I am very grateful that I am part of Microsoft Regional Director Community, small number of developers, architects and speakers honored by Microsoft for their great contribution to the Community of ICT professionals using Microsoft platform and tools. Microsoft Regional Directors are acting as a "liaison" between Microsoft Community and Microsoft as a company, often leaders (popular called “evangelists”) in implementing new technology and ideas and speaking about them at conferences.
RD’s (popular acronym for MS Regional Directors) are people that have great visibility not just in Community but also in Microsoft, especially when there are great efforts to make existing products better or to provide feedback on future product design and functional specification.
Also, RD’s are often engaged as independent consultants on various projects because they have deep knowledge of Microsoft platform and tools, even before it is publicly available through special private beta or TAP programs.
When new products ”hits the road”, RD’s are engaged in special programs like METRO program for ISV (Independent Software Vendors) to explain how to create new solutions using latest products – often based on their experience of implementing those products in beta phase of their life in real life systems.
They are often speakers at Community Launches (Visual Studio, Vista, Unified Communication, SQL Server etc), DevDays but also some of the featured speakers at important commercial conferences like Microsoft TechEd.
RD’s are also mentors to the other people, especially students – from my own experience: I was mentor or member of jury during past 4 years in Imagine Cup student competition for software design but I am also Network Partner for Microsoft BizSpark program – that is supporting new Start-up ISV-s.
To summarize – I am very happy to be able to share my experience and learn from experience of other fellow RD’s all over the world.
I am proud to be member of such small but prominent Community and I will do my best to make this community proud of me!