This month, The MVP Blog is shining a spotlight on some of the MVP community’s developer-focused initiatives around the world.
In this article, we’ll look at how developers in China and Japan recently celebrated major community milestones.
Starting in China, MVPs celebrated the 20th anniversary of .NET, a platform that has been a beloved framework by developers. Since 2017, the CNCF has recognized .NET repositories in the top 30 highest velocity open-source projects on GitHub, a testament to all the people actively improving the platform.
Zhen Zhu, Windows Development MVP in China and Reactor Shanghai, conducted a series of developer interviews with the theme "Talking about .NET Developers' Stories." This particular initiative has helped more developers understand the technology of the .NET platform and its relationship with various languages – and it has also increased the visibility of Microsoft's technology in China's technical communities.
Weihan Li, MVP for Developer Technologies in China, was one of the guest speakers at the online event. “I am not at the beginning of .NET technology, but .NET is the first technical platform in my programming path,” Weihan said proudly.
The celebration of .NET 20th Anniversary and the official publication of the .NET Chinese content was a great opportunity to learn more about the history of .NET development from other experienced experts.
“I like the C# language, it makes me feel like I'm writing a poem, and in recent years it has become much easier to program on the .NET platform as .NET technology becomes more mature and popular,” Weihan adds.
As the .NET will become more popular, the Microsoft community is keen on organizing more local .NET activities in the future. Check out a video of the event here.
In Japan, the HoloLens community, HoloMagicians, is very active and over the years has organized more than 100 community events.
As soon as the HoloLens was launched in Japan in 2017, the “HoloLens boom” happened among developers all around Japan. The father of HoloLens, Alex Kipman, recognizes the passionate Japanese mixed reality communities.
Even though community events had to shift to online events, which prevented them from providing the live experience, the community is still very excited about getting together to learn about HoloLens.
The most active HoloLens community, HoloMagicians, successfully organized the 100th community event in September 2021 and the 101st event in January 2022 to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the launch of HoloLens in Japan.
The number of Japanese HoloLens community leaders has also increased with 20 Windows Development MVPs contributing to Windows Mixed Reality. MVPs and community members are excited about Microsoft Mesh and Metaverse and anticipate what's to come in the future.
Kaoru Nakamura, Windows Development MVP/Microsoft Regional Director in Japan, established “HoloLab” in 2017 and is a core member of HoloMagicians. We wanted to know from Kaoru how the community impacted the HoloLens business in Japan.
As far as Kaoru says, it’s not easy for general developers to learn the practical use of HoloLens since it is usually used mainly by enterprises. However, the community works very well as a place where the members can share stories and information about the business cases.
Kaoru discloses to us: “The community members make an ample flow beyond individual corporate frameworks. We showed that to the enterprises and successfully created the environment to move forward together.”
Futo Horio, Windows Development MVP in Japan, was awarded for his active contributions at the events by HoloMagicians and now leads the community.
“What motivated me to work for this community? First, the community enables us to deep dive into the technologies with passionate community members. So, for example, we can share our intellectual curiosity about HoloLens and discuss the new possibility of the progress of technologies.”
Participating in the community is uniquely inspiring to the community members. Each can learn from diverse community members regardless of age, gender, nationality, and technology level.
“Those passionate community members motivate me to aim higher for learning more about my professional expertise, Mixed Reality. I would like to continue to boost the community, which is an exciting place full of developers’ energy,” Futo tells.
Yuki Izumoto, Windows Development MVP in Japan, hosted the first HoloLens event and is the core member of HoloMagicians.
Yuki recalls: “The attendees, who showed significant reactions like they saw magic, impressed me most when I hosted the first HoloLens event after receiving the first HoloLens device in Japan.”
On that experience, Yuki started building the HoloLens community: “What came to mind was that we would like to be the creator group that provides the magical experiences to the attendees – fantastic like a magician. Further, we wanted to provide that experience to a diverse audience, including engineers, designers, and people in different industries. Not Users Group/Developer Community. Hence, we named our community HoloMagicians.”
Since the launch of HoloMagicians, the community has organized 101 events and amassed more than 3,500 community members. For more, check out the website.
