I awoke this morning, rather later than usual after a small get together with some friends, and came down to check email and make sure the site was still working. Sitting down with coffee and breakfast and checking email is a regular event with me, probably close to 350 or so days a year. The volume of email was light, as expected, but there was one surprise.

I got an award letter from Microsoft, notifying me that I'd been awarded MVP status for 2008!  How cool is that?!!!?!

I've been a little skeptical of the MVP program for some time. Especially because I've never been picked and many people, including myself, think I'm one of the biggest advocates for SQL Server out there. However I've never been too concerned about it since I'm not a consultant of any sort and it wouldn't necessarily benefit me too much. But it's always surprised me and many people I meet that I've never been selected. It's kind of made me question their criteria, which isn't spelled out too well, but I didn't want to be accused of any "sour grapes" for not being selected.

I'm not sure what it means for me. I guess I get an MSDN subscription, which will carry me past May when my TechNet runs out. I also get to go to the MVP Conference in April, which is pretty cool. It will be exciting to see what's in the pipeline, though I'm not sure to what extent I can actually disclose stuff. 

It should help with me getting more timely and informative articles ready. At least now I should have a little notice before things happen and can at least get editorials or articles written and edited for release rather than the last minute scramble that I sometimes have to deal with now.

 It's definitely an honor to be selected. Even with the program being a little hazy on the requirements, it's nice that they've recognized me as a SQL Server professional. Guess my New Year's Resolution to work more with the community really needs to be kept 🙂