Video Transcript

Hi my name is Jeff Willinger J Willie on Twitter
and I am super excited to be here on the floor of the European SharePoint, Office
365 and Azure conference ESPC19 and once again I’m here at happy hour and once
again I have a new guest today and if you don’t recognize him also known as the
beard of the SharePoint world Benjamin Niaulin. Ben thanks so much for joining
the me and cheers. You know let’s play a little drinking game Ben. Our drinking
game will be every time I say the word SharePoint, migrate or Yammer we have to
take a drink. Wow that’s gonna be dangerous.

Alright so Ben tell everybody what you’re up to
these days. I mean we’re definitely looking a lot towards what’s happening in the
productivity space and the cloud infrastructure as well with Azure but quite a
bit on office 365 trying not to say the big word trying to see everything
happening the changes trying to guide everyone along towards what Microsoft’s
vision is to that mode
workplace. Do you guys I always when I think about companies
like Sharegate I think how often do you have conversations with Microsoft on
what’s next I mean you know? Every two weeks, every two weeks we have bi-weekly
meetings where we they share a lot of their roadmaps where they’re going things
that they’re working on so every two weeks usually there’s a call we hop on we
try to give feedback and see what’s going on and same thing on our product side
as well for everything that’s around moving people to the new version of that collaboration
area. What’s it called Ben, SharePoint? Now my beer started more than yours so
you know, and the audience will be able to see as I’m drinking Ben’s is in a
can so we can’t really tell.

So, Ben we go back pretty far in fact I just as I
texted you a picture of us today, I found that picture from I don’t know at
night 2012. Oh, I don’t even remember. We were in New Zealand together playing
a super fun game at one of these productivity conferences. Absolutely! And when
I initially met you I was always sort of enamoured with the content that you
curate because putting together these workshops and you were really to me even
though you didn’t realize that like I looked to you to see what you’re up to
when it came to office 365 and even before there was office 365 when it was
literally just SharePoint. Yeah. I look to you to see what was next and tell me
where do you come up with some of the content and maybe you could share with the
audience some best practices when it comes to first how did you know engagement
adoption but then I want to maybe hear one or two migration strategies as well?
Wasn’t that a word. That is the one of the words yeah. So, I’m talking about
figuring out what to talk about or what word in the next blog post and so on I
always try to focus on the desired outcome that I think people want to get. I
think one of the mistakes that I did early on was to focus on the features and
try to talk about the feature that existed so maybe there was a new thing that
came out and then and I see like a session title on that specific feature when
the reality is if when I go to conference and I’m looking at sessions in in
session list yeah I’m really looking at what’s going to get me where I want to
be. Right I have a job I’m trying to achieve something, so I have a desired
outcome. There’s a book that I found really helpful called jobs to be done very
short book and it helps you focus on what is the job that trying that people
are trying to get done. And it doesn’t matter what industry. Jobs to be done as
a framework to research essentially and to find out if you keep building a
hammer and you keep adding features to your hammer a better grip better
whatever wood now but ultimately what are what are what is people’s job to be
done is to put up a shelf in the house. So, if you focus on the jobs to be done,
you’ll realize that maybe they didn’t need a better and better hammer what they
needed was a shelf that can easily be set without a hammer. Ooh. So, it’s
really about focusing on what are people trying to get done and then you can craft
a title that works with that. I absolutely love that. You know who else loves
that, my man Shane over here. Shane actually has been lea
ing a lot from my
interviews I think yesterday when we had Scott Hanselman and Scott talked about
getting more done in short periods of time and what he does is he does these
sprints he’s got it because at the pomodoro. That’s not his. Oh yes of course. What’s
tough is for people to focus on one task. You’re spot-on I think that we live
in a day of distractions natural distractions usually it comes from our smartphone,
but it also comes from just people watching. Yes absolutely focus on people’s
desired outcome you need to be able to focus on one task and you need to
research nowadays you can’t we don’t have the freedom of just trying things are
moving very quickly technology is changing very quickly so you need to make
educated bets on the next thing you’re doing so I can’t I don’t have the luxury
of what’s going to be the next thing that we can build we have to research we
have to a/b test we have to prototype so that when we get to investing on
building whatever it is because investing comes in many forms it’s the workshop
you’re going to build, it’s the name of your session that’s going to accepted
so when you’re gonna craft session titles I often start out with tweets right
so I’ll put a tweet with a certain word and a link to the blog post. Then I’ll
later on tweet again to that blog post but with a different title in my tweet
different words and see which one had more engagement which one had more people
talking which one people clicked on more. I lea
ed that that would become the
actual blog title which may even become a session title. That is super
interesting in that I could take a one step further depending upon what time of
day you tweet also. Yeah absolutely okay I mean it’s not a I’m not trying to craft
the best in the world you’re just trying to make see what’s gonna engage gonna
see as much as possible. Right. Before you do the big investment of whatever it
is like even if you’re building a workshop this it’s a lot of it invest on your
part. It is. Of your time. Yes. So build it whatever it is a session is a lot
of investment of your time what do people want to hear how can you make sure
that that’s what they want to hear and that goes across all things that you do
right we’re talking here about sessions for us but even if you’re at the office
and you want to get something approved you want to you have to make sure that
you make those steps in the same way.

So, let’s get back to some of the kind of
productivity tips yeah when it comes to inte
al communications and some
practices that maybe even some however our viewers could actually take back
tomorrow when they get back to the office and use. Sure well first 60% of all
inte
al communications are not measured and that’s I don’t have where the stat
comes from it’s in my session slides I forget I believe it was in either
Gartner or another and essentially just people put out communications and we
can doesn’t matter the technology – email, communication sites well it doesn’t matter
what we’re talking about is we’re have a strategy to communicate but we’re not
measuring whether we’re successful with it. So you sent it out how many open did
you get in the emails how many clicks what title worked best and that’s some of
the things I do inte
ally as well is I send out the communication once to a
group of the people and did they open it or not and then maybe I’ll try
changing the title so that it will work better and I’ll try it with different
things. So that’s definitely my biggest tip is if 60% of us don’t measure
whether or not what we just put out is adopted is received is used is consumed
then that’s the first problem you should. Measure measures and then iterate. Yes,
just test it out and your SharePoint. Just getting a little bit parched there. It’s
never gonna be perfect if you wait for it to be perfect, you’re never gonna
achieve. And what really is perfection when it comes to that anyway I mean? But
we have this thing where I can see this all the time where people are waiting
for their SharePoint to be even better even better even better before they give
it to everybody else. I think I said the word again. You did. But essentially
just test it out put something out it can be just one site the title of it,
test the pages, the news whatever it is test it out does it work does at stake
iterate what works what doesn’t. Again, spot on with this Nirvana of an intranet
and what the client is hoping to achieve. Yeah. I mean why are they doing it to
begin with you know I’ve talked to a number of folks today and the one thing
that kind of kept on coming through was this idea of build it and they will
come make it look really pretty means nothing. Those days are gone it’s we’re
not we don’t live in the same world anymore and we live in a connected SAAS
world people can go get whatever they want all the time. I think the future of
this whole intranet thing and I I’m trying you know as much as I love my
passion is user experience I don’t think you knew that, just because something
looks really pretty doesn’t mean it’s easy to use I mean we both travel quite a
bit for work and you know we’re booking a lot of our tickets on our phones yeah
and we’re doing it you know as quickly as possible and then we’re also we’re in
airports we’re looking for an exit sign we’re looking if we checked our baggage
you know all these different things our user experience every day hits us and
yet when I give a statement of work to a client and they look at it and they
see design I don’t know to 300 hours user experience 200 200 to 300 hours
they’re like well you have the design let’s take out the UX or let’s cut it in half
like. I always say Ben you could probably relate to this you could pay me now
or you could pay me later because it’s got to be easy to use I look at Amazon
not the prettiest site in the world but I got to tell you it definitely. It hits
on the user experiences. Actually, often an example cited in terms of user
experience their recommendations the one-click buy-in it’s done and all these
little things that make up a good user experience for sure. When it comes to
that so what I see the future being is almost like that competition to being the
one that starts with a G yeah, a beautiful white space with a big search bar
and then a chat bot maybe two chat bots. Were thinking about the solution
already we don’t know right. Then yeah maybe two chat bots it’s one HR and but
again then we were like uh. Everything can change that’s I think what I what I
do believe is that people are gonna focus on making things personalized and
making it as simple as possible I 100% agree. How it’s going to come I have no
idea I just know that today we have a lot of data right everyone’s starting to
look into AI we cannot build one thing that’s gonna work for everyone anymore
yeah so with all the data that we have. Yeah one size fits all. What we’re
gonna see next it’s a lot more personalized experience when you get your mobile
banking app. You’re checking your watch there should I wait a little bit. When
you check your mobile app I expect the next iteration of these would be
personalized suggestions based on you and your bank account do you have one
account is it zero should we tell you that it’s zero so I think the difference
next will be how do we simplify and make it personable. For sure having that
personalized experience knowing that you’re a Montreal and I’m in LA and
serving me up Canadian content as opposed to US content. If you guys are having
some kind of picnic in Montreal, I don’t need to know that in LA I’ll be like
hey why can’t we have a picnic in LA yeah because your weather is always better
yes exactly. And we’re having fries the what is that fries. The Poutine. you
get a Poutine. You could tell I don’t eat much Poutine maybe I do like melted
cheese on anything yeah but I’m not a big gravy. Fries gravy melted cheese it’s
delicious.

Talk to me about Ben. You’re the migration business
among other things what do clients need to know before they before they take
this on, I mean the biggest thing that I see is on-prem to the cloud I mean
it’s and I’m guessing you guys? I mean we see this a hundred percent I mean I look
at my data of a couple thousand different organizations a week that are using
our products I see the telemetry and it’s pretty much all going to office 365. In
fact if I separate on-prem migrations to office 365 and office 365 migration to
office365 the source that is people migrating from office 365 to office 365 is
actually growing very rapidly so we’re gonna see a lot more mergers and acquisitions,
reorganizing, restructuring to adopt new things like the mode
experiences and
so on. Yes, yes yes that has been a popular project for me as well. We’re
definitely seeing that quite a bit. And what do what your clients be thinking
about sort of like when you’re moving your house you want to sort of get rid of
the old stuff. If you can a lot of reason, it’s so I actually have the answer
to that question well we’ve seen and the research that we’ve shown people this
is the jou
ey essentially, they prepare for their first migration. Oh, this
time it was me. They prepare they want to make sure that it’s gonna go as fast
as possible with the least amount of business impact or errors as possible so they
do analysis they do checking they do inventories what do they have what do they
need to bring and then the second phase is moving they move everything to office
365 and again they’re validating their checking they’re making sure everything
is ok. Once they get to office 365 the second jou
ey happens where they realize
that they are overwhelmed because now they don’t just have one product, they
have teams they have all these other products that are scaling groups and so
they tu
off everything. That’s the second step if you will and lastly, I call
the second big migration, or the second migration is going from classic to
mode
and top-down subsides to flat. To be able to adopt this new way of work
and that’s the mode
workplace that Microsoft calls are the intelligent intranet
whatever buzz refer this week.

I love that you talked about mode
versus classic
what have you and so you guys get to see sort of yeah you know what people are
doing and that’s kind of a big thing what people are doing or what’s happening.
Absolutely. I remember when Microsoft introduced office 365 and everyone’s like
whoa that’s in the cloud we are never going to the cloud and a lot of companies
definitely went kicking and screaming in fact I remember companies that were
when Microsoft really kind of kicked off Yammer. There were all sorts of
incentives from partners like myself that you know to push them into Yammer. We’re
good. Yeah push them that way and they’re like woo but it’s in the cloud and I
remember all the legal paperwork that had to be done. They we’re unsure of what
was going on what’s the risk. Exactly and now what I see what I’m seeing out
there are some of these security folks you know the seaso as they’re called in
fact Alex from Microsoft was on earlier and that is Alex’s task is Azure and
security. It makes sense. Yeah so definitely seeing a lot of that. You know
what you know what’s next for you slash Sharegate what do you I mean obviously
we’re pivoting non-stop your you know head of product what and you know what’s
gonna really separate? It’s an interesting question and we’re always looking
into it but essentially what our company is about is always about guiding IT
that are using our products that are often overwhelmed by all these changes is
to help bring simple products and simple tools to help their life be easier so that
the organization can adopt these new ways of work that they are bringing. So,
if it is a migration tool to move them to the latest version that’s what we
build. Now we’re talking a lot about an automated gove
ance so that they can adopt
a vision of Microsoft that self-service in nature that allows people to create
and use whatever they want that allows exte
al sharing we don’t want to block
we don’t want to create a blocker product. We want to enable that and give that
guidance and so that’s our newest product called apricot that focused on that but
with the vision of Microsoft. and in the Azure space a lot of it nowadays is
tracking and reducing your costs because there was the promise of moving to the
cloud but all of a sudden those VMS and everything’s going really high so we created
again a simple tool to make that task simpler. so that’s what we’re always
about tomorrow it might be another tool we’re trying to help IT go through
these changes as easy as possible.

And this amazing conference that we’re at how you
have had some meaningful conversations with some of the fans. This is one of
our absolute favorite conferences European SharePoint conference I’ve been
coming here every year since 2014 in Copenhagen if I’m not mistaken and love it
there’s tons of people Europeans have very different challenges it’s always fun
to hear the multilingual stuff, what you’re trying to achieve here and
absolutely love conversations at the booth as a vendor is always great to have
so love coming here and if you’re not because you’re watching you definitely
should come next year. I don’t know what the city is yet but I’m sure it’ll be
really fun.

You know if they can’t come though I don’t know if
you still do these, but SharePoint Saturdays are an amazing way for folks that
might not be able to attend these conferences which are well worth the money. But,
if you’re you know a polo protect practitioner heading to, I know there’s one
in Oslo this weekend that Jeff Teper is gonna be at. I find often what I like
about this particular one is that you get a lot of Microsoft product team that
shows up. that’s pretty cool they listen to you listen. They want feedback so
absolutely like. What’s that site that you could go to give the Microsoft team?
The user voice. Yes, the user voice yeah what is that microsoft.com. I forget I
forget. it’s Microsoft.com/UserVoice or something along those lines. We almost
said Google user voice Microsoft we didn’t though.

Ben, Benjamin this has been super fun as expected. Super fun thank you. SharePoint, migration Yammer. Thanks for having me really appreciate it. This is Jeff Willinger J Willy signing off for this afte
oon from this amazing conference ESPC19 on the conference floor. Thank you.