My Surprise MVP Party

Two Fridays ago, Sean and I sat down for our weekly DBAs@Midnight webshow* as usual. Unusually, we were expecting an out-of-town guest: Wendy Pastrick (blog, Twitter). Even more unusually, about 5 1/2 minutes in, Sean surprised me with the news that I’d received the Microsoft SQL Server Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for 2011.

I hadn’t even known I was a candidate.

The way it worked was this: When I was nominated for MVP, Sean contacted the MVP Powers That Be and got the questionnaire and follow-up emails routed to him.  Once I was awarded, he watched for the award package like a hawk. When the letter came, he leapt on it.  He plotted and schemed and kept secrets, and when it all came out, it was AWESOME.

Not only did he keep all that a secret…not only did he present me with the news in the best way possible (see the show [alternate iTunes link, click Hottub of Bellydancers], about 5 minutes in)…but he also WROTE TO MY FAVORITE BAND and got them to send a congratulatory note. (They were on a cruise ship, else he might’ve gotten them to call me!)  NOT ONLY THAT, my friends, but he got a bunch of industry giants – SQL authors, MVPs, product team guys – to call in and congratulate me.

It was the BEST BIRTHDAY EVAR, and it wasn’t even my birthday.

And the hits kept on coming. Another email, great coincidences and jokes from the call, a revelation about my PASS session….

Humongous thanks to Sean and Wendy. Ginormous incredible thanks to all the folks that showed up live to see what the big deal was, and to my friends and heroes that called in:

• Mark Souza, SQL Server Customer Advisory Team (SQLCAT) Founder
• Tom LaRock, Senior Database Administrator for Confio Software, SQL MVP, speaker, author
• Adam Machanic, Boston-based independent database consultant, writer, speaker and SQL Server MVP (I think I may be the first person EVER to call Adam “sweetheart”, excluding his wife and mother)
• Kalen DeLaney, SQL Server MVP, superstar, author, and speaker
• Allen White, a dear friend, MVP, consultant, author, speaker, and community fixture
• Denny Cherry, another good friend / MVP / author / speaker
• Grant Fritchey, yet another good friend, MVP / author / speaker
• Buck Woody, another-another friend, Microsoftie, author, speaker, personality and man-about-town …
• Andy Leonard, all-around SQL guy, MVP, PASS Regional Mentor, author and speaker (everyone go to SQLPeople.net!)
• Kendra Little, a super-cool partner in InapproPASS crime, DBA, and blogger
• Donald Farmer, (now ex-)Microsoft titan
• Dan Jones, of the SQL Server Tools Team, gentleman and sweetheart, who we absolutely adore, but who was sadly overlooked on the call because he called at the same time as Donald. 🙁
• (If I missed anyone, I’m sorry! I tried to get everyone…)

Wendy was awesome. She’s a SQL Server DBA, WIT Virtual Chapter Community Outreach leader, and the 2010 PASSion award recipient.

We – okay, Sean – managed to get some good tech talk and ranting in (I was really too verklempt), like a normal show. Such. Good. Times.

See you on the interwebs, and happy days,
Jen McCown
http://www.MidnightDBA.com/Jen

*We’ve been doing the webshow for over two years now, and this season we broadcast live on Ustream every Friday night at 11pm CST. A lot of people log in to watch live, and chat with us…they help drive the direction of the show. The live viewers get extra fun before and after the main show. It’s a lot of fun, and you should really stop by sometime!