July 2020 Content Wrap-Up

The best part of July is now the MVP renewal email. I am grateful to once again remain a member of this community, and receiving the award and slider a few days later. Feeling the love 🙂

As stated in last month’s update, I took a few personal days off this month. I’m a fairly social person, and while the daily online interactions are great, I am really starting to feel the stress of being isolated in this bunker of an office (as much as I love my space), and just needed to get out of the office and back on the road. I took two breaks this month, disappearing from most online activities to go fishing and hiking with my dogs. I was also able to take a short flight to Minneapolis (I have to admit…I kind of like how empty the airports were) to drive my daughter and her little family out to Utah for a week of family activities. LOVED getting to spend time with my grandson Israel, as well as my daughter and her husband. And it was a much-needed mental break from the screens and meetings and constant go go go. I’m feeling good…but am really behind on content, which I hope to catch up on over the next week now that things have calmed down a bit.

In July, the biggest event of the month, of course, was Microsoft Inspire — which is Microsoft’s annual partner conference, offered online this year. In case you missed the keynotes by Channel Chief Gavriella Schuster or CEO Satya Nadella, be sure to check them out, as these talks always set the tone for working within the Microsoft ecosystem for the new fiscal year. Check out the Microsoft “Book of News” for all of the official announcements made during the event.  I caught a few sessions, and will be going through some recordings (which you can find here) over the next couple weeks, as I can find time to review them. Inspire was also the focus of this month’s #CollabTalk TweetJam, which focused (as we do every July) on the business topic of “Opportunities in the Microsoft Partner Ecosystem” followed by an in-depth discussion with fellow RD Sharon Weaver (@sharonweaver).

As for my activities, I conducted several more interviews than appeared in my blog, so watch for new updates on the blog, YouTube page, and Podcast. I was also happy to join Mark Rackley (@mrackley), Stephanie Donahue (@stephkdonahue), Rob Foster (@lespaulrob), and Brett Lonsdale (@brettlonsdale) on the Techsplaining Podcast to talk about Inspire, the EU antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft by Slack, and some of the recent product announcements. Always happy to be a guest speaker — all the positives without having to do the post-production myself 🙂

In July, I was also able to host 8 different 1-hour AMA-style panel discussions, answering questions posted to the O365 Community page on Facebook. These Monday morning and evening sessions are then merged into 2-hour uploads on YouTube under the “Office Hours” brand, with 4 episodes added this past month. The blog posts and YouTube descriptions include timestamped links to each of the topics we cover.  We plan to continue with these for the rest of the year, so if you have questions, be sure to catch one of our live streams at 8am and 6pm PDT or watch the recordings.

And finally, I joined Russ Basiura (@russbasiura) from Accel365 to co-present the 3rd of our trilogy on Productivity Tips for Microsoft Teams. I’m still waiting for Russ to post the video, at which time I’ll upload the slides and create a summary blog post with links to each.

With the vacation breaks and little time to dedicate to writing, not a lot of content to share this month, but rest assured that the backlog will start flowing in August. Here’s what was published:

Interviews

• Episode 56 – Christian Buckley, Inspire, Dataflex, Slack Lawsuit, and more! [Techsplaining]
• #MVPbuzzChat with Sharon Weaver [blog | YouTube | Podcast]
• #MVPbuzzChat with Mario Trentim [blog | YouTube | Podcast]
• #MVPbuzzChat with Dr. Adnan Masood [blog | YouTube | Podcast]
• #MVPbuzzChat with Rainer Stropek [blog | YouTube | Podcast]

Office Hours

• Microsoft Community Office Hours, Episode 16 [blog | YouTube]
• Microsoft Community Office Hours, Episode 17 [blog | YouTube]
• Microsoft Community Office Hours, Episode 18 [blog | YouTube]
• Microsoft Community Office Hours, Episode 19 [blog | YouTube]

CollabTalk TweetJam

• Partner Opportunities in the Microsoft Ecosystem [buckleyPLANET]
• tyGraph stats [tyGraph]

Other Content

• Quoted in article “Slack Bashes Microsoft in Antitrust Claim, Calls Teams a ‘Weak, Copycat Product’” [ChannelFutures]
• June 2020 Content Wrap-Up [buckleyPLANET]

There were a handful of articles delivered that should appear in August, but this was the quietest month for content from me for a long, long time. Honestly, this past month was the quiet before the storm. Soooo much coming up with events (online), articles, and video that will not likely let up until the Christmas holiday. Busy times, they are approaching…

Oh yeah, and I’m participating in a webinar with Egnyte next week on a topic that I am really passionate about. Join us on August 6th as we discuss “Ordering Chaos: Combatting Teams and SharePoint Content Sprawl”