Before anyone’s alarms get set off, I promise you that I’m okay and that there isn’t anything in the background going on that I haven’t mentioned. 2024 is a year where I’m making selfish community moves, and I figured I better explain why.
I am retiring from the Microsoft MVP program this year – that means that I am telling them not to renew me this year. I’ve been a Microsoft MVP for 15 years, and it’s been quite an adventure!
But why are you retiring?
I get this a lot, and it comes down to something I wrote on my whiteboard while weighing the pros and cons of these big moves. I need to break the cycle.
I enjoy doing the community work, and I also enjoy collaborating with Microsoft and delivering feedback on their tools. However, the part I don’t like is tracking the metrics. I’m not involved in the community for the MVP award – selfishly, I’m involved in the community because it’s what I want to do. I’m in it to support my future – I want our future techies to be doing awesome things and growing and learning from the disasters we’ve experienced in our past.
Every year, as I reviewed my contributions and sent them to Microsoft for renewal, there was always a sense of dread. No, I wasn’t waiting until the last minute – I kept a spreadsheet of my contributions throughout the year that made it easy to report come renewal time. I just did not like gathering the metrics. I understand why they are needed, but that doesn’t get me any more excited about gathering data.
And you know what? I’m done! I’m breaking the cycle of unhappiness – I’m no longer tracking the metrics. I’m still going to do community stuff, but I’m not reporting it to someone else. When I want to be in the community to support them and it becomes more work than I want to do, then I’m going to cut what’s weighing me down so that I can continue to do awesome things.
What if you didn’t have to report the metrics?
It’s still time for me to move on. As the program has changed over time, so have I. It wasn’t a decision I made lightly nor quickly. It’s one that I am very decided on.
Many Thanks..
As I’ve grown in my career and community adventures, I am thankful for the recognition from Microsoft. I’m thankful for those at Microsoft and those in the MVP community who have advocated for me.
I also need to give a huge shoutout to my husband, who has been by my side through it all. The good, the bad, and the ugly – he’s been supporting me, listening to me, and encouraging me to continue to be awesome. I’m excited to finally be joining him on a conference planning adventure in his realm! And to my kids – who have grown up in the community and now want to volunteer at all the events – thank you for continuing to join me in these adventures!
I want to give a shoutout to all who have been supportive of me over the past 15 years. Conference organizers, user group meetup organizers, community members – all of you have given me opportunities to share my knowledge and experience, and I look forward to continuing this and continuing to learn from all of you as well!
It’s been a pleasure to support the community. Many thanks to all of you who helped make these happen:
- Assisting in conference organizing – from session review to volunteer coordination and more! CodeMash, Stir Trek, Music City Code, Momentum Dev Con, PyOhio, the International Space Apps Challenge to name a few
- Presenting at conferences – CodeMash, Stir Trek, Music City Code, Momentum Dev Con, devLink, Kalamazoo X, PyCon, PyOhio, Dogfood Con, Strangeloop, SELF Conference, THAT Conference Wisconsin, Techbash, World Usability Day, Kansas City Developer Conference, PonCon, JS & Friends, CodePaLOUsa, TDevConf, Live Coders Conf, .NET Conf, DataWeekender, SciFiDevCon, Festive Tech Calendar, C# Advent, many Days of .NET, SQL Saturdays, Code Camps, Ohio Linux Fest, Silverlight Firestarter, Cleveland Software Freedom Day (first keynote!)
- Presenting at user groups – both locally in-person, virtually all over, and including an in-person presentation to a .NET user group in Hong Kong!
- Tech-edited and ended up also co-authoring a book on PowerShell with my author who likes talking about the great new features – Matt Hester! (We left the not nice, gross new features out. 🙃)
- Various livestream appearances and recorded talks
So… what’s next?
Look forward to more community adventures. As I mentioned in another post, I am helping with MSPGeekCon. I’m starting to learn about the Domain-Driven Design community – especially through Virtual DDD and looking forward to Explore DDD next month. I also have another project that I’m not really ready to announce yet but know that it’s something I’ve been wanting to do for years and am finally getting to it! Stay tuned!