The Microsoft Tech Community was launched in 2016 and is an evolution of the Office 365 Network, extended to support the Azure; Windows Server, and SQL Server communities. Microsoft Tech Community brings together multiple communities in one central location to support discussions and best practice sharing across a variety of Microsoft products and services. We had a lot of fun catching up with Anna Chu at Microsoft Ignite last week to talk about her role at Microsoft, the value of community and what it takes to put on an event like Ignite. Anna Chu is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Microsoft responsible for working across the Microsoft Tech Community and MVP communities to engage with the IT Pro audience. This involves driving partnerships between engineering and marketing that influence product roadmaps and leading community strategy to enable best practice sharing between customers- in turn facilitating a natural feedback loop between the people who build Microsoft Office products and services and the people who implement them. You can follow Anna on Twitter https://twitter.com/_achu Click the icon below to listen.        

In this episode, Nic and Warren have a chat to the Perf Guy himself, Principal Lead Program Manager at Microsoft, Jeff Mealiffe We talk the evolution of Exchange and get Jeff to spill on which version he liked best! We also talk about Office 365 connectivity and the great things Microsoft is pushing internally to make your Office 365 experience better. Jeff Mealiffe is in the Microsoft Exchange Customer Experience group, part of the Microsoft Exchange engineering team based in Redmond, Washington. Jeff is responsible for multiple areas related to Exchange deployment experience for customers and partners. He manages partner programs related to Exchange solutions, helping to build Exchange knowledge with Microsoft’s partners and increase ease of product deployment and customer satisfaction. He also engages directly with customers as a result of executive-level escalations to ensure that issues are resolved efficiently by Microsoft services and the product group and that the knowledge gained from these escalations affects future product development. Jeff uses his deep technical background to manage engineering projects either within the Exchange product or in a segment of the Exchange product ecosystem, including end-to-end management of Exchange virtualization supportability and deployment scenarios. He has held various roles in the Exchange engineering team during his 11 years at Microsoft, and his project experience and knowledge of the product have gained him recognition as an Exchange expert. You can find Jeff on Twitter @mealiffe Enjoy!! Click the icon below to listen.        

The word DevOps seems to be everywhere at the moment, I can't open LinkedIn without coming across a bunch of posts and articles talking about DevOps. What does it all mean, and more specifically why should IT Pros care about something that seems at first glance to be very much related to software development? I recently caught up with fellow MVPs Simon Waight and Michel de Rooij in an attempt to understand what it is and why it is something worth paying attention to. Simon Waight is an Azure MVP from Australia who's career focus has been on the building of online software solutions resulting in a deep understanding of the technologies used and challenges faced when working in this space. He has a wide-ranging set of experiences having worked as both a consultant and an FTE and filled varied roles from development, to architecture, to release and team management. You can follow Simon on Twitter https://twitter.com/simonwaight and visit his blog at blog.siliconvalve.com Michel de Rooij is a Dutch Office Servers and Services MVP and Consultant who spends his time helping customers navigate the challenges associated with migrating to Office 365 for Exchange and related technologies. Michel's background as a developer helps him automate processes and develop supporting tools. Michel blogs at eightwone.com and you can follow him on Twitter https://twitter.com/mderooij Click the icon below to listen.        

The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has been on everyone's mind recently. GDPR became enforceable today, 25 May 2018 and is a regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy for all individuals within the European Union. It also addresses the export of personal data outside the EU and aims primarily to give control to citizens and residents over their personal data and how that data is used. It seems a lot a organizations left their GDPR strategies to the very last minute - I received a lot of GDPR related email this week! What does it all mean and why should we care? We had the pleasure of talking to Tony Redmond about it recently. Tony Redmond has been writing about electronic mail since 1992 and is widely regarded as one of the foremost commentators on Microsoft collaboration technology. Tony has written 15 books and is the lead author of Office 365 for IT Pros which is the most practical and up-to-date guide to everything Office 365 related I've come across - and it is updated weekly. I encourage you to follow Tony on Twitter (https://twitter.com/12Knocksinna) and to check out his weekly posts on petri.com. Click the icon below to listen.        

In this episode, live from Tech Summit 2018 In Cape Town South Africa, Warren catches up with Bernd Verst, Bernd is an awesome and passionate Microsoft Developer Advocate that works directly out of Seattle, coming from companies like Google and Twitter, Bernd hails from the same team as Donovan Brown and Jessica Deen at Microsoft and makes sure Microsoft Technology always keeps the developer in mind when it comes to products. Warren and Bernd discuss the various Cloud offerings from different Vendors, awesome new technology and early adoption with a couple of Life hacks and believe it or not, they walk about the weather! You can find Bernd on Twitter https://twitter.com/BerndVerst Blog https://readon.ly/ Github https://github.com/berndverst Bernd is also active on the Microsoft Developer Advocates Website and Community here. https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/advocates/index.html https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/advocates/bernd-verst Bernd is also active on the Microsoft Developer Advocates Website and Community here. https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/advocates/index.html https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/advocates/bernd-verst This Episode is brought to you by Plantronics ! See the Amazing 8200UC in action. https://youtu.be/mQF8WsNN3jE https://youtu.be/yJ68MMciTYE https://youtu.be/I3wjofTXZoQ https://www.plantronics.com/hk/en/product/voyager-8200-uc Click the icon below to listen.        

In this Episode, Nic and Warren had the privilege of interviewing the legendary Mary-Jo Foley, Mary-Jo has been covering the tech industry and Microsoft for almost 3 decades. Starting off with Berillum Copper Wire, advancing to Unix, then landing in the Microsoft ecosystem. In this episode, we see the human side of Mary-Jo Foley. Mary-Jo’s career has spanned many highlights, including interviewing all three leaders of Microsoft, being banned by Microsoft as well as shunning for being a journalist. Mary Jo Foley has covered the tech industry for 30 years for a variety of publications, including ZDNet, eWeek and Baseline. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008). She also is the cohost of the "Windows Weekly" podcast on the TWiT network. Click the icon below to listen.        

The telecommunications industry has come a long way since the days of manual service telephone exchanges. We caught up with fellow MVP Greig Sheridan late last year to talk about Skype for Business, Teams and the evolution in technology he has experienced in his 30+ years in the industry. Greig has worked in the telecommunications industry in Sydney, Australia, since finishing high school in the 1980s. Having entered the industry as an Apprentice Technician with Telecom Australia, he’s today the “Practice Lead - UC” for Generation-e, a leading Microsoft partner with a focus on the modern workplace, UC and Audio-Visual solutions. You can check out Greig's blog at greiginsydney.com or connect with him on Twitter - twitter.com/greiginsydney Click the icon below to listen.        

In this incredibly interesting episode, Warren and Nic catch up with Joe Baguley from VMware to talk what it's like speaking live in front of 90 million people and geek out about virtualization, edge computing and the endless possibilities enabled by AI. Joe Baguley is VMware's Vice President and Chief Technology Officer for EMEA, He helps develop and communicate VMware's strategy and vision with customers and partners, using his wealth of experience to help organizations reduce costs and better support users and business needs. As part of VMware's Office of the CTO and its representative in EMEA, Joe assists VMware's customers in understanding how to use today's advances in technology to deliver real business impact as well as working with them to inform VMware's R&D processes. You can find Joe on Twitter @JoeBaguley Click the icon below to listen.        

Mobility has been a hot topic for some time - in fact, IDC forecasts that the U.S. mobile worker population will surpass 105 million by 2020. Organizations often struggle when trying to provide flexibility and a choice of devices on the one hand and retain control of sensitive data and security on the other. We sat down with fellow MVP Steve Goodman at Microsoft Ignite late last year to discuss a simplistic approach to implementing Device Management and why it needn't be so complex. Steve Goodman is a Principal Tech Strategist at Content and Code, a top Microsoft partner. He works with Office 365, Exchange and Skype for Business and you’ll find him either deep into a complex Exchange Hybrid implementation or in front of a crowd extolling the virtues of Office 365 Groups & Microsoft Teams. If you’d like to get in touch with Steve, you can visit his blog at https://www.allabout365.com or find him on Twitter as @stevegoodman Click the icon below to listen.        

SharePoint can be intimidating, especially for those of use who don't work with it everyday. In this episode, WonderLaura tells us why SharePoint isn't so scary and we discuss some of the SharePoint announcements at Ignite. Laura Rogers is a SharePoint expert, speaker, author and educator. She is well-versed in helping organizations make the most of their SharePoint environments using out-of-box functionalities such as workflows, forms and Web parts. She is the owner of IW Mentor, a SharePoint training company. Laura’s technical expertise also includes over 13 years of experience working with Microsoft’s messaging and collaboration systems. She has been named a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for the past 7 years. Laura runs the Birmingham (AL) SharePoint User Group. She has contributed to several books on SharePoint over the past eight years. You can find Laura on her blog (wonderlaura.com) or on Twitter (twitter.com/wonderlaura). Be sure to check out IW Mentor if you are looking for SharePoint training (www.iwmentor.com). Click the icon below to listen.