 Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat and I'm talking today with Ferdy. Hello. Hello Christian. It's great to have you and for folks that don't know you, so you're a brand new MVP, so it's always great to introduce, but for folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you and what do you do? Yeah, my name is Ferdiladen Öhlos or say Ferdi. I'm a new MVP in the category apps and services since June, very new, very crazy. All the way since June. That's right. Yeah, what I do, I'm a German speaker in the community and my passion is to talk about Microsoft 365. So I had a blogging in English speaking or German speaking. I had some community events as a collaboration heroes. We talk a week about Microsoft 365 tips and tricks. What can you do and this for key users in the end of the game. And this is what I do in the community very much from Lincoln to sessions at the Scottish Summit in August session at the MS Berlin since three days. And in the next week I traveled to Salzburg to the Infinity 365 and talk about Microsoft Viva. And this is my passion. My passion is Microsoft Viva and the task management for Microsoft because in the end of the game or in the end of the day, my customer and very much people had two problems or two issues. You had many tasks. The task is coming from email to chat to a telephone or to talk on the floor. One thing. And the other thing is who can I learn something? Who can I have some knowledge to have a central location for knowledge? And this is my gaming about Viva. So I talk very much about Viva learnings and Viva topics because I think these are great applications for this and to talk about the task management from to do to planner. In my working position, I'm a senior modern workplace consultant and talk with my customer about Microsoft 365 and a complete way to integrate teams, SharePoint from the Internet to integrate with Viva Connection teams and SharePoint to build synergies and to bring Microsoft 365 in companies. I love the task management story because there's a lot of us. So I started out in project and portfolio management in my career. So I've been pestering Microsoft for years about pulling together their story around task management because it's been very disjointed. So it's exciting to see that we're getting more and more integration. There's still a lot of work to be done in that area. But it's a, yeah, that's a great topic. So that's one of my favorites as well. It's a very great topic. If you talk with customer or with end users, it's the big topic of end users. What is with my task? Who can I manage the task and what are for synergies I had in Microsoft 365? If I get an email, what can I do with this email to generate or to create and task or not? When I work with my personal task management and when I need to work with a collaborated planner, for example, planner also for a task management. And those are great topics for the end users. And another missing piece that Microsoft is moving down the path of is around the alignment with now Viva Goals and the OKRs because that's another thing. I think we're having experience in that background and sorry to take it kind of sideways here, folks, but it's because I'm again, passionate about the topic. So you have, you have to do, you have planner, you have traditionally project and our project online. You have you have the DevOps Azure DevOps capability. You can create things as you mentioned like an outlook. You have tasks that are, you know, part of notes. You can automatically create tasks that come through Viva as well as through Outlook. You want to be able to capture things in one note and have it integrate with various locations. But you want at the end of the day, you want all of that to roll up to a project plan. If there is a formal project plan in place or maybe it's lighter weighted, it's just planner. You also want it to all of the things you don't want to have to go do double entry and roll it up into your organizational tasks or OKRs. You want to be able to know that, hey, the things that I'm doing, the projects I'm working on, how are they helping align with what my team, with my business unit, with my company is trying to do with our overall goals. So I think it's a, it's a massive, you know, effort for Microsoft to pull all these pieces together. It's, and there is a team. They have people that are assigned that are dedicated to this space. So I think we're, you're going to hear a lot more about that alignment of that integration. Yeah, yeah, that's true. That's very cool. Well, so what, tell me about your, your path to becoming an MVP. Like what was that like for you and who got you into the program? It's very crazy, very crazy. What I'm my, I'm my passion about this. I think the, the MVP program is, is massive support for, for a consignancy for IT consignants because you get some information you can, yeah, I can speak better to your customer. And my, my opinion in the, in the end of the day is I want to, to, to talk with my customer about an integration of Microsoft 365 or application of Microsoft 365 completely. So I can decide do we this and planner do we this and to do and what plan Microsoft in the end of the day or in, in three months or six months. And I need to, to check this out to, to say my customer planner for this or no, wait six months, then you get a new tool. It's better. It's, it's, it's help you better for, for doing what you want. And this is why I, I want to, yeah, to get these MVP awards to, to my, my, my opinion, why I want this. I want to share my knowledge because in, in the word in, in Germany, for example, three Microsoft 365 has much applications. And in the end of the day, company, employee in the company or so on, he gets all applications and don't think about what can I do with this application or which application help me. And in the end of the game, I get, or I, I, I come to the company and I want to help and want to share my knowledge. And this is what, what's the Microsoft MVP award do. I, I share my knowledge in my network from YouTube, bloggings, pod castings, to, to session speaker roles, to help people in the end of the day. Well, that's certainly one of the benefits having, you know, we're at the, you know, the bleeding edge of, you know, hearing about the, the technologies. Microsoft relies on the MVP community to be the storytellers to help people to envision kind of it's the, the phrase you always hear is the art of the possible with the technology. I'm interested though, it's like, so how did you become an MVP? Like who, like, was it something that you pursued for a while or is it something that kind of, you know, somebody put your name in? All starts with other MEPs, Alex and Ragnar. I know you, you, you know about Ragnar, Ragnar, and he had in Germany, he had in, in show, the Alex and Ragnar show. And there is who my thinking about to do more in the community starts because I see the show and I say, well, it's cool. It's fantastic for my, yeah, my company, for my customer and so on. And this is what the starting label for me to say, yeah, it's cool and it's help people. So I want to do this. I want to start at two years with sharing my knowledge, to start with sharing my knowledge about the platform Lincoln for the start, then I get a YouTube channel with short videos about task management. And so it's grow, grow, grow. I test something, yeah, I test and then I put it in the recycle bin, but I test. And so this is what, what I start my way. I try something and at the end, it's the focus end users for two years. And yeah, yet I had a blog, a YouTube channel, a blog in English speaking. I, yeah, posts three or four posts in a week or in Lincoln. I had a Twitter account and so it's, it's grow, grow. And yeah, in January, it's, it's, it's a fantastic thing. What, what's happened? I sat in session or I created session for the European collaboration submit and send it and write in post of Lincoln. So I do it. I send a session for the European collaboration submit. English is not my language, but I need to left the comfort zone. So I wanted and then I get a message from Hans Brander. The message was fairly, you need to call me. Here's my number and we call and Hans says, you try to playing in the Champions League at the moment. You don't are a native English speaker. No, I don't. You try a topic what you don't ever try it before. And so you want to speak as a high level. Try other thing is a challenge to go to Pune in the tech community to Nandip or to Craig in London in a community and test your English. Test it, try it out, speak in the community. And if you go to a speaker, then you do the next step. And so it's, yeah, I call to Nandip, to Nandip and to check what is the tech community, what can I do in the tech community, what can I do for a session for the community of Pune and Nandip show what I do in this moment and say, well, I want you to nominate as MVP. And I say, what, MVP? Yeah, you say, yeah. And yeah, he nominate me a week later. And so I need to wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. And this month it's happened. And it's a great goal for me because my plan, my personal plan was to get the MVP award in three or five years because people who gets the award, he do so much technical stuff, so much storytelling. And I think in this moment, I do not enough for this MVP award. And yeah, but I'm very happy to get the award yet because in the end of the game, yeah, it's enough for this. Yeah, it's a, for folks too, that you bring up a great point, Ferdy. I mean, obviously you did enough because you made it into the program. But there is the, what is it, a lot of MVPs feel like, is it enough? And what's going on? And part of it, and I say this a lot, I would do the things that I do in the community regardless of the MVP status. And I'm sure you do the same things. It's just part of the way that I tick, part of the way that I network, part of the way that I work and I learn is from others. And so I would continue doing these things, long after I leave the MVP community, I will continue doing things like this, but it's, you know, that imposter syndrome, so many of us have that in areas. And it's, and it's sometimes it's incredible. Some of the people that are the most prolific bloggers and speakers that are out there, they, they also experienced that imposter syndrome. So I'd say just keep doing the things that you, you did to earn the MVP. And that was enough, you know, to, you know, that's the right level of activity. And just keep giving back to the community and the rest of it will work itself out. Yeah, it's the, the, the much topic is stay tuned. You, you block and much people. And I think about this too. You block, you do, you do, you do. And no one comes to you and say, cool, this is a cool article. Or would you like to speak in this or this community? And so in German, we, the people are thinking about, oh, is this enough? Is this good? Is the quality good? And they, yeah, they do a break. They do nothing and not stay tuned and, and do more and, and do always a week or one a day or in a month and do it. And, and this is a, yeah, I think this is the, the thinking we need to change. We need to do, to stay tuned. And yeah, one week it's not good, but the next week you get good blogging. You get good feedback or so on. And that's, that's what community is. It's right. It's a, well, and you know this from community building as well as it's, it's so critical to be consistent. I mean, if you think of like a user group, it's important that we have a stable location whenever possible. And I've been in user groups where we struggled where we would be three or four months in one location and then we'd have to move and find another place, somebody to host us, but to be consistent. But it's always at the same time, you know, it's always like ours is on the third Thursday of every month, always at the same time in the afternoon, so that there's that consistency there. When you're building your personal brand, so much of that is about that consistency as well. So it, but you need to, I think you were kind of making this point too. You kind of need to do that for yourself. No, it's great. I mean, you're doing it for the community. You're doing things. You're sharing the information. You have to enjoy it as well. So part of the consistency, it's easier to be consistent when you're doing it for you because you enjoy creating that whether one person reads it or a thousand people reads that blog post, it's less important of getting that out there, sharing that information, but then doing it in consistent manner. But I'm a marketing guy. I work with people on building personal brands and branding in general. So that's always my guidance. In the end of the day, it's, it's true. You know, you need to enjoy it. Yeah. Enjoy it for your life, for, for your work, life balance, for your family or whatever, not work for MVP award. This is not a good, a good game. You need to have, yeah, to, to have enjoy. You need to enjoy what you do. And then in the end of the game or in the end of the day, it, it was good. And you think it's good for you. Then all okay, stay tuned, consistent every day, every month, every week. And then, yeah, you, I think you, you, you get the MVP award because you do it, why, why you have, you enjoy it. Agreed. Agreed. Well, Ferdy, really appreciate your time today. Congratulations again on earning the MVP and for folks that want to find out more about you, get in touch. What are the best ways to reach you? Where are you most active out on social? Go, go to Google and type in M365 Röstmeister. This is my personal branding in Germany and you find my blog. You find my YouTube channel in the first, yeah, in the first steps, you find my LinkedIn profile. And if you get in contact with me, the best way is to, to write me a message about Lincoln to follow me, uh, Lincoln or Twitter. Excellent. We'll thank so much for your time. Thank you.