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Last week, I had the privilege of doing a live demo during the bi-weekly “Viva Connections & SharePoint Framework” community call hosted by Microsoft. This was my first time presenting in one of these calls, so I was a little nervous, but once the lights are on, all nerves disappear and there is no other option but to press on.

The topic I chose to demonstrate was “Upgrading SPFx solutions to the latest version using the CLI for Microsoft 365.” Whew, that’s a little wordy, but accurately describes the subject. You can watch the full video below, and find the links mentioned in the video at the bottom of this post.

I recently had the opportunity to join the crew from Community Cloudcast to discuss the true cost of moving to the cloud. Normally, the show has three hosts: Eric Shupps, Jason Himmelstein, and Paul McCollum.


Unfortunately, Jason and Paul were not available, so Eric and I tackled the subject on our own. As always, discussions with Eric are very informative, as well as entertaining.

You can watch the entire webcast below. I had a lot of fun doing this and hope to be invited back for future discussions.

In just under 2 months (May 9-13, 2022), I have the opportunity to present several sessions the the Microsoft 365 EduCon Conference. I’m really excited to join this conference as we move back to more in-person events. As I have stated many times, I think the real value in conferences is networking at all levels: Business Partners, Speakers, Vendors, as well as fellow professionals and enthusiasts. Content is awesome, but meeting people that you can contact after the conference is key to advancing your skills and professional development. Bring your business cards and collect as many as you can for your future.

This will be short, since I can’t talk about details without getting in trouble. Microsoft hosts an annual Hackathon for their employees and this year, for the first time, they allowed MVPs and RDs to participate. Since I had never participated in a Hackathon before, I was eager to see what the experience was like.

One of the biggest challenges was just picking which project(s) you want to be a part of. There were hundreds! And while the hackathon is just a few days long, many of the projects are much bigger than can be accomplished in a few days, so they continue long after the hackathon is complete.

I recently was awarded the Community Contributor recognition badge from the Microsoft Patterns & Practices (PnP) team! While it is nice to receive recognition, my support for this open-community effort goes far beyond recognition.

PnP has been a consistent part of my professional development for many years, and I credit the program with a large part of my growth as a developer. The “old” PnP was a Microsoft program where you could learn the “best practices” for building code in SharePoint, which has been my primary development focus for almost 15 years. I am not sure exactly when the program changed to be community focused and driven, but that change has led to the rapid growth of educational materials in the SharePoint space and is now growing into the much larger areas of Microsoft 365, Microsoft Teams, Power Platform, and so much more. The future of this effort could not be brighter. We no longer use the term “best practice,” as this program will introduce you to many ways to accomplish a task. The “best” way may depend on your “use case” or just your preference of one pattern over several “equally as good” patterns.

Conferences are slowing coming back and I am personally looking forward to talking to attendees, sponsors, and speakers in person again. First on the agenda this year is the M365 Collaboration Conference (formally the SharePoint Conference) in Orlando, FL, Jun 8-10. The “big” conference is still scheduled for Las Vegas in December, but this is a hybrid event that promises to be an exciting time as we transition from the virtual world we have lived in for the past year. I am honored to be chosen to deliver a couple of sessions during the conference and am looking forward to the trip.