 Hey everybody this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat and I'm talking today with Andrew. Hello. Hi. How are you going? I'm doing well here and congratulations on the new MVP. It's always fun to, besides I just met you a few months ago at an event down in your country and to be able to now congratulate you on getting your MVP. So it's a big deal. So congrats. Yeah, it's an honor. Well for folks that don't know you Andrew, who are you, where are you, and what do you do? Yeah, so I'm Andrew O'Young. I am based in Adelaide in South Australia. So I am a consultant, just pretty broad title, but yeah I've done a fair amount of work through one work, so Microsoft 365, moving through things like SharePoint and Teams and then touching the Azure and then moving on to the Power Platforms and nowadays I'm focusing a bit more on Power Platform, little bit of dynamics, which is scary at times. But aside from that I do run a user group here instead of the Adelaide Microsoft IT Pro community, a bit of a mouthful, but yeah we cover across many of the topics and services through Microsoft so anything from Teams to Intune and all that jazz, we try to run that monthly with some guest speakers and I also try to keep a blog up-to-date with random announcements and changes and sometimes some of my woes and successes, so yeah. Well that's, I think you may have answered the question we were talking before we started recording about, so you're an Intune MVP, you're added on and obviously I know you from M365 World, I mean the rest of the collaboration stack and so well somebody who does the bulk of their work in the modern workplace space become an Intune MVP, but if you're running a user group that is IT Pro, that's traditionally, that's like the Intune crowd right there and that labels. Yeah, well yeah, but the focus of the work starts shifting from emails and all that towards more device management and security, so I guess yeah the last 12 to 24 months has been a lot of just everything, so I guess Intune is one of those things I ended up taking command of because there wasn't as many people doing it at the time, so but yeah the user group, I think it was originally like an SCCM or some data center related group and there's interest in rebrands and changes and the co-host, you'd have a few Intune related topics throughout the year, so I guess the MVP team thought that's more Intune gear, but yeah by heart I'm still very M365. Well and again I said that's something that's interesting, I mean Microsoft, they move the buckets around every once in a while, but you're like I write a lot about, I talk about collaboration, productivity and AI and stuff that I've been doing for years and years and you know the, and so it's great that they've, it's become a major category, they're pushing for people to come AI, so there's you see increasingly MVPs that suddenly become a dual and they're even you know people that have three areas of focus, so three separate awards because they're doing so much in in those categories, so it shifts around, it moves around, there's opportunity to, it's like it's like going to MVP summit, it's almost like you know going to a university and you're like which electives do I want to take, so I can I can go to my SharePoint sessions or I can go over here to these Azure sessions and and so whatever you know you want to kind of build contact, contacts around and build your network around, you can go to those sessions, so that's that's a nice, Microsoft has really opened up with that for MVPs, once you're in in an area you can expand your footprint. So I'm gonna spy too. Yeah well so what was your, what was your path to becoming an MVP, like what was the process, what did that look like for you? Yeah so let's let's jump back, was it almost seven years now, so I attended my first Microsoft Ignite in person, it was the last one that was that big in Australia, so it was in the Gold Coast in 2017, yeah I didn't really know what to expect, I had a friend say hey you should definitely go and yeah try to try to get this red party of mine, that doesn't even mean, so so I got there, so the pre-event day it was like I don't expect going get given you a fancy backpack which you know season wear and tear now, but yeah they introduced us to a handful of MVPs and I was like oh what do these guys do and yeah just getting introduced and discovering what they kind of do and their own jobs and for the community, the tech community itself and it was like this is pretty cool and then as the event progressed it was very eye-opening, I met more and more MVPs and just other tech enthusiasts and we got along pretty well, took some selfies, yeah I met this guy called Dux and I'm sure everyone knows Dux by now if you've attended any of these events and it was like this guy's really cool, maybe like him and kind of just yeah from then on it was a what do I need to do to kind of be a you know one of these people, so I spoke to a couple of the more local based Australian MVPs and it's like what did you do and how do I get there and I did mention something about user groups or meetups which I was like what, so then I came back after the event to Adelaide and started looking and there were a couple, so the one I'm running or co-running now is one of the ones I joined at the time, so slowly I said oh well yeah let me let me do something for this community and I'll join in and do some stuff so they brought me on and started doing some new news feeds at the start of the sessions and then Adam Fowler who was one of the hosts at the time, he got the job at Microsoft so he relinquished his MPV title and he didn't have the capacity to run the group anymore so that you know he promoted me to an actual co-host so yeah I've been running that alongside Brett Moffitt and we've been trying to keep that as consistent as possible so a lot of that is just you know more news and announcements and changes occasionally I'll do a session on something that might be interesting, leading up to that as well I did a couple of presentations and I started the blocking process as well after attending at night, probably about a year after I'd say, which is roughly when I started you know doing contributions to user groups so yeah kind of hand in hand and then the I guess the sessions were kind of recorded and then the unprecedented times happened and we went to a online only situation because you know it was good and bad I mean yeah be more people because you know it's online everyone it's got time right and there's more more to do there's more opportunities to speak and that that kind of stuff I mean that that was a real positive but yeah yeah but a lot of camera off mic off so it's just talking to a screen really which is still you know it happens and you know I'd rather be a crowd because there have been a couple of sessions where the room's been empty so it's a bit a little bit soul crushing but you're still you're still there doing your thing right you gotta do what you do, we'll switch around and afford that. Yeah no it's funny I always talked about so long time ago 30 years ago I was had a band I was the lead singer for it we did a couple shows where we some gigs where you know we got like the minimal charge then we earned a little off of anybody that came in and we a couple times we found ourselves with you know the the bar emptied out people were outside smoking and there was nobody in the room and we we had to continue playing and we just decided yeah we're gonna play for ourselves kind of kind of things and sometimes that's what it feels like with the you know just the pure online like there's no interaction depending on the technology you're using and it's different different tools different times you know it's sometimes when you're presenting and you it's great to have a second person there who can see if there's questions that are coming through through the Q&A module or within the chat or something and doing that but it's it's frustrating it's hard to do that I've done some live audiences where there was no comment there was no feedback and I just thought wow I I tanked this thing there was nothing and then I got strong numbers on feedback like but I definitely prefer the the in-person you know having that interaction I would much rather have an an hour of content and then get through 20 30 minutes of that because of the different questions and maybe take it in a different direction if that's what you know the audience is looking for if we could have a really you know in-depth conversation down one path of of that of my planned content I look at that as much more of a success than hey in 60 minutes I got through 60 minutes of slides and and demos I mean it's just I'd rather have the interaction yeah um yeah anyway yeah it's not the events that in conferences you go to like when you're an attendee like you see now they control the room and the other how do you audience reacts to things but if you there's no one there that's really it's really hard yeah yeah well it can be yeah again it's it's uh and it's not like everything has to go well it's even even when I've had you know presentations or sections of a presentation where I haven't you know it's something that's newer I don't feel like I have many of the answers that I know people are going to ask about that and sometimes you just it's good just to collect like that's a great question and let's let me follow up let me go and find those things out or I don't know or is anybody else know here so there's ways of presenting that where again you don't have to know everything about you know 100 of the products that you're talking about but share what you know and capture the questions and and so I iterate on some of some of the sessions that I do regularly it's might have the same title but it's different each time because I'm adding to it I'm making changes to it every single time yeah I want to hear one of the recent events we're just at um like a runny joke where there's a I will take with that I'll find we'll get back to you and we'll circle back for that yeah yeah thing like that but um I mean yes so that it does mean a lot when you do follow up with those questions after the event um to the people asking them um but yeah speaking of the online times yeah uh got sort of well I reached out to um the team running the M365 May at the time so it was guys in Melbourne so it was Laurie and Megan and Rebecca so they were running um a large show for the whole month of May uh with you know presenters from everywhere really um so we got going on on that so that was that was nice uh and then finally yeah last last year in august at the digital workplace conference in Melbourne got to meet um you know all these MVPs I'd only seen online before uh and yeah one of the guys like Darrell Webster from New Zealand um got a bunch of him and we had to sit down and we talked about the whole MVP process and you know submissions and stuff like that so it was a good um sanity check to make sure that I am on the right track to doing things that would be considered you know worthy of an award so um if there's none I guess it was a bit of advice well that's that's something I you know if you've not already I mean I know I realize you've been an MVP for an entire day day and a half right so yeah yeah uh and so but it's you know just be prepared where people are going to come and start asking those questions and and uh I mean there's a lot of resources that are out there but um but yeah that's that's you know probably the most common thing you know when I was a brand new MVP it was you know the first couple months was you know people saying it's like well what what was the process what was that like what would you recommend I'm interested in finding out more about that and so um yeah it's it's a it's a black box there but there are certainly things that you can do to get yourself organized and to to even think about so yeah what what is a contribution like what am I doing for the community in fact I just had a conversation today I've been doing something uh because I'm mentoring for the last year I completely forgot to add that to my contributions but the fact that I've been doing something for the community on a monthly scheduled basis with results uh and I've not I didn't think of that it was just something that I was doing to help some people and within the community but it's all focused on on this it's all the technology related um and and so I you know even as long as I've been doing it for 12 years now and I need to remember like to capture all of these activities and and add it to those contributions why does that matter for for folks that are MVP because we want to be renewed as an MVP so you it's a reward for what you did the last year but you've got to keep doing stuff to get re-awarded but uh yeah anyway you'll get tons more opportunities so I'm excited for you it's going to be uh a bit of drinking from the fire hose especially all of the NDA calls that you uh just remember you don't have to say yes to everything they're all at 3 3 30 am I don't know how yes yeah well some of them some some of them have the the different times and so they have their their APAC schedule not all of them but uh but yeah um thankfully it used to be with most of those calls if you weren't on it there were no recordings like that that was it but they're getting much better about that now so at least you can watch the recordings yeah but that does hurt when you see the ones that you might be the way in normal contribute to but it's like uh yeah by that time yeah just do some time shifting just spend a couple weeks and just uh yeah sleep during the day and yeah I'm sure we'll work with that yeah yeah well well very cool so um so what are your uh and so we talked a little bit about your focus area stuff but what are what are you excited about what technologies which which products which things are you like most excited about right now what are you writing and talking about god just coming out of Christmas and nothing much um but yeah coming on the tail end of last year everybody's you know flavor of the month was uh it's co-pollates and AI and co-pollate for co-pollates and stuff and co-pollates a little seat um but yeah it's that's pretty cool um there's heaps of like stuff going out there but it's all still very you know gated by you need next number of this and why number of that so until I get some hands on which I imagine we do get access to something yes that you need to look into that they there is an mvp access to co-pilot so for m 365 co-pilot um I just hit up the support team to get access to the Microsoft Teams channels and they did a typo on my youth uh my display name but um I'll show up get back in and uh I'll I'll poke them about that yeah ping that we're done here make sure that you for the person to add you into this uh to add you into the co-pilot um I can give you that name when we wrap I don't want to inundate her with other people reaching out to her that aren't mvps um so I'll talk when the recording stops but uh yeah so that's that's definitely something yeah there's a lot of other perks you know access that you'll get in to get into things so yeah I've been running throughout this morning which is why I was running late to join this yeah um but yeah in terms of like the excitement yeah the anything AI co-pilot is really the flavor of the month um still you know it does rely on having your data and mvp 365 up the scratch and secure and govern and all that so um yeah it's it's full circle right it's no escaping from SharePoint um and I guess yeah I haven't really done heap of in-tune stuff since changing gigs so I might have to swing back and do some more uh updates on that but I'm sure my uh music group contributions will keep that afloat yeah well very cool well uh for folks that want to reach out to you connect with you uh where are you most active in the social platforms yeah um so I'm on LinkedIn um I'm also on twitter slash x or you want to call it these days um but LinkedIn's probably the best uh the source so I'm sure you'll have the journalists including the links I do and now I'll send through all the links anyway yeah I'll link that's probably the best I'll include all the links uh to everything that I find and I'll put it out on it'll be on the blog post on YouTube and on the podcast as well so people want to reach out to Andrew please do it's always it's always good to get the perspectives of the uh of the newbies uh into the program uh because yeah in fact since you'll get the latest of all the things to sign on to um all the different resources you know Microsoft is good with that to us make sure that you're set up you're aware of all the benefits the new site has a section none of you've explored that extensively but that walks through all the benefits and the things that are there um but like I said uh drink it from the fire hose next couple months uh yeah it's a big of fire hose now yeah yeah well Andrew hey it was great uh connecting with you again hopefully I I get to see you uh once or twice later this year so I think more more travels that are gonna be happening so uh wish you well hope to see you at mbp summit but I understand um the time and and cost of coming from abroad but uh you know hope to see in March but otherwise hey thanks a lot for uh for sharing some of your background with this audience you know it's thanks