 This is Christian Buckley with another MVP Buzz Chat and I'm here talking with Jay. Hey. Hey, Christian, I'm really excited to be here. Thank you for bringing me on. First time we've talked since I got that very coveted plaque over here. Woo-hoo! Thank you. Yeah, very... Why don't you have like specifically like one of those small spots that like lights it up? I need to be backlit around it or something. You know, you think that you put more care into it. I may, if you look at the spacing of the five lights, you can see that I at least changed the spacing just so you can see the blue stripe. There you go. The problem is the light is too tall. Well, this is, if for folks that don't know who you are, where you are, what you do, why don't you give us that background? The short version. So I'm the director of federal strategy for Avpoint Public Sector. On the side, I run the M365 Gov Community Call, which is a monthly phone call that we do on video. I also run the Buzzkill IT podcast, which is all about the topics that nobody wants to give you time and resources for, but if you don't have, you will fail. And I also run This Week in Teams, which is a non-weekly podcast covering Microsoft Teams topics. I know it was, the goal was to do weekly and let's just talk about goals. What does that phrase mean of non-weekly? Any other cadence is that's not weekly is non-weekly. It acknowledges that there is no cadence and therefore I can't tell you what it is. But the fact that it's called This Week in Teams, it suggests something that I can't live up to right now. I'm again, I'm gonna start using the phrase as people ask me, it's like, hey, you know, Harry, where's that status report? It's like, you know, I'm cadence free on status. Yes. Yes. Which I interpret as whenever I want or feel like it, I'm not feeling it right. I'm not gonna say that's wrong, Christian. I'm not, it's a reality of life right now. So Jay and I were together at that point, but and the other thing is, so Jay, so we last spoke was for the collab talk podcast. Yes. A few weeks back around your role in the federal space. Yeah. The conversation around like your MVP hood, which is more about the technology than you know, the department. Yeah, I know. Thank you for figuring out how to do that without. Well, there's another way of saying that, like where it's kind of a running joke with MVPs. So kind of you think of the word happiness. Yes. Yes. That's you did it. There we go. How you emphasize the letters, the spelling of that. Yeah. So MVP hood, I prefer. I like it. No, it's good. It reminds me, my wife's a doctorate, a doctor, a PhD. She's a PhD and she just got her hood. So it, I can pretend it's anywhere near the same level of notoriety that she has. Now I'm just thinking of your wife pretending to be Dwight Schrute, pretending to be a Sith Lord. I can't wait till she hears this. I'm in so much trouble. Has she walked on stage or anything with that? Or is it past that? Does she already have the doctorate? So she's not going to have that transfer. She just walked on stage this past summer. We went to- So I'm just going to say that with the hood, there was the opportunity to carry a lightsaber. I know. Yeah. Opportunity. Opportunity missed, dear Antares. You missed your opportunity. I'm with you. No, let's drop this on her. Well, I loved it to go through as part of these interviews and to, let's find out, like, Jay, what was your path into becoming an MVP? What did you do in the run-up, too? What do you think was what pushed you over the line? Well, the first memory I have coming out of, no, in all seriousness, it was kind of crazy and unexpected. A few years ago, I've been in technology for 22 years now. I started as a web developer and actually created my own web development firm. And since that time, I was a .NET developer. I was a database admin. I worked on Microsoft's workflow orchestration engine, which name escapes me right now. I did all of these things, and I ended up in the sales side of the house in the last decade. I spent five years doing it outside of Microsoft, where Microsoft was like something we connected to, and then I spent the last five years doing it again as a sales engineer, doing it as a Microsoft partner here at AvePoint. And so it's now as a salesperson, as the director of federal strategy that I'm an MVP, which is kind of crazy to me, but what did I do? Hey, well, that's actually, it's a great point to make, that it is, because people ask all the time, like, what are the steps that I'm doing? I think I'm doing all the things, and I always say to people, it's like, it's a black box. Yeah, anybody can do it. It's a variety of things that Microsoft is interested in, there's different reasons why. You're in a sales role and yet, but you're still doing all of these other activities, which are community. So it's not even as critical that you have the right job title of what you're doing. It really is what you're doing on the community side. Yeah, absolutely. And that's the key for me, too, is the community. I'm glad you said that, because when I got, I took a break from technology for a couple of years after college, and when I got back into technology, it was the .NET user groups in Texas, in the Dallas area, there were three of them that got me back up to speed and got me going again and got me multiple jobs. Tim Rayburn and Caleb Jenkins and the crew down there really got me moving. And so the community that comes with being an MVP, the community that comes with the entire Microsoft stack, is I think what made me successful and become an MVP. It's, you know, I run a user group, which has a non-monthly cadence. I have the three podcasts I just talked about. I have the Microsoft 365 conference, which we've now run twice and have a third one coming up in January. It's all of these opportunities to bring people together and share information. It's not even so much me sharing information, although, you know, I speak a ton and I write blogs and it's bringing other people together to do it. I think that's the magic of being an MVP. Yeah, that's my road. You know, it's funny, it's like we just had, so I had for our user group here, I've been, so I've been, I moved away from Seattle five years ago. Wow, it's been five years already. And I immediately, I joined the Utah that what was the SharePoint user group or the Spug. Yep. And we kind of morphed that, but I had started the SharePoint Saturday, Utah, when I was living in Seattle and I just, I went to school here and friends and family here. So I traveled out here, helped started up and run that. And so just kind of naturally helped run it since I've been here the last five years. Obviously, the pandemic has kind of changed even and has deteriorated some of the formerly, the community efforts, the user group efforts. Yeah. We had our, we had a monthly call and one of the questions on the table was like, do we just dissolve this? There's so many other online pieces out there. We don't know timeframe for really pulling this back together. And we put the question out there, but all of us on the family were like, you know, no, that's not really an option that even, even if it's the six of us that are part of the, you know, the board, we had a couple of people missing. Even if it's just us getting together, there's value in us getting together on a regular basis. And so with kind of renewed effort, we put together a new plan for it to kind of drive and go and move forward on that. My point in sharing that is that, you know, we recognize that there is value in being together, that we may not know what that value that we're looking for or what we can provide at this moment. I can't articulate that for you. Right. I remember having a conversation with the manager at a previous company based in Redmond, Washington where I had kind of an argument with the manager that I didn't get along with who I had been doing internal user group community type stuff on my lunch hour. Like, and sometimes they didn't participate because work wouldn't allow me to get away. It was my, it was my time kind of thing. And this manager told me and said, I don't see the value in you participating in our weekly one-on-one with, you know, in that group, those group activities. And my response, I chose my words and I said, I'm not so selfish as to think that I have to get value out of every interaction with the community. No, that's not the store, yeah. Sometimes being there, it's, and I might be able to share a perspective, share some other experience with them and somebody else gets value out of it. And I continue because I know that over time, I will then get value out of that. That's absolutely true. And it's amazing to actually break it down that far. Like the whole purpose of community is so that when I need community, it's there. But when I don't need community, if I'm not there for the other people in the community, how will I know, why would they be there for me when I need it, right? Exactly. So I love that statement of it's not always the value you are getting out of it. And I agree with it. The other thing that you said that really got me thinking and that apologies is my face went to the other screen because I wanted to make sure I was saying it right. Oh, I'm just gonna look at my watch 20 times. Let me put on a watch, hang on. Is, so you talked about the dissolution of the group and the idea of, look, if it's just the six of us that get together or there's still something that comes out of it is, so when my wife and I went to Oxford 12 years ago or so, we do tours of the area, ghost tours or whatever. And Oxford, there's something called the Eagle and Child Pub. And there was a group of writers called the Inklings. They called themselves the Inklings, including Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. And they all got together on a regular basis and just talked and shared and wrote together. And I'm not saying that the six of you on the board of the Utah group are the technology version of the Inklings, but that's how we grow is through our connections to other people. So absolutely, like if your user group is struggling right now, that's okay. And I'm saying this to everyone, not just you. It's okay that it's struggling, keep going, keep fighting, keep coming up with new ways to get people in there. And who knows, maybe you'll be the technological version of C.S. Lewis, I don't know. You know, it is something that, I mean, technology is cyclical around this. You're exactly right, because we're thinking like, hey, we're looking for speakers for that. By the way, we're always looking for speakers for Utah for the user group. If you'd like to present on any Microsoft technology in the Microsoft 365 stack, ping me. But that we realized exactly to your point is that we're all super busy. So we're engaged, like it's a busy time for anybody that's, especially in the collaboration arena around Microsoft technologies. It is just growing gangbusters. So most of the lack of participation from a lot of leadership is usually because we're just too dang busy to break off. And like, but we did our first in-person user group two months ago. I couldn't go because I had me right up until, like I was there online, but I couldn't physically go because the meetings that ended right at the start and I had a meeting after that. And so I just couldn't make it. But we realized that, yeah, the keeping it going part of it because in this cyclical cycle around technology is suddenly there will be something that sparks and then having that benefit of being together and asking questions is shared experiences will come through. The other side of that too is I think is an important lesson for people that are starting up. And I know that you'd agree with this is that there's a lot of fear of people that are like, I'd love to become an MVP. I'd love just to get more and to speak at these events. I'm not an expert, I'll do the air quotes expert on that. And but that's not always what it's about. Part of it is how many times we had in the Seattle user group and the Utah user group were somebody that wasn't the main speaker but they were a first time speaker. And here's the project that I'm working on. This is what we did. And then you kind of take questions to answer questions. That sometimes helps others that are trying to do that. And a lot of times get direct feedback from the audience like, hey, we tried something similar. Here's what we ran into that you haven't experienced yet. And so it's a way for you to learn and improve while helping others validate that they did the right. Like you prove to them that they are smarter than you. Hey, you helped them. Yes. It's funny, you talked about the I'm not an expert imposter syndrome thing. For me, an expert is simply someone who has value to share and also has an ego. Cause you have to have a particularly large ego to call yourself an expert. And that's not knocking anybody who does. And there are valid experts out there. But then there's also the people that should be the experts like Microsoft product team members that are building these solutions. People that aren't aware of this, they have go-to MVPs and non-MVP just experts out in the field that they get answers to questions that they have about the technology they're building. Yep, yep. So yeah, absolutely. If you don't think you are an expert enough in something, and I have one of the SES at Avpoint where we're talking cause she wants to become an MVP and she's, I had this conversation with her. I'm like, don't worry if you're not an expert, just find something you like talking about and talk about it and watch how that grows. You know what I'm not an expert in? Viva, Viva Insights. But I've now done three presentations on Viva Insights with Craig Janky. And you know, I can talk about it a little bit now. And there aren't a lot. So it's, you don't need to be an expert to work towards becoming an MVP. Well, the one thing that we are experts in more so than Microsoft with whatever technology is, is in our business and what we're actually trying to achieve with that. And the business application of technology, there is no right or wrong answer around those things. That's absolutely correct. Sharing those experiences. That's where a lot of the MVP value ad comes from. Yup. So, I mean, I had this, I've referenced this a number of times, but I had an argument with another speaker at a conference years ago. This was at SB TechCon Boston. I remember in the speaker room having an argument and the point he was trying to make was that, that somebody had written a blog post that had already, that topic had already been covered by the penultimate expert on the subject. And so this person was saying, why did that other person even waste my time, why bother around that? And I said, you know, this is ridiculous that we go and we see all this other content on that topic. That's already been definitively answered. I'm like, you know how ridiculous of a statement is? You know, why would we need search engines if there was only one source for any question out there kind of thing, you know? We need better filters for the information, but that person has a perspective. They have tone and voice and writing style that may just find more readable. I went and read that blog post and liked it out of spite for that person. That's, first of all, I love your response to it. There's a cartoon going around right now where I think it's two foxes and one of them has a box. All the reasons they have to live for. And the other one opens the box and says, there's nothing in here, but a piece of paper that says spite. So I think that's a fantastic reason to go read and like it, but you're absolutely right. If you have a unique perspective on something and you should share it, who cares if Scott Hanselman wrote a blog post on development, like go write your own blog post on it. And I'm not saying that's what it was, by the way. I'm just growing names out. I would argue, Jay, that even if you don't have a unique position on anything, but you're good at getting the community engaged and figuring out the information that others do. I mean, there's a lot of value in just that connector personality type. Absolutely, that's, I definitely get by by being a connector of experts because I am very, I am not an expert. I think that's like the, if we're looking at themes of like internally, I'm sure you agree with this, because I just had a, before we, what started talking on this chat, there's a thread going on where we're trying to find somebody, we had a speaker back out for a webinar, we're trying to find a new one. So the whole conversation is, who do we know that's around this? We're talking names, we're sharing information. Like every day there's something like that where we're connecting. I'm like, hey, do you know this person? They would be fantastic if we could get them in on this or we should ask that person this, for their expertise here to lend a hand. So, yeah, in fact, I just reached out, I've got somebody that's brand new, probably joining our App Point Champions, Community Champions program, and writing some content for us. That's fantastic. Where are we just, the goal? The content team said, hey, we'd love to have somebody come in and provide this expertise, this perspective. And I'm like, I know a guy. Yep, yep, so. No, that's awesome. And the connector's job in the MVP world and in any world is really interesting too, because that's one of the things that I try to focus on is as a connector, as someone who runs a user group and podcasts and a conference, I also try to showcase, and I'm gonna say this as a white guy, talking to a white guy, is I also try to showcase diversity wherever possible, because we're not all the same, not just in our knowledge and in our abilities, but in who we are and where we come from. So that's the other piece that I focus on a lot is as a connector, trying to help connect people who may not have the same connections and privileges I have. It's one of the reasons, one of the things I'm proud about on this series is reaching out to MVPs around the world. So not just, we're Office Apps and Services, so we're SharePoint teams, that Office applications experts, that's our focus area. And I started this because I wanted to get breakout of what originally I was a SharePoint MVP. I wanted to break out of that group and get to know others, Azure MVPs, developer MVPs, or the, what is it, mobility MVPs and kind of all those different areas. Government MVPs, I'm kidding, that doesn't exist. And around the world and plug that in. So folks that, I hope when we get back to in-person MVP summits, that we'll see some of these folks that fly in from around the world. And I know that Microsoft, it's yet to be seen whether we have to do another virtual which would be really sad, because it's, but if they do it, they've talked about figuring out a way to do a hybrid version of that. That would be interesting. Because there's typically about 4,000 MVPs from around the world that get together and- That's amazing. Or wait, no, is there 4,000 MVPs and like two thirds of them come in? Anyway, there's a huge chunk that can never make it. Yep. And so a way to involve them in that. So it's great that Microsoft is thinking about that, but hopefully we get to go hang out for a week in Redmond. Yeah, as somebody who's been running virtual conferences and participated in a few, I hope that the future of conferences in a quote unquote post pandemic world, because I don't know what that's actually gonna look like in general is a hybrid environment. Because the in-person, having with NACS and SPFest Chicago over the past couple of months, like it was a reminder of how much you get out of being in-person. However, what we've seen over the last 18 months is not only can working from home be successful, but actually the diversity of information and people and connections you can make in virtual conferences cannot match in-person. And so I hope we get to see this hybrid concept moving forward so that we can have more diversity of idea and sharing of information. Bring them both together and let's see what we can do. I think it'd be amazing. Yeah, I know that there are vendors that have solutions where they've tried to solve aspects of it. I had just not seen anything that gets close to having that the serendipitous connectivity, just running into somebody like, hey! Yes. What's your name again? Hey, person I totally know and I'm not gonna actually admit I don't know their name. No, that doesn't happen to me. Hey, you! That's the phrase, you know? Oh, but just running into people, seeing people like that and then having to go like, let's catch up, like what are you doing? Oh, you're doing that. Well, we should really talk. Wow, because this is what I'm doing now. Those kinds of hallway meetings or, it's just, it's amazing to have those experiences. Agreed. Well, very cool. Jay, thanks so much for finally. Well, again, last time we talked, we interviewed you were not an MVP. So, hey. I know, right? Yeah, it's a brand new congratulations again on that. Folks that want to be able to follow you, find you, what are the best ways to reach you? So the easiest thing to do is go to j.leask.com. So J-A-Y dot L-E-A-S-K dot com. That is a hub for everything else I do. You can get my blogs from there. You can find a link to my articles on AvePoint. Social media is there. So do that. And maybe I'll go update and make sure that it's all actually listed there properly now that I've said it is. Awesome. I love when people reference it, like go check out my blog and I go, oh, awesome. Let me look at it. Oh, last post December 2019. Nice. No, it's more recent than that. It is. It's definitely more. More than 2020. Awesome. And I've actually, I'll say this. So listen, as a new MVP, what I've learned is every week I schedule a half hour for me to just sit down and go, what did I do this past week? Oh, and you know, okay, I wrote this article or I interviewed this person. And so now I'm starting to get into that cadence because you forget. So, yeah. Let me give you my advice on this. So this is something where, because years ago, you may be shocked to hear this. I had a real difficult time with the self promotion like this summer. I was like, hey, I definitely want to hear that. Right. When I became an evangelist for the first ISV after I left Microsoft, I was doing it internally. I started, I didn't want to do a newsletter, but what I did was I just started providing an email monthly that went through and said, here's everything that I did. Here's every webinar and every conference. Here are the slide share presentations to each of those. Here's a blog post. Yes. These are the interview that I did that was published elsewhere. So I had that complete catalog. Then I got a little bit trickier. I started then categorizing them. Like, oh, nice. Here's everything around collaboration or around migration. Here's everything around governance. Here's everything. And I would package it that way and send it out there. Then I started, I've been blogging on my current blog platform since 2002. Yep. It was on TypePad and I moved it over to WordPress. And I do a monthly summary. So you can find it. I saw that. My monthly content wrap up. I really like that idea. And in my head, I've already stolen it. Yeah. It's not on my blog yet, but it's in my head. It's just a great way, because then for those again, or MVPs, we have to go and input all of our contributions into one location. So Microsoft can see all the things that we did. But it's a great way for me just to keep in my memory banks, all of the other things that I've done. And sometimes I forget to be like, oh yeah, that got published on CMSWire. I forgot to put that in for my June. And so I'll go back and update the June to put the asset in there. It's not about, oh, hey, the time has passed and I published the blog post. It's live. Like, no, that's my archive. That's the extension of my brain of my memory banks. Yeah. You know what I wanna see, and this is my last tangent. I wanna see a hundred years from now, like how have we augmented our brain? Because you're talking about a very two dimensional way to augment your brain. Jot it down and, hey, now I can go back to my blog and I can look at that category and I can see all those things. Like I wanna see a hundred years from now, which I clearly won't. How have we augmented the brain to do things like this? Because it's insane. Jay, our brains will be alive in jars as part of library. We'll be there. We'll be conversing. And yet again, the Simpsons will have predicted exactly how life will go. The Simpsons slash matrix world. Come on. I mean, you've seen the ads for matrix resurrection. So I mean, come on. Don't talk. I haven't seen it. I haven't looked at it yet. Oh, go check it out. I looked at the website and I thought it was, it's the simplest thing, but the most brilliant thing where they put in the time, your local time in, oh man, that blew my mind. Okay, I'm done. I am, I am. All right. Hey Jay, well, thanks a lot for connecting. We'll, I'll see you probably some other meeting later today. See you later today. Thank you, Christian. This is an awesome show that you do. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you.