I often wonder how much people in other professions genuinely love the industry they're in to the point that they'd do it regardless of the money. I'm sure there are examples, but I wonder how many lawyers look forward to doing something in the legal space on their weekend, or a shoe salesman wanting to, well, it's hard to imagine anything too exciting there. For me, it's stuff like this:

Rack upgrade day! Some new @Ubiquiti goodness to consolidate things, pics and details coming… pic.twitter.com/hRrFFUBKch

— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) July 17, 2025

One of *the* coolest things we’ve 3D printed with our @Prusa3D is a hydroponics tower. That’s 3 weeks from the first 2 pics to the last, from tiny plants to eating out of our back yard 😮 pic.twitter.com/I5nZtkHFyS

— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) May 14, 2024

And for the next bit of my IoT buildout - @home_assistant! pic.twitter.com/kEoQBEt7AW

— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) May 29, 2020

That's "downtime" between coding - playing with the network, 3D printing random stuff and descending down the bottomless rabbit hole that is IoT. That's the fun stuff! To be fair, I also love watersports, playing tennis, fitness, cooking, travel and other "normal" stuff too, the point is that to me, technology was a passion before it was a career. It's been that way for most of my life:

This is me, 32 years ago, a 16 year old in 1992 trying to make some cash. Worked out good in the long run 😊 pic.twitter.com/xOfsrwdRCK

— Troy Hunt (@troyhunt) July 2, 2025

To the point of the blog post, this month marked the beginning of my 10th and 11th years as a Microsoft Regional Director (a biennial award), and the 15th year of being a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional. These are not titles people set out seeking, and most of my peers who have been awarded them are like me in that they simply did things they loved, shared them with the community, and were then recognised for their efforts. And that, to me, remains at the heart of these programs: doing what you love and sharing the journey. Thank you to everyone who has joined me along the way.

And suddenly, as I finish writing this, I recall all the times as a kid when my airline pilot father would spend his weekends building radio-controlled model planes. Maybe this is all a hereditary thing 😊