Posey's Tips & Tricks

It's the End of an Era

Looking back at my long run as a Microsoft MVP.

As much as it pains me to write this, my time as a Microsoft MVP has come to an end. After 22 years as a Microsoft MVP, I was not renewed this time around. As soon as I received the news, I knew that I had to write a blog post publicly disclosing the fact that I am no longer a Microsoft MVP. Even so, I wasn't even sure what I wanted to say.

Let me begin by saying that I am not bitter about not having been renewed, nor do I have any ill feelings toward anyone at Microsoft. I have been told through unofficial sources that I hold the all-time record for the most times that anyone has ever received the Microsoft MVP award. I feel honored to have been in such a position and it is humbling to have had my work recognized by Microsoft so many times. I had a good run, and it was bound to come to an end at some point. I can accept that.

If anything, I am grateful to Microsoft for awarding me the MVP award so many times in the past. Being a long time Microsoft MVP created opportunities for me that probably wouldn't have otherwise come about. As such, being a Microsoft MVP was literally life changing.

I'm sure that the big question that many of you are wondering is why wasn't I renewed this time? Unfortunately, I can't give you any sort of official answer. The Microsoft MVP selection process is a closely guarded secret. I have heard (again, through unofficial channels) that there are certain key performance indicators that Microsoft tracks, but nobody outside of Microsoft knows what they are. To put it another way, there is no checklist of tasks that you can complete in order to become an MVP. Those who are lucky enough to receive the Microsoft MVP award are left wondering what they did to qualify for the award and each year they also wonder if they have met the requirements for renewal.

Although I don't know the official reason why I was not renewed this year, I think that it probably comes down to a couple of things. For starters, I write a lot less material than I used to. Don't get me wrong, I still write hundreds of blog posts each year. However, I don't write anywhere near as much content as I used to.

At one point in my career, I was writing 60+ blog posts each month. That's at least two blogs every day (more if I ever wanted to take a day off). Every great once in a while, the number of articles that I wrote within a given month was even more than that. I have on occasion had people call into question the idea that I could consistently write so much material, but I honestly did.

Eventually though, I realized that it wasn't healthy to continuously write at such a frantic pace. I was dealing with severe exhaustion and burn out, personal relationships were suffering, and quite frankly so was the quality of my work. Over the past two or three years, I have been writing a much more manageable number of articles each month (usually around 30). Scaling back my work has greatly improved my quality of life. Unfortunately, the fact that I am writing a lot less content these days probably worked against me during the MVP renewal process.

Another thing that I suspect may have contributed to my not being awarded this time around is the subject matter that I have covered in some of my articles.

I have always felt like I owe it to my readers to tell them exactly what I think about various technologies as opposed to parroting Microsoft's marketing messages. On occasion, I have written blog posts that have been critical of various Microsoft products or features (or of the way that Microsoft does things). Please don't misunderstand me. Overall, I like most of Microsoft's products. I use Microsoft software internally to run my own business. Like any other company however, Microsoft does occasionally make some bad decisions. When that happens, I am not going to recommend to my readers that they adopt a technology that I would not be willing to use myself.

One more thing that I suspect probably played into the non-renewal decision is that Microsoft and I seem to be going in different directions. It isn't exactly a secret that Microsoft would prefer you to run all of your business workloads in the Azure cloud. Azure definitely has its place, but much of the material that I write pertains to workloads running on premises. In a lot of cases, I just think it makes more sense to keep certain workloads running in-house, though that's another discussion for another time.

So what does all of this mean going forward? My plan is to keep on doing exactly what I have always done in the past (writing lots of content and creating video training courses). I don't anticipate that I will be changing anything at all aside from adding the phrase “former Microsoft MVP” to my bio. I am grateful for my time as a Microsoft MVP and am looking forward to whatever comes next.

About the Author

Brien Posey is a 22-time Microsoft MVP with decades of IT experience. As a freelance writer, Posey has written thousands of articles and contributed to several dozen books on a wide variety of IT topics. Prior to going freelance, Posey was a CIO for a national chain of hospitals and health care facilities. He has also served as a network administrator for some of the country's largest insurance companies and for the Department of Defense at Fort Knox. In addition to his continued work in IT, Posey has spent the last several years actively training as a commercial scientist-astronaut candidate in preparation to fly on a mission to study polar mesospheric clouds from space. You can follow his spaceflight training on his Web site.

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