1.8.2024 I received a message from Microsoft and after reading the first few lines I was absolutely stunned.
Of course, this wasn’t a complete surprise to me, because I had earlier filled out the application for MVP, but still, I wasn’t quite sure if I was going to be accepted or not into the program as it took some time to get validated. Well, I’m glad it turned out this way!
Meaning of becoming MVP
So what does this award mean to me? Well, this award is actually a recognition of quite a large amount of community work, that I have done for almost 10 years now. I have blogged since 2016, so that is 8 years of blogging (more actively on this current oksala.net domain). I have 3365 points in Stack Overflow, I maintain OSS project for Azure DevOps and Stream Deck, I’m currently writing Stream Deck plugin for Fabric and I have published video tutorials about C# in finnish. On top of this I try to participate in Microsoft product groups, mentor junior developers, host a few .NET meetings and organize AzureJKL event. This may sound a lot, but I find it interesting and it doesn’t feel like work to me. This is what I love to do. Learning and sharing my sparse knowledge is what I love to do.
When doing all of this work (without expectations of getting money or anything out of it) and someone comes to me and say “You are doing great job”, it of course feels good and getting this kind of recognition gives me more energy to continue doing this stuff. I don’t do this for MVP status, but this status opens me new doors, new friends and more ways to provide good stuff back the community. I will try to leverage this status to provide more high quality content to community.
What next?
On this classic question I can provide classic answer: I will continue to do what I love to do. Learn and share. I’m having some plans on recording more C# and Azure videos and publishing them for free at Youtube. I will also try to finish Microsoft Fabric Stream Deck plugin and of course continue blogging in normal rate (every two week). I will also try to arrange at least one (maybe two) .NET JKL meetings here in Jyväskylä this year.
Thank you
My biggest thank goes to you dear reader. Thank you for reading this blog and thank you for being part of my community. Without you I would have stopped this blog long time ago, but as I see many of you out there through Google Analytics (yes I spy you!) I know you are there. Thank you and lets make this year great again (sorry about Trump reference)!