Every July I find myself watching my inbox a little more closely than usual. This month, the email arrived, and I was happy to share that I had been extended as a Microsoft Data Platform MVP. Technically, this was my fifth update, which felt like a good time to mark the occasion with a blog post instead of my usual thank you note on LinkedIn.
In previous years, I’ve offered brief thanks to the good people at Microsoft who support and build the MVP community, and keep it moving forward. Five years in this program deserves a slightly longer pause for thought.
The anticipation never changes
Anticipation of email updates doesn’t seem to have changed. I remember how excited I felt the first time I received the MVP award, and the five years since have been just as exciting. In fact, I become more convinced with each passing year that the “sorry, not this time” emails are the ones I receive.
That’s not false humility. The MVP award is not something I take lightly, and it can never be guaranteed that it will come every year. This program recognizes your contributions over the past twelve months, not what you did five years ago. Each update is earned fresh, and I think that’s what should happen. The moment you think that appreciation is yours is probably the moment you stop doing the things you deserve.
Thank You
An award like this never belongs to one person, so several thanks must be given.
First, to Kevin Chant, who nominated me many years ago. Nominations are how the program finds people, and I wouldn’t be writing this post without them.
To Rie Merritt and the wider team at Microsoft, thank you for your continued support. The MVP program takes real work to run well, and the people behind it do an incredible job supporting the community year after year.
And for MVPs past and present. The technical recognition is great, but the friendships I’ve made since joining the program are the part I appreciate most. The Microsoft data community is full of generous people who share what they know because they want others to succeed. Counted among them is a true honor.
What the MVP award really means
For anyone unfamiliar, the Microsoft MVP award recognizes community contributions: speaking, writing, organizing events, answering questions, creating content, and generally helping others become better at working with Microsoft technology. This is not a certification and not a position. This is an acknowledgment of his presence in society consistently over time.
Framing is important because it means the way to get renewed or nominated and awarded is to keep doing the things you want to do. Five years later, it still feels good.
Next year
So, onto sixth year. I look forward to another year of connecting, learning, and sharing with the community. That includes FabCon and SQLCon in Barcelona in September, which I’m already looking forward to. If you’re going to be there, come by and say hello.
To everyone who has read a post, attended a session, listened to a podcast, or just said hello at an event over the last five years: thank you. This update is yours and mine.
Keep in touch
If community, careers, and the human side of technology are your thing, that’s what I explore in my podcast, Putting Humans into Technology. Take a listen, and hit me up on LinkedIn so we can continue the conversation.
PakarPBN
A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build backlinks to a “money site” in order to influence its ranking in search engines such as Google. The core idea behind a PBN is based on the importance of backlinks in Google’s ranking algorithm. Since Google views backlinks as signals of authority and trust, some website owners attempt to artificially create these signals through a controlled network of sites.
In a typical PBN setup, the owner acquires expired or aged domains that already have existing authority, backlinks, and history. These domains are rebuilt with new content and hosted separately, often using different IP addresses, hosting providers, themes, and ownership details to make them appear unrelated. Within the content published on these sites, links are strategically placed that point to the main website the owner wants to rank higher. By doing this, the owner attempts to pass link equity (also known as “link juice”) from the PBN sites to the target website.
The purpose of a PBN is to give the impression that the target website is naturally earning links from multiple independent sources. If done effectively, this can temporarily improve keyword rankings, increase organic visibility, and drive more traffic from search results.
