--- title: "Mvp and community" url: "https://trailassembly.com/salesforce-mvp-and-community/" topic: "Career and Certification" published: "2026-09-21T06:24:20+00:00" updated: "2026-10-06T14:00:02+00:00" --- # Mvp and community **The quick version:** nobody becomes a Salesforce MVP by trying to become one, and the people who visibly want it rarely get it. The award recognises a pattern of helping other people that has already been going on for a couple of years, and it is nominated by the community and reviewed by Salesforce. Every person who holds it was doing the work before anyone suggested they might be recognised for it. If the title is the goal, the behaviour it rewards tends not to survive contact with the goal. ## What the award actually is An annual recognition, renewed rather than permanent, given to people who contribute knowledge, leadership and advocacy in the ecosystem. Nominations come from the community, applications are reviewed, and the cohort changes each year. Plenty of excellent, deeply generous people are not MVPs, which is worth saying because the absence means nothing. What it gets you in practice: some access, some early information under embargo, an invitation to a group of people who are unusually good at answering questions, and a line on your profile that recruiters recognise. What it does not get you: authority, a pay rise, or a shortcut past having to know things. ## What the contribution actually looks like Almost always one of these, sustained over a long time rather than done intensely for three months: - **Answering questions where nobody is watching.** The Trailblazer Community, Stack Exchange, Reddit, a regional Slack. The people who do this well answer the question that was asked and then the question underneath it. - **Running a community group.** Booking rooms, chasing speakers, turning up when eight people do instead of forty. Unglamorous and the single most valued contribution there is. - **Writing things down.** Posts about a problem you hit and solved, with the detail included. Specific beats polished every time. - **Speaking.** Starting at a local group, not a global conference. Ten minutes about a real thing you built is a perfectly good first talk. - **Open source and free tools.** Smaller pool, disproportionate impact, and the maintenance is the hard part. ## How to contribute without embarrassing yourself **Answer the questions you are slightly unqualified for.** Working out the answer properly and then writing it up is the most reliable learning mechanism available, and it produces better answers than the reflexive ones from people who already knew. **Show your working.** A code sample, a screenshot of the actual behaviour, a documentation link. An unsupported assertion from a stranger is worth nothing to the person reading. **Say when you are wrong.** Publicly, in the thread, and quickly. This builds more credibility than being right does, and the ecosystem has a long memory for people who quietly edit and move on. **Do not lift other people’s work.** Republishing a solution from a community thread as your own blog post is noticed, and the community is smaller than it looks. Cite where you got it. ## The parts nobody mentions It costs real time, unpaid, usually in your evenings. A community group leader spends several hours a month on logistics. Someone who writes regularly is giving up a weekend a month. Nobody sensible does this indefinitely on enthusiasm alone, and the people who burn out publicly usually did it by treating the community as a second job with no boundary. There is also a visible-work bias. Speaking at conferences gets recognised far more than mentoring three people privately for two years, even though the second is often worth more. If your contribution is quiet, that is fine, and it is worth knowing that quiet contribution is less likely to be nominated for anything. ## If you want it anyway Do the thing for two years without mentioning the award. Help people in public. Run something. Write down what you learned in enough detail that someone can follow it. Then, if a colleague nominates you, that is what the nomination is made of. There is no other route, and people who look for one tend to find the ecosystem quite resistant to it. ## Frequently asked **Do I have to be technical?** No. Admins, consultants, business analysts and trainers are all represented. Teaching and community organising count fully. **Does it have to be in English, or online?** Neither. Regional community groups and non-English content are genuinely underserved, and contribution there often reaches more people who need it. **What if I have nothing original to say?** Explain something ordinary better than the documentation does. The best-read posts in this ecosystem are usually explanations of things everybody was assumed to already understand. **Is it permanent?** No. It is reviewed each year and people do cycle out, usually because their circumstances changed rather than because anything went wrong. --- Source: https://trailassembly.com/salesforce-mvp-and-community/ Trail Assembly — independent Salesforce write-ups.