#MVPbuzzChat with Erwin van Hunen

In Episode 18 of the #MVPbuzzChat interview series, I caught up with fellow Office Servers & Services MVP Erwin van Hunen (@erwinvanhunen), based out of Stockholm, Sweden, while we were both attending the Microsoft MVP Summit in early March of this year. In addition to being an MVP, Erwin is a Microsoft Certified Master (MCM) for SharePoint Server, a SharePoint Pattern and Practices (PnP)  Core Team member, and the product owner of SPTransformator at Renore.

At the beginning of this video, Erwin and I reflect on a road trip we did together a few years back with members of the Rencore and Sharegate teams during which we drove from events in Austin and Dallas, Texas to Denver, Colorado — via Roswell, New Mexico. I am a huge fan of road trips, and have explored much of the Western US, but had never driven through this part of the world. In the video, I share a couple snapshots of our adventures, which was highlighted by the fact that we all had “big heads” that were given to us as speaker gifts at SPTechCon Austin. And then there was the “incident” with Erwin, who has never been the same since…but we try not to talk about it.  We had a blast taking photos at stops along the way, and if you watch any videos of me fro my home office, you can still catch a glimpse of my big head in the background.

Aside from the road trip, in the video Erwin and I talk about community as an important aspect of product (and brand) building. In fact, this is a topic that I often discuss with clients, as the most successful marketing strategies include a blend of both community-based good-will activities (such as providing neutral explanatory an thought-leadership content, or speaking at free events, such as a SharePoint Saturday or local User Group) and company or product-focused content and activities. We then dig into some questions around his SPTransformator product, and his efforts to help organizations move from classic to modern sites, from on-premises environments to the cloud, and to adopt SPFx and PnP in an effort to modernize their systems.

If you would like to get to know Erwin and connect with him directly, you can find him on the Microsoft Tech Community, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, GitHub, as well as his blog and company website at https://rencore.com/.