OMG I’m an MVP!

I can’t believe it, but I can finally say that I’m now officially a Microsoft SQL Server MVP! Last week I got the great news from my MVP lead, Ryan Bolz (Twitter) in…a peculiar way. Allow me to explain. Typically MVP renewals and new awardees are notified four times a year, once every quarter. This past quarter’s notifications went out on July 1st. Like so many in the community, when the quarterly MVP day rolled around I was guilty of refreshing my inbox every 5 minutes for 24 hours hoping for that magic Wonka ticket into MVP-ville.

Alas, July 1st came and went with no email. Disappointed turtle was disappointed. Now I say I was disappointed since I knew I’d been nominated the last few quarters but hadn’t heard anything yet. And yes, I know “it’s the award you’re not supposed to want”, but still it’s stressful knowing you’re up for it but not hearing anything one way or the other. This time around I figured “oh well, keep it up and eventually…maybe”. Anywho, last week as I was at the JSSUG meeting when I got a DM from Ryan with the following: “Hi Jorge — Congratulations! You are a MVP. Call me so I can explain it all to you.”

Say WHAT?!? I checked and double checked the message to make sure it wasn’t some sort of sick prank. As soon as I got out of the meeting I gave Ryan a call to find out what was going on. I’d heard of folks getting awarded out of cycle before but I was still thoroughly confused as to what was going on! As it turns out, apparently I HAD been awarded MVP status in the July 1st batch but something went wrong with getting me the notification. For those not familiar with the process, Microsoft sends out the MVP emails en-masse to folks which seems to trip every spam filter around. Since this is the case, folks are told to check their spam folders on MVP day just in case. In my peculiar case it wasn’t a matter of spam filter black hole but rather an error in my contact information. Near as I can tell they had an invalid email address on file for me so they weren’t able to send me my notification!

Fast forward a few weeks and Ryan had gone on vacation and gotten sick during that period, when he finally got back to the office and catching up he somehow discovered that I had no idea I was awarded. That’s when he dug around and sent me a DM on Twitter as that was a guaranteed means of getting to me directly.

The Mushy Part

Story aside, I want to let you all know how truly grateful I am for this honor. It’s been a pleasure and privilege being a part of this amazing SQL community and this award just compels me to keep working even harder to deserve it. I want to thank everyone for the warm congrats and support, it means a LOT! I’d also like to send a special thank you to those who nominated me and sent me words of encouragement every quarter.

Speaking of working harder I got another piece of amazing news last week as well: I’ll be presenting for the first time at PASS Summit this year! What makes THAT even cooler is that the session is a Community Spotlight session, meaning you guys were gracious enough to cast your vote for me so I can bore educate the masses on Policy-Based Management at the Super Bowl/World Cup of SQL Server events! That being said thank you all so SO much for all your love and support and I look forward to continue serving this community for years to come!