Friday Feature: Elio Struyf

 

Roles & Companies:

• Owner – Struyf Consulting
• Senior Developer & Architect – Valo Intranet
• Vice President – BIWUG

MVP Profile

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/estruyf/

Twitter: @eliostruyf

Website: https://www.eliostruyf.com/

 

1. What are you most passionate about in the IT industry?

The continuous change is probably one of the things I like the most. IT is a never-ending story, it keeps you busy. Every day there is something new to discover. If you love learning new things this is really great.

 

Another reason why I like working in IT is that you can easily get involved in various projects and connect with people from around the world. There are so many brilliant people on this planet from which you can learn lots of things.

 

2. What’s your favorite part of blogging, and how do you select your topics?

I started blogging eight years ago. Back then I had a problem, some branding problem in SharePoint. I did not find an answer on the internet, so when I finally solved it myself, I thought why not share it so that it might help others. Writing such articles is great to create documentation for yourself. That way you can always go back to check how you achieved something in the past. Since that article, blogging became some sort of addiction.

 

The thing I most like about blogging is that you can share your thoughts/solutions with other people. That way, you can learn from other people who start discussions or ask questions. 

 

I have various ways in selecting the content that I publish to my blog. In most cases, it is where my current interest or project leads me, but I also get a lot of emails with questions. If I see common interests through all these emails, I try to formulate the answer into an article that can also help people.

 

3. How have you changed your approach to teaching others over time?

Teaching is a continuous process of self-learning and sensing how you are presenting and adapting it to your audience. It helps to pay close attention to the reactions of the attendees.

 

During training, I always try to break the ice by connecting with my audience. It always helps to ask a couple of questions. Once you’ve got their full attention, presenting gets easier and a lot more interactive.

 

Interactive sessions are always the best, you can touch other aspects of the course/session which you might not plan to cover.

 

I still know when I did my first presentation. I was only focused on myself and the content I was going to present. This has changed a lot over the years, the more you do it, the easier it will be.

 

My style of writing also changed over the years. The more you read articles and write your own ones, you get some sort of writing style over time. For my articles I try to give as much information as possible. That way you learn more and have a good documentation reference.

 

4. When were you first introduced to SharePoint? What are your favorite features of the tool?

I got first introduced to SharePoint when I was in university. Some fellow students and I participated in the Imagine Cup. After we did our final presentation at Microsoft, I learned that the application we were building had some similarities to a product Microsoft had already created. That was my first introduction to SharePoint. One year later I had my first SharePoint developer course from Patrick Tisseghem and started working as a SharePoint consultant. The rest is history.

 

My favourite features these days would definitely be the new development model for SharePoint (SharePoint Framework), and of course, search. Search is one of the things in SharePoint that can give so much value to your company from the moment you get is correctly configured, but it requires continuous improvement.

 

5. What do you enjoy when you’re not working?

I got a couple of things, first of all entertaining my two kids. Besides that, I love to keep learning and I do this by creating samples or getting involved in other code projects. 

 

I also like to play RPG games. I am a big fan of the Final Fantasy games. I have played them all of them, except for the MMORPG ones.

 

When it is good weather in Belgium you can find me on my bike or inline-skates.