Recently, a newsgroup user found my MSN ID and starts msn me. Well of coz, I don't really like to do newsgroups support over MSN, so he changed the subject to what is MVP? as usual, I just give him this link. Bla bla bla..... we continue to chat, well it was about 15mins. One of the question was - how do you spend your day as a MVP? and you seems pretty active online, don't you have a day job :)
FYI, I do have a day job :) let's not talk about it here. They have 'eyes' everywhere ! Now, I'm an IIS MVP, so I in most of the IIS related communities, of coz skip those others languages specific community. E.g. .jp, .kr and etc. Here's where I go everyday :)
First, ASP.NET, IISFaq, and IIS-Resources. Postings for the above 3 web based forums take about 10 percent of my total participation. I still preferred NNTP based of discussion ! Then I will move on the public newsgroups. that's msnews.microsoft.com, or this if you insist on web based. I have almost everything related *.iis and .inetserver.*. And yes, I can read, write both Chinese (Simp and Trad) and I do speak Mandarin, Cantonese and bla bla :) To bad, I don't know japanese, If not, I would have cover the .jp group as well. For public group, I have all together about 20+ groups, including windows.server.security and others, some of them are for reading and information only. This server has the highest postings, average I will get about 800-1K, of coz I don't really read each item, but I do read MOST of the items.
Next, private server in .cn and .directaccess, about 10 groups in total, mainly related to IIS and SQL (read only) - traffic in these groups are moderate, about 150 max on the weekdays and few over the weekend. Finally, the MVP private newsgroups, I hardly post here unless I need help, but the traffic here is quite high ! well, ranging from hard core technical discussion to something completely off topic :) I can't tell you more because it is under NDA restriction.
Now, that's pretty much the core part. for some extra cheese, I help few local communities as well - including MIND, and MOPIT, don't ask me what kinda of name is that? I have no clues, I'm just there to help. Traffic is low, but it is picking up slowly, and hopefully will see more quality posts there.
The conversation continue.... so how long you take to read all the posts? Now, that's the tricky part, in total I spent about 3 - 4 hrs each day. 15% if I'm free during office hours :) then the remaining after dinner or middle of the night. When I'm traveling, it's very hard to catch up, and it could end up as much as 5 to 6k postings depending on how long I'm abroad. Then came the next question, why do you want to do it? The answer is simple! because I love it :) because that's something I'm interested, because I can learn a lot from newsgroups, because I can find satisfaction in the newsgroups, because I can get to know more people, because ..... the list just go on and on..... last but not least ! because I'm a MVP, and that's part of the nomination criterias you need to fulfilled. Of coz, don't do it because of the award, if yes I don't think you would last wrong.
It's coming to the third years and I'm glad that I'm still part of the team! Oh, I finally got my profile up at MS site, here's the link.