 Hey, this is Christian Buckley with another MVP Buzz Chat interview and I'm talking this afternoon with Johnny. Hey, how's it going, Christian? Thank you for having me. Yeah. Hey, congratulations. So brand spanking new MVP. Right. Just a couple of weeks in the book. So I'm eager to learn more and keep going in the community. Now, did you send out the tweet that said that you're humbled and honored because that's kind of the, that's the specific warning. Now you can switch it back and forth. Honored and humbled, humbled and honored either way. Yeah, I actually did send that tweet out. I was actually sending the tweet out to congratulate the other MVPs as well. And then I put the and I'm honored to receive the MVP. You know, still kind of fresh and new to me. So I've been working for about four years to get this. So it's been, it's been definitely humbling and honored, honored experience as well. Yeah. You know, it's, it's one of those things that we were talking about before we started recording. It's, it's, it's, you know, as I'm sure you've been, you said you've been working on it and always provide this guidance. I once in a while, someone will reach out and be like, you know, Hey, can you, you know, throw my name in the mix? And, and some people that I don't know that well, I'm like, I wouldn't know what to say to be able to recommend. But I said, but typically, you know, the people that become MVP is they, they do this kind of stuff. They're heavy community activity, blogging, speaking, creating, you know, just different kinds of assets for, for the community, whether or not they have the MVP status. And I mean, you've been in around the community for a long time. So say working on it for four years, but you've been in around longer than that. What's kind of your, what's kind of your path? What would be your recommendation to somebody that's interested in becoming MVP? Like, what was your path? So yeah, just, I started out with my path is speaking locally at the user group meetings and attending those frequently and, and just become, yeah, go ahead. Maybe we should start with like, do the formal introduction of who you are, then back to that thought. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So my name is Johnny Lopez. I'm a Microsoft 365 consultant based down in Houston, Texas. I've been, I've been a native Texan. I served 10 years in the Navy. On board a couple of aircraft carriers. So I got, I learned SharePoint in the Navy. So I have a SharePoint background back to SharePoint 2003. I saw a book that was sitting on the table and I was like, what is this thing? And it was how to, you know, build your own SharePoint 2003 server. So that's how I kind of learned SharePoint and working in, in as it is a user as well. I'm very passionate about community family, very involved in a lot of things. I coach basketball right now, second grade girls basketball. I'm also a six U coach for baseball as well. So I coach performance sports and I called, I coach softball with my daughter. You know, I have boys and one girl. So I got to take care of her and make sure she's taking care of my daughter through high school played softball baseball with the boys for years was the only girl in like two or three age groups and then played softball in high school. And yeah, so it's a lot of, I'll be honest. I'm not a fan of baseball as a sport. I just, it bores me into tears, but seeing your kids playing it's a completely different experience. And I'll tell you, I have more fun at the kids games than I've had, you know, I don't really follow professional sports, although I am a lifelong ACE fan. So born, born in Oakland, raised in the Bay Area. So even though I'm not a baseball fan, I am a fan of the A's. That's awesome. Yeah. I'm an Astros fan. I'm a native. I'm a Houston. So yeah, got to support the home team course. Yeah. I mean, coaching, if I'm not coaching, I'm watching or or watching some type of sport. I'm pretty much involved in most of the sports here. So that's very cool. Yeah, I do even think of like how, how sports at that age, how they've been impacted, but you guys still out there doing things in the COVID era. Yeah, right. I mean, it's social distancing as, you know, as much as we can, you know, masks were for the, the players don't have to wear them, but for families and attendees for the, for the games they have to wear a mask. And just, you know, be cautious, wash your hands. Just, you know, the, the normal, you know, pandemic stuff, but we were in down in Texas. We're, we're pretty much, you know, still social distancing, but we're still playing as well. So all of our kids are in school. I think it's, you know, good that they're in school, but they do have asynchronous learning once a month where they sit at home and, and they do online learning. So it's a different experience. Yeah. Yeah. Well, all my, all my kids are big. So they're, I don't have to think about that, but I've got the elementary school, like right behind my house. And so I walk in the dog three, four times a day, you know, past, see the kids out and stuff. I just thinking about that. Well, it's great. Well, so back to kind of your path in. So doing some stuff in the space. You picked up that book. Who was the author of that book? Do you remember? Um, I don't remember. It was back. It probably, it might have been you. Oh, it wasn't me. I didn't have the free book, but yeah. Yeah, I don't remember who the author was, but, um, it was, uh, it was a pretty good book. And I actually built my own server and, and was able to do that, um, on a machine, on an actual machine that was in our shop. Uh, so, uh, it was, we repurposed it as a server and it was, uh, quite interesting and fun. Um, I did a lot of work over the years from migrations to, uh, and, you know, doing analysis on intranets and, um, building forms and info path and SharePoint designer. You know, so, uh, I got my good experience as, as a gauntlet. Yeah. I went to the gauntlet. Right. Um, and I picked up B pause too. Whenever it was, I'm always looking for new exciting technologies around the Microsoft stacks. I picked up B pause and then started learning office 365 and just became a champion. And, you know, and now I, you know, I, the title architect comes with, uh, with the experience and the, the passion to as well. So it's been, it's been a good journey. Uh, I'm very grateful for all the mentors that I had over the years that helped. Um, and that's why I try to get back to as well, becoming a mentor for, for folks that want to get started and just giving them free advice. And, and, you know, that's what the community is about, right? Helping them understand what they can and can't do and, and, uh, all that good stuff. Yeah. You know, it's, it's funny. You go and you look at, I love, uh, so we've been doing like the office hours, live streams, uh, for the last, you know, uh, 45 weeks. And, uh, the, uh, what's been great about that, you see like a different questions, types of questions that are asked. And there's some that are obviously like the, uh, the consultants, they're not doing the basic like, do your Google search yourself. Like you can find this information. Come on. And then you have, you know, people that are, you know, end users being some power users and they're asking, you know, legitimate questions that are a little more complex. And it's a lot of fun to dig in and then ask those questions, like, how are you using this? And they're running into these, these walls and you see, you know, we see it enough that we start seeing those patterns and, uh, and when you can help people get past those things. And especially when you just, you know, the answer, like, you know, this is what you need. Here's the script, PowerShell allows you to do this or, you know, no, it doesn't do this. I feel your pain. There's no solution for it that. Rarely we have that answer, but it's, you know, unfortunate answer, but it's, but it's just a great feeling to, to give back in that way. I'm, you know, I love that aspect of the MVP program is, is, uh, you know, wish, wish more people would, you know, give up more of their free time to help each other. I think we'd, we'd all be further along as a society if people would do that more. So absolutely. I agree with you. So what kind of stuff would you, like, are you doing any other events like online events? Like what kind of stuff are you talking about presenting at? What are you passionate about right now? So this year I'm, I'm, I'm passionate about really, um, the new teams and I call us the new teams because there's a lot of things coming out in teams and it's a lot, um, uh, productivity, uh, packaging and, and there's a lot of things that you can do deeper and now more comparable to other platforms. Uh, so I'm, I'm, I've been, um, I have a YouTube channel called the rocket channel and I'll tell you back story about that. Maybe some other time, um, but, uh, I'm doing a lot of teams things like, like my next, uh, video is breakout rooms. I'm going to do my breakdown breakout rooms as a organizer and as a participant. Um, and then, you know, very passionate about teams, uh, doing a lot of teams deployments, uh, for a lot of customers. So deploying the team, teams based on their needs and their, their culture and their, and what governance they'd need. I'm still doing SharePoint intranets. Uh, I have a passion about, uh, SharePoint. I mean, I started from that. So I don't like to shy too far away from that, but so just really make sure of teams and SharePoint and then search as well. So there's a lot of things coming out with Microsoft search, um, that can benefit organizations. So I'm going to start doing a lot more with search and, uh, really around building connectors and connecting their internal data with Microsoft search and how powerful it can be and so they can overcome challenges of spending a lot of time searching. Um, so that's a couple of things that I'm looking for. There's a butt, you know, internally inside Microsoft. I mean, just like any big company, you have people that will go and move into different roles and kind of the, you know, grow their careers there, but you've got a bunch of people that, uh, uh, were in the SharePoint space that have moved over into the AI and the search spaces. Uh, and so it's, uh, and there's people doing AI in the search space as well. But you know, there's the various teams in there. It's, but you're seeing the people that were long time SharePoint people kind of move over into some of those of the roles. It's only going to benefit, um, overall the platform. Absolutely. So Cole, sir, are you doing any events? Anything that you're, uh, actively participating in or helping organize? Oh yeah. So I'm the president for the Houston Office 365 community. Uh, we meet once a month. Um, I'm also the co-host for the Houston Power Platform user group. Um, Reza Durrani and I, we kind of run that group as well. And we, we have an annual event. Yeah, used to be called SharePoint Saturday. It's morphing into, you know, M365 Saturday slash virtual Friday or something like that. So, uh, all of our events have been virtual, but I'm looking forward to getting back into face-to-face. I do, I speak about 12 to 15 events a year, uh, whether virtual or you know, the last couple of years in person. Um, but I'm, I'm doing some of those events. We, uh, I'm speaking at our local event this month and also the Cincinnati user group, um, as well this month at the end of the month. So, uh, I'm hoping to do two a month. Uh, if not, I'll, um, I'll get three or four and then add some more videos to that and continue to push out content as needed. Yeah, it's, it's, uh, you know, for years I did the, well, well, back when I was working for one of the ISVs in the early to, you know, 2010s I was, uh, probably doing, you know, minimum three or four events a month. That was a lot to go and do. I'm doing the same thing where, you know, once or twice a month trying to, uh, to present it some, some kind of event. Um, and it's, uh, again, it's, uh, I'm, I'm thinking I'm in a different role now. And so it's, it's a little more on the biz dev side of things. Um, and the benefit of that, uh, so actually with my new job description, there is zero content that's part of my job description, which means that I'm still going to write blogs, still going to do other stuff, but it's stuff that I want to write about and talk about, which is kind of a cool thing. Um, but there are, there's, there's not a shortage of opportunities. If people want to like participate, like you want to find out more about like you user group. I mean, is there, uh, process for that? Do you actively, do you, do you have your calendar built out for months or are there opportunities for people if they are interested in sharing some of the solutions that they've developed internally and wanting to kind of get their foot in the door and speaking at these events? Yeah, absolutely. So if you go to H O U three six five dot org, we have a speaker submission form that you, that you can fill out and we can, we do have openings, but we do fill up a schedule in our user group for, uh, at least a couple months out. Sometimes we fill them up the whole year in a cup in a week or two, but, uh, with the pandemic and everything going on, it's usually month to month sometimes. But yeah, if you go to H O U three sixty five dot org, you can, um, see all of our sessions that we have upcoming and also, uh, look for more information. We post all the major conferences on the website. So if you're, you're stumbling on our website, you all the major Microsoft conferences are posted there. So if you do want to speak, reach out to me on Twitter or LinkedIn and I'll get you the information that you need. You know, one of the benefits to doing more online stuff is that you'd be like, you know, we were doing this with with Utah user group as well. So we, we also, uh, last year was our first year. We rebranded is, we moved it to Friday and called it Microsoft 365 Friday. We more than doubled our numbers by moving it to Friday. Right. But it's a little different. The, the, the culture of the community here in, in Utah, where, you know, Sunday is not an open day to do stuff on the weekend. And therefore, everybody gets stepped on on Saturday. So people are less willing to give up their Saturday to go to the technology event. So we moved it to Friday. So we've kind of adjusted. But one of the other things we've tried to do is increase the volume of webinars and other speakers and topics. So we're very opportunistic. Somebody reaches out to us, you know, and we really like that and it's just really timely. We're like, Hey, let's, you know, can we schedule something two, three weeks out? And we'll just put something in place in addition to our user group. So we've been doing that more. But yeah, so people shouldn't be shy reaching out. Well, let me ask you, since you're the first MVP BuzzChat interview of the new year of 2021. Let me ask you, what are your predictions for this, this year around the technology? Anything? Obviously, no NDA information here. But what do you think is going to happen? What would you like to see happen around the platforms this year? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I know Microsoft has done a great job on putting together a consistency across each of the products in the platform, you know, with search and with other components from a scalability perspective. I'd like to see more more of that too as well, continuing the progression and continuing the momentum that they had in the previous years with consistency. But from a timing perspective, there's a lot of extra licenses and some of these features that come out. So I'd like to see a little bit better licensing models come out this year from the Power Platform and also from the M365 suite just to help organizations, you know, be able to adopt their services faster and more agile and things that align to their business needs. And they don't have to wait two years down the road to adopt some of these features. So I'd like to see that. I think this year there's going to be a lot more emphasis on search. I think there's going to be there, Microsoft has announced a couple of things in the past like Project Cortex and SharePoint syntax and there's going to be a lot more coming out this year. I'm really excited to see that. I did a lot of beta work on that too as well with another organization that I worked with. Did a lot of preview for the connectors and I'm really looking for it for some of that stuff to come out. But we do a lot of GCC work as well. So the government communities and like I'd like to see more of the general Enterprise product features come out in GCC a little faster. I think that's 2021 would be a good time to align those stars that way when we're giving these demos we don't have to break and say, okay, well, GCC, you're not getting this feature until next year. Sorry. So yeah, it's just a few things. Yeah, there's that. That's a yeah, just just a minor point that you know, we do hear from a lot. Look, I've not worked as much within that sector. Plenty of friends that work within Fed as well as the state and local and have those kinds of issues. You know, what get excited about things. But to be fair, there's a lot of things where we all see it where get excited. We see something talked about it. Microsoft Ignite only to find out, you know, looking at the the roadmap site that it's they're saying, you know, H2 2021 you're like what like, I was so excited about that feature. So yeah. Yeah. And then just wait a little bit longer for, you know, any federal users getting access to that. So yeah, there's another one more thing that I'm interested about that, you know, Dan Holm is took a new role for for Yammer and groups kind of, you know, putting the puzzle pieces together. So I'm interested in seeing that play out. And, you know, Dan's a great guy, great, great visionary. Looking forward to see how that that's going to play out for future. And ever with within those technologies. You know, for somebody you can't get much more, you know, hardcore share point than Dan Holm and for him to go over in and he's had some marketing responsibilities, his team on that side of it, but to take over and move for those that haven't heard he's moving from product marketing over to product management. So actually helping shape the development of of Yammer and groups. Like that's a big deal. So I don't know if if Dan's ever been in a product role like that, honestly, I don't know. I have to look I have to look at his LinkedIn. Yeah, I mean, I know he's been on the deployment side and so he's, you know, he still is the SharePoint guy, the in-house SharePoint guy for the Olympics every four years. He's not given that up. You know, and so he was able to maintain that he went his move over to Microsoft. So yeah, it'll be exciting to see what what happens. A few people shifting roles around, but number still blowing up just increasing there. But yeah, I've been a long term, long time advocate of Yammer. I like the inner and outer room or ring concept. Yeah, and I'm Microsoft doesn't use it anymore, but I'm a believer in that. But anyway, with that all that, if people want to get in touch with you, what are the best ways that people can reach you? Find you. You could follow me on Twitter at rocket underscore 15 to with two T's or you can search with me search for me on LinkedIn. I always respond usually in the same day. So if you guys want to find me there, I do have an about me site. You can search on about me. There's some things on there. YouTube channel, but I usually respond to all the messages. Even the spam I respond to those two as well. So you get time on your hand sense respond that stuff. Well, I'll provide all the links out to you and the user group stuff out on on the on the bucket planet blog post as well. So if you find this recording on YouTube, so you can go over to Buckley planet and you'll be able to find this as well. You can search on Johnny's name and find blog post. But Johnny, hey, really appreciate your time today and let you get back into it. And yeah, we'll we'll catch up soon. One of these days I'll be down your way. Probably I'll see you down in Texas before we see each other at like a MVP summit or something up in Washington state. Yeah. When you when you get down in Texas till Eddie and and font roll I said hello. They know me well. Yeah, we'll do it. All right. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks, Christian. Appreciate it. Have a good one.