 Hey everybody, it's Christian Buckley doing another MVP Buzz Chat and I'm talking to you with Nicholas. Hello. Hello. Thanks for inviting me. It's great to have you. It's always exciting to talk to brand new like a week ago, week and a half ago, brand new MVPs. So Nicholas, for folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you, and what do you do? So who am I? So I'm Nicholas Chang. I'm currently a senior platform engineer from IT consultant company based in Belfast in England. And we provide services to different like public sector, private sector. And I'm recently awarded my Microsoft Azure MVP. Azure MVP. Yeah. There's a lot. I think the last, I think the last three people I've interviewed are all Azure MVPs. So we'll dig into that. It's always interesting to find out like what you focus on. But let me ask you first, because what was your path to becoming an MVP? Like how did you hear about the program? When did you kind of start down that path? I don't really have that much path. I just pretty much help the community. This just pretty much like, so I always very shy, presenting, speaking and those things. And one of my friends in the community pushed me to like do more community events. And I started speaking and started blogging, started like interviewing like in podcasts like yourself. And then recently I've started going to conferences. So that's been two conferences. I've been on two of the big one, like one Scottish Summit and one of the expert live Europe last year. So I don't, I don't use MVP as my target. I just help try to help more people. So whether it's just get them more learning about Azure itself and try to like the easiest ways to speak, use a group. So that's what I do. And then I, whatever I learned from work, I try to share it with other people. Yep. Well, no, I think that's the spot on. It's like, you know, it's the goal is not to become an MVP. I mean, it might be in the back of your mind. You know, some people are, you know, they like going down that path. I really wanted to focus on that. But it all needs to be based in, you know, things that you're doing for the community. And regardless of the award, I mean, there's, there's, you know, personally, I get benefits from helping people. I get that like runner's buzz of when I can answer a question or provide some help or guidance or point them to somebody else who knows the answer to a difficult question. It's, I love helping people that way. Yeah. Cause I don't, it wasn't urgent in my target. My target is just to be better myself, like soft skills, like presentation skills, communication skills and people skills and stuff. And then ending up really enjoying it. And then that's, that's why it, that's how it started. So just trying to be more comfortable at presenting since at university I was quite shy presenting at large crowds. So I tried to come up with a comfort zone. Yeah. That's cause I think that's a, it's always when you think of like the people's biggest fears in life, public speaking is always in the top three. Yeah. Yeah. Sharks. I'm more afraid of becoming electrocuted somehow. You know, that I'm more fearful of that. So how did you, like, how did you approach that, the first couple of times of public speaking? How did, how did you get the nerve to do that? I've, so I have like a role model. So some people in my community, that's very good. It's like, for example, Thomas Mario, April Edwards, some people are very good. So they act like I look at them as a role model. And then I tried to, whenever I've got a session coming up, like speaking session and normally prepare it well in advance and then need to read to myself and make some notes and stuff and just do some dry run. And then I just, just, just don't, whenever I'm on a day and standing up and presenting with people, large people, I don't think of them as a large crowd. I think of them like, you can teach them something. And then that's it. Because if you teach them, see them like a large crowd, it will scare you away. So I just show them that I can teach them something. So without being scared away by the large crowd. I like that idea. Cause my method is just to think of it as an interaction. And obviously sometimes you don't get that. You don't get questions. Sometimes if you're in a large enough space, might be dark. You may only see faces for the first few rows. But I always try to think of it as an interactive, like more of a conversation. Yeah. Cause sometimes if there's a question that you don't understand, just don't be afraid to say no, because no one's really expert in the cloud. So you can say you want to get, you can get back to them and you help them like contact me and social media. I'll try to help you. And so. Have you ever had a heckler in the crowd? Sorry. Let me give you a hard time. You know, so somebody, somebody who disagreed and, and argue with you. But then there's another word, another person in the crowd that helped to defend me saying that. Yeah. And I did the pronunciation before that's not it works and stuff. Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's something that I, I actually saw that happen to a few other speakers. And I just was, I've been waiting for that, that experience. And I've had people that have been very vocal, but I wouldn't call them hecklers. They weren't. You know, being, being negative, trying to catch me in something or, you know, but there's definitely people that try to talk about, like share their knowledge, like, oh, I know more than you. I'm kind of speak up, but again, it's just how you handle it. Yeah. That can be stressful, but it's not everyone's like that. So some people want to see us to see it. So end of the day. Right. You can buy your best. That's what I say. That's what I don't mean to scare people that are thinking about the second. It, it, it really, it rarely happens. Yeah. It's like that. So people are usually pretty helpful and empathetic. Sometimes when people do that, like, if someone typically do they want to test how much you know about some, like a subject and stuff, they keep pushing you. So it's kind of good in terms of troubleshooting because they help you thinking. So, so in terms of asking questions, just if you don't know something, just don't be afraid to say no, or in the worst case, no, a colleague could just, or someone in the crowd could actually help you. So wish you did. Yeah. Well, there was, so I've shared a few times, but so years, years ago before I was doing much public speaking, it was about just over 20 years ago, came across one, a gentleman who was speaking to technical communities and he actually had his entire talk documented down the slides and he had somebody a friend of his sit in the audience and go through his slides in a, he had it in a, like a binder and was taking notes when the audience would react, when they wouldn't react, when questions that were asked. So he got real time feedback, you know, from the audience and how they responded, but also little cues, things that this friend of the audience captured, like you did this, you couldn't really hear you, you didn't follow up with this point at this stage, or the people ask these questions, maybe you need to build up the content around that and make sure that question within the content. I just thought that was a fantastic idea. So that's again, for somebody that's, as you're starting out, that's a good way to get feedback. Of course, you've got, you got the tools, like PowerPoint has the presentation coach, presentation coach as well. Because you don't really, I don't, you can normally make notes, do your job, run your presentation coach, but at the end of the day, you just need to come out and come out, and try to do it because at the end of the day, people want you to succeed and stuff. Right, definitely. Well, what are your topics today? Lately, what are you passionate about? What are you talking and speaking about? My topics, really, some, it varies really. Sometimes it should be Terraform, sometimes it could be like OpenAI, because that's buzz around here. Hot topics, right. And then it could be like GitHub, and then it could be something like Azure DevOps, so mostly the DevOps side. Yeah. Yeah. Because normally how I do it is that when I submit a session, I normally put it as beginners, and then more I do those sessions that, like if I do another Terraform one, I can put it into media because I know it did it before. So I put it as introduction because you get a feel that you know what level you are, the various. Yeah. So what's your primary contribution type? Are you more of a writer? Are you creating videos? Like what kind of content? So I do various. So I do, like speaking at user group, and then otherwise it would be like normal podcasts with other people, like me and you and stuff. Otherwise it would be like going and writing some troubleshooting stuff from my blog. So writing my blog. Yeah. And when I have a chance, I just go to conferences. So that much. I'm trying to get used to question and answer in Microsoft tech forums. I'm trying to get used to it. Yeah. You know what? I find with that it's funny is that, because I always encourage people. I said if you're definitely afraid of speaking, if you're not really good at writing, you don't have a lot of time for that. I know some MVPs that they started out by taking like 15, 20 minutes every morning, going into like tech community and answering questions. Yeah. And when I've gone in there, I've attempted to do that. What I was finding was that a lot of them, most of them required follow up questions. It was like too slow of a process. I go in there and find things that I could answer like right off. How do you do that? That's a one question. How should we help? Should we shoot something? But they might need bird or should we shoot in? Yeah. Well, that's that's the thing. I know a lot of times, I mean, I've done the same thing. Ask a question because I'm just wary of going and sitting on the phone with support, waiting to talk to somebody and going through that process. But but yeah, it's still that that's something that I recommend. I actually started doing with a group of friends early in the pandemic where we started doing answering questions that were out in these various forums that were unanswered. And we started doing an AMA style and answering them with a group of us. Yeah. So AMA is quite good. So anything, you know. So it's kind of like, for example, if you go to Microsoft docs, you just look, those could be like raising pull requests as well. So that kind of contribution. Well, that's it. Yeah. In fact, for folks that might not know that a lot of that, you know, documentation on Microsoft is community created content. Yeah. So I always try to look for the authors of the content. If I'm looking in the SharePoint and Teams world, I usually know the people that are involved. So it's always, you know, it's just one of those kind of, you know, silent contributions. It's not like you go and tweet out to the world. Hey, I just added to document version 4.2.1 of this, you know, like, no, nobody does that. And so it's, it's cool to see people that, you know, out in the community contributing that way. Yeah. Because you can see the author name. So it's most of them is community members and it's like contributor. Yep. So what else do you have going on this spring? Do you have a bunch of events lined up? So I, I have one by commute in a community is called, I think they do it quarterly. It's called, I just bring clean. So every few months, people organize that. And then we just do topic on some, you know, it could be like cost management, security, anything. And then I've got one in that's in March. So yeah. And then I submitted some one photo helps to help one of the Microsoft learner, you know, learn a room, Microsoft learner room. Zero to hero. I'm trying to help a friend with that. So it's, it's pretty much like a learner room where people can go there to learn like from certificates and then every so often people bring speakers to teach them. Yeah. And I'm, I'm hopeful to some, submit a section soon on expert live Europe, which is going to be on this September, this year, September. And I think I come over the place now. Yeah. So it should be good. Yeah. It's, I just saw a couple of calls of speakers that coming out. I know that I always recommend to people too, is like start with your local user group. Like we, we have our local user group meeting, I think next week. It's kind of a no, it's, it's on my calendar. So I know it's there. These are the next week or weekend for anyway. Cause I, I organize a, I just founded my own user group as well. So just, Yeah. What's that about online? So it's pretty much is only Azure itself. And it just, it's, it's pretty much. Oh yeah. Only solely on Azure. We just do it online at moment. So it's on my, I think nine episodes so far now on Monday. Is that the Azure community enthusiasts? Yes. Yeah. All right. Well, see, I, see I, I just went and I'll put it in the blog and everything, but I'm looking at your MVP profile. So I was like, if it's not a link, you're talking about it. Hopefully it's in the links. Yeah. Yeah. And then I gave myself a kind of challenge to similar to yours by starting a new podcast called Azure community insights. So just speak to community members and bring day, like bring what they know about, like express that topic. So someone in the security. So give more insights and share with other people. So, and then hopefully I can put that like Spotify and Apple music. I, you know, I, so I tell people it's one of the, I just, I call it like a cheat sheet item for give back to the community is like, like this, like I'm not, I mean, I'm doing the production of it, but I'm highlighting other people. I'm highlighting their week, their work. It's, I love doing that. And so it's a, it's a fun way to contribute, give back to the community. So there's always the ability, whatever area people are focused on, to, to just become like a, you know, a, a, you know, a center of, you know, thought leadership around that, that topic. It doesn't mean you're writing it. You're creating all of that, but bringing it and highlighting the work of others. Again. Yeah. That's why normally one of my friend went to the MCT conference in Netherlands. And she said, MCT, it's a way to start MVP because you're like a, you're like a trainer. Yeah. You tell people about certain like product or stuff. And then it's cement and it's kind of one of your contribution to MVP as well. So same. Well, yeah, I mean, cause you're, you're creating content. You're, you're educating people. Yeah. Yeah. That's why I think you see a lot of MVPs that also are MCTs that, cause it just makes sense. They're the same kind of experience. Not, I'm not an MCT. I'm actually it's, it's one of the things on my list. I'm thinking about trying to get one this, this year. And there's a couple of different areas, which I find that I'm talking about writing about constantly. Like why don't I just go and finalize it. Yeah. And then you can do the certification and then you can do like a Lincoln course, Lincoln learning course, like whether it's foundation, not just fundamental AR fundamental, it's still a start because it's, it's still a course and foundation knowledge. Yeah. Well, that's again, for folks that are interested to become an MCT and a lot of the, you know, the foundational, the required, you know, course where it's available out there through, uh, LinkedIn learning and elsewhere. Um, and you can even take, you know, the, the sample tests. And then you have to get a paid for a fee for the, to sit for the actual certification exam. Um, but I believe everything else is free. Of course. There are classes you could do it faster. Uh, you could do the self-paced or you could go do a course and get that professional guidance. Um, which yeah, there's definitely better. If you do it and then you start doing it as a job, like whether your job will be teaching people, like whether it's making content. Yep. Well, there's another, uh, again, it's, I think it's great you bring it up because there are options for people out there saying, Hey, well, yeah, I'd be interested in becoming an MVP. There's, and I, I have people, I run a, I run a, I run a, I run a, I run a, I run a, I run a, I run a, I run a, I run a, I run a, I run a, I run a, uh, with a friend of mine, we run a mentoring group for people that are interested in becoming MVPs and we've had, we've been doing it for just over a year that Sharon Weaver and I have been running it for just over a year. And four of our people in our cohort have become MVP since we started. Um, and, and there's certainly things that you can do, um, to help make your contributions more visible, um, um, to Microsoft, to the community, to the world. Uh, and, but it starts with giving back to the community, getting, I always recommend like start today, go get involved with the years of group, show up every month, volunteer for things. And then like, as you did just share like, Hey, I'd be happy to speak and even if it's for like five, 10 minutes at the beginning of, beginning of a monthly session, like 15 minutes. And then you can bring someone like people can bring myself or in front of MVP to encourage you to, right. As well. Like a, like a solo, no, like a group speaker, like co-speaker. We started doing it where we ask anybody in the room, like, Hey, do you want to share, like if you're working on something really cool at work and you want to share what you're building or if you've got questions about that. And so sometimes people will like, Hey, I'm working on this and here was my approach and here's what I've done so far. And, and they actually get some consulting from people like, Hey, I've done, you should look at this or, you know, they get some help there, but it's also, you know, a, an experience of, you know, that first time of presenting to that user group. It's a great way to get started. Yeah. Because worst case now is someone can get started even at work doing presentation to other people, like a colleague and stuff like, like for example, my workplace, we do like a show and tell. So anything I learned, my team learned, we should share with other people. Yep. And that will help build your confidence to speak at a user group because you've done that session before. We've shared other members of your team. Yeah. That is great that you have your work culture that they are built around to support that. That's something that I've been in organizations that have done that. And it's always, it's benefited everybody, you know, to, to do that kind of sharing. And it's also better to, you know, highlight, you know, one, you want to see as a, you know, as a people manager, you want to see that people are constantly learning new, new skills. They're growing. And in the day presentation skills are soft skills. It's no matter where you go in your career, you still need soft skills. Like if you go to management skill level, you still need that people skill communication skill. I just use that as to increase it. Build your confidence. No, you will, I, you will definitely get more opportunities if you develop those skills for sure. Yeah. So well, Nicholas, really appreciate your time. Are you coming to the MVP summit? Yeah, I'll be in there March. So I'm coming. Excellent. I will be there as well. So we'll see what, whether we can find each other in the crowd, but yeah, if we see each other, we'll definitely have to say hello, take a picture. Yeah. I'll probably be there with people like Greg, and then one of my, one of my MVP is like, I think he got like 15 years MVP. I'm not sure if you know him. He's Kevin Green. He's like a system center. Like it's a different area. So that's the thing is whether we'll even see each other depending on how they organize it. They, there's different buildings. We may never cross paths during the week, but, but yeah. Please do. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, depending on how they do the layout, if we're all over on the main campus, because they've got the new building and everything over there, maybe we will see each other over there. So. Yeah. So I will, of course, I'm going to grab all your social links. They're the most active in the social platforms. Where can people find you? People can find me through LinkedIn and Twitter. Yeah. Those are my mostly. Okay. Yeah. Well, we'll get everything else. We'll make sure we get your user group on there and your GitHub profile, everything else. If you want to find that, of course, it'll be out on the buck the planet blog, out on YouTube as well as you'll be able to find links out on the podcast. So Nicholas really appreciate your time. Thanks for having me. Yeah.