microsoft in Redmond Washington. Next episode we’ll discuss what happens at the summit, what the MVPs get to see and hear there, and how the whole thing feeds back into a constantly improving program.

Ric Bretschneider 2/1/2009

PowerPoint’s Most Valued Professionals…

RicB — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 05:20:09 GMT

Over the next few posts we’re going to explore the workings of the PowerPoint team’s MVPs.

To begin, you first need to be acquainted with the general Microsoft MVP program.

As you may have guessed, MVP stands for Most Valuable Professional. Although that might sound like a contrived acronym, it’s actually quite accurate. They are highly professional, and very valuable to both Microsoft and our customers. It’s an incredible and unique organization – if you’re not already making the most of your MVPs, perhaps the next few posts can convince you that you should.

Microsoft watches the community of users, those participating in the product support newsgroups, some with their own product-based web sites, or those who simply stand out in their advocacy and support of specific products. In other words, the MVP program is looking for individuals who are already acting like MVPs, already supporting the larger community. These are people who answer other user’s questions, who help with their own how-to articles or add-in tools for the products. Candidates are identified, are discussed internally, and then some, the ones who really stand-out, are contacted and invited to join the program. And when they do join, they are assigned to a Microsoft product - typically the one they’re already noteworthy within, as you might expect.

What’s in it for them? Well, as an MVP, they do get a couple of perks and advantages. They get to purchase a few Microsoft products at a reduced cost. They are allowed to identify themselves as being an MVP in mail, their business correspondence, web sites, etc. And they get a higher level of access to the product group they support. Over all, it’s a pretty sweet reward for something you’re already doing.

So how about PowerPoint’s MVPs?

PowerPoint’s MVPs are a great group, excellent folks who represent a diverse set of specialties and talents with the PowerPoint product. We have world-class designers, design consultants, writers, programmers, and some amazing feature hackers. A terrific, talented, and generous group of folks you really should get to know better.

Some of the PowerPoint MVPs at the Microsoft MVP Global Summit 2008 – Redmond WA

I could spend the rest of the article listing these folks individually but you can read a bit about each of them here.

Next up: Where MVPs hang out, and how they can help you.

Ric Bretschneider – 1/25/2009

September is Alive with Presentations

RicB — Mon, 08 Sep 2008 01:44:04 GMT

Some quick notes about three special events of interest to PowerPoint users.

Slideshare's 2nd Annual Best Presentation Contest Winner

The results of Slideshare's 2nd annual presentation contest are in, and the winner is Jeff Brenman's Thirst, a compelling and very visual story about water. The contest was judged by Guy Kawasaki, Bert Decker, Garr Reynolds and Nancy Duarte. Read all about it and review the winners and other contest entries at http://www.slideshare.net/contest/results-2008

You Can Still Get Into PowerPoint Heaven

We may be biased, but we think that PowerPoint has the best MVPs around. PowerPoint user comments tend to re-enforce that opinion; the PowerPoint MVPs go above and beyond the call of duty. An example of this is MVP Shawn Toh's web site PowerPoint Heaven. Normally the site is chock full of presentation galleries, tutorials, and other examples of cool and useful things you can do with PowerPoint. This month the site taking things up a notch, and is hosting an online e-Con. Things got started on September 1st, and continue participation through 26th, culminating with an online convention capping the event on the 27th. We'll be watching things develop here, and suggest you may want to too.

For more details check out http://pptheaven.mvps.org/econ2008/

The PowerPoint Live User Conference 2008

Rounding out September and in it's sixth successful year, Rick Altman's PowerPoint Live User Conference continues to draw an impressive array of presenters and attendees. This year's conference in San Diego, is no exception. Held September 21st through 24th, this year's keynote speakers include Jim Endicott, Nancy Duarte and Garr Reynolds. Garr will present to the San Diego audience live from Osaka Japan.

Quite a lineup. But the meat of the convention is found in the three tracks of daily sessions focusing on skill building both in presentation construction and delivery.

Following the theme of arming attendees with new presentation skills, the convention builds and staffs a help center. Here a crew that includes many PowerPoint MVPs provides one to one assistance for convention attendees with solutions and advice on specific questions. A few members of Microsoft's PowerPoint and Office Art teams usually attend the convention. We're interested in the sessions of course, and occasionally speak or aid presenters. But we're also there to listen to customers, to learn how people use PowerPoint, and gather feedback that will help us create better products.

Check out podcast recordings from last year's conference, where PowerPoint MVPs, conference keynote speakers and conference organizers sat down to discuss the unique nature of the community this conference creates every year.

The conference is still open for registrations, but you'll want to hurry!

Ric Bretschneider