 Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley with another MVP Buzz Chat, and I'm talking today with Abou. Hello. Hi. How are you doing? I'm doing great. I really appreciate you taking the time out of your late evening. I know it's a slight time difference here. It's in the middle of the night for you. For folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you, and what do you do? Oh, thank you so much. My name is Abou Conde from Ghana, but currently I'm based in France. I'm working here. I just came in France one year ago, and I was the first MVP in Ghana, so that was... Congratulations. That's a big deal. Yeah, thank you so much. But now, since then, we have more MVP coming up, and we are doing a lot of things online in Ghana. So that's actually what I'm doing. I'm now focused on cybersecurity. Recently, I just got a job at Avanade. That's where I am now currently. Which I just saw today, there's a social post, something like 80 MVPs or something like, I don't know what the number is, 70 or 80 MVPs at Avanade, which I'm pretty confident is the most of any company in the world. That's true. That's very cool. And so again, what your MVP is in the Azure, but where specifically, it's such a broad category. So what are your areas of focus? Yeah, my focus is on identity, network security. So those areas, yeah. There's a lot that's happening with the Intra release and all that. That's not my space at all. In fact, I had a conversation with somebody on my product team today, where I worked for an ISV. It's like, do you know anybody that's working on Intra? And I'm like going to LinkedIn, I've got second degree connections with a couple dozen people in that space. But I'm like, I don't know anybody first connection. And so we're trying to make inroads in a Microsoft now, just to learn more about it and to talk with the product team. Okay, I see. We are trying to learn every day. I started with on-prem Windows server virtualization and joined Azure. We're gone. Now we are doing network server and government in Azure and then security. That's what I do most of the time. Networking. I see you're working with a lot of companies that are still on-prem or hybrid. Are you helping with those transitions? Yes, a lot of migration. The hybrid scenario, there is identity, Windows Active Directory and Azure Active Directory. At the same time, network and site-to-site VPN and express route configuration and security. Most of the time, that's what we do. I know a lot about migrations on the data side and the system. I spent many years working within that space and I know enough to always then go and work with an identity specialist to answer a lot of the harder questions of how it should be configured, especially in a hybrid world. I know that a lot of organizations that I've worked with over the years made so many investments into their on-premises systems. They can't afford to walk away from that, but they want to also leverage the cloud. In Ghana, in Africa, we are really, really moving slowly because most of the time they don't trust cloud. We don't have a lot of data centers in Africa. In Ghana, no data center like South Africa. They are always concerned about, where are you going to keep my data? It was a big deal to get the data centers for South Africa. Are there plans for Microsoft to open up any other data centers in Africa? No, I don't know. I really don't know, but we've been talking about it to Microsoft. I don't know when it's coming, because that's the serious business there and customer with where my data is going to reside. Europe, South Africa, Europe even closer to us than South Africa, even though we are on the same continent. A lot of people don't know that too. A lot of, I think the African subcontinent was all out of, was it out of the UK? Where was the data center before South Africa? Was it UK? Primarily? No, Netherlands. Netherlands. Okay. Yeah. So that's something that, and I'm surprised that we've not heard anything. I mean, if I'm correct, was it, hasn't Nigeria also gone back and forth to South Africa as biggest economy in Africa a couple times? Yes. And you'd think that there'd be a data center there, you know, and Ghana? Of course. Yeah. That's what we want. At least West Africa, because South Africa is very, very far from us, but West Africa, Nigeria is a big place. It's a big country. The economy is doing well. I think we should have one data center at least in Nigeria, so that we will use in West Africa. Yeah. Well, maybe we can pressure Microsoft into that. I have to believe with so much that the business is growing so quickly that Microsoft must have plans for other data centers there that just maybe aren't announced yet, but I'm not on top of what they're doing there. But again, I was trying to, with the opening in South Africa, and I had hoped to be in country when the grand opening there and planning, doing an event, and it just, it didn't work out schedule-wise. It got delayed. Yes. Yes. I remember that time around 2018. Right. We were talking about it here. Yep. Well, very cool. So tell me, what was your journey to become an MVP? Was it something that you tried to do for a while, or what was your path? Oh, even a long journey. Before, that was before 2015, I started learning Asia aggressively, and then the thing was, I can see that I was the only person who was interested in the cloud computing. It was new to all of us, and I wanted to have a way to get people to discuss about it and learn together. So I decided to create a community with my friends, my colleague, and I used to teach in Ghana as a certified trainer at the IPMC. So I informed some of my students, hey, why can't we form a community so that we start learning together and share ideas and prepare ourselves and pass a different exam. So we had a study group, and people saw it, it was interesting, and we contacted Microsoft Ghana, asked them that if you can use the conference room, they accepted. So we started having regular meetings there. That's when I started to see other MVPs to go to know about them, start to reach out to them, to say, hey, this is what we are doing. But that was before COVID. So they couldn't come to Ghana and attend and come and speak at events. It was very, very complicated because no sponsorship and nobody believed in what we were seeing, what we were doing. So I was just doing that one with some of the friends. And later, because we saw that, okay, Microsoft Office in Ghana is nice, but they say we have an event in Microsoft Office, people want to come. They have to come, meet, discuss, and that's what I was doing until I met one MVP from South Africa. And he said, hey, Abu, what you are doing is good. I think you can become an MVP. How do I become MVP? So I had to go through with him, some coaching about how I can become MVP. Yeah. Who was that MVP? Who was? Lawrence. Lawrence already. He was in Ghana some time ago. So we had a discussion and really that opened my eyes how to go about it and organize the first bootcamp, Agia Bootcamp, Global Bootcamp. So I got some other MVPs from India and France. And there's Patrick Kimone. I don't know if you know him. I know Patrick Well. Yeah, in France. Yeah. So Patrick, even the one nominated me to become MVP. Well, that's in this something, I think it's a great example of, so I've started you user groups where I've looked around and said, hey, there's a user group that's doing this, but there is a couple hours drive. They're not, rarely people from my area were going over to this. And so I said, I want to start something up. This is when I was in Northern California. So for those that know the East Bay, all the meetings were happening down in San Jose, which with the traffic was like a two hour drive away from where I was living. And I said, well, why can't we do something over here? And so went and talked with people said, hey, let's together, let's start something up. And so we just started meeting together. And it wasn't a Microsoft related user group, but Microsoft, a lot of the local community colleges and universities are happy to if you're doing something that's free and open. And, you know, they're you're sometimes happy to host community activities, they make space for that and can host you. So there's, you know, finding facilities isn't typically the hardest part. It's getting the word out. Yeah, yes. That was the difficult aspect of it. But because we've been working with the Microsoft, the company I used to work with, I had a former colleague called named Diane. So she was my former colleague. She joined Microsoft. And I say, hey, now my colleague is working at Microsoft. I explained to her that Diane, can we come in and listen? Okay, no problem. So since then we started having the bootcamp and we really, really got supported from like everybody was supporting the idea. So people keep coming. It comes to a time that we could even host the event there because a lot of people was coming always. And Microsoft 365 team to really help me used to stand as a goodies t-shirt. And so we shared that one and people see that they really, really want to come and join us. A lot of people was, I mean, I was a really surprised because the way it started and how people took it was really serious. Yeah, that's great. And I know that are you leveraging the Microsoft community tenant for your user group stuff? Or do you? Yes. Okay. That's what Microsoft is. When COVID came. So I think we were one of the first community, because I reached out to the community program manager. She's in France. I reached out to her. They say, can we have a free tenant? But that time there was no free tenant. Right. I don't know if that's what motivated them to build a free tenant for people and share. Yeah, I think that there were so many requests, similar requests coming in right at the start. And I mean, it had been discussed for a while inside Microsoft. I know because a lot of the people that own and drive that community tenant and people don't know what we're talking about. There is a Microsoft Teams community tenant. It's like MSFT community is the name of the tenant. And it's set up for free for user groups and other events. So even if you're doing like an annual event, like the Azure Bootcamp, if you want to host the Azure Bootcamp, you can go and create a site, have all the assets, collaborate and use that so that you have the same place to go back to all the members that were there. They're already added in. So every year, you know, they don't have to go rejoin another site. They're already in there. You can use that for user groups and other stuff. So yeah, it's fantastic. Yeah, that's when that was 2020. So because there was no Microsoft closed the office and we were there two months and people was asking me, can't we do online events? I say, I don't have a platform where we can do online events. But luckily for us, we got a Microsoft to accept that to give us there. Yeah, that's great. It's a, yeah, that's something, again, there are resources that are out there. There's an entirely, I don't know if you're aware of this too, there's an, they're even upgrading that entire community tenant experience. So they're, like over in the collaboration space, there were for years, the SharePoint Saturday events all over the world. And of course, now that it's not just about SharePoints, about teams, and it's about Azure and Power Platform and kind of all these different areas all in one. So they've kind of rebranded it as the Microsoft or M365 community days. And any regions like, you know, you can go and reach out to Microsoft and say, hey, I'd like to schedule an annual event, a community day event. And there's resources, they, Microsoft, you know, there's some funding that's even available where needed, but just tremendous resources, as well as it allows you to then tap into, if you're going to do a hybrid event, so have some people in person as well as online, it actually will give you access to potentially sponsors and speakers and more Microsoft contacts for your region. So they're making it easier to do what you and I have both done painfully on our own without the resources. Yeah. Yeah, it's true. It's really, really true. That's true. And I can say like, because when I was in Ghana, the first challenge I was fixing about the community was to get a speaker. It was very difficult for me to get some speakers because really the Microsoft specialists, there are no many in Ghana. Okay, so the first year we got all the people to speak, so we wanted the new people to speak. We had to record the same people again to come and do it, but COVID online, so I got to reach out to everywhere, people from everywhere. So a lot of people are from everywhere in the world coming to speak online to our events and I'm happy about that. And some people even, they were not MVPs and they reached out to me, they want to speak to my events and that was their first time and today they are even MVPs. That's fantastic. Are you starting to do, are they starting, while I talk about both France and Ghana, are user groups and stuff, are they starting to get back in person or is it still too early? Yes, so people start to do in person now, gradually they are doing it in person. Last week I was in London for an event, it was my first time overseas since December of 2019. So I actually had in 2020, I had three or four international trips scheduled and which obviously was all canceled, which was unfortunate, but it's good to see that they're happening again. Yes, so we can wait, everybody wants to now do in person events because it's been a while, we haven't seen each other so we want to do in person. I hope we will go to summit next year, right? I hope so too and as I was saying before we started recording, I often say this, it's the best perk about being an MVP is the annual MVP summit because no matter how much, I mean it's great to have, we've done the last couple of years online and a lot of great content. It's very difficult to do the level of relationship building, to meet new people, have those sit down, eat meals together, get in depth on things. Last week at this event in London, I saw two people who I've interacted for the last couple of years online have never met in person and so it's great to have the tools and have the meetings. I feel like I know them to some level, but it's different, it's better to meet people in person. I really, really noticed that when I went to South Africa, all the MVPs and the Microsoft staff I met in person, the relationship is different. I felt that we spent like two days in South Africa, Johannesburg for the Ignite Deter. We took some pictures together and I really, really got to see a lot of people from South Africa all over the world. We had a friendship up to now and most of them too, I invited them that if they get time to come to Ghana one day for our summit in Ghana. How meaningful those things are. There's the SharePoint Conference 2009, which was down in Las Vegas. I made friends that week that are still people that I'm talking to and working with now. It's been 12 plus years. Having those face-to-face interactions is so powerful. It's the best, really is the best. We were not lucky. The time we became MVP, we can't travel. Hopefully stuff is opening up and I hope to get out to your part of the world. In fact, I'll be over and I will be going to France before the end of the year. We've got a number of events that we're trying to pull together. I will definitely reach out to all of my MVP contacts, people that I know that I've interviewed. If I come through town, I will let you know. I would love to meet you in person. If nothing more, I will be there the entire week when we do summit. If it all possible, come and stay for a couple extra days before or after so that you can get acclimated to the time zone, spend your time and not feel like in a rush to get back out of there because it's great experience. That's true. That's so, so true. Well, I really appreciate you taking the time and your late night to dial in for this. For folks that want to get in touch with you or follow you, what are the best ways to reach you? Everywhere on social media, like LinkedIn and Twitter and Facebook and everywhere, Abu Kondi. Just type my name, Abu Kondi on social media. I'm very, very creative. Anytime you reach out to me, if I'm free, I can talk to you. That's awesome. Well, that's why I always tell people, don't be afraid to reach out and contact an MVP. We all love people connecting, reaching out. If you've got questions, come to us and if we don't know the answer, we probably know somebody who does know the answer. Definitely. Definitely. It's the biggest community. It's very interesting. I'm so, so happy to be part of it. Anytime I think, hey, I'm lucky to be part of this great community. I can talk to anyone who doesn't know me. You see that, yeah, MVP just start talking to you. You can see that's the magic. Definitely. And congratulations to all the MVP who just joined and do the renew. And it's not easy. And congrats on your renewal as well. Well, it's great to connect, to get to know you and thanks for participating in the interview. Okay, thank you so much and bye-bye.