Welcome to the MVP Show . My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills . If you have not checked it out already , I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP . The link is in the show notes . With that , let's get on with the show .
Today's guest is from France . He works at AvePoint as a solutions engineer . He is first awarded as MVP in 2020 . He has a vision to deliver value to end users around starting small , think big and fail fast , which I love and ask why lots . You can find links to his bio and social media in the show notes for this episode . Welcome to the show , Jeff .
Thank you , mark , thank you for having me today .
It's so good to have you on the show . You come from one of the most beautiful places in the world , france . Tell me before we get started food , family and fun what do they mean to you ?
Yeah , I'm actually from . My dad is from Small Island , renewan Island , so food , family and fun is all about this island , regan Island so it means a lot , and I've been two years in Singapore so you might know that food is a religion there , so it's a lot on my plate about this .
Just on Singapore . What was the best thing about the food there ?
Oh , the fact is the fact that the food is coming from everywhere . You can go to those food courts where you have some table in the middle . People book it with their phone , so that it's so safe . You know they put their phone to book the table and then you can get food from Southeast Asia , philippines , indonesia , yeah , asian food . So you can .
It's a bit like our job . You can get a taste of everything every day .
Did you ever go to ? Did you ever go to one of the hotels in Singapore for a bottomless brunch , like you get eat and drink as much as you wanted , did you ?
ever do , one of those in the .
Singapore hotels . Yeah , buffet .
Yeah , yeah , definitely Not enough . If I knew I was going to leave , I would have gone every week maybe , but now it's good . I mean , you have some lobster and good food for quite cheap .
Exactly , I couldn't get over it . It'd be like a flash hotel and then the food was just amazing and , of course , yeah , you go with a group of people and it's just an incredible time and it's definitely a highlight of Singapore for me .
Yeah , among the visits to do and the fun food is a good activity there .
Yeah , what made you go to Singapore ? Was it for work ?
Yeah , it was for work . I spent four years working in Paris and I was like , why not try Asia again ? Because I did study one year in China and I really enjoyed the multicultural context . I wanted to also improve my English and , yeah , that made me go to Singapore . I think it was just before I mean way before COVID .
I remember I did my interview using Skype and I got the job through Skype , you know , without going there . It was back in 2015 . So kind of an exception , let's say . And I got an IT service company to develop some internet for the Singapore government there . So really nice projects . And , yeah , I actually apply for different jobs and I got Singapore .
Wow , and did you say you spent a year in China ?
Yeah , in Changin , next to Beijing . That was thanks to my study . Thanks to my study , my school allowed us to go . We could go to Canada , usa and China . So I told myself back in 2011, . I think it's a chance that I can do that , because at that time it was not so open . The language barrier is quite a big gap .
I don't know , you're Chinese , but mine sucks . So I took this opportunity and went there for Olympic Games 2008 as well .
Wow , wow , and can you speak Mandarin now ?
No enough to impress people . But after they go deeper into the conversation I'm like no , I don't understand . Just to say hello and survive , let's say , in China .
Yes , yes , yeah , it's an amazing country . Amazing country . Tell me , what do you do now ? Where is your career ? What type of projects do you work on nowadays ? No-transcript .
Nowadays I'm a pre-sales for F-Point . F-point is a software company that builds software for Microsoft 365 customer . Let's say most of the products are on this . There's also for Salesforce , but the most is on Microsoft 365 . As a solution engineer , I help the potential customer understand the value of what they can get from the software .
There's a lot of listening what they want to do , their pain points . Sometimes they don't know their pain points so we try to understand what are the risks nowadays in the context of Microsoft 365 . Then it can be activities like helping them showing the use case about the product , of course , demonstrating the product and get them started with the trial .
I still have to learn a lot about Microsoft because you've always been asked this question what's F-Point better doing than Microsoft and also against other competitors ? It's still in my . I have 10 years experience in Microsoft 365 , I mean N , sharepoint and Primize . I'm still on the same topics , but on a different aspect of it .
Let's say You've been recently working with a large French company taking advantage of the Power Platform . Tell me more about your experience on that , any challenges , achievements and what you're doing there .
Yeah , that was my previous experience After COVID . A lot of companies , as you know , they moved to cloud or they moved to Teams right , this company . They had a huge digital transformation in place . When I joined they just started moving to Teams and migrating to Outlook from Lotus . Not if you can imagine the big change .
It's a cleaning company . I hate Lotus Not .
Yeah , I never had the chance to try it . It's a cleaning company , so not the most tech-friendly , let's say they had a lot of paperwork , not a lot of digital systems , so the local was a great opportunity for them to put the digital right in the hand of the people cleaning the airplane . Maybe .
If I give you an example , we created one of the first proof of concept we have done for the low code before deploying it more largely through a center of excellence . One of the POC was the cleaner . When they come into the airplane , they only have eight minutes to clean the airplane before the next assignment , let's say .
Rather than when they see a problem , they could report that to the pilot or to the team that is there . Usually they tell the manager , the manager write it down . Instead of that , they have an app which is a power app and straight away they can take the picture of the problem .
For example , if the wing of the airplane is scratched , for example , if they can see that , or if a belt is broken while they clean , they can report that . This is improving the quality of the future . What did you say ? Flight , let's say , because those cleaner they are the eye of their customer . It's not only cleaner .
So , yeah , and what did I do for them was to create a center of excellence to let people create their application , but in a safe context , security context , and also which tool to provide them , because there's so many power with Power Platform that if you just throw every tool to no 90 people , they might get lost right .
So we define the governance , we help them create an application and we try to get more known . And two , three years ago , we went to Microsoft in Paris to present during a conference what we have been doing for this in this company . So , yeah , I'm happy to achieve this with this previous company .
Wow , it's great . Do you find your workers more centered around SharePoint nowadays , or is it more centered around the Power Platform ?
In my current job or in general .
In general .
Oh , in general I would say we're on copilot now . I mean , it's not every day , but for me now every day is a lot about talking about governance , copilot readiness in terms of security and classification of data , and also the governance of teams , guests and Power Platform .
So in your day-to-day work , so personally now are you doing more with Power Platform or more with SharePoint ?
I would say more with Microsoft 365 in general . Now I'm exposed to stuff I was not exposed before . For example , before I never knew that there were quota on SharePoint and some company actually go over this quota , so I proposed them solutions to archive this data , et cetera . So it's still around SharePoint , because the data is in SharePoint .
But yeah , it's about data , let's say About the data . And maybe 30% of my time is about Power Platform governance , so how to go at scale with local and still know what's going on . So that's about automating some tasks . To ask the end user why did you create this ? And yeah , it's really specific to iPhone product , I would say .
But since I have to stay up to date , I also keep myself up to date with Microsoft 365 .
Obviously , Microsoft's talking a lot about copilot . What are you hearing from customers ? Are they requesting a lot around copilot ?
Yeah , before it was 300 license as a start . Right Now it's more open . I know some are doing some pilot and straight from the beginning they are a bit worried about the security . Like are my access permissions right ? Does my user has correct access to stuff ? I don't want to find the salary of the big boss .
Let's say , if I request copilot , so yeah , more and more . But more and more partners I mean IT Services Company that also want to build their offer about how can we help our customer to have a security review , for example , to help them to classify the data . So I talk a lot with potential partners that could resell fPoint .
They want to understand which value can we bring for copilot preparation .
Let's say yeah , preparation is a big thing . How did you ? In 2020 , you became an MVP . How did you become an MVP ? What was the process ?
Well , in 2018 , I was working in an IT Service Company and I got a chance to go to ESPC Copenhagen if I'm correct , dublin , sorry , dublin first one and I was following MVP online , getting to know a lot from them . To me , they were like the stars , you know , like nobody I could talk to , you know .
So when I went to ESPC , I get to meet a lot of people , including Patrick Guimonnais and Gokhan , for example , and they took me around to the people they know , the sponsor and I discovered this beautiful community and I'm like , okay , why not myself ?
Or so I will try to speak at some conference , and I had this opportunity to organize some conference in the southeast of France . We are live now in Nice , so I organized one conference , I participate to another one .
The second year , I organized another conference and then , okay , I tried to get MVP and in 2020 , I got M265 MVP for two years , and then I switched category to business apps in 2023 .
Do you now co- ? As an ? You can have two classifications . Do you still have M365 , or are you just fully in the bzeps now ?
Only BISapps now , but I would say it's thanks to the . I do a lot of talking about governance , about four platform . So yeah , under BISapps today .
Excellent . So you're using the COE Starter Kit as part of that governance discussion .
Before , when I work in my previous company , we did something ourselves , and now it's more about how in terms of process . How do we do governance ? And also speak about F point , product , but also , yeah , COE Starter Kit as well a little bit , but that's more about process .
Let's say and so , when you look at your MVP tenure and your time as an MVP , do you what's your go-to when it comes to creating content for the community ? Are you more a public speaker ? Are you more YouTube ? Are you more blog posts ? What works for you ?
Blog post was until two years ago . Now , more about micro blogging . Let's say , on LinkedIn , publishing some tips about Microsoft Teams , Any tool I use in Microsoft 365 as a user . Let's say , that's how I started really sharing knowledge . Let's say , and yeah , share also about Copilot and poor platform . And then I do public speaking and co-organizing conferences .
For example , the next one is in Paris Modern Workplace Conference .
Nice , nice . Tell me about the public speaking side of things and this is more around . What is your process for deciding one , what topic you're gonna speak on , and then , how do you structure your presentation ? And I'm asking this question because other people wanting to become MVP's , they're thinking about these things right , like how do I choose my topic ?
How do I structure a presentation ? Do I do some demo ? What's your thought process for when you're gonna do a presentation ?
Yeah , first of all , when you submit some talk , you wanna be chosen right , so you have to find a topic that maybe stands out from others . So I know today for sure people are gonna propose Copilot . There gonna be a lot of submitted session about it . So I think it's a good topic , but risky as well . So there's some topics that always come back .
Generally , I did about governance for platform because I know there's a lot about citizen development or pro development and not a lot about governance . So I chose governance . Nowadays I know teams has been left out a little bit , so I'm trying to propose some what's new with teams , what's best practice to manage it . So still around governance .
So let's say I would say , choose what you like first of all , and trying to think what could be accepted and submit few sessions to get more chance . That's for the topic . And then how to prepare it . Well , if it's a 30 minute session , you might not have time for a demo .
I would say I mean you could have time , but it's a bit risky if you want to have Q&A session et cetera . If you have 45 minutes , then it's more comfortable for a demo . I would say so when I have 30 minutes . I just put some screenshot , like animated in PowerPoint , just to open some discussion and knowledge to people .
And if you make yeah , the last point is how to structure the presentation . So before I would say I do it naturally , where you put the problem statement at first , or the opportunity , then the solution and then what's the benefit out of it . And I was trying to learn new ways . So just I think two days ago I got those two techniques .
So , yeah , one is problem slash , opportunity , solution , benefit . And the one is talk about the product , the what . Then you explain the why , so what can I do with this product ? And the last one is the what can I do next with this product , like , should I try it ? Should I try to find some use case ? So it's always three steps .
And , yeah , find time to interact with the audience from right , from the beginning . I guess makes you feel more comfortable and less stress , and also spend some time on question at the end , because it's about all about sharing knowledge , right .
I love it . I love it . Those are brilliant tips . The last thing I wanted to just get your insight on you talked about micro blogging on LinkedIn , and I'm seeing a lot more of this . What's your ?
Is LinkedIn your main tool that you're using these days as and from a social interaction perspective in the community , and tell me about what you think about when it comes to micro blogging ?
Yeah , initially I tried Twitter and LinkedIn , and I don't know if it's since it became X , but even a few time a time ago , I stopped using Twitter because I feel like it become a bit too much of just pictures and not a lot of value added content .
So I kind of switch gear to fully LinkedIn , because I feel it's every post I find value in it , and when I say micro blogging , I am not talking about the article , I'm really talking about the post in LinkedIn . Yeah , and now we see more and more content because also of co-pilot .
I remember I feel I was one of the first one putting emoji , you know , back in 2018 in your post , when I discovered this beautiful shortcut and now everybody has emoji . Yes , yes . So I mean , we have a job on the side , right ? So to my planning , it's fitting better because I'd say , in my daily job I discover something .
It's quick for me to schedule a post on LinkedIn or just post it straight away . So , yeah , that's one of the techniques as well . My colleague tells me how do you do you ? You post things in teams , in Yammer , inside the company . You're also post on LinkedIn . I say , yeah , I don't work .
Well , I do work , but sometimes I plan some posts maybe at that time now for the next morning , because I know the audience is not connected at this moment . So what's the point ?
Yeah , so true . Final question what advice would you give to people that want to become an MVP ? I would say never give up .
I try myself three times and all I did was sharing knowledge , and one day it happened .
Hey , thanks for listening On your host business application , mvp Mark Smith , otherwise known as the NZ365 guy . If you like the show and want to be a supporter , check out buymeacoffeecom forward slash . Nz365 guy . Thanks again and see you next time .