On top of giving back to the commnity, Tom and I decided that we needed to show our appreciation, on a smaller scale, at the person level. We decided to start the MVP program just after we got back from Atlanta and Milan. Nick Kwiatkowski and Michael Labriola really stepped up and helped us out. They did so for no other reason than to help.
Upon reflecting on that help we realized that each of our events had an MVP: someone from the community that went above and beyond any expectations. Either with guidance in business, logistical help negotiating the Adobe landscape, or helping us burn USB drives, or acting as translator for us in Italy, helping smooth out some of our harrier international incidents :)
To quickly recap from our Wednesday keynote from San Jose ’08:
- San Jose ’07 – Ted Patrick. Ted was an orginal founder and was instrumental in getting this ball rolling.
- Seattle – Ed Sullivan – Our man on the inside of Adobe; Eddie helped us find the right people to talk to for whatever problem we had. He helped us not go crazy dealing with the Adobe corporate machine. We love you Adobe employees, it’s just the machine that gets in the way sometimes.
- Atlanta – Nick Kwaitkowski – Nick helped us burn USB drives and man the registration desk. We were admittedly a bit unprepared and Nick helped us not look completely lame.
- Milan – Michael Labriola – Mike helped us a TON. His Italian mighta been rusty, but our Italian was corrosive, so Mike was a god send when dealing with registration issues. Plus he was instrumental in ordering dinner without nasty looks. :)
- San Jose ’08 – David Bigelow – Dave is possibly an unlikely source of business knowledge for us, since most of his advice directly impacts him as a sponsor. That said, he’s been the closest thing to a mentor in business Tom and I have had, and we’re hoping that relationship (as well as the organizer/sponsor one) continues to grow and flourish. Dave has opened our eyes to a lot of business realities we had overlooked.
Thanks you guys!!!!
We wish we could do more, but hopefully the cheesy plastic trophies and Olympic-like medals show how much we appreciate you more than words can :) Plus you can defend against ninjas with them, which has to be worth something.
The Bowling League shirts are worth something though, so we’ll have to get together and play a few games.