MVPs Going Beyond the MVP Award!

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Congratulations to MVP Arnie Rowland, who was re awarded with the MVP Award for his outstanding contributions to the SQL Server and .NET communities! One of the benefits of the MVP Award program is having access to great Microsoft technologies. Arnie has decided to go beyond the benefits, and give back to the community in a big way.

With the launch of Visual Studio 2010 and .NET Framework, the MVP Award Program was able to provide Developer MVPs with access to Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate with MSDN activation cards. These activation cards were given out to the community, at the discretion of the MVP. Arnie Rowland was creative with this opportunity, while also providing an avenue for the community to give back.

Last year, Arnie gave his subscriptions to people who committed themselves to 100 hours of volunteering to develop software for non-profits. A stellar idea!

From Ramblings of a Harried Technogeek:

This year, I will be seeking proposals from unemployed (or under-employed) developers that would use the tools to improve their skills with .NET, SQL Server, and Windows 7 Phone. The proposals should be for a project for a non-profit -either a new project or an upgrade to an existing project. In addition to the Microsoft MDSN Ultimate subscription, Pluralsight will provide a three month subscription to the training content available in their On-Demand!™ .NET Training Library, O'Reilly Press will provide three (3) books of the winner's choice, APress will provide three books(3) of the winner's choice, ComponentOne will provide Studio Enterprise components and tools, DevExpress will provide a one year subscription for DXperience Enterprise w/CodeRush, RedGate will provide a license for ANTS Performance Profiler, and Quest Software will provide a license for Toad® for SQL Server.

The idea is to provide the recipient access to all of the tools needed to improve his/her skills, an opportunity to gain practical experience, the potential to earn a recommendation and/or referral –and to positively contribute to society as a form of 'give-back'. No free lunch, just sweat equity –the kind that makes us all feel good for the effort.

Arnie challenges other MVPS to find a qualifying project that they feel would benefit from this opportunity.