Are You Getting the Most Out of Your Microsoft Investments?

In uncertain economic times, with many companies slowing or freezing their hiring efforts and looking for ways to reduce budget demands, we are often asked to not only maintain the status quo but to increase our overall productivity and output. With Microsoft’s latest marketing messaging around doing more with less by leveraging the full capabilities of Azure, the Power Platform, and Microsoft 365, the question for the community is: Are you getting the most out of your Microsoft investments? Are you looking at the success stories from around the community, learning from the experts and those in the trenches to better understand how you can maximize the value of the tools you already have in place today?

In the next #CollabTalk TweetJam taking place on Wednesday, June 28th at 9am Pacific, the community will once again join forces and have a focused discussion on the topic of “Doing More with Less.” We’ll share our thoughts and real-world experiences of how we’re accomplishing more and discuss examples from across the Microsoft stack.

In this 1-hour Twitter-based panel discussion, we’ll bring together MVPs and Regional Directors, community experts, partners, consultants, and practitioners to share their perspectives on this important topic.

Anyone can join this community discussion using Twitter and the #CollabTalk hashtag or your favorite Twitter platform. You don’t even need to be an “expert” to participate in the online conversation. Anyone can ask questions, comment on the questions posed, or just “lurk” in the background. These online discussions are open to anyone — you do not have to be on the panel to participate.

This month’s tweetjam is being sponsored by TekkiGurus and, as always, our friends at tyGraph. Thanks for your support!

If you have never participated in one of these tweetjams, it’s pretty simple: anyone can jump in and share their thoughts, or just lurk in the wings and absorb the wisdom of the crowd. Either way, it’ll be a TON of content to consume in a single hour. You can follow the live session using the Twitter UI of your choice (Twitter.com, Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, whatever). How it works is that I’ll post a series of questions every few minutes, and people will respond to Q1, Q2, Q3 and so forth with A1, A2, A3, always including the #CollabTalk hashtag with their answers. Feel free to reply as often (or as little) as you’d like, ask your own follow-up questions, share relevant links, re-tweet others, and engage with the audience.

The questions we will discuss during the session include:

1. Microsoft has been a big proponent of remote work, especially with tools like Teams. How has this allowed businesses to maintain or increase productivity while reducing physical office space and resources?
2. What are some concrete examples of how Microsoft technology has enabled you or your clients to do more with less? Any specific instances where fewer resources were required to accomplish more?
3. How will Microsoft’s AI and machine learning technologies further optimize workflows, improve efficiency, and enable businesses to get more done with fewer resources?
4. How is Microsoft ensuring that its products are accessible and affordable, particularly for small businesses and startups, thereby enabling them to “do more with less”?
5. How has Microsoft’s emphasis on interoperability and integration (like through Microsoft Graph) helped businesses reduce redundancy and do more with fewer systems or platforms?
6. Microsoft has focused on empowering developers with its tools and platforms, such as Visual Studio, .NET, and GitHub. How does this contribute to “doing more with less” in the software development lifecycle?
7. Microsoft’s tagline isn’t just about using less, but also about increasing impact. How has Microsoft’s commitment to social responsibility, through initiatives like its AI for Good program, allowed organizations to maximize their social impact with less resources?

Of course, there will be many side questions, side conversations, and wise-cracking shenanigans. This is open to the public, so please join in the discussion! The dialog is always thought-provoking and fun.

Participating on this panel (so far):

• Kevin McDonnell (@kevmcdonk), M365 Apps & Services MVP and group manager, modern workplace at Avanade
• Laurie Pottmeyer (@lauriepottmeyer), Microsoft Teams community lead at Microsoft
• Dan Rey (@stilldrey), M365 Apps & Services MVP, technical trainer and owner of DESA Enterprises LLC
• Matt Varney (@thevarnish), intranet manager at KCTCS
• Dwayne Natwick (@DwayneNcloud), Azure MVP, global principal cloud security tech lead / cto at Atos
• Tobiasz Koprowski (@KoprowskiT), Data Platform MVP, founder and consultant at Shadowland Consulting
• Jay Leask (@jayleask), M365 Apps & Services MVP and US federal director, strategic accounts & solutions for AvePoint Public Sector
• Sharon Weaver (@sharoneweaver), Microsoft RD + M365 Apps & Services MVP, consultant, trainer and ceo of Smarter Consulting
• Ragnar Heil (@ragnarh), M365 Apps & Services MVP, Viva Explorer, global director of partners and alliances at Rencore
• Wes Preston (@idubbs), M365 Apps & Services MVP, evangelist,  and owner at TrecStone
• Eric Overfield (@ericoverfield), Microsoft RD & SharePoint MVP, chief product officer of Creospark
• Mike Nelson (@mikenelsonIO), Datacenter Management MVP and solution architect at Pure Storage
• Hal Hostetler (@TVWizard), M365 Apps & Services MVP and senior field engineer and social media coordinator for Roland, Schorr & Tower
• Martina Grom (@magrom), co-founder of atwork.at, M365 Apps & Services MVP and Microsoft Regional Director
• Simon Denton (@buildbod), M365 Apps & Services MVP, visiting professor at Birmingham City University, and business architect at Mott MacDonald
• Galen Keene (@sdkeene), owner and chief transformation leader at Lion Tech
• Eli Robillard (@erobillard), SharePoint MVP, musician, fly-fisher, collaboration technology guy
• Adam Ball (@AdamCBall), co-founder of COUCUG, Teams and Skype for Business MVP
• Harjit Dhaliwal (@Hoorge), former-MVP, product marketing manager for Windows Commercial at Microsoft
• and your host, Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet), M365 Apps & Services MVP & RD, director of north american and asia-pacific partner management at Rencore, content strategy at TekkiGurus, and #CollabTalk founder

If you would like to be included on one of these panels, please drop me a line via email, LinkedIn, or Twitter. And thank you again to TekkiGurus and tyGraph for your support of these CollabTalk tweetjams! And finally, if you are interested in being a sponsor of a future tweetjam, please contact me.

We’ll be back in July for the next CollabTalk TweetJam where we’ll be discussing “The Future of Modern Communications” with our sponsor Verizon Business, so be sure to follow me (@buckleyplanet) for news and updates.