 While the Voitanos YouTube channel launched in 2016 alongside the company, it really hasn't been one of my best resources, but that, hopefully, that changes today alongside with the debut of my new podcast. In this episode, I want you to find out what you can expect from the Voitanos YouTube channel, the Voitanos podcast, and the Voitanos blog going forward. Hey, I'm Andrew Ponyl. This episode is also available as a blog post on Voitanos.io and as a podcast on Voitanos.show. Check out the description below the video for links to these other resources. Hello, world. I'm finally getting around to doing something that I've wanted to do for a little while here, but it's not just one thing that I want to share with you in this in this episode. There's actually a bunch of stuff that I want to talk about and introduce you to both a new podcast, the Voitanos podcast, and the revitalization of our Voitanos YouTube channel. But before I do that, I thought I would probably have a good idea to just introduce myself before I explain kind of what this whole thing is. I mean, it is this is like officially like episode one. So let me go ahead and dive into this. My name is Andrew Connell. If you don't know me, I'm a developer or web developer from St. John's County, Florida or St. John's, Florida. And I love to learn new things and tech and help others learn them too. I've actually been a recipient of the Microsoft MVP Award every year since 2015. So it's going on quite a while. And I've also been teaching for over 10 years and just about every way that you can teach from in-person classroom experiences to online instructor led courses, speaking, doing workshops, delivering workshops at conferences, doing, presenting sessions at conferences, breakout sessions at conferences. And I mostly over this time, I've talked about things like the dot net framework around JavaScript and TypeScript development, client side apps, Angular. I've talked a lot about React. But most people probably know me for my work in the SharePoint space, the Microsoft SharePoint space. And more recently, that's really been around the SharePoint framework. But I've also got a lot of interest in a lot of depth in everything Microsoft 365, everything Microsoft Azure related. Today, what I do, what my primary focus is, is I focus on my company, Voitanos, which is dedicated to delivering high value, high quality educational content through courses and blog posts. And now a podcast and a YouTube channel to professional developers in the state that are focused on Microsoft 365 professional developer topics, as well as Microsoft Azure and then some related stuff to all of that. I've got a bunch of courses that are on the Voitanos site that I offer. And I also have both paid on demand video courses. But then also I have some email courses, some free email courses that are also available for people to jump into. I also have a podcast that I've co-hosted that started back in October of 2013 and has gone now for, at the time I'm doing this recording, has gone on for eight and a half-ish years now. So it's been a long time running. I've been doing this quite a while, over 400 episodes of the Microsoft Cloud Show with a really good friend of mine, Chris Johnson. It's been a lot of fun over those years. But one of the things that I wanted to really kind of talk about here in this episode is I wanted to kind of explain, I started it off by saying, hello, world. Well, there's a reason for that, because that's whatever developer is the first thing that we end up doing is building an app that's a hello world. And I wanted to explain kind of what my thinking is behind this and also to kind of explain what you can expect from this new kind of a push, not just around the podcast, but also around the YouTube channel and then how everything kind of ties in together and kind of bring it all together for you. I will tell you that, you know, however you're getting this, if you're watching the video or if you're listening to the podcast in the notes below in the description below the video and the notes for the episode as well, you will find links to all of the other resources that are related to what you're consuming right now. If it's the blog post, you've got a link to the blog post. If you if you're listening to the podcast, there'll be a link to both the blog, the blog post and the YouTube video. If you're watching this on YouTube, you will find in the description a link to the blog post and the podcast episode to where you can learn this. And let me kind of explain a little bit here about why what I'm doing here, what my thinking is, you know, I I've been writing and I love writing, but I've been writing since 2003. In fact, I started my first blog in September of 2003 on my personal site, Andrew Connell dot com. And, you know, since then in 2016, I launched my own training company where I wanted to deliver my own courses that I was recording and that I was publishing, and that's Voitanos. And I started a blog on that side as well. And, you know, you kind of it's a it's a little bit of a fuzzy thing between the two where you'll find a lot of the same content on both of those sites. I find people go both places and there's really no reason not to do that. I mean, there's all the SEO stuff. But, you know, there's ways to deal with that and and having, you know, unique URLs for each one and making sure you tell Google that, you know, hey, this is where the primary content is that this content here, while it's a dupe of the other one, it's not a ripoff is, you know, that's the one that you really want to index stuff like that. There's a little there's a little tips and tricks on to do, like, you know, white hat style stuff, not not gray hat or black hat stuff. But, you know, up until this point, you know, I've used the Voitanos blog to convey what I consider high value educational and informative content that's related to Microsoft 365 professional developer topics. So far, that's really been focused around, like, SharePoint framework related things and blogs are good, but they're really good for people who like to read and who like to be able to find content online. But that's just one way that people like to consume content. You know, I'm I guess you consider me kind of old schoolish in the sense that I'm I really prefer, you know, to read blog posts and pull them up on my iPad and, you know, save links that go back and I read later. But I also know that, you know, one size doesn't fit all and the world has changed over the last couple of years. Or I mean, you could argue that it's I'm way past, you know, way overdue for doing this. A lot of people may not want to read stuff. A lot of people may want to watch content. They may want to prefer to watch videos on YouTube instead of instead of reading blog posts. Other people may like to listen to podcasts over that. You may like to do all three of them. I mean, like me personally, I, you know, I wanted to reach out to those different audiences because I know that I kind of fit in a little bit of a different category here. Like, you know, for me, I I like to I like to listen to like to educational content and interviews and and maybe a deep dive on something I like to listen to on a podcast when I'm out for a run or when I'm exercising or when I'm doing the dishes or doing something around the house that doesn't, you know, have a lot of or when I'm driving something like that or doing something around the house that doesn't have a lot of doesn't require a lot of like, you know, head focus type stuff that you can you can you can multitask. But, you know, when you listen to podcasts, you know, there's there you'll you'll find that, hey, there's resources they mentioned or they want to show you something and they can't really do it because it's all audio. And I'm usually listening to it when I can't take notes on something like when I'm out for a run, I'm not going to, you know, I'm focused on my run. I don't want to I don't have to stop and write a link down or or or something like that. So I thought, you know, there's got to be a way to go through and to kind of mesh all of this stuff together and to be able to have these different mediums kind of mesh together without having to, you know, do a ton of work to to to flush stuff out. So I, you know, a couple of months ago, I sat down and started looking at what other people were doing in this space. And, you know, were people doing this? And I had this idea that was inspired by some other people online, totally different industries, some in the crypto space, some in some other areas that are interesting to me, like some historical stuff, looking at like some history of companies and such. And I researched and I tried out a few different shows, YouTube channels, podcasts, and I wanted to see how they did it. And it's kind of led me to something that I'm trying out here. And I think it's going to work. And, well, we'll see. I've been really curious to get your feedback on this. You know, I thought, like, what about trying to double dip on this? People want to read, they want to watch, they want to listen. Maybe they want to do just one of those. Maybe they want to do two of them. Maybe they want all three. And maybe it depends on what they're doing. That's how I fit. I mean, I'd much rather, I'm not one to generally like subscribe to a bunch of YouTube channels and go just watch YouTube channels. But I use YouTube quite a bit for like research and, you know, going down the YouTube black hole as well. So I thought, what about if I can write a blog post and that's going to hit the people that want to read stuff? Well, I do that today. But what if I then also flipped on the camera and I recorded a screencast of me talking about it and sharing the same, sharing this showing and sharing the same content that I covered in the blog post? And what that's going to do is that's going to hit the people who who watch who want to watch a video instead. But if I'm smart about how I record it around the screencast, then maybe I can also rip the audio track off of it and I can publish it as a podcast. So someone could listen to the actual podcast that they prefer to listen to them. You know, great example of this. There was one of those MIT open courseware courses that I was just I was watching late last year. And it's only available on a YouTube playlist. Well, I really wanted to go back and like get some of the links and stuff from that. But I also, you know, these were the the the courses, the lectures were like an hour to two hours long. A lot of times I wanted to listen to that when I was out for one of my, you know, long 10 mile plus runs when I was training for a half marathon. And I had to, you know, I had to go do this stuff myself. I had to go rip down the the YouTube video. I had to lift the MP3 off of it and I had to put it on my on my phone in a way that I could actually listen to it. I was like, I totally would have loved to just subscribe to that that MIT courseware and listen to it. And when there was visuals that were shown, I can go back and watch the video whenever I want to. You know, I thought about it and I was like, why don't I do this? Why don't I go through and I change this up for the YouTube channel and for and launch a podcast, the Boy Thomas podcast that does all the stuff that I want to do all of these three resources between the blog posts, the YouTube videos and the podcast episodes. They're going to cross reference each other. So for example, you know, take someone like me who likes to listen to the long form podcast when I exercise, you know, if if if the host is going to reference a link to a picture or to a demo, you can always go back. You can watch the video. You can get the links from all the stuff that we talk about in the blog post. You know, maybe you read a blog post and you're like, you know, I've I demonstrate something or I talk about something and you're like, I say, I got to see it. Like, well, there's a video for that. Maybe you don't have time to go through and read this stuff and you want to listen to it instead. I give you all those different options with this. Is this going to work? Well, only time will tell. This is just my hypothesis. This is how I want to consume content. So I figured I'll put it out there and we'll see what everybody else thinks. The only way to really know this is just to try it. So here we go. Now that you kind of know where I'm coming from, let's go through and let's let me kind of explain each one of these things in a little bit more depth. So today I'm excited to share with you that I'm launching this new podcast, the Voitanos podcast and you can subscribe to the podcast by heading over to Voitanos.io slash podcast. Now, when you go over to that link, depending on when you listen to this and when you go to the page, you may only see a single subscribe option for an RSS feed that you're going to have to copy and paste it into your podcasting app of choice. That's going to change. I've got a bit of a chicken and egg problem here. In order to get listed in other podcasting platforms, you have to have a show, you've got to have a few episodes and a feed that have been published to be able to get accepted. And I'm currently in the process of submitting the show to a bunch of different platforms, including things like Apple podcast, Google podcast, Spotify and a bunch of other ones. So the podcast homepage will get updated with additional links on where you can listen to this stuff once they get approved and listed. So if you see one that's missing from that list and that you like to use, just drop a link, drop a comment, drop in a comment below the video in the YouTube video or tweet me at Andrew Connell or at Voitanos and I'll take a look at it and see if we can't get it added. Now I'm seeding the podcast with a few episodes that I've recorded already. I've got a couple of episodes here that I've taken the old YouTube videos that I've published that have associated blog posts and I've pulled the MP3 from the audio track and I've created episodes out of those. They were not following this exact same process. I just wanted to have a few things in the feed. So a couple of those episodes, first two or three episodes you may look at and be like, I don't know about this. Just know that I know I'm referring their audio tracks from demos that I was doing and explaining. So they may not be like perfect for a podcast format but I thought, you know, I want to just go through and I want to try this out. Just giving it a shot, just testing in production I guess as you could say, it was something that developers do. So the most recent episode though, so I've got this episode, which is episode number one that goes along with the associated blog post that announces the podcast and the updated YouTube channel. And it also goes along with a video on YouTube that's associated with this as well. I've also got the most recent episode that's going to be in the feed is going to reference the latest release of the SharePoint framework that I wrote how to long form blog posts about it in a long video about it as well. That's the first real episode that kind of pulls all of this together so you can really see what that's like. So the way this is going to work is that you will see that blog posts, they're going to really serve as like the podcast episode permanent link and the homepage for it. So while I'm going to strive to have each installment have a read, watch, list option as well or listen option as well. So you've got read, watch, and listen. There may be a few exceptions. So just keep an eye on the Voitanos blog because it'll always reference a video that's been published or reference a episode on the podcast that's been published as well. And you'll see that if you, when you go to any of our blog post pages or blogs on the Voitanos.io page including the one that's referenced with this post in the right hand margin or if you're on the mobile experience below the article you'll see a little call out that says this is also published as a video or as a podcast episode and it references the episode number. So you can get to the content in any of those different ways. Now, let me talk a little bit specifically about the podcast. What can you expect from the Voitanos podcast? Now it may evolve over time. In fact, this whole process may evolve over time but my current plan is to focus primarily on topics that are directly related to topics that Voitanos covers. So for instance, today that's really gonna be about the SharePoint framework and about the Microsoft 365 Developer Associate Certification or more specifically the MS-600 exam. But in the future, that's probably gonna expand into other topics that I have plans to cover as well. I also want to address my plans for the release cadence of my podcast episodes. Now, I'm a big proponent of a podcast publishing regular episodes on a schedule and while I'm still gonna strive to do that with this being my first solo show I'm adding more than just an episode to each drop as I previously explained. And I'm also gonna be a bit of a realist here. I know what my goal is. I know what my internal goal is. I'm gonna keep that to myself for right now but let's just set some expectations. And I would say a worst case scenario you can probably expect a new episode is gonna drop at least once a month. I hope that's a lot more frequent than that but let's just say that for now. Another big aspect to a podcast is what's the format? Is it one person or two people? Is it going to be mostly news? Is it gonna be covering something? Is it gonna tell a story? Is it gonna be like an interview based kind of a thing? The majority of the episodes that I expect are gonna be educational or high value content in nature. I may have an occasional guest on there for an interview or something but the focus is really gonna be the audio version of the podcast and the YouTube video. That's how I'm gonna do it with the podcast. Now I do wanna give you a bit of a heads up and I might reference something that you can see but if you're listening to the podcast you won't see it obviously. So you may hear me reference something that you can't see like a demo or a picture or something like that. So for those instances, remember that you can always go back to the podcast or the video or the blog post that's associated with it to get the links and stuff that I'm actually referencing here. Let me also talk about something else really quick. For those of you who are familiar with me and for those of you who are familiar with Voitanos you might know that I've got another podcast that I've done. I mentioned this in my intro, the Microsoft Cloud Show which you can get to at MicrosoftCloudShow.com. And you might be asking yourself, well, how is this different? Well, it's a good question. So let me go ahead and address it. So yes, I have another podcast, the Microsoft Cloud Show and I started that with a really good friend of mine Chris Johnson back in October of 2013. And since then we've published over 400 episodes weekly. For the most part, they've been weekly and they primarily focus, what we always said was we focus on the Microsoft Cloud. Started out with Office 365. Then it was Microsoft 365. We also focus on Azure, Microsoft Azure but then we also focus on the competitive landscape. We talk about all of those topics and related topics like Amazon Web Services. We talk about the Google Cloud Platform. We've even done interviews on Oracle's Cloud. And then we also focus on industry news like security stuff and things that are related to this interconnected world that we're in these days. The episodes and the format of that show is a mix of news, it's a mix of deep dives, exploring features and interviews with both community and industry leaders. Now, how is this podcast? How's the Voitanos podcast gonna be different? Well, at least at this point, I'm not gonna focus on interviews or the latest news. The primary focus is gonna be about educational content. So if you go back and you look at the blog post on the Voitanos blog, that's the kind of stuff that you can expect to see things that are related to it. So if you're a subscriber of the Microsoft Cloud show, don't expect more of the same from the Voitanos podcast. You can expect more of me but it's really just gonna be me. It's just a solo show. So you can learn more by tuning in to the first episode of the podcast or the first episode of the podcast, the video version on YouTube if you wanna go take a look at it. The podcast isn't the only thing that I wanted to cover in this first episode. I also want to cover a renewed focus around the Voitanos YouTube channel. And as I already talked about so far, I'm gonna use this channel to cover the watch aspect of my read watch, listen approach to educational content. Much of what I've discussed already in this episode is gonna apply to the YouTube channel as well. So just like my podcast, videos are usually gonna be associated with a blog post. For example, like I've mentioned earlier, the most recent episode on the YouTube channel and on the Antelope Podcast, they're gonna go along with this post. They also are gonna go along with another post that I've got around the SharePoint framework, the latest release of the SharePoint framework. So if you're listening to this, if you look in the show notes again, you will find a link to the associated YouTube video as well as a link to the associated blog post. If there's a video that goes along with this, if you're watching this on YouTube, you will find a link to the blog post that goes with this as well as if it's there, a podcast episode as well. There will always be two of these. I mean, there may just be a blog post and then it's gonna be a blog post and a video and a blog post and a podcast or maybe all three. All right. Again, just like the podcast as well, if the blog post has an associated video with it on the YouTube channel, in the sidebar, you will see where it says that there's a video there where you can click to it and just jump straight to that video and go watch it on YouTube. So that kind of wraps up everything that I wanted to cover in this here. I'm really excited for this change and I'm really curious to know what you think about this. This whole read, watch, listen approach of an episode is something I've wanted to do, watching what other shows did, kind of adapting what they did to my own little flavor. It's been something that I've kind of come up with and I'm excited to see how this turns out. Of the ones that I've been checking out that have a similar approach, I really have enjoyed consuming their content in this way. Now, I'm just like everybody else, I'm gonna have my own spin on this and like so many other things, I got my ideas right now, but once we get into this, I'm sure that things are gonna evolve over time. So I'll be sure to check in with you and let you know, you just kind of watch it, you'll see as things kind of change. But I really am curious to know what you think about this approach. So best way to let me know about that is if you're listening to this on the podcast or if you're reading about the blog post, you're reading the blog post associated with this, drop me a message on Twitter, just at Andrew Connell or at Voitanos. There's a link in the show notes, there's a link at the footer of all the blog posts where you can do that. If you're watching the video on this on YouTube, drop a comment below the video, let me know what you think. I'm really curious about it. And I'd love to get your feedback on this on what you like, what you don't like. Let me know, what do you prefer? I like blog posts or I like YouTube videos or I like podcast episodes. Do you like one over the other one? Does it depend? I mean, we're all consultants, so it always depends, right? So, hey, thanks a lot for taking the time to listen to this. And I hope to see you on future episodes, hope to hear you tune in and interact with me on future episodes. So I've got a lot more stuff planned too about the interaction piece. So for now, let's just focus on the announcement in this episode. Thanks a lot for watching. You got a question or comment? Let me know what you think by dropping a comment in the video below or tweeting me at Andrew Connell or at Voitanos. And if you liked this episode, man, I'd really appreciate it if you'd share it with the rest of your friends. This episode, as I said earlier, is also available as a blog post on voitanos.io and on the Voitanos podcast at voitanos.show. I've included links in the description below to these other resources. And hey, don't forget to subscribe to this channel and click that little bell in the corner to be notified of future episodes.