 Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat and I'm talking today with Morton. Hello. Hello. Hello. So Morton from folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you and what do you do? My name is Morton and I'm calling in from Denmark and I'm in Microsoft MVP just recently. I got to become an MVP on February 1st. So it's pretty new for me. Daily I'm a cloud and security architect working with medium-sized enterprise customers mostly with headquarters in Denmark, but a lot of international customers as well. Well, I know that Microsoft split out what was the enterprise mobility and there's a few, some MVPs that state as enterprise mobility, some that moved over to security and some that were made dual MVPs. So I guess it all depends on like the focus. So what do you talk about right about speak on on a regular basis? Well, I became an MVP in security. So I'm a, you can say a nature of security guy from the very beginning. I was actually nominated on January 6th and it was announced on February 1st. It was really fast through the system and really happy about that. So, but my passion is around the Azure side and the monitoring side, the logging and I do a lot of talk and blogs around that as well. So I, for example, in April, I did 19 blocks around the whole and new Azure Log Analytics V2 with both the log ingestion API and also how to do all the things with the AMA. So that's my passion. So, but besides that, I'm also working on the whole defender stack. So, you know, the security side of the M365. Yep. So it's both Azure and the M365 that, but focusing on the security side and the, and the logging. That's my passion. You know, so I've been involved over the years. I used to do independent research and so partner with a local university and do things and primarily into the Microsoft 365 stack, you know, that world. And year after year after year for the last at least decade, you know, the number one concern, the number one focus of customers is security. Yeah, exactly. And so that's it. I look, I go back my cloud experience actually started back in 2000, 2001, where I worked with the company that we built a dedicated cloud service around collaboration technology. And then, I mean, the issues that's where SaaS was a new, new terminology in the cloud and, and all that everybody was concerned about security and of their systems and accessibility and, and management of those things. And it's amazing that that those concerns have changed in all that time. That's right. Well, how I see it is that for me, it is very important when I work with my customers is to, to actually work with them on three different tracks and actually just to give you a little insight to my background back in 2016. I sold a big company that was a managed service provider doing an operation of customers. And I got in that process to learn about how to build up a big company and build an organization, build the processes around this and of course getting the technology in place to support these customers. And I use that knowledge today. So for me, I'm a, you can say a different, you know, technical guy, because I also know my way around, around processes and also building up the organization. So for me, when I deal with and talk with businesses today, for me, I have three tracks, you know, you have a technical track where you get the all the security stuff up and running and the new platform up and running. But I also address the processes and getting the organization maturity up and running. So for me, you know, technology by itself will not enable it will just be the enabler but it will not make sure that that things run 365 days a year. So, so that's how I talk into this. And I think it's very important that you address all three things. But, but I love the technology and the all the footprint that Microsoft has has gotten over time. And they have really become really a mature partner for people when talking about the security. So, but for me, I really also like what I see, for example, with some of the documentation around the processes and how do we adopt this as an organization. So I try to address all three tracks. Yep. Well, I always I do like to ask, because you mentioned just becoming an MVP. Yeah, what was that. So, what was your pathway to becoming an MVP. I mean, what led to you being, you know, you got introduced to the program. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So my what I've done is that I have been working very much with the product teams for numerous years, working on the private preview program. So that's actually how I started to learn the team behind this, both in Israel, and a lot of the security guys are located but also in Redmond and also in India. So I've been working with them for two, three years, giving feedback and having meetings with them and discussions with them. And a lot of that I really passionate about, you know, if I find something myself or my customers tell me this can be better and just giving feedback back to them in a constructive manner. And so, and then I was actually, you know, the team behind the private preview program asked me, you should start to do some more blogging around this to get, you know, the methods out. And I did tons of that work. And the, and actually that kind of accelerated this. So, I was doing a lot of internal feedback, you know, to Microsoft, and I'm also now sharing a lot of things. I'm doing, you know, you know, speaking around the world and, and, and, and, you know, sharing externally. And that is how I like it to do a lot of feedback and help people. And as an example, I was just in India two weeks ago, and there were 950 people at the conference, and one fifth of those were students. One of them came up to me to ask, how did you do it? What was your career path to this? How, what do I need to do to become an MEP? And what should I focus on in my career and all these things? So, a lot of, you know, I really like talking to people and trying to help them because I was there, you know, 30 years ago, when I started working with this. Yeah, that's, so I too, I've been in tech for 32 years now. Yeah. And one of my favorite things, like in the late 90s, early 2000s, I started working with a couple of universities with the University of California Berkeley and with Stanford, with a number of groups, I worked with a couple professors at both, and would talk to students, kind of the same thing, like, what's the path? What are all the job opportunities? Like, you get an engineering degree, or you get a business degree or a marketing degree around that, but you have a passion for tech. What are the opportunities? What can you go and do? And so, just trying to explain some of the fundamentals of that, and I tell us to my own adult kids as well, you know, four different areas that they're focused on. But that, my biggest recommendation for people is to write, write about your journey. You don't have to be a prolific writer, but if you're, it's almost like you're documenting your journey as you're learning, you'll kind of learn out loud, share what it is that you're going through. Don't be, make the mistake of reading what other people have written, be like, ah, well, they've already covered this. I don't need to write about it because your experience is unique. And so, by writing about it, that gets you, like, interacting with people in the community, asking questions, answering questions. I think what stood out to me about, from what you described, is probably first and foremost, since you can't nominate yourself to become an MVP, you have to have another MVP or a Microsoft person nominate you. And so, it will only benefit you to work with Microsoft people, ask questions, answer questions, be a resource for them. Yeah, and that's, I think it's all about sharing and, you know, sharing your feedback and sharing the knowledge, help people and to grow and answer questions and also be realistic about things and try to motivate people as well. In case, so for me personally, when I was nominated and waiting for this, I was, it was terrible for me, you know, it's like, when you are waiting for the renewal, will I be accepted or will I not be accepted? And it was really hard because suddenly you really want to do this. And for me, it was very exciting when I got that information. And to be, recently I was being nominated by the Azure Monitor team for an Azure MVP. And I realized that I couldn't get a second one because we had to wait for this renewal. And for me, that it will be July next year. So I have to wait and hopefully I will become an MVP again. Well, you know, I always tell people, it's like, so I honestly, I don't really think about the renewal. I'm not just like, it would be fantastic. But what I say, and I'm sure you feel the exact same way. It's like, look, I would do the things that I do regardless of whether or not I am an MVP. It's just part of my DNA that I do. I think it's a little special the first year because you don't know am I doing enough or what will be, you know, the line where you do it. But I fully agree with you. If I'm not being renewed, I'll just continue doing what I'm doing because it's so much fun. And like I was saying, I tried to come around and meet the people and I also invite my family to join. So we actually make a small trip out of it. Last year, for example, we went to Israel and I had a couple of days down there having, you know, 10, 12 meetings during two days. And we also got to swim in the Dead Sea and go to Jerusalem and stuff like that. So we tried to make a family project to visit these countries. My daughter especially would like to go with me to India because we want to go to visit Mount Everest and fly out there. Oh, yeah. Go to Nepal. So we have small things we want to try. So again, meeting the people and getting to know them. And that is important for me and learning how I can help and what are their challenges and how can we do better. I think it's important. For example, I've just built a new PowerShell module that will, it has actually been downloaded, I think 21,000 times already. And it will help customers migrate to the new log ingestion API inside Log Analytics. And I've been working very closely with the PEMs in the pipeline team and the DCR team as well, see how we can do things and make it easier for people to do this transition. So I've learned so much about that. You know, and a lot of things besides the technical side that you have to learn like GitHub and how do you do a markdown, a language for read me files and how do you set up the documentation and how do you measure the number of downloads and how do you publish scripts to PowerShell Gallery and stuff like that. So I've learned so much over the last couple of months and it has been so much fun. Well, that's, I think you've kind of tapped into the secret of it. I say it's the work out loud, but it's the, you know, you want to collaborate with people, you want to connect with people and help them and share what you know. I learned faster that way. It sounds like you have the same philosophy. Like we learn more when we're engaged in and asking questions and connecting with people. Yeah, and so that's the kind of, that's the secret to certainly to becoming an MVP is it's the connections that you build and it has to be, I know that there are people that are very introverted that are MVPs and they do things and they're not as much into the social scene around that. But you still have to make connections and yeah, yeah, so well, Morton, I really appreciate your time today talking to get to know you. Hopefully we'll be able to, you know, hook up some time over here in the US if you do a family over here and you're looking for suggestions, especially the Western US, that's kind of my realm. But you're happy to help out and hopefully see you at the MVP summit next year. But for folks that want to get in touch, where are you the most active in social? Where can they find you? Yeah, so I will, I'm mostly on LinkedIn. That's where I am. And you can search for me and Morton Walton Knudsen and I can provide the link as well. And that's where I'm sharing mostly and on Twitter I'm Knudsen Morton DK. So those are the typically places that I share things. I have my own blog. It's Morton Knudsen.net and I'm sharing things on there. But I'm mostly on LinkedIn. That's where you can find me most of times. Excellent. Well, I'll have, of course, all of Morton's links that are in the bio that are in the video is on YouTube as well as on the blog. So Morton, I really appreciate your time today. Thank you, Christian. It's really great to be here. So thank you very much.