This quarter, the MVP Award has been extended to the Office 365 technical expertise. Eight MVPs have been awarded as Office 365 MVPs! As apart of our "MVP Monday" series, we have reached out to these MVPs and asked them to talk about the product and share helpful tips, tricks, and insight. Today, we would like you to get to know them a little better!
Have a look at the below interviews for some fun questions and answers!
Office 365 MVP: Chad Mosman
Q. What does being an MVP mean to you? (How did you feel to be awarded an MVP?)
A. The thing I like most about being an MVP is being part of a community that is passionate about the technology and helping others. The MVP award isn’t something you can buy or get study guides to help you attain, you get it by working hard and earning the respect of your peers in the technical community, and that is what really makes it special.
Q. What are you most excited about or looking forward to in Office 365?
A. 2 things, ADFS and Remote PowerShell. For large organizations ADFS has tremendous potential to cut down on the password issues you run into with BPOS and should make for a much better user experience. Remote PowerShell, because it’s so powerful and gives control back to Administrators. I just love the PowerShell in general.
Q. What is your motto?
A. It’s not really a motto, but more words to live by from Henry Ford, “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you are probably right.” It’s all about keeping a positive mental attitude and believing in yourself.
Q. What was the last movie you saw? OR What was the last book you read?
A. Last movie was True Grit.
Office 365 MVP: Myles Jeffery
Q. What does being an MVP mean to you? (How did you feel to be awarded an MVP?)
A. It’s great to have my input to the Office 365 community recognized. It shows that someone is watching and taking note of what ordinary people like me contribute day in day out. Being an MVP gives me a sense of greater responsibility and a feeling of pride.
Q. What are you most excited about or looking forward to in Office 365?
A. For me, Office 365 represents a mountain of untapped potential. There has been a wave of interest building up in the cloud through BPOS, but still there are many businesses that have been holding back for various reasons. Office 365 will be the catalyst that really opens the flood gates and gets these businesses to harness the power of cloud. No longer will the cloud be a buzzword, it will be the standard for most businesses to run on.
Q. What is your motto?
A. My motto is “achieve your potential”. I am an entrepreneur at heart. I believe that everyone has the ability to achieve what they want with the right support. For me, the cloud is that great enabler that gives ambitious businesses that platform to achieve their potential.
Q. What was the last movie you saw? OR What was the last book you read?
A. The Hobbit. I’m still reading it; to my daughter. She loves the Lord of the Rings movies so I promised I’d read her the Hobbit until that comes out on the big screen. But with a release date of end of 2012 we are having to set a very slow reading pace!
Office 365 MVP: Arnaud Alcabez
Q. What does being an MVP mean to you? (How did you feel to be awarded an MVP?)
A. My first nomination in 2004 was a surprise, because I did not know the content of the MVP program. Until 2010, I shared special instants with the Exchange teams and I would like to thank them for their encouragement and their availability to share their knowledge with their MVPs. This is the main advantage which I see: an annual pass to allow discussing equal to equal with Microsoft’s internal teams. After some years, I consider the renewal Microsoft MVP recognition as a good metric of my commitment. Being a MVP, I need to know how to share my knowledge with others and how I can improve it. Day after day, it is difficult to make sure if I respect this practice. The recognition as MVP is a good method to assess it. I would like to say thank you to my employer, Capgemini, where I work as Office 365 technical expert to bring its support in this recognition. And the last, but not the least, the MVP recognition is a ticket to promote the French culture and expertise and maybe to destroy clichés (for example: Always ready to criticize ;-)) about the strange French people. ;-)
Q. What are you most excited about or looking forward to in Office 365?
A. One of the major shifts for Microsoft is to achieve its move to the cloud computing, and transform its applications so that they can work in different modes to correspond to the needs of each firm (on premise, hybrid, online). I am therefore very passionate to follow it, and if I can it, give my small contribution in this change. Microsoft Office 365 has the best trumps to be a decisive SaaS to favor the adoption to the cloud computing. Besides, two of applications who compose offer Office365 – Exchange Microsoft and SharePoint Microsoft – won the award price of « InfoWorld Technology of the Year 2011 » in their respective categories.
Q. What is your motto?
A. “We’re all in”. Behind this motto, two valuable things: The first one is to say that we are all interconnected. The second is to say that we have a collective liability to build all together our future.
Q. What was the last movie you saw? OR What was the last book you read?
A. Vápnfirðinga saga and þórðar saga hreðu: Two Icelandic sagas. Fan of Iceland, I am under the charm of Icelandic human values and of fantastic landscapes which gives the country. It is also ideally located exactly on the rift valley between Europe and the United States. Halldor*, you can call me when you want if you look for an Office 365 MVP ;-) *Halldor Jorgensson is the country manager of Microsoft Iceland :-))
Office 365 MVP: Brett Hill
Q. What does being an MVP mean to you? (How did you feel to be awarded an MVP?)
A. When I was awarded the MVP, my wife and I drank champagne. It means a great deal to me cause I’m really passionate about technology and work at contributing useful content to the community. Having an MVP is like instant status when you meet people and that goes a very long way, not because I’m want to be all that important, but because when you know something real about technology and you’re providing expertise to people, if you have an MVP, people are more likely to value what you say which is good cause MVP’s know what they are talking about. In addition, the MVP community is a great group of people that a smart, on the edge of the technology wave, good communicators and when get a few of them together – can be known to have a good time.
Q. What are you most excited about or looking forward to in Office 365?
A. Office 365 is going to go wild. When I saw the feature set for Office 365 for Small Business, it had to check with some people as I was thinking “this can’t be true. That’s just too good a deal to believe” and it’s been a long time since I had that feeling (lol). But is was true and the package of features you get with Office 365 is an incredible value. When businesses get the message about what features they can have the price point, there will be tsunami of onboarding activity. While Exchange Online is what gets people to talk about on line services, I’ve become something of a SharePoint fanboy lately. I’m lucky enough to have a SharePoint Online account in the Office 365 beta and am actually using the sharing features to invite people I work with to my document library where they can check in and check out documents we are collaborating on. That has been very easy to use and is already providing a great value. Take that to scale in a larger company and the cost benefits are clear. And that’s just one feature of one service! There are too many to review , but I would suggest people interested in Office365 head over to Office365anwers.com and click on the Office365 resource page. Take a look at the Office 365 beta service description for Exchange Online and SharePoint Online. If you’re like me your thinking “I get all this for $10 a month? Wow!”
Q. What is your motto?
A. Hard to pick just one. One of my favorites was something I learned from a wise man who said to me “ When dealing with a complex subject, approach it simply”. This has been a real guide to me when wrestling how to explain or teach some technology, or being to solve a problem. I supposed another one would be “do no harm.”
Q. What was the last movie you saw? OR What was the last book you read?
A. I am reading “Against the Machine – Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob” by Lee Siegel. Very interesting stuff that asking us to evaluate the impact of technology on human relationships.
Office 365 MVP: Daniel Trautman
Q. What does being an MVP mean to you? (How did you feel to be awarded an MVP?)
A. Being an MVP, to me, means that I have shown initiative to proactively assist people with situations where documentation has not yet been developed or solutions not yet found. It also means that I am dedicated to perform to the best of my abilities whenever possible in order to accomplish this.
Q. What are you most excited about or looking forward to in Office 365?
A. To be able to provide the control of an on-premise environment in a cloud-based experience (and the ability to find new and inventive ways of providing required business solutions).
Q. What is your motto?
A. “K.I.S.” Keep It Simple. Too often do people over-complicate their lives in order to achieve very simple goals. If you want to be happy, smile at someone; knowing you have made someone else’s day better by simply being there and showing you care is the best feeling in the world.
Q. What was the last movie you saw? OR What was the last book you read?
A. The last book I read was “Spook Country” by William Gibson, but, my favorite is still Cryptonomicon by Neil Stephenson which is a very complex story of cryptography, covert missions, and the explosive growth of the Internet (and buried treasure).
Office 365 MVP: Zoltan Zombory
Q. What does being an MVP mean to you? (How did you feel to be awarded an MVP?)
A. I have been working with Microsoft technologies since more than 15 years ago. More than a year ago I had started to share my knowledge with the community, which is a great and new experience for me. The MVP award is a big honor for me. I hope being closer to Microsoft opens me a new world of possibilities and knowledge.
Q. What are you most excited about or looking forward to in Office 365?
A. It is a possibility for the smaller companies to have Enterprise level IT. Originally I worked for multinational company, currently I am a business owner and my company has small business customers as well. Finally we can bring the latest technology to all of our customers.
Q. What is your motto?
A. Technology makes us better. Hundred year ago only the photographers had photo machines, now everybody can have it and share it in the cloud in seconds.
Q. What was the last movie you saw? OR What was the last book you read?
A. The last movie I had seen in theatre was Avatar, I science fiction is my Favorite. My last book I read was about Forefront TMG.