Calling all strategists – the new Strategy MVP Advisory Council and nominations are open!

It’s that time of year again and nominations for the Sitecore MVP (Most Valuable Professionals) award are now open! 

Authors: Alison Sainsbury, Amanda Shiga, Jacqueline Baxter, Kristian von Magius

The Sitecore MVP program recognizes individuals with expertise in Sitecore who actively participate in online and offline communities to share their knowledge and expertise. The MVPs are a smart and welcoming group who love to help others get the most from our platform, and they get lots of perks too – recognition, early access, opportunities to give feedback, fantastic parties and much more.

The MVP award has four categories: Strategy, Commerce, Technology and Ambassador. You can read more about the categories here, the nomination process here, and the information needed for an application here.

If you’re wondering whether you’d be a candidate for Strategy MVP, the answer is quite possibly YES! Please read on.

The Strategy MVP Category – chances are, your role counts!

The criteria for Strategy MVP seek to recognize individuals who have strong experience with data-driven marketing and delivery of business results using the Sitecore platform. This should be backed up with customer and project references, but also includes sharing of thought leadership on context marketing topics such as personalization and optimization.

If you’re getting the impression that you need to be in a role of “end to end” strategist using all features of Sitecore across multiple disciplines – fear not. A successful marketing campaign requires a cross-functional team with many different skillsets. In the same way, this award seeks to recognize those who contribute in specific strategy-related areas.

Whether you are a UX practitioner designing campaign assets,  an analyst looking at metrics and analytics,  a content strategist producing personalization variants, a strategist planning a marketing automation campaign, an SEO specialist, or a content editor – all  these roles help drive business results on the Sitecore Experience Cloud platform .

A special shout-out to content specialists

In line with our mission of solving the content crisis, the Strategy MVP award is 100% open to practitioners focused on content strategy and operations.

If your role is related to content strategy, information architecture, content modeling, digital asset design or anything related to content production in Sitecore, we encourage you to apply. We are striving to expand the program in this area and celebrate these disciplines. And if you’re an existing MVP of any flavor who knows someone who would fit this category, please nominate them.

SMAC - we want you!

To increase participation in the Sitecore community across digital strategy roles, the Strategy MVP Advisory Council (SMAC) has been formed at the recent MVP Summit in Orlando. 

We want to see more aspiring MVPs from different roles getting involved in the Sitecore community and building their qualifications for nomination, and we want to grow and deepen our community around these roles. 

We'll be outlining a program of activities to inspire and promote the Strategy MVP community in 2020, and looking at defining clearer and more meaningful qualities for Strategy MVP nominations for 2021. But in the meantime, we're here to help for this current round of nominations. If you think you might qualify for Strategy MVP 2020, but would like some clarification or have questions, feel free to reach out and we'd be glad to assist!

Please contact your local SMAC member for advice or questions:

• Alison Sainsbury, Asia Pacific Japan
• Amanda Shiga, Americas
• Jacqueline Baxter, Americas
• Kristian von Magius, Europe Middle East Africa