It All Started with a Typo (My MVP Journey)

I was reading through a GitHub repository one evening, working on a project, when I noticed a small typo. Nothing big. Just a word out of place in a file most people would probably scroll past. I almost scrolled past it too. But I didn’t — I fixed it and opened my first pull request.

A few days later, it got accepted.

I remember looking at that notification for way longer than it deserved. Something about seeing “merged” next to my name felt bigger than it should have.

Not long after, I was working with an Azure DevOps migration tool — one that used to migrate more than 14 million work items — and I found another typo in its repository. I did the same thing again: opened a pull request. It got accepted, and this time the repository owner actually thanked me for it.

I was really happy about it. Happier than the moment really called for.

Some people didn’t get why. One person even asked me: “It’s just a typo. Where’s the achievement?”

I didn’t have a good answer back then. I just laughed it off and moved on. But the question stayed in my head.

It took me years to actually answer it.

The achievement was never the typo. It was opening that first pull request and realizing that I could contribute too.

That’s the lesson that small fix taught me, and I still hold on to it: no contribution is too small if it makes something better for someone else.

Looking back, I realize that sharing had always been part of who I was. Whenever I learned something useful, I wanted someone else to have it too. So I started writing blog posts — not to build a following, just because I hated the idea of someone else spending hours on something that took me hours to figure out. If I wrote a script that saved me from doing the same boring task twice, I shared it. If something confused me for a week and then finally made sense, I wrote it down while it was still clear in my head.

I didn’t plan what happened next. It just happened, one small step leading to another. A blog post turned into an invite to speak. That session led to another one. A bug report turned into a real collaboration with the people maintaining the project. And every pull request I opened made the next one a little less scary.

At some point, without really deciding to, I stopped being someone who sometimes contributed and became someone who just contributes. It’s not something I do anymore. It’s part of who I am.

None of it came from confidence, though, and I want to be honest about that. I was scared to publish my first blog post. I was scared the first time I had to give a talk in English, which still isn’t my first language. I kept thinking I wasn’t experienced enough to be the one talking.

I did it anyway, every single time, and I learned something I couldn’t have learned by waiting. Every talk made me a little better at speaking. Every post made me a little better at writing. Every small, scary contribution helped me grow. So when people tell me they’re waiting to feel ready before they start, I understand it — I felt that too. But I know now that readiness doesn’t come before you start. It comes from starting.

After several years of consistently contributing, a Microsoft MVP reached out and told me he wanted to nominate me for the Microsoft MVP Award.

My first reaction, strangely, was to say no.

Not because I didn’t appreciate the award, but because I saw it as a responsibility.

I wasn’t contributing to earn recognition, and I didn’t want my motivation to change.

He just smiled and said, “You’re already doing all of this because you love it. Nothing will change.”

As I thought about it, I realized how rarely I’d seen Arab and especially Egyptian women receiving this kind of recognition. If my name on that list could make even one woman think, “Maybe there’s room for me too,” then saying yes felt like the right decision.

The review took almost three months. Every contribution I’d made over the years was reviewed, one by one.

Then the email arrived. I had been awarded Microsoft MVP. I remember reading the email over and over because I simply couldn’t believe it. It took me a while to accept that it was real. I was one of around 150 MVPs from nearly 90 countries around the world, and I became the first Egyptian and Arab woman to receive the award in the DevOps category. A year later, another email arrived. This time, I smiled before I even opened it. I had been renewed for a second consecutive year.

The moment it finally felt real.

The award changed my title. It didn’t change why I show up.

I still think about that question sometimes — “It’s just a typo. Where’s the achievement?” — and I have a different answer now than I did back then. The achievement was never the thing I fixed. It was that I stopped waiting for permission to start.

If you’re waiting for the moment you’ll finally feel ready to write that first post, open that first pull request, or say yes to the thing that’s scaring you — I don’t think that moment is coming, at least not the way you’re picturing it. You start a little scared, and the confidence catches up later, if it ever fully does.

You don’t need hundreds of hours. One hour a week, kept up long enough, is enough to change where your career ends up. Start with what you already know. Share it with one person. Then another.

You never know where your first contribution will take you. Mine started with a typo.

Maybe yours is waiting in the repository you’re about to close.