It's a great day for me and Moulding and Millwork (the company I work for).  A few weeks back, I let you all know that I'd been given the green light on finding someone to help me out with Data Warehousing.  One of the first people I turned to for suggestions on finding someone was Scott Stauffer, the chapter leader of the Vancouver BI PASS chapter, PASS regional mentor, and SQLSaturday organizer.  I was hoping Scott could help me find the right person out there to help grow and support the fact-based decision making engine I envisioned working at M&M.  Scott has a ton of contacts from being a leader in the community, and having a busy consulting practice in the area for years and years.
Scott thought my news was great - he was really excited for me that what I've been working towards was looking like it was gaining a lot of traction.  But then he surprised me.  He didn't start by giving me a list of people he knew that would fit the position.  Nor did he point me towards recruiters or job boards.  The first thing Scott asked was if I thought he would fit the position.  That totally threw me for a loop.  I was expecting to have either a naive kid to train up completely, or a SSAS geek to learn from.  It won't surprise you to find out that I was (after the shock) VERY interested in working out arrangements with Scott.  (If you get an MVP interested in working with you... you find out a way to say yes.)  On top of being a great community supporter and organizer - which only touches the tip of his interpersonal capabilities and vision for the big picture - Scott is an exceptional technical talent at the whole Microsoft BI stack.  Yes, he'll claim that I've got him beat in Integration Services, but I actually don't think so.  I'm a hacker (in the classical sense) in SSIS, and only have one "project" to claim on my resume.  I've managed to milk that into an MVP award for the third year in a row now (yay!) which I just found out about this past weekend.  But Scott has a list longer than my arm of successes in this space that I now get to draw on and use to help our IT department support our business with insightful data to help them make visionary decisions quickly and more confidently than ever before.
With that, I'll be accepting your congratulations to me for landing Scott as a partner in crime here at Moulding and Millwork.  It's a real coup for me, and I'm pretty happy with myself at the moment. ;) I'll make sure his badge at PASS Summit is appropriately labeled with his new allegiance.  Oh... and I guess you can send your congratulations to him on twitter or in person at the Summit.  He'll have to get used to the good-natured ribbing I dole out - welcome to M&M Scott!