 Hey, this is Christian Buckley with collab talk and I'm here with John White with tigraph and a little bit of Vince Hey, are you doing Christian good to see good to be on this? Yes. I know so well you've been sponsoring You know, thanks for the continued support. We've been this is on the I'm trying to remember like when you guys got involved in sponsoring these it's been like Seven years we talked about it at the airport leaving Ignite and Atlanta So what year was that? That was three years ago No, no, no, you've been sponsoring you've been you've been years ago Name is the answer. Yeah, it's four years ago. Holy cow Yeah, I mean you guys were involved prior to that because the development of the analytics tools But it's officially sponsoring it. Yeah, like four or five years, but yeah, right so the the topic for today, of course was takeaways from Microsoft Ignite and And did you participate as much as you had hoped in the event? Well, it depends depends on what you mean by hoped I hoped I'd have been there in person and participated a lot more In terms of what my expectations were for the online event. Yeah, I did I was I was able to focus on it and And got a significant amount out of it. Yeah, I you know, I'm interested I didn't ask this as part of the tweet jam today and I didn't really kind of come up But did you participate in any of the non-session activities just a pure community like they had yoga Sessions going on and other kind of Collaborative community activities. I didn't do a single one. I know that I okay I've not found anybody that I know that that went and did any of those no I think I think they're you know, they're they're in the right in there. They're meant well Yeah Yet, I wonder if there needs to be the volume. I who knows who knows what the numbers are Yeah, maybe we're introducing bias I don't know but and I also I didn't look at yesterday or today the stats the tigraph stats for the event I did and it's a little It's interesting because of course the time frame is it's only two and a half days this time, right? It's it's split into two Magnets normally four and a half days, so this event's just a little more than half the event time of the of the usual event And if you look at the Twitter traffic, it's a little more than half So it's pretty much lining right up with in line with the previous events Maybe a little bit more, but I think that would be expected due to the online nature of this I mean everybody's sitting there on the on their computers. Anyway, why not have a Twitter open a window open beside that? It's easier than banging back and forth on your smaller screen, etc. So Good traffic though. Did Microsoft share any numbers about Online participation this quest somebody asked this question yesterday and was trying it was wondering about because I think If I remember remembering that for build They had said that there was something like 250,000 people that one point touch the event I haven't heard. I haven't heard any of that 45,000 tweets about 450,000 impressions and I know we million you mean Thank you And it it had topped a billion at ignite last year So that's that's number sticks in my head. Wow. Yeah, that's right. Well, let's jump into this So it's seven questions to the tweet jam today love to hear kind of your takeaways from each of these So question number one in your opinion. What was the biggest announcement of the week for Microsoft ignite and why? Me well, I mean, I don't forget the world I live in is the world I live in is Power BI and hands down the biggest biggest Announcement of the event was the it's it's a combination of two things really and one one leads to the other it's generation to architecture for Premium capacities of power BI that and that's become now a set of features in addition to just a sharing capability As well as a premium per user licensing policy So smaller organizations don't necessarily have to buy the farm and get the you know, the big skew upfront They can price per user if if the economics don't match and there are some differences in the sharing capabilities with it But no longer do these guys have to be left out in the cold. So I was that's really the biggest one for me Well, that's great. Yeah, I know that there once we look at the stats from the tigraph You know stats that are the main available all including the blog and the link within the body of this video description But I love you're going back through now if you've added on the the final tab So it's all out in power BI if you've not gone out and see this tigraph tweets You can find it via Twitter on tigraph tweets the link John I'm sure you shared it half a dozen times tigraph.com forward slash collab talk pretty there you go and on the last if you miss the tweet jam you can actually go to the last tab and go through all of the tweets that use the club hashtag hashtag during that the hour and Reading through people's responses. That's always because like certain things that stuck out for me like certainly SharePoint syntax was a big deal the first. Yeah product or service to come out of project Cortex The virtual commute stuff kind of the softer stuff that's necessary to break up the workday and help people Have a more balanced online life. I think all that effort is really good I also I thought was a huge announcement was the dynamics 365 the azure communication service the Omni-channel end-to-end phone solution is massive. Go take a look at that. It was Julia white demo It is and it's not done as much play as it probably should it's it's plumbing, but it's really important plumbing I know a couple of the folks that were on the tweet jam that are the unified communication folks Tom or but not Adam ball both brought that up and I retweeted and that's a huge one because that's like part of my past world as well So prior to to the SharePoint life And so it's it's great to see that progress. So definitely go check that out. All right. So question number two Let me jump back over to it Is what were the primary themes of this year's Microsoft Ignite event? Oh Oh remote work, right? I mean you heard the word resilience over and over again, but I came back to remote work I think you know my mice. I always have a little bit of snark in my comments, but You John My slightly snarky comment was it seemed to be the theme was look at how our technology is integrating with Microsoft Teams Which is And I mean why wouldn't you right because teams has had some such amazing Adoption in the last few months to support remote work. It's done a great job of it Yeah, everybody wants to jump on that band like it. Yeah. No it was was great And I think you're exactly right. I mean resilience I think was the was the number one take away and certainly there were other other You know smaller themes there, but I think that's what most people certainly from today's tweet jam We're talking about and looking for You know answers to a lot of the top feature requests are our work from home based Yeah, all right. So question three was there anything missing from the Microsoft Ignite product announcements that you wanted to hear? Yeah, yeah, that's an easy one for me. It's the price for the premium per user skew and Power BI They announced this brand new skew. It's gonna fix this bottom end of the market. Oh, how much is it gonna cost? We're not saying yet What? Your news is a skew Yeah, the price is a pretty important piece of information to include you know, it's like a month ago I was talking with a client about their website and website redesign and guidance of Microsoft partner and guidance from Microsoft and that I Was referencing there was something I don't have it was a month ago the discussion But Microsoft was recommending. Hey partners You should always include pricing when you're gonna make an announcement about a service out there And it's like the number one complaint from customers and yet is the number one complaint Microsoft goes and announces something and I say the number two behind it when they announce something get everybody jazzed up about it not have the pricing and also to have no Information of when the API capability around the new features will be available and that that came up a couple times today as well It's it's there's a real practical reason for this isn't just I want to know what the price is or I want to complain about whatever the price is or anything I actually well, that's just a given it I completely trust that the price is gonna be where it needs to be because the whole point of this is to aim at the Smaller end of the market but but as a when you're designing a system the Not only that the price of the license, but the structure of the license is an important component when you're designing a system Do I go this way or do I go that way and it's often a cost consideration? So you need to know this stuff so it's gonna delay people, you know thinking about deploying this stuff It bugs me that anyway. Well, I think of that in terms of like the consumer experience go to grocery store brand new product You've been waiting for it's all out there. There's no price on it. Well, how much is this? Just just give us your credit card number. Just give us a blank check for this Come back today. Yeah, come back today. It comes in the store. How about pre-order this product? Well, how much is it gonna be? Well, we'll tell you the day it ships Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that I was gonna say that there's you know, there's there's a precedent for them not Announcing the licensing on that. I think there's yeah, I know we've always done it this way before it doesn't mean it's a good thing. Yeah The question number four was has the shift to online events impacted how you consume product announcements in community discussions? Yeah Really has I mean, it's pretty much To a large degree. I mean, I'm now just receiving broadcasted information all of the you know Most of these sessions are pre-recorded. Yeah, there's no opportunity to interact with the speaker and the best of cases There's an ask the expert session afterwards. That's good When you can line that up behind it That's that's I think was what's needed to be and I also like how they throttled the number of people that could participate in There's real-time sessions So it's not just overwhelming with thousands of people in one of those rooms But even those there they're not really that interactive you you post a question and a moderate I've been on I was on both sides of that you post a question a moderator Decides whether or not it can be answered and someone answers it That's it's just kind of lobbing it over the wall to some degree It just doesn't match that experience of being in person and having a dialogue back and forth and back and forth with Clarifications even during a session. So it you know, it feels a whole lot more like product announcements to me that it does You know, that's in some cases. It's what it is that it but that it does a conference where you know You're absorbing this stuff. It's it's organic. You're in with other people talking about things You know, it's totally missing that side of things. So has it has it affected it? Greatly and frankly negatively although there are really good aspects to this too. There are some real positives We should take like, you know, so if I can use my as a former Microsoft employee use my Microsoft Speak here is that really what this is is that there's an opportunity for partners and for community people for MVPs like like the two of us to to build off of this this on-demand content that's out there And to go and do like sessions, you know webinars things on that where we're doing that in-depth and Inviting Microsoft people the product team members to participate in some of those things. So, you know, it's I agree with you I I love the the interaction that side of it. I mean one of my favorite things about ignite and Like build I've I've just done the online. I'm just not it. I'm not a dev So I've never never done it but inspire and ignite the best things about those events Are like I rarely go to sessions It's all about going over to the product team booth areas Talking with the people that are building and supporting a marketing these products and as well as the community But then asking those in-depth questions ask about specific scenarios. Yeah, that back and forth Even better, I know I know it's more me than you but but you bumping into those same people at the party afterwards after they've had a couple of adult beverages The answers flow Yeah, it's very convenient That's what I actually really miss about you know, I was for years it was a purple badge and had an office on campus and So I was able to go over and visit with the product teams and and it'd be like I initially I get the Official marketing, you know description. I'd be like I do the it's me You're talking to here and I usually get the like close the door close the door And then have a conversation about it. And so I miss I miss that as well Well number five here So what are three newly announced products or features from ignite that you plan to perform a deep dive into anything else? catch your Obviously gonna play with this new architecture Poke around with it. It has some real immediate impact for us our business. We include This architecture in our solution in some cases And then there's the there's a new visual. It's available in power BI the smart narratives visual We're basically you can have a text box and tells a little story about the data that happens to be in your data set And it's brilliant because you know, you can you can filter click a data element on your page And that text itself is gonna update accordingly. I really I really can't wait to play with that and Frankly, it's project nucleus is going to be interesting I don't you know, we do data collection from the graph and from SharePoint I don't think that's gonna have immediate Applicability to what we're doing but Technologically bringing lists offline is something that's I think pretty slick. I want to see how that works So I'm just kind of interested in that. Yeah, there are a few really cool List Microsoft lists features, you know the the undo redo the you know at mention notifications is part of it's big But but yeah, that's that's one, you know, it's funny John It's like the two two things that are at the top of my list to go in Reviews I need to do some cleanup on my Azure environments, but is the Azure auto manage? Yeah, the optimization that capability and there's I know that there's some third-party Solutions that are out there. I saw I've not done enough in-depth to know the differences between some of those Yeah, and then the other one is the big one is that you know Azure the Azure communication service in dynamics Solution so that's a big one for you know, whatever the size of your organization You know that that could be a just an amazing solution to better align your sales marketing and support people around The they're the customers and with that end-to-end phone solution. It's pretty awesome. Yeah. Yeah, that's all good stuff All right, and let's see number six So for someone who was not able to attend what should they focus on first from the news and content out of Microsoft Ignite? Well with my comment on this, I'll just I'll really repeat it here is If you weren't able to attend this ignite guess what great news because you can I mean, it's pretty much all every all of those sessions are available online and frankly your your Experience is not going to be significantly degraded from someone who was able to attend I mean with the exception of that You know the question-and-answer sessions that I was talking about you're going to be able to see the information as it was presented replay it etc etc The one thing I would comment on this and it's you know You hear that even for those who were able to attend this it was because it was remote Everybody tried to cram it into their usual work day. I did not I took the time I would normally spend to focus on this stuff and Focus on this stuff. So set aside the time to watch these things Don't get interrupted because an email comes in right focus Go go through this stuff as if you were sitting in the room and you're gonna get a lot more out of it You know make this comment again I did during the tweet jam, but I think with the such a high volume of sessions. There's a couple things one That there were a number of things that I didn't find in the schedule builder That I don't know what I did wrong to not find it I would hear about things through the social channels and be like crap. What was that thing? And so that you know, they had kind of silos of where you go and search and did to build out your schedule around like the official sessions versus the community stuff there was a lot of on-demand Content that was just published when the show arrived And you know for us we're used to going through the schedule and seeing what's in what slot and picking which one we're gonna We're gonna watch well that kind of that if you use the schedule builder that kind of all fall off on on Thursday At the end of Thursday, and if you weren't looking for that, you didn't know it was there That's right. And so but the the benefit to all that of course because even those sessions that were live and repeated Is is that as I'm going back through the schedule and finding these things and adding them to my backpack Which is which is one of the reasons as you say even if you missed it this whole week if you were you know on vacation Somewhere and they let you back into your country and with the travel restrictions You can still go. I believe you could still go register to get access to everything and it's free You know you should be able to because but but get in there Then you'll be able to add Build out a schedule find all that stuff add it to your backpack and go at your leisure and go through all that content Well that backpack and it's useful just from a sharing standpoint. I know Ed But business partner Ed, you know it I had a time he registered built out a backpack and then took the word file that you connect to save it as and just Posted it to our networks. Here's what I'm gonna be watching. You might be interested in some of this boom Real quick access to the stuff so yeah, exactly and then the final question that I always like to ask for these Microsoft events Is if you could give one piece of advice to Microsoft leadership, what would it be? you're pertaining to the topic of Ignite of course. Yeah, my comment on that was simply don't think that Online events are gonna replace in-person events from an effectiveness standpoint moving forward. Just I know we've had to do this I know we're going to be doing this till the end of June at the very least is in terms of what Microsoft has stated But looking at this saying, oh, maybe we can trim a few dollars You're losing a lot. You're losing your community if you do that. I think in the long term I think the community can hold together We know we're going through some tough tough times But long term if you start to treat the community is just some broadcast thing I think it's gonna fall away. So so let's not let's let's let's get back to in-person events as soon as we can Agreed and I I made a couple comments at the end there as well I I think that there's been the obvious value of in-person is the networking the conversations all the things that yeah Not about the the sessions. It's never been about the sessions are great They give you something to talk about but yeah, but you know the keynotes what you could do And I I'm one of these people even for all the events that I go there I would typically do some of these events. I would do the keynotes watch them streaming Via my hotel room rather go down to it and then go straight to the expo hallwars where I would live most of the week During these events and for all those interactions So it's great that somebody made the comment in fact It was Matt Wade who made the comment about how like what the positive of this is that so many more people can participate I'm like, right. That is a great argument for post post COVID having hybrid events doing more Online to make that content more accessible. Oh, yeah, but it's not one or the other It's not one or the other right. Yeah, they're not mutually exclusive Let's do a lot of this online stuff for those people who can't attend in person. I think that's great So you're just totally extending it but then also have the in-person experience So you get your best of both worlds, right? Exactly. Well, John, thanks so much for your time today People want to find out more about you and about Tigraph. Where do they go? What do they do? Tigraph.com my blog is white pages dot unlimited vis.com My Twitter handle is at diver down 1964 So you'll find me one way or another if you if you go go go to those sources and another great example of What Tigraph does certainly for these events as you go out again to? links dot is it link or links link link dot Tigraph comm slash collab talk and you'll find The event today and past events. That's Tigraph for Twitter right there. Yeah, that's right. All right. Thanks a lot, John We'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Christian