On April 1, 2015, I was awarded the Microsoft MVP award in the Office 365 category. This is a great honor and a privilege, and I have many people to thank for this.
This award recognizes the contributions I have made to the Chicago area technical community, through my co-leadership of the Chicago SharePoint Users Group, presentations to numerous user groups and at local SharePoint events such as SP Saturday and SharePoint Fest, and my activity in the SPYam and O365 Yammer networks.
There are many people I want to thank for helping me achieve this award. First and foremost, my wife Jennifer, my son Jacob, and my daughter Alana, who patiently put up with me spending several Saturdays each year talking to fellow IT professionals about SharePoint and PowerShell, and listening to me when I practice my presentations, as well as enabling me to attend many user groups in the evenings.
I also want to thank Dan Holme for putting me on the path to O365 MVP. He advised me to pursue the O365 MVP rather than the SharePoint Server one.
I want to thank Esther Lee, MVP Lead for O365, for recognizing my contributions as meritorious.
I want to thank my boss Rick Parham for recognizing the value of my public speaking to PSC and allowing me to spend time at work preparing for my speeches and conference sessions.
I want to thank all the members of the Chicago area SharePoint community that attend local events. It is you that have made CSPUG, SharePoint Saturdays, and SharePoint Fests possible. Without the user group and SharePoint Saturday Chicago City and SharePoint Saturday Chicago Suburbs and SharePoint Fest Chicago, I would not have had the opportunity to contribute to the community nearly as much.
Thank you all.
Michael
