Microsoft's 'MVPs' say they're often its sharpest critics

Computerworld - If you happen to be wandering around downtown Seattle this week with a malfunctioning PC, you're in luck: Help will be near. Lots of it, in fact.

Almost 2,000 of Microsoft Corp.'s Most Valuable Professionals, the elite members of its massive army of unpaid technical helpers, are expected to descend upon Seattle for the software vendor's 2007 MVP Global Summit.

The summit will officially kick off Tuesday with a keynote speech by Bill Gates, Microsoft's co-founder and chairman, and then run through Thursday. It is expected to be the best-attended MVP event ever, with attendance up 40% from the last summit in the fall of 2005.

Since 1993, when Microsoft chose 38 inaugural MVPs, the MVP program has grown to the point where it now counts more than 3,600 people as members, 60% of whom are located outside of North America, said Sean O'Driscoll, the company's general manager for community support and MVPs.

MVPs dispense free technical advice on everything from back-end IT products such as SQL Server or Visual Studio to consumer fare like MSN Money or the Xbox. And although many, if not most, MVPs work as consultants, programmers or systems integrators, an increasing number come from backgrounds more in line with consumer hobbyists. For example, the MVP membership includes students, politicians and people who hold jobs such as mechanic, tow-truck driver, roofer and even cardiologist.

At this week's summit, MVPs will get to see Microsoft product developers lay out early road maps for future software offerings. In return, they will get a chance to deliver early reports from the field to Microsoft on how users of Exchange 2007, Office 2007 and Windows Vista are faring.

Far from being apologists or cheerleaders for Microsoft products, MVPs say that they routinely provide highly critical feedback to the company's developers.

"It works both ways," said Bharat Suneja, who has been an Exchange MVP since 2005 and works as a principal software architect at Zenprise Inc., a Microsoft business partner. "Naturally, I'm slightly biased toward Microsoft. But I also give very ruthless feedback, because I want the best for the product."

Suneja, who has posted nearly 7,000 help messages on Exchange newsgroups in the past year and a half in addition to writing the popular Exchangepedia blog, has never worried about being the bearer of bad tidings. "Microsoft places no restrictions on MVPs criticizing its products," he said. "If it did, I would already be out of the program by now."

Paul DeGroot, an analyst at Directions on Microsoft, a research firm in Kirkland, Wash., agreed that MVPs are both "in Microsoft's camp" and its "best critics" at the same time.