My MVP status was renewed today for another year. Thanks Microsoft. This is the fourth year for me. I remember the first time I got it, I was so surprised and excited that I drove to the house some 20 miles away where my husband was installing a roof (on a hot hot day, so I also brought him and his partner some ice cream) to show him!
The MVP Award recognizes contributions to the Microsoft Community over the past year and covers all Microsoft technologies, from Microsoft Office products, to developer products, server, XBox and more. Mine is for “Visual Developer - Visual Basic“. The award had originally been created to recognize people who went above and beyond in the Microsoft newsgroups. In recent years, the recognition has been expanded to include other types of community involvement as well, such as user group participation, online communities and more. There are MVPs all over the world and I'll make a guess that there are somewhere between 2500 and 3000.
You can find much more about the MVP Award here.