{"id":79556,"date":"2018-07-01T21:30:58","date_gmt":"2018-07-01T21:30:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/?p=79556"},"modified":"2019-08-15T13:49:28","modified_gmt":"2019-08-15T13:49:28","slug":"honored-and-humbled-to-get-my-14th-microsoft-mvp-award","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/blogs\/honored-and-humbled-to-get-my-14th-microsoft-mvp-award\/","title":{"rendered":"Honored and Humbled to get my 14th Microsoft MVP Award"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">I don&#8217;t know if I can put into words how much I appreciate this award, so I won&#8217;t try too hard. I will say that feels really weird to be happening in July. For the first 13 years I had the award, the announcement was my kind of unofficial launch of the holidays in early October. The award announcement occurring (or not), then the celebration (or healing) would include PASS Summit, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year\u2019s, and all that the final three months of the year hold. Leading up to the day usually meant a build-up of weeks of near cardiac episodes where every little thing set me off. No recent emails on the downloads? Must mean the end. No message about the MVP Summit? The sky is falling. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">But two things have changed over the past few years:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\"><span style=\"font-family: Calibri\">1.<\/span><span style=\"font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';margin: 0px\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><span style=\"font-family: Calibri\">The bar for the MVP program has been elevated. Popular MVPs didn\u2019t make the cut. We were warned. If what I had done didn\u2019t meet the requirements, so be it. I am loving being a part of this Simple-Talk community blogging, speaking 5-8 times a year, and working on the Program Management team at PASS and Music City Code. If it isn\u2019t enough, it just isn\u2019t, as I have aged 14 years since my first award, I need more exercise, sleep. and time at Disney World. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000\"><span style=\"font-family: Calibri\">2.<\/span><span style=\"font: 7pt 'Times New Roman';margin: 0px\">\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><span style=\"font-family: Calibri\"><span style=\"color: #000000\">In my yearly <\/span><a href=\"http:\/\/sqlblog.com\/blogs\/louis_davidson\/archive\/2017\/11\/17\/post-pass-summit-resolutions-2017.aspx\">state of affairs<\/a><\/span><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\"> blog for my SQL community involvement, I meant it what I said I would \u201cDevalue the MVP Award as one of my motivators\u201d. No matter how much I clearly want to stay in the program, I am setting the bar for my community involvement based on my desire and ability to be involved. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">This very much makes this award year\u2019s one of my favorites. It has felt less stressful, and more of a joy (until very early this morning when I admit to start checking my email WAY too early for an email that originates on the West Coast.)<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">While I am honored to get the award, I couldn&#8217;t do it without a lot of people. This starts with everyone reading my blog for your part in me keeping this award. Those of you who select\/ask me to come to your group\/event\/committee, to reading my blogs, and, perhaps more importantly, teaching me stuff that has made me better at what I do\u2026 I can\u2019t do this alone. I covet the time you and I spend together in person, virtually, and even time shifted. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000000;font-family: Calibri\">I won\u2019t promise I will make it to 15, or that I will stay active in the community past this blog post, but when I finish writing this one, I have blog to write about a SQL Saturday in two weeks, and I have an idea for a technical blog that need writing. So I wouldn\u2019t bet against id.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t know if I can put into words how much I appreciate this award, so I won&#8217;t try too hard. I will say that feels really weird to be happening in July. For the first 13 years I had the award, the announcement was my kind of unofficial launch of the holidays in early&#8230;&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":56085,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[60283,60284],"coauthors":[19684],"class_list":["post-79556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs","tag-mvp","tag-mvp-award"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/56085"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79556"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79556\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":79557,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79556\/revisions\/79557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79556"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.red-gate.com\/simple-talk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=79556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}