You read well; Microsoft nominated me, and I’m now a MVP, a Most Valuable Professional about Internet Explorer. For those of you that don’t know, it’s an important recognition in the Microsoft ecosystem: it’s given to professionals with a certain area of expertise, around Microsoft technology or technology Microsoft use, for their work in the community.
So why Microsoft gave me recognition for Internet Explorer? In the end, I’m working at Mozilla. Well, I see this as a good news for everything I was doing while I was there (like Make Web Not War), and everything I’m doing right now: it’s another proof that Microsoft is more, and more open. As I’ve always said, it’s not perfect, but it’s going in the right direction (MS Open Tech is a great example). In my case, this award is less about Internet Explorer itself, than about the Web, and it’s lovely technology that is HTML5. They recognize the work I’m doing in that sense, either with Open Source, with communities in Montreal or with talks I’m doing about the Web. At first, it may seem weird for you, but I think it makes a lot of sense that Microsoft recognize someone like me, even if I’m working in a company making a competing product. Microsoft is doing a better job since Internet Explorer 9, and the browser is getting better, and better. No matter if you don’t use it, but other people do, and by making a better browser, which respect more the standards, they are helping the web to move forward. It’s also a good thing for us, developers, as we can more easily build great experiences for any users, no matter the browser they use. On that note, I was happy to see a bit more transparency about IE with the platform status website.
So, I salute the openness of Microsoft to nominate someone like me (they even hired me in the past). By being part of that MVP program, I’m looking forward to seeing how I can continue to work on the Mozilla mission while helping Microsoft to be more open with web technologies.
