Working hard pays off

On Monday, October 1st, 2018 I was awarded the Cloud and Datacenter Management MVP award.

I did not know about it until a few days after because I was busy renovating my office. During the renovation, I did not regularly check my e-mail and the notification slipped through the cracks.

Two days later at 6 AM, I checked my e-mail and jumped up. I saw an email that started “Congratulation…” from the MVP Global Administrator. I got the MVP award.

How did I get here

I remember when I first started contributing to the community.

It was after SQL Cruise, now Tech Outbound, that I got introduced to a couple of famous people like Grant Fritchey (t), Argenis Fernandez (t), Tim Ford (t) (organizer of the event).

During the cruise, I met up with Catherine Wilhemsen (t) who asked me why I was not presenting all the things I knew.

I did not think I was that knowledgeable compared to the people on the cruise but she thought otherwise. She, and the others on the cruise, suggested I start presenting and I got into contact with Aaron Nelson who allowed me to present on the virtual chapter of PASS.

I got into contact with Chrissy LeMaire (t) who is the godmother of dbatools.

My first task was a new command and that got me started developing for dbatools and contributing more to the community.

I started doing more presentations and spend countless hours developing PowerShell commands to help me and others simplify DBA work.

It was a lot of work but the reward I got from the community was worth it.

Over the years I’ve met some wonderful people and that certainly was a reason to continue.

I want to thank my boss, Joe Sheffield (t), from Waypoint Analytical LLC for supporting me to contribute to the community.

This would not have been possible without him. I’m not going to stop and this only lets me be more active in the community. Thank you all that supported me and keep working hard because it pays off in the end.