 Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat and I'm talking today with Ben. Hello. Hey Christian, how are you? I'm doing well. Getting ready to travel. I'm excited. But for Ben, for folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you and what do you do? All right. So I am Ben Stedgink and my last name like nobody pronounces it right. But there is an advantage to this Christian. I am literally the only Ben Stedgink in the world. So let go Google my name, Bing my name, Duck Duck, go my name, whatever the verb is you want to use and I'll pop up. So if people do want to find me, just search for me, but I often think about that other Christian bucklies out there that I need to, you know, uh, go because there can be only one, uh, you know, it must go and, and destroy them. But, uh, you know, in my spare time, I don't have time right now for it. Yeah. So anyways, that's, if you want to find me, that's an easy way. But I do Microsoft 365 consulting. So I started my own company. It's like 12 years, 12 years ago now. It's been a while. Time flies. Um, but doing more it pro, I don't like dev stuff. I don't like writing code unless PowerShell accounts as code. Um, I love writing PowerShell. I'm not going to do any JavaScript or C sharp or any of that. Uh, so consulting, I have a podcast. Um, some of your watchers, listeners may also know Scott Hogue. Um, he's been in the community as well, particularly the SharePoint community. So he and I both go way back when it comes to SharePoint. Um, but he and I have been doing a podcast for about five years now. Your head is blocking the logo behind you though. It is. Duck. There you go. Um, so yeah, do that podcast. Talk all about Azure, Microsoft 365 from the IT pro side of things, um, play with Lego. You can see I got Lego everywhere. I got Lego here and Lego over here and the pirate ship is actually like a set from the eighties from when I was a kid. I have Legos. Yeah. Dating all the way back into the eighties and now I just get bigger and more expensive sets now that I'm older. Yep. Here in Jacksonville, I forgot where am I Jacksonville, Florida, uh, little bit warmer down here most of the time, but most places. Yes, it is talking about before, like I can't imagine though living in a place that's always like that, the temperature, like we were in Hawaii in December. I'm like, it was great to do that. But besides the fact that I get Island fever, like it's just too small of a space and after a week, you're like, all right, I'm ready to get off the island, uh, even back into the cold and it's beautiful. It's nice, but to have it warm like that all the time, like I couldn't do that. Yeah. And to be fair, that's actually what I like about Jacksonville as opposed to you get further south like Tampa or Lando, they have much more of a consistent temperature. We get our cold days like Christmas or on Christmas this year. We actually got down in the 20s at night highs in like the 40s and 50s. So we get a couple of days of cold weather every year. Um, but I grew up in Michigan. I, I still have my Michigan mug. I have Michigan mug. I'm still a big Michigan fan. So sorry to any Ohio state fans that are listening or watching. Um, but I like my cold weather yet. Um, I still enjoy having that variety. So I don't know that I could go any further south in Florida. Um, staying up here on the north side of Florida is good enough for me. Yeah. You know, we've talked about, uh, as we're building a house and moving to Dallas this summer, you know, this is our last winter here in Utah. And I said, I like the snow, but I've realized that I like visiting the snow. Yes, there is something to be said, we visited the snow this year. We went up to Michigan for Christmas. Um, and I don't know if you remember, like there was that massive cold that went through, um, there was like a big cold front blizzard. So we actually had a blizzard warning in Michigan. We were up there, got 18 inches of snow, woke up like Christmas morning and the wind show was negative 20. Nice. It was cold. My kids still bundled up. I have four kids. I all bundled up and played in the snow. So it was a good time. That's great stuff. Well, that's what I'm looking forward to do. I've got a great, I've headed to Minneapolis. I think it's snowing there all day today. It's, uh, we've got reports of that as well, but it's, it's not. Happened yet here in Utah, but, uh, heading up into the hinterlands and get a play in the snow with my grandkids, uh, after this event, I'm doing the M three, six, five twin cities event. Okay. I saw that. I'm not headed up for that. It'd be fun. I mean, it's going to be great to see people. Yeah. I'm getting the itch. I haven't been to an in-person conference in a while. And I'm like, I kind of find one. Um, well, there's more and more that are popping up. I mean, this is their first, I mean, they were, of course, folks that don't know, they were doing two events a year. And so this is our first since the pandemic. So, uh, you know, so it was the fall of 2019 was their last one, I believe. And, uh, yeah, I've done a few, like I was in Copenhagen in December, uh, for an event and I was in June in the UK for, uh, comms verse and things like that. And, but it, but even seeing like the formerly known as SharePoint Saturdays, the M three, six, five Saturdays and collab day events and stuff are slowly starting to pop up again for in-person. And I'm a, I'm a huge advocate. We're planning our, our event for Utah. It will be in-person only, no hybrid. Okay. So we're, we're going to do something like we will promote it. Hey, if you want virtual only, like we've got our user group, there's plenty of content online, but we're going to focus ourselves that are people that on people who are there in person and not worry about who might or might not be paying attention online. Nice. That'll be, when does that one? I may have to come up. Are you going to do it? We just, we just got our date change. So we're struggling with the venue. So we're, we're even looking at potentially. So it might not be until like August or September. Okay. That would be a nice time to visit Utah though. It's a great time. We, we won't have our share ski event that we usually have in February, but we'll do something. We're thinking about doing like even people that want to come out, do like a guided tour, uh, like maybe go out to Moab or something. Go see some rocks. Fun. I used to go out to Utah. So I had a buddy that had a place, um, well, his dad had a place, uh, at the base of park city. So we'd go out there and like ski for a weekend in park city and personally, I think park city is one of the most boring parts of the state of Utah. Uh, but there's so much nicer stuff to go and see, uh, than that. And I think better skiing, cheaper skiing for sure. But all right. Well, so Ben, so tell us, tell us, tell me like, what was your path to become an MVP? A long one. Um, so it's, I will say it was an interesting path. Um, and I don't know, it kind of came and went. So maybe six or seven years ago, I say a long one, six or seven years ago was actually, I think when I got my first nomination, um, I, it was right before, or maybe it was right about the time I started the podcast. I was running a couple of user groups here. Um, I was still doing the SharePoint thing. So I had a SharePoint user group. Uh, I was doing an Azure user group, had an Azure user group and, um, was first nominated back then by a friend of ours, Andrew Connell. He's Jacksonville as well. So AC and I have known each other pretty much ever since I moved here 10 or 12 years ago. Um, and filled it all out and kind of, um, I was all excited. I was like, Oh, I got nominated, fill everything out. And then I got denied. And I just kind of kept going at stuff. Like, did they, did you get any, any explanation? Did they give you any guidance or, you know, on that? Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. I'm trying to remember. I think the very first time. It was, I don't think I get any guidance the very first time. Um, I don't know how much it, I know it's changed quite a bit. Even that process over the last six or seven years. It's a black box. Nobody knows whether it's changed or not. Yeah. Exactly. So yeah, but I still loved what I was doing. Like I love doing the podcast. Um, we have actually managed to release an episode at least once a week for five years. We've never missed a week of an episode. That's great. Um, so I love doing that. Like I love speaking at events. Again, getting to know Andrew and introductions there. I spoke at, I would speak at events down in Orlando. Um, I did get to speak at one at night, right? Maybe four years ago, um, did some of the SP cons. Um, so just kind of kept speaking, writing blog posts a little bit. I'm not a blogger, much rather talk. Yep. Um, so podcasting speaking was a lot of those types of contributions that I would make. Um, and got to know a lot of people. I don't know when we first met. I kind of, we'd run into each other at events. Um, a lot has happened the last decade, the last decade. Right. Exactly. So got to know a lot of different, actually a lot of different MVPs, a lot of different speakers. There's, there's a group of people that kind of go around and speak at a lot of these different events. Um, and it was interesting sometime in the last, maybe three years or so, I actually got a little disillusioned with the MVP thing. Um, I would go to these different events again. I knew a bunch of you and I would be talking to all these friends, all these speakers at the MVP summits and it would come out that I wasn't an MVP and they're like, really? Why not? Well, yeah. Like I kept getting nominated, I would fill it out and a couple of times I got guidance of more community contributions, all of this and really did. I just got disillusioned with it. I'm like, everybody thinks I should be. I fill out the nominations. I put everything in there and I'm not. So to your point, it was kind of a black box and I just kept going at it, going at it. Um, just doing, kind of doing what I love. It wasn't like I stopped doing stuff because I wasn't getting nominated. I just kind of kept doing the same things over and over again and four or five months ago. Now, um, one of the partners I do some work with, um, I do some consulting with them, more of a contractor for another consulting company. Uh, they had a regional director that works with them and he's like, Ben, you got to do this. He's like, you absolutely should be an MVP. You need to do this. So he, uh, encouraged me to do it. He put my nomination in again. Um, and this time again, black box, it, it all worked out. Got nominated back in September, October, filled out the nomination, um, and got the email. Like it wasn't January one. It was a holiday. I was one of those few that got the email on January two, I think. Hmm. Yeah. I think that's what I came through. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, hey, look, look, that could happen depending on what falls on that first day because I mean, Microsoft, they are gone on holidays that, you know, that kind of stuff. So yeah, it's, yeah, sometimes you have to remember it's, it's humans that are actually pushing those buttons and setting that. Yeah. So yeah, that was kind of the path. Then I would say it was a lot of, I had some times I was disillusioned with it. I was like, I'm on, I was convinced there was like an MVP blacklist and somehow my name got on it or something. I don't know that there isn't a blacklist, but I like there's a because I know there's some, some, some folks who, uh, for years weren't able to get it because of things that they had done. And, you know, that somebody who it may have been because somebody else at Microsoft finally left Microsoft that opened a pathway for somebody like there's that stuff real. Again, it's people. And, uh, yeah. So I, I sometimes I, I, I joke, you know, somebody who can't, you know, get in there. It's like, well, who did you piss off? It, you know, what, what did you do, Ben? All those years. I don't know. I never got any feedback on it other than just keep trying. And yeah, I would say I've talked to others and again, my path, I was like, it may take a while, but don't, in my experience again, don't do all this stuff to get it. I would say do this stuff because that's what you enjoy doing. Again, I love doing the podcast. I love speaking. I don't run, love running user groups so much. Um, the last, it's hard work. It is a lot of work. It is three years with the whole work from home stuff and hybrid. I would, I kind of just let those go. Um, whether I've ever spin up a user group or not, um, I don't know, but I'd much rather go speak in person as we were talking about go, see people do it in person, speaking at hybrid events is hard, running user groups is hard. I want to go speak in person again, do the podcast. Um, I actually have a Facebook group too. I didn't mention that. I started a Facebook group or sometime over the last three years for like office 365 and Microsoft 365 admins. Yeah. It just looked the other day. It's up to like 13,000 people now. People, I was just telling somebody this, uh, earlier this week that, that said, should I go pay attention to what's going on in Facebook? I said, look, you divide your time how you want. I said, but, uh, some of the technology, the Microsoft technology groups, there's one, I think one of the teams, uh, communities on there has like 60,000 members. Yeah. It's so like, you should go in there. Probably there's more engagement happening there, certainly than any LinkedIn groups, um, that I'm a member of, and it's, it's less chaotic than Reddit or, or even Twitter on there. It's a bit more organized. Um, but yeah, that's what I found in, I don't do a lot on Facebook outside of that. Uh, like I'd be perfectly fine if Facebook just reinvented itself as groups. Um, I have like a tab opener link to go to like two or three Facebook groups. I don't ever scroll the social feed anymore or do much of that. I published stuff, but yeah, same thing. Um, the death scroll, you know, avoid it. Yeah. Yeah. The group, it is. There's a lot of engagement. Um, I've put a couple of things in place too. Like I, right or wrong people, I've seen arguments both ways. I don't allow anybody to post links to YouTube videos, blog posts, job postings, any of that. Like I don't want it to become a group. That's just a bunch of people marketing themselves. Um, any of that, I go in and delete it. Um, it is purely. I have a question or I'm trying to figure something out and I need some feedback on it. If you have a blog post or YouTube video that addresses the question, great. Go ahead and post it, um, because you're helping somebody out, but don't. Sorry, I was just going to say, like, what, what is the, what is that site? We should mention that. I don't know if I'm part of that one. I don't know. I lost my mouse. My mouse is disappearing. If you search for office threes, I think it's office 365 slash Microsoft 365 administrators. Um, let's see what we find here. Uh, I see this. That might be it. Private, visible. It is private. I do have to let you in. It is not a wide open group because. Right. I just, uh, uh, yes, you ask those basic questions. Uh, there's pain point, uh, like, pain point dealing with me and other people's because I'm always looking for questions with the AMAs that I do and other content. I'm more interested in what kind of questions are people asking? Like I respond and try to answer questions in the communities I'm a member of. Well, a lot of times I will try to surface that through the AMAs that I go and record. And I, and I, a few times I would go like what you don't allow, I would go and when we answered the question, go back to where the question was asked and said, Hey, we, we recorded this discussion of five MVPs sitting around and we taught, taught, we answered this, you know, and I was just like, you know, I don't have the time to sit and go find and then post the stuff. Like, I don't do that. It's, it's out there, but, um, but I'm always looking for content. So I, all right, I just, uh, so I just tried to join that. We'll see. We'll see. All right. That's me confirming. I'll let you as soon as my computer. Yeah, I was going because my mouse is like, yeah, yeah, no worries. Well, listen, so, um, like last question is, I mean, you talked a little bit about what you're like focused on. Like what, what big announcements or what, what things are you really passionate about right now? Like what are you really focused on? Or whether or not you're writing about it, working on it, you know, what, what kind of in the Microsoft ecosystem are you really excited about? So I won't say I'm working a lot on this. I can't, I can't wait for the Microsoft loop app to actually drop. Yeah. The app itself versus the components. Right. The components have not been very useful to me. I'm hoping that app will bring Mac my love of putting notes within something in the Microsoft 365 ecosystem again. Yeah. I have struggled with one note as of late, like just random stuff. Um, I can't do one note. Well, but a lot of the one note, like, so I love one note and I use it all day, every day. It's always open and it's just the, because I've developed like my system for writing and taking notes and capturing that I use it that way. But I am also excited because the loop app, whether they name it something else specifically, I don't know, but it's almost like that it's the next gen word. Yeah. So I'm excited to see it. Right. I'm, I'm curious to see how all of that shakes out come to fruition, what it looks like. I would say from working, there's kind of a couple of things. I've really gotten into some of the Microsoft 365 security stuff. Conditional access policies, the security center, throwing stuff into Sentinel, Microsoft Defender, some of the endpoint management. As I transitioned kind of from SharePoint on premises, because that's where I got my start into SharePoint online. And you said it correctly. Thank you. I, you know what? That is a pet peeve. I need to do like a YouTube short about it is on premises. It is not on premise. Right. Or on-prem. That's acceptable. That's acceptable. But yeah, on-premise would be like a literary statement. It's like it's, it's on, it's on-premise. It's on-mark for the premise of the story, but it's not on premises, which is the, you know, the, the, like on location at the data center. A physical location. But yeah, as I kind of get into the Microsoft 365 cloud from that admin IT pro perspective, there was a little bit less to do with SharePoint. So I kind of started expanding my skill set out to more of the Microsoft 365 administration as a whole. And I think a lot of the security stuff is really cool. There's a lot of fun stuff to do there. The other thing that's really exciting me and again, this, I know there's a little bit of controversy over this is some of the stuff coming to teams with the team's premium license and the AI stuff. I've been working with some clients, even with the team's phone system, deploying physical phones, migrating from some of the old traditional PBX systems that they have, these legacy phone systems and rolling out teams and teams phone and again, integrating it all with Microsoft 365. So yeah, just that whole ecosystem. It's exciting to me to see how Microsoft really took SharePoint Exchange, Skype, the Office products, because that's kind of how it all started off back when it was B-Pause and Office 365 was a productivity suite and it has expanded into like a full blown device management security, seeing how it's grown and how you can really almost manage your entire IT infrastructure from the Microsoft 365 cloud has been really fun to see and work with over the last few years. And I think it's just going to get more and more fun over the next few years. I agree. It's I know that Jeff Taper, who for the folks that know Jeff is the Godfather of SharePoint. Yeah. But he is as the his new role, he's the president of collaborative apps and platforms. I believe that's the title. So he owns SharePoint teams Yammer, OneDrive, kind of all of those. And he talks about how the last couple of years, he felt like he was broken record kept saying like this is the biggest year for number of releases. And like last year there were 450 different changes releases to teams over the course of the year, 450. That's crazy. And he says that this year 2023 will be even bigger. So he said, I'm not just saying that. It's like looking at the roadmap. And what we know is on the board, it's going to be bigger than last year, which was bigger than the year before, which was bigger than the year before. So that's not right. People are like, I go in and every day there's something new. And it's like, well, yeah, 450 releases. There's only 365 days a year. There probably actually is something new every single day of the year. Yeah. And that's what makes it fun to like, I love being on the bleeding edge, playing with new stuff, figuring out new stuff. So being in an ecosystem where there's always new stuff, it's fun. It is. Well, well, Ben, really appreciate your time today and chat and I'll I'm sure I'll see you sometime in the near future. Are you doing Vegas in May? I am not. I. I struggle with Vegas, in all honesty. Yeah, I have asthma going in a casino with a bunch of smoke. Yep. Yeah. I'm not a Vegas fan. It is a non-drinker, non-smoker, non-gambler. Yep. Vegas doesn't do a lot for me. But yeah. But we're in the smoke, but all the conferences have been there lately. So I'm going to have to break down and head out to Vegas again here. Well, I am. I'm definitely ramping back up and getting out to more events. So I'm sure I'll see you sometime during the year and lots going on. But in the meantime, Ben, folks that want to find you one more time, like how what's this way to reach you? Where can they find you? Best way Twitter is at Ben Stedgink. LinkedIn is Ben Stedgink. Those are probably the best too. You can go to my website, Ben Stedgink.com. My company is IntelliGink.com. It's I-N-T-E-L-L-I-G-I-N-K. Little goofy spelling, but that's my company. Any of those probably the best way. Again, Facebook, I don't tend to do a lot on there. And then the podcast, MSclouditpro.com is the podcast, if you want to check that out. And of course, I'll have the links to all this stuff out on my blog post on a buckling planet as well as you'll find it on the podcast as well. And on YouTube in the description, you'll find the links to all those things. So so Ben, really appreciate your time and we'll connect soon. Also, well, thanks, Christian. Thanks for having me on. And it was fun chatting for a little bit today.