This afternoon I received an email with a strange subject: "Congratulations MVP Microsoft 2009!".

At first I thought the usual spam email that just got better, but then I saw the post of the Italian MVP lead that announced the new MVPs for October 1st, and realized it was not spam, but that someone decided to award me with the MVP title in the category ASP/ASP.NET.

When I started taking part in the community I was looking at MVPs as Guru and unreachable people, and now I'm one of them: I still can't believe it.

I'd like to thank Alessandro Teglia, the Italian/Baltic MVP Lead, all the Subtext team (Phil Haack, Steven Harman, Scott Dorman and Barry Dorrans) and most of all David Silverlight. (I already thanked all the Italian guys in the post on my Italian blog)

See you all in Redmond for the MVP Day next March: I'll finally be able to meet all the guys I always talked to via email or chat or lately with Twitter.

PS: You might wonder what the gladiator on the left is: it's the unofficial logo of the Italian MVPs, aka Italian Gladiators.