If you have been active in Microsoft web collaboration technologies, then you have probably heard of Joel Oleson. Joel has been around since the early days of what became SharePoint and has had a tremendous impact on the customer and partner communities for SharePoint and then later Office 365 and Microsoft 365 today. In fact, his latest endeavor is a global spanning, virtual initiative, that promises to set the standard around online events for years to come. Along the way Joel has embarked on some epic adventures with other leaders in the Microsoft Collab community space and he has left his mark across the globe.
In this Social Sessions, Joel and I discuss his path to the present professionally at Perficient, his globetrotting adventures with the SharePoint/Office 365 community, and his latest endeavor with the Microsoft 365 Virtual Marathon.
Resources:
* The full unedited, machine learning, transcript can be read below.
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Transcript from Social Sessions Episode 2
1:08 PM
Michael Gannotti started transcribing
And here we go.
And we are back after our session one this is session 2 of the social sessions II might gianotti today I am joined by Mr. SharePoint himself Joel oleson.
1:09 PM
Joel.
It's great to be here.
Schedule with my friend Michael.
So Joel you know for those of you those out there who don't really know you um.
Tell a little bit about yourself and and what you're up to these days at apart from tech at home you know as you're sheltering in place with your family.
Sure sure so I moved to Oceanside California about 5 years ago from the ocean a lot I do I'm I'm 7 miles from the ocean I've actually walked from my house to the ocean what's kind of interesting is there's a crater as in like a dormant volcano between my house and the ocean sure sure yeah yeah.
1:10 PM
Great great trails between here and the ocean nice.
But you know, if you think about like today, you know just kind of pulled together with proficient. And what really top of mind? What are the kind of things that you're saying from a proficient point of view that you know you know?
1:43 PM
Either keep you up at night or that you see keeping your customers up at night and that you're solving for things that are trying to help with that are really styling to. Yeah, yeah, well it's absolutely about digital transformation. Yeah, our world is really there's the way you're doing business, and there's the way you could be doing business, so a lot of that is transforming your business and whether it's the move to the cloud or whether it's the.
This digitising a lot of processes that aren't, and even just you know, brushing off some of the processes you've gotten, finding that there's a better way I I brought up earlier this whole idea project cortex. Yeah, how how great is it to build a partnership between AI and humans? Humans are awful at tagging documents.
And here's this. Hope that we can actually have a solid knowledge network where we can actually tie our business data and these, together with topics in these ontologies and leverage the power of AI to actually do the analysis and build these ontologies based on our taxonomies. Or based on what it discovers through reasoning over how are people are using this data. Yeah man man, I'm I'm. I'm very pro AI. Let's let's let the machines help us figure this out.
1:44 PM
And I do think this is going to be.
As far as taking I technologies and bringing them into the business and finding ways of doing it I think this is this is a monumental massive stake in the ground where II has found a way to solve not just K it does extraction over here or it's it's recognizing objects in pictures it's taking all of these AI techniques and putting them into a single product and it's super exciting.
1:45 PM
Yeah I mean I monetizing AI it's cool cool back to you know we but both in our SharePoint days and you hit the nail on the head people don't like to tag and they don't.
They just don't and I get. I hear it all the time from folks. How do we get them to do this? And we have all this that we want them to do and I'm like they're never going to do it. They are going to rebel, so being able that's what to me is exciting. Bringing the power of all that kind of tagging and recognition and what you can do with that, but taking the onus off of folks who wouldn't do it anyways. Yes, yes, bringing it down, and in fact I would say there was a vision.
There was laid out.
Back when we moved SharePoint to SharePoint online and I was I was there I can tell you there was this vision of.
How can exchange be better when SharePoint and Active Directory and link are all there as well and we thought?
1:46 PM
You know what we can't even tell you what it's going to be but guess what.
Here we have a platform that goes across email SharePoint teams Yammer all that stuff it's the most horizontal product that then says you know what we're not going to stop there connect to whatever other data sources you want to connect to the power platform and pull in hundreds of other stuff use our partners and pulling hundreds of all your other IBM and whatever other repositories open text and blah blah blah all that stuff.
File Nets bring all that world in and now let AI do its job like whoa what's the what's going to happen I mean this could could change our world exchanges collaboration changes knowledge management this is this is one of those things where there's an epic step that we can step up here and it's like yeah I'm excited to see what happens when you put all these technologies together now we've got it this is a maturity step that we can take yeah teams was the first one.
1:47 PM
And now we're saying wow another step in such a short period of time yeah look at like when I look at the move to teams to me that's like the evolution of what we were doing you know team site so it's really evolutionary but when I look at cortex that's right I mean that's 1 of those rubber.
Yeah, I mean because then think of all the evolutions that will happen.
On Top of that that today not impossible right this is basically going to Microsoft research and saying Hey guys we've been working on in the API space yeah whoa it's unloading the flood of all this AI technology and let's put those robots to work for us I mean yeah and let's put the power in the hands of the end users in the business.
1:48 PM
Yeah all this is going to become available.
6 I agree it's very transparent very exciting times so any last things you want to share a so you were asking what have I done recently yeah so my last kind of interesting trip I was speaking at SharePoint Saturday in Istanbul.
And uh I visited go back late happy.
Which is the oldest human man site that has these stones? So you could say this was actually where, um, man settled down it. They went from a nomadic society to being an agrarian society and they actually like the goats in the sheep weren't even.
1:49 PM
They weren't domesticated so basically this is the Valley this is the area where all that happened one of the most exciting kind of experiences there and it's actually fairly close to the Syrian border which leads into I visited Syria on that last trip did you talk about crazy epic destinations went to Damascus OK and visited there's some Greek ruins like yeah you have Jupiter there in Damascus in downtown the old city.
Um and uh right next to that one of the oldest mosques that actually says they have John the Baptist head in a shrine yeah it's crazy um Yep all the possible like preached in those streets and all that man it was it was super exciting very interesting.
It was actually somebody else in the community MITM andreani who's originally Lebanese we stayed with his family and had this amazing meal.
1:50 PM
It's these connections with the community that are so rich you know there's no price to being able to sit down with your friends family.
And uh just it's awesome I mean that trip to Syria was.
Insane it was crazy but super exciting it was a day trip we did we went through the cracks discovered Hey this crusader craft Castle near homes but the destruction man the destruction was someone saying these like we're just driving along the road and in it you know you're just city this flat like here's Azure point now some of these things I remember a big eye opener for me was when we went to Turkey and.
You you you start seeing these you know people think Oh well it's this kind of a you know historical this and this but really that whole area such a confluence yeah going back to the days you know even before Aleksandr and then Alexander the Great and Greek civilization and the Roman civilization and then you know so many it's such a rich area so much but you know it's cool and I think this is what like.
1:51 PM
You've been seeing is that one of the neat things being in tech yeah is.
When you're talking people tech and culture it takes the pilot you could if as long as we're mature enough you can take the politics out and you can connect on those levels and really get to experience each other and connect these people absolutely absolutely and you know I've made such great friends I think about early when it was that inflection point of on my way out of Microsoft I kind of saw it as their business big wave of the technology?
1:52 PM
How do I step off that way even just keep surfing it but into the community into the field and a just take this as far as it'll go?
Say that that's what I've been doing is. I've just been surfing for the last, hence Oceanside, you know. So I was going to say my last question last question. Have you learned to physically surf?
I I have been surfing I'm not great at it by any means. I actually got my surfboard from.
Um?
Anyway I went I went surfing with.
Heather Heather Newman. Yeah yeah. Simeon Simeon's actually I gave me the surfboard. Um, yeah, incredible like I love being able to get out in the water. The power of the ocean.
1:53 PM
Sign off on the ocean if I had my dithers I'd be in it every day yeah yeah yeah can't wait to get back to it I don't blame you.
Well thank Joe this has been awesome so any if people want to connect with you learn more about what you're doing proficient any Top ones I know you're going to be sending me some links and things will share in the post but I think I've been doing a series of webinars with proficient.
I just finished the virtual team summit with proficient they went really well we had a full day event you'll be if you follow my blog or the proficient blog you'll hear more about upcoming webinars and events the biggest one I'm working on is this big virtual marathon huge you've already got 1700 people registered for it and we haven't even started marketing it yet yeah that's pretty awesome yeah I've been focused on the speakers and making sure it truly truly is global.
1:54 PM
Telling you the call for speakers is still open till May 1st so please get your sessions then we want this to be for the community by the community plus PC muscle behind us Yep awesome well thank you very much so with that that wraps up session suit 2 Yep so collapseto.com travelingepic.com.
Anjolee assign on Twitter you can find me on Facebook find me on LinkedIn I'm fairly ish open LinkedIn connection type person it's a little bit harder on Facebook because of the 5000 limit but I love connecting with the community if you send me a message on Twitter as a DM I will respond I want to make myself very accessible to people my email even is Joel dot Oh listen at proficient.com yeah definitely feel free to email me feel free to reach out.
1:55 PM
Happy to connect very cool well thank you for today and with that we're going to bid everybody have a great day I'm going to see if I can find my little contrived to find out if there is a keystroke some time for this.
I want to thank everybody we're going to stop our recording but next time be sure to check this out on social sessions with my Canadian from Mike and.
Joel Joel 365.
Take Care now.
Michael Gannotti stopped transcribing
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