 Hey everybody welcome to another post collab talk tweet jam tweet jam takeaways, and I'm here with John white. Hello Hello Christian. How are you now? Happy new year almost happy. Well, yeah, almost happy new year So yeah, thanks for participating. This has been you know traditionally And I know that tigraph has been a sponsor of the tweet jams for most of the decade You've been involved. We were just talking about it since at least that I can remember specifically like late 2012 Early 2013 which is like a year and a half after we started you may have been involved since the first couple episodes Yeah, yeah, it's possible. It's possible. I know we started systematically doing it In 2016 like there is a matter of record tigraph sponsoring the tweet jam and all that stuff But yeah, we were definitely involved with you well before that. Well, this is great What started as you know it was has always been our biggest tweet jam of the year and this month of Course didn't disappoint. We had some great activity. I still need to go back through Like Jay least did a summary blog post where he pulled out a bunch of tweets I'm still going back through the tigraph tools out in power bi Which I'll provide the link in the recording as well, but it's linked at tigraph.com whack collab talk it gets all of those And so you can really get in and look at the sentiment analysis around that as well as in the last tab Which I love or we've talked about for years until we had it which was every single tweet that used the hashtag During that that time period. Yeah, and you can filter it by event too, right? If you go back it that only goes back a certain distance, but but yeah You can go back and compare event over event or yeah Yeah, no, it's cool stuff to go back so there's if you missed it of course you could go back and search on Twitter and In on the collab tech hashtag and find tweets from every tweet jam which is monthly for the last decade It's all still there. Yeah, however, it's easier to go through the tigraph tools What's a little a little more and a little more informative. I'll put it down. Yeah, I agreed Well, so this this topic the end of year is always like a look back at the year as well as kind of a look forward So let's jump right in and get some of your thoughts John So the first question was in your opinion, what was the biggest news for Microsoft 365 dynamics 365 in Azure this year? Yeah, and I had to answer that in terms I mean your question was what was the biggest news and certainly the thing that made the biggest splash had to be Viva I mean the Microsoft, you know, the field has been engaged or energized with Getting Viva out there in front of people etc. There was a lot of events around that's all all the major events We're talking about Viva So I'm not sure that it was the biggest or the most important technologically But it was certainly the biggest news of the year in my opinion. Yeah, and the only caveat I added to that my comment was that, you know, we've been talking about Viva for a couple of years now And so while it's GA and kind of all the things around it And I said, you know, I thought the the the stealth news the bigger news was really around Fluid framework and loop only because it's going to evolve and change like I so I put it like Viva Agreed loop and mesh as my one two three Yeah, I mean well that gets into it gets a one of the other questions But fluids certainly I think is the most I don't know if it's the most important across the stack But certainly if we're talking about the office group, I think it's the most important technologically Yeah, we'll come back to that as well But so question number two has your outlook on microsoft technology and or strategy changed this past year Why are we not why not? A little bit of bias here from partners Well and technologically again, I don't think it's changed a bit I mean we've bought into the we've bought into the cloud first for quite some time You continue to see good progress on that front And I don't have any complaints. I mean so the fact honestly the one thing I didn't write down yesterday is It hasn't really changed and that's To the good because if it was going to change it probably would have only gone downhill. It's pretty much I'm I'm still well sold on the strategy I'm well sold on the technology. There's some other aspects If you get outside of the technology on strategy Area like for example the community events and all the way all that stuff is handled. I It's it's worsened a little bit. I think I think there's a little bit of a cash grab going on There's there's a little over monetization Happening at microsoft and I think some of that has to do with the org structure Yeah, I think we'll come back to that too because we had a couple of questions about Community and then advice for microsoft and a number of people kind of made similar comments I made a comment similar to that about you know microsoft and priorities and You know historically microsoft has been you know like the battling beat, you know business units kind of focus on Let's go and create sometimes overlapping or conflicting capabilities in that And and I don't know that we're back purely to that but there I I think there are some areas where it's like Microsoft hey, are you not talking to each other? Are you not aware of what other teams are doing? And uh, there's some refining that needs to happen there. Yeah, yeah, exactly I mean, I could think of a particular example. This is I know and I'm not gonna I'm not gonna get into the I'm not gonna get into the teams themselves, but I I can think of one particular example I know there's a team looking at Charging for something That will take away from the same spend happening on azure Just basically because it's in a different team. That's not a consideration And I I kind of think it's a dumb call, but you know, that's the way it says That's the kind of thing from a partner standpoint And we're at the front line of having to answer those questions for customers that are frustrated and they don't understand Why something and we're like, yeah, we we know this is what we're we're dealing with and Sometimes those get passed along to customers directly. So Yep Well, the third question kind of it that the heart of of our workspace, but have the introductions of viva flow and mesh Altered how you or your customers think about collaboration Again, I don't think it's had a major impact in the way we we think about uh collaboration I know I mean over the last couple of years. We've had a lot of customers Going whole hog rolling out just teams, right, you know that and and the whole remote working. So these are I guess I'll I'll call them icing on the cake to some degree, but I don't think they've been a fundamental change I think they are Formalizing that's what I think this is what I said yesterday was They're they're kind of formalizing the strategies the moves The way we think about collaboration for some time. So I don't think they're they're they're causing a change in thinking I think they're just realizing it. Yeah, I think viva really fits well into that category. It's it's more Again that word refining refining of the experience is the focusing on You know, we're really now just looking at how are people utilizing the technology and is that the right way? Is it the most effective? Is it the healthiest as far as? You know well being of our employees in the way. Is it a healthy collaboration model? Like it's great to have to report high efficiency But how long can you maintain that do we have a higher level of burnout around that? So having a better understanding of Not only hey, we have a certain number of downloads. We have a certain amount of content that's been uploaded or created And hey, we have more people chatting those are all important metrics to look at activity But is it happening in a meaningful way and are You know, are we seeing higher levels of of burnout are people? Truly engaged for the long term that's a it's just a healthier way of looking at collaboration Yep, it is and another thing I think about viva. I think it's a bit of a I don't know if it's a turning point it remains to be seen if we keep going in that direction But it's certainly a shift and it's a shift from I think Products being focused on features to being focused on functions Right as opposed to there's this thing you can do. There's this thing you can do There's this viva is supposed to be at least all about here's this experience you can have and these are the things you can get done And it's less of much less of a focus on the particular workload or the or the product or the feature itself In how it can get done. It's trying to bring together things from all kinds of you know Basically a from microsoft 365 as a whole to accomplish a goal And you know one thing an observation to is microsoft the last few years has really been Hoping that partners would step up and focus on industry specific solutions That's always been the case and there's opportunity for partners for isv's for service companies to go in there and And demonstrate their level of expertise in the education sector the manufacturing sector of those those different industries vertical Yeah, in the verticals somebody made or a couple of people made the comment about it was it was one of those ignite announcements around further expansion of the industry the vertical clouds And investments that microsoft is making there, but I think that there if you look at viva, which is about that employee experience flow, which is Really about I mean, it's it's more complex than that but really about you know Co-editing collaboration real-time collaboration across a loop loop loop. Sorry. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah loop not flow loop Yeah Loop and and mesh. Yeah, I actually get that wording wrong in the question. Yeah, because it's supposed to be the loop and But you know what I meant? Yes, but you know with that with loop You know, it's still about you know about collaboration closer collaboration and then mesh is all about You know opening up just yet another opportunity for different ways that teams can go in their engage looking back at viva and and loop as The collaboration continuum Also providing different ways for people to go and connect. Yeah mesh. I think Mesh is I you know, uh, some people wrote it off as a toy. Um, I personally think it's not feature rich enough yet A microsoft does have a habit of rushing to market with something that's maybe incomplete at first. We'll see But I think conceptually It could bring something very important to the table and that we've we've lost with with remote work And I've always been a proponent of remote work. You know that but one thing we do lose is the the face-to-face The body language facial expressions, etc. Etc. If we could get that right virtually Um, I think that could be a killer I don't think it's there yet. It'll remain to be seen how much it's it's adopted I mean the whole walking around legless thing. I mean that's I mean something completely different when I'm walking around What I my joke when I saw that was that well, it's it's the premium feature where you get to pay more to get pants I know But but you know kudos to making the attempt and and this is you know an entry level into this this whole space And that could be Very interesting Obviously, I mean we've had enough sci-fi out there to show us that you know what some of the potential What some of the potential downfalls could be but I do Think it would be nice in a remote working environment to be able to collaborate a little bit closer Well, that's a great segue into question four, which is how has the continued effects of the pandemic impacted your Community activities and what are your community plans going forward because that I agree with you like we we have not found that happy medium yet I think the in fact is interesting watching as part of ignite with the mesh announcements How all of the unhappy faces, you know the emoticons as people clicking the down the thumbs down It went very negative around that in its defense It said that when you Want to look at it from our perspective and and it's it's not like we're we have an avatar like k experience You know, it's not that kind of seamless like is it the real world or is it memorex kind of thing it's But even with how naive the graphics are now we're early in this this process when you're in that Space and when you got the goggles on we've got the immersive experience It's incredibly powerful over the mind and how It does allow you to go and you can have a 2d Speaker presentation a power point going off and sit and watch that And then I could go over to you. We see each other or avatars We could walk off to where it's quieter Have a conversation about that have a couple other people join us walk back over Watch the rest of that and interact with that other presentation It just opens up new opportunities for community Agreed. I mean the folks at the european collab summit did a birthday party for sharepoint in june I think it was And they did exactly that it was it was a bunch of presentations on stage Your avatar could go up on stage and start speaking about things and It had you can see it. I mean you can see that I mean the technology kind of failed it at the at the end of the day I mean it was there was a lot of it was glitchy it didn't really work well You didn't get any facial expressions. It's hard to tell who was who except for the name floating over their head, right? But I You can see the potential of it And so that and that was you know, that was one of the community things that I did this year I I will just answer that question. I I'm sick and tired of virtual events. I'm just sorry You don't I mean you're basically just tossing a presentation if you're a presenter You're just tossing a presentation over the wall Um And and this is very little feedback I can speak certainly as a sponsor of some of these virtual events and talk about you know One measure is leads and we've gotten precisely zero leads out of all the events we sponsored over the last couple of years So there's no engagement with the audience on that front And I mean we've we've seen some events at the end of the year this this last year that We're quite successful actually Um from that standpoint and as a consumer You've seen during the course of the pandemic As an attendee say of the various microsoft events the content shrinking and shrinking and shrinking as I'm sure they recognize, you know, the attention span isn't nobody wants to be sitting in front of the computer for hours on end all the time But I mean the content has suffered tremendously and it's just turned into a mic a marketing marketing exercise Of just delivering messages and I don't need that. That's not what I need out of events So from that standpoint, it's had had a had a real negative effect, but I mean we're still trying We're still doing our best from a community standpoint. We're still communicating And you know bright lights at the end of the year. I mean the last three weeks in in december I spent Um Traveling around doing events again. So that was wonderful. Yeah, and I think as that starts to open up like look I think from like my like our user group I think it's uh, we decided going forward We settled on a new model, which is Our speakers will always be virtual or if they're there in person because we have a location But it will always be broadcasted always be like we had already been doing that But this is like the set model one of our sponsors journey team has said we have this dedicated space We will be and and not many people have shown up for this yet But I think that it will grow over time Where it's a viewing party and people that show up get some pizza and things as well But that's it. So you have the option, which is great from a community standpoint still anybody can get involved But that there is a place for us to virtually or in person gather and give people that choice The hardest part with doing a uh a hybrid is keeping the connection between virtual and in person and that's also something that I think with uh, uh, like the uh, north america clav summit. So wrackley's event out in brance of missouri Uh, that's something that I think is on the right track is the best that I've seen where we had As much as possible. I helped organize it But mark is really the the gets all the credit for leading it Um, but is the in person as well as online moderators So having those moderators so that we make sure that there is constantly Both that in person and online interaction q and a Somebody is raising a physical hand to ask a question on behalf of the virtual person That's right. That that I think that works really hard really really well But don't ever let mark hear you say something he did was the best you've ever seen. Oh, no And he'll never watch one of these videos. No, that's true. That's it won't get out Well, so the next question was uh, what three features available now are publicly announced or having or will have the biggest impact in 2022 uh, I gotta go, um I Again, it's the same From a technological standpoint. I think the my answer was um We've already talked about it right mash has got the potential for having the biggest impact loop If it's a dot like a mash, we'll see if it's adopted loop if it's widely adopted because loop isn't You know, they're pitching it as a product, but I actually think it's it's a feature It's a piece of functionality that goes into different products You know, it surprised me like we've talked about like fluid components and loop and I was excited about that But the whole the canvas the workspace that actually Took me by surprise. Yeah, I think that's going to be confusing frankly. Uh, we'll see Um, but it's another delve Yeah, or like an r&d product That really is until it's integrated within the other existing tools That is exactly what my concern is definitely what my concern is and um, you know As the other I have to go from my We focus on on collab talk on on the collaboration space obviously, but technologically from microsoft the uh What I see happening with synapse now and synapse in the power bi integration that's going to be coming That has been announced. I mean the big one for me was synapse being integrated with azure data explorer I know i'm out there on an edge on the edge on that one But um, but that's going to have a huge impact for me well And a lot of it too is that Going and looking at and I was talking with mark kashman about this a a few weeks back about how Where he did his summary of all the announcements out of ignite and I was pointing out I said more than half of these items are AI driven So the the AI footprint across microsoft's innovation. I mean that's going to be a massive You know continued impact Uh across uh 2022 I'd say I agree with you on on loop. Um, I I think there's a lot of A lot of opportunities. I also made the comment. I said I really thought that 2021 Was going to be the year that microsoft figured out the tasks the tasks like cycle across products So I'm I'm hoping 2022 it becomes a big thing. It gets figured out. You're more of an optimist than I am. I think yeah I know All right, so number six. What are your predictions for the microsoft ecosystem in 2022 and beyond? Oh, I don't remember what I answered yesterday, but I the easy one. I think is continued growth They're they're kicking it in the cloud I don't know if this is the year we're from a from a pure revenue stamp on the overtake aws or not But they're certainly on a trajectory. Um, I I don't see uh, I don't see any doubt there That's that's a big one. I think We're going to see the full blown return of in-person events in the latter half of this year So from a community standpoint, I think the things are going to get back what that looks like I don't know. I think we're going to see, you know As you mentioned like using marks marks event as the uh, as north america collapse summit as an example I think they'll be hybrid I don't think they'll be quite as big as they they used to be but you know, you got to start back somewhere yeah, I I I know that microsoft i've heard this from a number of microsoft people about how thrilled they are with the 10x 20x number of Registrations of participations for build and inspire and like I get that's not real is it? No, it's not. Well, that's that's the thing like we'd always have like putting on a share point saturday event And we'd be excited that we had 600 people register and then 250 people show up which was a which is a fantastic turnout by the way. That's right. Yeah, yeah But we have an event where we have, you know 400 register And 125 show up, you know kind of thing So it's it tends to be about a 60 drop-off For those in-person meetings. I have no idea what that is like But most people I talked to it's like, ah registers. I ended up not going to any of those sessions I'll watch some of the recordings later, but they count as attendees Right and from a microsoft marketing messaging back to your point Like that's fantastic for them, but then you lose all of the depth And it's useless for a partner event. It's just yeah, it's it's just useless So that Inspire was always my favorite event which the annual partner conference And that's all about in-person And it's all about in-person the relationships that you build and it's just it's flatlined Yep, that completely that's a perfect example So number seven question last question if you could give one piece of advice to microsoft leadership and or product teams What would it be? I don't think it's the new piece of advice, but uh flatten the org structure, man Flatten the org structure and it comes back to the stuff. I was talking about before I think far too many decisions are being made within They're not silos anymore. You know, it's one microsoft all of that there has been, you know Improven in that area. I don't want to take away from the the guns pointed at each other's heads But there are still too many silos. There's still too many There are still too many financial decisions that are being made around org units Not as not for the company as a whole and until you can start making decisions that cross The entirety of microsoft microsoft's not gonna Getting the most of it partners can't get the most of it because they want we want to use the whole stack I mean the value proposition of the microsoft product is that they work well together I mean, I know people would argue that point in some in some areas, but fundamentally that's that's you know Single identity across the board etc. Etc But if I have to start making design decisions around Frankly, I want to say a bad word that I around really bad licensing choices That's taking away from the true value of the platform And so I I think it would it would behoove microsoft to flatten their org structure It would benefit the whole community of benefit the partners that would benefit microsoft because I think they're going to make smarter decisions financially I agree. I I made the comment of three word. Well, so I said um flatten so kind of I was you know Echoing your point a couple other people made a similar comment. I said refine So it was really kind of uh refined then the strategy across that and and keeping that end to end You know customer end user experience in mind And I think which was a mantra that satya began his His career with his ceo I'm saying that we're going to look at that end to end customer experience in mind And not just develop point pull the solutions within that and then the third thing is As much as we love innovation and all the new things that are out there but uh Deliver on the promises already made Paying your technical debt Yeah, so I think that there's a and there's quite a few things this year I mean, that's how I kind of put viva this year into that category of Well, it finally went ga and kind of all the things I said, yeah, but this is stuff We've been talking about for a couple years now And finally kind of reaching that point. So I'd like to see more of that Yeah, yeah, so get finish something before we move on to the next shiny thing. Yeah, that'd be a nice idea Yeah, I realized with the innovation cycle and that's not always going to be the case but To have that in mind to be able to it's always heartwarming when then you ask questions about yeah But what about this that you talked about and was like, oh, yeah, yeah, well, we'll go find out We'll come back to you with that. It's like come on. That's right. Yeah. Yeah, but uh, yeah Anyway, looking looking forward to one thing that we didn't mention That I think is going to have a really big impact in this latin this this next year Is uh teams connect is the shared channels Capability. Yeah, it's a fundamental problem. Okay. Let's look at the number one platform out there that everybody's using It's microsoft teams And the number one problem that I have is multi-tenant and moving between those Yeah So if if connect and you know just to with the background on connect is the ability to create a channel and share it with people from outside the organization Um, and it's different than switching Your teams client to someone else's tenant so that you can work. That's what we've done up until now That holds the promise of eliminating the need for that if if I truly don't have to tenant switch again I agree. That's that's a game changer certainly in the team space and teams obviously Matters a great deal then communication becomes way more pervasive. It's much easier to share things Um, you know, I've been around I've been in the business long enough to say that's a great plan Let's see how it let's see how it materializes. So when I see it I'll uh and and work with it if it truly does deliver on that promise Um, I'll be very impressed. I am a little bit concerned about you know, the the processes that we've built up Until now will they work without doing that? I imagine Yeah, we're a lot of people are going to have to make a lot of changes to make this work the way I'm I'm I'm envision that John. I think the way that the phrasing you're looking for is that if there are opportunities There are partner governance tools providers and for consultants to help with that It's like, I mean look there's a yeah like as with anything you look at something as incredibly powerful as that That deals with identity deals with permissions and authentication and It's going to be there are governance questions that we need to answer about that. So I'm excited that microsoft is continuing to go. I I'm I mean I was I've been talking for some time about wanting to Start up a a a a mobile device like an emulator on my desktop Where I could interact with the teams From my mobile device has figured out the multi-tenancy at least from the learning It's very easy to move between tenants Why don't I have that the desktop? Why can I do that on my phone? And I can't step within the desktop. Outlook has figured that out. One node has figured that out Why couldn't teams figure that out? I always want to ask that question, but yeah That's uh, that's one piece of advice is answer that question microsoft. Why? Yep. Why why why really appreciate your time? Thanks again for your continued sponsorship Always a pleasure. Flat talk tweet jam. And of course, uh, we'll be back on january 25th The topic is not announced yet, but that is our 10th anniversary show or tweet jam So that's gonna be cool. I think we're gonna do for this where it's like one on one the post tweet jam We're actually gonna do a panel. So we're gonna do a bit more around it. So we'll make sure we'll have tigraph there I'll probably have jay on representing ad point. I know i'm representing the holiday edition of but uh Yeah, so you'll have to come decked out in tigraph gear. I'll definitely be doing that Make a crystal clear. Well, john. Hey, happy new year. Thanks for participating and we'll talk to you in the new year You know it sir. Have a good one