Office 365 Distilled

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. 

Day 2 at ESPC, which means it is time for a little round up of all the goodness that was spread on day 1. We have Kevin McDonnell, Manager at Avanade, MVP and good friend of the pod to talk about all the cool stuff he has seen. We talk SharePoint Embedded, the new headless solution for documents, Copilot adoption and rollout and much more.

In this episode, we have Imre Tholen as a guest, together with princess Kas. Imre is the collaboration expert at Mateco IT and talks about his experience with CoreView and why they made the decision to go to 1 tenant, with tenant separation.

Welcome to the second episode, live from #ESPC! We’ve got a couple of new guests joining us today: Kas Nowicka from CoreView and Ragnar Heil from Rencore.

In this episode, we’re going to be dipping our toes into the five pillars of cloud governance: Cost management, Security baseline, Resource consistency, Identity baseline, and Deployment acceleration. Sounds like a lot of fun, right?

Our host Steve talks about identity, which is great because he’s been struggling with his own identity for years. We’re hoping that by the end of this episode, he’ll finally figure out who he really is.

Marijn, on the other hand, is drawing a blank. We’re not sure if it’s because he’s overwhelmed by all the governance talk or if he’s just having a bad day. Either way, we’re here to support him.

And then there’s Kas. She’s our hero, our savior, our knight in shining armor. When Marijn drew a blank, Kas stepped up to the plate with her quick wit and humor. She’s the reason we’re all still here today.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any whisky yet. But don’t worry, we’re working on it. In the meantime, sit back, relax, and enjoy the show!

The boys are in Amsterdam at ESPC23 and bring the spectacle of M365Distilled, live from the CoreView booth!
Picture this: a room buzzing with energy, the smell of fresh Stroopwafels in the air, and a trio of guests so stellar, you'd think the constellations had realigned just for this event.

First up, we had the enigmatic Kas Nowicka from CoreView, who could make even the driest technical details sound as riveting as a Dutch detective novel. Then, there was the charming David Nevins from Simeon Cloud, whose insights were so sharp, they could cut through a Gouda wheel at twenty paces. And hold onto your clogs, because the lineup was crowned by none other than Jeff Teper, the president of Microsoft 365 himself!

Our hosts kicked things off with the tale of Simeon Cloud's birth and its journey to being scooped up by the eagle-eyed CoreView. It was like a Silicon Valley fairy tale, except the hero's a cloud and the magic beans are lines of code.

Kas and David tag-teamed the mic to unravel the problems SimeonCloud solves, and let me tell you, their solutions are smoother than a well-aged Jenever. It was a deep dive into the nitty-gritty of cloud management, so detailed you could almost see the pixels.

But folks, the pièce de résistance was Jeff Teper's first-hand commentary on how Copilot has flipped the Microsoft ecosystem on its head. It's like the wheel, sliced bread, and those little plastic things on the ends of shoelaces all rolled into one. Teper waxed lyrical about Copilot's transformative powers, painting a future so bright, we're going to need shades made of SPF 100.

With a Special theme tune for EPSC @ CoreView the boys are joined by Kasia Nowicka, Kas to friends, to launch a series of podcasts directly from ESPC recorded live from the CoreView Stand in the Exhibition Hall 

Value is not always easy to find when thinking about all aspects of M365.  Applications focus on functionality, and new solutions are set up without considering what is required to maintain the operational production needs.

In this podcast by the boys, we look at all the places value is hidden or lost.  Check out the meeting of Opportunity Cost, Technical Debt, or Culture Debt.

Finally, we get to a Durvelish Spirit that is rare and lucky to have landed in the hands of this podcast duo... 

The Podcast will now be formally known as M365Distilled... the name the boys finally landed on after a few amusing alternatives as we introduce Misky365 and Miss Stilled.

This is a strange podcast that takes a few statements from Darrell as a Service, which Steve refined into:

• No Adoption without User Governance
• Because user Governance Drives Adoption
• Adoption plus Governance is managed change

So, Steve started a conversation, and the boys just talked about it... coming together with a little basic knowledge about Adoption and Governance and proving the above statements are the basis for Adoption and Governance.

What comes out of this podcast are several statements that can be used as a basis for defining your governance and adaptive paths.

Here they are:

• Microsoft default Settings are a form of governance.
• Viral Governance is a tool that works in many organisations.
• Governance is actually tough to do... even if you have a plan.
• Adoption and good Governance may or may not drive better change (the jury is still out).

Finally, the Golden Nugget from Marijn is...   Adoption plus Change drives Sexy Change.

It is a sin that Steve and Marijn have never shared with you the annual release of Cairdeas whisky from Laphroaig, so we tasted the 2023 version and atoned for that sin.

The boys review the events visited and the future speaking opportunities for this year.  And then recall a conversation over lunch bounced from the CollabDay Belgium presentation.  Pieter was looking at MS Team growth with the few years with COVID driving many applications to be thrown over the wall at the users.

Value is discussed by comparing the various Project management methods working out, which adds so much value to the business for a limited spend.   We then throw in Risk, adoption training and eventually applications and understand the size of the work needed to be successful within each of the delivery management levels.

Then, Cloud features are discussed and compared to underwear and socks. It requires regular changes in small iterations... but each of the applications is compared against of the project methods to understand the work associated with the methodology.

And Marijn cannot resist moving away from T-Shirt sizes to 3-piece suits and mankinis.

Finally, a Whisky is tasted from Vascu’s birthday collection, the Ardbeg Galileo. 

Steve is in a mood and Marijn is suffering big time... We are trying to identify all the end-user apps that need governance and adoption and how much work is required.  Marijn says all Outlook versions are the same and don’t need re-training, but Steve is being an arse and saying the difference is important.

Marijn is slowly getting convinced to listen in and check how Steve bullies him into believing that he is right...  yes, feel sorry for him.
Steve says  “ I do apologise, brother, I gave you a hard time” ... “But it was fun recording this” 
We decide that there are loads of Apps and nearly impossible an export all of them except Yannick who has a superpower as a member of the M365 Force.

The conclusion is that we try and count the total applications and don’t reach a conclusion because the number is huge (in context) and stopped counting at 80+ and started to really panic when we suddenly realised we had not considered Apple, Android and Mobile apps.

The boys finish by going Cheap with their whisky bought on the way back from South Coast Summit and on the boat... they found a bargain...  White Cask is a Speyside Malt which surprises both of them.

Firstly if you want to  Governance at the South Coast Summit (join their workshop at Practical Microsoft 365 Baseline Governance – South Coast Summit ), it is Last chance folks...

The Boys from Office365Distilled want to talk about focus, the ability for people to move the company forward through an understanding of goals, or the Viva Goals of the company.

At the recent Collabdays in the UK, at the National Computing Museum, an excellent place that everyone should visit if they visit the UK and are in computing in any way forward.

Looking at the definition of OKR and how Viva Goals helps organisations fix the vision of their Objectives and Key results... goal setting and reporting as a process managed by a tool.

In their Collab days presentation, great demonstrations are described here... and then we talk about GoldCock!!

This is the whisky that Marijn tasted in Prague and found at the airport on the way home and just had to buy a bottle... even if it is to keep saying the work and all the jokes on this podcast.

There is a new model described that helps understand the value of Viva Goals which is described before Marijn and Steve drink their GoldCock!!

But after this, there is a little revelation about adoption of Viva Goals...