 Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat and I'm talking today with Martin. Hello. Hello. Hello. So Martin, I see you're outside wandering about. So for folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you, and what do you do? First of all, hi everyone. Basically, my name is, like that. Currently living and working in Netherlands, basically, exactly near in Amsterdam. I'm working basically here for a big finance institution, let's say like that. So most of the time, let's say working as with Azure and basically also my MVP is related to Azure. So most of the time working with Azure, Azure DevOps, and in the last three or four years, I can say that I can include my new topic. Basically, for me, essentially, it's going deep a little bit in the security ops, let's say like that, or the new modern career path, that's the course, which I a little bit focused more in the last two, three years. And basically very curious how the security can improve also. Yeah, I'd say cold pipelines, you know, because everyone now started to use the pipelines, the DevOps journey is DevOps we have working and so on. So now a little bit focused to secure all of these pipelines, cold injections and everything that has happened. Well, very cool. And so is that what is your primary like output? Are you a blogger? Are you a speaker? Are you write books? I mean, what kind of what's your your output focus? Output focus most of the time is a football. I must say that basically I'm a big it was not anything that you mentioned about MVP site. I first let's mention that maybe it's good idea that from MVP site, my biggest passion was to be, you know, to share the knowledge, to write a blog post to give explanation. I have a really good or huge technical background because most of the time I want to execute the things not just write and basically give explanation. I want to be here for to see how it is in the real thing. And basically my primary I would think it's a blogger and second very often that is happening in the last two, three years also as a speaker, we are joining from time to time depends how much time I have because if you need to go somewhere and to talk in person and also COVID that is happening now, it's let's say behind us. So most of the time you need to organize also your at home at work, you need to step out early to travel there to start everything. So yeah, that's my primary focus, let's say on this blogger and speaking currently in the next couple of months, maybe to come more. But beside that, I would mention that I'm a big fan of football, let's say it's like that, a big lots of fun from Italy, people will know basically. So yeah, most of the time maybe from time to time reading some book, but most of the time watching football, I would say, let's say beside the MVP as you and everything else. I remember traveling over, I believe I'm trying to remember if it was in, I think it was in Berlin, TechEd, where there was basically the midweek party, the big event for attendees was sitting in a stadium and they had the one end, they had the football like the goal and everything set up so you could go and like that, but they just had this massive giant screen and they put out benches everywhere and tables and just people would were drinking beer and eating sausage and pretzels and watching the match. As a non football fan, I'm a US, I'm an NBA, I'm a basketball fan, but being in the crowd, I mean it's pretty infectious. I had no skin in the game for either team that was playing, but just watching the crowd and hearing the roar of the opposing, I think they had pretty even of the two sides that were there, it was pretty exciting. Yes, basically very often, should we go in, maybe I don't know, in Germany, should we go in Switzerland, should we go here on that? I'm saying, okay, let me think about it in Switzerland, I think we should go near Zurich, there is a football club and if we need to go in Germany, let's go in Dortmund, there is also a football club, there is a stadium and after that she never started to ask me, should we go there? She said, just say, we're going in this country because there is no stadium about football, we don't need to go to watch football match, we don't need to find the tickets and so on and so on. Yeah, it's really nice experience, basically also in the crowd and everything, it's a little bit, you're joining to the crowd and feeling the vibe, let's say, of the football and everything, especially in Germany, maybe two or three years ago, I remember now that the Football Association in Germany put it on matches in Monday, the audience, the fans, protest in front of, I think, somewhere in Germany, because they don't have time for their private lives, because the whole week they need to go on stadium to watch football, which is really, imagine the whole nation to go every day, every week, per day, just to go to watch football, really funny. I mean, there is a difference that having been to, in America, been to NBA games, been to baseball games, been to American football games, I've never been to a, I've even seen hockey, I know from my Canadian friends out there that every time I say ice hockey, there's like, there is no other kind of hockey, there is Canadian friends, there are other types of hockey. No, but it's something to say, you don't have to be a hardcore fan of the sport to go and to participate and enjoy that. Like I was in India and went to a couple different sporting events that were just in, again, it's about the crowd watching. Yeah, yeah, yeah, cricket, I think they, yeah, so it was a cricket match that was massive and it was, you know, it was very warm, it was stifling hot in there, where you could just see the steam rising out of the crowd, but, yeah, it, but it was a fantastic experience. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I agree on that, and basically every sport, you know, have their own wife, that's all they got and a lot of funds, which is a good, I think also that you in United States have this MLS, I think it's called the world that they have MLS, I think the name of the league. Yeah, so you have now inter Miami, basically, I think that it will be how it's called. Macy's coming there, so you can go. I don't know if you noticed, but it's already one ticket, it's more expensive than one NBA match. I don't know if you have noticed that. I don't pay attention to that. I even know that while I was the last years of Seattle, the Seattle Sounders, so the soccer league there, you know, I think they won the U.S. Championship and they did very well, and I don't know, I didn't pay attention to any of that. So, yeah, yeah, I'm more of the focus on the technology stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's so what's the community activity like going around? So now in the Netherlands around Azure, how is it? Are you very active in the community groups? In the active in the community group, there is a lot of, first of all, we must clean the things. Basically, there is a lot of active meetups and things that is happening. Basically, I think Netherlands have a lot of MVPs also and a lot of meetups and groups, user groups, let's say, that want to share knowledge, basically. And I'm participating on some of them, not all of them currently basically a little bit focused more on work, to be honest, but very soon now this month is some type of a vacation that's set to get next month. So vacation period. So in parallel, I'm preparing something also from, let's say, to share something official on, let's say, for the community. Let's add like that to some type of maybe newsletter or some new good, let's say, technical more focused. I think this month already I have one presentation as a speaking, but it's a virtual for basically my, let's say, birth country Macedonia. So where I will take a presentation about Azure Arc, which is one of the topics that I'm very often skipping the Azure and everything and working on this side, basically one of my favorite currently that I'm working to find some cold, very often spending time a little bit on the technology. So this month I'm doing one, let's say, talking and then basically vacation and then starting again to join some of the communities around Netherlands. Because as I mentioned, there is a lot of ongoing things about Azure security and also the DevOps topics and pipelines and this or that, which is a really big topic currently as I think a lot in Netherlands currently from what they see also from the job market. If we make, let's say, some analysis, that is a lot of people that the companies are looking for mostly security and DevOps, let's say, within the company to work about it. Very cool. Well, there's a lot going on. I know that these things are starting to ramp back up. Like, none of you participated in previous years, the annual, like the Azure day, like the single day event where they try to do kind of around the world. I know I ran that for two years here in Utah and looking to kind of get that back underway. I think that's in general. I think it's just, we just passed that. Was that like end of April? Like when they did that? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. End of April, basically, I was invited to go in person to Macedonia to give us a talk about Azure day. But I missed it just because of some private reasons. But I'm planning now, there is also a topic about Azure back to school also, which I'm planning maybe with a blog post or with some small talk, let's say about one topic, which I think it will be really nice and a good topic in the next couple of months. So, yeah, maybe the next step would be, I forgot completely on that. I put it in my notes, Azure back to school and maybe, yeah, speaking on some conference basically. It's always really welcome just to share knowledge with the community and the people around you. Yeah. Well, that's that. Whether I'm presenting or just attending, I mean doing the community activities, there's something that replaces that online. You can't beat the in-person, the interactions with people. Especially, look, I was in Las Vegas a month ago for a conference and seeing people that I realized, like, oh, hey, just caught up on our conversations. And then we realized we'd actually never met in person before. It's always been online. It's always been digital. But here we were. But it's funny how it was, we kind of forgot that fact and it kind of came up like, oh, yeah, hey, by the way, we've actually never met. Exactly. That is, I think also it happens, let's say in this side of Europe, also back in my country also here, I noticed in Netherlands, for example, the people going to work on, they will say, oh, I was working with this guy three years and now officially we met in person after three years and they met each other on some meet-up or some conference. After that, they figure out that they're working in the same company. And after that, they met in person, let's say like that, which is really funny. And a lot of cases like this happened, I think, also here in Netherlands, which is really funny, you know, how it's going from what happened in the last two, three years, last day with this COVID. But I would say again, it's finally done. So let's cross fingers and just say, never, you know, like this to happen again. Yeah, exactly. Well, Martin, really appreciate your time today. For folks that want to reach out and connect with you, what are the best ways to reach you? Where are you most active in the social sphere? I was a lot of active in the previous time on Twitter. I started really early in 2007, 2008. And I was really active and I think still keeping a really good number of followers, something like 7000. And a lot of people replying or this and that. But currently, most of the time, I must say that I'm focused completely on LinkedIn. I don't know, maybe it's just because, you know, these technical things, a lot of people are sharing with the community about the topics that, let's say, me, you, or some other people that are listening to this podcast, basically, are interested in. And basically, I must mention maybe also LinkedIn, definitely really big, let's say, reach currently on most of the blog posts. Because also we need to think about and be aware that a lot of people are switching careers. That is what I noticed. Because also I'm in parallel as a Microsoft trainer, that a lot of community work was done on LinkedIn. And a lot of people learn basically how they can switch their career path. Because during the COVID, because everything was virtual and only topic that was working was, let's say, the IT part of the people or the IT people, I would say. So I think currently to answer your question, this was just to put a strawberry in the cake that currently they can find me on the LinkedIn. Anytime they can ping me and they will get answered, minimum for 8 hours. After more work time, I'm available again. Excellent. Well, and of course, I'll include your social links on the blog post and on YouTube as well. But Martin, I really appreciate your time. It's great meeting you. And hopefully in the near future, we'll cross paths. I hope also, if I go next year on the MVP summit, why not? Thank you for such a nice, let's say, call. It's again, thank you and story for this, but I just finished from work. I'm connected from phone. But it's still, I think, okay, the voice and everything. So, yeah, from technical perspective, I heard that it's all good. So I don't need to worry about it. I will have one question to you. How would you pronounce my nickname? For example, my website is Lacialec.io. I'm just thinking cloud. Yeah, I found that. Yeah. So basically, this is going to confuse the people on my, let's say, native language. Lacialec means a fan of Lazio. Just because I found it also this morning, find it confusing for the people. So just to give a clue that Lacialec is not a ghost or something. It's a fan of Lazio on some language. Let's say it like that. Yeah, I would honestly, I wouldn't know how to pronounce that. So, but I'll have that link as well for folks to know what we're talking about. So both is, both your, your carbon made site as well as your dot MK. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, the IO, I think I switched that IO at the end. So I switch. Yeah, that's the current where the people can find me and also LinkedIn most of the time. All right. I've got it. All right. Perfect. Well, thanks a lot for texting. We'll talk to you soon. Yeah. Thank you for telling me more time. Have a nice rest of the, I suppose, night now almost in the United States. Here it's almost the end of working time. So yeah.