Microsoft MVP For Eight Straight

I am happy, honored, and humbled to receive the Microsoft MVP award for the eight straight year.

Having April 1st as your renewal date is a mixed bag. I can still recall my first award and how it got caught in the company spam folder, meaning I didn’t get my email until April 2nd. Good times.

I am not able to explain why I am considered an MVP and others are not. I do my best to help others. I value people and relationships over money. I play around with lots of Microsoft data tools and applications and I like to blog about things I find interesting. Sometimes those blogs are close to fanboi level, other times they are not. But I do my best to remember that there are people over in Redmond that work hard on delivering quality. Sometimes they miss, and I do my best to help them stay on target. Maybe that’s why they keep me around.

And a shout out to Tim Hall (blog | @oraclebase) who was renewed as an Oracle ACE today as well. We’ve never met in meatspace, but data has binded us virtually for several years. It’s that type of connection that supersedes companies, platforms, and pieces of tech. We are here for the data, to help others get value from data, and to help each other.

We do these things because we want to, not because we want an award.

Perhaps that’s the difference.