On November 1, 2019, I received an email stating that I had been awarded Microsoft MVP in Developer Technologies for my community contributions.
I was actually in a conference call with some work folks when I received the email, and I may have - MAY - have got a little excited and interjected that I had received it. Okay, not “may”, definitely “did”.
I was nominated back in June (or July?) of 2019, so I knew I was “in the system”. I regularly had to go and log contributions into the website for things that I had done. And, that’s when it hit me. I hadn’t just got nominated for current contributions. You see, I had to log, approximately, the last year’s worth. I realized while doing that, that I had been doing some of those things for a while. And, while I most likely said to myself at some point, “let’s go for MVP”, I had been working towards it for quite some time without necessarily realizing it.
Why is that?
Because I was doing what I loved doing. It just so happens that a lot of what I love doing, overlaps into MVP territory.
You see, I had started submitting PRs against documentation to various repositories (though, honestly, mostly Microsoft docs because thats usually where I spend most of my time). I started open sourcing my own creations (you can find them on my github profile). Some of those creations were developed on my live stream (which I also started during that time frame). Of course, one of the unfortunate things about streaming on Twitch is that the videos will “disappear” after a short time period, so I also ending up starting a YouTube channel where I push all of the recordingsI made conscious decisions to volunteer in the community, because, well, I love the community. Then, I started a podcast - because one has to these days, but also because I think its fun (we just released our 11th episode!).
What I’m saying is, I was going for MVP and didn’t even realize it until much later because I was making the contributions to help others and have fun. I hope that’s why you’ll get it, too.
If you have questions, please feel free to reach out - comment here, twitter, email, etc., whatever works best for you.
This post, "Becoming a Microsoft MVP", first appeared on https://www.codingwithcalvin.net/becoming-a-microsoft-mvp/