 Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley with another MVP buzz chat. I'm talking today with Shahan. Hello. Hi, Christian. How are you? Thanks for having me. Doing well. It's great to have you. And for folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you, and what do you do? Yes. So I'm Shahan Pereira. I'm from Adelaide, South Australia. So I'm a consultant in Microsoft 365 sort of things in a company called Data3. So we implement, we usually look at the projects, do implementations and things like that. So yeah, I'm a consultant at the moment. Very cool. So what's your career been like? Have you been focused on for the last few years this space or what's kind of your background? I started, so my career in IT started back in 2006, of course, as a hell-disk engineer. But I was always passionate for Microsoft technologies and what they do to the world to make it a better place. So I started doing their certifications, got hold of their technologies, and then I moved on to a bit of a senior position in IT, but still doing, but troubleshooting can be things like that. And then in 2012, I moved on to, from helping the internal customers to helping external customers. So yeah, so that was basically project-based things. I looked at, I think from day one, I started looking at Office 365 back in the day. So there's Office 365, moving emails to cloud and things like that. And after coming to Australia in 2016, then my focus changed a bit. I went back to helping the internal users, but I used the technology ability, the focus, to help them in a better way. So it was not just user support, but I managed to do some of the major projects there as well. So that helped me to move in my career to come to this position as a consultant today. So again, I'm back in the fields helping the customers in the projects. So it was pretty much a long way, but I think I'm really happy the place I'm in at the moment. Yeah. Well, it's great. And I know that you're a relatively new enterprise mobility MVP. So what's your focus? Because enterprise mobility covers a number of different areas. So what was kind of your path to becoming an MVP and what's your focus? Yeah. So it was definitely the blog I started writing in 2019. So back in the, when I first started, I didn't have any focus on what should I write. I wrote anything Microsoft 365, which I'm passionate about. My main theme was we are taking things from the internet every day. We look into internet to find out, let's say, what's this error to troubleshoot things. But my idea was why don't I give it back to the community. So I started writing. It can be something about Microsoft's exchange or teams or something like that. I really liked the device management side of it and the identity management part, SUED and Microsoft Intune. So I think I changed the focus after some time. I did a lot of DIY stuff during the weekends when it comes to identity management. So without why not I write about what I got to know. So that's how I changed my focus into Microsoft Intune and actually any side of things. And I got to do a lot of projects as well. So I use that knowledge in my blog writings. So I'm mainly focusing on Microsoft Intune product at the moment and anything that comes with it. For example, it can be Microsoft Defender. And it can be a bit of KQL that goes with log analytics, actually log analytics side of things. So that's what makes me to help me to write when it comes to blogs. And I think that helped me to become the MEP today and to nominate in that enterprise mobility side of things. You know, I've always said that you'll write what you know and what you're passionate about regardless of what other people are writing about and doing. You can't go and look and say, well, you know what somebody else wrote like the definitive blog post on that topic. Therefore, I won't share my experience because you have your perspectives. You have your customer internal or external customer experiences. You have your sense of humor, your visit, your background, your industry knowledge, kind of all those different things. It's going to be different. And there's nothing wrong with pointing to those other articles that you reference those, call them out. In fact, highly recommend that one, don't plagiarize. But there's just more of a lesson for those that are listening in. But don't plagiarize that. But it's a good thing to call out, to name drop. Like, hey, this person wrote a great blog or created this great walkthrough video of this problem area, and then add your experiences on top of what they've done and build onto that. Yeah, I think that's the sense of the community, right? You help each other. You promote each other in that way. Everyone would get a chance to shine in a way. And also, yeah, as you mentioned, it can be the same troubleshooting method or something like that. Inventing the wheel, that's what I'm thinking. I used to write, I'm still doing that. What was my experience implementing this, let's say, piece of software or something like that, or maybe what involved, what are the gotchas, things like that. Sometimes, when it comes to troubleshooting, there are a lot of articles that says, okay, these are the steps, these are the screenshots. So you know how to do it. But sometimes, there are no articles or there are no information on the internet saying what was my experience involving this implementation. This is now to be a very small one. It can be a company-wide implementation. So you know what things to look at, what are the gotchas and what was my exact experience doing this. So I use a lot of those sort of things in my blog writing. And people, when someone looks at it, yes, I want to give a one-stop sort of experience. So yeah, and also, as you mentioned, I do mentions as well. And I see some in the community, they have mentioned my blogs as well. So which is a good thing. So yeah, that's the community sense. Yeah. It is good to that. That's a great point. It's good to watch for and see where people may mention you and doing other things so that you can go back. And again, this is part of the growing the community is to, when you find those, whenever I find that somebody has mentioned me or one of my articles or a video or something and kind of calls me out and thank the person, connect with them. And sometimes it's great when I find somebody that I'm not following on Twitter or I'm not connected to on LinkedIn and to reach out and thank them for that connection. You definitely want to do that kind of pay it back and then maybe find other ways that you can connect and do some, create new content and stuff around that maybe jointly with people. It's a great way to connect with people. That's right. I think it's all goes back to the same thing. We get from the internet every day, day in, day out. But I think sometimes we forget to probably do a reshare or repost or maybe give a thumbs up to that article. So I think writing back would cover everything up because I'm giving it back to the community. I think everyone, every MVP and everyone who does that job doing the same thing and they're giving back to the community, which is a very good thing. Yeah. Speaking of the community. So how is the community, how's it going in your part of the world? Because I know that a lot of user groups are kind of struggling. Some are coming back in person. So how's that been for you? Yeah. So I think during the past couple of years, it was all, so I'm not holding any user groups. I'm merely a member of the groups most of the time. But it's coming back to in-person events now. In-person, half-in-person, you can still join wire teams if you are working from home, something like that. But yeah, it was all virtual. And things are slowly getting back into place right now. That's something which I want to do as well, because I feel like I'm one of those MVPs who provide the knowledge by writing only, which is something. But there's nothing wrong with that. And some people don't want, look, I've got, one of my kids is a germaphobe and like, I get it. And it's just nervous about getting back in. And other people just prefer just to not have that interaction. And look, there are MVPs still out there. I know a couple personally who all they do is through forums and out on tech community in a couple other places. And they're very active out on Reddit and Discord and tech community. And that's fantastic. It takes all kinds to be an MVP. There's a different path for everybody. Yeah. Yeah. I think when I first thought, when I first, when I first started my blog in 2019, so I was writing the articles, I didn't think about becoming an MVP one day. I just want to want to share my knowledge. And one of my best friends out there, and he said, why don't you thinking about being nominated as an MVP? And I told him it's, it's, it has a lot of work that needs to be done. I thought maybe I need to be a all around it. I need to speak, I need to do a lot of community, community contributions. Then again, I reached out to the community, I talked with some of the MVPs. And they said, no, it doesn't have to be everything. If you are good at something, yeah, just do it and talk to your community program manager in your region and they will help you. So that's the same thing I did. And because I had some solid work already, that helped me get nominated. Yeah, of course. I mean, that's a great point too. It's not just about quantity. It is about quality and impact. The hardest part is probably just, you know, getting the attention of Microsoft. Because now you used to be able to go in and say, Hey, look, I've got a great body of work that I could talk about and I could self nominate. You can't do that anymore. It has to be Microsoft or an existing MVP that refers you into the program. And I have, I've had people come forward to me that I sort of know casually through the, the community like, Hey, can you nominate me? I'm like, I don't know the body of your work. I like, let's have a conversation. And, and then I try to be very honest back as like, I, I think here's what I think that you could do around this to kind of package that to surface that to get Microsoft's attention at the end of the day though. I mean, if we're submitting names, I think it's the best path is if you have Microsoft contacts and they're aware of what you're doing and have them refer you because it has even more weight than we do as MVPs. But then you need to think about what are other MVPs doing and am I doing similar type activities? It's not a one-to-one. There's no checklist as you know. It's not like, Hey, I've done all the things. Therefore, give me my award. It's Microsoft's to give. It's a bit of a black box. We don't know what the process is exactly. But at the end of the day, kind of go back to what you said, like you were initially looking to become an MVP or just doing things in the community. And that's really the secret. Have a little bit of humility, do good things, participate in the community. If it doesn't happen, you've done these good things, you'll have positive impact and you'll get positive benefits out of that. Yeah, that's exactly right. I think when I change the focus to do more in-tune and actual AD side of things, I noticed and then my friend planted the seed about being an MVP. So I checked the structure. So I noticed, yes, before the identity and management, I did management change to the security like very recently. It was all in one bucket. It's mobility and security, I think. So that's when I thought, okay, so I got the stuff already that I've written. And Microsoft have got the structure that well-fitting to my criteria as well. And the community program manager helped me a lot to understand what more things need to be done. And actually, she validated the articles as in, gave me the green light to go to the next step. Obviously, the next step is the product groups are validating my approval. Right, yeah. So the information needs to be, what I've written needs to be accurate as well. So I think I've done my job 100% there to get validated. Yeah. And for somebody that doesn't have, to get to that step and be working with the community managers because they have them around the world representing each of the different regions. And if you don't know who those people are, you don't have that contact. Again, talk to an MVP. And that's a great way to just to get kind of plugged in and referred. And again, I try to be very honest with people about, hey, I just don't think that's the level at which Microsoft will consider you for that. But it doesn't hurt to have that first conversation and take that feedback and think about what more things that you could do to, again, surface those activities. Yeah. Yeah. I think that being an MVP gives you that sense of leadership. And you are basically a community influencer when it comes to technology. And people would rather than thinking twice, they know, okay, this is coming from MVP. So this needs to be correct. The information that you're providing needs to be correct. And I think it's our responsibility always to give the correct information, lead them in the right path as well. Yeah. Well, I need to stop with all my guesstimates then for that. Yeah. Well, sometimes, and you know that too, sometimes it's an educated guess. Sometimes it's, I can't tell you what I think because in my mind, I'm thinking, my knowledge that I have, was that an NDA call or is that public information? And so I have to kind of pull my punches sometimes. But it messes with your head, people. You know, the stuff that we know. Yes. I think I started with a few of it. And yeah, I think you're correct there. Yeah. We have to be extra careful. We can't, you know, guess into like, is that truly a guess or did my suppressing some knowledge that I actually know about roadmap? Yeah. Yeah. You've got to be careful. But well, very cool. Well, Shahan, it was really great to meet you and hope to be down in your part of the world early next year. So we're doing travel budgets and plans right now. But yeah, I'm glad things are opening up. I miss, I miss traveling down to Anzed region. So I'm hoping to be in both New Zealand and Australia in first quarter. So I'll let you know if I'm in the vicinity and we'll have to try and get together. Yeah. Definitely. For folks that want to follow you or find out about you, what are the best ways to reach you? Where are you most active in social? Yes. So obviously my LinkedIn. So you can find me from Shahan Perera 85. And my Twitter handle, Shahan Perera 85. And my Instagram, which is ShahanJ Perera. Excellent. Well, we'll get all that information out in the blog post as well. And thanks so much. Have a great day and we'll connect with you soon. Thank you. Thank you very much.