 Everybody this is Christian Muckley with another MVP Buzz Chat and I'm talking to you with Shiraak. Hello. Hello. Hey, Christian. Hey. Great to be here. It's great to have you. For folks that don't know who you are, why don't you give us an intro? Who you are, where you are, and what you do. Yeah, sure. I'm Shiraak Patel. I live and work in London, UK. I'm a Microsoft 365 consultant as well as the owner of Patel Consulting. So it's basically specializing in delivering services around migrations, deployments, covering Microsoft Teams, SharePoint for many years, Power Platform, and generally work as an IT pro. And I'm an MVP for a couple of years now. I love speaking in the community, doing conferences. I'm also a certified trainer as well as covering other disciplines around Togoff architecture and various other certifications within the industry just to sort of keep going and just learn more about the Microsoft tech that we have, that I work with on a daily basis. So yeah, that's briefly about myself, but techshiraak.com is the best place to get to me. What's your background? What was kind of your path into becoming an MVP? What technology did you kind of find your way into the program through? Sure. When it comes to MVP, I mean, I heard about the program many, many years ago, but I never kind of reached out or never applied for it until only a couple of years ago. Chris Haud, who's also an Office and App Services MVP, and he kind of reached out because I used to speak on a few events in a year, but obviously, you know, follow a lot around the SharePoint and Teams. But basically just kind of, you know, just sharing what I do in terms of my work experiences as well as things that I learned and yeah, I think just, you know, obviously I wouldn't say that's a secret success formula to become an MVP, but certainly I think just being part of the community and just, you know, getting to know people, learning from the community members even like yourself, Christian, is just a great way of basically giving back to the community. That's how I've been inspired by a lot of the folks in the U.S. as well as in Europe. You know, I've had a number of friends and in fact, I'll name one and it's part of our conversation. So Eric Overfield, who's been now for many years an MVP and is also a Microsoft Regional Director, which is a completely different thing, but and I remember talking to him and I, you know, putting forth his name, you know, and he wasn't able to kind of break ground and becoming an MVP, it really is like a black box. There's no like, hey, I did this list of 10 things, therefore, hey, Microsoft award me it like it doesn't work that way. It's very much, you know, Microsoft goes in selects and there could be, you know, a number of different criteria that make a difference depending on the region, depending on the area of focus, you know, that things. And so it's funny, like Eric had it on his, it was like one of his goals to become an MVP. And remember me seeing him in an event and he came up, he said, you know, I just resolved that I'm giving up on trying to become an MVP. I said, you know, what I've seen is that it really doesn't matter. It's like it's been so much benefit to me personally, to my business, just my level of involvement in the community. It doesn't matter that I, if I have an MVP or not, like it's been so rewarding just doing all going through these being active within the community. And like a month later, he became an MVP. So it kind of surprised him that it like, you know, came out and, you know, Yeah, that's a good feeling. Yeah, it is. So I mean, what would you say, what are your like primary contribution types? Like what are some of the things that you do? Sure. So mainly in the SharePoint and Teams area. So in particular around the office and app services. So generally I don't code, I don't develop solutions. So mainly promoting kind of the good practices around the IT pro sort of thing. So, you know, a lot of the folks, and especially as an independent contractor when I work with various organizations, a lot of the folks tend to focus just on a specific area of the technology, whether that's exchange or the identity infrastructure SharePoint, you know, depending on the perception. Right. Yeah. Hey, there's a lot of share. There are there are still just to have this conversation a couple of days ago. There are still a lot of people that are on hybrid or on purely on-prem and a lot that are in kind of the government sector that are on that. And so there are still a lot of people that are 100% SharePoint people. And that's all that they do. And that's pretty much what I kind of touch around in terms of the migration space because, you know, knowing everything about Office 365 is one thing. But given that the maturity of the organization who might be still, you know, let's say stuck in a second or third gear, if you like, of an IT, then you still have to carry that IT team forward to understand, you know, the full landscape of what's in what Microsoft 365 and SharePoint just being, you know, although a small part of it, but still the rich part of it as well, because of, you know, all the file and collaboration experiences. So when you kind of when you look at from that perspective, then that's pretty much where I get the job done in our, you know, in particular, I'm doing the migration is one thing. That's just one vehicle to get from A to B. But then it's all about the things that the organization should be doing by their IT. And then pretty much if you like, I can walk away from that organization, hoping that they've kind of got enough toolbox in them, in them, in their place to be able to drive that journey forward. What are some of the I mean, your experience working with some of those customers that still have some of those on-prem, you know, components or struggling with making the move. What's some of the reason? Like, why are they struggling with the move to the cloud? What are their reasons for remaining with the older technology? Is it purely just like a, you know, hey, we spent all this money and we're going to make sure we get the value for, for however many years before we even consider making a move or is it something else? I think, I mean, a lot of the time, what I find is the skill set more than anything else in the sense that they've got their day jobs in terms of what they do. They, they have enough and that could be purely because if it's a poorly managed IT, so they've got a lot of services on their hands to be able to try and support those services. And they tend to all then they tend to view that, you know, SharePoint or Teams or anything else is more of an extra baggage, if you like, on top of what they do, because, you know, let's not forget they have their legacy business applications, their services and, you know, their user base that they have to support. And a lot of those are kind of mundane in terms of the kind of support they give. So I tend to find that they don't have enough skills or not enough learning power to be able to to kind of learn about that, because they always tend to think we'll, for example, you know, and without surmising a lot, they'll think that they'll get somebody else in the team who might just do SharePoint or Office 365, right? And then along the way, they'll probably learn something about, say, Azure, if you like, and then, you know, Power Platform in which they may have to convert or upgrade their legacy applications to something that, you know, like Dynamics or Power Platform suite of products. So that tends to be the key thing. But in terms of the other extreme, I also find is more of a tick box or a kind of, if you like, a spend of an IT to try and get something about Office 365. And typically file shares tend to be the starting point for a lot of these things. Before then they realize that, you know, there's teams and that is the services, the apps that you get part of the teams, and all that opportunities that open them, open that up. Then it's obviously a different ball game altogether, as opposed to being just a project that they have to deliver, because it then becomes a huge program. And that's sometimes very hard to sell to that, you know, limited constrained IT organization. Yeah, that, you know, the hard part of that as well is that there's there's everything, the conversations that are happening within IT and the management and the cost of making the change and the new and all of that. But at some point, end users start looking at their seeing, you know, that all these rich capabilities are coming through what's new, and they're going to be pushing and the longer you wait, the harder that transition could be. It is, it is. And I think that's, I think it's, it's one of those things where, you know, thinking about service is one thing. A lot of the folks that I work with, they're more like, you know, if you're like, they think about service, the hardware is right and all these things. So that's a switch that sometimes they, they have to make like it or not, because that's just how Microsoft 365 in the cloud works, right? We're always moving that rate of absorption of that knowledge. It's not within that power because, you know, I mean, I remember when I used to read books on, you know, SharePoint SQL server, pretty much what every three years, we had that upgrade cycles. So you could probably, I could set your timetable up to say, you know, when you go to sort up that knowledge and try and apply that now, I'm on Twitter practically every day, you know, just kind of, you know, get some of my learnings nuggets, if you like, from that, as well as being able to just keep up with through the RSS feeds and, you know, various products that we have. So it's certainly a discipline that one has to change about themselves to be able to try and regularly keep up, as opposed to that my organization asking me to do it. Well, one other thing too is that, and I know that for anybody that's listening is thinking, well, we still have a hybrid or we're still, you know, SharePoint online, we have those components, you know, they're, while, you know, Schrag and I are both, you know, huge advocates of the cloud of Microsoft 365 that there are valid business cases for remaining on-prem and having those those platforms and those tools that are out there. And I should just clarify, this is my huge disclaimer, Schrag, is that Microsoft is has also stated that they are going to continue creating the on-prem version of SharePoint. So it's, there's no sunset date, there's no plan yet to shut that down. I don't know a little bit. No, they're there specifically, like there is no sunset date. And so I don't know the timing of the next version, they've started to talk about that. But what we had our 2019 version, so probably, I don't know, this year, maybe the next year, but every three, four years, there'll be a new version of the on-prem. So, Well, especially after that subscription model, isn't it? I think it's what was it called now? Subscription addition or something like that, right? Right. So making it even easier to go in and stay up to date with that. Yep. So what else? So what are you writing about talking about lately? What are you kind of your latest sessions that you're talking about? Yeah, so a couple of sessions coming up around security and compliance, mainly within Microsoft Teams. So in fact, that's probably one of the session I'm speaking about at the Scottish Summit, which is coming up in sometime June next year. I'm saying a huge conference. I've been there before in person as well. But yeah, generally around Microsoft 365, the administration side of things, as well as the end user experiences as well. So, you know, even just using like our daily tools like PowerPoint or Excel, and being able to at least use it from the end user perspective, to at least understand what are the future experiences and especially with teams. We know a lot has been rolled out this year, especially that the meeting experiences and the meeting apps. So there's that whole area. So that's one of the sessions I'll be doing next year as well. But otherwise, I think in generally, I tend to cover not just one specific technology either, I tend to kind of hop on and off, if you like within that wider spectrum of M365, because purely because it just changes all the time, right? And Yeah, what I find a lot too, that a lot of the questions, a lot of the things that I write about and talk about are based off of customer conversations, somebody asks a question and be like, Yeah, hey, that'd make a great blog post, or I should go to do that. A lot of my I know that the most highly trafficked topics on my, you know, YouTube page and blog are those where I talked about productivity solutions, and I've been doing a lot around teams. I just I like I've, I need to write more, I need to do more of that type of content. I know that's where suddenly I see the peaks and leadership. But yeah, it's a there's a number of other things that you're coming over right next month, next month, because obviously I also Well, coming coming over virtually. Yes. In spirit. That's right. I would love to be back over there. So in fact, in fact, after the European SharePoint conference or the European SharePoint Office 365 and Azure conference in where was it? It was in Prague. Probably last one. December, the last man, right? Yeah, December of 2019. I went from that event, like that was the last big in person conference. I my in-laws were living in downtown London. In fact, it was in the theater district. It was fantastic or museum district. Sorry. So it was over by the university where we had the SharePoint Saturday a few years back. And with all the museums all around there, just a great location just south of Hyde Park and just love that area. And staying in London for a week for free is a good thing as well. I loved that aspect of it. But anyway, so I was there staying with my in-laws that were in a little apartment there and seen everybody. And I was planning to be right back. In fact, I was coming back in April of 2020 was the plan was to spend like two weeks in London and visit people and do user groups and all this kind of stuff. And as we know, COVID intervened there. But yeah, I hope to make my way back over. I feel good. I mean, I think you know, virtually be good because obviously M365 UK is a trial keeper. In fact, I created I use the group online in the pandemic times, right? So it's been running every month. So yeah, it'll be good to have you next month on that. I'm looking forward to that. For the folks who are listening, 26th of January, Jan. So M365 UK, it's waiting to search on Google and sign up on the meter. Well, that's a great, it takes a lot for for doing this, of course, record this session. And that was kind of like where I usually wrap up is like, what are the best ways to reach you? So definitely go and take a look at do a search for the M365 UK user group, sign up for that. And then and I'll be presenting in January. So probably just a few days after this goes live gets published. But how else can people find you? What are the best ways to reach you? Yeah, absolutely. So techchirag.com is the way to get LinkedIn, Twitter, everything you find the links from that. And yeah, like every time I say, even in my presentations, don't hesitate, just ask me any question. If I'm if I don't know the answer, I'll help you connect to the folks who do so just feel free to reach out. And if you want to speak as well, I can sort of help you out. You know, no formal skills required, just your content. And then the rest will just take care of it. So yeah, that's always I love that you know, techchirag.com for new people that's coming up like the I have to start somewhere people and speaking in the user group online is is easy. That's the best. Yeah, share just about what you've learned it what you have done at your own work. Just share it could be a work in progress. It doesn't matter. Just get into that habit of being transparent and share what you what your knowledge is and what your experience is. That's the key, right? Because also, even if you if you do find that if if the topic that you want to talk about and somebody else is presented, don't let that get in your way because it's always about your perspective, your uniqueness, because what you think might be different to what others or even the experts might think because everybody learns from from everyone. And that's how I've pretty much done for myself because yeah, books are one thing. Microsoft learn is one thing, but then, you know, reaching out and then yeah, so it's the way to do it and, you know, and being able to then increase that confidence as well as being able to at least being part of the industry in the community as well because there's lots happening at Microsoft, especially are doing a lot around that in terms of, you know, various initiatives as you know, it's always changing. And it's also industry specific. So if you there's a lot of things that are out there that are kind of general like, hey, this is what's new in the technology. But if you have experience within the education sector, manufacturing or retail or or, you know, communications, telecom, you can bring that perspective. That is a fantastic way to go and kind of build the name be be the Microsoft 365 person for the education sector or or, you know, whatever, they go build it up that way. No, definitely. Definitely. Great. Well, it was great talking to you, connecting and we'll love to talk more. But thanks for having me and we'll be talking next month. So we'll be talking to you. So correct. Have a great weekend. Have a great New Year's. Thanks.