I am delighted and overwhelmed to announce that Microsoft have given me the gift of ‘Most Valuable Professional‘ Award. If you are reading this blog, it’s because I have wanted to say ‘thank you’ to you, in a way that’s communicates more than a 140 character tweet 🙂 If you don’t know what an MVP is, my thoughts on this follow directly, and I look forward to your opinions.
I am overwhelmed by the kind responses from the SQL Server community. I wanted to say how grateful I am for the welcome that the SQL Server community, right from the start. I have commented previously about the SQL Server community being a great community, because of the ‘helping hand’ we all give one another. The number of good wishes by tweets, emails, phone and text messages have been testament to that, and I’m delighted to be part of this community.
What is an MVP? In my opinion, the MVP Award is, for me, a focus on ‘other’ people – helping people in the community, and helping individuals at Microsoft to be clear about users’ opinions. In my opinion, the MVP isn’t a career ‘goal’, which necessarily focuses on the ‘self’ rather than others.
In my opinion, being an MVP is a focus on helping members of the community. For example, assistance can be offered either directly by offering advice and technical expertise via blogs, speaking, twitter, forums for example. It can also be done by taking customer and user perspectives back to Microsoft, and ensuring that the users’ voices are ‘heard’ in the direction of the Microsoft product range. I will be interested in other people’s thoughts on this, and please do leave feedback on my site.
Since we are a community, the MVP Award isn’t a sole achievement. So here are a few examples:
– Thank you to the SQLBits team for allowing me the opportunity to speak. If you are debating over whether to submit a session – please do. You won’t be sorry. Being part of the SQLBits community has given me many friends, and speaking has meant that I can reach out to people.
– Thank you to the SQLPass team for giving me the opportunity to do the SQLPASS 24 hour hop webinar. Again, it brought me in touch with many people in the community, and gave me the experience of doing a webinar.
– Thank you to Microsoft for offering the MVP Award program – for me, it shows their interest and emphasis in community, and in what users’ think.
– Now it’s ‘big lump in throat’ time – I have to thank the many people I’ve met in the community at User Groups, community events and whom I’ve met remotely over twitter. There are too many to mention. Some of my best friends are in the community – I hope they know who they are!
I am looking forward to contributing to the Microsoft community now and in the future. I’ve had a fantastic time being part of the community, and look forward to even more!
