--- title: "Neglecting Israeli MVPS, and INETA MEA is worthless" url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/9/6/neglecting-israeli-mvps-and-ineta-mea-is-worthless.md" canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2006/9/6/neglecting-israeli-mvps-and-ineta-mea-is-worthless.html" published: "2006-09-06T12:13:13" updated: "2006-09-06T12:13:13" tags: ["Community News"] author: "Roy Osherove" description: "Israeli MVPs are being neglected If you're a Microsoft MVP, and are not from the United States, you probably have your own MVP Lead in your country, taking care of business. Israel had one until a couple months ago or…" usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)." license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # Neglecting Israeli MVPS, and INETA MEA is worthless By Roy Osherove September 6, 2006 In [Community News](https://osherove.com/blog/category/community-news) **Historical article** · Originally published September 6, 2006; technical details may be outdated. Israeli MVPs are being neglected If you're a Microsoft MVP, and are not from the United States, you probably have your own MVP Lead in your country, taking care of business. Israel had one until a couple months ago or so. then that job vanished. I'm not sure why, but Israel MVPs have been getting the short end of the stick in this regard - we're getting a "regional lead" not from Israel that is responsible for us. This is supposed to be a "temporary" thing until they find a good replacement, but it definitely does not feel temporary, and, knowing the souls involved I wouldn't be surprised if this thing will ever change now that it's set in motion. I even offered up myself as the Israeli MVP lead. You need passion to do this, and knowing the community, and understanding the folks. And frankly, having someone who's doing they're job in a half-assed manner, as part of 10 other things they have to do, and when they look at this job as nothing more than a stepping stone to use on their way up (we've never had an MVP lead for over a year or a little more than that as far as I know) - things degrade fast. Out last lead was wonderful - but then she left for a better job at Microsoft England. Seems like noone wants to take her place here at microsoft Israel, which tells you exactly what MVPs mean here for MS Israel employees (I know only a handful of people at MS Israel that know the true meaning of MVP - and they are not the ones calling the shots on this I think). So - here's a call to microsoft - step up and give us a lead, or **make** us a lead. But don't just think you can ignore this and think it will go away. I won't let it. **Why INETA Middle East is worthless** On a similar note - INTEA middle east is one of the most un-influential organizations I've ever seen. I've been offering myself up as an INETA speaker for more than a couple of years now, and have even been accepted, but nothing happens in that regard. either there is no budget, or there are other things in play, but INETA MEA is **nothing** like INETA US. And why on earth can I be a speaker on INETA US, or even INETA Europe? It seems like INETA is missing out on lots of opportunities here for great community, simply because of lack of proper management of resources and personnel. In short - Microsoft does community well in the US and Europe. It sucks doing community here in the Middle east. Hope the point is taken. ## More in Community News [All posts in Community News](https://osherove.com/blog/category/community-news) - Oct 19, 2006 ### [MSDN Premium auction for Africa](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/10/19/msdn-premium-auction-for-africa.html) - Oct 2, 2006 ### [My sessions at TechEd Europe 2006](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/10/2/my-sessions-at-teched-europe-2006.html) - Sep 6, 2006 ### [Influence the next Microsoft Israel Conference](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/9/6/influence-the-next-microsoft-israel-conference.html) - Aug 16, 2006 ### [Speaker Idol @ TechEd: Developers](https://osherove.com/blog/2006/8/16/speaker-idol-teched-developers.html) --- ## About the author **Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery. ### Sites - [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership. - [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts. - [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin. - [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model. - [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps. - [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes). ### Social - X: https://x.com/royosherove - LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/osherove/ ### Contact - Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7 ### License Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/