Canonical Developer Advocate Named Microsoft MVP

We would like to congratulate Hayden Barnes, a Developer Advocate at Canonical for Ubuntu on WSL, who was awarded MVP (Most Valuable Professional) by Microsoft for 2020-2021 for his contributions to the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) community.

The Microsoft MVP Award is awarded annually by Microsoft to technology experts who passionately share their knowledge with the community. This award is a wonderful recognition for how he has empowered WSL users and been a true innovator.

“For more than two decades, the Microsoft MVP Award is our way of saying ‘Thanks!’ to outstanding community leaders. The contributions MVPs make to the community, ranging from speaking engagements, to social media posts, to writing books, to helping others in online communities, have incredible impact.”

– Microsoft MVP Program

Hayden is the founder of WSLConf, the first community conference dedicated to WSL, held March 10-11, 2020. Hayden joined Canonical in 2019 and leads Ubuntu on WSL development and advocacy. He regularly blogs, speaks at conferences, assists WSL users on social media and GitHub, appears on podcasts, and finds new and interesting uses for WSL. Hayden is also writing a book on advanced WSL to be published by Apress in 2021.

The WSL team at Canonical has since grown to include myself, Sohini Roy, Product Manager on Ubuntu on WSL, and Patrick Wu, Lead Engineer on Ubuntu on WSL. In collaboration with the Canonical Public Cloud and Field Engineering teams the WSL team provides the most popular Linux distribution for WSL for individual developers and enterprise clients.