Back in February this year, I reported on the Visio MVPs in Redmond (see http://blog.bvisual.net/2013/02/ ).Well one thing that we learnt back then was that Microsoft had started the transition of the Visio Engineering to Hyderabad in India. Later, Microsoft also announced that the MVP Summits were going to be changed from spring to fall (or autumn if you are not North American). So, this year was to be exceptional because there was going to be two MVP Summits whilst the transition took place. That left the new Visio team in a bit of a quandary : where to hold the fall summit? Redmond, with the rest of the MVP community, or Hyderabad, with just the Visio product team? I was delighted that they took the brave step of holding it in Hyderabad, whilst the rest of the MVPs went to Redmond last year.
There are 16 Visio MVPs in the world ( see http://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/search-mvp.aspx?kw=visio ), and seven of us were able to make it to Hyderabad … special mention for John Goldsmith ( see http://www.visualsignals.typepad.co.uk/ ) who made it to his fist summit!
We stayed at the Westin Mindspace, absolutely wonderful buffet meals, and I even got time to help with a little ploughing nearby!
The Microsoft team were so open and helpful. We really felt the week was was so worthwhile, but of course, I cannot share the details of our discussions, except to say that we are all enthused about the future, and look forward to spending fall in Hyderabad next year … the sunshine must be more compelling than the weather in Redmond at the same time … and the evenings outside the restaurants with the product team … priceless!
