 Everybody this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat and I'm talking to you with Simon. Hello. Hey, how's it going? So Simon, for the folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you and what do you do? As you'll gather from my millifluous accent, I'm based in the UK. I'm now a two times MVP based up in the north of England in Yorkshire for those that really want to know. And what do I do? Well, actually, I'm retired, which is a remarkable thing. Is it retired with air quotes? Yeah, it just means I actually work really hard and get paid for it these days. But I had two companies, all tech companies. I started my first cloud two, getting on for 15 years ago. And that was a SharePoint consultancy. But we think we were the first company in the world to actually do an so-called in the box SharePoint solution. So that's how we cut our teeth. So I started my career in SharePoint and SharePoint Saturdays with all that community activity there. That's probably where I met you originally, Christian, in one of those talks. I think so. I think, was it Naughty Ham or one of the London ones? Could be any of the above. I was in the crowd and then eventually on stage, a lot of them. Yep. Well, that's cool. So you have, and you just started something else up. So what's your other project? So you mentioned, because you did one, I was interested because you said you got the SharePoint one, would you get that shared background? But you also did one that was in the healthcare space. Yeah, actually, effectively, it's spun out of cloud two. Microsoft came to us with this great idea that they thought was a SharePoint solution, or get into a detail. That lets GPs or other healthcare professionals get expert advice from consultants or specialists as an alternative to sending people to hospital. The good old Microsoft Health team thought, that's been a great SharePoint solution. It just wasn't. It was actually much more like an office communications server solution. And that's what we originally built it in. Then we threw that technology away. We couldn't quite do what we needed it to do. We built a bespoke platform, proper platform for doing these advice and guidance consultations. We're actually, I'm coming to the end of that now, but over the course of the last eight to nine years, I've been running that company. We've stopped 80,000 patients going to hospital. Wow. So I think that's just as a side note, very exciting. So I'm actually an advisor for a startup that I met through as a regional director through the mentoring program through the Microsoft for startups program. That's in that space. They've got a platform that they've built there. It's growing very quickly in the US, but that's a, I mean, this is a completely different topic and my daughter's in healthcare. So I have a little more passion around this topic. We talk all the time about how to fix healthcare and the astronomical costs here in the US. And so one of those things being able to do to kind of pool your doctors, your help and the guidance and almost add the community layer to help each other as preventative medicine. Like, I don't know why we have not been doing this before. And so it's taking off. I should introduce you to Kike, the founder of that company. We could do a whole podcast series just on this. Oh yeah. It's a great space. You can't write my opinions on this on the back of an envelope. You know, you'll need a big book. But yeah, we should talk about that more. That would be very interesting. And I'm always happy to help because I'm retired. I have free time now free time to go and help again other startups and anybody that can pick, you know, pick from our knowledge. I've spent basically all my career one way or another in the health, health industry. I was in the medical device industry before getting into tech. And at one point I was in the probably the top 50 or so wound care experts in the world. Well, that's an interesting conversation to have. No, that's that's another, again, I know a little bit about the space because again, former business partner, who's now actually a patent attorney, he was ran the IP team at Google and also at Uber. He's now with the with the law firm doing that, but he started also in the medical devices was so Dr. Michael me and who is at Stanford. Was that okay. Yeah, there you go. Yeah, for medical device. So yeah, so he started that space is funny he went did his I think he did his in like AI and neural networks, his actual PhD but his masters, I'm getting probably messing it all up if Michael ever watches this but you know, but but you got into that the IP side of things. No, it's it's interesting though. You know, one I think you say about technologists, you know, sometimes I look at like family members will ask me it's like, well you've kind of gone between different industries is it yeah but I've always been in tech. And the things that I have done for those companies and product and program management roles and eventually as an evangelist. And it's funny, my undergrad is in marketing my then I've got an MBA, and yet only until the last few years have I truly had a marketing role. You know, so it's funny isn't that I mean my undergraduate degree is in physics, physics and chemistry actually my postgraduate in physics and chemistry as well. Yeah, I also would say I've always been in tech it's not always been in computing tech. But in the broader, you know, the broader technology space it's always been what I've worked on. And, you know, currently information technology in its various guises is a really good set of tools for addressing the world's problems. And so I'm using a lot of that at the moment, but it's not just about, you know, binary stuff is all the physical stuff that comes out of that. There's some stuff I'm actually talking to a startup in the UK at the moment about how do we give a eyes because everyone's writing about that me included, but how do we give a eyes that ability to interact with the world and of course that's robotics. And there's some interesting stuff going on to be able to make it easier for people who are developers and coders, but don't want to learn about robotics to be able to interact with robots through a common common framework. That's a whole conversation as well. Well, that's, yeah, that's interesting. From in parallel to that, sorry, folks, we're going to get really nerdy here, but worked for years in the manufacturing sector, high tech manufacturing, where we were doing something very similar. So leveraging trying to build common, you know, language using XML to communicate between these disparate, you know, manufacturing platforms with kind of to be able to to kind of create this, you know, this this communication hub across all of them. So it didn't matter what you went if you had proprietary language or proprietary system, but you can still, you know, go to this service hub and communicate with all of the other platforms and systems and tools that you needed. And you just need something similar you need to abstract that out for robotics so that you can plug in do whatever you want proprietary, the AI models, yet have a common way in communicating. Exactly. I mean, I'm old enough to remember when you couldn't do that with printers. You know, the early computers you actually you had to directly interact with the printers. Yeah, drivers, where and then windows, etc. come along and actually abstract you just talk to windows it talks to all that we need to do. Yeah, that plug and play which never 100% worked and certainly work anymore. Yeah. But it's really interesting. One of the blogs I wrote, you know, probably last month or something, you know, talking about why people shouldn't be afraid of AI and I list a bunch of reasons why you shouldn't be frightened of the sky net scenarios. And one of them is, AI has had no agency. And here I am now, a couple weeks later, talking to a robotics company about giving AI agency. But the really interesting thing they said was, Oh, that's the problem to solve. We just physically prevent the robot being able to do bad things, even if the AI tells it to. And you can do that you can build physical sensors into robots will stop them, you know, smacking somebody across the head with their metal arm, even if it's told to You know, I've got a simple solution. As we build out the tools that this that the robotics can can use these artificial life forms. We don't add an option to the list of games chess. We don't add global thermonuclear war as an option. I think solve a lot of problems. Yeah, adding that to the menu that the robot can select from. Yes, that's me. Yeah. It seems like a reasonably sensible approach, doesn't it? Well, so I always like that. So you were you've been in a space long enough. What was your path to becoming an MVP? Why did it take so long for somebody that's been so involved and created a company doing things? Because what was your what was your path? Well, I guess it's because it never occurred to me that I could or should be one. I mean, I'm not. I'm clearly in the technical space, but I don't write code. I don't build servers. I'm more of an information architect. And my particular skillset has always been understanding the technology and how it interacts with business. That's that's always been my space. But then another MVP, Simon Doyle and I, amongst others have been running what's now the M365 North user group in the UK. We've been running that for nine years now. And we just did that because it seemed like a really cool thing to do when they needed to be one in our in our region. And I've been doing that. And then through that we got involved with Mark Anderson et al. and got sort of into doing this majority model for Microsoft 365. We've done a lot of work on that. It's really potent stuff. It's changed the way I think about business as well as tech. And so we were at the European Collaboration Summit a couple of years back, the first one post pandemic that we could go to. And we were chatting with yet another Simon, because there are loads of Simons in the MVP world, Simon Agrin about this stuff. And I'd already done some work with him about how they could adopt the maturity model. He went, so how long have you been an MVP? I went, I'm not. We went, well you should be. And the following day he recommended me. And it was kind of like that. And so then you do, you know what it's like, you do all the Microsoft stuff to prove you as good as the recommendation. And I guess it was probably April or something last year that I got my MVP. And I was absolutely thrilled. And I'd never sought it. And I think one of the majors have probably a great MVP is they don't do it to become an MVP. They do the community work because they want to do the community work. And suddenly somebody says, here's an MVP. Exactly. It's a reward. It's the icing on the cake. It's not the cake. Yeah. And I think you find that. And Microsoft does a good job, I think of sniffing that out from people that are trying to become MVPs but aren't doing it for the right reasons. You know, they're changing their behaviors rather than recognizing the behaviors that already exist. Yeah. And I think that's a great model. I mean, again, I'm thrilled to have been nominated and then be re-approved in my second year. But I think what's probably most valuable is as an MVP, I then get to be asked to do stuff or can get people like you to come on to our events in a way that we couldn't when we weren't MVPs. So we can actually use it to leverage more community activity, which I think is great. It also means I get to go and talk at a lot of conferences and I love that. Yeah. And that's something to be said for folks that are not MVPs and looking at how do I get more people to join our user group or to participate. We want to schedule an event. We want to get started. It's like, well, one of the ways you can do that is go find your local MVPs, get to know people in the community, get involved. And that's how things evolve. I had the same thing for a couple of years. I was the chief evangelist for the software company, for an ISV partner in the ecosystem. I was speaking at events. I mean, thankfully I worked for a company that recognized the value of the community activities. I was never in a sales. In fact, I've been in this is my first sales role here this year in my lifetime where I've got a number based on something, but I'm on the partner side, not in direct sales. But for all that time, it was never expected, okay, Christian's going to go speak at that event. And from that event, from Christian's activities, we'll have this many leads and this many customer. I never thought about that. I was there purely to talk about the technology, be an advocate for my company's technology, to talk about the art of what's possible to help identify gaps and whether people could fill those gaps themselves or my company's products can help fill those gaps. I mean, those are the conversations that came out of that. But I was just always very neutral talking about technology. You can be biased. There are plenty of MVPs that all that they do is talk about their company's products and services, and that's fine. But contributions are primarily neutral. So there has to be stuff that you're doing that is, in fact, there are MVPs who lost their MVPs because their only output was for their company blog about their products and services. And that stuff doesn't count. Yep, quite rightly too. Yeah, I was never very good at directly promoting my own company stuff. It's probably why I'm not a millionaire. But hey, yeah, I'm still retired. So it's not gone too badly. But I think it's really important that people need to be honest and educational. You know, I think one of my great heroes as a physicist is Richard Feynman. If you don't know Richard Feynman, go look him up and remarkable American physicist. But he was a remarkable educator, and there's a lot to learn from people who whose passion is transferring knowledge to others so they can carry the torch further than you can run. Yes, it's funny, as you said that in my I thought of, you know, one of my so I started as a my first major was industrial design so I always have the design in the back of my wife just actually graduated here. After, you know, 30 plus years of marriage finally went and finished her degree in the degree program that I started in the beginning of my which I ended up leaving after three years. I had a design degree, the same university, but I had a professor who I hated him when he was my professor was grading my work. But once I had that relationship, you know, we became really good friends, kept in touch years later went back and visited campus and he was very much about let me show you this cool thing and I don't know if you've seen like the, the new The Last Dark the Indiana Jones movie. Yeah, so you know his office that had like the aisles with all the artifacts. Yeah. Professor Sindrich had a similar office racks of stuff but it was designed stuff and books, but you walk through to the back past these rows to get to where his little desk was. We had all these design elements artifacts around him. He was very much like a design architect or archaeologist. But that, that kind of passion I mean that that really instilled in me that I that that idea of learning about the pieces sometimes they don't always fit. You don't know how they'll they'll fit together, but it's amazing how my interest in technology would broadly how that's led again to these similar roles but in very different technology areas. And that but that they as they kind of come together. It's, you know, I got involved in knowledge management information systems in the early 90s. And so many of the issues, working with IBM and HP technologies and then not even getting into Microsoft technology, the enterprise side until I had personal computers, but into until the, you know, 2005. That was a is a big shift. But so much of what I learned and what I, you know, built my career on was relevant to everything that we're doing today. Yeah, there's there's a skill to managing information and knowledge that you can intuit your way through we be taught but it's a really important skill. And I think the first, the first intranet I built was was for the medical big international medical advice company, and that was built in Lotus domino and notes. I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. It goes back away though. Yeah. Well, hey, it was powerful and what it what it did. It's one of the reasons why I mean if you look at the path again, all the things that they did. The huge influence that Ray Ozzie had coming over to Microsoft led to so many of the different pieces. I think it would have never happened. Had it not taken that path with I mean I discovered groove when he launched that when he split off and did that. That was during while I was working on my MBA. We were using an FTP server to share files to communicate with each other. And then suddenly we switched over to using grooves and doing like modern collaboration video chats. You know, all of the social tools as well as the file collaboration, which evolved into, you know, it influence your point. Right. Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Remarkable. And yeah, we got to take that for granted. Yeah, you and I remember a world where that just didn't exist. Yeah, it's, yeah, these kids these days they have no idea. Yeah. No, it's funny. I love shared one time but my daughter who was born in 92 and I don't know why this is we were doing a trip from California, driving across Nevada to Utah. And I remember we stopped at a gas station, and my daughter is like pointing out across to the desert behind this gas station out this this this lonely stop. She's like, what is that over there? I'm like, what's what I'm peering off and like, what, what are you looking at? She's like, right there. I'm like, where is it behind? Is it behind the pay phones? She's like, the pay what? Yeah. It's like, what is that? I'm like, what do you mean what that is? It's a phone. She's like, why don't people just use their cell phones? Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. I was like, you're not that young. I was like, you've seen a pay phone before. She's like, Nope. And it made me then look when we back went back home and there were I just I thought I could swarm their pay phones outside the grocery store. Nope. Nothing at the school like that is all of it was already gone. So she just had no clue what that thing was. So, Yeah, all of the all of the the classic British red telephone boxes in the UK. Most of them are still there, but they're all either defibrillator stations, or they've been turned into community book exchanges. Oh, really? I thought it was just there for people for American tourists to take selfies. Yeah, they kept them mostly for American. Yeah. So, well, Simon, really appreciate your time and talking. I'm sure I'll see you once or twice more this year. You're going to be at ESPC. I'm not. But there is a chance I might be at North American Summit come April. Oh, okay. So I could be down in Texas and that's where I'll I'll definitely be there. I'm helping on the coordination side for that. Well, I know Don very well. So, yeah, I think we've got a sneaky plan. So chances are I'll be there. Oh, very nice. Yeah, so we're very excited. So I'm excited to see that move and to grow and stuff. So for those that don't know what we're talking about the North American collaboration summit, which is the first week in April next year in 2024 down in the Dallas, Fort Worth area. First second week. I'm not quite sure. A lot of mine spoke to Don. Somewhere early April. Yeah. Sometime around the eclipse. So a really good time to be. Oh, yeah, really. I think the eclipse is on the 8th or the 13th or something. It's going to reach down that that. Oh, yeah. All the way along the Western Seaboard. Okay. All right. Well, I'm sure there'll be a watch party. So, well, thanks for folks that is folks that want to connect with you, reach out to you. Where are you most active in the socials? Where can people find you? Oh, I mean, you can easily find me on LinkedIn, of course. Simon J. Hudson on Twitter or whatever it's called this week. I've got to call it Twitter. Twitter. Yeah, whatever. But Simon J. Hudson on there or just Google me or Bing me. Bing chat. You'll find me on Bing chat. Oh, there you go. Yeah. All right. Well, thanks a lot, Simon. Yeah, pleasure, Christian. Wow.