Microsoft Corp. this week will host about 1,500 of its Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) at its Redmond campus, where the software titan plans to announce big changes to how it incorporates their feedback into its product life cycles.
The 1,500 attending this year's summit hail from 65 countries across the globe and comprise more than half of Microsoft's current 2,600 global MVPs. It is also double the 750-odd MVPs who showed up for last year's summit.
Attendees will be treated to an executive session in Seattle on Tuesday, where they will hear from key executives including CEO Steve Ballmer; Jim Allchin, the group vice president for platforms; and Eric Rudder, the senior vice president for servers and tools.
Attendees also will get to choose from more than 200 technical drill-down sessions at the Redmond campus Monday and Wednesday, which will span more than 70 Microsoft technologies and range from large group meetings to one-on-one, specific technology meetings between individual MVPs and Microsoft engineers and technologists.
Microsoft's MVP Program, which is in its 11th year, essentially recognizes individuals with expertise in one or more Microsoft products for their active participation and efforts to help Microsoft customers in online communities.
The theme for this year's summit is "Inspired communities inspiring people" and is Microsoft's way of acknowledging that community for its deep technical expertise, knowledge, feedback and voice in its product-development life cycle, Sean O'Driscoll, the director of Microsoft's MVP and Technical Communities in Redmond, Wash., told eWEEK in an interview Friday.
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