>>Every accounting software vendor that I know of supports some kind of community of VAR's who sell its products. Invariably the vendor, to use your term, "annoints" the leaders of the community who usually also happen to be the largest volume sellers.
Equating MVPs to IT product resellers with anointment and rewards for whales who shift the most product? Your words, not mine. ;-)
>>My brother is in the life insurance business and that industry invented the "community" idea by organizing groups of large producers.
Not sure I see the professional anointment. Are you equating a MVP to an insurance broker on commission? If so, surely the message is that incentivization/payment by the vendor carries the risk that advice is directed by incentive offerings more than customer interest.
>>Back in the mainframe days, IBM created GUIDE - a group of IBM mainframe users - and subsidized periodic meetings and annual conventions. GUIDE officers also happened to be associated with the largest installations.
IT again. I was referring to "professionals" and in other spheres. How about law? Medicine? Dentistry? Veterinary? Who appoints their gurus?
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
