November 2022 Content Wrap-Up

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One of the primary benefits of creating this monthly summary of the prior month is that it reminds me of the many discussions and community interactions that might otherwise fall into the cracks in time. There is so much happening in the world, in the tech world, within the Microsoft ecosystem where I spend most of my time, and within AvePoint that I need this recurring activity on my calendar so that I can pause and take stock of the month behind me.

I kicked off the month with a 5-day Power Platform challenge with the Collab365 team, spending my evenings building out components to an employee vacation request app on my CollabTalk tenant. I had been looking forward to taking the challenge for weeks and filling in the gaps in my Power Platform learning, and finally was able to participate fully and further develop my technical skills.

IT Nation Connect 2022From there, I traveled to Orlando, Florida to participate in the IT Nation Evolve + Connect events, meeting current and prospective partners at these MSP-focused events….in the middle of a hurricane. That’s right: I arrived in Florida just before a Category 1 hurricane made landfall, weathered the storm from inside the convention center, and departed on Friday without any flight delays. I was lucky, as many people were impacted, and some team members were unable to join us due to canceled flights.

After a week home and participation in a number of online events, including the Microsoft Marketplace Summit, we celebrated Thanksgiving with all 4 of my kids in town for the first time in a couple of years. My grandson Izzy (Israel) was 1 year old the last time they visited from Minnesota, and now he has a sister (Lily) and a cousin (Miles). We rented a studio and took some family photos shot by my nurse/photographer sister Kelly which I can’t wait to see. All I wanted was a photo of my wife and I holding the three grandkids, and what we got was a tiny bit of chaos. Should be some funny shots.

I wrapped up the month with a trip to Copenhagen, Denmark for the 11th European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference (#ESPC22, which was the 9th in-person event with 2 online). It was exciting to be back at one of my favorite events and to see so many friends from the community who I had not seen in person since #ESPC19 in Prague in December 2019. I had one session (How Organizations Can Prepare for Microsoft Viva) which is still a session I am actively presenting on, so no slides to share except through the event app. I was also able to once again participate on the ESPC Community Reporters team, alongside fellow MVPs Tracy van der Schyff, Michael Greth, Eric Overfield, Chirag Patel (who also gets cover photo credit), Karoliina Kettukari, Vesa Nopanen, and Anoop Tatti. You can see the links to our live streams below, and more of my interviews will be popping up on the ESPC YouTube site over the next month. Great event, and already looking forward to next year’s event in Amsterdam!

In addition to these travels, I found some time to generate some content as per usual…

Community Interviews

MVP interviews, podcast recordings, and my final two episodes of the Office 365 Hours show, the reigns for which I have handed off to two of my AvePoint peers, Norm Young and Conor Dean, with my primary content focus at work moving entirely over to the channel. New content series (#APChangeTheChannel) kicking off in January!

Productivity Tips

Alas, I had hoped to create a few more productivity tips in November, but it wasn’t meant to be. I have some drafts lined up for December, though, so watch for more of this content coming soon.

  • Productivity Tip: Create Tasks from Text within Outlook Email [buckleyPLANET]
  • Productivity Tip: Versioning in File Explorer [buckleyPLANET]

Collaborate with Confidence

I would absolutely love to do more voiceover work! Had a no-notice request for help on this project, lending my voice to a short-but-sweet video that highlights a great AvePoint customer story around our Cloud Governance and MyHub products. Check it out!

  • Collaborate with Confidence in Your Hybrid Workplace [YouTube]

Ask-Me-Anything (#M365AMA) Discussions

Started in the early days of the pandemic as a weekly live stream, this group of MVPs, experts, and Microsoft employees gets together regularly to answer questions asked by members of the community across most of the Microsoft workloads. Always fun and informative, the Microsoft 365 Ask-Me-Anything series continues. If you have a question you’d like us to address, drop me a message.

Articles

I did manage to produce a couple blog posts that were not part of any other series. Enjoy.

  • Leveraging Social Informatics to Improve Collaboration [buckleyPLANET]
  • KM as an Essential Part of Modern Business [buckleyPLANET]

#CollabTalk TweetJam

Soon to be closing out our 11th year of tweetjams, this past month focused on governance and the Power Platform. More on this hot topic in the new year, for sure!

  • Is there a Governance Gap with the Power Platform? [buckleyPLANET]
  • Community Feedback on Power Platform Governance [buckleyPLANET]

Channel Activities

Fellow conference traveler Kimberly Simon has put together a great channel series, recorded during the IT Nation Evolve event in Orlando, and invited me to participate and share some of my networking tips. I also made an appearance in once of her blooper reels.

  • Season 1 – Minute 5 : Konnect In a Minute with Christian Buckley, Brand Alliance Director, AvePoint [YouTube]
  • Bloopers from the show: Konnect In a Minute [YouTube]

Sharing Music

Only one music post this past month? Yep. Sorry. It’s a big one, though.

Blatant Self-Promotion

And, of course, there was some blatant self-promotion.

December is already well underway, with a few days home from Europe before time off for a much-needed vacation to celebrate my 32nd wedding anniversary. With my wife, of course. 🙂 And then it’s a couple of weeks of work, hosting the year’s biggest tweetjam, and then we’ll hit the start of the new year. Looking forward to it!

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Christian Buckley

Christian is a Microsoft Regional Director and M365 Apps & Services MVP, and an award-winning product marketer and technology evangelist, based in Silicon Slopes (Lehi), Utah. He sits on the board of TekkiGurus, is an advisor for both revealit.TV and WellnessWits, and provides channel and marketing services for Microsoft partners. He hosts the quarterly #CollabTalk TweetJam, the weekly #CollabTalk Podcast, and the Microsoft 365 Ask-Me-Anything (#M365AMA) series.