Monday, November 18, 2002		Feature

HE'S 23. He’s a certified nerd and now he’s one of the 33 Indians felicitated by Microsoft with the Most Valued Professional (MVP) Award. And he’s the only one from the whole region to have achieved it this year.

That’s Gaurav ‘PC Clean’ Khanna, a son of Chandigarh-based communication engineering professor. A product of DAV institutions, Gaurav’s ambition was to be a pilot that later evolved into fiddling with silicon. He has a number of successful software under his belt, the most famous being PC Clean, an anti-virus software.

Currently working for analyst programmer for Dryden Technologies, Australia, Gaurav has spoken at numerous seminars and has numerous hardcore programming publications up his sleeve. He’s also taken up highly technical projects on GIS, ASP .NET and Web-based technical support systems.

Gaurav loves to solve other person’s problems through newsgroups and message boards. In fact, it was this skill of his that was monitored by Microsoft.

About his present plans, he intends implementing real time project for instant messengers and guide. NET-based user groups.

Another person who has some roots in the region and has also been awarded the MVP for his contribution to the newsgroups and technical peers is Nimish Mathur. Nimish is a UK-based Indian, and visits Chandigarh off and on to see his relatives settled here. The creditable thing about this Differentis networking engineer is that he is a self-taught man and did not attend any computer class.

Nimish, who plans to get married shortly, had been actively participating in the Microsoft Active Directory and Networking newsgroups with an effort to help the ones who were lost in the mist of inexperience. He had been mostly involved in troubleshooting active directory problems, migration techniques, system maintenance and fail-safe recovery. Later, he plans to expand his work to other areas like Unix and ERP.

Microsoft established the MVP Award almost a decade ago to recognise individuals for their outstanding contributions in a wide range of community activities. From newsgroup to top user group, Websites and message boards worldwide, MVP status is awarded to the most active online community gurus for their technical expertise, voluntary willingness to share their experience and commitment to helping others realise their potential within Microsoft technical communities. - PA