No Longer a Microsoft MVP–Hello MVP Reconnect
Today marks the first time in nearly a decade that I am no longer an MVP. I will be joining the MVP alum in the MVP Reconnect program.
Getting the MVP award every year has become a great side benefit and validation, but the real achievements have been in working with the community and all the things that we’ve accomplished over the last decade!
When I first received the Microsoft MVP award in 2010, it was an achievement I had been working towards and it was something that really validated the work I was doing in the community. It was a goal I had set – to become a Microsoft MVP. When I got it, I was so excited and felt like Microsoft folks were really paying attention to what I was doing. Keep in mind back then that open source wasn’t even a contribution category, but I was doing a lot of talks in the community and working on the Chuck Norris Framework.
After achieving the award for the first time, my focus shifted to primarily doing great things in the community. A lot of that for the last few years has been hands on and I’ve been at the forefront of those efforts. And accordingly, Microsoft continued to validate that what I was doing was important and helpful for developers using Microsoft technologies.
Over the last few years, my role has shifted a bit to building a long term viable business to support the Chocolatey community. This means managing a business and building an amazing team that can help move my vision forward. This last year especially I’ve been focused in that effort of building a great team and that has meant that I’ve had less visible contributions. I’ve been focused enabling my team to do great things, and two of them are MVPs, which is fantastic!
I’m certainly very appreciative of my time as an MVP and have met a lot of amazing folks in the MVP community! I would have loved to have that 10 year blue disk, but Microsoft has rightly saw that my contributions over the last year have not been up to the standard of other folks out there and has made a proper decision on that front.
One thing I will miss is filling out the renewal paperwork every year as it forced me to take some time to reflect on all the great work we were doing in the community, and it put numbers to that work. I think I will look for my own time to do that reflection at some interval, hopefully a bit more often than annually. I always think of this Ferris Bueller quote when I take a moment to reflect. It’s certainly a great quote to apply to your life:
“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in awhile, you could miss it.” – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off
Thank you Microsoft for the opportunity and validation over the years – I’m going to continue doing great things in the community and maybe that will bring me back to the MVP award, but maybe it won’t. And that is totally fine.
