August 2020 Content Wrap-Up

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In this month’s content wrap-up, more of the same: interviews, office hours, and a smattering of online events. In this WFH era we’re living in, the number of daily meetings has certainly increased, but also the number of events. We live in interesting times, for sure. One of the benefits of everyone being online is that it is much easier to find people online and connect with them…which I’m finding can also become exhausting. I have started to turn off all social media and communications tools (email, phone, Teams, etc) and block out not just a couple hours in a day, but several days during the month so that I can get work done. I used to joke to my wife after a long day of morning calls and video chats, usually between 2 and 4pm, that I was done with calls for the day…and NOW could get to work. However, that was becoming every single day, so action needed to be taken. I’m pushing through a massive amount of content, and feeling like I’m in a constant state of catching up, but thankfully there is a light at the end of the tunnel, and after this month, things should get back to normal…whatever that means these days.

Of note in August, I participated in the launch of the M365 Virtual Community event, leading the Lighting Talks segment, joined Stephanie, Rob, Brett, and Mark for their Techsplaining podcast, and connected with the Egnyte team for a webinar on content sprawl that has, not surprisingly, generated a number of other content pieces to build on the topic. With so much going on during the month, I stepped back and took a break from both the Productivity Tips series with Tom Duff, as well as the CollabTalk TweetJam — but don’t worry! Both will return in September, and we’re locking down dates for the remainder of the year. I also have a number of already-recorded interviews requiring some post-production love which you should see go live here in the next few days.

So here is what what published for public consumption in August:

Talking about content sprawl

One of the ISVs I’ve been working with is Egnyte, a cloud storage solution that provides AI-supported security, data governance and administration capabilities in a simple, seamless solution. I joined Sr. Solutions Architect Kyle Wallstedt, and Egnyte customer Stephen Hand, Director of IT and Cybersecurity at Tilson, to discuss the exponential growth of content sprawl within the Microsoft 365 ecosystem, some governance best practices, and how Egnyte provides additional value to M365 customers. I had two guest blog posts go live on the Egnyte website, and have a whitepaper being published in September, so watch my social feeds for updates.

Online Events

It may seem like a short list of online events from the list below, but it didn’t feel like it…hence the pause on the tweetjam and productivity tips webinar this past month. It was great to connect with the full Techsplaining team and discuss current topics from the M365 world, including the Slack antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft (which I predict will go absolutely nowhere). I was also able to participate in the launch of the M365 Virtual Community, which was spearheaded by fellow RD+MVP Joel Oleson, and SoCal community leader Galen Keene. I was asked to facilitate the Lightning Talks, coordinating a number of pre-recorded and real-time presentations and discussions. You can follow the links to the event recording, but in the coming weeks we plan to break up the individual lighting talks and post them to YouTube, as well.

  • Techsplaining, Episode 56 – Christian Buckley, Inspire, Dataflex, Slack Lawsuit, and more! [Techsplaining]
  • Microsoft 365 Global Virtual Community Launch Party [YouTube]
  • Microsoft 365 Virtual Community – Lightning Talks Introduction [YouTube]

Interviews

I hit a major milestone in August with the 100th episode of my #MVPbuzzChat interview series, with fellow RD+MVP Reza Rad. I have a few more recorded for September, as well as another Microsoft employee interview which I hope to push live this next week. Additionally, I was joined by fellow RD Sharon Weaver to discuss our July #CollabTalk TweetJam in which we talked about takeaways from this year’s Microsoft Inspire partner conference, which was held entirely online, of course. Always great to catch up with Sharon.

Office Hours

These weekly Microsoft Community Office Hours live streams on Facebook continue to push forward, with a cast of regulars — and the occasional surprise guests jumping in to answer questions posted to a couple different community forums. We primarily pull questions from the Collab365 community rooms for Office 365 and Microsoft Teams, but we have also had questions coming in from Tech Community as well as our new email at OfficeHours@CollabTalk.com. We live stream every Monday at 8am and 6pm Pacific, but are talking about consolidating our time to a longer morning session. We’ll see what happens in September.

  • Microsoft Community Office Hours, Episode 24 [blog | video]
  • Microsoft Community Office Hours, Episode 23 [blog | video]
  • Microsoft Community Office Hours, Episode 22 [blog | video]
  • Microsoft Community Office Hours, Episode 21 [blog | video]
  • Microsoft Community Office Hours, Episode 20 [blog | video]

Other stuff

Aside from last month’s content wrap-up, I am also sharing the link to my old band efforts. I was the lead singer for My Cat Jeoffry in the early 1990’s, and while we didn’t have the money to put together high-quality recordings, we did manage to capture a few songs here and there, and recorded the album ‘Housebiter’ sometime in 1993 or 1994, I think (fuzzy memories). I was going through the garage and consolidating boxes when I discovered a stash of cassette tapes, and added this album to my personal Soundcloud account. Enjoy.

Upcoming activities

There are a few things happening in September. The biggest is that I’ll be traveling to Branson, Missouri to attend the North American Collab Summit (https://www.collabsummit.org/) to present two sessions, as well as to help Mark and team run this hybrid event. I am organizing the online portion of the event, with online and in-person moderators for each of our 6 tracks. If you would be willing to moderate one of the tracks on one or both days of the event (either 8:30am to 12:00pm CDT or 1:30pm to 4:00pm CDT) please reach out to me. We still have about half of the moderator seats open. And if you’d like to join us in-person, all moderators will get a free pass to the event!

My two sessions will be:

  • 20 Microsoft 365 Productivity Tips that You’ve Probably Never Used (But Should) — Tuesday, Sep 29th at 2:50pm
  • Everything You Need to Know About Tasks in Microsoft 365 — Wednesday, Sep 30th at 1:30pm

If I don’t see you in Branson, then be sure to catch one of the upcoming webinars or live streams. I’ll publish dates and topics for the next tweetjam and productivity tips webinar sometime next week.

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.