Office 2010 Pro When Most Valuable Professionals G

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,Windows 7 Product Key!
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,Office Professional, 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,Office Standard, our team has a lot of regular contact with the MVPs,Office 2010 Standard, 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,Microsoft Office Pro 2010, 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 <div