Archive
Virtualstudy.pl: let’s go virtual !
When I was @ the Microsoft Technology Summit in Poland few weeks ago I had the pleasure to talk with a lot of MVPs @ the Community Booth that had been set up for the event. BTW, that was a HUGE event with, I presume, almost 2.500 attendees. As you can imagine, it’s the biggest annual Microsoft event in Warsaw and, from what I’ve seen, it was a real success.
BTW, I’d like to point out a great article on the event (in Polish) by MVP Piotr Pawlik.
Well, during these conversations a lot of interesting things normally come up. One of those was regarding the VirtualStudy.pl (not to mention all the other communities like WSS.pl, codeguru.pl and a lot more).
Thanks to the hard of the community members, VirtualStudy.pl now has a full support of English language, an English forum and even a few videos in English available as VOD.
At the same time the board is now looking for presenters who would like to prepare and present sessions in English (possibly with good presentation skills).
VirtualStudy.pl was created to allow users to attend online meetings and learn free of charge. Since the beginning they had quite a few interesting courses like Windows Server, SharePoint 2010 Training, SQLServer 2008, Windows Phone 7 programing, as well as 6 month C# training course which finished with an exam and certificates) where the average number of attendees was around 200-300 people.
Currently VirtualStudy.pl hosts all the previous sessions on a on-Demand basis (few hundred sessions are already available to watch).
These online sessions do not contain any marketing content, but it’s pure technical Microsoft knowledge.
And at the moment they are currently organize their first VirtualStudy.pl Conference 2011.
So this is a call to action for anyone with technical skills on Microsoft Technologies who wants to deliver English presentation.
And, just to close the topic that I started at the very beginning, these are some pictures from the MTS:
And this is me, powered by a customized Chrome-Joke T-shirt (
), when I just got a nice & unexpected gift:
Thank you for the wonderful time guys: I’ll see you next time in Warsaw (or even before, @ the MVP Global Summit !!)
Microsoft MVP Award – April 2011 Awards !
Everytime is a challenge, everytime is a “working hard” to make sure all the valuable members of the Communities are Awarded. It’s a process that never ends…
And it’s not that easy, monitoring all the Communities in CEE & Italy (the Region I represent, excluding Russia & CIS Countries), and find the “best of the best” inside those entities.
But I’m helped, of course: thanks to the continuous commitment of the Microsoft local Subsidiaries, and the help of the MVPs themselves, we get new outstanding nominations throughout the Region every Quarter.
So what can I say, apart from CONGRATULATING the new and re-awarded MVPs?
I never experienced that but, if I would be a technical expert in the IT Industry, getting the MVP Award e-mail should be really satisfying, from a personal and professional standpoint.
I always feel the excitement from the new MVPs, but also from the ones who are renewed, it’s still a very emotional part of their jobs and careers.
And this is thanks to what you do, on a voluntarily basis, that makes you a Microsoft MVP, even if you are not “MVP-branded” yet
. Doing communities activities, being available to the local subsidiaries when it comes to do technical presentations or articles or whatever it is, you’re part of the Community Ecosystem as an “Influencer”. People listen to you, listen to your advice, and take actions on your technical feedback. And this is definitely TRUST, something you gain year over year with your continuous effort in helping the communities grow from a technical perspective. So this is just to say THANK YOU, again, for what you do.
Back to the April Award Cycle, I’m very happy to announce the new MVPs (sorted by name):
| Influencer | Country/Region | Technical Expertise |
| Alberto Ferrari | Italy | SQL Server |
| Anton Staykov | Bulgaria | Windows Azure |
| Bahrudin Hrnjica | Bosnia-Herzegovina | Visual C# |
| Daniel Stefaniak | Poland | Management Infrastructure |
| Dimitris Papadimitriou | Greece | Connected System Developer |
| Francesco Sodano | Italy | SharePoint Server |
| Igor Pavlekovic | Croatia | Exchange Server |
| Jevgeni Tsaikin | Estonia | Device Application Development |
| Marcin Dembowski | Poland | Internet Explorer |
| Marcin Iwanowski | Poland | Expression Blend |
| Mirko Mainetti | Italy | Dynamics NAV |
| Nicola Ferrini | Italy | App-V |
| Toomas Ruus | Estonia | Exchange Server |
(as soon as you’ll publish the news on your blogs and/or on your MVP Profiles, I will add the links to your name so anyone can see who you are
).
I won’t put the list of all the re-awarded MVPs as it’s very long but, if you ask me to do it, I’ll do it !
Of course we had some declined MVPs. And this is natural: sometimes people don’t have time to dedicate to the communities anymore, some others changed jobs so this make it difficult for them to be active again: any other reason in between I don’t want to lose connections with these guys because I’m sure, sooner or later, they’ll come back again !
BTW, If you don’t know nothing about the MVP Award Program, why don’t you subscribe to our blog? You’ll definitely find some good interesting stories to read about !
That said, Enjoy your Award and talk to you soon !
Microsoft WinDays 2011 !
Following the great success of the last year’s event,
Croatian WinDays strikes back with a new 2011 promising event !
" There is no better place to search for new and different ideas than the leading business and technology conference in Croatia – Microsoft WinDays11!”
The Conference will be held in Rovinj, Croatia and it will be split in two conferences:
WinDays11 Microsoft Technology Conference 4 – 7 April, 2011
WinDays11 Business Conference 7 – 8 April, 2011
“Whether you’re an IT professional, company director, an expert in sales, marketing or business development, you can always happen to run out of new ideas. We are all here to help: a great source of ideas runs dry, and it is necessary to look for inspiration. There is no better way to do this than to surround yourself with people who, like you, live and profit from new ideas and their implementation, which is even better, ideas really begin to live only when you share it with others.”
Featuring MVPs Ilija Brajkovic, Marin Franković, Damir Dizdarevic, Robert Petrunic, Domagoj Pavlesic, Dobriša Adamec, Vibor Cipan and I’m sure many more, covering lots of Microsoft technologies (as you can also see by the picture above): from Lync Server to Windows Phone 7, from Silverlight to IE9 and Office 365 just to name a few…
Feel free to follow the upcoming news and see you in Rovinj! ![]()
Link to: Početna – Microsoft WinDays11. Prostori ideja. Drugačije ideje
Microsoft MVP Award – January 2011 Awards !
I’m always happy to see new Microsoft MVPs coming onboard. No matter what the Country is, what language is, what the activities are, there’s one thing in common and I’ll never stop saying this out loud: PASSION.
Together with other Microsoft MVPs, the local subsidiaries and Microsoft Corporation, we identified top community contributors, within many different areas of expertise, who really deserved the MVP Award !
Particularly for the Region I represent (CEE & Italy), I would like to announce the newly awarded MVPs as of the 1st of January, 2011:
| Name | Technical Expertise | Country |
| Alvise Cervellati | Windows Expert-Consumer | Italy |
| Catalin Gheorghiu | Device Application Development | Romania |
| Darius Porowski | Virtual Machine | Poland |
| Fabrizio Volpe | Directory Services | Italy |
| George Andritsos | Exchange Server | Greece |
| George Varakis | Lync | Greece |
| Heiki Tahis | Windows Expert-IT Pro | Estonia |
| Joanna Vathis | Exchange Server | Greece |
| Marcin Borecki | Internet Explorer | Poland |
| Massimo Bonanni | Visual Basic | Italy |
| Matteo Pagani | Device Application Development | Italy |
| Michele Aponte | ASP.NET | Italy |
| Pawel Wilkosz | SQL Server | Poland |
| Philippos Panagiotidis | Office System | Greece |
| …. | Windows Azure | Italy |
| Sabrina Cosolo | Visual C# | Italy |
| Tomasz Onyszko | Enterprise Security | Poland |
| Tomaz Scavnicar | Internet Explorer | Slovenia |
| Ugo Sansone | Windows Live Messenger | Italy |
| Zoltan Zombory | Office365 | Hungary |
(as soon as they’ll publish the news on their blogs and/or on their MVP Profiles, I will add the names so you’ll get to know them
).
Congratulations !! I think this is the best time of the year as you celebrated the New Year in the best possible way !!
And of course Congratulations to the re-awarded MVPs (and you know who you are !!
)
BTW if you want to know more about the MVP Award Program, be sure to read our blog and follow me ![]()

























