Keyvan Nayyeri

As I had mentioned last year during the launch of my own podcast channel, Keyvan.TV, web is moving toward multimedia content (i.e., video and audio) for online publishing and a common part of this process is the widespread use of podcasts for different topics. So far, I've published 9 episodes on Keyvan.TV and although the progress is slowed down (due to my busy schedule), I'm planning to have more coming soon.

The experience with Keyvan.TV showed to me that multimedia content can communicate much better than other mediums with the audience, and it's time to incorporate these tools to enhance the level of content publishing for individuals on the web. Recently, I had the chance to find that a few friends are working on a new podcast called Mash This which targets the area of online service, APIs, and libraries, and I could join them as a host.

Mash This is an audio podcast by Lee Dumond, Nick Berardi, Dustin Davis, and the guy who's writing this post that will be launched soon. The specifics of the show are yet to be set, but in general, we're planning to have an audio podcast that covers the area of online services and API's with their increasing importance. We will talk about the concepts related to online API design, different tools and technologies for working with online services, and individual services and libraries that can be interesting for people.

We already had a dry run to talk about our plans and prepare for the first real show that will be recorded soon, and based on our initial thoughts, I think this is going to be a very good podcast with focus on a specific topic that is very important. With a quick look at many of the applications that we've built or used in the past few years, we simply realize that they're mostly using online services or even provide such services to people through public or private API's.

Most of the mobile applications on iOS, Android, or Windows Phone are working based on services, and most of the websites are using or providing services (even we can consider RSS feeds as a basic service to expand this). For example, this blog is powered by my own simple Behistun engine and is using two services for spam filtering and phone messaging (for 2-step verification). If you look around, you'll find that you're using many of these services in your daily lives as well, but the truth is that most of such services don't have a well-designed public interface for programmers, or even if they do, they may have other problems like the lack of good documentation. Mash This podcast wants to talk about things like these to improve the awareness of programmers about designing public services and API's, and introduce them to services that can help them, but they may not know about.

Therefore, stay tuned for more updates about this podcast coming soon. Mash This has a site as well as a Twitter account and a Facebook page.

Every once in a while, Microsoft releases the list of new and renewed MVPs and usually a bunch of congratulation messages appear on social networks and blogs, and there is also some stuff against the program. This time, it's a little warmer!

Despite the expectation of many people, I never received a Microsoft MVP award and was nominated only once. There have been several people who believed that I am an MVP already! I failed to gain that award that one time after nomination because I responded to their email with less than 25% of my contributions in hurry in less than 5 minutes, and as Rob Eisenberg has written in his good post, I couldn't sell myself to Microsoft to receive an award that is supposed to appreciate my activities based on the research that they do!

I don't think I need to write much about this program and what a disastrous source of technical and geological discrimination it has been in years. Other than Microsoft employees and current MVPs who naturally defend this program, and have been complaining about the recent reactions, everybody else has a partially or completely true view about this program. A former Microsoft employee, Phil Haack, has a post reflecting his opinions on this program which implicitly admits the problems that everybody has mentioned in years! I'd like to talk to all those Microsoft employees and current MVPs and tell them that things will change for all of you sooner or later. You may have limitations to say something against this program, but at least, keep an open mind and don't defend something blindly!

I had written about the fact that the Most Valuable Professional is the worst name chosen for these programs because by no means they reflect any value of professionalism in an individual, and it's just based on certain activities without considering the quality and emphasizing on quantity! Here I try to share my thoughts on this program that are my own based on almost 10 years of observing the .NET community since its very first days!

Technical and Geographical Discrimination

I said technical discrimination above because this program has failed to recognize many active and talented people, and I said geographical discrimination because they don't recognize people from certain countries for budget and political reasons!

As of technical aspects, many of you may not be old enough to remember that they didn't (and still don't for some) recognize some people like Phil Haack, Jeff Atwood, Scott Koon, Jon Galloway, and many others despite all their activities. It was the force of the community that made them recognize a few people, and it's still like that. Every now and then, community members use their knife to make a group of employees at Microsoft see the real MVPs! What is wrong, really? These people get paid to do one thing and they simply fail at it!

As of geographical aspects, in many smaller countries with smaller communities, they don't recognize people in certain areas simply because they don't have budget for that. For this reason many people from south America, Africa, or Middle East are not considered at all! In one view, it's like a marketing distribution. If you live somewhere that has a better market for Microsoft products, you have better chances for an MVP award!

Likewise, they don't consider some countries for political reasons at all! Iran is one of them and maybe one of the reasons I wasn't recognized for years before I come to the US! But the most interesting/frustrating point is that there are people living in such countries who use certain tricks to be recognized! It's yet another sign of a weak system!

The Nomination Process

The nomination process is vague, and the best view that we have of this process is that if a bunch of prominent community leaders and Microsoft employees keep ranting about the nomination of a person, he may be seen by Microsoft MVP program employees!

They assert that there are some ways for being nominated, and of course, some areas like open source are overlooked. For other areas, it's very clear that they don't differ by importance. For example, if you spend a lot of time and give a novel talk to 200 people, it's kind of the same as writing an article on a small site on DateTime type in .NET in 2012!

Likewise, it's all about quantity rather than quality. If you have one high-quality item, it will lose to 5 poor-quality items. As Rob has reflected in his post, there are some people recognized only by maintaining a daily link-blog of aggregated items from other bloggers because they have 365 blog posts per year, or simply because they have created a community site where other people publish content and they just watch!

Of course, some people say that other peers, MVPs, or Microsoft MVPs can nominate you, but I realized that this varies significantly by teams and since most Microsoft employees are living in caves ignoring the community, most people have no chance!

The Selection Process

After being nominated, you need to be selected to be an MVP! For the selection process, a Microsoft employee contacts you to ask for a list of activities that you have had in the past year. That's the part when you need to sell yourself to Microsoft like a marketing guy. I found this the strangest part of the process.

What is expected for an award program is that the organization monitors the activities of people and rewards them without asking them what they have done. If you know what you're doing, you shouldn't ask somebody else to show you what to do!

Maintaining the Award

After receiving the award, you need to repeat your activities to renew your award for the next year. In my experience, this is mostly like a monopoly because most of the MVPs that I've known have had less activities but were renewed in the next years! Again, there will be some current and former MVPs disagreeing but I don't think anybody can buy that!

Why It Still Matters

Many independent individuals and business owners already know that MVP status doesn't have any technical value, and cannot be used as a method for recruiting or promotion, but why is it still breathing? During these years I realized that there are three main reasons for that.

First, Microsoft tries to make a big deal out of this program. They keep referring to it like it's very important even though they don't count it in action themselves. Since Micorosft is the central authority behind its community and most people only follow it, it still receives attention. Don't forget that the main body of Microsoft developers are not an active part of the community and a simple status can fool them because they don't know who is who!

Second, it's the current MVPs who try to make it look like it's important. I don't think it's necessary to explain this one!

Third, it's the atmosphere on the community in certain countries that makes this program important. For example, I learned that Indians put too much emphasis and value on this program and try hard to gain it. If you follow some Twitter accounts or blogs, you see this clearly.

Conclusion

There will be some people disagreeing with this whole post or parts of it and I respect their opinions but let's be honest and see the truth. This program has been a marketing tool for having a group of people working as an evangelist and support guru for different Microsoft products in years. The reward doesn't match the cost of the hours of work spent on gaining it. The only positive outcome for an individual may be the attention he receives to make better networks. I know some former MVPs who found their way to work at Microsoft only by meeting some managers at MVP summit!

As Phil states, it's the satisfaction of people that should be the goal for contributions. It's the help to the humankind that is the sweetest part of a contribution. I wrote 4 books, over 850 articles, tutorials, and tips/tricks, coordinated 15 open source project, had several talks, contributed to some internal Microsoft programs with different teams, have been a VSX insider, and tweeted over 10'000 technical tweets about Microsoft products in a period of six years or so. One thing about all these activities was that they were all novel and have been serving the Microsoft community for years as a primary resource, and people keep thanking me for helping them, and that's what puts smile on my face every day. I never needed and wanted a Microsoft MVP award even though I was overqualified to receive that for years, but I never stopped because there was a blind eye not seeing me. Unfortunately, Microsoft is passing the worst time of its history being flooded with B and C level players, and such issues are totally expected (read the last chapter of Steve Jobs biography by Walter Isaacson).

The one lesson I learned in all these years is that it's the biggest mistake of somebody to invest much into a company like Microsoft, Apple, or Google for his career. After all, it's all about business and the money matters much more than a passionate individual to them. You see how people change their view of these companies once they lose their awards or leave their jobs, so with a little smartness, you would understand that all the noise is superficial and truth is not told by people! Therefore, if you're a young reader at the beginning of your career path, I can tell you that you better contribute with passion for people not awards and companies! It has hurt me, but I'm lucky that I had alternative plans, so beware!

Another year is ended and a new year is here. The older you become, the faster time goes, and I've started to feel this a few years ago.

2011 turned out to be a year full of failures and downs for me, yet a year that I gained some good experiences in.

in one big view of 2011, it was a good year for some people in the world as they got rid of dictators and started their long path toward a democracy and freedom.

I couldn't and I didn't plan for many resolutions for 2011, but I achieved those few little things. I guess it's going to be the same for 2012.

For most of these years of my life, I've been hoping that the new year brings some luck and a better life for me, but it often turns out to be the other way around, so I think I've already given up and don't want to wish anything anymore.

All in all, I hope you had a good 2011 and 2012 turns out to be a great year for you where you can achieve whatever you wish. Happy new year 2012!

This is the third Christmas I spend in the United States, but it is actually the first one when I have a free mind from different stuff. First time, I was new to here and had to settle in, and second time, I had a big test coming up and spent all my time studying at home!

I generally don't like to relate happiness to religions and tag this occasion with a special religion because I strongly believe that it's been these religions and their differences that has put space between people and started all the evilness and wars in our world.

Therefore, I wish a merry Christmas for everyone regardless of religion and where they're from, and hope that everybody has a happy day today. I also wish that you enjoy your holidays and have good times no matter how you spend it.

After a couple of frustrating years, I'm looking forward to better experiences in 2012 (even though it usually happens to be worse after all).

A couple of times in December 2005 and 2008 I compiled a list of the best things that I found in the year that was ending. For other years, I was unable to find enough items to put on the list and that's why I didn't publish such a list.

This year, 2011, was a fruitful year with many good things coming out in our world in different aspects, but it wasn't a very good year for me personally. However, here is my list of top picks for 2011:

• Software product: Siri was doubtlessly a revolutionary product of the year. Most people wouldn't notice that for the next few years but I'm pretty sure it will change many things in the coming years. There were many attempts at using voice recognition and artificial intelligence but none of them could be practical enough. Despite long downtimes and other issues, Siri has taken it much further and being in Beta, I'd expect it to grow fast and be better.
• Online service: Twilio is a fantastic service that for once solved and simplified the task of dealing with voice calls and text messages on websites and applications on the internet. The point is in its reliability, availability, and simplicity.
• Singer: I heard many good songs by great singers this year but I'd vote for Amy Lee from Evanescence for her great work, and being different from many other female singers of her generation out there. After almost five years of silence, she returned with a new album that has a set of great songs that I liked mostly. I attended to their concert in San Antonio earlier this Fall which turned out to be one of the best concerts that I've ever attended. The song Oceans from their Evanescence album released earlier this year is one of those songs that has stuck to my mind!
• Music album: Although I liked the Evanescence album for most of the songs in there, Mylo Xyloto album by Coldplay was the album that was full of lovely songs.
• Movie: The Help was a movie that I prefer to consider as the best movie of the year even though I watched many movies and it's hard to pick one, and I already have better movies in mind. The reason I like this movie is its sincere yet humorous focus on the terrible issue of racism that still exists at a big scale in the western world.
• Book: Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson is surely the one! After the number of my workout sessions, the number of my readings is probably a record that I have in 2011. Out of all these technical and non-technical books that I read in 2011 this one that I finished last evening had the most impact on me, and I'll write more about this book soon.
• Person: Steve Jobs was definitely the person of the year for me. As I said, I'll write more on that, but it was after his death that I discovered many things about him, unfortunately. After all he did with his ambition and perfectionism for our world, he deserves to have a place on our minds.
• Technology product: iPad 2 was a product that I really loved. I got mine in Spring and had no idea I'll find many uses for it and will use it everyday for several hours. iPad was originally the type of a technologies first, needs last product that was introduced as a tool and we found applications for it. When I got my iPad, I didn't have this many applications for it in mind. As Steve Jobs had emphasized several times, it was their responsibility to build what users need next. Users don't know what they need and it's your art to show them what they need.

Just like before, there could be more items to put on this list, but I believe these are the major highlights that deserve to be there. I could also add a bunch of research projects that I studied in the past year and will become mainstream in the future, but they don't have a tangible outcome for ordinary people to notice at this point.

As we approach the end of 2011, I hope it was a good year for you, it wasn't for me, as it wasn't in 2010. I hope that 2012 brings better news for all of us.