November 2019 Content Wrap-Up

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Community people at MSIgnite19 in OrlandoAh November, we hardly knew ye. Maybe it’s just middle age, but time seems to be rushing by at incredible rate — and there never seems to be enough time in the day/month to complete everything I’d like to / need to complete. But then again, I am crushing it on TF2!

The big news of the month, of course, was the massive Microsoft Ignite conference held once again in Orlando. I’m fairly comfortable with Orlando as a conference destination, as it was the site of past TechEd events and a couple other conferences in the past decade, and I know how to get around. I spent a very long week on the ground in Orlando, kicking things off with a red-eye flight so that I could participate in the Sunday pre-day activities, and a Saturday morning departure the following weekend. The rest of the month was spent in client meetings, sales calls, and family activities surrounding Thanksgiving. The month saw another Productivity Tips webinar, several podcast recordings, but no tweetjam — with Ignite so late in the year, the Ignite takeaways topic that I had planned to host was too much of an overlap to the December topic, which is always our year-end takeaways and predictions for the next year. So I punted on the tweetjam for November, and had a nice little break in the Twitter-based chaos that always surrounds them.

But here’s a quick summary of the content and activities from last month:

Productivity Tips Webinar

Another month, but finally a “win” on my part against my arch-rival in productivity, Tom Duff (@duffbert). We always have fun recording these sessions, and you can find the blog post, video recording, and slides for our 18th webinar in the series below. If you’re unfamiliar with the series, check out our link list of past webinars here. You can join us for the next tournament (the “January Jostle”) on Jan 21st at 10am Pacific by registering at http://bit.ly/O365jostle  

Having fun with friends at MSIgnite19Ignite Conference

Microsoft’s largest event of the year is an IT Pro and Dev-focused event covering every product and service they offer, and I was honored to once again present a session at the event, as well as record 4 podcasts from their podcast center. Additionally, I spent several hours answering questions and helping out in the Yammer and Teams booths alongside product team members, which is always a fantastic way to put a finger on the pulse of the community to find out the issues people are experiencing. One pattern I noticed was questions about Teams, SharePoint, and even Exchange migrations. I was able to answer some of them, and where I couldn’t, I relied on my friend and fellow MVP Ragnar Heil (@ragnarh) from Quest to step in and help.

One thing about Ignite that seems to get better and better every year is the community section. The SharePoint Saturday booth was always a meeting place for a large group of familiar faces, right over next to the MVP and RD walls, and next to the Unconference area, in which I participated a couple times.

On top of all of the friend and expert sightings, I was also able to spend some time with MVP Peter Carson (@carsonpeter) from Extranet User Manager to record our takeaways from the keynotes, which I followed up with on the EUM blog and in a webinar where Peter and I were joined by MVP and RD Joel Oleson (@joeloleson).

MSIgnite 2019 badge#ESPC19 Community Reporters

The team at the European SharePoint, Office 365, and Azure Conference once again invited me to participate in their Community Reporters effort and help organize this year’s booth and activities. You’ll see a number of live broadcasts this month from the event in Prague, Czech Republic (one of my favorite cities to visit), as well as articles, live tweets, and post-conference content from this team. I was able to interview Microsoft VP Jeff Teper (@jeffteper) again this year, who will once again keynote this stellar event.

I’ve attended every one of the ESPC events going back to the first one in Berlin in 2011, have keynoted 3 times, and am excited to be returning as both a speaker and a community reporter. See you there!

My annual sighting of TiffanyWI (Tiffany from Wisconsin)Other Content

One of my new year’s resolutions is to get back into the swing of things with blog posts that are not tied to client projects. I’ve spent so much of 2019 focused on client content and research projects that I’m simply out-of-the-habit of sitting down and writing for myself. My goal for 2020 is to write at least 2-3 times per week for the entire year, while still delivering content for clients. Until then, here’s some of what I generated in November:

  • Power Apps and Power Automate Community Survey [buckleyPLANET]
  • PowerApps+Automate Community Survey discussion with Mark Rackley [YouTube]
  • Industry Success: The Pharmaceutical Sector [EUM blog]
  • An Interview with MVP Eric Riz on Adoption [EUM blog]
  • Successful Adoption of Office 365 with Microsoft MVP Eric Riz [YouTube]

 

Coming up in December is my trip to Prague for #ESPC19, of course, followed by a few days in London to visit my inlaws who are serving a 12-month mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and living in South Kensington (awesome location!) where they’re working for the mission office. Their mission (the England London Mission) was actually the very first mission in the church, formed back in the late 1830s, so quite a bit of history in that area. Looking forward to visiting, for sure. And then, of course, I’ll be taking some time off with family for the Christmas holidays.

But don’t worry — the end-of-year/decade #CollabTalk TweetJam will still happen on December 30th at 9am Pacific, so be sure to join us!

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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.