At the start of April, I received an email from Microsoft, which says I had been awarded their MVP (Most valued professional) award for 2017. This was the third award I have received under the title MVP, not just from Microsoft, but from the technical communities in which I am involved.
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I am extremely grateful to have received the Microsoft award, which was given due to my contributions to the community in both writing and public speaking - in other words, sharing knowledge with the technical community. The First MVP, which I received was from CodeProject, the second from the C# Corner Community - both of these are very important to me as they are the communities, where I am most active. I am grateful to the leaders and the members of these communities that are my 'tech family' for allowing me the platform to contribute my few thoughts and ramblings.
MVP awards come and go. They are awarded for a period and are not everlasting. To get it renewed, your work in the community is evaluated each year and depending on your updated contributions, it gets renewed or not. What is very important to keep in mind is that life goes on - if someone has the time to commit this year and gets an award, thats great, if life gets in their way and they need to attend to family or career or learning, exams or other commitment; it restricts their community work and they lose their MVP status, they are not forgotten. By contributing to the community especially by writing (and these days where talks are recorded for ever on youtube etc.), your words and knowledge continue to live on and be shared. If the life circumstances change again in the future and you are able to come back to contribute to the community, its awesome. Critically, its not something people feel should take over their lives.
I think its really important to contribute *when you can*, but also equally important to encourage others to contribute - many people, doing a little bit, together keep life in the community. Together we are better, we don't stand alone as islands. I encourage everyone of you who have not yet written an article or contributed to the community to take some time (if you have it!) and think how you can join in. Remember, together we are better :)