I was just answering an email and realized I’m behind on posting on a few topics, one of them the notification last week that I was renewed as a SQL Server MVP for another year. Always nice to be recognized, nice to have something for the resume, and of course the other SQL MVP’s make for stellar company.

Want to be an MVP? Brent Ozar wrote a nice post Congratulations, You’re an MVP! Here’s What You Need to Know that is worth reading if you’re interested in what you get as an MVP and a little bit about how to get there. I’ll add a couple things of my own:

• There are about 270 SQL chairs on MVP island. To get on the island you have to do more than someone already there, some how. If that seems fuzzy, it is. There is no public formula, but you can look at the MVP’s and see there are a variety of paths you might take.
• MVP status is, in my unofficial and not-MS-informed view, about influence, which is most often achieved by doing good in some way. Forum posts, blog posts,book writing,Twitter, etc, etc, are ways you can do good and build influence. Influence is hard to quantify, yet it’s not that hard to figure out who has it. Want to have influence? Focus! Be the voice about something, somewhere.

That last point is the one you should think on, and the hardest part of this. It’s not enough to do good, people have to know you do it – if you want to move to this level. If that feels a bit impure, maybe it is, but it’s no different than how things are at the office. If you want the promotion or next plum assignment, then you have to do/be good, but you also have to make sure your boss knows, and you have to figure out how to do that in a way that works for both of you.