In 2005, I attended my first series of Microsoft community events in my local area.  At the time, they were typically hosted at movie theaters, and I enjoyed every second of them.  I started going to my local Philly.Net user group in the months that followed, soaking up every lesson that I could attend.  In 2008, I gave my first presentation at the user group.  It was a 15 minute ‘lightning-talk’ demonstrating a simple ASP.Net state server that I had written.  From then on, I was hooked.  I wanted to be more involved in the community.

Each year since 2008, I have presented at both Philly.Net code camps. I have travelled on my own expenses (and recently with some help from INETA and my employer) to regional user groups and conferences to speak.  This blog and my Telerik blog have seen more and more content.  Finally, all of that hard work has finally paid off.

Today I was named a Microsoft MVP in the area of ASP.Net and Internet Information Server.  I am humbled to be recognized as a leader in the ASP.Net community by the team at Microsoft.  For those of you who know me, you know that I have a deep commitment to this platform.  I am a huge fan of ASP.Net, and look for all sorts of ways to implement neat and unusual web applications with it.

I have always been excited by the web.  I’ve been building web applications for decades now and as my career has changed to that of an evangelist,  this award means even more to me that it would have when I was a developer.  I’m going to add the MVP badge appropriately to my various profiles, speaker bios, and get back to writing interesting content for you dear reader.

This won’t change the type of content that you see from me.  I won’t hold back on telling you what’s cool and what’s lame in web development.  You’ll just see more of it even more frequently from me.

That’s enough blogging about myself for now.  I’m going to go grab a gluten-free donut to celebrate.