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Tips and Tricks to Attain Sitecore MVP

The 2019 Sitecore MVPs were just announced, which means now is the time to start planning and setting yourself up for an award consideration in 2020.  It may seem a long way off, but in order to compete for this highly coveted honor, you have to start immediately.

This is not only my 5th consecutive year of receiving the MVP award, but it is also the start of the 6th year I’ve helped my organization run a program that enables Sitecore developers/strategists to succeed in the achievement.  In that time, the program has helped 11 different people reach MVP, 6 of them women!

If you need a refresher about the details of the MVP program, my fellow WoS (Woman of Sitecore), Una Verhoeven, has written a blog article about it. 

The gist is this though: ” Sitecore MVP is an individual with expertise in Sitecore who actively participates in online and offline communities to share their knowledge and expertise with other Sitecore partners and customers.”  Additionally: “Sitecore MVPs are awarded for the quality, quantity, and level of impact of the contributions they make by sharing their product expertise and mastery of the Sitecore platform with other Sitecore partners and customers.”

To make the cut is not any easy feat.  It takes time and persistence.  Many MVPs (including myself) can tell you frustrating stories of being passed over during the first couple years of submission.  As mentioned above, a baseline requirement is having mastery and expertise in the Sitecore platform.  For MVP, you need to go above and beyond attaining that knowledge, and additionally become an active community member who is recognized by those who first must recommend you before you can even submit a nomination form (Sitecore employees and current MVPs), and then those who sit on the selection committee (Sitecore employees). 

Most people who would like to try for this are working at partner organizations and client companies that already have high demands for their time in building Sitecore applications.  This means you have to carve out this extra time in your personal life: nights, weekends, holidays.  The good news is you can timebox and hone in on the important types of activities that will give you the biggest bang for your buck.

My hope here is to impart what myself and my colleagues have learned over the years in order to help you to reach for and achieve this goal.

  1. Have at least one Sitecore certification in your resume. It isn’t necessarily required for MVP, but certainly does go a ways towards gaining and proving your expertise.
  2. Start actively participating NOW and make sure to do a minimum amount of activities that gain you recognition monthly. Keep this up right until the nominations open up around November. This is critical so that you stay relevant and maintain a presence throughout the year.
  3. Create a point system for different types of valuable activity and try to hit a minimum number of points each month. I’ll give you some examples of that in a moment.
  4. Compete with friends/colleagues who are also vying for a spot, maybe set up a prize for the end of the year as a reward for the person with the most points. This will keep you all motivated to keep going.
  5. Don’t let busy months at work get in your way. Make a concerted effort to carve out some time every single month! As little as 5 hours per month can be enough to write a few blog posts.
  6. Keep a log of your activity.  Sitecore is going to want you to regurgitate all of this information in your nomination form, so make it easy on yourself!
  7. Reach out to both MVPs and Sitecore employees. Make real relationships with them.  They will be able to recommend you come nomination time.
  8. Blog about topics that don’t already have posts out there! Writing another article on how to install the latest version of Sitecore is redundant.  Did you do something super interesting recently that was a challenge, that you could find no helpful information on in the community, kept you working all weekend, and you feel great joy over finally figuring out?  Then blog about it ASAP!  Be the first one out there.
  9. Become a subject matter expert in something within the Sitecore platform, especially good is a topic or enhancement that is new. Write a blog series on the topic. Present at a Sitecore User Group, and submit a presentation paper on it for Symposium.
  10. Take part in the Sitecore Hackathon, You can register for it through Feb 15th!  Not only is it a lot of fun, but it’s a sure way to get noticed (especially if you win!).  Note that although this seems like a developer only activity, you can get creative as an Ambassador or Strategist and join a Hackathon team as well!
  11. Share everything you do on social media especially Twitter and Facebook. Join the Sitecore Slack and Facebook groups, Sitecore Stack Exchange, and update your profile in the Sitecore Community.
  12. Do NOT plagiarize anyone else’s thoughts, blogs, tweets.  You will be found out, and exposed publicly 🙂
  13. For those going for a Technology MVP, it is important to share code, for example on github or Stack Exchange, otherwise you are likely falling into more of an Ambassador category.

In my company, we have tiered activities in the following way, with the higher tiers getting more points.  Note that some of these are more developer focused.

  1. Speak/Present at a conference such as Symposium or SUGCON, Participate in the Hackathon
  2. Speak/Present at a SUG or other smaller event, present a webinar (that people attend).  Note, these are GREAT practice for the larger events and having these on your resume give you a better chance of being selected to speak at Symposium/SUGCON.
  3. Attend a conference like Symposium/SUGCON (but make sure to interact with community members there!), Post a blog series (3+ posts, video or written) on a topic to help you achieve subject matter expertise recognition, create an open source module and share your code, attend a training that results in a new certification
  4. Attend a Sitecore a User Group in person, write or record a single blog post
  5. Attend a SUG virtually, attend a webinar (don’t depend on this though or overdo it), participate in Slack/Community discussions, answer questions in Stack Exchange, post in social channels

There are four types of MVPs. The activities for Technology and Commerce MVPs are more straightforward and some may find it a bit easier to engage in the Technology community (for one, it is a lot larger community than the others).

Important to note about Commerce is that you really do need to be focused on Commerce. Some that were Commerce MVPs last year have been switched to regular Technology because their involvement wasn’t focused enough on Commerce. In the past that could mean anything commerce that integrated with Sitecore, but likely going forward Sitecore will be looking more and more for the Sitecore Commerce product.

For those looking to achieve Strategy MVP, Stephanie Allen, a new Strategy MVP this year, recommends that you consider partnering with a Technology MVP and solving problems together on projects. You will gain important knowledge, including platform gotchas and sticking points, that you can include in your nomination form. In addition to writing your own blog articles around strategy themes, you could also partner with a Technology MVP to co-write articles together. Focus on attending events and applying to speak.

Jaina Baumgartner, another new Strategy MVP, shared the following list of activities which helped her:

  • Contribute to the #digitalstrategy channel on Sitecore slack
  • Write blog posts
  • Present in webinars and at events, especially around a specific topic (becoming an expert in it)
  • Provably show how you have optimized business value for a real company/client (you can share this in your nomination form in your best Sitecore Anecdote!)
  • Attend/conduct SBOS/Strategy workshops

Ambassador is the newest category and was made for really anyone else who is an evangelist of the Sitecore platform that bring value back to Sitecore and doesn’t fit into any other category. This could be executives, sales people, or leaders in the community who perhaps don’t code as much anymore but are still very involved. Many of the same activities listed above will work here, but you’ll have to rely more on blogging and speaking rather than code sharing.

To be well prepared, here is what Sitecore looks for in the nomination form (this has been consistent for a couple of years now).

  • Motivation, why you deserve this/want to be an MVP (don’t be afraid to BRAG about yourself, you deserve it!)
  • Objectives for next year within Sitecore Platform and Community (can’t hurt to mention some of the new bells and whistles on the platform roadmap)
  • Community Activity:
    • basic information: your blog url, Sitecore community profile url, stack exchange profile url, twitter handle, linkedin url, github url
    • Summary of online activity: Reported Bugs/Fixes, Slack, Marketplace Contributions, webinars, articles, blog posts, whitepapers, online discussions, comments on articles, Facebook/LinkedIn group activity, product feedback, influencing decision maker, etc
    • Summary of offline activity: Sitecore User Group Attendance, Presentations/Trainings (that Sitecore provided), Symposium, SUGCON
  • Work Experience
    • Best Sitecore Anecdote (keep this in the back of your mind and look out for interesting Sitecore experiences that come up during the year!)
    • Live Projects: URLs and your role on the project (even include the projects you or your company no longer maintain!)

For first time MVPs, as mentioned above, you need a current MVP or Sitecore employee to first recommend you, before you can even get your hands on a nomination form. Recommendations/Nominations usually open up around the beginning of November and close towards the end of the month. Sitecore then deliberates for two months, announcing the winners at the end of January.

Are you ready to take on this challenge? If you are and would like more advice or are looking for comradery in the process, join the WoS (Women of Sitecore) slack group and reach out to any of the current women MVPs directly or in the general channel. We all are looking forward to helping you!

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Our Sitecore Call to Action: Empowering Women in Tech

Anyone who attended the Sitecore Symposium this year may have noticed another focus grabbing people’s attention above and beyond the innovative new ways that Sitecore is pushing its platform.  Often you will see a lot of different groups at the Symposium: Partners, Sitecore Employees, Clients, MVPs, Strategists, Technologists, Marketers, etc.  But this year one group stood out and made their voices heard: Women, and I feel honored to have been a part of that awakening.

The Sitecore world is a microcosm of the larger Technology world and has similar statistics around women technologists: not enough (somewhere around 10-15%).  Those of us who have been in technology for many years are aware of that and many of us have been complacent about it.  I know I was.  I was too busy to think about it and I didn’t see it as an issue.  My company recognized me and we have women in leadership and engineering roles.  We are compensated well and given opportunities for advancement.  I dismissed it without much thought.

In the last few years, as I joined the ranks of the Sitecore MVPs (Sitecore’s selective Most Valuable Professional program), I had been proud to be one of perhaps half a dozen women MVPs and an even smaller subset of women Technologist MVPs.  With each year there were a few more.  But the percentage to the whole remained woefully low, and now that I think about it, instead of being proud, it should have been a wakeup call to do more.

When we attended the MVP summit each year, the women would break the ice with each other joking about how we could use the bathroom without worrying about a wait.  Deep down, we were feeling a little intimidated and likely lonely.  Meanwhile, in the larger technology world, organizations and movements like Women in Tech, Girls Who Code, and Move the Dial have been raising awareness.  And as our MVP group got bigger, the idea of doing something to explicitly make it bigger started to take hold.

To be a Sitecore MVP means that you are a self-motivator, with a good balance of ambition, intelligence, and support.  Every single person who has achieved it likely has similar personality traits, regardless of the role they hold.  This means that it was inevitable that a mental shift was coming for the women involved with Sitecore.

It started out this year with Isabel Tinoco (fellow Sitecore MVP at Coveo) creating blog posts highlighting women MVPs. This was the first spark that got the group talking to each other.  Then as Sitecore put out their call for Symposium presentations, the flame of an idea was lit: bring together the women MVPs onto a panel presentation at the 2018 Sitecore Symposium and discuss empowering women in Sitecore, with the hope that our stories could help other women who had a love for Sitecore and Technology.

In the early summer, Amy Winburn started the Women of Sitecore group: an inclusive group for ANY woman interested in Sitecore (independent from the Symposium panel, although several women are involved in both and form much of the leadership team). A Slack group formed, a twitter feed was opened, #womenofsitecore, a  website created: http://www.womenofsitecore.com to host all kinds of helpful content, and Dua’a Abu Gharbieh created the most amazing Women of Sitecore logo.

Shortly thereafter, Sitecore (as an organization) also started pushing to support the idea of more women in tech, including the July kickoff and recognition of their internal Women of Sitecore program during their GSKO.  For Symposium, Sitecore organized a 2 hour plated luncheon with an inspiring guest speaker, Jodi Kovitz, CEO of Move the Dial, a non-profit organization dedicated to getting more women involved in technology.

Then the news came through that our MVP Panel session was selected.  Now we had to come up with how to fit the stories and life lessons from 18 women into a 45 minute segment.  We brainstormed and finalized 6 areas to be covered by 3 women each:

  1. Why having a community matters
  2. Why organizations benefit from enabling more women in roles of technology and leadership
  3. What are the barriers that women in tech feel that we as a community can help overcome
  4. In what ways may an organization be inadvertently creating a gender gap
  5. How women can balance a personal life with the demands from a career in technology
  6. How we can inspire and develop the newest generation of women looking to grow their careers in technology

It was an eye-opening experience planning for these topics, talking to the other women, and reading up on it all.  There are some companies that are better than others at inclusion, but ALL can improve in various areas of awareness.  Some women have personal situations that are better off to support them and others need help.  There is a lack of education in younger girls about what a career in technology even means, the opportunities that await within it, and that they can get into it and still be into the outdoors and fashion and daylight 🙂  As a company, it is in its best interest to have more women in the tech and leadership ranks.  There are proven success metrics to back that up.  And that company may be inadvertently sabotaging their ability to do just that!  Most importantly, I realized it isn’t just about whether I have been able to succeed, but that I have a responsibility to pay it forward, be there for others, and raise awareness.

Meanwhile, the snowball continued to get bigger and bigger.  Mark Stiles generously reached out to me and asked how he could help. He volunteered his excellent videographer skills and offered to film a few of us in a round table discussion while we were all gathered in Orlando.  Swag from tshirts, to buttons, to stickers were quickly thought up and executed upon in short order, women donating their own money towards the cause.  Sitecore started reaching out to find several women in the community for short video spots that would air at the start of the luncheon.

It all finally culminated in a whirlwind 4 days (5 days for MVPs staying later for the summit) at the Symposium in October.  Every women who attended spoke to what a difference it felt like this year compared to others.  Sure, we all thoroughly enjoyed learning more about Sitecore’s strategy, vision and the underlying tech, partaking in various festivities, and the good-natured competitive environment that is common for Sitecore partners while at such an event.  But there was something really special about this year, it meant more.  It’s hard to put into words.   Whether it was while practicing in the speaker room a few times with our 18 co-presenters, or sitting down to a cup of coffee at the breakfast tables reserved for us, or just sharing a quick moment as we passed another woman wearing a pin or tshirt, there was a shared comradery that crossed the artificial lines of role, status, and company.  We knew we had each other’s backs if we needed it.

Now we are back to our respective homes and caught up in our typical day to day routines.  This is where the hard part comes in, this is where we have to keep it up and keep being there for each other and the people who have not yet discovered this community.  This is where we continue to DO SOMETHING and turn the words into actions.  We push for changes at our companies, we visit the local schools and educate about how cool our field is before the girls get to college and have a major in mind, we reach out for mentors and offer up our own mentorship, we write blog posts, we support each other.  It’s an exciting time to be a woman in technology and I can’t wait to see what this group of amazing women does next!