11 Years of Microsoft Regional Director and 15 Years of MVP

I often wonder how much people in other professions genuinely love the industry they're in to the point that they'd do it regardless of the money. I'm sure there are examples, but I wonder how many lawyers look forward to doing something in the legal space on their weekend, or a shoe salesman wanting to, well, it's hard to imagine anything too exciting there. For me, it's stuff like this:

Rack upgrade day! Some new @Ubiquiti goodness to consolidate things, pics and details coming… pic.twitter.com/hRrFFUBKch

— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) July 17, 2025

One of *the* coolest things we’ve 3D printed with our @Prusa3D is a hydroponics tower. That’s 3 weeks from the first 2 pics to the last, from tiny plants to eating out of our back yard 😮 pic.twitter.com/I5nZtkHFyS

— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) May 14, 2024

And for the next bit of my IoT buildout - @home_assistant! pic.twitter.com/kEoQBEt7AW

— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) May 29, 2020

That's "downtime" between coding - playing with the network, 3D printing random stuff and descending down the bottomless rabbit hole that is IoT. That's the fun stuff! To be fair, I also love watersports, playing tennis, fitness, cooking, travel and other "normal" stuff too, the point is that to me, technology was a passion before it was a career. It's been that way for most of my life:

This is me, 32 years ago, a 16 year old in 1992 trying to make some cash. Worked out good in the long run 😊 pic.twitter.com/xOfsrwdRCK

— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) July 2, 2025

To the point of the blog post, this month marked the beginning of my 10th and 11th years as a Microsoft Regional Director (a biennial award), and the 15th year of being a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional. These are not titles people set out seeking, and most of my peers who have been awarded them are like me in that they simply did things they loved, shared them with the community, and were then recognised for their efforts. And that, to me, remains at the heart of these programs: doing what you love and sharing the journey. Thank you to everyone who has joined me along the way.

And suddenly, as I finish writing this, I recall all the times as a kid when my airline pilot father would spend his weekends building radio-controlled model planes. Maybe this is all a hereditary thing 😊

MVP 14

Just over 13 years ago, Microsoft gave me my first "Most Valuable Professional" award. Out of the blue, as far as I was concerned. It wasn't something I'd planned for and it certainly wasn't something I'd expected, but it has become a cornerstone of my professional identity.

Indulge me while I go off on a bit of a tangent here: like the other things in my professional life that have turned into a success, the things I did to earn that first MVP award were things I was going to do anyway. Things like speaking at events, writing blog posts, and, of course, running Have I Been Pwned. It's an enormous privilege that these activities are things I do out of passion, and they've given me a successful career. That's wild, and I can still hardly believe it 😊

As I've said each year when this award has landed in my inbox, and I'll say again now after the 14th one just landed, thank you for giving me the platform on which I've been able to build this career. It takes people like you reading this now to turn up to my talks, consume the posts I write and use HIBP to do useful things after data breaches happen to make me successful at what I do.

So, cheers to everyone who has contributed to my 14th Microsoft MVP award 🍻