January 1st I got the following e-mail from Microsoft:

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On February 1st, Microsoft announced on the MVP Award blog that there will be some changes to the program:

Since we started to challenge our award cycles, we went ahead and challenged everything about them.
For the past several years, the MVP Award Program has had four quarterly cycles where we both onboarded new MVPs and re-awarded existing MVPs.  Because of that, MVPs identify themselves as
“January MVPs” or “April MVP”. We’d like to simplify things and move to a more unified program
that provides a consistent experience to all our MVPs. That’s why, starting July 1st 2017, we’ll be celebrating all our renewing MVPs with just one annual award cycle.  Everyone will snap to that cycle.

This means that my current award will be valid until July 1st 2017, which is the new annual award
cycle.

I feel very honored and privileged to have been part of the MVP program for this many years:

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It is very pleasant to be able to share knowledge with the community by writing articles, speaking
at and organizing user group meetings as well as various other contributions such as PowerShell
modules. On the other hand, it is also rewarding due to getting the chance to interact both with Microsoft employees (especially the PowerShell team) and other MVPs.

The 2016 Microsoft MVP Summit in Redmond was a highlight last year, where I got to meet both existing
and new friends from the community in person. Also, a fun thing happened during the last session of the conference, where I was in luck of winning Jeffrey Snover`s tie (I believe this was the first
tie he used when speaking at a conference) at a lottery:

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Thanks, Get-Random!
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I also got the chance to get it signed and chat with Jeffrey later that day:

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