I’m very glad to share with you that I have been interviewed and spotlighted on the Official Microsoft MVP Program website.

You can read the full interview from here.

I’m super excited to announce that my MVP status has been renewed for another year making me one of the few worldwide to maintain the status for 6 years in a row (4 for SharePoint Server & 2 for Office 365).

The MVP award was a remarkable milestone in my career as well as my personal life. It gave me the opportunity to reach, influence and empower thousands of people across the globe, network with extremely genius IT professionals, engage with different product groups in Redmond, and fly to 25+ cities across 4 different continents for consulting opportunities, speaking engagements, product launches, etc…

The amazing thing about the MVP program, is it’s an award, not a credential. It’s always great being associated with such a smart and influential community, it’s something that I appreciate a great deal.

Last but not least, I would like to thank my family, my Office 365 community friends, the amazing MEA MVP Community,  my blog followers, all those who attended my sessions and all those who helped me progress in my career. Without you guys, I would have never been able to achieve anything.

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Last weekend, Middle East & Africa MVPs had their first local gathering since 2008. Although this was very close a long trip to Las Vegas to attend and speak at the global SharePoint Conference 2014, I made it to Istanbul on March 20^th to attend “MEA MVP Open Day” and spend a couple of days in one of my favorite cities worldwide.

It has been an amazing event for me, not only did I get to make new friends but I also had the chance to meet some friends that I had previously met during global MVP Summits, TechEd events as well as local conferences.

During the two days, we had the opportunity to listen to great & informative talks by Aben Kovoor (MEA HQ DPE Lead), Michael Fosmire (Microsoft MVP Program Business Lead), Dariusz Zalewski (Nokia Developer Champion CEE Lead) and Ekaterina Lajintseva (International Senior Site Manager for MSDN & TechNet). We also had some MVP-to-MVP sessions and discussions, those for me were the coolest & most useful part in the two days!

Although I’ve been in the community for a long time, the MVP-to-MVP sessions in addition to our side talks inspired me to come up with new plans and work on new things:

• I liked how Alistair Pugin (SharePoint MVP) united the efforts of the South African SharePoint User Groups & SQL User Groups to work together on joint big events, this is something that I’m planning to replicate in some of the countries that I regularly visit in Middle East & Africa.
• I also liked how Taylor Gibb (Windows Consumer MVP) reached millions of technology users through his consumer-focused blog. Although I’m maintaining an active blog that deeply tackles many business productivity and collaborations areas, I still didn’t offer much in the consumer space. During the next months, I’ll also extend my focus to cover other products areas like Office Online, Skype and others.
• I very much liked the personal branding tips and tricks presented by Daron Yondem (Azure MVP). Daron was kind enough to share with us very useful online services that can help boost the reach of our technology contributions. IFTTT.com & bufferapp.com are just two examples.

Besides, I enjoyed learning about some of the impactful activities in the past 12 months:

• Yasser Makram’s (Client Dev MVP) well-received sessions at TechEd North America & TechEd Europe events.
• Sherif Talaat’s (PowerShell MVP) two books in 1 year!!
• Niyi Omotoyinbo’s (Directory Services MVP) contribution to the Cloud OS MVP Roadshow in Africa.
• Ahmed Bahaa’s (Visual Studio ALM MVP) session @ MEA Visual Studio 2013 launch in Dubai.
• And more …

Last but not least, I would like to extend a huge word of thanks to Hande Kayadeniz Torkan (MEA MVP Lead) and Sinem Eylem Arslan (Turkey MVP Lead) for putting together such a phenomenal event. Cannot wait to see you along with fellow MEA MVPs in Seattle (well, If my MVP status is renewed in April) J

Last week, I had the pleasure to get interviewed by EMEA MVP Community. Just today, the interview was published on their official Facebook Page.

You can read the full interview here.

I found the following email in my inbox yesterday :

Dear Ayman El Hattab,
Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2013 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in SharePoint Server technical communities during the past year.

Yes, this is something that I’m really proud of .. The MVP Award turned 20 years during the latest MVP Summit and I got my 4th award a couple of months after. This means that I’ve been an MVP for almost 20% of the MVP Award lifetime 🙂