It’s time for Friday Feature, say hello to @Albert-Jan Schots! Described as “a true die-hard SharePoint developer,” he shares his entrepreneurial approach to problem solving and his excitement for working with passionate individuals.
Albert-Jan Schot
Job Title: CTO and MVP
Company Name: Mavention
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/appieschot/
Twitter: @appieschot
Website: http://www.sharepointappie.nl/
- You’re described as a “true die-hard SharePoint developer.” What do you love most about SharePoint and why?
- How does the Microsoft MVP community help your career and continued education?
- How does keeping an entrepreneurial spirit at Mavention help you in your role?
- What’s your favorite part about industry events such as Microsoft Ignite, and the SharePoint events your company organizes for customers?
- What’s your approach to problem solving at work? How do tech tools support you in this approach?
The flexibility of the platform and the community around it. It’s truly powerful to enable customers with out of the box functionality as well as extend the platform with customizations we feel could help our customers to achieve more.
Microsoft has both the MVP summit as well as a regional gathering once a year, this helps in connecting with other community leaders, exchanging ideas with each other, and learning from the Product Groups on how they envision products and services. Events like that helps in a way of getting on top of your game and always focusing on learning. Other opportunities like discussion groups, webcasts on new technology and the benefits 3th party vendors offers MVPs help you experiment with new tech. By focusing and staying curious, you can grow in both personal life and career.
The Mavention brand name comes from the word Maven, meaning: “a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others.” That is something I strongly believe in and definitely is something that plays a role in my daily work. Having said that, we have a lot of freedom on how to run projects or pitch ideas. The general rule is that if you have an idea and can rally some people around it, all you need to do is to pitch it to get the support you need. This innovation focus helps us in generating a steady stream of new project ideas and apps. I really like the energy that you can feel when doing stuff you love, with people who trigger you to get the best out of yourself and the technology options you have!
The SharePoint or Office 365 community is pretty awesome. On the one hand you have events like Ignite, Build and SharePoint Unite, on the other there are SharePoint Saturdays as well as user group meetings and internal techmeets. At Mavention we have a bi-weekly knowledge sharing night where everyone presents on projects we are running. I just love the energy and passion everyone shows when presenting topics they care about. Whether it is at Ignite for large audiences or internal sessions with a small team of focused individuals. The fact that people take time to prepare and figure out new and complex stuff always keeps me energized.
Problem solving is a pretty big part of what we do at Mavention, but the problems vary quite a bit. Some of the challenges we face require focus and large chunks of dedicated time. Other problems can be tackled with a more ad-hoc approach. I like to come in early and run something of a 2-hour block of dedicated time for the first type of things that needs to be done. Most of the time that gives me the feeling of having a head start and provides me with a productive feeling throughout the day. Tech does play a big role in this, but how it is incorporated differs per topic. Some solutions require software either to map out the problem, make notes, or build a piece of code that solves it, while others just require some drawing materials. I like to prep my next day at the end of a day by defining what needs to be done using Wunderlist and then breaking it down to a plan with small tasks so I can focus and do what needs to be done.