January 2012 will go down as one of the most memorable months! What a fantastic way to start the year, received an email from Microsoft telling me that I have been presented with the Microsoft MVP Award in the Visual Studio Application Lifecycle Management Competency for 2012.

Dear Tarun Arora,
Congratulations! We are pleased to present you with the 2012 Microsoft® MVP Award! This award is given to exceptional technical community leaders who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with others. We appreciate your outstanding contributions in Visual Studio ALM technical communities during the past year.
Also in this email:
• About your MVP Award Gift
• How to claim your award benefits
• Your MVP Identification Number
• MVP Award Program Code of Conduct
The Microsoft MVP Award provides us the unique opportunity to celebrate and honour your significant contributions and say "Thank you for your technical leadership."
Nestor Portillo
Director
Community & Online Support
My Recipe for MVP!
The secret is there is no one single recipe for making an MVP! As for me… over the previous years I have been actively contributing to the Microsoft Technical Forums, sharing solutions on codeplex & other communities and writing about my experiences on my blog. Microsoft pays a lot of attention to contributions made in the ecosystem by individuals and makes every effort to acknowledge their expertise and contributions.
Charles Sterling who sits on the other side of the table has a great blog post on the process for selecting an MVP.
All I can say is, be committed and be honest in your contributions!
After all, Microsoft could not be everywhere so they decided to create MVP’s…
Thank you Microsoft for acknowledging the efforts, among others I would really like to thank Brian Keller, Anu Bharadwaj & Charles Sterling for their continued support and direction! I am delighted to have become part of this prestigious community, I will try my best and more to live up to the expectations!
Wish you a very Happy New Year 2012!
Best Wishes, Tarun.