 Everyone, this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat. And I'm talking today with Dwayne. Hello. Hey, Christian, how are you doing today? So for folks that don't know who you are, who are you, where are you, and what do you do? Dwayne Natwick, I am out of Michigan in the USA. So I am a Microsoft MVP in the Azure area. And my day job is a senior product manager for migration and data analytics practice at Cloud Reach, who is a multi-cloud partner, Microsoft partner, AWS, and Google, one partner of the year honors with all three. Oh, wow. I'm also previously worked for a Microsoft learning partner for a couple of years as the lead of the training architect team. So I'm a Microsoft certified trainer and also a regional lead for the MCT program. Very cool. And I know there's some changes that are happening with MCTs as well. Is that? Yeah, they're changing some of the requirements around, where there was a fast track capability of becoming an MCT by having somebody vouch for you that you've done training for over a year. Now they're going to make it a requirement to take some type of training class. And as well as they've had a large influx over the last couple of years of office trainers and they're not accepting any more right now. They're allowing the current ones to stay on board, the office specialists and masters and all that, but they're not bringing anybody new and they've kind of got to freeze on the whole program until the Microsoft fiscal year start. You know, that's something that just people need to be aware about too. It's, you know, maybe not so much. I mean, there's always changes that are happening with the MVP program. We were talking just before we started recording about, you know, the evolution of the naming of some of them and the streamlining of some of the names that used to be like there were Excel MVPs and PowerPoint MVPs and kind of all these different areas around office and they consolidated all those things with SharePoint and Teams and everything within that office suite and family products, Yammer, all of that within office apps and services. Well, they did the same with, you know, with Azure. So they're constantly, they'll reduce down and consolidate and I'm sure with, every time there's a major product announcement, you can rest assured that we're not too far away from an MVP change. Like in Azure, we're just talking about and the security side of things with the release of Azure or now just, did just Microsoft purview? Yes, Microsoft, yeah, Microsoft purview. They took the Azure out of it just like they did with Security Center, right? It's like they was Security Center and Sentinel at Ignite where they took the, yeah, they're, and which I think is a good idea really because those are some, those are becoming integrated across the entire Microsoft cloud scope. So it makes it, it makes it a much, you know, having Azure, I wonder if they're gonna eventually do that with active, with Azure Active Directory. I was one, I continuously try to explain when doing it, when doing a training that Azure Active Directory is really not Azure and it's really not Active Directory. It's really just branding that it's even called that. So hopefully maybe that'll be the next one that drives everybody crazy in terms of a naming change and it gets everybody scrambling. But I like the name change of purview because it is an integrated product across SharePoint and really any storage level account, whether it's in Azure or Microsoft 365 or the SaaS based products, it is all integrated governance. So that's a really cool direction that they're heading. Well, at some point you have to abstract up because my next question is gonna be like, where do you focus on Azure so that you don't go in and while there might be six or eight categories within Azure, it's not like you focus in on one thing. It'll, your experience will be, might be more in depth than one or two areas but you're gonna be across the spectrum there. I mean, that's something even as an office apps and services MVP and I spend most of my time around Teams and SharePoint and Yammer and OneDrive and kind of those as well as down in the office suite. But I also get my toes over into Azure and security and windows and different areas. So it's not like, MVPs are generally broad over a number of different areas but have a major concentration. So kind of what are your areas of focus personally? Personally, it's around security governance and compliance. So identity and access, I just published in March, the an exam guide for SC 300 but I've also got the exam guide coming out next month, I guess later in June on the SC 900, which is the fundamentals, which again goes broadly across Microsoft 365 and Azure. So I focus on, when I'm doing talks and doing sessions in the community, it is pretty broad and but usually I'm talking, if I'm talking around Azure, it's usually around like defender for cloud and Sentinel and how we're protecting our environments and security posture management and things like that to get those in. When I get into, when I'm specifically in, in the Azure area, it is, it's virtually, I mean, it's, I'm probably more in a background of networking than Windows Server and SQL databases and deep into those much more infrastructure architecture oriented from my level of experience and understanding. So you're doing the, do the training guides, is that, are you doing that for a certain platform or do you just do that independently? Yeah, I've been doing it for pack publishing. Okay. Yep. And there's a just about to get started on the cybersecurity, Microsoft cybersecurity as well, the SC 100 that's in beta right now. So I've already, so I know a couple of people that have written guides like that and that have also written books and having co-authored several books and knowing how much that process sucks. And I just think, and I always thought, it's like, wow, writing those training guides and stuff, that's going to be like worse than writing a book. I don't know if you co-authored a book or written a book yet. Yeah, that's what those guides are. Yeah. Are they full books as well? They're full books of the exam guides, exactly. So yeah. I wrote both of them over simultaneously over the course of the last year. So you just have to make it part of your life more of a habit to go in and do that? Because I mean, I'm just thinking, what kind of blackmail did they have on you to get you to write those? Yeah, it's funny because I heard the horror stories and things like that as I went in. It really wasn't, to me, a terrible experience. I really enjoyed it and that's why as the SC100 was coming out, I said, hey, I'd really like to do this book as well. Just kind of, for me, it kind of completes the SAT because the SC300 is one of the prerequisite exams to getting that cybersecurity architect expert. And I always say, start with the fundamentals around any area as well. So I'll have those three books really could be kind of your cybersecurity architect set of books to have. So I wanted to just kind of tie the little bow around it from that standpoint when that one came out. But I mean, I guess I spent a part of my career as a project manager. So I know how to project manage myself, I guess, pretty well. So it gave me, I had the discipline just really to just sit down a couple hours on a weekend and work on a chapter and continue for that standpoint. I'm up fairly early in the morning getting kids off the school. So I'd spend some time if I was running behind working on that while kids are eating breakfast, getting off to the bus and things like that. So it is a special level of discipline that you've got to have on yourself to do it though. There's something to be said. So I started my career as a technical writer and an analyst and so going in and of course outside of the Microsoft arena and early on I went to work for EDS. And so I did a lot of technical documentation as part of my role and nothing. And then I was looked to as the subject banner expert on those things that I was writing about. And I sometimes amazed myself at the minutia of data down in the weeds that I understood about the products that I wrote for because I had to go and find those answers. Somebody would ask a question, a meeting and I'd go back looking through my notes or I'd find and be like, that was an answer. Where should that answer be? And I improved my content every time I would write those things out. I'd have these massive documents go and have conversations with people and be able to draw from my own material. It's a great way to learn about something that's going right about that. It's actually a recommendation I give for people that want to know like, well, how to become an MVP? It's like, well, go right about what you're working on right about what you know and share it out there, be humble that you may not have all the answers but be willing to go and dig and uncover the answers to the questions that you're asked. Yeah, that's a perfect point. I mean, that's something I've been doing actually recently is being with a company that's not just Microsoft. I'm trying to just strengthen my AWS capabilities. So I've been working on the AWS solution architect associate exam. And as I was going through studying, I'm like, okay, I've got Azure, I've done Azure training. I've taught the architect class. What is the difference between the two? So as I'm going through a cloud guru and watching the video course, I started taking notes. I'm like, you know what? There might be other people that are going this route as well. So instead of just taking notes in one note, I started writing it as blog content and putting that up in my blog and really have like nine blogs that I created around each area of AWS to that, you know, hey, somebody else probably is going down the same route. I'm going to share it with everybody. And that's really what as MVPs, you know, that really is how we benefit the community is just getting out there what we're dealing with and what we're learning and sharing it with everybody else. Yeah, there's a, I know with the hang out with a lot of the gamer people and there was the phrasing that they had for that is the working out loud model. And that idea of, I mean, that's that collaborative social collaboration work style is that it's very flat. It's very open. You're sharing what you're doing. It's again, the olden days when I started my career so much around, you know, power that was gained. And if you wanted to secure your position in a company it was by hoarding information and being that subject matter expert and being that go-to person and where it's now completely flipped where the people that hold the most power are the ones that are the most open with their information, sharing their learning path and going saying, I don't know the answer to that let me go find that information for you. That's kind of the path. I'm sure it's an MVP now. I mean, you hear this question and we all get this question, you know, like how did you become an MVP? What was your path? Do you think what were the patterns that you shared that you showed that helped you become an MVP? I think a lot of it was my want to share as your point you were just saying and just getting involved, like starting to do some getting involved in call for speakers and just putting myself out there. That's the first thing, the first thing really that I tell anybody is it's putting yourself out there taking that step to not worrying about, and I tell this to people that are like trained that are struggling as trainers or public speakers. I've mentored quite a few people that have come to me and said, hey, how do you get over the fear? You know, I'm terrified to talk in front of people. How do you get over the fear? And you've got to get past the fact that, okay, you know, you're in front of a group of people or you're doing some video content or you're doing some blog content. You got to get past the fact that, you know, okay, you might be getting judged by certain people but there's also a certain group in that in there that you're helping and that you're giving something that benefits them. And so that was really the big step was, you know, I started my blog site, you know, I started to get involved in just submitting, you know, submitting for calls for speakers and speaking more publicly and just really, and just like I said, sharing information. I did start a, you know, started a Microsoft user group that kind of got put to put at a stand still a little bit because of the oversaturation of virtual user groups because of the pandemic, you know, I couldn't really, you know, I started it the same month, everything shut down. So, you know, it went good for eight or so months and then I was getting like one or two people showing up. So I was like, I didn't have a chance to really ramp it up, you know, because a lot of people that had their user groups already that were getting 50 to 70 people that are, you know, 25 or so people that were showing up, they were still getting those people plus they were getting virtual people. I, you know, I had the, we're retooling it right now me and the co-organizers are retooling it in more of a conversational aspect rather than death by PowerPoint type presentations and things like that. So which, which there, you know, there are hundreds of those out there right now. That's a healthy activity for every user group to go through as well. Or we're, you know, we had where we were showing up and there'd be 30 people or something in a room and now we're back to do it. We're doing hybrid. We actually were very excited. We had for the first time ever, what we have is more of a viewing party location for people showed up, which doubled the number of people showing up. But I mean, there's a bunch of people online, a couple of dozen online. But the fact that we, you know, not to say that moving from two to four is trending, statistically it is. Right. Exactly. But, especially if you're flatlining for a good six months. But something we kind of changed the model where that was the primary and online. We just didn't make a decision. Like we're going to be back purely, you know, in person where we said, we're going to do this hybrid and we're going to test things out, but we're going to do it in a slightly different way. And we're still testing out. I mean, there's it's low cost to go and try things out about that. That's part of what you need to do. You constantly look at, like we started out as a SharePoint user group and as interest in SharePoint kind of waned underneath others, it's more of an infrastructural discussion. There's still SharePoint stuff going on, but it's part of the broader teams in Microsoft 365 bigger discussions across workloads. And so we just, we changed up the makeup, the user group around that, but you constantly adjust and like anything, I'm a marketing guy. So it's called the marketing mix. You know, as the market needs change, you adjust. If you don't adjust, it'll dry up. It'll, it'll die on the buy. Yep. Yeah. Anyway, well, it's very, very cool. Well, it's great being able to catch up with you. And as we were talking about before we started recording, hopefully we'll get to see each other someday. And one of these in-person summit events that we all, summit event or Ignite or something, right? Something, I know, I know. Yeah. Well, on that note, I heard some rumors about some hybrid events later this year, but, you know, I'll tell you, I mean, I know there's some, I just, I just did Azure Live a couple of weeks ago and they were, they were hybrid. They had people in the Netherlands in person doing presentations and all that, but also had, you know, I did a virtual presentation and they had virtual, you know, virtual moderators and all that. So, they were in a really nice- I was looking for the Microsoft, like the Microsoft hosting their events hybrid, you know, back in person. That's, I think that's going to be the moment. Yes, that will be, that will be the, that will be the crescendo, right? Yeah. Well, Joanne, for people that want to find out more about you or get in touch, what are the best ways to reach you? I've got my, my blog site is captainhyperscaler.com and as well as my Twitter handle is DwayneNCloud. So my first name, last initial with cloud on it and LinkedIn, you know, I'm open, you know, to being messaged on LinkedIn and meeting people. Like I said, I've had numerous people reach out to me, you know, asking me questions about public speaking and training and things like that. I'm happy to contribute from that, you know, from any aspect that anybody has any questions. I would say that, hey, if there's an MVP, they are not shy, they are welcome, all contact. So just don't be shy, reach out. Dwayne, really appreciate the time. Get great to get to know you and hope to see you soon. Thanks, Christian, appreciate it.