MVPs Chat It Up on Twitter

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MVPs around the world came together for the first official MVP Twitter Chat on April 28th!  Attendance was huge, the conversations fun and informative, and we have a record of it all thanks to Silverlight MVP Tony Champion (@tonychampion).

Tony used the Silverlight PivotViewer to organize the #mvpchat tweets. Make sure to check out the conversation here.

Photo: This chat was fueled by coffee and doughnuts.

Around the globe and across 11 time zones, 345 MVPs jumped into the conversation. Here’s what it felt like on the Microsoft campus:

By 8:30 am PST, our conference room was filled with excitement— the combined effects of doughnuts, caffeine, and stepping into the unknown. Our group had never tried this before; what if we threw a party and nobody came?

Photo: Where all the magic happened.

Ten members of the MVP Award team (@MVPchat) had gathered to moderate and at 8:59 am, we all exchanged an "Oh my gosh what have we done?" look. A minute later, we buckled down as a flood of #mvpchat tweets began to hit Twitter. Introductions and questions began bouncing back and forth between MVPs, and we started calling out the questions and trying to post them as rapidly as we could. Networking and rich conversation flowed from around the world. True to form, MVPs were answering questions and at the same time driving conversations for the chat. For two hours, Twitterland became MVPchatland! 

Photo: Our highly advanced question tracker.

Photo: Trend map of where the #mvpchat tweets were coming from.

You may ask, why chat on Twitter? We say, why not!? Our main focus with this chat was to provide an opportunity for MVP-to-MVP networking and for new MVPs to ask questions of more seasoned MVPs, introduce themselves, and connect with the broader MVP community. We clocked more than 2,000 tweets during this inaugural event and are looking forward to the next MVP Twitter Chat!

ASP.NET/IIS MVP @gpeipman described his evening with a tweet, "One silent evening with pork, Heineken and heavy metal #mvpchat.”

A big thank you to Tony Champion!