Last month we unveiled a new program within EMC to recognize and reward our top contributors who specialize in Microsoft technologies. This new program, called mSpecialists is aimed at creating a community of highly specialized and highly motivated technologists who are passionate about Microsoft technologies.
For people who are familiar with EMC's Microsoft Community, we have a large group of existing resources who are already focused on Microsoft technologies and are recognized Microsoft experts both within the company and in the industry. So why create this new program? What the mSpecialist program will do is create a way to recognize these specialists and to better connect them to help share information among our Subject Matter Experts as well as extend this to our customers and partners. What is unique about the mSpecialist program is that we aren't limiting this to just EMC employees; this program will be open to our partners, resellers and other resources who help to promote and support EMC and Microsoft technology solutions.
So what makes an mSpecialist?
There are several attributes that help define an mSpecialist but the easiest way to define it is anyone who is helping to improve the company, the community and our customers by sharing information, educating others and developing new tools or solutions. In other words someone who is giving more than they are asking. Similar to Microsoft's MVP program in which Subject Matter Experts in their respective communities are sharing information to help educate others and are often the first to respond to questions or requests for help on specific, EMC's mSpecialists will include people who blog about technologies to help educate others around them or respond to questions posted on the Everything Microsoft at EMC Community.
So what does an mSpecialist get in return for their efforts? In addition to helping our customers, partners and fellow technologists better understand EMC and Microsoft's deep integration and joint solutions, there are several additional benefits for their participation. A sample of benefits include:
- Invitation to yearly gathering with special access to resources and roadmaps and hands-on labs on Microsoft and EMC technologies.
- Ongoing series of meetings with EMC solution and product teams to help bring field requests to influence EMC Corporate roadmaps.
- Webcasts with Microsoft product teams to learn of ongoing product developments and to discuss customer trends and requests.
- On the spot rewards for outstanding achievers (in December we gave out 20 different prizes including tablets, network storage devices and SSD hard drives).
- Passes to industry events.
- Advance access to EMC beta code.
Interested? To become an mSpecialist you need to be recognized by someone on my team as an active participant in the community. To start, use the Everything Microsoft at EMC Community to blog, post information, share data and ask\answer questions. We will be looking for people who go above and beyond to help make others around them and the community as a whole better! Other things include creating demos or tools, sharing references, volunteering to help and being socially active. As they say Cream Rises to the Top!
To learn more, check out Sam's Inside the Partnership (an example of someone going above and beyond!) interview and overview of this program and our recent EMC Microsoft Specialist gathering!
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