10 Years as a Microsoft MVP
On July 1st, I received that much-looked-for email from Microsoft letting me know that I had been renewed for another year as a Microsoft MVP in the Office Apps & Services category, which includes SharePoint, Microsoft Teams, OneDrive, Yammer, and other related tools and services. It has become cliche to tweet out about being “humbled” and “honored” by this award, but I continue to be thankful to Microsoft for including me in such an awesome community. The perks of the MVP program are certainly huge (annual summit, monthly program calls, additional MVP early views and feedback sessions, swag, etc) but the biggest impact to my career has been the association with some of the smartest and most passionate people working within the Microsoft ecosystem.
In case you haven’t been paying attention, my interview series with fellow MVPs around the world and across all product areas continues to grow. The #MVPbuzzChat series has been my way to get to know some my fellow MVPs and to help promote their profiles and the work that each of them are doing. If you’ve not yet perused the list of #MVPbuzzChat interviews, you can check them out here.
In addition to being renewed as an MVP this week, I was thrilled to have another peer earn the MVP title: Jay Leask (@jayleask). I’ve known Jay for a few years, and interviewed him recently on the topic of Microsoft 365 and the Federal sector. Jay has long been my go-to person on the sector, and I was happy to help advocate for him becoming an MVP. Now…let’s see if together we can get @hw_enduser over that finish line…
I’ve worked for companies that were very supportive of my community activities — and those who were not supportive. One of the factors for me joining AvePoint last December was their support for community and the individual interests and passions of its people. While community events and content creation are not part of my job description, the company provides ample room and support for my community activities, which was a huge benefit to joining the team. With Jay’s MVP award, we now have 5 MVPs and 3 Regional Directors on the AvePoint Team, which you can find here:
Taichi Nakamura, MVP
Junzhe “Shelley” Liu, MVP
John “Jay” Leask, MVP
Dux Raymond Sy, MVP + RD
Christian Buckley, MVP + RD
Christian Buckley, 
John Peluso, RD
With so much of our global economy now focused on collaboration, information management and security, I am genuinely looking forward to the next decade of this space — and I hope to continue participating in this community! Thanks again to Microsoft for the recognition, and to everyone for continuing to read my blog, show up for my sessions, and consume my videos and podcasts. Much more to come!
