We say goodbye to the overindulging Festive Season and ring in the New Year with curious streamed stage performances in Sydney including Confidence Man.
While I still worked around the Public Holidays and commitments, it’s just another month right? Well now that most workplaces are back in swing, I opened up Outlook on my phone and I received the long-awaited and anxious email from… Microsoft Azure?
On closer inspection, it says Congratulations – oh cool another thing I’ve done… but I haven’t… OH! It’s happened!
I laughed. In disbelief – because it’s happened? In Confusion – because it’s for Intune? I laughed some more while I showed my wife and then scampered to the PC to Onboard to the MVP Program more excitedly than when I splashed on the recent Black Friday Sales.
So what does this mean? Like the above mentions, it’s about recognition of the contributions to the Tech Community. For more information: https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-US/mvp/overview
While the annual award looks back on the last trailing 12 months, this has been several years in the making – and I probably could have been nominated sooner.
The same tale I tell when meeting people and doing interviews on my passion for Modern Work and working towards MVP:
In February 2017, the child was about 3 weeks old – I left behind the wife and kid with the MIL and went to Microsoft Ignite in the Gold Coast.
I had been learning and working on Office 365 since 2013, and this was the first major conference I would attend.
Having not much information, experience, and know-how – I wasn’t sure what I would be expecting.
On the pre-event day, after receiving my beloved Ignite 2017 Targus backpack, I was introduced to some Microsoft MVPs. They were cool, and we took selfies.
For the rest of the conference, I was overwhelmed and excited. I met many like-minded people who were just as excited and interested in Microsoft’s products and services. And I met even more MVPs. And then I met Dux Raymond Sy; oh my word, what a guy. I believe I had set him as an idol and that I would attempt to aspire to his level of public speaking and contributions. Don’t know how long or how far it will be for me to achieve near his levels. I did catch up with him again last August at the DWC AU finally after the ‘Unprecedented Times’. It was good.
I had some conversations about what it is that they do and how they became MVPs and what else goes on. I was informed that some run User Groups and that there should be some in Adelaide as well!
So after the eye-opening experience and “Get Ignited” Red Party, I returned to Adelaide to hunt down these User Groups. At the time there was a fledgling Adelaide Office 365 User Group but that fizzled out. Daniel Brown ran the Adelaide SharePoint User Group, which is now the Adelaide Office 365 User Group – and he has just created the Adelaide Copilot User Group as well!
Also discovered the Adelaide Microsoft IT Pro Community Meetup, where Adam Fowler and Brett Moffett ran the show. I attended several Meetups and eventually joined them in co-ordinating/organising/presenting in the sessions.
After Adam started working at Microsoft, he relinquished his MVP title and commitments to the User Group and I inherited more responsibilities for it.
Adam actually nominated me for the award and provided plenty of advice along the journey. But several other MVPs (Darrell Webster, Rebecca Jackson, Daniel Anderson to name a few) were also there along the way to provide guidance and reassurance on my contributions through Blogging, the User Group, and just to “keep on keeping on”.
It has been quite the experience, from writing about weird and sometimes not-so-wonderful processes or bugs, and spending many a late night working through Microsoft Learn to get all those Certifications, to presenting virtually or to a physically empty room 😢 – some hard yards have been done now and there’s more to come to renew and retain the Award and hopefully achieve more in other Categories!
Look forward to the swag and activities to come!
#MVPbuzz
M365 Senpai 