In External Ranger Champions 2011.1 and “the” Champion of Champions are announced! we announced the most recent External Ranger Champions, who are nominated twice a year by the Ranger family outside of Microsoft. In this post it gives me great pleasure to announce four Rangers who have won a special annual award for the past financial year (FY11).

We are hoping to announce these special awards annually, whereby the nominations are made by Core Rangers.

AWARD
RANGER	Brian Blackman	Bill Heys	Mike Fourie	Bill Essary
WHY?	For outstanding mentorship, guidance and support of the Ranger projects as “Ruck” master. Brian has gone well beyond the call of duty to not only support the project teams, but has been instrumental in the definition and stabilization of the new Rangers process.	For outstanding leadership and collaboration for the Branching Guidance project. Not only has Bill nurtured a vibrant community around branching, but has driven the downloads and awareness of the guidance to new levels.	Twice every year the community is asked to nominate their champions as outlined here. During FY11 Mike has not only been nominated as a champion, but he tenaciously lead one of the Build Customization Guidance feature areas and has been actively involved in most other Ranger initiatives.	For outstanding support of the Rangers and nurturing the collaboration between the product group and Rangers. Thanks to Bill the Ranger projects are well aligned with TFS and will not pass his strict review before reaching world class quality.

“COWABUNGA” … well done guys! Proud to be working with such brilliant, experienced, yet humble individuals.

Visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vstudio/ee358786.aspx where Champions and their mini biographies will be posted for perusing shortly.