Here I sit 30-some thousand feet up on my way back home from the 2007 MVP Global Summit... tired physically and mentally. What a fantastic week... a handful of us SharePoint MVPs got together at Ft. Lewis down in Tacoma, WA for a day of paintball. I never expected it to be as much fun as it was! Everyone was very sore the rest of the week... in fact, you could easily spot a SharePoint MVP: look for the guys walking gingerly, limping, or taking a while to get up the stairs (including me). Fellow SharePoint MVP Dan Larson brought his video along and shot a few clips. He compiled a short video you can see watch (I'm the guy in white sneaks, jeans and dark blue sweatshirt with the hoddie up over my head).

Here's Dan's paintball video, cleverly named SPPaintball, hosted on MSN's SoapBox:

MSN SoapBox Video: SPPaintball

Now for a few pictures. The first one a shot I took to the goggles. Shane Young and I were laying a storm of fire on this one building in a village, trying to "kill" Kit Kai's wife Stephanie. I peaked from behind the tree and all I saw was my face explode in orange, catching me off guard resulting in a loss of balance and knocking both Shane and myself back into a rock creek bed (I'm still feeling the welt on my knee from that one). The other picture is a shot of all the paintballers (Cornelius has a good list of who each one is, that's me in the back row with the blue sweatshirt & headgear on top of my head).

What's so great about Summit? Two things: first, the content rocks. Thanks to the conference being wrapped up in a nice tight NDA, everyone can be very candid and free flowing with their comments and ideas (yes, and some constructive criticisms) with fellow MVPs or with the product team. By the end of the day, you're mentally wiped out because every question is a thought provoking one... a very cool experience. The other thing I love about Summit is the networking. There's no other time you get to see your fellow MVPs in your competency in one place. Many of us are international, so we don't all show up at the same conferences (the Aussies would likely hit TechEd APAC, while Europeans would hit TechEd EMEA, and North Americans hit TechEd USA). So not only is there networking during the day, but we also play very hard... VERY hard at night. Let's just say it's fun, but there's no way I can burn the candle at both ends like we did this week!

For those, like me, who didn't leave until Friday, we all met up at Kell's down near Pike's Market for dinner and drinks. Dan passed his camera around again and we each offered a few parting comments. I promise my introduction for my comments was a joke! :) Here's the video on SoapBox again:

MSN SoapBox Video: 2007 MVP Summit Recap