 Hey everybody, welcome to episode three of Cloud Dev Clarity, and today's episode is going to be getting a little background on the Andrew Connell, my co-host on Cloud Dev Clarity. Without further ado, let's get Andrew to come in and say hi. Hey Andrew. Hi. How's it going, Julie? It's going great. It's going wonderful. I like this tool we're using. This makes stuff so simple to publish. We spent last episode making it all about the me show, which was wonderful, but now we need to learn all about you. Tell us about yourself, Andrew. Okay. I'll be quick on the way back story stuff. Unlike you, I'm not a traditionally educated developer, computer person, IT person. I went to school thinking I was supposed to do the same thing that my dad did, and so I went to school with a business degree for finance, found some classes I really liked, but found that finance wasn't my jam, so I switched over to marketing, and then I switched over to management, and then I switched over to marketing, and it wasn't until during that time, I was like had a interest in like, it was web was just coming to be in its own at that time. Late 90s-ish is kind of when all that was going, 97, 98, 99, time, I guess not 99, it's 96, 97, 98, and I was playing around trying to build little websites and building a website for my fantasy football league and stuff like that, but between my junior and senior year at college, I got an internship with your classic web startup shop back home where I live, so that was Northeast Florida in the United States, and I found that in doing and working with them, building a couple of different web apps or websites, I found that there was actually an industry for this stuff, and I was like, I really like this, this is like a true challenge and I'm really enjoying this, and kind of reminded me of the classes that I, one of the classes I took, my only AP class that I took in high school was on, is a development class where I was using Turbo Pascal. I always been like just a computer geeky kind of guy, but I didn't really think of a job or a career in that, so when I went back for my senior year in college, I went to University of Florida, and I changed my major from, I was so late in the game that I was kind of stuck with, I only had so many choices, because I wanted to finish in four years. The company, when I left the internship, they offered me a job when I got out of college, and so I was like, you know, doing the same thing, I really wanna go back and do some sort of a computer science degree. And at University of Florida, we had three different options, there was one with a college of engineering, that was the most technical and hardest one, there was at the college of liberal arts, there was, that was the next level down, so that was the second, like not as technical, but it was the second kind of computer science degree, and then third one down was at the business school, which was really more of like, you had to be a little technical, but it was mostly around like business management, or MSIT, so I did that, I did a little bit of the stuff that sounds like what you did, not electrical engineering, but assembly, working with an assembly computer architecture design of chips and stuff, and there's a whole story behind that, but ultimately graduated, barely because of that class and designing chips, but that's a hell of a story, one day we'll have to do an episode of like bloopers and like, you know, epic stories, and that's one of my career epic stories. Anyway, so got out of that, took the final on Tuesday, found out that I passed the class on Thursday, walked across the stage, got my diploma on Saturday, started my job on the following Tuesday, so I really cut that one close. Yeah, you did. So anyway, for years I was doing, I was a, or for I guess two years I was a contract, sorry, I was a full-time consultant at a web shop, startup web shop, where I developed a tool that we called, called Adminette, which was at the time it was DHTML and using Ajax to post to an iframe on the page with where today it really is kind of like, today the modern version of like, it's like a modern version of a spa, the classic version of a spa, where you would create a client-side web app that would do posts of XML to an iframe that could then process that, do server-side stuff and then respond back that way. It's before REST was really a thing and all that. We used that, that Adminette was basically used for companies to manage their websites like our local Chamber of Commerce, the Jacksville Jaguars, NFL team, Tocana, those guys. So I left that company after a little bit, I went to go join a guy that was working there at a, he was working, when I joined he was working there and then he left to go co-fund, co-start, sorry, co-found a startup. I followed him a few months later, it was my, I'm in my 20s and this is my opportunity to be in my 20s and be rich and drive in a Ferrari. Didn't work out that way. I'll give you the shorter version of it, but I found out what happened when we had a major round of funding come through and found out that even though you thought your money was safe with the Fed and with all backup and tapes, when the towers fell on September 11th, that's where all of our stuff was. And so we were like, we can't get our money for a long time and I left. Oh, wow. Did some contract work for a while as a, but doing some really interesting stuff where I was working for an electric authority, our local, I was working for a contractor through our local electric authority where I came in as a developer building websites using a classic ASP and then we switched over to ASP.net when it came out, running it on a Windows NT card that ran inside of an AS400. And so I basically built a website. One part of the project was they were scanning in like accounts receivable and engineering drawings and stuff of the electric authority. And I built a website for them to be able to view that stuff, view those drawings and all that paperwork that was all saved on optical platters, read-only platters on the AS400. Oh, wow, yeah. I then went to go work for, I quit doing that after a while, went to go work a contract with, ironically the company that bought the first company I worked for out of college, they bought them right as I was leaving the company to go do that startup gig. And I went back to them to go work a year for one of the intelligence agencies in the United States and worked as a contract developer on a local Navy base, where I learned a ton of different things like cold fusion, ASP.net, I was responsible for securing, applying the NSA, the National Security Agency level of security, it's called the Platinum Stig for locking down SQL server boxes and the Microsoft's IIS, their web server boxes. So 80% of my job or 20% of my job was locking the boxes down, 80% was fixing the apps that broke because I locked them down. Yeah, yeah, I bet. So then fast forwarding a little bit, the way how I got into SharePoint, I ultimately left that company and went to go work for another company here in town where that's where I met if old school SharePoint people will remember someone named Heather Solomon. Heather and I, that's where Heather and I met. And we were, at the time, they were going through a view process to figure out what are they gonna use for their new corporate intranet. So it was a company, a Fortune 500 company, 13,000 employees worldwide, and they're gonna rebuild their intranet. SharePoint was actually number three or four on their preference list, but then they were told, hey, the company just signed an enterprise agreement with Microsoft, and so you're gonna use SharePoint, okay, apparently it's number one. Interesting. We had a need for doing content management and collaboration. And at the time, Microsoft had a pilot running that meshed three of their products together, SharePoint, Microsoft Content Management Server and Commerce Server. Yep. Ultimately, that was called Project Jupiter. Ultimately, they dropped Commerce Server and they were continuing to work on trying to mesh SharePoint and CMS together, MCMS together. And I spent a ton of time on the publishing side. I was, it's just kind of where my history was on web-based content management systems. And so when Microsoft then, we actually did mesh those two things together with SharePoint Portal Server 2003, and we did a bunch of custom dev on it, but then Microsoft, they eventually transitioned and said, CMS, we're gonna take all the stuff from CMS in all the deficiencies of it and we're gonna put it on top of SharePoint where we call it WCM on SharePoint. Oh, yeah, I agree. So at the time, a lot of people in the world were doing SharePoint for collaboration stuff, including a bunch of developers, but nobody really was doing any web, any CMS-based stuff. And so there was a handful of people worldwide that were doing it with a, a handful of people worldwide that were doing it. I had spent a lot of time in the, this is kind of dating myself, spending a lot of time in the Usenet use groups, news groups. Oh yeah, we did those in college. Yeah, exactly, right? So helping people, answering questions about MCMS and SharePoint. And so when, that's how I kind of got my, I kind of, that's where I kind of got my name. I was able to make a name for myself, helping people in there and got a Microsoft MVP award for it and being involved on a book. But then when SharePoint really, when it absorbed MCMS, I continued to focus on WCM, ended up writing a book on it and really not by any intention just kind of fell into it because nobody else was talking about it. Right. I shouldn't say nobody else. There was a handful of us that were doing it, but I kind of turned into the WCM guy, or AWCM guy. And that's really where I think I kind of got my, where a lot of people like found out, like learned about me, how I got my persona. Yeah, absolutely. That is the content that I remember consuming from you. Yeah. Yeah, it was all, I was all WCM. So I did that. And then now here's the part, when you told your story. Yes. About how you got into stuff. This is where things I started to kind of be like, oh my God, this is so crazy. So when we were learning SharePoint Portal Server 2003, so I was like the lead dev on the team. Heather was like the main owner of the team. Right. She had much more history with the company, but I was like the lead dev, but I always saw myself as like, and I was, I didn't just see myself this way. I was the second fiddle to Heather. Yeah. Or her like right hand person. And so when we needed to bring in training, I hired a company. People are probably familiar, or some of our people are familiar with us. Remember our company called Mindsharp. I hired them and Bill English to come in and teach us SharePoint Portal Server 2003. Interesting. Met Bill, talked to him a lot. Met Todd Bleaker as well, talked to him a lot. And ultimately they offered me a job to go come work for them as an instructor and teach. And so I left, worked from home in Florida, did not move to Minneapolis where they were. And for about, I think it was about a year. It was probably about a year, might've been two years. I kept all those jobs I was mentioning. I was never at the same job for more than a year or two because I would learn everything that I had to learn. And then I get bored. And I want, and then another opportunity would show up and be like, oh, look, new challenge. Yeah. And so that was like- Leave me. I know that feeling. Yeah. So that's when I was listening to your bio in episode two. I was like, oh my God, it's the same thing. Yep. Got the grief from my dad saying, you've had more jobs in the last four years than I've had my entire life. You can't do this. And I'm like, yeah, but I kind of can. That's kind of what the industry does. But anyway. Yeah. After I worked for Mindsharp for a couple of years, I then was, it's kind of funny. I was doing a community event for Microsoft around the Vista launch, I think it was. And I'm in a room with a couple of other people that were presenting at this event. And the lead developer or the developer evangelist for the Southeast is sitting to one side. I'm sitting on one side of him and Ted Patterson is sitting to the other side of him. And he looked over at me and he's like, are you happy where you are? And I'm like, yeah, that's fine. He's like, you looking for something else? And I'm like, oh, not really looking, but I'm always listening to something like that. And he looked over at Ted and goes, aren't you looking for instructors? And he's like, yep. And he goes, aren't you looking for developer instructors that know SharePoint? Yes. Weren't you looking for somebody that knows WCM? Yes. Andrew meet Ted. Ted meet Andrew. You guys go make SharePoint babies. So that's how I got linked up with Ted Patterson. That's interesting. Okay. That's an interesting story. That was about, let's see, that was 2008, 2007. That was 2007. Did that with him for a little while, for about a year or so. And then he and I decided, he approached me and said, you wanna be, you wanna start a company over this. He had the Ted Patterson group, but it was really just Ted Patterson plus a bunch of contractors. And he wanted me to come in and to kind of be his co-founder of this. And that's when in 2009, we founded Critical Path Training. Interesting. That's how you really got deep into the training stuff, which is kind of how I always sort of vision, that was my vision of you that was the trainer person. You know what I mean? Yeah. So I did it because I just, I did enjoy it, but I didn't have the insight or the self-awareness that I did later in terms of the education side of being in the education space. So I was still mostly contractor. I still did a lot of contract work either for either as a full-time consultant or as an independent consultant. But then I was also teaching with Ted. Well, when I did Critical Path Training, I quit all of that outside stuff and focused just on building courseware and doing our model, which was rent out a hotel or a training facility, a hotel ballroom or a training facility and do workshops at conferences, take our content, teach our content, some of it private classes to different customers, some of it public stuff where we would sell into it at a hotel ballroom and all that. Yeah. And did that for about four years. So from 2009 to 2013, but in middle of 2012, I had this realization, I wasn't happy and I couldn't put my finger on it. Business was great, but I couldn't figure out why, what was going on. And I'll never forget being in Cambridge in Boston, sitting in my hotel in the Marriott right around the corner from the Microsoft Technology Center where I was teaching that week. And it was a Tuesday night and I left the class and I went over to my hotel room and I put my bag on the bed and I turned the TV on. And I was like, I'm gonna go for a few minutes before I go find something to eat. And I channel surfed for about two hours, never staying on one channel for more than 20 seconds. And after two hours, I was like, it's nine o'clock. Oh my God, I've just wasted, I'm brain dead. Yeah. And that's when it hit me that this teaching in person in these classes, I'm doing the same class 20 to 30 times a year. Yeah. And it was just like- You're back to being bored. I was bored. And you totally put yourself back in that board space. Yeah. I did. Cards on the table, it was great. I mean we were providing a good living and it was not hard to do and I did enjoy it, but after a while it was just like, I'm getting complacent, I'm not building. And that's not my style. Yeah. That's not my identity. And what I ultimately ended up doing was, I came home told my wife, I was like, Meredith, I can't do this. Meredith was basically the back office running the company while Ted and I were the content people and bringing in the money and trying to figure out what do I do? And I was like, I can't own a company and go try and find a job. I can't own a company and start another company. And finally it was just like, I remember it was Thanksgiving and I was like, I just have to get out. I have to stop. I have to walk away. And I remember, I'll never forget it. We were sitting at the SharePoint Conference. SharePoint Conference 2012 when you were on maternity leave I guess. Oh, yes, early, yes. And I remember looking at Ted and just being like, dude, I'm done. I can't do this anymore. And I mean, justifiably he was, I don't think he really believed me. I thought he won, I think he thought that I was trying to start a competing company from him. And I wasn't, I had no plans. And I was like, no, I'm fine. You want to do a non-compete? I'll sign a non-compete, I have no plans for it. So the following February, we figured out how to split the company up and for me to walk away. I did, and that was in February of 2013. And right then I was like, I need to change things up. So I got rid of all my Microsoft stuff. I got rid of my Windows laptop. I got rid, I stopped doing everything.net. I switched over to doing stuff with Angular. I started doing stuff with Node. I started focusing more on JavaScript and in TypeScript. I just did a massive, people are familiar with the movie hunt for October. I just did a massive crazy Ivan. I was like, I have to learn something. You're right. And for a little while, I was doing, that's all I was doing was building single page apps, speaking at Angular conferences, interacting with Google a lot in that community. From, I quit doing SharePoint. I was like, I'm tired of this. I've been doing it for 10 years. It's been September 2003 when the SharePoint portal server was released to this time. I was like, I'm done. I got to do something different. And I'll never forget, Microsoft asked me to come back and do a session at one of their internal conferences at the time, it was called Tech Ready. And they're like, we want you to show the field, some of our sales field people how to build a single page application and have it run in SharePoint. And I'm like, peace, guys, I can do this. I've been living in this space forever or for the last couple of years. And at the same time, I was also trying to do a startup if people followed me closely. That's when I was doing curb or I had one foot in the door of trying to do curb and the other foot doing Angular stuff. And they, at that event, I had lunch with some people on the SharePoint engineering team and they're like, we want to show you something. And that's when I think it was 2015 or 14. And they showed me the spec and the idea for the SharePoint framework. Right. And it, I mean, it doesn't look, it looks very different today than what it did. Well, hell, two years later, it looked very different than what I saw, what the original plans were and aspirations were, but what I walked away with it from and I do this thing called a mastermind with some friends, some colleagues. And I said, I was like, you know, there's just this opportunity here that I see that traditional SharePoint developers are going to see this switch from saying, stop using .NET, stop using Visual Studio, go to using this more open source, community-based tool chain, build tool chain, start using Node, do everything client side. I looked at this going, they're not going to have a freaking clue what to do. And you were so right. But you were so right. Well, I looked at the audience and I was like, those developers aren't going to have a clue. And I looked at Microsoft, I'm like going, you guys don't have a clue. Well, they had a subset of people who knew what they were doing, but yeah. Arguably, they had, this is a bit of a hubris to me, but I looked at it and I was like going, you guys don't have a clue how to explain this to these people. You have no idea how to do this. And I'm like, I've been living in this space and I know how to, and that's when it really hit me. I'm like, and I got excited about teaching people. And I was like, you know what? I'm floundering trying to find something to do for like the last two, three years after I quit critical path. I'm like, I love teaching. I identify now this is self-awareness kicking. I'm like going, I get my energy from not from development and coding and stuff, but I get my energy from learning something and then explaining it to people and seeing that light bulb and turn on and seeing it impact other people's lives. And it sounds corny as hell, but I know that that's what I get my energy from. Yeah. Yeah, that's totally legitimate. And I think that's super important. And for everybody else in the world is you've got to find that thing that is the thing that makes you get up in the morning and not really worry whether it's a work day or not a work day. Like when you get to that point where you just love what you're doing, that's huge. And so to your point, right? If that's the thing that jazzes you, then that's the thing you've got to follow. You've got to follow that energy because otherwise your life is going to feel like drudgery and you're going to channel surf for two hours. Totally. Yeah. And so I went back to my mastermind and talked to the guys. And one of my friends is the reason I do a mastermind is because everybody's supposed to be very blunt and they're supposed to challenge you. And one of my friends like, why don't you quit doing this startup thing? You've never done a SaaS. You know education. This is your sweet spot. You have an audience of SharePoint developers that know who you are. So you have an existing market. You have a new product that you can come up with, a SharePoint framework course. Why don't you do that? And so fast forward about a year when SharePoint framework came out in February of 2017 and I'm gonna see if I can get this right. Yeah, this finger. That bottle behind me is an empty bottle from the night that I did my first big launch of my course with Voitanos, which is the colors, well, I guess we're... Orange. There it is, the orange in the navy side of our cutesy little logo. That's the, yeah. And so I started a business called Voitanos where I do focus on develop, education for developers on, it was originally for the Microsoft 365, but it's more focused on the same audience that we're talking to in this show, the Cloud Dev Clarity. So that's how I got to where I am today. I mean, that's the, I did the SharePoint framework thing. I'm still doing the SharePoint framework thing. I do a lot of Azure stuff as well, a lot of React stuff. But yeah, that's the... That's the big story of Andrew. That's fascinating. I knew some bits and pieces of that, but I did not know all of that. That's pretty fascinating. Some of your early stuff, very cool. Little trivia for people, the logo there, it looks like Cloud Dev Clarity. It's like two Cs back. I like that. That's how fancy I am, man, right there. I didn't even pick up on it, but now I see it. I see you're smarter than I am with that stuff. No. I'm gonna give Steph a little bit of... Yeah, I'm gonna give Steph a little bit of teaching me illustrator for that. Well, that was fascinating. And this is my therapy back here. Yes, your Lego therapy. Not the lack of my hair, but this stuff, all of this and then all the space stuff above it. That's all my... There you go, backup. There you go. Gotta have those things. Cooking is mine. Cooking is mine. That's my fashion. That's what I do to get the creative juices going. Cool, well, awesome. So what did you think, everybody? Could you like this episode? Please let us know by dropping a comment below or submitting a topic to discuss on future Cloud Dev Clarity episodes. If you liked the video, please give us a thumbs up and then subscribe by smashing that big red subscribe button that's gonna be below the video. And then you'll see when we publish more episodes and you'll be able to follow along with us for all the content that we're gonna be releasing in upcoming episodes for developers on the Microsoft 365 and Microsoft Azure topics. So absolutely follow along with us. Thanks.