Literally minutes before leaving work on 1st  October I received the following email:

This left me utterly speechless, which is not something that normal happens to me. After re-reading it about ten times the news finally sank in. I’m ecstatic that Microsoft have awarded me the MVP award for my contributions to the SharePoint community.

So I wanted to share a number of thank you’s for everyone who has supported me along the way.

Most importantly my beautiful wife who has supported my many many hours chained to my PC in the office at home beavering away on CKSDev or Presentations instead of snuggling up in front of a movie on the sofa. Without her understanding and support I definitely wouldn’t have found time to make the contributions I have. Also sitting through many hours of practice presentations before my speaking events.

Matt Smith for four years ago helping me to understand how to start to become involved in the SharePoint community.

Waldek Mastykarz for his friendship, support and advice and those midnight coding adventures before releasing a new version of CKSDev. Thanks buddy 🙂

Chris O’Brien for his friendship, advice and putting up with some seriously deep technical conversations over the years when I’m trying to get my head around a SharePoint feature and Visual Studio API.

The CKSDev team past and present, Wouter, Matt, Waldek, Todd, Paul, Carsten and Wictor who all at some point over the last few years have advised, written some cool code and generally helped ensure CKSDev was meeting everyone’s needs.

The event organisers for SUGUK, Evolutions/Best Practices London, SPSUK and SPSNL (Steve Smith and Combined Knowledge, Brett, Tony and Nick, Mirjam and the DIWUG peeps) for providing me opportunities to present and be part of the event teams.

My employers Content and Code and especially people like David Bowman and Tim Wallis who gave me time and support to contribute to the community. Not to mention Salvo di Fazio, Tristan Watkins and Ben Athawes.

To conclude what has been quite an emotional post to write I just want to say thanks to everyone in the community and MVP community who have helped me all these years. There are too many to list, but you know who you are 🙂