October 2020 Content Wrap-Up

by Christian Buckley · Published November 1, 2020 · Updated November 2, 2020

And here we are at the start of another month. October felt huge. Lots going on, big changes coming this month with the launch of new services, and daylight is getting shorter. On top of the regular interviews, client consultations, monthly tweetjam, and weekly Office Hours live streams, October saw the return of the M365 Productivity Tips webinar with Tom Duff (@duffbert) after a 3-month hiatus, with November and December webinars already on the calendar (check out the latest blog post for details). But the main event of the month was the European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference. Due to Covid-19, #ESPC20 was broadcast online via Teams in a combination of live and pre-recorded material. And for the 3rd year in a row, I helped lead the community reporter effort in support of the 2-day live program. ESPC remains one of my favorite conference of the year, and while it was sad not to be able to see the team, my friends, and members of the community during this quarantine period, it was great to be able to participate — which I did in 2 all-nighters, as the entire event (which was supposed to happen in Amsterdam this year) was scheduled for Central European Standard Time. Recordings of the panels and interviews should be made available soon for all paid attendees of the event, with select recordings made available on the ESPC YouTube channel in the coming weeks. I recorded/conducted 19 different segments over the 2-day schedule. I was exhausted, but I had a blast.

A highlight from October was moderating “The Great Debate” with AvePoint‘s John Hodges, and Microsoft MVP Tony Redmond (@12Knocksinna) on the topic of Office 365, and whether a 3rd party backup solution is really necessary. If you missed it, definitely watch the video. It was a great format, with John and Tony discussing their thoughts on key scenarios, and sharing their opinions on a number of vendor claims (including AvePoint). Following the debate, I was joined briefly by AvePoint CMO and MVP+RD Dux Raymond Sy (@meetdux) to discuss our own takeaways. I really enjoyed the event, and am hoping to be invited back to cover another topic (cloud migrations, maybe?).

Additionally, I was able to participate in a session of the Egnyte Summit, a user conference for Egnyte customers, for which I presented on Microsoft 365 content governance, and answered live audience questions. These online mega-events seem to run smoother and smoother as we all become experts at this online webinar software, and props to both the ESPC and Egnyte teams for making it easy for me to participate and focus on the content — instead of wrangling with the technology.

November will be a bit quieter, as I am working on a few client offerings, and will be launching a new CollabTalk service in January that I am very excited to talk more about in the coming weeks. I’ll continue to work with the Microsoft ISV community, and have one or two research projects on the docket for 2021, but I foresee this new service taking up the majority of my time next year. More on that soon.

As for content, here is what happened in October:

Office Hours

These weekly Ask-Me-Anything (AMA) panel discussions are a ton of fun, and we’re building quite the catalog of answered questions. We are now live streaming on 4 platforms: YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, and you can find us every Monday morning at 8am Pacific. Recordings are posted here to my blog and the CollabTalk YouTube channel. Send your questions to us at OfficeHours@CollabTalk.com

Microsoft Community Office Hours, Episode 28 (which was posted late, and post-dated) [blog | YouTube]
Microsoft Community Office Hours, Episode 29 [blog | YouTube]
Microsoft Community Office Hours, Episode 30 [blog | YouTube]
Microsoft Community Office Hours, Episode 31 [blog | YouTube]
Microsoft Community Office Hours, Episode 32 [blog | YouTube]

#CollabTalk TweetJam

I’ve had quite a few people asking for a tweetjam focused on the Power Platform (Power Automate, Power Apps, Power BI, and Power Virtual Agents), and this was a fast-paced community discussion that really highlighted why this one of the fastest-growing aspects of the Microsoft community. We’ve touched on “citizen development” in the past, but this was the first time we focused entirely on Microsoft’s stake in the low-code automation space. Apparently, we briefly trended on Twitter with more than 1.6 million impressions during the one-hour event. We’ll be back on Friday, November 13th at 3pm Pacific for a special edition of the #CollabTalk TweetJam, providing a live panel discussion + community tweets in conjunction with the M365 Chicago event, which will be held online. Find out more at m365chicago.com

Automation, Citizen Development, and the Power Platform [buckleyPLANET]
tyGraph tweetjam stats in Power BI [tyGraph]
October 2020 #CollabTalk TweetJam Summary with MVP Treb Gatte (@tgatte) [YouTube]
Community Feedback on the Power Platform [buckleyPLANET]

Interviews

I was able to get caught up on my interview post-production activities, finally bringing to light my interviews with Jennifer, Ahmed, and Chris. Some great discussions!

#MsftBuzzChat with Chris Slemp [blog | YouTube | podcast]
#MVPbuzzChat with Ahmed Nabil Mahmoud [blog | YouTube | podcast]
#MVPbuzzChat with Jennifer Mason [blog | YouTube | podcast]

Productivity Tips

FINALLY, the Productivity Tips webinar series is back up and running! We took a brief summer hiatus, but then struggled to find working dates for the past couple months due to travels and other online events. But Tom and I locked down our Q4 dates, and both the November Nexus and December Dust-Up are coming up, so please be sure to register!

Microsoft 365 Productivity Tips “October Ousting” [blog | YouTube | SlideShare]