Become an EMVP (OMVP) It's Great!!!

Overview

As everyone should be aware Episerver having bought Optimizly in 2020 is now rebranding under the Optimizly name https://www.episerver.com/campaign/optimizely

With all the investment in to Optimizly (Episerver), the new products and the Optimizly's push furthur in to the Leader quadrant https://www.episerver.com/reports/gartner-magic-quadrant-for-digital-experience-platforms this is the perfect time to not only make the platform your jam but also become one of the experts.

The page https://world.episerver.com/emvp/ lists a number of benefits but is a little dry so having been an EMVP for a number of years I'm going to write my take on why YOU should try to become an EMVP (or whatever we end up being named :-p).

The Platform

Optimizly has been growing it's platform from the grass roots of it's starting points in the content management to the great digital experience platform it offers today. This includes

• Enterpise CMS platform - Features such as WYSIWYG, reusable blocks, rich media, workflow, dynamic forms, projects and much much more.
• Enterprise Commerce platform & B2B Commerce - Features such as catalogues, tax, regions, shipping, campaigns, payment integration and much more.
• Profile Store and Intelligence - Allows storage of complex customer tracking data and intelligent recommendation in both the content and commerce space
• Campaign - A powerful multichannel marketting system allowing email, text and direct integration. Uses the intellgence of the DXP to personalise the experience
• Social - Headless social integration for comments, reviews and user based content.
• DXP Service - The default hosting system built by Optimizly on the Azure stack providing a one stop shop for hosting, content delivery, security and deployment.

The current product suite is a great fit for medium to large businesses in all sectors and Optimizly will provide expertese in any solution/journey.

I personally love the stack, love the way the software is written and find great excitement about the future of the platform.

The People

The EMVP crowd is an amazing bunch of people. I personally have interacted with many great EMVPs both in person and online and there's a great amount of talented people pushing this forward. By becoming one of us you'll not only gain access to great benefits but great industry experts to converse with in our private EMVP Yammer channel. Also when we have meetups or attend socials all the EMVPs are very friendly and enjoy a good chat and a beer (or 5) :-)

The Benefits

The offical page lists the following 

• VIP treatment at all Episerver events.
• Special EMVP-exclusive meetups and events.
• Episerver licenses for personal use.
• Yearly EMVP Summit, typically a 3 day off-site session in a beautiful part of the world

Howver there are also a number of great benefits not listed

• Access to the EMVP private channel which allows conversing with not only other EMVPs but Optimizly top guys.
• Access to regular webinars on the platform and future features
• Access to free courses on the Episerver Academy so that your knowledge and training is kept top notch.

And most of all the pride of being one of a great bunch of experts on a great platform

How do you become one?

So to become one you must try to do as much of the following as possible and then you'll hopefully get nominated.

• Be Episerver Certified in Content/Commerce
• Be active on the blogs and forums providing great content and helping people regularly
• Contribute to the community. Be it blogs, github project contribution or Nuget packages it's all about pushing the platform forward and helping others.
• Be friendly. Talk to people, converse, attend events and get to know people. If you're known you'll easily become a lover of the platform

Conclusion

The platform is great, the people are great and it's a great community to be part of. So be kind, be passionate and you'll so find yourself in the club. 

I look forward to seeing you around!!!