I received the Microsoft MVP Award 2020

I received the Microsoft MVP Award 2020

Yesterday I received the email informing me that I received the Microsoft MVP Award 2020. July 1st is that time of the year that as a Microsoft MVP you find out if you are renewed for the new fiscal year. I was. That was cause for a celebration. But I had to wait a bit to shout out my happiness as I was in a Teams meeting on Veeam Backup for Azure.

I received the Microsoft MVP Award 2020

I enjoy being a Microsoft MVP

I am thrilled to be awarded as an MVP again. To this day I remain in the Cloud & Datacenter category which is a very good fit for me. As I do indeed work across both worlds. That’s where I help fill the gap to ensure digital transformations go smooth & you don’t lose out wherever you run your solutions. There are many creative solutions to be designed in hybrid scenarios and at the edge. Places where you can investigate, research, and find opportunities to build those creative solutions.

People who follow me know I don’t just copy/paste “best practices.” I research what works best and come up with ways to leverage technologies. I apply out of the box thinking to deliver excellent value for money efficiently and effectively. Then, I share my experiences and what I learn by writing, blogging, and speaking. That includes my successes and failures, as we learn from both.

What do I do?

I like to work end to end. The full-stack. No silos. There is no hiding behind another team or blocking another team. You could describe me as a multi-pronged T. Various prongs go deeper based on need or interest. But there are many and the T is wide so we can act and work without needing to much help to get something going. For one, this also enables me to give feedback with enough real-world knowledge to be valuable. Secondly, it keeps me honest. I do not just do design, I deploy it and support it. It has to work. I dislike support or consulting with tunnel vision or that design only for maximum profit instead of for the need at hand. My approach leaves money for better solutions and saves money in the long run. What I learn and see I take back to Microsoft in feedback, in discussion and interactions with the program managers. That is valuable for me as well as I learn a lot from them as well. In the end, it leads to better products and experiences for all of the community and customers.

I received the Microsoft MVP Award 2020

I enjoy being a Microsoft MVP for the opportunities it gives me to learn and share with like-minded people from all over the globe. While it takes a village to raise a child, the child needs to get out of the village into the world to evolve and keep learning. Today that is easier then ever before thanks to technology which eliminates many boundaries.

2020 is a bit of a special year

Talking about the globe at the time of writing. In a time of Corona and COVID-19 running amok in the world, it is our technology that makes this still possible while we do not travel en limit ourselves for the better good of all. I am proud to say that our technologies were in place to go in lockdown immediately without having to scramble for solutions. telecommuting is something we did already routinely and technologies could scale up and out, both on-premises and in the cloud, both in the areas where they excel.

That, combined with living in a country where we have universal healthcare and social benefits (taxes for the better good of all) helped ease the blow we all received. We all have shortcomings. But as a nation, businesses, and people we were ready, willing, and able to do what needed to be done.

All this means that this year and next year we do not have an in-person MVP Summit.

I received the Microsoft MVP Award 2020
A reminder of great times in Redmond & Bellevue

That saddens me. The face to face discussions from breakfast till literally in the hotel hallways before we go to sleep are priceless. Those chats with our peers and Microsoft employees are very insightful rewarding and educational. That experience and intensity are hard to recreate in a virtual event. We are all eager to get past lockdown, social distancing, and travel restrictions. We can only achieve this by self-discipline and acting responsibly at our own personal and local level. That and relentless efforts to find a vaccine, which, hopefully, will grant us back some of the privileges we enjoy.

Good intentions for 2020-2021

While I am very happy to receive the Microsoft MVP Award 2020 I want to make sure all recipients feel appreciated and are able to be themselves in our community. I plan to pay extra care into making sure that diversity, inclusiveness, and equity are always on the radar. My extra effort in order to keep the community a welcome and safe place for all.

A small gift

As a special give on the 1st of July, Microsoft made Azure Firewall Manager generally available. I have been working with this in preview the last couple of months. Today I am very pleased I can start using it in production!

Happy New Year & Microsoft MVP 2017 Renewal

Happy new year to all of you. May you and your loved ones enjoy good health, happiness, prosperity and interesting work and studies in 2017.

image

 

While I enjoy the time off around new year and appreciate the comfort of a soap stone wood stove on a cold winter evening I also enjoy IT work.Luckily, as I cannot retire yet to enjoy road trips for sightseeing and hiking for the remainder of my time on this planet.

Designing, building, deploying, supporting & troubleshooting high available on premises, hybrid and cloud infrastructure is what I love to do. Today that means ever more a software defines approach. That doesn’t mean you have to work at Amazon, Google or Microsoft. That means you have to investigate how PowerShell, DSC, JSON & Azure Automation can help you achieve your goals. That also doesn’t mean you don’t have understand clustering, networking, storage or virtualization anymore yet. Trust me on that.

This afternoon I also received my renewal e-mail as a Microsoft MVP in the Cloud and Datacenter Management expertise. This is my sixth award and I’m as happy, honored and proud to be one as ever.

MVP_Logo_Horizontal_Preferred_Cyan300_CMYK_300ppi

2017 will be filled with many Windows Server 2016 projects on top of our already strong start in 2016 after it became generally available. These projects will be tied to some new cloud efforts in Azure, efforts that surpass IAAS alone.

The IT world evolves and moves fast but technology doesn’t disappear over night. Keeping things tied together, moving forward to the new, leveraging new capabilities, enabling new opportunities and staying up to date takes a serious effort. Sharing what we learn with the global community is what the MVP program recognizes and stimulates. We all learn together and advance by sharing experiences and knowledge. We also help each other out and this year I’ve seen and participated in a number of cases where community members and fellow MVPs came together when needed to solve some serious problems.

Blue ring to celebrate 5 years as a Microsoft MVP

A week ago I got a package in the post. It contained a smaller box with in it a blue ring to celebrate 5 years as a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). First in the Hyper-V expertise and now in Cloud and Datacenter Management.

MVPAward5Years

To all the people and organizations that have given me opportunities, that supported me and trusted me, I’d like to say thank you. It’s been a blast to be able to learn, test, design, build ad support so many solutions over the years. Sharing those experiences and insights helped me grow as much as anyone else. I’m convinced that every Euro or Dollar spent on my growth has had a ROI much greater than it ever cost. The mission for the years ahead is to keep learning and evolving. The job is for paying bills but all the effort and time spent is another occupational level, one I hope every one finds to have fun  whilst working.

Thank you!

A MVP once more in 2015 – happy New Year from a renewed MVP

Happy New Year people! May 2015 bring you happiness,  good health,  and good jobs/projects/customers with real opportunities for growth & advancement. Don’t forget to step out of the office, away from the consoles once in a while to enjoy the wonderful experiences and majestic views this world has to offer.

image

Being an January 1st MVP (my expertise is Hyper-V) means that every year on new years day I might get an e-mail to inform me I have been renewed, or not. Prior to that our MVP lead will contact us to make sure we have updated our community activities and they’ll decide on whether we’re MVP material, or not.  Today I received this e-mail awarding me the MVP award for 2015.

image

It remains a special feeling to receive the award.  It’s recognition for what you’ve done and it means that I can enjoy the benefits that come with it: the MVP Global Summit and the interaction with the product groups at Microsoft. The summit is very valuable to me and if I knew the dates I would already book my flights and the hotel right now.

Some people think it makes us fan boys but I can assure you that’s not the case. Microsoft hears the great, the good, the bad and the ugly from us. And yes, they appreciate that as they cannot and do not want to live in an Ivory tower. So they need feedback and we’re a part of the feedback loop. We MVPs are a good mix of customers, consultants, partners & businesses working with their technologies & helping out the community to make the best use of them. Microsoft puts it like this:

“The Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award is our way of saying thank you to exceptional, independent community leaders who share their passion, technical expertise, and real-world knowledge of Microsoft products with others.”

The fact that we are independent is an important factor here. It makes us a valuable resource pool of hands on experience to mix in with other feedback channels. As Aidan Finn wrote in his blog post, Feedback Matters Once Again In Microsoft, it does indeed matter. Again? It always did but they listen more and better now Winking smile. They don’t need an "echo chamber" they value opinions, insights and experiences. The MVP award is for the things you’ve done and do. Sure, there is a code of conduct but that doesn’t mean you cannot voice your concerns. "Independent" means that what we say doesn’t have to be sugar coated marketing. Our value is in the fact that we help out the community (their customers, partners and Microsoft itself) in the better use and development of their solutions base on our real world experiences. Microsoft discusses that here.

It opens up doors and creates opportunities, and for that I’m grateful as well. For my employers/customers it means that when you hire me you get access to not just my skills and expertise but to the collective knowledge and experience of a global network of passionate experts that have a proven track record of engagement and are recognized internationally for that. Not too shabby is it Winking smile.