Scores of MVPs and thousands of online viewers have come together to foreground technical learnings and strengthen community ties during the coronavirus pandemic in Latin America.
MVP Week LatAm brought to life many hours of content on a wide range of technical topics in Spanish and Portuguese for the region’s communities.
Supported by 26 MVPs, three “seasons” of content were broadcast live over the three weeks on the MVP channel on YouTube from April 20.
Organizers Flávio Farias and Rodrigo Dornel previously worked together on another edition of MVP Week two years ago and said the worldwide shelter in place orders inspired them to create an online event which would mobilize MVPs across the continent.
Reaching out via mailing lists, app communities, and social networks, the organizers wanted to foreground the very best of Latin American tech knowledge.
The successful callout produced a variety of speakers and on a variety of topics ranging from “PowerBI Turbo” to “Azure Cycle Cloud”, and “Practices to Apply Security in DevOps” to “Enrichment with AI in Azure Cognitive Search”.
“The highlight was undoubtedly the commitment of all those involved in the process,” Flávio said. “It was never the event of Flávio or Rodrigo, but the event of all MVPs, and not only of those who participated but of the entire technical community that one way or another is always participatory.”
“What I like most about being in this community is being able to work with magnificent people and thereby generate benefits for other people,” Rodrigo said. “Being able to get in touch with several experts, exchange high-level information, influence people to be better and grow in life and in your career is priceless.”
The event reach was enormous, Rodrigo said, with more than 1000 people following and consuming “very good content made by the best of LatAm.”
The current video view count has passed 3000, with 39% of the spectators female and 34% in the age group of 35 to 44. Microsoft MVP Sara Barbosa, who hosted a session titled “Keep calm and share with Microsoft 365”, said it was great to see so many knowledgeable colleagues bringing new content to the tech community.
“I would say after 10 years of being part of this community that it is kind of part of my life,” Sara said. “I had too much fun and I've been learning a lot with all of them.”
Alexandro Prado hosted the session “Azure Cycle Cloud” and said it was an honor to participate in something as significant as MVP Week LatAm. “I believe that at times like this with a pandemic and with social isolation we have to come together and share a little knowledge,” he said.
Carlos dos Santos, who hosted “Docker in the development environment - why use it?”, said this event gave an opportunity for MVPs to transmit their passion to others in their community. Likewise, Alessandro Trovato, the host of “Dynamic matrices, new functions and their equivalents in native functions”, said he was impressed with the sheer amount of effort from the MVPs involved to bring information to the LatAm community.
Meanwhile, Thiago Lunardi said it was simply fun to be part of MVP Week LatAm. “The environment around it is super cosy and the feeling to be part of a great group with aligned ideas – to learn and to share knowledge – is pretty delightful,” said Thiago, the host of “Build, Debug, Dockerize and Deploy K8s with brand new Microsoft Tye”.
MVP Week LatAm participants and viewers have been very positive of the initiative, with plans already in motion to hold another event this year between September and October.