Category Archives: MVP

Concluding My Summit, Conference & Community Engagements for 2014

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After Redmond (MVP Global Summit 2014), which was a great experience I flew to Berlin to attend and speak at the Microsoft Technical Summit 2014 on “What’s New In Windows Server 2012 R2 Clustering”. Germany has a seriously engaged ITPro & Dev scene, that’s for sure, and the session room was packed! Afterwards some interesting questions popped up in the hallways. That’s great as question really make us think about technologies and solutions from other view points and perspectives.

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After Berlin I was off to Experts Live 2014 in Ede (The Netherlands) where I presented on “The capable & Scalable Cloud OS”. The talk went well and I had a great crowd attending with whom I had some great chats after the session.

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That concluded the third leg of my international road tour where I invest in myself, the community & the people I work with. Never ever stop learning Smile. Normally this also concludes my traveling schedule for 2014 unless I’m needed/requested somewhere to help out. Being an MVP is about sharing in the community. The only way to prosper is to share the knowledge, experience and the wealth. It provides for a healthy ecosystem from which we all reap the benefits. This should be promoted and facilitated. There is too much expertise & knowledge not being leveraged due to the fact it’s economically unfeasible, and that’s a waste when people are screaming for IT skills. In a war for talent, any waste is surely very counter productive?

TechEd North America 2014 Session

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There is something extremely rewarding about seeing your name on the intro slide of a TechEd USA presentation. I helped deliver What’s New in Windows Server 2012 R2 Hyper-V together with Ben Armstrong yesterday and it was quite the experience.

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A big thank you to Ben and Microsoft for the confidence they have shown in me and the opportunity to do this. A mention to our CEO who has the ability to look beyond the daily needs and facilitates his and encourages his employees to get out of the village to learn, grow and prosper. This is the principle one of my high school teachers lived and worked by, help people be all they can be.

The IT community around the Microsoft ecosystem is both a local and a global one. In this day and age knowledge gets shared and flows freely. People work with people and with organizations. No one gets anywhere in isolation.I’m happy to see so may of my buddies do so well. It’s great to see people succeed, grow, enjoy their work and reap the fruits of their efforts. Look at Benedict Berger who was presenting in the room next to ours or Aidan Finn, a long time community member and experienced speaker who won speaker idol and by doing so secured a speaker slot for next year. This has many reasons and one of them is people believing in you and giving you the chance to grab opportunities. To those I say, thank you very much!

2014 Kicks Offs With A Microsoft MVP Award Renewal!

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I can start of the new year at the office tomorrow by whishing everyone a great 2014 and talking to the CEO about making sure we schedule/budget for the MVP Summit in 2014 as I just got this e-mail in:

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This is great news. Somewhere this month, a box will arrive at my house with a new ring for the award trophy and a new MVP Certificate. The trophy itself stands proudly on a cupboard in my parents living room. I might have earned the award, but they made sure I was given the little backpack with the values & the education to make that possible. And while they don’t really understand the technicalities of what I do, they think the world of it when I fly of to the USA because Microsoft likes to talk to me Smile.

While you get the MVP award for contributions over the past year to the community you must realize that being active in the community is a very rewarding endeavor in itself. No, it’s not like you can put a hard dollar amount on it, nor want to. The value is that you help out a lot of people and in return effectively crowd source your IT issues to a global community. It help other and yourself learn and grow. We constantly need to figure out a lot of things in our line of business. Studying, thinking, analyzing, designing, implementing & supporting a wide ever changing IT stack is not a one person or one team job. Sharing insights & experiences (both good and bad) with your peers helps a lot. You grow a global network of highly motivated, experienced & skilled people. A network you can leverage & consult when you need it. A network that you contribute to when you can, where you can. That’s what it’s about. The cost of participating is dwarfed by the return as many hand help make hard work easier. Good bosses & smart organizations have figured this out. During a panel discussion at Dell World Jonathan Copeland used the metaphor that it take a village to raise a kid. I added to it that one day that kid needs to leave the village and go out into the world. Being active in communities helps with both. I’ve also talked about this here.

I’m very happy with my 2014 MVP Award. I cherish the interaction with my fellow MVPs and Microsoft. The 2014 MVP Global Summit is already on my agenda. I’m grateful for the opportunities it brings and the continuous privilege of learning & sharing. See you all on line, at conferences, think tanks & community events & in Bellevue/Redmond.