 Hey, everybody. This is Christian Buckley with another MVP buzz chat interview and I'm talking today with the new pillow. Hi, Christian. Nice to meet you. Well, it's great to to talk to you. I think we've actually, we may have met or I don't know in an online world. I don't know. Remember, like who I've met in person, or I've just had conversations with online. But for folks that don't know who you are, why don't you give us that background who you are where you are what you do. Yeah, so firstly, my name is Anup Anup 30. I am basically from India, but I have been living in, in London for about 10 years now. So yeah, and I work at a company called content plus cloud. So if you've heard of Chris O'Brien, he works here. And I've been doing, you know, SharePoint development since about, I would say, nine or 10 years now. And yeah, have been in the development space since I started working with SharePoint. That's probably it then because the, you know, the SharePoint community is a, you know, smaller, tighter community and interaction and content of things. Of course, we know Chris, you know, from for many years. But, well, that's great. How many so how many MPPs at your company now. So I'm the fourth one. So yeah, three, three other MPPs who are into office apps and services. And mine is in office development. So it's always interesting, while we could all be focused on one thing like SharePoint, there could be multiple, there are people that are SharePoint people that are business applications, MPPs and office development and enterprise capabilities, another one where people are more over on the DevOps side of things. But, but yeah, or there's even a couple people that have their Azure MPPs, but you're just kind of work that side of the stack. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Yeah. So a lot of different things to concentrate on now. But yeah, it's good to see that, you know, there are MPPs in all these different, different domains. Well, I'm always interested to learn like how, like what was your path to becoming an MVP? Like what was your process? What would you say, like in your recommendations for people that are interested in moving along the path? Right. For me, it's been mainly the community. You know, the SharePoint community, it's, it's so helpful. The patterns and practices community. You know, we get to, at least for me, I get to learn a lot of new, new things from that community. And I've been learning from the community and contributing back to the community. And, you know, that's, that's my path, basically, so learn more and then share more. So that's why, as the more of the community is sharing is caring. So, yeah, in fact, what happens is with, with every new, new concepts that that get released by Microsoft. There's a lot of information about those new concepts in the community. So you are very much up to date with all the new updates that Microsoft keep releasing. And the community, you know, they release a lot of videos, write a lot of blog posts, tweet, tweet about all these new concepts. So that's where I gather a lot of information. And with that information, you know, I process and then try to, you know, provide a bit more or my findings on that. And that's, that's my path, how it has been towards the MVP. And also, you know, Chris, Chris O'Brien, he has been very helpful. So, you know, I had a few conversations with him, you know, throughout this path. So how we can approach and yeah. That's always great advice if, if for people that are participating in the community and are interested in learning more about the MVP program is to go and connect with talk with an MVP. So if you, I mean, it's great that you have as teammates other MVPs, like, you know, at point there are five of us that are MVPs, there are three of us that are regional directors. And so occasionally people will reach out like, what, tell me more about the program and, and what else can I go and do. It's great to be able to have that if you don't have somebody a teammate somebody within your organization that's an MVP is, you know, reach out to some of the MVPs who are, you know, just like your favorite people that you follow in their blogs or their videos or you've met them in person once or twice. It just reach out even if you don't know them like MVPs are generally pretty approachable, you know, through social. Yes, that's right. Yeah. You know, because in a lot of these conferences when you go and speak to MVPs, you know, the answer your queries and read anything, you know, there's nothing like a silly question or anything. So they are very helpful. The silly question is the one never asked. Yes, that's right. That's right. Yes. And even from Microsoft side. So we've got Claire Smith over here who is the MVP manager from Microsoft. So she has been also very helpful, you know, after the nomination process. She went through all the contributions and told me how I can proceed with the application. So I always forget about that. So that's a great recommendation if that's something if you're serious about you're finding out more and pursuing that that path is to is to get to know that MVP leads and if you don't know who they are. Because over in the US, you know, we have Christian and Betsy that are that cover North America. They're social, they're doing a lot of things just kind of out there. People can find them. But again, that's something if you don't know in your region of the world, who you're the MVP lead is you can ask an MVP that so. Yes, I'm sure that exists out in a website somewhere out publicly if you could just do a search on MVP leads at Microsoft. Yeah, on the on the MVP dot Microsoft.com. I think there's a there's a list. Okay, yes. I didn't even know that so look you're you're already providing community value today. Well that's really cool. Hey I was wondering so for folks that aren't familiar with the patterns and practices like those sessions. Maybe talk about that more how people can get involved like what is what is it. How can people get involved. Yeah, sure. To start with, there's a website called pnp.github.io and that website has a lot of information. And, you know, the community itself. There are a lot of weekly, you know, weekly community calls. So in that. So to give an example, there's a SharePoint community call, which happens every every other Tuesday I think yeah. And then, or every other Thursday, but yeah, but the, you know, the initial call will be, you know, they give you updates on the latest happens at Microsoft and then any community member can do a demo for 10 minutes. So there'll be three demos in each call. And the community members like Wesa, Waldeck, David Warner, Hugo, they're all very helpful. And on the website itself we can go and register to these. They have, you know, lots of different sessions on how to get started. If you want to present, you know, what are the initial steps that you can do to do a demo, how to increase your confidence etc. There's a lot of information covered on that website. And yeah, that community itself is very helpful. Like I said in the beginning of the call, I have learned a lot from the community earlier. I was very scared to do a demo on a community call but, you know, with the help of the, you know, these community meetings. We can do a demo and everyone is very supportive. And they, you know, they answer questions, ask questions and get information from you. So yeah. That's one thing. And so I know like Waldeck is former MVP for many years. You have a lot of people at Microsoft that were MVPs and Microsoft like snatched them up out of the community. And you know what, for folks that are, you know, tentative about, I don't know that I'm ready to go and share and, you know, they can help you through that process and, and give you advice on that give you feedback before you go and present something live but that is a great springboard to, you know, the path to becoming MVP or just doing public speaking on the on the subject matter in the first place. Great experience, even if you have no desire to be an MVP or to ever present in a conference, just making those contacts and yes, you know, having that those contacts to help you in your work for your company can be hugely beneficial. Yeah, definitely. Because the amount of information that you get from the community, say in your day to day work when you face some problems. You can ask a community member and then you'll get a solution straight away or even if you have attended one of these calls, the solution might be there. So all the calls are recorded and shared on YouTube as well. So you can, you know, watch the calls at any time. There are several blog posts on the calls as well. Yeah, it's, it's a very helpful community. There are very, you know, I think the youngest member in the community is about 14 years old. So she's also doing some demos and participating in various calls so yeah it's really good to see. Yes, that is cool to see and there's a, I don't know that Microsoft handy has any age limits on becoming an MVP. I think the youngest that I'm aware of there was. There's an 18 year old. Wow. I'm trying to remember if. So I've got a good friend of mine, Paul Holmes, he became an MVP and then his daughter Ashley became an MVP. I don't know if she was the youngest I think there was another there was a. I'll say kid because he was young like a, I think he was 18, and he was in like Singapore or Malaysia or something and became an MVP. So a few years back I don't know what happened to him. I'm confident he got older. But I anyway, so I mean there have been, you know, but Ashley, I don't know if she was 18 or 19 when she just like a year ago when she became an MVP but but again it's it's all about the work and the contributions to the community so it's a great way to to start out your career differently by getting involved in community giving back and then, you know, trying to earn that. I always say that that even if you don't get the recognition you're by Microsoft you're not added as an MVP. There are huge benefits to being involved in the community and giving back and having that low level of of impact and participation in the community. It's going to benefit your career. Yeah, that's the thing because it's all about learning and sharing. So, well, you know, from the community, you get to learn a lot of things which you can apply in your day to day, day to day work to solve problems and, you know, once, even if you discover some of the new problems and discover solutions for those just share it back with the community so the, the feeling of satisfaction that you get when you do that learn and share. That's really great. You know, I have to say that so two of my four kids followed kind of STEM paths. And in high school, all four of my kids I tried to convince them like, if you start blogging about your educational path, as you're learning just just one article a week one blog post a week on what you're learning and the subject matter of your major, you know, it would benefit your career I said you will years from now, look back at those, if you're doing it a week that's you're doing a blog post in a year over years, as you're learning, you know, in that in the area of study like my, my middle son is is finishing up his degree in atmospheric sciences is his undergraduate you know go on to grad school and likely a PhD and kind of go down that path. And I keep harassing and he's done a few, but I keep I was like be consistent, talk about he's like, I don't know what to go and write about. You're learning what you learn in your classes, the experiments that you've done the projects and his internship, right about that stuff. I said even if you don't have the readership now. Think about that on your resume if you can point back to 50 or 100, you know, blog posts articles that you've written on the subject matter. How far ahead you will be of the your competition of other graduates your age. Yeah, true, true. That's what because it's like, it's, it's, yeah, you keep all your learnings and then one day, they will help you one or the other way. Well, that's something where I go and so I use one note is my repository for all my content. And when I'm going and researching on the topic one thing that one benefit of writing so much is that I will go and do a search within my one note and find the research that I did articles that I wrote years in the past that I can leverage for that research like oh you know what I've written on this, or I had even if it was never published. I'll capture notes, put my thoughts around it with links to the talk that I saw or the article that I read, and I'll keep that as a repository, and I'll leverage my own past thoughts that I had long forgotten on that topic. And then kind of continue that I might do a blog post, finish a blog post that I started two years ago, because the technology has progressed. And I have more to say on that topic today. Yes, yeah, that's right so blogging is always good or even just like you said keeping notes, you know, they'll, they'll just help you in one or the other way. What a contribution do you or do you prefer blogging. Are you more a video person or kind of what's your style. So, it's a mix I would say so mainly blogging though so I write blogs on the platform called medium. I write blogs related to SharePoint and Azure and bit of power platform on the, on the other side, you know I try to participate in a lot of community calls, and those calls get recorded and, you know, they come out as on YouTube. Yeah, short calls so yeah but I don't have a personal video channel or anything. Well that's always something to aspire to or we're a void we depending perspective on that. Well, a new really appreciate the other take of the time getting to know you and and for folks that want to find out more about you or follow you so where where can they find you. Yeah, so I'm on Twitter, under the account. Sorry, under the username and tells I write blogs like I said on medium and the username there is, there is a new key. And I'm on LinkedIn as well with my full name on a fatty. I'll have a blog post all the links so anybody what you if you're listening to this via the podcast and you'll be able to go to buckley planet calm, and I'll have an article with all the links to all of this social and his blog and everything there. And so you can find them that way as well. So really appreciate the time today. Yeah, thank you very much Christian for this opportunity. Thanks a lot.