On spotting the difference between MVPs and Microsoft employees...

Raymond Chen complains about the pass colors for this year’s MVP summit. Specifically, since they were color-coded for products, it’s hard to tell MVPs from Microsoft employees. Luckily, I know the sekrit code — Raymond, look for the letters “MVP” at the bottom of the badge :)

I only know this because I helped hand out the free high-end Vista-ready video cards on Thursday evening (What, you didn’t hear about that swag? The life of a Windows Server System MVP is a nice one!)

Anyway, I was under strict instructions to “check they have MVP on their badges” before handing over the video card. Of course, this system kind of breaks down when 200 hardware-crazed MVPs charge the stage. So a big thankyou to the two guys who saw the bottleneck and came up to help. I’m pretty sure one was an MVP and the other was a Microsoft employee, but I never actually checked their badges — they both saw there was a problem, and they both stepped in to help solve it. Hmmm, maybe there’s not such a big difference after all…