REDMOND, Wash. – Feb. 21, 2013 – It's 1993, and you need technical support. Who you gonna call?
Most techies at the time would plug in their modems and dial up
CompuServe. In the days before Twitter, Facebook and broadband,
CompuServe's forums were a gathering place for geeks to talk shop and
get answers to burning questions.
Calvin Hsia
February 21, 2013
Calvin
Hsia, pictured here with his son Tyler, started Microsoft’s MVP program
20 years ago as a simple list of “most verbose” people on a forum.
Calvin Hsia, a developer who lived in Hawaii, thought it might be
fun to figure out who posted the most. So he wrote a program that could
download, organize and tabulate hundreds of daily forum messages. He
then published a list of hundreds of the forum's "Most Verbose People,"
as he liked to call them.
Microsoft saw value in that verbosity, so much so that the members
of "Calvin's List," along with its creator, became Microsoft's first
Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs).
As part of the launch of the program, the MVP Award was created in
1993 to thank exceptional, independent community leaders who — often
verbosely — share their passion, technical expertise and real-world
knowledge of Microsoft products with others. This week, as Microsoft
celebrates the 20th anniversary of the MVP Award, the original group of
34 award winners has swelled a hundredfold. Hsia was among the attendees
who honored the milestone at this week's MVP Global Summit, not as an
award recipient — he became a Microsoft employee 19 years ago — but as a
supporter.
"Our MVPs are incredibly important to the company," said Hsia, a
senior software development engineer (SDE) on Microsoft’s Visual Studio
team. "They help our customers, they act as beta testers and they give
us honest feedback. They're huge for us."
He isn't the only fan. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer also expressed his gratitude for the community's longstanding passion.
"For 20 years, the insight and feedback from the MVP community has
helped drive and shape Microsoft's product advancements," Ballmer says.
"The contributions that MVPs make to technical communities is
invaluable, and I deeply appreciate their passion as well as all that
they do for our customers."
This year Microsoft honored 3,800 MVPs across 90 Microsoft
technologies. Every day, MVPs reach 1 million customers through social
media, in forums, at user group gatherings and as presenters at
technology conferences around the world.
That reach makes them the company's "best buddies," says S.
Somasegar, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Developer Division.
"These are our best and most passionate customers, those who take
it upon themselves to learn about everything we're doing, to provide
invaluable feedback and to then help the rest of the world discover and
make the most of our technologies,” he says. “I view our MVPs as
ambassadors to the technologies and work that we do at Microsoft."
A Dev in Paradise
Hsia didn't need much to create his original MVP list — just a
little code and a dial-up connection via his blisteringly fast (and much
bigger than a bread box) US$549 2400 baud modem.
"The
contributions that MVPs make to technical communities is invaluable,
and I deeply appreciate their passion as well as all that they do for
our customers."
Steve Ballmer , Microsoft CEO
That code helped Hsia stay on top of the 700-plus daily messages
posted on the forum for FoxPro, the database program at the heart of his
consulting business. At the time, Hsia mostly stayed away from
Microsoft products. But after the company began publishing FoxPro, he
changed his tune. The company was pouring a lot of resources into
improving the database, and Hsia took notice.
Meanwhile, the MVP Award helped him gain a reputation as a FoxPro
whiz. If someone posted a question on CompuServe's forums, Hsia usually
had an answer.
That technical expertise attracted attention in Redmond. One day
Hsia got a question from a senior Microsoft executive: did he want a job
at Microsoft? He handed the phone to "the boss" — aka his wife — who
listened for 30 seconds, said "No thanks," and hung up.
"We live in Hawaii!" she said.
The young couple eventually changed their minds and made the move
to the Seattle area. Hsia became an SDE working on FoxPro. He continued
to maintain “Calvin's List,” but the conversation soon drifted from
CompuServe to other forums and websites. Today, he ranks the top MSDN
and TechNet blogs.
Hsia also stayed in touch with the MVP community, listening to
their feedback about the various products he worked on throughout his
career. They really are Microsoft's most valuable — and verbose —
external community, he says, and over the years they have played a big
part in changing public perception of "big, bad Microsoft" among
customers.
"Our MVPs — they're out there trying to help our customers every day,” Hsia says. “And in doing that, they really help us."
Hsia himself perhaps best articulated the value and spirit of MVPs
20 years ago, when CompuServe Magazine profiled him shortly after
winning his award: "I know how difficult it is for an independent
developer to see all angles to a problem, and I know how nice it is to
receive a reply with a solution. It's extremely gratifying to know that
I've helped solve somebody's problem."
0 comentarii:
Post a Comment