 Hey, this is Christian Buckley with another MVP Buzz Chat. I'm here talking with Jonah. Hello. Yeah. Hi, Chris. Really great to be here today. For those that don't know you, why don't you introduce yourself, what you do, and where you're located? Yeah. Sure. My name is Jonah Anderson. I work as a software engineer and IT consultant at a forefront consulting company here in Sweden. That's what I do as my day-time job, and I code. I'm a .NET developer and I love coding with Microsoft Azure. Yeah. Remind me, your MVP, is it Developer Technologies? No. It's Microsoft Azure. Azure. Okay. Yeah. Excellent. It's funny as a Microsoft partners, like I talk Azure numbers every day, not the details of the technical aspects of it, but as a partner, I mean it's a huge part of my day, co-sell activities and talking about Azure consumption with customers in our own organization, and so it's just become part of the daily grind, always talking about Azure. Yes. But I actually aim also to have Developer Technologies because I also love programming, like maybe create content for C-Sharp or .NET which is also really good and helpful for other developers. So I'm not sure. I think it's possible to have two categories. It is. There are some that even have three. I can't fathom the amount of content and activities that you have to be able to hold down three. But yeah, actually, yeah, it's interesting that there are more and more that have MVPs that have two and for those that aren't aware, I mean to become an MVP, I mean obviously there's a black box of a process, like there's no one way like, hey I've done all these things that therefore give me an MVP award. It's up to Microsoft's discretion, but typically it's a lot of blogging, a lot of speaking at online and in-person events, it's a lot of involvement with your local community, all those things, and I'll let you get into your experience. So think of that as doubling that volume, speaking a lot on multiple topics to be able to earn that dual MVP, but it's pretty impressive feat for people that are able to do that. Yes. It's not my ambition right now, maybe in the near future, but right now I'm satisfied to have the MVP award for Microsoft Azure. So as you said as well, I didn't know actually, I started sharing and public speaking and blogging about Microsoft Azure. It's just about like for the past year, that's why I got the MVP award. And to be honest, I didn't know that Microsoft MVP award existed until someone who interviewed me in the podcast, had a friend that worked in Microsoft said, that Jonah, you're already doing MVP stuff. You should be an MVP. And like someone in Microsoft just nominated me, I submitted all the contributions that I've been doing for the past years. And it takes a process, takes time. And there's an interview, there's right. Yeah, that's right. And then you have, it's not just about contribution. I know that you've been an MVP for many, many years. I've seen your MVP profile and you have a lot of great content. And I found out after I talked to, I had an interview that being an MVP is not about sharing content, it's also your passion to help the community. And that's what I love and what I'm passionate about. So it's just like the MVP award is like a token of what I've been doing. So I'm really happy. Yeah, well, it's, and I've said this again and again. It's that, and I think when you and I were talking last time, we kind of said the same thing is that, you know, we would do the same things whether or not we had the MVP. Like I really enjoy this process of going and learning about things and then sharing what I've learned about that. I love doing like this interview series. I love hearing what other people are doing, novel approaches to the same technology. So even I'm, my MVP is in Office Apps and Services. So I started as a SharePoint MVP in Office 365. And now teams, I do most of the content around teams and all of that. It's all around collaboration technology, which is such a broad topic, even when you talk Azure, such a broad topic of focus areas within Azure, what you do. And so it's, it's not surprising. I'm sure we'll see, like that'll get divided two years from now. There might be, you know, five new very specific focus areas within Azure, for example, I just randomly pick that number. I don't have any insight of you. Someone will ask me, but it's like, what five areas do you have you heard are going to be split, you know, Azure split it to like, no, I randomly picked that number. I just, as an example. Yeah, I agree with you. It's Microsoft Azure is a very broad, like technology, like as a developer working with Azure, it's also like a lot of things to learn, to choose from. That's why when it comes to certifications because they also recently cleared the Azure developer associate certifications and the fundamentals, it is important to choose what kind of role-based certifications that you want to have that will help you in your day job. So, yeah. Well, that's part of what's fun too. I mean, there's a lot of opportunity for anybody. For somebody who's saying, hey, I'd love to find out more and become an MVP. I've had a number of people that said, oh, it's my goal to become an MVP. I was like, well, that's great to have the goal. But these were people that, in fact, one person in particular I'm thinking of who said that two, three years, he was trying to become an MVP and where he actually came at the end of that process and said, you know, he was very active in leading this user group, was part of the board there, became the president of the user group, was consulting on it, was speaking at, you know, events every month, writing a lot and doing all that. And he said, you know, I've just realized that I don't care if I ever get the MVP. It's been so rewarding. The connections that I've made, it's helped my career and do kind of all those things. And like, I'm not kidding, a month later, he got his MVP. So he was surprised by, he didn't realize he was still, he had had the interview and all of that, but still there was the selection process. It doesn't mean that, hey, you've been interviewed, you've provided the last year of all the activities. There still has to be an opening that has to be, the timing of it could change. And so it was great to see that happen. But I think that's kind of the point. What he realized is that the benefits of doing, of being part of the community, that's what it's really all about. And whether you become an MVP or not, you know, it's just a piece of paper. And yeah, it's great to have the access and this other community thing that has the recognition around it. But the greater benefit comes from just participating in the community. Yeah, I agree with you. It's not just like collaborating and sharing knowledge and feeling empowered by the entire community, but it's also you yourself, like as you speak, as you share, as you blog, you learn as you share about Azure, as you share about your knowledge to others. So it's like a two-way and it's really, really great. And before I got the award, I, a few people already told me that you're already an MVP for us, Jonah. So when I was waiting for the process, like for the decision, I was like, I'm going to continue what I've been doing because I love what I do, just like your friend. So yeah. Well, so what's the, so what is the kind of the latest things that are going on in Azure? Like what are you passionate about right now? What are, what are kind of the topics that you're speaking on and writing on? Yeah, lately, especially for the past months, I've been speaking a lot about serverless, developing serverless with Azure functions, specifically with durable functions, where you as a developer focus on creating some, creating event-driven solutions and functions as a service through Microsoft Azure, using your favorite programming language. And for my case, it's C-Sharp and .NET because that's where what I do is the daily job. So I've actually, in April this year, I've spoken seven public talks online. And I think half of them are all about Azure functions. And lately, I've been also developing Azure functions or durable functions in different patterns because there are different patterns that that technology can solve. Like you can perform like stateful functions and run it parallel and you get the result. So I'm trying to work a project where I can develop it with integrations with different APIs like send grids, Twitter and like a Cosmos DB. And lately I've been posting a lot about it and some of my contacts, new contacts at LinkedIn, they're interested to get to have a content about how to protect your serverless functions with Azure Key Vault. So that, I haven't tried that. So I'm learning that so I can share. That's very cool. So what kind of customer solutions are you developing with these? Yeah, it's actually, you mean for Azure functions? Yes. Yes, it's a function as a service. So it's actually like specific to the backend part of your application. So if you want to connect, it's mostly use, it's not suitable for all type of business requirements. It actually depends on your backend service talking to APIs. And like, I don't want to get too technical on this talk. But I can share some links. Well, I noticed it's interesting we have people that aren't working with Azure and to understand some of the business requirements that drive some of this kind of development. So what are the customers actually asking for? The customer doesn't line up and just say, well, would you like you to go and develop a solution using Azure functions? But it may be expand on the types of customer solutions that you work on that you're building as you use this technology for. I think it's more useful when you want to create a backend service that connects to the APIs. But as for the business part, it's actually like depends on like, for example, if you want to create a function as a service within Azure, but you want your developer team not to think too much about infrastructure because Azure is taking care of that. And the one of the advantages of serverless in the business scenario is that you can pay as you go and it creates productivity for your development team. And you can scale out and off the scale. And the advantage of that is actually you can create long running processes in your application. So it is something that you integrate with existing applications or new applications. And it's like Azure functions empowers it. It depends on what you need. I hope I explained it in a way that you understand. I'm sorry. It's all right. Some of the other events you've been participating in, do you have anything else going on this year? Are you doing any in-person? Do you have anything on the calendar for the year? Like what's the outlook in your part of the world? Yeah, for the past year I've been doing it virtually, but I submitted some proposals for in-person talks. But I'm not sure how it will be considering the pandemic that we have right now. But I really missed traveling and meeting the community. Well, that's the hardest part about that. Even with like I have my first back face in-person event. It's a hybrid event, but it will be in August. And I think things are fairly opening up here in the US. So I think it's not a question. Like it'll happen. It'll still, it's yet to be seen. Here's an event that typically brought in 400 or 500 people in this annual event. Last year there was about 100 that were in-person. And so whether we get back up to the 400 to 500 number or not is a question. And then there's one that I'm sure will be bigger. It will be in Las Vegas in December. But those are the two main ones that I'm looking to go and do. So I'm sure you're in the same way. Very anxious to get back and see actual life human beings. Yeah, I have a question. We're talking about public speaking in person. Have you been in Europe to do some public speaking? Or do you do it from time to time? Because I would love to meet you in person and listen to your talks. So I usually, for the last 10 years, I'm probably over in Europe five or six times a year for different events. So yeah, my last time there was the European SharePoint Conference was in Prague in December of 2019. And I did one more trip before the pandemic shut everything down. So I was on the road in January. And then I did an event in February of 2020. So yeah, I hope to get back over there. Then obviously, I mean, the other thing we're waiting for is a new MVP. One of the, it is a huge perk is the MVP summit on campus over in Redmond. It's fantastic experience. And if nothing more, for those that haven't been an MVP and are interested, I mean, one great thing about it is, you know, we all kind of congregate on campus there. It'll be interesting to see if they do another hybrid or if they do, it's been online the last two times, but whether they do a hybrid event and include people that are remote as well as the in-person activities. I suspect that's going to be the direction that Microsoft goes, that they can include more people who still can't travel but have the in-person activities. But it's almost like being at university. So while you're surrounded by the people that are part of your area, your focus area, so for me, you know, SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, Yammer, kind of all the products that are the collaboration related things. But you have the opportunity, like I did, the last time we were in person, to go sit in an Azure session, to go and sample these other sessions, meet other MVPs in other areas, and interact with the Microsoft product teams. It's just, it's fantastic. So highly recommend that. Yeah, I would love that. Hopefully my first summit will be in person because I'd like to meet many great people that I follow already, like even before I became an MVP. I like learning from experts. And it would be nice to meet all of them and you, meeting you as well. And I have a question for you. It's like I've been interviewing you as well. Yes. You've been an MVP for many, many years, like so you've been to summits many times, you gain a lot of close MVP friends for the past years being an MVP? Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, it's a great networking vehicle. Again, it's depending on your area of focus. And even, I mean, you'll probably get to know the other Azure MVPs, but you'll start to meet people. And this is one of those things where I highly encourage, you do anything like that, is when you go in and you sit down in the room to kind of take the first few minutes and like introduce yourself to the people sitting around you. And so I've been, this will be my, with this rule cycle, it'll be 10 years that have been an MVP. And of course I had plenty of friends that were MVPs prior to that. And I was at Microsoft prior to that and knew some MVPs while I was a Microsoft employee as well. So I see the familiar faces, but, and there's also the thing where, and I'm sure you'll experience this plenty too, is that where I know people's faces from their Twitter profile picture, or their, you know, I know them from online activities, but then I remember it was like, I've never actually met you in, you know, in the physical form. So it's great to have those, those interactions. But yeah, you can't walk away from an event like that without just a handful of new business cards and contacts. And I mean, I, there are people that I'm, I've remained friends with that I met like that first year. So yeah, it's, it's a great, it's a great experience. It is a great experience in rewarding to meet great people. And that's one of the most rewarding things of being an MVP. You get the connections that you meet, the stories that you hear from different people and you learn from. Exactly. Well, well, typically people who become MVPs, we are super connectors. We are people that love to network. And if I don't know the answer to the question, like I know several people that probably know the answer. And I'm happy to put somebody in touch with those people. Having said that, there are those people that will attempt to abuse that, that process. But yeah, so, so people who have a legitimate, hey, I'm looking for help in a certain area, or I have these questions, it's like, please reach out. If you, there's someone that has a Microsoft MVP as part of their title, like don't be shy, reach out and connect with us. And again, I'm happy to point people towards the people within my network who might be able to solve that problem, answer that question. But it's like at the end of a presentation. You know how this is. We just say if there are any questions, and then it's silence in the room. And we like to joke and say, it's because my presentation was so succinct, and I've answered all questions. Like no, it's, you know, don't feel bad about that. Some people are shy, but feel free to, here's how you email me, find me on social media, but reach out afterwards. And always happy to make new connections that way. Yes, I agree. That's really great that we can connect with others. And I would like, related to that, I would like to share that when I was a girl or a young kid, I was actually very shy. We're talking of shyness. So I used to hide behind my mom when it comes to public speaking and schools and presentation. But for some strange reasons, when I started working and became adult, I learned to like, I learned to get out from my closet and share what I have to say. And I don't have experience with public speaking like professionally, like went to school for that. But I usually speak from the heart and what I know. So that's why that's when you feel confident when you speak from your heart. Because sometimes when you read by like, if you memorize too much, that's when you forget. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, you have some of my favorite presenters, fellow MVPs who talk about still, like they're just so dynamic and they're fantastic on stage and talk about every time the nervous butterflies that they, it makes them feel sick to get up in front of people and in front of the crowd. And I don't feel that way. So I'm a strange breed. But for me, so many years ago, over 20 years ago, 20 years ago, I was in a band. I was a singer for a band. So I think being on stage and we played every weekend for a couple of years. I mean, we were sometimes twice, you know, Friday and Saturday nights. And I think being up in front and singing, you know, songs that you wrote and lyrics that you wrote, that just kind of burned off the stage fright for me. And so getting up and talking about technology, again, about things that you're passionate about, things you're excited to go and share. And I tell stories when I, when I present. And so I'm not nervous when I'm sharing, when I am passionate about what I'm, you know, had personal experience about. Yeah, I agree. Because that's how you connect with your audience, with the people that are listening to you through by being genuine and sharing a story that they can learn from also. Like it can be, like it doesn't have to be a perfect talk about a specific topic. It's just like as long as you share your knowledge, maybe a mistake's learned from a bad experience. Or for example, I had a tech talk where in, I think in December, one of the talks that I had was, I shared my lessons learned from a migration that I did from an old dotnet migration to Azure. So I had that experience and I shared my lessons learned and what, what I should have done in that situation that I shared to others. So it was like a talk that was popular and it was good to talk it because it's like from the real experience. Yep. You know, it's funny. I just made me think too that I, so I gave a presentation a couple years back. I was down in Melbourne, Australia. And just as I was getting started, I had like went through like my title slide, slide that had my contact information and picture on it. And then like the table, like the contents of what I was going to cover in the session. And then the screen went blank. My laptop went blank. What happened was the video card in my laptop failed. So we couldn't, we couldn't get it back. So it was like, this is like done, like dead in the water, the beginning of my session. And so we spent about five to seven minutes fidgeting, trying to figure out what's going on. And finally I just said, you know, hey, this is a, it's a 60 minutes session. We're 10 minutes into it already. I said, so I just, well, technical team was poking at it. I just started going through. I knew the material enough. And so I gave, I gave that entire presentation for an hour on memory, but like this, I knew the stories that I wanted to tell about it and the experiences and the major points around that. And I had, and I'm sure there were a bunch of people that were angry at me, you know, that they, we didn't get this. I'm like, you'll get the slides. I'll make them available once I'm able to retrieve this. But I had a bunch of people come up afterwards. It's like, that was fantastic. Like I got so much out of that. And that again, it speaks to, we sometimes, you know, you can close your eyes to whatever's showing on the screen and get the points from the, from the speaker, from the presentation. And I mean, if you can, not that I ever want to do that again. But you did conquer the challenge. You deserve the standing evasion and that. For people to get the value out of that, of what I intended to do even with the visuals up in place. I mean, that was very rewarding for me. So that wasn't anything. I don't look at that as the, hey, my skills as a speaker. Like I limped through that, but it does speak to your passion comes through knowing your material and the points that you want to communicate. And then I answered a lot of questions as I was talking and people were asking questions. It was more of a conversation, which I think personally, the best presentations are more of a conversation than they are. Hey, let me just dictate this information. Yeah, I agree. I agree with you. And I never want to do that again. Yes, but, but if ever it happens again, you know, we can control technical problems. Then if ever it happens again, you have the experience to conquer it again. Yeah, well, hopefully it's not. So that's always the danger. If you have a presentation that is heavily demo centric, like what do you do then? I understand. I, one of my recent talks, I usually do presentation first and then do demos and show my code project. And when I was presenting, my code didn't work when I did live demo. And it was like inside of me it felt kind of embarrassing that I had to say sorry to the audience and then the organizer or the host said, you don't have to say sorry for technical problems. Yeah, so that's one of the things I learned. People have become more understanding too, but think because think about it, like everybody is doing the web meetings. And so everybody with the volume that we're doing, everybody has been through the technical issues now. So I think there's a lot more empathy out there for that. And so that's again, if you're making it more of a conversation, it's more of here's what we did. I mean, I actually, I love when that happens, not. I know it's painful for the person presenting, but when that kind of stuff happens, we're like, hey, they're human after all. Yes, I agree. I agree. We work them up in our minds to be these superheroes that they know they can answer any question. But I also, that's why I also appreciate when people say, it's like, you know, that's a great question. I have no idea what the answer is, but let me, let me go figure this out. Let's take that offline or let's go see who we can ask to get the answer to that. So don't attempt to answer, just guess something, but to honest about, yeah, not knowing something. That's okay. That is really, really great advice. Yeah. Well, there's so much that I don't know. I'm, I'm, I can honestly say there's so many things I don't know. I think we all, we, every day is a learning opportunity for all of us. Like we think we know everything, but there's a lot of new things to learn from, from the technologies that we have and from others, the new people that we meet. Yep. Exactly. Well, Jonah, really appreciate your time talking today. It's great to connect with you and get to know you. And for people that want to find out more about you, what are the best ways for them to reach you to find you? Yeah, to connect with me, they can find me on LinkedIn. My name is Jonah Anderson there, and I'm also on Twitter, CJ Kodare. And I also have a website, JonahAnderson.Tech, so you'll find everything there. And yeah, thank you so much, Christian, for having me here. And really great talking with you. You too. And of course, the links and everything will be over on my blog at BuckThePlanet.com, as well as in the description here for the YouTube video and out on the podcast. So thanks so much for participating. I hope to see you at an event soon. Yeah, same here. Yeah, thank you so much.