July 2019 Content Wrap-Up

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2019-2020 slider on the MVP awardFor several years I was in the habit of collecting the links from every blog post, feature article, event, video, or quote that I generated in the prior month to catalog them on my blog. It’s a healthy habit — one that I highly recommend to keep track of all of your personal and professional accomplishments, no matter what your role or industry. As an MVP, it is a great way keep track of where I’ve been, with some narrative behind the major events. However, it’s a beast of an effort to catalog everything. I often find myself going back to previous months and adding bits that I had forgotten about. And it’s also a great researching tool, as I usually lump like-activities together by category and find myself frequently searching within my OneNote archives or on my own blog to find reference material.

Long-story short, I got out of the habit due to my busy schedule…and I’m now going back through my notes and links and slowly adding missing months. So for those who may follow my blog, be prepared for a few strangely outdated posts. I’m back-dating them, but subscribers may get a notification of “new” content. Don’t worry, I’ll be caught up by end of month 🙂

MSInspire 2019 badgeNow, for July, we’re right on schedule. First off: July is one of the best months to live in Utah, as we have two major holidays to celebrate with fireworks. Growing up in Northern California, I remember watching the aerial displays from our front porch….and seeing the inevitable grass fires pop up across the Danville/Alamo valley, and all fireworks were banned sometime in the late 1970’s. When I moved with my wife and kids to the Seattle area, the fireworks were yet another thing to love about the Puget Sound. But they’re an even bigger deal here in Utah. We have Independence Day on the 4th, of course, but July 24th is Pioneer Day, celebrating the Saints entering the Salt Lake Valley after escaping persecution in Illinois and Missouri.

Also a big deal in July — I was once again renewed as an Office Apps & Services MVP, receiving my 9th slider. I’m grateful to Microsoft for allowing me to continue being part of this great community, and I hope to continue as part of the program for the coming years.

And with that, here is the content that I was able to generate in the month of July — as well as long-term project and research output that is finally available to the public:

Major Research Projects

There were two MAJOR assets that went live in July: The first was the Partner diversity guide. Based on research that was funded by Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Tech Data, and Microsoft and conducted by CollabTalk and the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University, the guide is a resource for channel partners who want to develop a diversity and inclusion strategy for their organizations. It was authored by Barb Levisay, who writes extensively for the Microsoft ecosystem, including Redmond Channel Partner magazine, and includes a side-bar with Microsoft CVP and Channel Chief, Gavriella Schuster. We’re very proud of this asset, and encourage you to download a copy (no registration required). The other research project asset is the Office 365 Operational Success Playbook, which is based on the two research projects completed earlier this year looking at O365 governance, security and compliance, and which you can download from the Spanning website:

Event: Microsoft Inspire

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella keynote at MSInspire 2019The big event of the month, of course, was the Microsoft Inspire conference, held at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas. This was my 10th year attending, and my feet still hurt from walking so much. Included here are three live stream videos I captured on my Facebook page but which are publicly available — including Satya’s keynote, and a great demo on HoloLens by CVP Julia White:

  • Julia White with a HoloLens demo in the Inspire keynote [Facebook]
  • Satya Nadella keynote at Inspire [Facebook]
  • Walking into the MSInspire “Hub” expo area [Facebook]

LOTS of Interviews

If you follow my YouTube channel or Podcast, you’ve probably noticed the steady stream of content. Over this past year I have shifted my attention from the written word to video and audio. I’m still refining my home studio setup and gear, but getting fairly quick in producing webinars and interviews. You can easily spend double the amount of time on post-production as on the recording itself, so I am trying to standardize or “templatize” my output as much as possible, streamlining post-production. I’ve broken up the content below by series and format (video or audio) to make it easier to navigate:

The CollabTalk Podcast [SoundCloud] (broadly focused business and technology discussions)

  • Episode 7 | Modern Knowledge and Information Management with John Mancini [CollabTalk Podcast]
  • Episode 8 | External Sharing and Extranets in SharePoint with Peter Carson [CollabTalk Podcast]
  • Episode 9 | End User Adoption and SharePoint Governance with Rob Bogue [CollabTalk Podcast]

The MVPbuzzChat series (interviews with Microsoft MVPs)

The MsftBuzzChat series (interviews with Microsoft employees)

The WasatchAmplified series (interviews with Utah-based influencers, technologists, and entrepreneurs)

Fellow MVPs Heather Newmand and Stepahnie Donahue at MSInspire 2019The CollabTalk YouTube Channel [YouTube]

  • MsftBuzzChat Episode 2 with Tom Resing [YouTube]
  • MVPbuzzChat Episode 58 with Christina Wheeler [YouTube]
  • MVPbuzzChat Episode 57 with Nuno Arias Silva [YouTube]
  • MVPbuzzChat Episode 56 with Sean McDonough [YouTube]
  • MVPbuzzChat Episode 55 with Adis Jugo [YouTube]
  • MVPbuzzChat Episode 54 with Sarah Haase [YouTube]
  • MVPbuzzChat Episode 53 with Robert Bogue [YouTube]
  • Interview with Peter Carson on External Sharing in SharePoint [YouTube]

Productivity Tips Series

In July, Tom Duff (@duffbert) and I conducted our 15th Office 365 Productivity Tips webinar, entitled the “July Jostle.” In each of these sessions, we share 10 personal and team productivity tips from across the different apps and tools. It’s a fun format, and I’m planning to build a searchable Power BI database of every tip we present, which I’ll make available on my blog.

  • Office 365 Productivity Tips “July Jostle” [buckleyPLANET]
  • Office 365 Productivity Tips “July Jostle” [YouTube]
  • Office 365 Productivity Tips “July Jostle” [SlideShare]

CollabTalk TweetJam

Visiting Hoover DamAnd finally, I wrapped up the month with yesterday’s CollabTalk TweetJam on the topic “The Evolution of the Microsoft Partner Network.” While the July and August tweetjams tend to be lightly attended due to vacations, our stats were still fairly strong, with 129k profiles hit and just over 3 million impressions in the one-hour event. August should be bigger as we’re tackling a hot topic: Microsoft Flow. Watch for updates under the #CollabTalk hashtag.

 

Oh yes, and I *finally* visited the Hoover Dam before departing Las Vegas. I’ve been to the city more than a dozen times, but never ventured too far away from the conferences I attended…or client offices, back from my Pacific Telesis days. Speaking of road trips, I am looking forward to a long drive in August to Seattle as I visit family and present 3 sessions at SharePointFest Seattle. If you’re planning on attending, please say hello. It’s always fun to meet the people who read this stuff….all three of you 🙂

Oh, and later this month (August) I will become a grandfather, so that’s going to be great. And weird. But with kids ranging in age from (almost) 27 to 19, I suppose it’s to be expected….

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Christian Buckley

Christian is a Microsoft Regional Director and M365 Apps & Services MVP, and an award-winning product marketer and technology evangelist, based in Silicon Slopes (Lehi), Utah. He is a startup advisor and investor, and an independent consultant providing fractional marketing and channel development services for Microsoft partners. He hosts the weekly #CollabTalk Podcast, weekly #ProjectFailureFiles series, monthly Guardians of M365 Governance (#GoM365gov) series, and the Microsoft 365 Ask-Me-Anything (#M365AMA) series.