The MVP Summit kicks off (by John Koziol)

Today the MVP Summit was launched here in Seattle. Hundreds, probably over a thousand, MVPs from around the world converged today for a host of technical and social sessions over the next few days.

Speaking as a former MVP from 1998-2001, it's wonderful to see the company embrace these folks. I remember not too long ago that the program was run by a single person (Connie Sullivan).  Now we have these huge annual summit meetings with, I'm guessing, a huge budget.

I didn't get a chance to meet anyone outside of my cognoscenti, which are the Visual FoxPro MVPs, but it looked like all of the groups were well represented at the kick-off reception and there were lots of Microsoft folks scattered in the mix.

A group went on a walking tour of Seattle today, accompanied by myself, Richard Stanton, and Alan Griver (yag in his posts). We had a great time, and we might have even gotten some great blackmail shots of yag - lol. What's really great, though, is that we all are friends and we're all busting butt to help out the technical community. Think about it; with over a thousand MVPs the odds are that over ten or a hundred times that many technical workers and end users have been helped.  That's simply fantastic.

It's going to be a great conference.