TechEd (online and offline)

I recently participated in the TechEd EMEA Developers, which took place in the beautiful Barcelona. I won’t cover the technical sessions here (which many people already did) but I’ll focus on something else.

Basically I had 2 main targets in my mind:

• Promote the MVP Award Program
• Network with as many people as possible

I’m very satisfied with both of them as I would say I accomplished them both. I was attending the Community Booth (which was right in between the 2 Ask The Expert Zones), being available for the customers who wanted to know more about the Program.

 “the ATE Briefing”

I guess this is the first time (ever!) in which I don’t get any questions like “Who are the MVPs?” “What is the MVP Program?” or, even worse, “Is that a Microsoft Certification?”. It seems all the attendees visiting and/or passing through our Booth were very aware about the MVPs which is great! I also wanted to promote the Program internally among my peers, and I did that, meeting with some colleagues of mine from EMEA and showing the impact of the Communities and the MVPs as key contributors of them. I always refer to Coca Cola when I talk about “promotion”: “if The Coca Cola Company does advertisements throughout the year, then I suppose anyone, any Company, any team, even any individual would need some!”. One of the things I also did was to interview Karen Young in a sort of Q&A interview on the “MVPs and the Power of Community” (you can find the full version in the TechEd Online main page).

I also had an interview with Channel 9 (thanks Christian !), very informal & funny, which I guess will be published very soon..

The mingling part was the fun part: meeting with all those MVPs (from Croatia to Latvia, from Greece to Romania, from Italy to Malta, etc..) was very energizing. Anyone who knows me is aware that the passion I have for the communities is driven by the passion of these guys that voluntarily share their technical expertise every day in the online and offline communities and User Groups. Being there and talk with some of the people I unfortunately don’t meet very often was even better! And then dinners and parties have been another important part of the event

I cannot mention you all but a special thanks goes to all who have contributed to the success of the event and particularly to all who have contributed to the “quality time” I had

Tags: TechEd Microsoft Events Travels Barcelona MVP Community Interviews