Introducing the Embarcadero MVP Regional Coordinators

When I started at Embarcadero Technologies in 2013 there were 56 MVPs, including me, but then I retired, and Anders Ohlsson became an MVP, so we balanced that out. In five years since we’ve lost a few MVPs, but gained a lot. Today we have almost 200 MVPs, and we have a list of new MVPs to evaluate. Adding iOS, macOS, Android, and Linux attracted a lot of new MVPs, and now with Community Edition the amount of interest in RAD Studio, Delphi, and C++Builder is greater than ever.

The MVP program is one of my favorite parts of my work here. For a while now I’ve felt wasn’t keeping everything that was going on, and that I was holding the MVPs back. The solution I’ve come up with is the MVP Regional Coordinators.

The Coordinators aren’t managers or directors of the MVPs in their region, but instead, they work with them to help everyone be awesome. My idea is that with smaller groups they are able to get more done. I’ve divided the regions by a number of different criteria, including MVP popular, resulting in them not lining up with traditional geographic boundures. And as the MVP ranks continue to grow the regions will most likely change as well, but for now, here is the list of Embarcadero MVP regions and their Coordinators.

Africa and the Middle East

• Coordinators:
  • Gerhard Stoltz, South Africa
  • Samer Assil, Turkey
• MVPs in Region: 12

Gerhard and Samer are from two opposite ends of their region. Originally, I had Africa and the Middle East as sperate regions, bun since Africa is a continent and the Middle East a transcontinental region there was already overlap. And one I think I’ve learned about MVPs is they are hard to put into boxes. I’d noticed that some MVPs in regions technically outside the Middle East, but in Northern Africa were already collaborating on events, and I didn’t want to divide them up, but if I split North Africa off of Africa then it left very few MVPs in Africa. That is why I decided to just combine the two regions. I’m a big believer in collaboration and expect Gerhard and Samar to accomplish great things here. We’ve seen huge growth recently in the Middle East and Arabic speaking MVPs, and Delphi is part of the standard school curriculum in South Africa.

AsiaPac

• Coordinators:
  • Sunil Kumar, India
  • Alister Christie, New Zealand
• MVPs in Region: 13

I just met up with Alister while I was in Australia for the ADUG symposium. And while I’ve been to India I haven’t met Sunil yet. The Asia-Pacific region is quite large when you realize how many islands are found in the Pacific ocean, not to mention Australia. Technically it only includes South Asia, as North Asia is part of the Eastern Europe region. I’ve met a lot of great developers in India, Australia, South Korea, and Japan during my visits there. And while I’m sure the number of MVPs there will continue to grow I doubt it will have anything with trying to avoid the number 13. It is generally only considered unlucky in western countries and is even considered lucky in Thailand and India.

Brazil

• Coordinators:
  • Kelver Merlotti, São Paulo
  • William Duarte, Rio de Janeiro
• MVPs in Region: 25

Brazil is the only region made of only one country, and it has one of the largest MVP populations. When I was considering Brazil was when I realized it made sense to have more than one coordinator. I certainly don’t want a coordinator to feel overwhelmed. They already spend a lot of time supporting the community as an MVP. I’ve been to Brazil five times now for their annual developer conference. The last one was for the 10.3 Rio launch and there were 800 developers in attendance, and most of the 25 MVPs were speaking there. I’ve known both Kelver and William for many years and am excited to be working with them and to see where they take their region! William is currently finishing up his second Delphi programming book, and I am finishing up the forward for it.

Britain and Ireland

• Coordinator:
  • Jason Chapman, United Kingdom
• MVPs in Region: 7

Britain and Ireland, also known as the Atlantic Archipelago, or the British Isles, is the group of islands in the North Atlantic off the north-western coast of continental Europe. Among the islands is the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. This is one of the two regions I’ve not been to visit (Africa and the Middle East being the other one). Europe as a whole has a lot of MVPs, so I was looking for a way to break it up into smaller regions.

DACH

• Coordinators:
  • Olaf Monien, Germany
  • Uwe Raabe, Germany
• MVPs in Region: 15

Is an acronym for Germany (Deutschland), Austria, and Switzerland (CH = Confoederatio Helvetica). It is the German-speaking countries of Europe. Since Germany had the most MVPs of any country in Europe it made sense to make its own region. I saw that DACH was specifically the German-speaking region of Europe. Although Luxembourg, Liechtenstein, and Belgium also have German as their national language. I’ve been to Germany a few times, and most everyone I encountered spoke pretty good English, so while it is logical to group the German-speaking countries in the region I expect they will also be involved in events throughout Europe.

Eastern Europe

• Coordinators:
  • Roman Yankovsky, Russia
  • Žarko Gajić, Croatia
• MVPs in Region: 20

A combination of Eastern Europe and Northern Asia really. Technically I’ve not been here to visit yet either. I’ve been to both Europe, and Asia, but not any of the countries that make up Eastern Europe. I’ll specifically call out Roman as the brains behind some amazing Delphi tools: FixInsight, DelphiAST, DelphiSpec, and ndyacclex. FixInsight is an incredibly valuable IDE add-in, and I’ve recently taken an interest in the syntax, lexers, and parsers. So maybe I’m just leaving this here to remind myself . . .

Europe

• Coordinators:
  • Bruno Fierens, Belgium
  • Bob Swart, Netherlands
  • Filip Lagrou, Belgium
• MVPs in Region: 34

Even after splitting all the other regions out of Europe this region still has the most MVPs, which is why it has three coordinators. Bruno Fierens is an incredible MVP and also runs TMS Software. Bob Swart and Filip Lagrou are regularly organizing events in Europe (and elsewhere in the world too). I’m really excited to see how Europe continues to grow as a hub of Delphi development in the world.

LatAm

• Coordinators:
  • Miguel Angel Moreno, Mexico
  • Luis Felipe González Torres, Venezuela
• MVPs in Region: 13

LatAm is essentially the Spanish speaking nations in the Americas; Mexico, and all of South America except for Brazil. This is a good example of how the MVP Regions are flexible. If for example, the LatAm MVP Region wanted to host a Spanish speaking online conference, they could certainly invite MVPs from Spain, or any other Spanish speaking MVPs from elsewhere in the world.

North America

• Coordinators:
  • Loy Anderson, USA
  • Holger Flick, USA
• MVPs in Region: 27

Last but not least is the North America region where I live. Loy is a fairly new addition to the MVP team, but she’s been working part of the community for over twenty-five years working on conferences and books, and she is the co-founder of Delphi Developer Days. Holger Flick is relocating to the USA from Germany and recently finished his Ph.D. in Engineering with a Masters in Computer Science.

So please join me in welcoming all our new Embarcadero MVP Regional Coordinators! We are all really excited about this new phase in the Embarcadero MVP program and the growth it will lead too!

If you know of any potential MVPs please submit their information for consideration via this form.