Dane Morgridge

For those who don't already know, yesterday I received my first Microsoft MVP Award in Data Platform Development.  With less than 5,000 MVPs in the world overall and about 20 in the Data Platform category, saying I am honored would be an understatement.  From the first time I spoke at a code camp, I was totally hooked and have had a blast travelling around the east coast speaking at code camps and users groups. 

I'd like to take the time to thank Dani Diaz (@danidiaz) for the nomination and everyone who supported me, especially my wife Lisa for letting me travel and speak as much as I have and putting up with me for late nights and such.  Roska Digital, my employer, also deserves a shout out for supporting me and giving me the necessary time off to get to speaking engagements.  With any luck, the next year will be at least as fun if not more than the last one has.  I hope to see you at a code camp or user group meeting soon!

I would also like to send a congratulations to the other new Philly Area MVPs: John Angelini & Ned Ames (@nedames)

You can find out more about the Microsoft MVP Award at https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/ 
 

I started at my current job at the end of March last year and there were some pretty funny April fools jokes.  Nothing super crazy, but pretty funny.  One guy came in and there was a tree in his cube. 

We (me and the rest of my team) were planning for a couple of weeks on what we could do that would be just awesome.  We had a lot of really good ideas but nothing was spectacular.  Then Steve Andrews had a brilliant idea (yes it's true).  Since we have internal DNS servers we could redirect DNS to our internal servers for a site such as cnn.com.  Then we would lift the code from the site and create our own home page that would contain news about people in the company.  Steve was actually laughing so hard when he thought of the idea that it took him almost 30 minutes to spit it out.

I thought, "this is perfect".

I had enlisted a couple of people to help come up with the stories and at the same time we were trying to figure out how to get everybody to the site the morning of the 1st. 

Then it hit me.  We could have the main article be one of my getting picked up by the FBI on hacking charges.  Then Chris (my boss) could send an email out telling everyone that I would not be there today and direct them to the site.  That would for sure get everyone to go to cnn.com first thing and see our prank.  I begun the process of looking for photos I could crop myself into and found the perfect one.  Then my wife took a good pic with our Canon 40D and I went to work. 

The night before I didn't have any other stories due to everyone being really busy at work, but I decided to go ahead with just the FBI bust on it's own.  I got everything working and tested and coordinated with Chris for me to come in late so no one would see me at the office until after everyone had seen the joke.

And so the morning of April fools came and I was waiting at home and the email was perfect.  Chris told everyone that I wouldn't be in and that not to answer any questions if you got any calls from anybody.  The Photoshop job I did was not perfect, but good enough and I even wrote an article with it that went into more detail about how I had been classified as a terrorist and all kinds of stuff.

People at work started getting the emails and a few people didn't realize it was a joke (as I had hoped), including some from senior management (one person in particular who shall remain nameless in this post).  Emails started flying around about how to contain the situation and how to handle bad PR.  He basically bought it hook, line and sinker and then went in to crisis mode.  It was awesome!

He did finally realize it was a joke and I will likely print and frame the email he sent out. 

In short, April fools this year was a huge success.