I am delighted to announce that Microsoft has granted me (me?!?) the MVP Award. The official description of this award: “Microsoft Most Valuable Professionals are exceptional technical community leaders worldwide who actively share their high quality real world expertise with others.” The Microsoft MVP public site is at: http://mvp.microsoft.com.

As the week has progressed since the announcement, finding the words to express my feelings about it is becoming harder rather than easier – there are so many people in the community doing great things! Not sure how I made the cut, but I’m looking forward to learning from all the other MVPs and Microsoft folks I’ll be exposed to, and continuing to contribute BI content to the community.

Many times I’ve said the Microsoft user community is very different from others. The extent to which information is freely shared is astounding. We should all greatly appreciate the ability to fire up our search engine and find advice which saves us time and teaches us something. So many people invest time and effort to make that happen. There are blogs, user groups, books, SQL Saturdays, webinars, Twitter, forums – with many great friendships made along the way.

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about how much our work lives depend on being fearless. What I mean by that – technology changes all the time, business methods vary, best practices evolve, we change, and the people around us change and grow. Many times we find ourselves doing something unfamiliar. The more experience I gain, the less I fear the unknown and the more confidence I have that we as a team can “figure it out.” The sheer volume of information that’s available to us in the Microsoft community to improve our skills makes “figuring it out” faster, easier, and with less risk for poor decisions.

Now I don’t want to pull a Sally Field moment here, but there’s a few people I want to call out. A heartfelt thanks goes to Rafael Salas who submitted an MVP nomination on my behalf. Wayne Snyder was instrumental in giving me the confidence to start blogging. My good friends Javier Guillén and Jason Thomas – these guys are always willing to review a draft, exchange ideas, or just go for a beer – they make me smarter by association. My employer, Intellinet, has been extremely good to me - the level of support and encouragement I’ve received from Leo Furlong and everyone at Intellinet has been amazing. Finally, my husband Bob is my rock. That says it all.

Today I received a really nice plaque and certificate. See the little 2013 disc on the left side of the MVP plaque? If an MVP award is renewed the following year, the recipient receives another disc to slide onto the plaque. Cool, huh?

Here’s to a great rest of 2013!