 Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat and I'm talking today with Gregor. Hello. Hi Christian, how are you doing? So for folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you and what do you do? Yes, so my name is Gregor Sutty. I, you might be able to guess from my accent. I am from Scotland, so I live near Glasgow in Scotland. I am an Azure architect. I'm obviously an MVP, an IMCT and I'm an Azure architect for a company called Intercept in the Netherlands. I'd like to say that, so first off, so more than 50% of my line is, comes from the Glasgow, Scotland area. So it was actually supposed to be there and doing some research with my in-law and some of my family members were going to go do some family research in the area and things kind of changed and wasn't able to make it out there, but I love the area, been many times, but. Cool, the next thing you know, give me a shirt. Yeah, we'll do. Yeah, so it's funny, it's like my maternal grandfather Richardson, it was like we can trace back, I think 17 generations. Oh wow, that's impressive. Yeah, so pretty impressive. Then just stop. So that's my task is to go and find beyond that. So for folks that are unfamiliar and not that I know everything about in the Azure space, but what areas of Azure is your specialty? Because that's such a broad area and I'm sure Microsoft will get creative and break it apart and recreate other MVP sub areas within Azure. So what do you focus on? So my background is mainly development. That's not really my focus area, but my background is .NET, well actually VBSyc development, then .NET development, then I became a dev manager and then I got into Azure. So I'm coming to Azure from a development background. It's a little bit different to most architects. So I'm not very good at networking. I'm more web apps, app services, function apps, all that kind of good stuff. I've also got a data background as well, so SQL Server back in the day. I've got data, AI, everything apart from really AKS, which I haven't really got into networking. These are the two areas that I don't do. So anything else that comes up at work, they can sometimes give me a shout and I'll jump on a call and help. But that networking is not my strong point. So my main background is development. It's interesting. A lot of the people that I know that are kind of in that space kind of came up through the networking desktop support, like that side of things. I worked in, so my prior life before Microsoft Ecosystem, so back when I would work with IBM and other technology, it was in software configuration management. It was actually those tools I worked with, Rational Software, if you remember that. Yeah, yeah. In fact, we were the largest, my company, we sold the Rational back in 2001. We had the largest collection of free rows and clear case add-ons. Those take me back. I remember using them. Yeah. No, it's kind of funny too. Sorry, people go in sideways here that a lot of those people after IBM bought Rational, a bunch of those people in the SCCM space joined Microsoft. They didn't stay for very long, but there were a bunch of big names, famous authors in that space that all joined to kind of help build kind of like the beginnings of Microsoft's DevOps journey, which honestly, I don't know where it kind of is or, you know, I don't keep up on that space at all. I keep up on that space. That's my space as well, DevOps as well. Yeah, very cool. So the team that built Azure DevOps kind of moved over to GitHub, and they're all building GitHub actions at the moment. Which has taken off, which is great, and it's pretty broadly supported. Yeah, yeah. But I don't pay much attention to what's happening outside of the Microsoft ecosystem. No, I mean, to be honest with you, yeah, I've been a Microsoft fan by all my days, so I couldn't really tell you much about anything else. Yeah. No clue. Yeah. Well, so what's kind of your passion topics right now? What do you do out in the community? What do you write about, speak about those kinds of things? Well, I just like helping people. So my big thing is helping people. So my big, the kicks that I get at the moment are helping customers. So I, my number one thing is probably a customer phoning me with something I've never seen before. Like a rational rose problem that we need sorted, then I'll come and fix it. So I get a kick out of fixing things that I don't really know anything about. Do a wee bit of reading into it, do a wee bit of playing about it. Try and learn it and then figure it out. So that's my big thing at the moment. Doing a lot of bicep at the moment. So doing a lot of infrastructure as code for customers. Doing a lot of that. My main job is basically helping customers who are either getting on board and into Azure, or customers who are already in Azure and want to do something better. Like maybe, maybe sort of their environment or move from maybe modernize their apps. That kind of thing. That's my big thing. Modernize apps is quite good fun. Well, that there's an endless job right there. Yeah. Often, often a thankless job. It's just because they pile more on. So what was, what was your path to becoming an MVP? Like how did you get discovered? That's a good question. I didn't actually, to be honest, I've been in IT for like 25 years until about six years ago. I didn't really, I heard the MVP, but I didn't really know what it was all about. And then I spoke to a bunch of a good friend of mine called Kenny Lowe who works for Dell. And he was telling me all about it. And I was like, that's quite interesting. I need to look into that a bit more. And he kind of lit the touch paper. They kind of got me interested on it. And then I just decided a lot of people say that MVP shouldn't be a goal. And I probably do tell people that, but I wrote up on a lot of paper about my screen MVP. And that was my goal. So that was my one and only goal when I got to Azure. I was going to like, I want to become an Azure MVP. So I decided to, how am I going to go about that? So my path was, I had to learn Azure as I was doing this. So as I was learning Azure, I decided I would blog the learning resources and the study material that I was using. And that became very popular. So I started off with doing the developer exams from having zero Azure knowledge and failing them and kind of blogging my journey of how we'd go about learning all again and kind of the study methods and what not to do, basically, because I was doing this in not a very clever fashion. So I then belonged about how to do that. And then I think now I've got like 26 exams or something like that. So I've kind of did quite a lot. That's kind of how I started. Not really sure how I got found out about an MVP. I kind of self-nominated just before that part changed. Oh, yeah. For folks who don't know, there was a window, a short window where they allowed self-nominations rather than a Microsoft person or existing MVP, which is now what it's back to. Yeah. So I self-nominated, waited about six months and then they said they're getting rid of that. So I had to start the whole process again, which was fine. You got on the radar. Yeah, exactly. They knew how I was at that point, which was good. And I was helping with the Glasgow Azure User Group. I was doing lots of community stuff anyway. Yeah. So the one thing I would say is people shouldn't, like, I know I'm kind of contradicting myself here, but you shouldn't really try to become an MVP. You should just earn the MVP as part of what you're doing. That's my opinion. Yeah, that's the great guidance. That's that balance. You have to surface the things that you're doing. You've got to make people aware of it, but you've got to do it in a humble way. Yes, exactly. Yes. Being humble is one of the key things, I think. I always put it down to, like, I was thinking about this this morning because I thought you might ask this. Like, if you're one to win an Oscar, you don't think about one to win an Oscar. You probably just want to be a leading film star and then an Oscar becomes part of the world of just being a good actor and being good films. So if you're a good community person, the MVP thing will come along, but you shouldn't really just go all out for MVP. Yeah, except, except that there are so many people like I had this before I've got nominated where people just assumed I was. Yeah. And guess who said like, wait, you're not an MVP. Yeah. There's a few people I've nominated that I was like, before that I was like, you're not an MVP. I was like, I want to sort that out and then go off and nominate people. Right. Yeah. I've also been quite lucky. I've nominated 20 people for MVP and 18 of them have become MVP. So that's quite good. That's good. Yeah, quite good. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully one of the other people is going to become an MVP soon. That's one of those things where I've had people that have come up and said, you know, hey, could you nominate me or could you recommend me? And I've had some with a couple of them, some frank conversations, like, like I don't, I don't see, I don't know enough about the stuff that you're doing. Like, here's what I'd have to go and see. And some of those people like never came back. I've had some others that have come back and been persistent. I think that's great. Like doing that thing. And I actually had one, a good friend of mine who's now actually an MVP and an RD. So a regional director who he said, you know, it's been my goal. So I've been trying for like three years. He says, I've just decided I'm going to stop trying. It's like, I don't, I don't care. Like I'm, I'm loving like work is great. I'm doing the community stuff. I'm passionate about this. If I get it great, but I'm not going to try to get it. And I kid you not a month later, he. That's the mantra. I think you need to try not try. You just do what you're doing and it will come along. Yeah. Yeah. There's loads of people. I've had loads of people like yourself reach out and you don't know them. And you're like, no, I'm not, I'm not going to entertain people. You don't know. Yeah. There was a lot of people like you, like what you were saying that. I couldn't believe where I'm the MVP. I just assumed that they were MVPs and they're like, no, I'm not an MVP. And I'm like, okay, let's do something about that. Yeah. That's why you've got to be, I don't know, be subtle about it. I mean, talk to friends of yours, like get to know MVPs, get to know Microsoft people. But, but it, I do agree with you that if you're involved in like wherever you live in the world, if you know your local Microsoft sales people, though, if there's an office nearby, if there's user groups get involved with that stuff. If you become visible and are just out there doing stuff and speaking at and creating content and answering questions, because you don't have to speak at conferences and blog every day and create videos. There are still people that like block out time every day to go into Microsoft tech community or other, you know, other, you know, areas that just answer questions. And there's a huge community out there and people that just answer questions and discord. Yeah. There's many ways to do it. Yeah. I think some, I think a lot of people get intimidated and think that they need to public speaking. And I think that's a big, not really true. I think a lot of people have been like, I'm not going to talk about MVP to blog and do you say help out and hit the forums and that's, that's perfectly legit. You don't need to be in a public speaker. I don't really do public speaking. So yeah, I think that's about my mistake. Some people make. Well, that was like my main thing. I was because I was blogging occasionally, but a lot of my content was for the company that I worked for 10 years ago. And so for me it was thankfully I had a company that would do all of these events. And I was going to be there in the booth regardless. I just then submitted to every one of them and just slowly started getting picked up and people would see me and I'd speak more. But now, you know, in post COVID, like, I'm fine with letting others, the younger generation go and do that and be the, be the travel jockeys and do all that where I'm just doing stuff like blogging and content creation and, and interviews and, and promoting the community, that kind of stuff. And, you know, it's, I love doing this, this stuff. I'm still giving back to the community, but I'm not standing up in front of as many crowds as you know, that's, that's kind of where I'm doing the same. Yeah. I've kind of, yeah, speaking as really my thing. So yeah, there's plenty of opportunities. Yep. Yeah. Well, that's great. Well, so for folks that, you know, want to get in touch with you find out more, like what are the best ways to reach you? Where are you most active in the social realm? Most active as a 12. So it's just Gregor underscore city. I'm on Twitter quite a lot. Or LinkedIn. And actually, I don't really use Facebook or anything like that. So yeah, definitely. Well, if you're not a grandparent, that's, I keep getting hearing that. So I do use Facebook a lot because I am a grandparent. So I've got three littles, but yeah, but it's a, no, but what's kind of your other, other places your blog or other sites. Yeah. You got the content to point people at. Yeah. YouTube as well. Just Gregor city and my blog is Gregor city.com. I don't blog as often as I used to. I used to blog quite regularly, but more into YouTube videos and content creation that way. Now kind of not really got started on YouTube channel. Done one or two courses. We've just finished on these 900 course, which was good. So I need to do, I want to do more of that. My main thing. I had a previous boss who would always say that when you learn something, you should try and teach it to other people because you learn more and you're also giving back. So that's my, my main thing. I feel very lucky that I've been working for people. The company I'm at in my previous job where I was kind of mentored into teaching people and giving back. And I always want to do that. I think that's really quite important. So that's a big thing for me at the moment is doing courses to give back to people. Well, I realize that everybody has different learning styles and different skills. But I'm with you. Like I, I learned the most by, by going through walking through organizing it, teaching it, you know, speaking about talking about it, sharing that, and then getting that real world feedback. It's like, like you go back like the networking stuff that you're talking about hardening, you know, you're that network around you are hardening the content. You're building your confidence in that. And that's why I realized it's hard for somebody that feels like, Hey, look, there's nobody that is an expert on all things, you know, even within their space, even the most knowledgeable people on a topic will constantly talk about how they're learning, you know, and you learn because different industries, different users, different scenarios, different companies and partners and all those experiences. But if you're writing about it, sharing about what you're learning about, then you'll get more of that input that feed others. And we've even learned to do something blog about it. And somebody said, there's a better way. So, you know, you're getting, they're getting win-win from other people as well. Yeah. Yeah. Then the AZ 900 was really good because even just realizing that some people don't even know what a virtual machine is. And you have to start from the very basics because we're kind of like going into a too high level, even though it was the AZ 900. You need to remember that some people are like marketing people who want to do this for their job, but don't really know anything about Azure. You have to make sure that your content is at the right level. So that was a learning curve, but it was a great learning curve. Yeah. Well, there's another opportunity right there because what I find is usually there's like the one-on-one content. And then it jumps right up into advance. And there's often the greatest opportunity or the people like, I understand the core concepts, but ease me into the more complex things. And that's where the greatest opportunities. That's where most people are as well. Definitely. Even for the, when you go to conferences, that's kind of where most of the content is. It's not really a beginner. It's just above beginner, but it's not quite at the expert level. So yeah, I'd agree with that. Yeah. So I just need to think about what course to do next. But I think the fundamentals is popular because there's a lot of people just trying to get into cloud and kind of, you know, data fundamentals is quite popular. Yeah. All the, all the containers and AKS fundamentals, all these fundamentals courses seem to be the most popular. Do you worry about, do you ever go out and look and say, Hey, I really want to write about this. I wonder, you know, what else is out there go and do like some SEO analysis of a topic before you write something. Do you? No, I can't say that. I probably should do that. No, I can't say that. I do. I just know that the fundamentals, when I, when I did a LinkedIn learning course, I asked what's the most popular ones and they're saying the fundamentals, the fundamentals ones are the most popular. Yeah. Which I can understand, especially AZ 900, just getting into Azure in general, that's where people start. So that's going to be big. Data fundamentals is quite big. AI fundamentals now obviously is going to be huge. Yeah. I mean, build's coming up tomorrow and it'll be AI every second word. You know, it's going to be massive. Of course. Yeah, yeah. I just got, I just got an abstracts accepted for a conference in August on AI that I'll be doing. So yeah. Yeah. I think if you're not doing anything, you might not get accepted anyway. He's taking over the world. Yeah. I was at night in November, and I was talking to this girl Veronica, who's an AI MVP. And I said, there's nothing about AI. And she's like, no, no. And then all of a sudden, I said, you must be the busiest person in the world. She's like, yeah, that was really funny. Did I make a mistake that I actually wrote the title of my and my abstract. I didn't have AI created. I had a failure right off the. Well, I mean, I'm slightly concerned that people get fed up with all that stuff. You know, it's like when you're on Twitter, it's like every second post is about AI and chat, GPT. And I'm thinking, yeah, maybe, maybe somewhere else might be the way to go. Well, my, my approach is that like, I'm just looking around at what sessions are out there. I know what I'm interested in. And so I found a title is like, I don't see a couple of people writing around the broader topic around it. I'm just like, Hey, this is a niche. And it's something that I'm actually doing and using. And, and so I'm looking at, it's a brand new topic. I'll be doing it for the first time at a conference in Australia in August. But it's stuff that I'm going to, I'm looking forward to hearing people's feedback on my approach on the different things and, and strengthening that and changing that and come up with some other topics. So again, I'm looking at it as a learning tool as much as that is sharing what I've already learned. That's interesting. I've got a topic in mind. This is very similar. We've been doing some stuff at work and a lot of customers are like not doing this thing. And I'm like, yeah, but there's not a lot of content out there on it. So definitely going to try and do some talks around that stuff and some, some courses. Yep. That's a, well, the reason I was like, I don't do the SEO thing either around the topics. I write about what I want to write about. I go look at, after the fact, like I look at, I do, I do a series of, of AMAs, ask me anything videos and blog posts around that. And some of them get like, hey, 20 people looked at it in six months. Another one gets thousands of views. You know, and, and so it's like, okay, well, why did one hit and you know, and so it's interesting to look at that just from the data standpoint. We do a thing every December where we run a whole month of contributions from the community. That's the one thing that I do look at. So I kind of do look at that and see what sport we learn. It's the same. It's very similar. It's the same sort of topics that I see year on year. It's the same sort of interest. It's quite interesting. I think AI will definitely be massive going forward. Obviously it is already. So, of course, build. Yeah. Having seen the kind of pre-built stuff when we were at MVP summer. Yeah. It's going to even worse now. It's going to be. Yeah. Everyone's going to be AI. Yeah. There's, well, hey, it all demos really well. That's very exciting. Yeah. It just, I think there's a lot of opportunity around the practical application of all those things. What does it actually look like? Out in the wild. Instead of in that clean demo. Yeah. I always do have a little bit of, yeah. Okay. That's like a nice flashy demo, but how does that actually work in the real world? Right. We need both know that it's not. It's simple as what the demo doesn't always work like that. No. Yeah. The funny thing is when you're talking about massive amounts of data is like, what does that data look like? How much massaging happened in that data to get it to the point where you could show that slick demo. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And customers don't normally supply your data like no nice to clean them. And yeah, normally you get raw data that you have to kind of do the massaging yourself and then make it look pretty. Yep. Yeah. So that'd be interesting. It's an exciting space. It certainly is. Yeah. Change each of those areas. It's going to, it's going to change, you know, the Azure space is going to, I'm in the M365 apps and services. It's changing that world. It's going to be, I think in two years. You know, the MVP segments will look very different. Absolutely. Yep. Yep. Yeah. Cause Mark Brasovic at the MVP summit got asked what's, what's his 10 year thoughts like? And he's like, I don't know this moment in time because it's so up in the air. I thought that was really interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Even he wasn't really sure what the one landscape is going to look like. So that's quite exciting. I'm interested. Sorry. Lots of new opportunities. Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I do a monthly tweet jam. So we're actually doing one this week on, on SharePoint. But I, my end of year, the December topic is always like, what was the biggest news from the year behind us and what are your predictions for the year ahead? And it'll be, there's so much that came out so much that changed with this year. Where we actually saw the demos of all the co-pilot stuff. For example, it, it's going to be an interesting end of year. Yeah. Look at that. Our CTO, I intercept kind of challenges recently to start doing some calls every couple of weeks about innovation. And I was like, you wait till the MVP summits finished and I'll come back and speak to you again. Obviously I can't, I need to wait to build out. Right. So I'm like, there's lots of stuff that we can't really talk about right now, but everything's going to change. So I wouldn't tell them to too much innovation just yet, wait to build. And then we'll, we can have a chat because then we can talk about it. And almost like, there's, there's going to be announcements and inspire. There's going to be announcements at Ignite. It's going to be, there's just a lot happening. So yeah, you need to, you know, folks, I know this, a question I get all the time is an MVP, like how do you keep up and it's almost a full-time job just keeping up with all this stuff going on. It's impossible. I think, yeah. I mean, lots of people read the emails. I tend to just like put them in a folder and I'll look at them every now and again, but I don't, I don't have the time to go through all these emails. I imagine it must be like that when you work at Microsoft, you must have like an inbox of thousands of emails. You just don't have time to read. Yep. Yeah. I think you just need to learn to, to not try and be that person who reads every single email and every single thing. Too much, not enough time in the world. Yep. Great. To do that. Well, Gregor, really appreciate your time and, and thanks for connecting. And I'll, you know, hopefully see you now that we're back to in-person MVP summits. Hopefully see you next year. If I don't see you somewhere in between. Yeah. Thanks for having me on. All right. Talk to you soon. Cheers.