 Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat and I'm talking today with Drago. Hello. Hi, how are you doing? I'm doing well. How are things over there? Well, quite great. It's by me, it's in the evening, but you, it's kind of morning and it's sunny, 30 degrees Celsius. Switzerland's hot, so we have nothing to do. I have no idea what that translates to, but okay. It's pretty warm. It feels like summer now, though it's already the autumn, so from this point everything is fine. Yeah, that's what we're, we're at that, I call it the, you know, it's the late summer, so it's still like we might have another heat wave where it's Fahrenheit, it's still over a hundred, you know, it might do that, you know, one more time, but you start to see a few more showers, you start to see the leaves dropping off, so it's moving towards fall, which I think most people fall is their favorites. And I love fall. I love seeing the colors. You do? Okay. Yeah. Well, by us, I mean, I'm living now since 15 years in the city of Zurich, but I'm originally more from the eastern part of Switzerland, so the region I'm coming from is more known for skiing and all this, and Zurich is actually in the fall, not so extremely nice because it's quite a foggy, but since it's still so hot actually, it's fine, I'm enjoying it at the moment quite well. Yeah. Yes. Have you ever been over to Utah? Have you ever skied here? Well, no, I didn't. I have here my own skiing areas like many of them, and we are really known for that, but if I'm 100% honest, I even prefer more to go for ice skating and playing ice up here than for skiing or snowboarding. Well, I'm not a huge skier. I love it when I can go, but yeah, I just, I didn't know that if you knew that, Utah is known for its powder for its skiing and it's, one thing I'll say that is fantastic about for those coming to Utah, here I am, I'm on the Utah Transportation Board doing advertising for Utah, is the fact that you can stay at a hotel in downtown Salt Lake City and within 45 minutes, you can grab a city bus and be dropped off on a slope. It is super efficient, like we have a word winning bus system here, which is a big deal in the US to have a reliable bus transportation, mass transit here. But the fact that they serve the local ski location, so it's so easy to get up to the ski resorts, whether you're going up to around the back of the mountains to Park City or to the front of the mountains with the Cottonwood canyons. It's fantastic. But anyway, that's not what we're here to talk about. Not really. For folks that don't know you, I always like, so, you know, who are you? You've already said where you are. What do you do? Well, regarding to my boss, I don't do much. No, no, no joke. Yes, my name is Drago. I'm a Swiss MVP in my fifth year now. So I'm compared to you and still a junior in this regard. You have like how many years? 12 now. Yeah. Technically, it would have been 12 and a half when they changed the timing of the renewals, but. Yeah, right. Right. That was this shift. Yeah. I'm originally coming from, if you talk about the topic, about messaging. And I say messaging like I was doing like Unix mail, all these things. And then my first serious contact to Microsoft Technologies was Exchange 2003. I skipped 2007 because it was not, okay, I will not use the word now. I didn't like it much. Let's say like this. Yeah. And then really serious. It got with Exchange 2010. And I got to a company and I was responsible for an exchange environment with more than 200,000 mailboxes, which was quite a bit for our tiny country. And yeah, and this was also the time slowly I was getting more and more to read blog articles because that was like deep PowerShell stuff with Exchange 2010, especially when you had the hosted Exchange version, there was no management GUI. So I started reading and quite quick, I found Paul Canningham and his blog. There was Exchange Pro, Exchange Online Pro, something like this. It was named now it's practical, but it's not his anymore. And I liked how he was writing the articles and it helped me a lot in the past. And then I, on one day I decided when my know-how was deep enough, I want to do the same because without people like you or like Paul, it wouldn't be possible to do things. And I think sharing know-how is like a key point why we have such a great life actually or area to work in. And yeah, then I just started writing and more and more and more and more. And it was actually also as my main topic. Then I had to make some certifications. So there was maybe you remember, there was still the MCSA Office 365. I did this because yeah, I thought that's the way to go. I made some Skype for business stuff. But then it was like always on Exchange. Then Microsoft announced the release of Microsoft Teams. And you know how it is, you start switching slowly more. So I would say in the last few years, especially since 2018, I would say I got deeper and deeper or let's say 2019 shortly before COVID, I started really to go deep in teams. And yeah, that's like my super main topics are that Microsoft Teams exchange. And I do also some data classification stuff and all those things. My company where I'm working for, I work as a currently as a principal system engineer and cloud solution architect. So that means I make the onboarding progress for new customers to the Microsoft cloud. And I am here to fix the problems other engineers has which cannot find the solution. Yeah, I have some knowledge about it. Then we have like a good network where we can also ask some questions. I dropped the question and yeah, this is like my daily bread I'm doing. That's really good. You know, it's actually your approach into the teams, your background is a little bit unique for teams, people for MVPs in the world. Because like, so I came from the SharePoint side of things. Of course, a lot of my background back in the 90s was around social collaboration technology as well. So I had that that experience coming into the collaboration space. But SharePoint, I was a SharePoint MVP. And then one of the first that made the move over to Office 365 MVP for the brief, like the one year, like one of them says Office 365 MVP up there. One or two years of that before the M365 apps and services. But either either people came from the SharePoint side into teams or they came from the unified communication side. So more of the telephony, you know, the side of things. And so it's rare to see somebody that comes from the messaging side, the email side into teams. I agree, but as I said, I had to do, I mean, I loved to do or I love still to be messaging stuff. But I, as I said, just to have one leg is not enough to walk. So I started my second one and that's why I went to Skype for business. But never, I'm a left footer, how to say, and my left foot was exchange and the right one was Skype for business. But I would never say that there was a super pro in Skype for business. And that somehow it might make this way, you know, and I started using teams. And I was talking to the company was also saying like, hey, we have to go to this new tool for Microsoft and they thought, no, we don't need that. We have Skype for business. And I said, yeah, but I mean, we know all the story of what happened to Skype for business where teams went, of course, I don't say nothing good about COVID, but the only good thing on COVID was that teams got a huge boost. Yeah. I mean, if we can't say something good about this pandemic and the teams got good, got the great product. Yeah, for me, that's fine. And I'm super happy with that. I'm just two major topics in. And yeah, I know I'm a bit special, maybe. Well, you know, it's interesting to you look at one of the reasons why teams has even post COVID has continued to grow and continue to do well. And and part of that is because of the integration with the integrations with Outlook, the integrations with, well, Yammer got folded in. But I think what helped now, Viva, engage is also the integration with teams and the communication between those three applications. So the messaging side of it. Now, I think there's plenty of opportunity. It's a nice way of putting it. There's plenty of opportunity for Microsoft to go when they're improve on the messaging layer between the various applications. I think that there are still some disconnected pieces. I'm also my background is on the project management side is on that, you know, that the the project based task based management activities. I think that's the other huge opportunity for Microsoft to fix. So between messaging and task management, I think you've got something for Microsoft to focus on for the next decade to improve on what they've done. My third wish list item is that they would get the webinar piece done right because it's still messed up. But yeah, let's say teams is OK. There will be some some changes because there will be a new subscription from Microsoft's where teams will be taken out from the e-plans as far as I heard. But I think teams. I don't like much this premium stuff for basic things. Let's call it like this. Yeah, let's. Yeah, but that's that's that's a bit of another story. I think the webinar stuff. Yeah, you're right. There is still a lot of potential of webinars. I think they should make like maybe the current version of webinar a basic function and maybe if they develop more features for webinar, they could use it as a premium feature, you know? Yeah, on the premium features, you're right. I mean, look, I understand Microsoft is trying to figure out new revenue streams. How do they continue growing and looking at that? But yeah, but I agree. It's I mean, look, long term Microsoft's pattern is that they will add things to premium. There's the initial pain up front and then as even more advanced features come later on than what were some of those premium kind of find their way down into the baseline services. Of course, with that, prices rarely remain the same. They'll they'll go up a bit anyway. So you're you're paying for it additionally anyway. But yeah, I mean, this is Microsoft's in that with with the premium features, the difficulty is that when they go out and they get people so excited about, look at you can do. Here's the art of what's possible. They rarely talk about, well, what you actually need to go license to have in place pay for to make that demo even possible. I agree. Absolutely. So that can be a bit of a sticker shock for people. Yeah, it's also like just also when you think there's or additional licenses for teams to go for PST and calling. So if they stay like this, but let's go back like, I mean, I also see like how the world changed a bit since we have the smartphones. People are start writing more messages, not SMS messages. And that's why I also everyone tries to reduce the amount of emails. And that's why the chat possibility from teams is is a great thing. I think also the most people started or start using teams because of the chat functionality and then, of course, the collaboration part, like we share pressure online and all this. And I think that's that's also something how how people start changing the way of work, because it's easy to drop a short chat than to write an email. Right, as it's less formal, let's say like this. Well, you know, it's it's funny that, you know, there was the whole there was the movement a few years back where with with tablets and everybody saying, oh, we're going to move away from using desktops, we're just going to drop off at computer sales. We're going down. Everybody was moving towards their mobile devices and tablets and those things. No, what actually happened is that I don't know what our PC sales are. I think it kind of bumped back up during covid. People were buying more robust systems. So I don't know what that actually that market looks like. What happened is that most people like myself, I have my home workstation. I actually have two. I've got an even more powerful workstation sitting behind me than the primary that I use, plus I have my laptop, plus I have, you know, tablets, plus I have my my phone. It's a similar thing with messaging. It's like, yes, the volume of email has just decreased yet. I've not. I'm like, I'm still using email every day all day long. It's just more focused yet. I'm also doing things over SMS and various messaging platforms and through, you know, so much through teams. And I do some community stuff through non-Microsoft community stuff that's through Slack. Like I have all of these tools that are up and running all day long. So what's happened is that I'm not it's not that I'm emailing less because the volume of communications has gone way up. Agreed. But if you hit me an email and you hit me a chance, the first answer we'll get by chance. That's what I mean. Right. This was sad. I explained to me, though. I mean, I'm sure we all have this where I have those those friends where people that I work with or or, you know, I guess, friends, the acquaintances within the community and can't reach them by email, can't get them on their phone to return a text message. And yet if I send them a message via Facebook Messenger, they respond like that. I mean, we'll be linked in. But that's a more yeah. But yeah, I mean, it's I think it's the point of being formal. I mean, chat, if pops up, it pops up. You maybe have a small screen which shows you the teams chat stuff. And you just say, yes, no, maybe whatever you need to answer quickly. And when I read emails, I really sit down. OK, and now we're going to look on my emails or when one email come I know I going to spend now some time on my mailbox to to read all the emails which came maybe in the last hour and last two hours or over lunchtime or something. And then you're sitting there and answering the emails and not doing nothing. But a chat you answer just in between two tasks. Let's call it this, you know, so and that's I think more and more people doing like that. And I feel also especially I'm still in the home office. I'm maybe once in a month in the office, maybe every second month because I'm better equipped at home. You said you have two workstations and all this. I have the same here. I'm working in six, twenty seven inch screens at home. OK, I serve sometimes the most. That's true. But I'm better equipped at home than in the office. And the rest of my team where I'm working with the same and we wouldn't have such a great communication or collaboration between each other if we wouldn't have a teams, you know, if it would just be email and phone that wouldn't be working out like it's just at the moment. And I'm sure it has how people do the same. You know, yeah, I'm exactly the same way. In fact, one of the frustrating things that is that travel has started to open up again and being on the road and trying to get work done from that one little laptop screen, it's frustrating. Yeah, impossible. Yeah, I find it very difficult to to get other work done other than check email, check calendars and do some teams, meetings and chats. It's difficult to get work done if I don't have my two giant monitors. I've got the two extra wide with about one hundred and fifty tabs open into different things, but same. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, but that's the way to work. I mean, when my wife comes to my home office still, I mean, I have this set up already for quite some time, but still she's just thinking that I'm for sure not a normal person and that there is no one so crazy like I am. And I just tell her, well, maybe. But that's our world. I mean, that's IP and it works for us. Well, it's interesting to look at the way that, you know, the way that people have worked and I think that, you know, studies will be done years from now, looking back over, you know, the change that's happened in the way that teams work together, how we communicate, the how comfortable we have become. I often use the the experience. I tell the story about how so years, years ago as living in Northern California, I commuted for a year on a motorcycle. So I bought a bike. It was beautiful, always beautiful weather, you know, occasionally a little bit of rain, but, you know, very, very dry climate. And so it was an easy commute, only a couple of freeway exits down. So not too bad. And about it was almost a year into riding my bike. And someone did me a favor. It was parked at night and somebody hit my bike and crushed it. And and so the next day I borrowed my wife's car. I had to go buy a vehicle. I bought a car instead of a motorcycle. But what happened? Because I went through the training, got the license and commuted. I realized how. People, how many people ignore motorcycle riders? And so I became much more motorcycle aware because I was a rider. And that's something that stuck with me. Like I see them, I give them plenty of room now. Like I've adjusted myself. I liken that to this shared COVID experience where prior to COVID, when you tried to do things digital, people, some people were like, no, we have to be in person. Clients would be like, no, you've got to fly out. You've got to be here for this. And no, we want to have this training done in person, kind of all those things. It helped people become more aware of that, though, you know, actually we can do this. We don't have to be there for the all of these pieces. Now, I'm a huge proponent of being in person of face to face. You cannot substitute face to face for relationship building, for example. However, there's so much more that you can get done. You can be so much more efficient by being remote and through the various tools. Totally agreed. I mean, this call now wouldn't happen if we wouldn't have the tools. I mean, you're in the US. I'm in the center. Well, COVID would have still happened, but we would have struggled a lot more. Yeah, but also when I have like when I go to customers and we start talking about, OK, they are customer, what you need, what you want and what can we do for you? And these are meetings that have to happen face to face. You have to feel you have to be there. You have to be able to look the people in the eyes, not in the camera. You have to have a classical whiteboard where you can really get dirty hands. Let's call it like this. This is still really important. It's I also like to seem like I really like my coworkers actually. But it's no question about that. We just also another point that we saw often at home. We're making more team events like we go for people, we go for something. That's great. But another side is like I wake up in the morning. I take my shower, I take my coffee and I switch on the computer and I start work. So that means I can sleep a little bit longer. I'm less stressed than I have no traffic jam. When I go to the office, I stand up earlier. I have my traffic jam. I go to the office, I meet people, I talk to people in the first time a switch on the computer is like two hours late. Is that if I would do it when I would work from home and especially in the evening, when you're tired, I need nothing less than some traffic jam. I better spend this time with my two year old daughter by playing some I don't know, Kokomao and whatever she is playing at the moment. And so from this point, we got the higher level of of quality life, I would say. But it's also the trust about responsibilities and loyalty about company that you really work when you have to work. Yeah. And this is, I mean, take example, Zoom. Zoom is just like they told to the employer that they have to come back to the office. It's a bit strange because it's Zoom. But you know, that's that's like by some it works, but some it doesn't work. So we also have like some co-workers from my team, from other teams. They have to go to the office because it didn't work out with them working remotely. You know, they were not responsive. But it forced organizations to kind of rethink, relook at how they work together. I'm with you. I think I think that the right model is the hybrid model for for working teams. Having said that, I'm the only employee with my company in the US right now. And so everything is online. But even that we recognize we did in all hands, you know, was in Germany, you know, a few weeks back in the summer. So yeah, we recognize that there still need to be those times when we get together, where we see each other and build those relationships to be successful in what we do virtually. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, hybrid, that's the way to go. And we see the Microsoft is also forcing this way, which is a really good thing. And I'm pointing again on the topic from events. The last thing I do is hybrids. They still have to do some learnings from it. But that's being kind. Yes, you're being very kind with your words there. You know, we are very neutral, you know. Now, the point is like, but if I say, OK, I don't know, how was the experience for the people from the MVP Summit who were not in Redmond? But I heard more good things than I heard about the Ignite, which was just like three, four months earlier. So I think that's the way Microsoft goes. And it's also another benefit. I mean, OK, you are located in the US. You definitely have no travel issues from the how to say from the government side. But if you're located in, let's say, in some country, which has, which is too expensive to travel to the US or which you cannot get a visa to the US, you cannot join these events, although maybe you are a choreography in your topic. And if you have these hybrid events, you still are able to to join these conferences. OK, the networking is, of course, still easier to do when you're on site. But at least you have the possibility and the opportunity to join events. I agree with the inclusiveness part of that. And to have from accessibility standpoint for people that have a difficult time with in person inclusiveness, the ability for people that don't aren't able to do the travel that are still able to get something out of that. And for Microsoft to be able to still get that message out. I might personal my frustration with the new model of the marquee Microsoft events is that what they've done, though, is that they've they have missed the mark and that they don't understand that the primary benefits of those marquee events are the interactions, the relationships that you build from people around the world. And I think that if they what they should do is they should go back to the old model of it as big as it was and allow those people as many people that want to be there physically and have the hybrid components so that they can get the rest of the people there so that you're not removing the benefits of being there in person because my view is that there is very little to zero value in being at ignite or inspire or build in person like it's just gone. They've taken away any value to being there. And instead, sorry, I don't mean to like use this to soapbox on this and Microsoft has heard my feedback on this point. But I think that you've for as a as a former business owner as an entrepreneur working for an ISV for a startup, the value for us was me. All the meetings was not the sessions was the meetings. It was the face-to-face relationships. And that's God. Long with each other. And it's also for me like my boss asked me, do I want to go to ignite this year? I said, no, because the night will be two days in Seattle. So I will be in the same time in the plane like I will be on the night. This makes definitely no sense for so many reasons. And and I remember it is the last real ignite. Let's call it like this was in Orlando 2019. Yeah, that was great. It was great. It was fantastic. Yeah. I met so many people and it's I also see. So I know, OK, I'm going to do something else. But between the sessions or in the evening, you go for a dinner with other MPs or with other people you maybe just know during the year from from the community or from online stuff. But seeing these people talking to these people. Ah, OK, he's not 180. He's 190 tall, you know, like, OK, it's again metric system. Sorry. Yeah. But, you know, like all those things, they are really important. That's why I absolutely agree. So I would say, like, in person for all these benefits, hybrid for the other benefits for people can which cannot travel. That would be like the perfect way to go. But I agree, it has to be at least four or five days. Yeah, agreed, agreed. Well, I really appreciate your time today. And I always like to like to ask for people that want to find you, reach out to you, what are the best ways for people to connect with you? Where are you most active in the social realm? Well, the very most active I'm actually in LinkedIn. So just search for my name and you will find me and also on Twitter. And I guess you will post my my link there. Of course, they'll have all that, of course, up in the up in YouTube, out in the blog as well. And when this goes live, so we'll drive was really great meeting you. And hopefully we'll see each other at the MVP Summit this next year. Hope really. Let's see what kind of I mean, you know what people say, we make a plan and God laughs about it. But yeah, let's hope that we see us on the MVP Summit again. You were there too last year. Yes, yeah, this year. Yeah, yeah. So in one session. And yeah, let's hope and thank you for having me on your podcast. And hope to see you soon.