Thank You Microsoft – I was awarded an MVP

I spent most of today with my head down coding trying to complete some changes to a report for my client and I wasn’t paying a whole lot of attention to my email.  It wasn’t until very late in the day that I noticed I had an email from the MVP program congratulating me on being awarded an MVP in Client App Dev.  Woot!  The first person I wanted to tell was my wife, who I couldn’t reach, so I spent most of the rest of the day happy as a clam (even if I was working with database stuff) and coding away.  I finally got to tell her this evening and now I’m announcing it here.

To be honest I wasn’t expecting this.  I had been nominated back in February and hadn’t been selected in the previous two rounds (MVP is awarded quarterly) so I had decided that I was pretty much a square peg that was hard to place into one of the round targeted MVP specialties.  My interest in technology goes well beyond one specific focus (those clearly heavily Microsoft-related) and wanders quite a bit (a little ADD maybe… ). 

I love working in the community.  If you were at the Kalamazoo X conference last year, or saw my blog post on community then you know I find the community very important.   While I am honored to be given this award, it’s a reminder to me that being in the community brings you all sorts of rewards.  Maybe not an MVP, or nth place on Community Credit, or top rep scores on Stack Overflow, but that’s not what it’s about anyway (at least not for me).  The real award is that it brings you into a group of very intelligent people who are passionate about the same things you are (even if they violently disagree with your coding practices/views/platform/choice of OS, etc.).  It allows you to meet people in your profession that are beyond the walls of your employer, or client, and learn from them.  You don’t have to be sent an email from Microsoft to reap those benefits, just start going to user groups and sharing your experiences in Open Spaces and online forums.

I’ve very happy to have been awarded the MVP, so.. thank you Microsoft.

PS - Thanks also to those that nominated me, and to my wife who gives me a TON of time to pursue my involvement in the community.