Karl Seguin

I mean, Karl, you're a nice guy and all, but I wouldn't go so far as to say you're an MVP of Sensitivity yet.

I think I'm gonna stay out of this conversation this time.

You suck.

Dude, you are totally right on.

Color pickers rock.

Color pickers suck, you should just memorize the RGB values like I did.

you're getting old... or are jealous... or both =oP

How was the new font dialog?  Any breakthroughs in File | Save As...?  

Dude, I've met a LOT of MVP's in my life and there are very few of them who actually continue to think for themselves instead of kiss MS's ass all the way. 90% of those are on codebetter.com (Scott Bellaware you da man!).

So, yeah, I'd be pretty P/O'd too. But considering an MVP has to be renewed each year, many of them need to kiss ass, instead of actually show what they know and share that knowledge and help people. many of them become MVP's and think they are superior individuals.

Joe, you skated around something I've seen in play. One of the fundamental issue with the MVP program is that MVPs profit greatly from being MVPs. Not from Microsoft, but in their private jobs. This is especially true for consultants.

I'm not a consultant - but I _was_ able to leverage being an MVP when I switched jobs...and I _would_ do it again.

Under those conditions, the _need_ for renewal can be significant.

Karl, obviously they profit from it. I'm sure not all of them do it just to get limo rides at the MVP summit. The point here isn't what benefits they get but by what means the gain and renew their status.  The whole point of what the MVP program is meant to be comes under judgement when they blindly follow and suck up to MS.

Let's face it MVP's do a great service.

Depending on who you are and what they know in the current area they might know less than you.  So what.

BUT if MS only wants cheering yes men then there's trouble.  In the long run an MS like that could fold.  So I suggest that if you're worried and have specific issues, use feedback, use existing fora and if that's not good enough find or create other options.

The fact you feel you're not in control of feedback is itself a problem.  (Maybe a presentation which is largely one way "presentation" is itself a problem.)

Good point Karl.

I don't think they give out an MVP for "providing honest and valuable feedback, so insightful that it hurts just to say it".

So if you ever see good feedback coming from MVPs it's incidental/orthogonal to their role as MVP.

MVPs are frontline footsoldiers -- even though they're intelligent, you can't expect them to go against command. Intelligence doesn't correlate with ethics or honesty.

lb

Dude... I stopped going to the Ottawa MS .NET Users Group for that exact reason: the damn color picker. It was just before the release of 2.0 framework, most people knew what was coming down the pipe. Anyway, they didn`t order enough pizza, they started the demo, the color options in the intellisense were first on the feature tour. As soon as they hit Aqua, I got up and left. Some MS guy stopped me on my way out and asked why i was leaving - eesh.... get a clue.

Thanks for the post Karl!  I'm not an MVP, so I wouldn't have thought about this topic before reading your post.

You suck!

You're welcome...

Interesting.

I don't know much about the MVP program but I have noticed that some bloggers that I used to respect massively have changed the tone of their blog entries after becoming MVP's. Equally I've also noticed that a few MVP's aren't, how can I put it, that impressive. They post a lot of content, and have a view on everything, but do not seem to be pushing things forward.

Of course there are many great MVPs but at the moment I tend to view the whole MVP thing with a lot of skepticism.

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