EP122: Reflecting on The Power of Focus

We have a guest who has been listening to the podcast since Episode One “ Gianni Solito “ Gianni uses SaFe AGILE methods for managing adoption and change as we talk through how this model can be used to improve the process of keeping M365Distilled updated and aligned.  You can check him out here  https://www.linkedin.com/in/gianni-solito-2221561a3/ 

The Boys talk about the new gameshow “ IT Depends” which you can find here  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcB3Ba6K6N3HMUbt6yVT1Bg 

The boys with Gianni dig down into the roles and process of the SaFe AGILE framework and try to identify the simplicity in what feels like a lot of moving parts.

Marijn aligns SaFe Agile to the Fellowship of the Ring headed up by Gandalf in a SaFe role and it Kinda works... all working towards a big picture that they all know about....

It seems a long time since we talked about AGILE working and how M365 grows on our podcast as we add in SaFe where we look at Scaling the Agile Framework and finalise the way to look at update adoption and change through the SaFe process.   

Then we took a breath and drank a whisky from a distillery we had tasted before, but this time it was peated.  The Loch Lomond distillery is one of the most beautiful locations for a distillery and the Whisky is the same.  Loch Lomond Heavy Peated is a lovely peated dram which Steve does not fully agree with as he takes some time to feel the smoke.

Its an area of Scotland that the boys no well and re-live the small road and the experiences with the buses.  Driving to Oban along the loch is one of life's pleasures for anyone finding themselves in that area. 

As always the start is about our travels and community speaking events was from Miami to Bremen we talk about Tetsi flies and the rule of ‘Don’t look at the Boob’ when Steve knew it was the answer to another memory problem…

The Boys talk about the new gameshow “ It Depends” which you can find here  https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcB3Ba6K6N3HMUbt6yVT1Bg 

After 15 minutes of community talk the boys went around the world… Ami Diamond posted a great LinkedIn article comparing M365 to the new wonders of the world.  It was so cool that we decided it required more in-depth expertise from Steve and Marijn.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7159248067244765186?updateEntityUrn=urn%3Ali%3Afs_feedUpdate%3A%28V2%2Curn%3Ali%3Aactivity%3A7159248067244765186%29

So maybe this is AKA Jules Verne “Around the M365 World in 80 minutes”.

So, enjoy the humour of Steve and Marijn as they discuss Ami’s great post… check it out.

Listen to Steve try all the tough words from around the world as we describe the output from the post and add a bunch of disrespect and fun…

Then eventually the podcast gets technical as we bring in the M365 bits and break down the article from AMI.

Enjoy even if the Chat GPT analogies are weak, the humour is good supermarket listening.

Then we drank a whisky, I know a surprise right?  This was something interesting: a special bottled edition of the Edradour distillery from 1st fill Oloroso casks out of the smallest distillery in Scotland.  Dark and a powerhouse of flavour.

Imagine that you have 5 days to migrate a small company to M365 from Google Docs…  What would you start with, Apps, Email MS teams, Power platform… when the Boys put together the plan and decided what goes first…

And a few things to catch up with... Marijn as a Seamen, Life is about the basics first and complexities later and of course... CoPilot gets everywhere

In Short... the boys look at what is on the roadmap and mix them in with some of their own ideas that might not be true... can you work them out 😊 

We look at some of the great new innovations due and a few ideas that maybe should be put in place. Before tasting a whisky we come clean about which are from Microsoft and which are from the awesome imaginations of Steve and Marijn

Finally, Brian sent over a great whisky to taste, The Glendronach Parliament, 21 years old, which is a very Sherry Whisky, but from Oloroso and Ximenez barrels; what do you expect?  The finish is awesome, and the water drop brings in so much pepper it changes the drink.

Merry Christmas to every listener of M365, although we suspect that you will not listen to this before the 24th Dec, Monday's celebration day... but if you are listening to that, please accept the Best wishes for Xmas that Steve and Marijn sing as Episode 137 of M365Distilled kicks off.

The boys give themselves 10 categories to find their best of the best for 2023... Check out what Steve and Marijn decide on the best Conference or speaking location, their best community contributor and, of course, the best Whisky they have drank this year.

They discuss episodes, guests, Golden nuggets and the best Microsoft releases and upgrades.  Before thinking about their funniest 2023 moments, sessions they have listened to and finally the best titles.

Ever wondered how they choose the best title... when listen in and check it out.

Finally, Marijn dips into his whisky shelves and selects the Tullibardine 288 to taste on the podcast, and they find it delicious and very mature whisky with depth and satisfaction.

The Boys are back after a hectic time at Lisbon and ESPC where they created 9 podcasts from the CoreView stand @ESPC so this is a kind of recap of the people we met and included on the podcast created from the CoreView stand

We talk about AI and how it might be adopted, we talk about working lifestyles and finding time to think and workout strategies and solutions.  We talk about 2 great whiskies, yes we break the rules and do 2 whiskies as we have a truly relaxed conversation...

The last episode at #ESPC and we are here once more with Kas! This time we bring Jasper Oosterveld on board as a guest! He talks about business cases for Copilot and the issues of rolling it out just for testing.

Final day at ESPC, which means it is time for a little round up of all the goodness that was spread on day 2. We have Chirag Patel on, the man with many 3letter acronyms on his title and good friend of the pod to talk about all the cool stuff he has seen. We talk community, community and some community!

Last podcast of day 2 at ESPC, and we have Kenneth van Surksum with us. Kenneth is a Security MVP, who has been involved with Simeon Cloud for years, using them for his customers and contributing to the platform as well. The boys also have David Nevins back, and they have a nice chat about Simeon Cloud, and the benefits the platform brings to rolling out baseline tenants.

The best thing about live events is running into very cool people. Karuana Gatimu from Microsoft, famous for all the work she did on Microsoft Teams adoption, is now the driving force behind Copilot user adoption. She joins the pod for an honest conversation about Copilot, the effect it had on her job and how to get the best out of it when you are rolling out for your organization.