I am excited to announce that I was recently accepted as a Microsoft Regional Director! While I have been aware of the program for a long time, but I had never thought seriously about pursuing participation until this past year. Stephanie Donahue & I had many discussions when she joined the program and based upon her experience I decided I would accept her offer to nominate me and pursue joining the Regional Director (RD) ranks. I am truly appreciative for her friendship & insights.

In my last post I shared the update about what has been happening in our world this year and my application for RD was a part of what was going on just at the same time as everything else at that time. To call it chaotic would be an understatement. As I was going through the application process my family asked me “What is the Regional Director Program?”. Happily there is a website, https://rd.microsoft.com, that gives good information about the program.

Here is the gist from the site:

The Regional Director Program provides Microsoft leaders with the customer insights and real-world voices it needs to continue empowering developers and IT professionals with the world’s most innovative and impactful tools, services, and solutions.

Regional Directors act in a non-paid advisory capacity with Microsoft. On an ongoing basis, RDs are asked to participate in scheduled strategic feedback sessions with Microsoft senior leadership teams. Because of their community leadership positions, passion, commitment to technology and business excellence, RDs have a regular outlet where they can express real-time customer and community feedback directly with Microsoft engineers and the senior leadership team, including Satya.

I am looking forward to engaging in this program. We had our introduction call today and started seeing engagement on the distribution lists tonight. It is a very warm and welcoming group of 205 RDs & Microsoft folks. I look forward to meeting the other RDs and gaining a broader set of insights from those relationships.

Tomorrow is MVP Renewal day. It is very much a Forrest Gump kinda day because you never know what you are going to get. I have been fortunate to be a part of the program since January 1st, 2014 and I hope to continue for many years to come. The RD program is a completely different thing with it’s own requirements and requirements for renewal, but happily it is a 2 year term so I won’t worry about that for a while. For now I am going to sit back and enjoy the excitement of the new program.

Thanks to everyone who supported my nomination, all those who continue to help guide me toward new adventures, and my community family that I would do anything for. I am eternally grateful to all of you.