Dynamics Profile: New Microsoft MVP finds balance in leadership, community support

When Nick Doelman received an email alerting him to the fact that he had received the Microsoft MVP award for his work with Dynamics CRM, he reacted a little differently than most others in the same situation - he thought it was a joke.

The reason: he received the notification on April Fools' Day.

"Because it was Saturday morning and it was also April Fools' Day, at first I thought it was a joke that one of my friends or one of my colleagues was playing on me," Doelman says. "It took a minute to kind of sink in that it was actually legit. Then I was pretty happy."

A boost of confidence

Doelman, the manager of CRM solution development at BDO IT Solutions in Canada, nominated himself for the award last summer. After he filed the necessary paperwork, a Microsoft employee from the Mississauga, Ontario office contacted him.

"He was really helpful in guiding me through the process, telling me what I needed to do to be considered," he says. "I kept him updated and finally, a few weeks ago, we realized I had quite a bit of content. We said, ‘OK, let's see what happens.'"

However, Doelman admits that initially he was probably a little overconfident about his chances of being named a Microsoft MVP.

"I had done a few blog articles and I'd done a few presentations and I was fairly active on the forums and the CRMUG sites," he says. "I've been working with CRM since Version 1 and I thought ...