The Evolving Discussion around Adoption & Engagement

It’s been a while since I’ve been able to catch up with long-time friend and community member Ruven Gotz (@ruveng), but I was able to get onto his busy calendar this afternoon and capture a great discussion for the CollabTalk Podcast. For those who don’t know Ruven, he is currently serving as the Director and Workplace eXperience Lead – US West for Avanade, based in Los Angeles, and just had his 7th anniversary with the company. As a former SharePoint MVP, he used to be very visible on the conference circuit, but these days he spends most of his time on client engagements up and down the west coast. And if you visit Building 34 on the Microsoft campus and stop by to see the #ShareQuilt hanging on the wall in the lower lobby as part of Microsoft’s art collection, you’ll find his “Groovin’ with Ruven” t-shirt sewn into the front of the quilt.

In this episode, I asked Ruven about his engagement process at Avanade, and some of the common patterns he sees across organizations. We discussed changes within the Office 365 community, the transition from “keeping the servers up and the lights on” to more business value-focused discussions, and the evolution of how organizations approach adoption and engagement of technology, and specifically collaboration technology (Office 365, SharePoint, etc).

Thanks again to Ruven for participating in the podcast! And if you enjoy this episode, please subscribe to the CollabTalk Podcast! (Also available on iTunes, Stitcher, and other aggregators)