For me July 1st has always been an anxious day. No matter how many times I’ve been awarded as an MVP I’m always nervous when my anniversary comes around and its time to be evaluated for a re-award. This year I am being joined by all the other MVPs as Microsoft consolidates and makes July 1st the re-award date for everyone. But other changes in the program made this year’s wait more disconcerting than normal. You can now have community contributions noted in multiple areas, but that also means that your contributions may be diluted by being split up. But for the 10th year Microsoft has decided that my contributions to the SharePoint and Office 365 community were sufficient to earn me an MVP award again for the category of “Office Servers and Services”. In the coming year I will continue to focus on SharePoint and Office 365. But this year I hope to also expand by digging back into Dynamics CRM, especially how it integrates with Office 365.
I continue to start each day by answering a few questions on the MSDN and TechNet Forums. But am also hoping to expand my presence on the public Yammer forums and the Microsoft Tech Community. As a former trainer I still get excited by providing answers to interesting questions for people. Finding the answers to these questions often teaches me new things about SharePoint and Office 365. I’m also looking forward to continuing to share what I know at several conferences this year. I’m always looking for new topics that people would like to hear about. If you have a question or a topic then drop me a line and my next talk may be inspired by you.
I’m also always inspired by my friends and colleagues in the MVP program. The knowledge they have continues to amaze me and its a definite advantage to have so many intelligent friends. This last year has seen a number of my MVP friends leave the program to join Microsoft as employees. That is a constant reminder of all the great people who work for Microsoft. Being able to network with them is also a great privilege.
But the bottom line is still that I wouldn’t be an MVP if it weren’t for all of you out there in the SharePoint community. Its been great to meet all of you in person and thanks for all the questions that you’ve asked. As long as you keep asking questions and listening to me at conferences I’ll keep trying to learn more and share what I’ve learned with all of you. Without you I wouldn’t be receiving this award. I hope to continue to live up to the honor and hope that I never get complacent about what its really about: Helping to support the SharePoint and Office 365 community.
