It’s taken me an age, but on Wednesday 24th May I finally got the news and am now able to paste this wonderful capture into this post:

There is no better feeling. It lasts for a long time – I’m still getting so much satisfaction out of it.

It’s taken so long and there are a few people I couldn’t have done it without.

Firstly to Paul McSharry who was my mentor the whole way along. Once I started, Paul offered to help and he pushed me very hard during the documentation phase. I had to go to the well many times to augment my design with missing parts. Sometimes an innocuous one bullet comment meant me re-writing a whole section or adding a section to score as many points as possible. That is the rigour of VCDX !

Without his input I’m not sure my design would have been accepted. Always available with a prompt reply, and a gentleman to boot.

Gregg Robertson and I sat in the VCDX bootcamp back in Barcelona 3/4 years ago with VCDX001 and 002. I wondered who was this overly-enthusiastic South African ;-). Turns out that enthusiasm has been quite useful for this community. At various times Gregg has given me a poke or prod that was needed, especially before the final run. Thanks to Gregg for setting up his Slack study group site, as well as this was an invaluable aid.

From a mentorship perspective I wanna thank Lior Kamrat, Rebecca Fitzhugh (for lots of input including design reviews and mocks), and Rene Van Der Bedem. I recommend Rene’s posts very highly for anyone working towards VCDX – also Paul McSharry and Gregg have written some excellent posts too.

Thanks to the VCDX’s who gave up all their valuable time on the Sunday before the submission: Paul Mc, Sam McGeown, Gregg Robertson and Kiran Reid. This was invaluable, and for others who gave me great advice along the way …. Dave Charter, Chris Kranz and Andrea Mauro. It’s good company to join.

I’d like to also thank the study group of Brian Gerrard, Jeffrey Kusters and Bilal Ahmed.

Family = Number 1

Last but not least I have to thank my incredibly patient wife Dara and kids Eve, Isobel and Max who pretty much didn’t see me for several months. The encouragement my kids gave me was one of the most important weapons I had. Look at the 3-D card to help me visualise the panel and imagine myself being in there.

I plan to write some posts about my experience and resurrect my dormant blog over the coming while. To aspiring VCDX, to use the words of Sam McGeown, “Well Crack on then”

Don’t let anything stop you ! Believe it and it will become reality !