Drinking the poison cup

Socrates drank a cup filled with poison because he stuck to his principles. This post is much like that, in the sense that I’m sticking to the plan I originally had, although I feel that my chances of surviving the writing of this blog post are actually a lot better compared to the odds Socrates was facing.

Not so long ago, there was a contest where people could choose the most influential SharePoint community person in Europe. The winner was Gokan Ozcifci, the SharePoint Pirate: https://harmon.ie/sites/default/files/images/docs/Top25EUSPInfluencers-Final.pdf. This was a big surprise to me, as Gokan managed to get more than two times (342 votes) the number of votes than SharePoint-dino Michael Greth (152 votes, he doesn’t know this, but he was actually the reason I wanted to become MVP) and well-known SharePoint figure Spencer Harbar (153 votes). So, congratulations with that, Gokan, an amazing feat!

I was also nominated for this contest, and before I disclose the position where I ended up, I want to share two little anecdotes with you.

The first anecdote is this one: every year, a couple months before New Year, in the Netherlands we start baking “oliebollen”. If you don’t know what these are, you’re missing out, and here’s a picture:

I live in a small town and I usually buy oliebollen at this cute little shop. At the end of 2011, I started noticing that these oliebollen tasted better and better, and it turned out others agreed with me. A national newspaper holds an oliebollen contest every year and my favorite shop came in 4th. So, they bought this huge banner stating: 4th in the contest! Score: 9.5 out of 10. At the end of 2012 they advertised with this excellent score. Then, the newspaper held a new contest. I don’t know what place my favorite shop ended up with, but I do know that soon after they removed the banner and the place became significantly less busy than before.

The second anecdote is this: There’s a coffee shop in my little town and they participated in a “Best Coffee Maker of the Country” contest. They ended up at the 17th place and advertise proudly with this fact. To me this is an ambiguous thing. On the one hand, it’s not bad to be 17th; on the other hand, I feel you should at least end up in the top 3 before celebrating.

As you may have guessed by now, I didn’t make it in the top 25. But that’s not the reason I’m writing the blog post.  I’m writing it because I was actually touched by the fact that other Wiki Ninja’s took the effort to vote for us: https://blogs.technet.com/b/wikininjas/archive/2013/01/10/community-win-vote-for-gokan-and-margriet-top-25-sharepoint-community-influencers-in-europe.aspx

Thanks guys, regardless of the outcome, I did really appreciate it!