Kentico Community Programs in 2025 - MVPs and Community Leaders

Kentico is excited to announce and congratulate 👏 the community members awarded Kentico MVP for 2025.

We also want to share the exciting launch of a new program - Kentico Community Leaders - and celebrate the first individuals to be awarded with this status who will also help define it for the future.

Finally, we'll describe changes to the Kentico MVP program and compare it to the Kentico Community Leaders program. For those of you interested in increasing your participation in the Kentico community and throwing your hat in the ring for the 2026 awards we will explain how you can learn more about both.

Kentico MVPs

This year we had many candidates for Kentico's MVP Program and we would like to thank the community for their interest and active engagement promoting and discussing Xperience by Kentico in 2024.

The Kentico MVP Program has grown steadily the past several years, mirroring growth in Xperience by Kentico and Kentico's business.

It's great to see all of our MVPs from 2024 have been re-awarded the status for 2025. Additionally, today we welcome 4 new individuals to the program, bringing our total up to 15 MVPs.

• Derek Barka, CTO for SilverTech
• Joe Peschardt, Client Business Director for Devotion Digital
• Ben Quinlan, Director and Solution Architect for Zeroseven
• Łukasz Skowroński, Senior Solutions Architect for Konabos

Please join us in congratulating the 2025 Kentico MVPs listed below for their accomplishment.

Kentico Community Leaders

Here at Kentico we love seeing our community - our partners and customers - be successful by growing their knowledge and use of Xperience by Kentico. We want to support that growth and the folks using Xperience every day.

In that spirit, we are announcing a new Kentico community program - Kentico Community Leaders - and the individuals awarded this status for 2025. Since the program did not exist in 2024, these founding members will help define what it is to be a Community Leader through their efforts.

Today, we are recognizing them for their contributions to the Kentico community in 2025 and for helping to start something new with the goal of growing the Kentico community in size, empowerment, and impact.

Our first Kentico Community Leaders are the following individuals.

• Danny Paul van Iersel, Senior Software Developer Team Lead for Blastic
• Milan Lund a freelance Kentico expert
• Mike Rahel, Owner of Refined Element

Kentico community programs

Kentico's MVP Program began back in January 2010... 15 years, wow has it been that long!?! 😅

In that time the program has evolved from a recognition of technically-focused individuals answering questions on DevNet and promoting Kentico in channels that could reach .NET developers. Back then this was a valuable way of growing Kentico's brand visibility and business.

The DXP and martech landscape has changed significantly over these 15 years and continues to evolve at a rapid pace.

Even though software developers and IT administrators are an important part of successful DXP solutions, our messaging now speaks first to marketers since they are they day-to-day users of Xperience and their departments are most often responsible for martech product selection and purchasing.

The DXP ecosystem has also become much more competitive, with a number of product choices and organizations often migrating between vendors based on their marketing team's goals, product capabilities and roadmap, and total cost of ownership.

The Kentico MVP Program

To best align the Kentico MVP Program with our commercial strategy and guarantee its reach and impact we are evolving the program to focus on our MVPs' strategic value for Kentico. This reinforces the meaning of term MVP (Most Valuable Professional) for the program and makes room for new kinds of community recognition (hint, hint 😉).

What does this mean for current MVPs and MVP candidates in the future? Much will be the same! You'll still see MVPs at our sponsored events like Kentico Partner Days, Partner Connection, and local Kentico meetups. MVPs will still contribute to our open-source presence for Xperience by Kentico and join the community in discussions about Xperience and DX (digital experience) topics on LinkedIn and the Kentico Community Portal.

The main difference is Kentico MVPs will begin to focus more on the following.

• Direct feedback through collaboration with Kentico teams on product and commercial strategy.
• Explaining how Xperience by Kentico helps solve digital marketing challenges to more diverse audiences.
• Produce content that grows their visibility as thought leaders on digital experience topics.

To summarize, Kentico MVPs are defined below.

Kentico community members are awarded the MVP (Most Valuable Professional) designation for their strategic professional value to Kentico.

MVPs are a select group of digital marketing industry experts and are community representatives of Kentico to partners and customers.

MVPs publicly share digital marketing thought leadership and insights about Xperience by Kentico capabilities and implementations. They engage with Kentico through direct collaboration with feedback on our commercial, product, and customer experience strategy.

Kentico MVPs focus on helping us communicate the why of Xperience by Kentico.

The Kentico Community Leaders Program

With our Kentico MVPs focusing on feedback and collaboration with Kentico and speaking to a wider external audience, we need experts to step up and help with our community support and growth internally.

Community Leaders produce important "how-to" blog posts, promote information about Kentico on LinkedIn, experiment with Xperience by Kentico, participate in discussions on the Kentico Community Portal, and share what it's like to work day-to-day on Xperience by Kentico projects.

To summarize, Kentico Community Leaders are defined below.

Kentico community members are awarded the Community Leader designation when they go above and beyond with community participation.

Kentico Community Leaders are enthusiastic community members who consistently promote the effective use of Xperience by Kentico and publicly share their insights working with Xperience by Kentico through public channels and events with Kentico's support.

Community Leaders help nurture and grow the Kentico community, making it a welcoming and educational environment for new and experienced Kentico users.

Kentico Community Leaders focus on helping us communicate the how of Xperience by Kentico.

What's next?

I am really excited to work with our MVPs and newly formed Community Leaders in 2025. The difference in community engagement between 4 years ago and today is noticeable and I can't wait to see the impact these folks will have in 2025.

More information about our community programs can be found on a new dedicated Programs page on the Kentico Community Portal, which is in development and we will continue to update.

We will soon describe each program in more details and include a form you can fill out to express your interest in learning more about the programs by booking a meeting with me 🤗.

We'll also be updating Kentico.com to point to all the Kentico Community Program information over here.

Again, congratulations to all award recipients this year. 2025, here we come!