Some things come when you least expect them to
It’s 5 pm on a Saturday, you’re on vacation and out biking with your kids and stop for some ice-cream. You quickly glance over your messages as one does and there’s one that catches your attention:
You open the email, read it through:
Dear Mattias, Congratulations! We are extremely pleased to present you with the 2017–2018 Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who share their remarkable passion, real-world knowledge, and technical expertise with others through demonstration of exemplary commitment. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in the Microsoft Azure technical communities during the past year.
And even though it’s 100% obvious what news it’s bringing — it still feels a bit unreal. I’d been nominated for some time and during the nomination period I’d not heard much from the program except when someone new nominates you or the confirmation emails you get when you add activities for your active nomination. So even though you knew it was a possibility, it wasn’t at all expected.
I’ve jokingly often said I’m alternating between hubris and imposter syndrome— while it’s been said tongue-in-cheek there’s still some truth it. While perhaps not helping with the hubris part, I’ve found the act of writing down what you’ve done quite “therapeutic” — as it brings facts to the table which speaks to the engineer in me. Having a list made things “measurable” and “actionable”!
Some of the activities I’ve submitted as part of my nomination that led up to the award is now public up on my MVP Profile page at:
https://mvp.microsoft.com/en-us/PublicProfile/5002677
To summarize I feel really thankful, honored and I must admit a bit proud to be among the 36 people who this time was awarded Microsoft MVP Award for the first time. And as with your kids you shouldn’t have favorites, you should also probably not have favorite MVPs…but I must just say I’m truly happy that my friend Gary Park just was awarded too:
Looking forward, I’ve got ideas for blog posts to write, meetups and events to organize, open source projects to maintain, product teams to give feedback to, conferences to speak at and excited to see what new experiences will be in store as part of being a member of the MVP program!