Kristen Hosman on The MVP Show

today's guest is all away from denver denver colorado in the u s a she's a president and senior consultant at mount evans consulting she's and i'll get it to correct me if i'm wrong but second as an m v p she is a co host of the microsopt n v p woman in tech the untold stories which we're going to unpack that in a moment because i think that's fantastic you can find her on twitter christine holman or her blog christine hlsman dot com welcome to the show christen

thank you mark for having me happy to be here

so good to have you on the show um let's correct anything i got wrong there first of all the podcast is that correct v p woman in tech the untold story

yeah that is correct

awesome because i was just on with mary thompson doing another podcast recording and is she one of your co host with you is that right

yeah mary thompson and shannon mullins they're both co host with me

awesome so now this is just purely coincidental that she mentioned

okay

the untold story and then coming and i'm getting ready for this and i'm like well hang on you are one of the people running that show that's fantastic now did i get your name and everything your website and your twitter handle correct

yes you did

awesome good to go people can find you will make sure but that is details in the show note so before we get started always like to get to know who you are where you're from and and that type of things kind of like tell us a bit about colorado i've not been there yet denver i've not been there yet tell us a bit about family what's your favorite food and what do you do for fun

all right well so denver colorado is actually known as the mile high city so the

oh

elevation is fifty two hundred seventy nine feet so if you've never been to vern you come into

wow

denver and you're not used to being at a little bit of a higher elevation than you're probably you know going to get headaches or something like that so i always tell people coming to denver o make sure to prep at least a week beforehand by drinking just a lot more water right um i actually

okay

live about forty five minutes south west of denver in a small community called pine junction and we're actually at eighty four hundred feet in elevation so quite a big quite

wow

a bit of difference b between denver and where i'm at um another fact about

yeah

colorado is that we have fifty eight mountain

oh

peaks exceeding fourteen thousand feet

wow

so

that's

yeah

amazing that's amazing

it's

i can see why you get so much snow

yeah yeah it was actually sixty degrees at my house yesterday

yeah

and then today it was snowing so um people like to joke that colorado has very big polar weather so that's always fun

it's that's

but i didn't always

yeah

live in colorado

oh

i actually moved here about five and a half years ago and i was born and raised in minnesota so i'm used to bitter cold and no longer winters

yeah

so i moved here about five and a half years ago with my family i have two little boys nine and eleven

oh

and you know some of the things we like to do here since moving here is snow arding dart biking deeping you know uh people want to go hike you know a fourteen

oh

er and i just want to get in my

oh

jeep and drive up right um

nice

m

nice

so those are just kind of the fun things that

wow

we like to do you know camping very outdoors y area we live in so

yeah i love it my experience of course with colorado is by david and julie yak because i've done a lot of work with them because of any peas for a very long time and so that's kind of my total exposure and the other fun fact or like about colorado which i found out when i went to do a bungy jump is that colorado has the highest bungy jump platform in the world

oh i'm gonna have to look that up

have you done bungy jumping

um i haven't bungy jumps

oh

but in los vegas the stratus phere you can jump off of the stratusphere and i have done that i'm all about like going to the extreme

yeah

rill seeker you know so

yeah

i'm going to look it up because i haven't heard that one yet

yeah i did i've done the highest bungy jump in new zealand and that was phenomenal but when i was looking like who has the highest in the world colorado comes up as as the location and i don't know that it's open all year round it's only opened for a certain period of time but it's the highest in the world so

okay

it's a lot of time free falling before the rubber band pulls you backwards

yeah

that would

oh

be pretty phenomenal

yeah that would

yeah

be pretty crazy

um anyhow

uh

i'm very keen to know about your podcast and really get the listeners to go take a listen and and subscribe to it tell us around tell us about what microsoft mvp woman and tack the untold story is all about what's the angle i love this title the untold story so keen to hear about it

yeah so the podcast was born actually by shannon mullan so neither mary or i can take credit for that but shannon

oh

had approached us up a year and a half ago

yeah

with the idea of actually you know having

yeah

this monthly meet up where

oh

us three would get together we would invite another woman within the community usually an m v p m to come and just join the show and in what we really talk

oh

out is just how to empower women

ah

to get into tech um so we've had a couple meet up where we've actually talked about

ye

starting blogs

oh

you know starting social media how do you get

oh

yourself out there you know where do you go to speak and in different things like that you know and we've also had some of the harder conversations as well about you know things in our career that has happened to us as women but we try and

oh

keep it very light we we are not trying to bash

okay

anyone gender in particular we've had a lot of

yeah

males actually join our meet up and what we found talking with them afterwards is

oh

that they found it they just it was an eye opener for them right like

yeah

one of our first ones mary had talked about a situation where she she worked for a partner that kind of made her feel uncomfortable when she was going on client visits and it was a real eye opener that conversation just to see how you know women are treated out and about at conferences you know network in events and different things like that so um and we've also empowered

okay

a lot of women to like join

oh

and teck more recently we've had teachers who have i mean we don't know them they found us somewhere along the way and they've joined our meet up and um they felt empowered to get into the tech industry so

oh

i think really the cool

oh

thing about it is that you know we're just empowering women you know people who have never really been in tech as well to take a look

oh

and see what it has to offer oh

this is so cool this is so cool and and we need we need more of it you know ve been to a range of conferences where there there have been women in text sessions and i've attended s and you're so right there's some discussions that a lot of people sorry some discussions that need to head that a lot of people are unaware of there's a need for education and i think you know very compelling that people look to people that look like them you know in that position so the more the more

yeah exactly i was just at directions north america last week and i was on the panel for the women and dynamics luncheon

oh

and very light hearted you know light

oh

conversation and taking the audience

okay

questions and just really talking about my journey coming in technology which happened gosh it's been like thirteen

oh

years ago already i started as an accountant and then you know kind of moved my

m

way up but throughout

hm

my career i've always been mentored by by men um and you know if i look back at my career i don't know that i would

oh

be exactly where i am today if it wasn't for specific men on the way and i told this story during this luncheon and right

yeah

afterwards i had this gal come up to me and she was crying and everyone had kind of left the room it was

oh

just her and i in there an she told me that i told her story like you know it was nice for her come and actually

right

be in a room with other women and men and feel empowered and i think that's that you know

yeah

that's that's what we need right now you know

oh

we're not trying to bash one under like i said before but we're just trying to get everybody to feel empowered

no

in that is where they belong if they want

yeah

to be here

i love it i love it so

ah

tell us a bit about the show format how do you run it what's your type of frequency and where can people find it

yeah so we try and run one

yeah

once a month and it's just through a met up

nice

so you can go on me up and i can get you that link to include as well in and we have a couple of hundred

awesome

people that that are on the meat up and it's very low key we usually like i said earlier have

yeah

a guest and we always kind of

yeah

come up with some sort a topic beforehand um cameras are optional people are just so active in the chat you know we're going back and forth answering questions and it's

yeah

it's very just low key you know usually an hour we record it so if you miss it you can catch it on youtube later on so you can go out there and find

nice

find all those out there that we've done in the past yeah just just a good time good time and

awesome so

if

we'll

there's

make sure we include that in the show notes

right right and there's someone mark listening you know to to this podcast right now and you're interested in

oh

now becoming an m v p or even interested in co

yeah

hosting with us you have something that you want to talk about

oh

you now feel free to reach out to one of us because we definitely would love to have one who wants to talk about something you know on on there

oh i like it i like it tell us about your journey to becoming an m v p

my journey started about two two years ago i got a phone call from

oh

steve endow he's a microsoph v p out of harry's based ota lafornia and he had given me a call and basically

yeah

said hey what do you think about this do you want

yeah

to be nominated and at the time i was just shocked that he would even

oh

think of that i had been talking with belinda allen

oh

you know months previously about working my way to kind of get to this point as she had some good advice for me at that time and i was working towards that and never did i think you know that

oh

someone would approach me um kind of thing so he approached me and it was summer of twenty to one m and i took about two weeks to get back to him because i was just kind of like so shocked and just trying to process at all and talking with everybody about you know was at the right time was i doing what i needed to be doing you know i was speaking at conferences at that point i was blogging i was active with user groups so i was doing all the right things you know to get that nomination i

oh

so i gave him

yeah

the green light and september first twenty twenty is when i got that email and you know after you get nominated

yeah

you're kind of on these pins and needles right because every month like and you're

yeah

while you know first thing in the morning and i took my boys to school that day

correct

and i don't have any reception like once i leave my house and then take them the opposite way i don't get receptions i took them to

oh

school and that wasn't until like i don't know like nine o five i got home in the morning and i checked my email and i had i had the email you know but but kind of going back to steve in do you know talking with him at that time he had went to um the m v p summit and he didn't see very many females there at that time he's been very open about you know wanting to get more them m v p so he's on a mission um mary shannon and i are on a mission

yah

um

oh

i specialize in business central there's about thirty b c v p is world wide and only five females and i think all the men they're all developers

yeah

i'm not sure

yeah

if a lot of them are functional

yeah

but you know we're on a mission and over the next few years you know especially with the b c i think we're going to see a lot more

yeah

women m v p s coming coming into the space

i love it i love it i love it this is so cool any advice just as we wrap up any advice you'd give to folks that either they don't know how to become an n v p or they want to become an n v p m that you that you kind of give to people

yeah i mean i think the biggest thing is putting yourself out there right so starting a blog and you can start a blog on anything i like to tell people take issues that you've seen in business central like it could be like a support case that a client sends you turn it into a blog um some of the highest hip blogs i have

oh

are some things that i would think you know everybody would know how to do but you know they're they're hitting my blog and i'm not a great blog writer

oh

so you don't

i

have to be the best writer you just have to put it out there

oh

the other thing i would say is is speaking at conferences or doing interviews like this um you know if you're nervous about speaking out of conference there are tons of speakers out ther m v p is non m v p s um that are willing to co present with you there's a lot of conferences out there that you can reach out to and just say hey i have an idea but i'm not really you know wanting to do it by myself and they can find you a co speaker so those are the two things that i would say