 Hey everyone, this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat. I'm talking to you with Smesh. Hello. Hi, Christian. Hi everyone. It's great to have you on and I love talking with brand new MVPs and so I love to hear about your journey. So for folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you and what do you do? All right, so thank you for having me and this was with this interview. So those who know me and those who don't know me, I am Smesh Pathak. I'm an MVP in Enterprise Mobility. I'm living in Stockholm, Sweden from basically from India. So at four years in the Sweden I've brought from home and I'm working for Tata Concertancy Services that is TCS, one of the largest IT consulting company and providing support for customers in across different domains. So I'm someone who is passionate about workplace services. So I'm at it today like I'm supporting customer work with services solutions. Intune is something which I'm fanatic about it. So people know me that yes, if it's something iOS or Android guy then yes, it's Smesh and that's the passion and that lead to me this MVP. So married and with the four year naughty son living in Sweden. Yeah, that's what that's that had to be an adjustment just moving up and having those long nights and long winters. It was not an adjustment. It was crazy because when we actually came in summer from India to Sweden and it was in May 2019. So from 44 degrees Celsius to 10 degrees Celsius and then the first night, oh my God, why is not getting dark here? So for a few days, it was like crazy that it gonna be dark, it gonna be dark. And for like for my son who was like not even a year old, he like he took a long time to adjust that I'm not gonna sleep until it's dark. So it has been a journey, difficult journey. You have to block out that. Yeah, for those that don't have small kids. I mean, yeah, you have to the having it get dark early is sometimes a real benefit to young parents. The kids don't know and basically you have to block out all the light. Well, it was very cool and enterprise mobility is really just a very broad category. I know that I have friends that were in kind of back in the 90s, you know, desktop support kind of stuff and just which could encompass so many different topics. So what areas do you specialize in? You mentioned Intune as well, but what's your area of focus? Precisely that enterprise mobility being a broad term in which we have like in tune, we have AVDs and everything. So my specialization is again like Intune is on mobile devices, which I've which led me to go deep dive and those which I sense and getting more involved into those troubleshooting sales and this whatever this new comes in this mobile management world is something which I have a passion for as I'm curious for. So this is my focus area for into enterprise mobility. Well, it's interesting. And what was your path to becoming an MVP? Like, did you have other people that it's really advocated for you or you've been involved in the community for a long time or kind of how did how did you hear about and what was your journey? I would say like we since when I started working around 14 years back was I know that you are MVP you have any SharePoint so you have a SharePoint MVP and I started my journey at the SharePoint and like at that time it was MOS 2007 and there was 2010. So when whenever we had troubleshooting calls and going Googling and those things we turned out to MVP. So if those blogs are something from MVP, these were at miles that these are the persons who are top notch in technology. And when moving from a SharePoint to 365 when I came there the transforming myself to this enterprise mobility. Then five years back I started learning and then Adam and Adam and Steve's show that's everyone know for Intune for the YouTube channel that we watch. I started contributing so first for the learning phase then I started contributing to the community. I am highly active on LinkedIn and like Discord and Facebook and technical community. So the time was that I should now give back to community what I have taken from them. So following certain MVP's Rudy Oms I always admire him and like Andrew and the MVP is an enterprise mobility. So that motivated me that yes we if we if I have contributed more to the community then it's actual work that we are doing. And then one of a Microsoft employee nominated me and then that that day I came to know yes I have been nominated and then that email that congratulations on being an MVP. Yeah. Yeah that's so following the footsteps of the MVP's like you and other like that's inspired me to be there. Yeah it's it's a I don't get a lot of questions I'm sure now that you're you become an MVP you'll start have people come up and say well how do I get underway what's the process around that. So what what is your guidance what are what are the some of the things that that people that want to become an MVP like they should start doing. Absolutely so this was the first question that people came to me like wow you are an MVP or how should we also become. So I would say that first thing is community the more you are involved to the community see MVP is everyone knows it's an award it's an it's a contribution from Microsoft that we do for the community. If I've seen people like who are much more technical and strong who are like sword in those things but if the moment you start contributing the community is the moment you see that yes you have the passion and people will notice you. So I would say there's only one thing that that being an active contributor in the community teaching out to people helping them is what is the ultimate journey towards being recognized. Yeah it's it's a and how people get involved there's so many different ways. Some people are like you know I don't have time to to do to the level of other people it's fine you know there's a lot that you can do and benefits from participating in the community whether or not you ever achieve the MVP award yeah it's fine there are benefits. In fact I've had people that have sought after the MVP award who have said you know hey you know I that was a goal of mine for a long time I've not been able to achieve that but I've I've just made so many connections it's helped me like personally as well as my company and my role and so they see the benefits of participating regardless of the award status but it's there are definitely some things that you can do to increase your chances raise your visibility to earn the award. Right yeah so we have to decide a visibility and it's something that comes to the notice then yeah. Yeah so what kind of what how are you involved in the community what kind of activities are you involved in? My primary involvement is like a question and answer helping people for example we have a very good channel coming platform is on discord where like Eunice and Andrew and other guys they are managing it and we have channels for there for example different platform queries read conditional access air protection policies enrollments those things then I'm also actively involved in a LinkedIn group which is for MS endpoint manager 26,000 plus users in which Andrew Garcia is managing it so like there's the same thing like involved getting involved being on top of it people ask questions to respond to them and it could be that my question is answer is not correct it's not up to their solution expectations but yes helping out so I'm Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and discord these are the basic platforms where I'm active plus I'm also writing my own blog where I share my because basically what I'm sharing is the day-to-day challenges that we face that are unique that we have not faced anywhere else that I try to share on the social media. Yeah it is do you need to have a blog anymore I mean so much is that it's out on video I mean what's your feeling of blog versus video? I prefer blog because I'm not that compatible with the like yep see people nowadays I prefer videos because it's give them the look and feel what they want like they see and then they implement it but yes I prefer blog because writing down on my thoughts taking a sometime to write down okay I face this issue and this could be something issue so yeah blog is also people also look forward and I prefer blog but yes look forward for having my own YouTube channel also one day. Yeah there's something to be said as like I don't have you know I envy the people that have those that really lovely environments or they go through or even using the Microsoft the demo sites to go through but to meticulously go through and and and demo on the features where I'm like I understand that some of my best red blog posts are when I do a technical walkthrough of a problem so some of the years I say here's the issue I see questions are out there let me walk you through and do screenshots and actually highlight hey here's where you need to look here's the each of the features and so even now I've written articles blog posts that were published three four years ago that are still in my top three on my site with the new content which is kind of frustrating when you're writing a lot of new content that that old content still achieves but hey people find your your site do the content that they that they want but well interesting well so any other suggestions for somebody who is interested in becoming an MVP any other best practice your takeaways from your experience yes one more thing like be curious be passionate about technology that you I think that's what so Microsoft simply say that three things be known be can be known what you are doing and like be curious passionate about the technology so speaking on platforms or contributing to platform is one thing but if you are not curious here we're not having your own solutions to the problems that you are people are struggling with then you are not that one who's differentiated right looking into solutions trying on their own getting into like technical deep dives things will help you to when we have and I'm contributing when you're contributing to platforms then people look up to you that you know the technical answers for it right so be curious be passionate about technology that's what I feel that helped me there because when I am talking about reading what in tune I go endless blogs endless topic Microsoft documentations and those things so have that deep knowledge yeah well I get anything it's obviously people need to be thoughtful about hey what is my role what what you know what am I there's what I'm passionate about I do a ton of stuff in the community that's on my time it's evenings it's weekends because it has nothing to do with my day job yeah when you can find that that blended view where it fits in what you're doing with your day job like that's a great thing to have especially if you're with an organization that supports a lot of the activities but yeah I think that's another important thing is that people need to realize that we're not awarded our mbps for what we do with our day jobs it's the things that we do above and beyond all of that yes and that's a difficult job I would say like having a family and then eight to nine hours of work like sticking stealing out some few hours from the midnight from the night sleep from the family and then writing own blogs sometime we get split from the family also but this is what what they as you precisely said they're taking out the time and then doing your own stuff yeah now I think that's that's an important point that people need to understand too well so much really appreciate your time people want to find out more about you get in touch what are the best ways to reach you I'm always available on linkedin discord twitter these three platforms I'm 24 seven every level and to reach me through my blog also and that's the way I'm nowadays more active so you can find out for me easily and reach out there well I'll have all the links out on the youtube and out on the blog post as well so so much really appreciate your time and great to meet you hopefully I'll be over sort of in your neck of the woods later this year but hopefully you get to meet in person one of these days yeah for sure yep thank you very much