Two New Microsoft MVPs at Team Telerik

I don't often get to brag about the accomplishments and hard work of the outstanding members on the Telerik Evangelism Team, but with the recent round of Microsoft MVP selections and renewals (thanks, by the way, Microsoft!), I thought I'd take a minute to recognize two people.

First, I'm proud to announce and introduce the newest Telerik Evangelist, Chris Eargle. Chris joins the Telerik Team as a well respected and prolific speaker in the .NET community, and an active holder of a Microsoft MVP award. Many of you probably already know Chris, but if you don't, be sure to say hi when you see him at your local DNUGs and check him out on his blog, KodeFuGuru, and on twitter, @kodefuguru.

Next, I'm also excited to announce that our very own XAML Evangelist, Evan Hutnick, has just been awarded a Silverlight Microsoft MVP. Congratulations to Evan on working tirelessly in 2010 to serve the XAML community (in addition to the Telerik community!). You can pat Evan on the back on his twitter, @evanhutnick.

Telerik has one of the most generous and hard working teams in the industry, and I'm happy their efforts are recognized by all. With more than 5 Microsoft MVPs and several Microsoft RDs on staff, Telerik stays well connected so that we can deliver the best possible products to you, our customers. If you ever need support for your community events, or have questions for our Microsoft experts and MVPs, don't hesitate to reach out. We're here for you and we have the awards to prove it!

LIVE from Microsoft MVP Summit 2009

Well, I'm "LIVE," but unfortunately I can't bring you live coverage of the event and it's keynotes (as I have at other events in the past). The "NDA-heavy" event does not leave much room for sharing, but rest assured that there are two Telerik Evangelists/Microsoft MVPs here to soak-up the info, chat-up the "big whigs," and make sure Telerik is well positioned to continue bringing you the best tools and components possible in 2009. For those unfamiliar, the MVP Summit is a chance for Microsoft to bring together all of it's MVPs (about 5,000 world wide, of which about 1,400 attend) and facilitate a few days of close interaction with the product teams and company leaders. It's one of the bigger "perks" of being a MS MVP, and I happy to get to check it out this year. In the mean time, Telerik Evangelism won't stand still! Kevin Babcock will be conducting this week's weekly webinar (Thursday, 11 AM EST) and he will be covering "Client-side Tips & Tricks for the RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX." Should be a fun topic for any ASP.NET AJAX devs out there looking to better understand how to leverage the Telerik client-side features to build high performance, rich, standards-based apps. Look for a registration link on Telerik.com soon! And if you want to keep-up with all the MVP Summit action that can be legally shared, catch all the updates (including mine- yes, I do occasionally "tweet") on Twitter!

New Microsoft MVP at Telerik

It is with great pleasure that I announce that I have been awarded the Microsoft MVP Award for 2009! I don't particularly care to "toot" my own horn, but I would like to thank everyone that helped me achieve this goal. The Microsoft MVP program is probably among the most respected "community MVP" programs in the software world, and I am honored to join the ranks. For those unaware, the Microsoft MVP Award is granted annually and it serves to recognize those people that go above and beyond serving the Microsoft community. It doesn't necessarily recognize the most talented developers in the world (though many great developers are often MVPs)- it is devoted to recognizing technical leadership and community involvement. I've been technically awarded as a "C# MVP," but that doesn't mean I can't relate you VBers out there. Last year's survey (run on this blog) should be proof enough of that. What is does mean is that I will continue working hard to serve the .NET community and make it as easy as possible for people to use .NET to write software. In any event, it's a great way to kick-off 2009 and it's further proof that Telerik is dedicated to being a leader in the .NET community. Happy New Year to everyone and here's to a great 2009!