 Hey, everybody. This is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat. I'm talking to you with Arjun. Hello. Hello, Christian. Thanks for having me. How are you? I'm doing well and hope is good there. It's a good kickoff to the year. Anything exciting going on? Oh, nothing yet. Not just resolutions which I will not meet. So just that kind of things happening around. We have to put ourselves through that every year. I know all the things that we're going to do parts of. Make an endless list and make sure that it doesn't meet towards the end of the year. Exactly. Exactly. Well, that goal of not meeting your goals was met. So yeah, hey, congrats. Well, for folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you and what do you do? Hello. I am Arjun Menon. I am based out of Bangalore, India for my day job. I don't call it as a day job. The job which pays me. I'm a solution architect working for a company called Tata Consultancy Services, TCS. And outside that I am a Microsoft MVP in the Microsoft 365 development area. I'm also a co-maintenor of CLI for Microsoft 365, which is a command line interface tool, which you can use it for managing the Microsoft 365 tenants, upgrade your SharePoint framework projects, those kind of things. And I'm also a member of PNP. And I try to blog about what I learn, share it with the community. That's what I do it. Yep. Well, that's cool. And so you've been an MVP for a couple of years now. What was your original focus? What was your path to becoming an MVP? Well, that's funny. I mean, it did not start to look for an MVP. It did not start it that way. So what my journey was that I was contributing to the CLI for Microsoft 365, the one which I'm maintaining it. I started contributing to that through one of my friends, Rabia. She works for Microsoft right now. So when I saw her contributing, I liked that particular thing. And I started contributing. So that was the beginning of the journey. And I kept on contributing because I loved doing it. Not that I was aiming for MVP though. That was my journey if you ask me. So I continuously did that. Whenever I learned something, I tried to start blogging. This was my path to MVP. And then one of my call, I would love to call himself as my mentor, Valdek. So he nominated me, Valdek Mastika. She nominated me for the MVP. And that was the journey. And eventually I think I got it in 2022. Funny that the month which I got MVP, I think a month before was the month where my daughter was born. So hard to forget that. Memorable month. So the child being born. Later in life, that's what you tell the daughter, depending on how good she's being that month. Exactly. Ironically, because of that, I mean, awfully my contributions has been drastically going down because I have to check with the family. But that's a life, right? I mean, that's how it works. Well, that's great. And Valdek, of course, I know, so he long time, he was at the company I'm with now, Rencore. So for folks that remember Valdek from the years with Rencore, but now, of course, over at Microsoft. And I just noticed too, so you've got the links too. And of course, I'll have the links out on the blog, out on YouTube and everything, but out to your GitHub page where it has the links to the CLI for Microsoft 365 links. You have a probably a better link list here than you do on your MVP profile. But with the new site, of course, I've got that linked off the page as well. But yeah, so it's great stuff if you want to follow up with Arjen around that. So what are you, like what are you passionate about right now? What are you talking about? Like with all the latest news that came out, there just seemed to be so much. Like is your life renewed, dedicated now to co-pilot? It's funny, right? I mean, you cannot give an answer without using the word gen AI, right? I mean, everything, it revolves around that. So yeah, I mean, so basically before this whole AI revolution, I would put it that way, came into the picture, I was into the teams development, the Microsoft 365, teams apps development, that was the area which I was primarily focusing on. Now with the gen AI, what we try to do is that we try to bridge the gap between these two, like trying to build solutions on teams using the gen AI, then a flavor of co-pilot. So yeah, answering your question, co-pilot is everywhere, I guess. I mean, including everywhere. I mean, whatever you do, it is basically co-pilot run is making you run, not the other way probably. You know, it's funny, I was sitting through a review, a panel that was looking at kind of the elevator pitch for three startups. And of course the questions, the first two, they didn't have AI built into their title or into like the product description. And there was obvious usage there. And the third one, it was like their whole, the company was shaped around the AI capabilities and kind of the enriched user experience from that. But it's interesting. I think it's a positive that people are looking at not just, okay, here's a tool, here's a solution that does these five things for me, but also look at the rich data that we can pull from that. And is there a natural language interface where I can, you know, get more out of that. People are, it's already very rapidly starting to shift where people are thinking in those terms. Semantic search, how am I going to find this stuff? How am I going to improve this experience? How am I going to pull this rich data out and synthesize that with my other documents, my other, you know, artifacts in my system and improve everything? Totally. So what I felt is that the whole idea of search has been changed, right? Now things are revolving around the conversational element of that. Because before you try to find something by going to conventional search and you get something. Your journey doesn't end there. Just continue to the next level. Okay. It is like conversations and the rich data, which it is formulating and it is bringing back is just amazing. Only thing is that you need to know what to ask. Simple. I mean, it is end of the day. It is a machine. Well, that's always been the problem with search and it's been more limited. It is. And you used to always say that with just searching and finding content. It is like, well, do you have the right permissions? Was it tagged properly? Was it classified properly? Is it in locations I can get access to? Am I using the right words to get to that? Kind of all of those things. And again, the AI helps with that process a lot. Well, definitely, definitely. I was thinking with all of the new MVP announcements this month that came out. For a while there, Microsoft, as they do, they rename the categories, the buckets of the MVPs. I started out as a SharePoint MVP. I then was, I believe, the second or third Office 365 MVP. And then we got moved over to Office servers and services. Then Office apps and services, then M365 apps and services. And then the latest was just M365. But I just noticed in some of the letters that people are posting up on social. Like there's somebody that just got it added in as a SharePoint MVP. Yeah, I noticed that. I'm like, well, that's fantastic. I mean, is it still technically you're under the M365 bucket? Does it matter? But so having said that, what was originally, so what is your actual category that you're focused on? So I mean, I know that it's M365 like I am. Right. What specifically, what area, what part of the product team that pulled you in? Yeah, so with the classical development I am, I just follow the classical SharePoint path in the interest of my journey. That's what I started. But I think answering your question precisely right now, the focus area which I am into is the graph areas. Anything related to the team's development or SPFX development. That's area which I belong to or rather my contributions account to. But I was just viewing one of the MVP results that SharePoint is one of the category. I felt so happy to see that SharePoint as a category. But like again, I don't know where it belongs to eventually, but that's a different story anyway. Is there a graph MVP? Is that a category? So there is a contribution criteria, but I honestly don't know whether there is a category or not. I don't know actually because there is a lot of changing. Yeah, I know. Yeah, it does change a lot and Microsoft shifts things around. And that's something important for people to understand too. I came in as a SharePoint MVP and I focus on a broad range of solutions. I'm a collaboration technologist. I've been involved in collaboration technology since the late 90s. I was at Microsoft for three and a half years and part of what pulled me in there was the launch of what is now Office 365 was because of my background helping create dedicated cloud collaboration solutions. And I was one of the few people that did that. I was at a company called E2Open. We built something. I took that experience and joined Microsoft in 2006. But again, once you're an MVP, you're in there. We're touching a number of different areas. It's interesting. You have to be focused in an area to get selected. And some areas are tougher to get into. Some are, let's say they use the word saturated. There are a lot of MVPs in certain categories. It's tough to get an MVP in any given area. But once you're an MVP, you might spread out. Yeah, that's the beauty of the Microsoft 365 in my opinion because you can have a broader horizons of options in front of you where whichever chooses or whichever areas which you like, you can focus on. And still it can count into your MVP as well. So that is the advantage in my opinion if you are into those category. But like I said, like you said, there are many areas which are kind of saturated. Again, at least I don't see any much more advancement going into that area at least. Right. Again, you need to be focused to get in. And once you're in, they support being a generalist and spread across a number of different areas. Exactly. I'm also interested. How's the state of community in your region? Are you active in user group? Is there still like our events starting to pop up again? Oh, so we do have an active user group here. Though I'm not actively an organizer of that. So recently we had something called previously we used to have M325 SharePoint Saturdays. So now it is being called as M325 Saturday. So I think last month we had one in the place which I am part of Bangalore where I had given a session as well. Similarly, since India is a very big country. So there are many areas where they will have local groups where they will have a community. Say for example, we have a Pune community. We have a Mumbai community. So there are many areas where they focus on the communities as well. So answering your question, yes, there are communities, but most the impulse and sessions in my opinion are still not up to the level in which it happens in other places. Most of them are virtual sessions, but it is still happening and it is relatively going in good directions. I mean, things are going up in a good way. Well, I know that a couple of years back as things were just starting to open up again, there was the, so I actually was a keynote for the, what was the SharePoint Saturday on Devad. And of course there are a couple of good friends. I'm Mark Anderson fellow MVP was also there in person. He does a lot of business over and travels over to India. So it was, I was a little surprised to see him in the audience. For those that know Mark too, you can't miss Mark, the white hair that confused look. Like he just got surprised by somebody. Though I've not met him in person, but he's a famous guy. Mark is awesome. But so it's great to see that kind of stuff in the hybrid events. I think I'm Devad just had their event. It did last week. I wasn't sure if it was this weekend or last weekend. Yeah, it just happened. It was last week. Yeah. I saw some MVPs that were traveling to that. So, but it's because the reason I asked about the community, because there's a lot of regions, my region here, like we're struggling to build up to our, what we were pre pandemic to get the attendance and things around there. It's things have just changed. I don't know if it's just because people can get information and feel like they're, they're getting plenty from the pure virtual and there's tons of virtual events that are happening. And so they feel like they don't need to show up in person. Yeah, but nothing beats the in person experience. Nothing beats that. No, it's a completely agree. Well, this, yeah. So I, so I always like to ask too, since you've been, you've been in MVP for a couple of years. I'm sure that you get questions from, you know, like, well, what is the process? Like what can I do to become an MVP? How do you mentor or advise people on that process? So if, if I've had similar questions, people ask me. So what I would tell them is that don't keep MVP as your destination. What you do is that you find an area where you want to contribute to the community, keep loving it, keep doing it consistently. And eventually MVP will come to you. At least that's what I always tell the people. Don't keep it as a, as an, as an ambition, I would say, because I've seen people, folks who has kept it as an ambition and they never get it and they will get rejected. So don't do it. It's not a good idea. So what I would tell them is that if you want to start, there are a lot of initiatives, which is around, if you've heard of PNP community, Microsoft is by BNP community. There are a lot of tools and softwares where you can start contributing. CLF and Microsoft is one of the two, which I started the contributing. So you, you can go to these repositories, find some of these issues which you can easily work on. It could be a simple documentation changes or it could be a simple change in the code, which will make a huge impact to the tool. So start identifying these things and keep continuing and see how the whole community works so that you will understand how all of them collaborate, communicate, and eventually when you start doing it, MVP will definitely come to you. I mean, there's no doubt about that. I've seen people getting it MVP because of that. So that's what I would tell the folks. Not a simple answer, I would say, but it is easy to take it up. You know, for folks that if maybe this is the first episode you're watching of this series, go and watch three or four episodes and they range anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes long. But you get that exact same advice. It's pretty consistent. It's out there. And what's interesting is like I've got friends that are now, I've got a good friend who's now an MVP and a regional director, which is a different thing, a much smaller group. There's about 4,000 MVPs now globally and there's just over 200 RDs. So just the difference is there. But it's not like, hey, I'm an MVP and now I'm going to become an RD at that higher level. No, they're just different programs. But anyway, so good friend and just remember having conversations. I was one of the people that nominated him for MVP and he was frustrated that, you know, for a couple of years just was getting, was just getting passed up and I didn't understand why and he kind of said, you know what, I just kind of came to a realization. It says, I think I'm going to withdraw my name from the process because he says, I don't care. I said about that. I'm sharing my knowledge. I'm making contacts. My business is doing fantastic. I'm making all these great Microsoft contacts. I love my role in the community. My interactions with the community are fantastic. I've got friends for life. I've got my, again, the business is booming, kind of all those positive things. And so he just kind of stopped thinking about becoming MVP. And I kid you not, it was like a month later, he got his MVP award. Oh, nice. So it's almost like the, you know, the, you know, the universe understood, okay, humble yourself a little bit, focus on, you know, on giving back and whether you believe in karma or whatever it is that you put good things out there, good things will come back. It may not result in MVP award, but you're going to make contacts. You're going to help people which has that there's a, there's like a runner's high off of helping people when you're able to actually answer a question or solve a problem for somebody. There's nothing like that. I can see why people go into teaching with its dismal salaries, but they still do it because they love that. And I think that's a lot like this. Oh, totally. I mean, whenever, whenever you someone ask a question and you give a response, which will help them and the gratitude which you get back, no amount of money or whatsoever, or materialistic skin by you that. So that is an impact. I would like to test that out. I think there are some amounts of money that I be, let's go on off record and talk about that. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, just keeping jokes apart. I mean, that more than that, you keep a good connect with the amazing folks around those people. For example, I've been seeing him doing wonders right from the beginning. So when you, when you have people like them and when you see what they are doing it consistently, it's hard for you not to do that. I'm not able to do that consistently right now, but it's amazing. You get inspired automatically. Well, I think the vast majority of us are all consider ourselves technologists where whether no matter what our roles are, we're excited. We're passionate about tracking following what's the latest things that are happening out there. How can it solve business problems? Because a lot that's the other side of this. It's not just about talking about touting new features and being cheerleaders for Microsoft. We're, we're using it. We're testing things out. We're coming back and saying, you know, hey, Microsoft, we're seeing these issues or, hey, did you think of this use case or I've got this client that here's their situation. That's different. I love the stories where there are, you know, novel use cases across competing technologies. You see more and more partnerships with SAP with Oracle and Adobe with, with Cisco with, you know, with all these opportunities where people are coming up with these again, really these combinations of technologies across the multiple stacks. And I think that's important because I think gone are the days where you come across a large corporation that is like all Microsoft technology. We won't even consider anything outside of the Microsoft stack. No, everybody is multi cloud. Everybody's looking for that. And so there is a need for people with experience in these different clouds and to be able to talk about, Hey, here's how we use SharePoint. Here's how we use teams, but we use these other technologies. Totally. Totally. I mean, it's, it's very good to see the, the barriers of the technologies getting diluted per se. I mean, it's wonderful. I mean, having the different systems coming together, just to solve a problem for your user. I mean, the user technology doesn't, doesn't really matter whether you bring it with the rocket science or bring it with the basic things. All it matters to him or her is get my things done. How you do it, which technology uses doesn't really matter. Right. Well, I love when Satya was newly the CEO of Microsoft. He gave a speech at, I think it was the partner conference. There's, there's a partner conference for folks that don't know. It's now called Microsoft inspire, but it used to be the worldwide partner conference or WPC. And it's first one where he talked about, and just to paraphrase, I mean, essentially said, like, you know, Microsoft, we want to build the best software says where we don't have the best solution, or maybe we don't have any solution in an area. We still want to remember the customer is looking at solving this, we might do this piece, this piece and this piece. We want to make sure that the customer gets everything they need. That means we need to partner with the solution providers that are in between or may compete with us in different parts. Because at the end, like we all benefit from the customer's problems being solved. And that it was a dramatic change in philosophy for building software for Microsoft away from the gates bomber era into the Nadella era. It was listening about integration, about solving the customer's needs and that customer experience. That was huge. You know, I've been saying that for years. So it was just was very much in line with most of the community people that I worked with. Exactly. Probably that would have started the Domino's effect in my opinion, because I think that would have started rest of the large software vendors like Microsoft to follow the similar pattern rather than compete with each other so that we will have a collective good rather than we have an independent silo. So I think that would have started the Domino's effect like you said. Yeah. I think so. It was the start of the stone rolling down the hill. Yeah. Whatever you want to use for that. Well, Arjun, I really appreciate your time and coming on and great to you and are you going to make it over for the MVP summit? Oh, I doubt so. I don't think that's a that's a long trip and expensive trip to make. But it's it has become expensive right now and before I think it was not the case, but now it has become very expensive. Yeah. So I don't think so. But yeah. Good that we have a virtual virtual event where the problem with that is that time zones again. So we'll have to again rely on the record at times, but again, no complaints whatsoever. Well, hopefully, hopefully we'll hear like your voice on there asking a question or something or maybe you'll see us. Those that are there in person on camera, but for folks that want to reach out and connect with you, where are you most active in social? Where could people find you? So definitely people can follow me in Twitter or X, whatever you call it that platform and pretty much active and also in LinkedIn as well. So these are the two areas which I try to keep myself updated. And that's what I do. Okay. Excellent. Well, Arjun really appreciate your time. Same here. Wonderful. Thanks for having me here, Christian. Have a great day.