 Everybody this is Christian Buckley with another MVP buzz chat interview and I'm here today with Shafina. Hello. Hello everyone. Another brand new office apps and services MVP congratulations. Thank you very much. So why don't you introduce yourself who you are what you do where you are. So, first of all, thank you very much for this opportunity. Like he said, my name is Shafina recently awarded the MVP Award. But you know, prior to that I've been working in the industry specifically around SharePoint and Microsoft Teams. I've worked with Microsoft for the last 12 years, I would say, so really heavily focused on SharePoint in terms of collaboration and productivity. And so then I just naturally moved into this Microsoft Teams ecosystem. And I found myself really enjoying working with my clients to help them understand how to enable end users to be really productive and more collaborative with the tools and technology. So that's kind of how I found my passion and that's when I really started sharing things with the community was when I was realizing that actually I really enjoy helping end users and just empowering people to do more. That sounds so Microsoft. Well, that's that is. That's my sweet spot as well. I that aspect of it and one thing too is you can have a number of us that are out there like I see some of the sessions that you're doing around like, you know Microsoft Teams hacks and Microsoft 365 acts like I do the same thing I've got an ebook I'm pushing right now that has kind of 20 teams hacks and and 20 teams that are out there, but it's so large and so complex, and there are different approaches to some of these common problems or tips hints and tips that are out there. There's plenty of room for a lot of us that are out there doing similar kind of stuff, and people love that kind of content. Yeah, you know, it's really rewarding when you're able to give someone that aha moment, and that aha moment can come from so many different tips and tricks, just based on, you know, their needs in their everyday jobs. So it's really, it's really cool to see. Yeah. Yeah, there's a session that I do where I go through and do just do top 20 productivity tips and I've done a variation of that starting back in the SharePoint days I'd say, you know, there's a session that I called like top 10 SharePoint tips that you've never used, you know, kind of things, and I've had something like 600,000 views of just that variations of that presentation. But I think the largest one had like, I don't know, 400 500,000, you know views of just that first version, but anyway, what you know people go through that session and their feedback it's always the same. They're sitting there it's like a herd of this I know this I know this and then number seven they're like, Oh my gosh I've never heard of that thing. And like, and I get then emails back or Twitter, you know, messages, like that tip changed my life like that that was a problem that I had changed changing people's lives. That's what we do every day. And you know, and that's exactly why I decided, you know, what better way than to change more people's lives and share with the community. So that's why doctors, people that work in the front lines, you know, and those that do hints and tips. I know it's actually a lot more interesting than measuring someone's blood pressure. Yeah, that can be pretty fascinating if you're over time but that's exactly so. So what are the some of the things that you've been doing. What, what kind of led you into the path becoming an MVP. Yeah, it's a really great story so I was actually brought on to roll out Office 365 to an organization in Canada so a crown corporation of the government of Canada. I really started focusing on the change management aspect of it I had received my change management certification. I also have a background in marketing, and I happened to be partnered with a fellow MVP Joanne Klein. She was also on this rollout project alongside myself, and, you know, we just found that we learned so much from each other throughout that project, and she just really started to push me to think about how I can share my knowledge with others and prior to that I really didn't understand that you could share this knowledge with others. It wasn't something I was really exposed to as much but Joanne really kind of made me understand the importance of this she mentored me through it. And then along the way I met other MVPs in Canada so a new res and a Simran and hubby just develop Canadian MVPs and we would meet each other at these specific user group sessions, and I just really fell in love with the community. I would say that every year, you know when we were doing the in person MVP summits. There were always complaints that they wanted the Canadian MVPs always have like the matching jackets, and they're always seem to be taking pictures together and so they're just great camaraderie around and there's so many MVPs in the US it's impossible one Microsoft will not fund to go buy us all matching jackets, you know for that. But, you know, it's great to go and find other people and for folks maybe advice for people that are interested in becoming an MVP. You know, like, you're the point that you made about sharing that information out. I mean, I've been in industry long enough to remember when it was, we didn't talk about it so much but hoarding of data of information was kind of power that's how job security I mean that was just part of the way you worked within it is you kind of hoarded that and you became set yourself up as being that go to for those problems or that bit of knowledge, and it's completely flipped where the power comes from those that are more open to learning and sharing what they're doing and and connecting people with ideas and saying, I don't know but let's go find out. It's just a different approach. It's it's such a different approach and yeah that hoarding that feeling of hoarding it, you know, it's, it's been with us since our high school days when that person wants to copy off your, your notes but, you know, as you work and you collaborate more and actually work together as people in the community with a common goal. I find that you are actually more knowledgeable at the end of it, and you've created these connections you've built a network, and you're actually ultimately benefiting your clients at the end of the day so I mean it's a win win for pretty much everyone I see. And that's the thing too is that go and leverage the knowledge of others and even if you, you are validating that you perfectly deployed the technology and did everything exactly right. Somebody else can benefit from that knowledge that experience, but I would guess that that there's always something in every project there's always something that goes amiss and being able to turn to and leverage and say, Hey, what are your thoughts this is what I experienced this is the barrier that I ran and getting those multiple perspectives. It's just, I guess it's better than doing it alone and trying to figure that stuff out. I completely agree. I completely yeah first hand experience. So, highly recommend it for any of those who are thinking about sharing with the community, you know my advice honestly is just find something that that you're really passionate about when you're talking to someone you know find that topic that really motivates you to learn more and and share your learnings with others. It's, you'll see it just comes naturally then and you don't have to think about it it's not work it shouldn't be work. And that's another thing to I always make this point when I talk to MVP is that we would I'm sure you would agree with this or disagree if you but we would be doing this whether or not we had the MVP. Exactly. Absolutely. This has just become part of my personality if I learn something I want to write about it share about it it's not a hey look at me it's a hey I learned this thing this is really cool, put it out there in case somebody else can find that useful. That's right. So, Christian, I know this is all about me. You know, I want to hear from someone with a lot of experience. Why don't you give me some advice as I embark on this new journey. Well, I as I like to answer every question. It depends. No, I think it's, it's, it's, it's funny. So I have four adult children and going in four different directions and you know career wise and things that are doing and I've advised all of them kind of the same way I said you know look if well here's a great example my middle son I've got a daughter and then three boys and my middle son, he's going into atmospheric sciences so he's a, I think he's officially a senior now at the University of Utah and very smart boy and and doing great but I've been telling him for years since high school. I said start blogging start documenting your journey. And he said well I'm not an expert on that I'm like, No, you're not don't claim to be an expert, but share your process of learning. I said seriously if you do that for at the very least the four years of college and blog post a week on the topics that interest you and your journey as you learn. And at the end of that four year process you'll have your degree, you'll also have this collection of content, kind of showing your path along that way. It'll open up conversations it'll help you get better at writing for doing okay what's to go on to masters essentially his doctorate, you know that going on that path, but the network that you'll build the process in your own mind to work through different topics, as well as collecting a library of knowledge that you'll be able to go back to an access for future projects. So that's my advice for somebody that's a new MVP, or for somebody who's looking to become an MVP is start cataloging documenting your knowledge and what you want to share. You never know what it is that you've been through the experiences that you had the knowledge that you captured. How that could help other people within that process. You know you're so right even though I'm at this point where I'm starting this journey along the MVP route. I still think there's so much value in me documenting and and just keeping that diary something that you know something could come out of it you don't know, but at the very least something for me to refer back to and and just see my journey and see how I've evolved and you know obviously make myself better along the way. There's a lot of things that I do so I live and breathe inside of one note. It's always open. I'm working to capture all my notes but every blog every article everything I've ever written every presentation outline a catalog it when I'm done with it when it's a published article or whatever I will if I when I remember I'll put the URL to the published links of CMS wire or or wherever it's published, you know, my company blog my personal blog I'll put the link in it, and then I'll archive that page and I've created a folder for that. The benefit to that is that when I'm going and researching a topic for a new article or a project or there's a customer question. One of the first places I will do a search is in my own archives. It happens so many cool things. There's so much knowledge that's out there, but it comes from that catalog and so I'm able to go back through and I'll see some of my notes and links to other articles as I was putting together that content. So it's become a tremendous and much more accurate or relevant content than just doing like a Google search or being search. So one note is like Buckley's search. That's that's my, you know, my, you know, Buckley search.com. That up for everyone access. No, no, I think it's a valid thing for me to hoard from a security. So what from the technology standpoint kind of what are you passionate about right now what what are you excited about seeing that Microsoft, of course, NDA in place so talk about only those things which are public. Yeah, I got to be really careful here. No, honestly, I just, I'm really excited about the teams platform so five years ago when I started out with Microsoft teams I was so excited to introduce it to users and, you know, anyone to talk to about it, but now I'm actually even more excited. And I would definitely like to thank the pandemic, because the pandemic not only pushed Microsoft to push. Hey, no one talks about the benefits of COVID. Okay. Thanks to COVID Microsoft has been just turning the features out. And people are just adopting them on a daily basis. There's just new things that they're finding out on a daily basis. And I find the users that I'm working with now are less against the change and they're more willing to accept the change. They're more willing to accept that these are new tools and new features and I just need to learn them because something about the pandemic changed the way that people perceive learning. Right, it forced the change. You had no other choice, but to learn that I mean because so I mean so you've been certified change management is a big topic of my background is project management so change management is part of my history before entering the SharePoint world. And people have a difficult time with change management and I would often say organizations that are good at change that change management will surpass, you know, in learning and IP creation companies that are not. So, it's a competitive advantage. Yes, but you've found that organizations are better at it because of the last year and a half are better at change management. Yes, I have not seen that. There may be instances of organizations who have been able to do that more efficiently or effectively, but I do think that the inability for organizations to set up events and certain types of, you know, engagement, communication initiatives are lacking with the virtual world. So, in terms of actual change management. I'm not sure if the pandemic has really helped but what it has helped is the users, and the users willingness to accept change, which was a really big barrier. Well, I mean that's that's a big problem with change management is unwilling users are are recognizing hey we need to more rapidly change around that. One of the things that I would always write about and talk about is that, well one of the problems with change and why so many end users were reluctant to change is because they were never included in the reasoning for why we're changing. We weren't part of that discussion. And so that's another part of being open of, of, you know, the working out loud model of being very transparent in the decisions that we make about our technology with the end users with the people that actually use the technology. Crazy idea. You know that the why is very rarely communicated right it's just, oh hey guys guess what we're going live, make sure to do this and this and this by this date, and the users are like, oh, archive. Totally if they understand, you know, why this is important to the business what their role is and you know how they can actually make this a success. They're more willing to adopt and learn so it's a really big challenge for sure but you know being virtual I noticed. Like, yeah, everyone's willing to learn and adopt these new tools and technologies. But I also noticed that people are, you know, being more autonomous in their learning they're not depending on their organizations to provide learning and opportunities to engage and figure things out. They're actually using external sources on their own to go and figure, figure things out whatever it is whether they need to learn a new tool or whether they need to communicate with someone or collaborate with another community people are actually reaching out and doing that so Yeah, that is great. It's, well, I will see how much of this change of what's the what's improved because of the hardships that we've all been through will will stick going forward as we come out of this. All the positive things I hope organizations hold on to and don't just relapse back into the way that they were doing it they take advantage of this. Yeah, yeah, I'm not going to comment, but hope for the best hope further. Well, should be really appreciate your time today for folks that want to find out more about you or get in touch with you what are the best ways to reach you. Honestly, the best ways linked in that's probably my favorite platform to engage with the community but also you can find me on Twitter at Shafina. And, you know, look out for me look out for my posts at user groups or conferences where I'll have the opportunity to speak and share more of my knowledge. Excellent. Well, thank you so much for your time and we'll we'll catch you soon. Thank you so much and thanks for tuning in. Thank you.