Zune Thoughts: Microsoft Awards MVP Status to Five Zune Community Leaders

Not too long ago, Cesar Menendez from Microsoft's Zune team, contacted five people who run Zune communities and/or Web sites and awarded them Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) status for their contributions to the Zune community over the past year. Haven't heard of the MVP program, or ran across one in newsgroups or Web forums? Here's a little bit about who MVPs are:

"Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals (MVPs) are exceptional technical community leaders from around the world who are awarded for voluntarily sharing their high quality, real world expertise in offline and online technical communities. Microsoft MVPs are a highly select group of experts that represents the technical community's best and brightest, and they share a deep commitment to community and a willingness to help others. MVPs represent a broad spectrum of Microsoft product users. They occupy many different professions including accountants, teachers, artists, engineers and technologists. MVPs reside in over 90 countries, represent 30 different languages, and cover more than 90 Microsoft technologies."

You can read more about the MVP program at this Microsoft page.

The awarded Zune MVPs are, in no particular order:

• Andrea "pinksage" Avellan who runs Generation Zune
• Harvey Chute who runs Zunerama
• Stefan Shipman who runs IWAPZdotcom
  
• Paul Colligan [no MVP profile] who runs Zuneluv
  
• Jason Dunn who runs this site :-)

Huge congratulations to all of the MVPs! You'll notice I'm on that list for my work here with Zune Thoughts, but I'm listed under the Windows Mobile group. Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't have the ability to cope with "dual competency" MVPs so I can't be an "official" Zune MVP. Oh well - maybe I'll still get the free keychain or whatever. ;-) My hope as a Zune MVP is to get the information and support from the Zune team to make Zune Thoughts even better for all of you, our Zune community.