I’m very proud to have been selected to be a Microsoft Data Platform MVP for the 3rd year running. Until you’ve finally ‘signed’ the NDA you’re not sure if you’re going to be re-confirmed or if there’s been an admin mistake.
It’s quite a bit of waiting from the end of March to now to find out if you’re activities have been deemed worthy of renewal. No one’s quite sure what you have to do to become and MVP, which is good because it allows Microsoft to reward different skill sets or pick people who support the community in different ways, which just adds to the suspense as you don’t even know what or how much they’re looking for.
I gave myself a little talk the night before, about how I’d spent the year doing all of the things I normally do in the community and enjoying myself whilst doing them. So if I wasn’t reconfirmed then I’d lost absolutely nothing. My technical skills were going to be exactly the same and the talks I present would be just the same in terms of quality and content.
I think if you’re just doing community events to ‘rack up points’, you’re missing quite a big point. If you’re only doing something to try to become (or keep) being an MVP then it’ll probably be noticed, but not in the way you want to be.
Having run events before and after becoming an MVP I can tell you that it’s not the though of ‘MVP points’ that keep you going when things breakdown, it’s the wanting to provide something fun and interesting for people in your community.
All of the MVPs I know and have met, are doing this because it’s fun. This makes working with them or learning from them fun. Someone who’s just ‘grinding’ away trying to level up will not be as much fun to learn from or cooperate with, and people will notice.
So if you’re a fellow recertified MVP, well done for keeping on doing what you’ve been doing so well. Hopefully we’ll start bumping into each other again once life is less virtual
Or if you fancy becoming an MVP one day, then get into things because they’re fun and things may happen along the way. If you don’t become an MVP, then at least you’ll have had a lot of fun along the way and met a lot of great people who are part of the technical community.
So this year I’m just going to keep on doing what I do each year and fingers crossed, this time in 2021 I’ll be looking at MVP number 4. If not, I’ll still have a grin thinking about everything I did and more knowledge than I do today, so nothing to be upset about there.
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