 Hey, this is Christian Buckley with another MVP Buzz Chat, and I'm talking today with Gil. Hey, great to see you. Hey, hi, Chris. Good to see you. So people that don't know who you are, where you are, what you do, why don't you give us the backstory? That's a good idea. So I'm Jill. I live in Belgium, a very small country, somewhere in the middle of Europe. Some people think Brussels is our country, and Belgium is sometimes the capital. Sometimes here people say that, but Belgium is a country, and I live close to Brussels. I've been doing Microsoft stuff for nearly 20 years. Actually, it occurs to me that I graduated, I think 18 years ago, and it occurs to me over the weekend. And I've never done anything else but .NET, because I actually graduated and then .NET was released. And I, right from my internship at my first company, I started doing .NET, and I have been doing nothing but .NET. That was an early embrace. I mean, I know that it's funny that that's been kind of a pattern where a lot of Microsoft technologies is never what the kids are interested in focusing on. Every few years, especially you get this within the DevOps space, and I've worked in years ago where I would work with a couple of universities, local universities, and get that question of what would be your recommendation, somebody that's going into computer science going into engineering, which is not my background, but I've worked in tech my entire career. And so I would talk about some of these Microsoft technologies and some of these more operational technologies. And they kind of make faces like, ah, I want to go work with you. I must say I was, I also was, yeah, like you say, I was an early adopter, I think. It was kind of a funny story because there was someone from Microsoft here in Belgium who came to, I think it was in the last year of university, and they came and did a presentation. And I was already doing some net in my spare time, building like a web shop for the local computer store and stuff. And I had a chat with him, and then basically that's how I also got my internship at a company that also built, at the time it was web portals that we were building, and so then I basically started my first job there at 2001-2002, which was, yeah, a difficult time also to find a job because all the dot com stuff had just happened, 9-11 was not that long ago. And so yeah, I got lucky and I got launched in the Microsoft space, and yeah, the rest is history, I think. So yeah, I was indeed pretty early in that. I still have somewhere in my office here the alpha CD, so for dot net alpha. So I still have them somewhere. I don't know where I got them, some Microsoft tech days I think. You know one of the things I have to say, so I was at Microsoft for three and a half years, but then for a handful of years, so I lived in the Seattle area, I had an office on campus as part of the Microsoft Partner Solution Center building 25. So I think three or four years that we had an office there, and one of the things that I loved doing, looking around as both an employee and then as a partner with access to campus, was people would clear out their offices and purge like old books and old sets of discs, and they just throw them in the cafe area and allow anybody to come take them. And as a joke, I used to run Saturday events on campus there and other community stuff. I would go grab these obscure old, let's say old like early 90s technology, dense, you know, Bible-esque books, some obscure technology, now defunct technology, and then we would give them away as raffle items for the interviews. Do you remember that Microsoft at some point had the MSDN library in books, that I had it, like a seven-part book or something, a seven-part series or something, that I actually bought it at some point, imagine printing that now, that's amazing. I know, well, I'm old school that way, I still prefer to read the printed word over digital for four books, but certainly there are some things like digital guys, desktop guys, I think of like Tony Redman's guide for Office 365, like you want that digital format because constant updates, you're constantly, it's a reference series, but let me ask you, because you're very involved in the community, so you're part of the local user groups and running those and been involved in your speaking, your sessions and topics do arrange from more, you know, the deeper development topics to more beginner 101 topics. So kind of going back to what we were talking about, about getting into, breaking into the field, do you see a lot of young people kind of entering this space now that are looking around the Microsoft ecosystem or is it still kind of the older crowd that has spent a few years in the enterprise and realize, hey, this is a lot of the technology that's actually making companies run? Yeah, I would suggest the second option, sadly, but sadly, but true. It's in data, I run the user group here in Belgium together with my wife, which is fun because she's also in IT and a colleague of mine that also I started a company with. And so, yeah, that's exactly what we see. We it's you see fresh faces, but yeah, not enough, let's say it's it's it's difficult. And and it's also part of the problem, at least here in Belgium, where universities, they often default to Java. And and yeah, that's basically not a good place for another good starting point, let's say, for new people that are entering the field to then make the jump into Microsoft and the Microsoft ecosystem. There are, like I said, it's not all bad, of course, that there are, there are people that are looking for jobs in in our space. But yeah, it what also strikes me sometimes is I don't see a lot of new people going on a stage and starting to share the knowledge. It's not not only that we don't we will reach new people. I'm sure about that. But it's I don't see a lot of when I when I started speaking, it was really a competition here, a good competition in a good way. But you you you were actually talking with other people here in the community. I found some some conference there. Let's let's let's go there and let's let's try to speak there. And you don't see a lot of people at this point doing that. It's maybe like you say, maybe we're getting old. And that was a bit hard time, I don't know. But it's yeah, it's it's different than 15, 20 years ago. Well, certainly, I mean, I well, it's it's it's hard to keep the perspective of things now since we're all working remotely and doing a lot more online. And certainly, it's a lot easier for for anybody to go and use a free or inexpensive tool and run a webinar and kind of share their their learning. What would be your your advice to people that that are that have been working with the technology and are interested in kind of building up their profile as a as a speaker, as an expert, you know, in the field? Well, that's that is something that I they are often talk to people about. I run my own company now. And one of our goals within our company is actually getting people involved in the community and getting them to share knowledge. And and that's exactly my advice, sharing knowledge is actually is also learning it yourself, because the more you actually want to share, it it it pushes you to go further to explore something further. And and it's in my opinion, the best way to to learn something. And and sharing is sharing knowledge is, I think, still the best thing that you can do because everything that you know is something that that someone else probably doesn't know, or maybe he doesn't know, or she doesn't know. But yeah, you will help someone with it. And that that should still be the driver, I think, to to start going on a stage to to go to user groups and and and and present there and and and write articles. And it takes time. It takes time. And yeah, it's it takes time also to to build up your reputation. Well, also, yeah, you have to do it out of a passion. I've always, yeah, I got lots. I became MVP, I became already a long time ago. So it's I yeah, I've been lucky. And I also wanted to give back to the community. And I think, yeah, doing those presentations, doing it all in your own time is is part of that, I think. Yeah, it's I think we, of course, individuals, we can be our own biggest your worst critics and and we stop ourselves from going and trying new things and doing new things. And writing is difficult for a lot of people. And one thing you have to be careful of is not to look at the fact that let's say you and I were doing the same similar roles in the same field. And we do very different things. But for this example, and and I saw this great blog post, an example that you gave of something that I would really been wanting to write about, that I've got an experience for my company, just because somebody else has written another article that's that's in parallel to your experience. They have different backgrounds, likely different industry, you know, different personal experiences around that. It's still valid to go and write up and share, you know, that that best practice or that learning, whatever it is. And then the other thing I would kind of along these lines is don't think that it has to be whatever solution came up with that it has to be perfect. I think and that is indeed true because some people think, well, I'm not good enough and they're going to ask me me difficult questions. And I'm always like, if if someone asks you a question, they're not there to to bully you. They're not there to to make you look bad. They are there to learn. And if you don't know it, well, follow up with them and try to help them. And it's not like you say also that it's not because something already exists that you cannot also write to talk about the same. We're not competitors. We are basically here to to to help the community move forward. Yeah, I think that there's a skillful way, definitely, to respond to those kinds of questions where you don't know. And it's we joke in the Microsoft ecosystem with the Microsoft people, I think that they shoot your mail. Well, they say, well, that that's a that's really good feedback. That's an interesting question. So I think that's part of I don't recall. I might have skipped that as part of the the new employee introduction, the NEO program, but I'm pretty sure that the train new employees with the vocabulary to respond to that stuff. But it's also for for just community speakers. And and and if you're a trainer also, I also say to people the first time that you teach a class, it's also the same thing. You you will not know everything. And again, people are not sitting there listening to you three, four or five days to see you fail, they are there to learn. And if you don't know something, yeah, try to figure it out together with them, follow up with them. There definitely don't fake it. Don't don't try to, you know, and be very clear, be like, you know, I don't know here in there's it's one thing to kind of go through and say, well, logically, this is how and I and I often use the phrase like, well, this is the behavior I would expect. But like we're doing we're doing a weekly office hours now. And so we get questions where there's four or five of us sitting there and we're like, you know, everybody's kind of, you know, I'm not sure. This is the way that I've had experience with this part of it. I'm not sure how that works. And sometimes one of us will jump on and go and look it up and see if we can find somebody that's written about it or we're actually going to the admin panel to look and see how it responds. But yeah, there's nothing wrong with not knowing the answer. It's it's better to admit that up front and say, but and then follow up. Yeah. And that's that's a great opportunity. You know, yeah, you learn as well. And you are you are you are benefiting from this as well. And it is sometimes in the community, sometimes also that people think you and MVP, you know everything. And I'm like, no, it doesn't have anything to do with that really. It's it's it's sometimes a misconception that that the program has. But yeah, that's right. Well, and I always say this, like, look, nobody knows everything about the technology. There's I mean, the reality is that there's product teams, the Microsoft people. There are community people that they'll reach out to to answer questions about their own technology that they own building on to get. There's no shame in that. Yeah, there's definitely no shame. But it is something that that is a bit of a barrier for people to do, I think, before they actually step on the stage, mindset that they have to go to and yeah, it takes time and some people can actually do it. And well, that's another probably it's another great kind of push towards community and for the user group. And certainly, I mean, our membership in the RD and MVP programs, you don't have to be an MVP or RD to be able to leverage those two networks. So get to know, you know, introduce yourself to it. I would argue that the vast majority of RDS and MVPs are some of the most community oriented people, which is why they get those designations. And so if you have questions to not be shy to reach out to those individuals, there's the only dumb question is the question not asked. Yeah, that that too, right? That that is there's also that that's the other side of things. And I live in Belgium and yeah, Belgians are pretty shy people. And and it's it's always difficult here because I run a conference. Maybe you've heard of it. Tecarama is quite a big conference. And so, yeah, in the beginning, when we had US speakers coming over, it's typical in the US that people make their sessions a bit shorter for a Q&A session of Q&A part of the session. And in Belgium, you get zero questions, maybe after the session they'll come forward and ask you a question, but it's very rare. And and so in the beginning, some speakers were like panicking. Well, I missed my I have only 40 minutes or 50 minutes and I had to fill an hour. Sorry, I didn't know. I'm like, yeah, yeah, the Belgians also are the same. They didn't ask questions. So they're shy in that area or in that direction too. So that's why it's always good. I think with any topic that you go and present on, this is just kind of, you know, my best practices have three or four questions that you've been asked previously. So be ready for that non-response. Sometimes it's and sometimes when you say, here's a common question that I hear and then don't even give an explanation for that. You'll see a bunch of heads nodding and stuff after that. But once you do that a couple times, that tends to then you get a hand go up with the question. Yes, sometimes it works and there are speakers that have a natural talent to actually get people to talk. I've seen sessions here where people actually are jumping on their seats almost, but it's rare and generally it's a cultural thing here. And it's sometimes hard to get people to ask questions. And like you say, the only question not asked is that's a dumb question because there's nothing wrong with that. Well, I say that then being an American and being loud and talking a lot, there are a lot of people like me at events. And and I would say that I have run into some dumb questions that were asked out loud, but yeah, but then again, it's, but I always, I welcome those. It gives the room a good laugh. Yeah, but yeah, indeed. Well, tell me, tell me about your, your company and more about what your company does. Yeah. So I run Xperia here in Belgium, so Xperia is a high level consultancy company that originates in the Netherlands. So Netherlands has been around for now close to six years. And so Mia and another colleague here. So basically the same person I have been running the user group with for 12, 13 years. So we joined forces in a company as well. And so Xperia does, like I said, high level consultancies. So architecture, DevOps consultancies, we do typically short term assignments, helping customers, coaching teams. And yeah, we're not a big company in terms of we're in Belgium. We're a understand people at this point. So we only started on a one and a half year ago, but we focus mostly on shorter term assignments that help customers make a big jump into client, into new architectures that that are beneficial for them. Yeah, that it's been, it's interesting. So I've done, so my, my company, so my little company, you know, me and I have part-time employees and of course contractors that I've worked with, but we do research as part of what we do and a partner with local universities. And we did a study three years ago. First one we did. So Microsoft is the primary sponsor of that, but about a dozen different, you know, ISVs and SIs within the Microsoft ecosystem that co-sponsored around on-prem environments. And while we were focused on SharePoint, it was, you know, some interesting data points about, you know, the move towards the cloud. What was interesting to me personally is that I joined a startup and not a Microsoft technology company, but back in 2001, January of 2001, where we built a cloud-based collaboration platform. And as I was, I ran the deployment team and we did deployments all around Asia Pacific and across the U.S. and, well, North America, so Canada and the U.S., you know, we saw tremendous resistance back in 2001, 2002, moving from on-prem to cloud environments. And it was, you know, SaaS was a new acronym that not everybody was familiar with yet. There were very few enterprise-scale solutions, SaaS solutions out there in the late 90s, early 2000s. And with all of that, I'm still, I don't see it quite as much, but there is still some resistance of companies moving towards the cloud. I mean, are you still seeing that with your customers? Yeah, we are still seeing it, although, like you say, it's gone down. It's gone down. And again, it's because we work together a lot with our colleagues in the Netherlands. It's also a cultural thing. And again, I will refer to Belgium as being very conservative in terms of technology as well. Belgium is often like, oh, it works. Let's keep it this way because I know this and let's keep it this way. Whereas I see in the Netherlands, customers are more engaging into a newer technology. They don't want to keep things like they are. Whereas in Belgium, it's very different. It's sometimes hard to understand that there's such a big difference with two tiny countries next to each other. And there's such a cultural difference that sometimes in people's minds here in Belgium, it's sometimes difficult to convince them. And of course, that's not for every customer. But we still see where customers, where it's hard, although we focus mostly now on these types of transitions. So we typically come in and we talk with the management team to show also the benefits and stuff. And lately, it seems to be going more smoothly than before. I think it's more easing in at this point. Well, imagine if somebody is coming to a company like yours looking for this help that they're moving down that path already. They typically have already done the decision, maybe, not always. Definitely not. There's always those examples of like a CIO has made the decision and yet others on the executive team are against it. And there's pushback there. Yeah, yeah, it's like you say. And we are typically more we also also help the C level people make this type of decisions that's part of what we do. But we also in general also come in to help the actual doing of the technique of the transformation. And sometimes the decision has already been made. But it's like you say, it's it's different depending on customer to customer. You know, what kind of issues do you see that are, you know, organizations that are resistant to move entirely over or that are struggling with that? Are there do you see any trends of, you know, of what's keeping them from just moving towards the cloud? In the past, when I was still doing consultancy at another company, we sometimes had issues where companies were willing to keep the data within the the national into the borders of Belgium. We did some customers for the government more government related. And they definitely was a typical example of it having to be within data centers in Belgium. Oh, and of course, also with the GDPR stuff. You also see some some things there that that initial like to when it when it started was like two years ago, that also gave some some customers more doubts about should we do this or not? Yeah, that's what a typical the privacy related stuff and the sensitive data oriented things. Those were the typical things we run into. You know, we hear a lot of that here in the US, especially about, you know, the German marketplace and a lot that Microsoft has done specifically. I think I think even before GDPR, they had one of the globally one of the strictest, you know, a set of regulations around data sovereignty. You know, not really heard. Yeah, I don't honestly, I don't know about the rest of, you know, northern and western Europe, you know, as strict or or. Yeah, I think also that also depends on the country. And some things are regulated on the EU level. Some things are more regulated on a country, on a national level. So it really depends on the type of project. So it's yeah, it's like you say, in the US, you probably don't run into those type of issues that often. It's one huge country. So I assume it's at least different type of issues. Well, I think even now, I think more and more companies, even if they don't have physical locations in other countries, it's becoming more and more commonplace for, you know, predominantly US companies to have international employees. And so some of these these issues come into play. I know there's some questions around that. And I've run into that and I spent a chunk of my career working with companies, you know, a handful in Europe, but mostly across Asia Pacific. And, you know, so these kinds of issues are the same things that we heard about, you know, 25 years ago. Yes, that's indeed the same thing. Like I say, it's not new issues. It's typically the same thing that still bubble up every now and then. Yeah. Yeah, well, it's fascinating. Yeah. Well, so, so, Joe, people want to find out more about you. Get in touch with you. What are the best ways that they can reach you? Oh, I'm typically quite active on Twitter. So that's just Jill Claren on Twitter or via the company xperia.com slash Jill will also get them to my profile and they can reach out to me anytime. Excellent. And as I mentioned, you know, most MVPs and RDS, like we welcome the questions and people reaching out. So you don't have to already be connected on LinkedIn. Reach out. I get. No, that's true. That's true. Yeah. Just reach out. Yeah. Well, hey, well, I hope get to see you at the next summit since we were going to be virtual again next spring. But hopefully I'll see you soon enough. I'll be back overall definitely, you know, summer of 2021 in fall. I've got events that I'll be back over your way. So hopefully we'll get to meet up in person. Always welcome at Tecorama as well. Thanks. Yeah. When is that event run? When's the next one? So we were supposed to have the one in Belgium in May and the next one would be in October in the Netherlands. But yeah, we are skipping 2020 and we're now looking at 2021. So it's going to be interesting to see what's going to happen. But we are last week. We actually started the planning phase of 2021, which is special. It's not a normal planning phase this time. But yeah, we're looking in what we can do. So yeah, the dates are already fixed. It's going to be again May and then October. Okay. Well, actually, yeah. Well, that was, you know, I was supposed to be over there three times this fall, just this fall. And so I'm sad to not get to go over and visit some of the most beautiful cities in the world that I've visited. I'm just excited to get back over, but it'll be another year. Yeah, that's cross offering us. That's cross offering us. Yeah. Right. Well, thanks a lot. It was great talking to you. Great talking to you. Bye. Bye.