Renewed for the 2013 #MVPAward

I woke up late on this New Years Day to find a renewal email waiting for me from Microsoft letting me know that I am once again a SharePoint MVP – my second year. I’d like to thank everyone for helping make this possible – for the various event organizers for continuing to select my abstracts to speak, for the folks who come to my sessions and read my articles, to my team at Axceler for supporting my workaholic behaviors, and of course to Microsoft for once again giving me this opportunity to participate in a great community of experts and thought leaders in the SharePoint space. I look forward to continuing to give back to the community for another year.

Inevitably, with every quarterly renewal (its an annual recognition, with a portion of the awards given out on the first day of each quarter) there come questions: how does one go about becoming an MVP? What are the secrets? Is there anything I can do to earn this recognition? Earlier this year I wrote a post on this called 10 Steps to Becoming a SharePoint MVP which you might want to read.

But the key to earning this award, I believe, is at the top of my list: Love what you do.

Passion is key. Find the most vocal and energetic people in the crowd, and you’ll generally find the MVPs within that group. There are some who quietly give back, but most are sharing their opinions out front, encouraging others to participate in the community dialog.

Your goal should not be to earn the MVP award – but just do what you do, giving as much of your time and energy to the community as your job, family, and personal priorities allow, and don’t worry about achieving the award. Do it for the right reasons. Along the way, you might pick up some recognition or awards, but those should not be the reasons why you do it. I think most of the MVPs would agree with me when I say that we would do what we do regardless of our MVP status. The award is just the icing.

Congrats to all of the MVPs who earned or renewed their awards this cycle. Happy New Year!