Heeee'ssss Back!

Hello to all my readers. It has been since January this year honestly since I have been creating content on my blog. For those who did not know, this has been a busy, busy year for me. Because of that, certain things have fallen off my list of things to do. Blogging was one of those things but was not the only thing.

Social Media was another thing. For most of 2019, I was only using Instagram for short stints, Twitter to help send out a few things like Patch and Switch recordings and stuff I really felt needed to get out, and I went through Facebook here and there. The only Social Media that I was keeping a real eye on was LinkedIn for professional reasons.

You might be thinking, "Why did you go away then Jared?"

Well, I got super busy and I wanted to focus on me and getting through many things going on. What might those have been? Well ...

• Got my condo ready for sale starting in February into March
• Moved out of my condo into a rental apartment (which got delayed thanks to a snowstorm and impacted my attendance for NACS 2019)
• Moved into a new rental apartment and setting it up
• Reduced the "stuff" in my home, which I need to do more of (Thanks to Wendy for helping me with this and the move preparation)
• Sold my condo (Thanks to Denise and her team of folks in getting my condo ready for sale)
• Changes in my work team that caused our on-call schedule to go to 3 weeks (1 week as a backup, 1 week as primary from 4pm to 10pm, 1 week as primary from 10am to 4pm)
• Preparations for changes to my work team in the coming months
• Shoulder pain from my prior surgery in March of 2018
• Travelling to Minnesota to help my mother visit her childhood hometowns before her brother moves to Wyoming

Quite a bit going on, eh? So what now?

Well, I am slowly getting back on Social Media. I am not going to be on it as much as I used to be. My goal is to enjoy myself and when Social Media doesn't help my enjoyment of my life, it will be packed away for a while. I will definitely be around on Instagram with more photography that I am doing. I have a backlog of photographs that I need to process and pull together. I plan to show those off more as I am proud of the shots I have been able to get so far. I am also looking forward to more shots in various places around the world.

On top of Social Media, I plan to get some blogging done. Yes ... there will be more posts here. I want to make sure I post some blog posts at least monthly, maybe even more. I have some topics I have built up for a while now and would love to get those out. If you have something for me to talk about, let me know and I can put it in my list of things to think about and blog. Easiest is to comment below or hit me up on Twitter, @jshoq.

One change to my site you might have seen is the "In The News" page. I have been using a great service to monitor RSS feeds called NewsBlur. One of the benefits of a paid account is a personal blog that I can use to call out articles and post comments about those articles. Instead of having another link off to that, I have been able to integrate it into my site. I have some more work to do on it but I am excited about it. I can offer links to articles that I have read that I feel are important along with a quick commentary of that article. Feel free to paruse that page now and look at the updates I do to it over the next few months.

In the area of talking and presenting, I have been super quiet here. Unfortunately, my summer prevented me from applying to Microsoft Ignite this year so I won't be there this November. However, thanks to David Leveille of Crush Networks and Heather Newman, I got a couple of last minute slots at SharePoint Saturday Los Angeles and Ensanda. I will post more details about each delivery but I am looking forward to seeing my SharePoint friends and talking about the Cloud, Office 365 and Power Platform.

So what is after that? Well, I hope to get out and speak again more. My team's on-call rotation is putting a bit of a hamper on that but I plan to work with my managers to get me time to head out. If you have an event where you need a speaker talking about SharePoint, Office 365, Power Platform, Azure, Cloud, DevOps or Site Reliability Engineering, please feel free to contact me about it.

Bringing Myself and a Follower Joy

How many of you have seen the Marie Kondo series on Netflix or read her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tyding Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing? (Amazon - Amazon via My Affiliate - Audible) There is a wave of people that are talking about "Spark Joy". There's even an article in Time Online about how "Thrift Stores Can't Keep Up With All the Junk and They're Saying the Signs Lead to Marie Kondo"

How does this matter to you Jared? Well, if you have not seen it on some of social media, I am selling my Condo and moving into an apartment. I might talk about my future plans but for now, let's just suffice that I want out of my current arrangements. My current plan is to move into an apartment by the first week of March, before the North American Collaboration Summit in Branson. This does not give me a lot of time once I reviewed my project plan.

Thanks to the help of a family friend, I have started going through my place and packing it up. At the same time, I am sorting through the items and getting rid of items that no longer "spark joy"... clothing that doesn't fit, electronics I no longer need, furniture that I do not want to have anymore ... The list goes on. I have looked at many items that I have not touched in years and no longer desire to keep those items with me.

Now, you might ask yourself, why are you talking about it and how can it bring me joy? Well, as I have gone through my "stuff", one thing I have found is bags and backpacks; loads of them. Many of the backpacks are from conferences or events. My hope is to bring you joy if you are 'missing' bags from your collection and clear out items so I don't have to move them.

So, here's the deal... I am using this blog post to show the items I have available. You need to fill out the form below to request one of the items. If it is still available, I will contact you via the address you put into the form and work on shipping you the item. In return for me shipping this to you for free (no cost for the bag nor shipping), I would love if you donated to one of the local shelters in your area. All of the bags that do not get sent out by February 15th, 2019, my plan is to donate them to local Seattle-area shelters with school supplies already inside.

So, let's get some joy for children in tough situations and help each other out. Here are the bags available:

Change ...

Change is something you cannot stop …
Change impacts you in multiple ways …
Change is just a part of the Information Technology industry …
Change is something IT Pros must embrace or be left behind …
Change …

Just over a year ago, I went through a pretty big change. I left the company I was working for to head back to Microsoft to join the on-prem SharePoint Custom Portals team with Microsoft IT. Looking back over that year has seen many changes with both my job, my team and Microsoft IT in general. Right now, we are in a major change around Modern Engineering practices within Microsoft IT. On top of that, SharePoint is undergoing a massive change around Office 365 and SharePoint on-prem with new releases slated for later this year. Change has been a constant companion and one should not expect anything different, especially in the world of IT.

Many people have talked about the change in the world of IT to allow for rapid evolution and growth of systems and teams. One of the names this has been given is "DevOps". Many may argue about what DevOps is and is not but the view that we are taking is one of the better views that I have seen. DevOps is not about tools. DevOps is not about process. DevOps is about philosophy. It is getting the agility and growth by having all aspects of IT working together and allowing evolution cycles to deliver the best services possible for the customer/user. It is not about developers setting up servers like operations teams. It is not about operations teams making changes to code bases. It is the feature team working together in the best possible manner to deliver the best products and focusing on the customers or users. That means that focusing on the live site and user experiences are the key to delivery in this new world. Some are scared by this change but I see this as where IT needs to focus. Money spent on services should be spent on the best possible experiences for the users.

As we are seeing this change, SharePoint continues to drive towards a major change in its own paradigm. SharePoint has been slowly moving from on-prem to the cloud with Office 365. While SharePoint is still entrenched in the on-prem world, new features are being created for Office 365 that are not making their way back to on-prem. Things like Delve and Groups are being built on the Office 365 infrastructure but are likely not going to find their way back to the on-prem version. We might see some more feature parity from Office 365 to on-prem but the Office 365 version will always have more features than on-prem due to the integration that can be done with Exchange and Lync as well as scale and Azure technologies. It shouldn't be a shock to see that products are changing. To see just how much SharePoint and all of Office 365 is changing, you should head on over to http://roadmap.office.com.

Now, in my previous roles, I didn't get to dive into the technology as my job was to be the Service Owner or Director of IT. In the Microsoft IT world, the Service Owner is the "buck stops with me" person for the service. They work with partner teams and customers to ensure the service is delivered to the users. They meet with all the various teams, provide data on the service, talk about the improvements to the service, and represent the team at all levels. Having been a Service Owner in MSIT earlier, I knew the role and the requirements for the position. In many ways, the Service Owner is the human shield between much of the IT bureaucracy and the team they represent. As I said, I have performed this role, both at Microsoft and my role as Director of IT. This can be a bit of a thankless position and if you are doing a good job, things just work.

So let met talk about why I came back to work at Microsoft. One of the things that I got offered by returning to Microsoft was to return in a very technical role as a Senior Service Engineer. My time would be spent working on the technology again. I got to focus and play with technology over the past year. Part of what I got to focus on was SharePoint 2013 infrastructure upgrades, running SharePoint on Azure and preparing for the next version of SharePoint. I was not a Service Owner anymore. This was freeing for me and I have loved the past year. On top of this, I got to work with and for a friend of mine I used to work with on my first stint with Microsoft. She was a good Service Owner in that she was the human shield allowing me to get work done. You might be wondering where all of this is going … Back in January, my Service Owner gave her notice of intent to leave at the end of the month. 

Change … 

I am now the Service Owner as well as being the Senior Service Engineer. I have been working with my peer to determine our roadmap and the future of our service. Being both the engineer and service owner, my time is taken up with more meetings, data gathering, and worrying about live site issues more so than just as the engineer.

I want to thank my friend, Aliya Kahn, for being that human shield for the past year. In just 4 weeks of being in this position, I can see exactly what she did for me and the team. Service ownership is very tough and can take a toll on a person professionally and personally. I will miss her, her jokes, and her optimism on a daily basis. She is missed but change brings opportunities. Here's to those new opportunities. 

Many of you might be wondering why I haven't been on much of social media as of late. These new responsibilities of the Service Owner position has been keeping me very busy. I am still trying to figure out my schedule and keeping my sanity, but I will be back online soon.

New Year Means New Changes

Everybody does it. The New Year drives changes they want to make. New Year's Resolutions. Gyms get a large push of visitors. Home stores have higher sales. The New Year causes people to want to effect change in their lives. Some industries have sprung up around these changes. Many of you might be wondering where I am going with this. Well, I am about to go through my own New Year change.

As of January 24th, I will no longer be the Director of IT Services for Radia Inc., PS. I have spent almost 4 years with Radia since leaving Microsoft in January of 2010. Over those 4 years, I have worked with good people who have a single driven goal to patient care. I was able to bring some new ideas to the IT Operations and help Radia get into a Microsoft Enterprise Agreement to help manage our software needs. Many folks have told me how I have changed how IT engaged with them to get their needs met. The best thing I was told was how I had a great laugh. At the same time, I was able to grow, learn, and mature. While I have enjoyed the people and where we were going as a team and company, I was approached with a great offer.

Starting on January 27th, I will be returning back to Microsoft. Not only will I be returning to Microsoft, I will be returning as a "Blue Badge", or full-time employee. Instead of going back in as a manager, I will be returning back as a Senior Service Engineer. My return will be back into Microsoft IT but I am coming back to the SharePoint team. While I am joining a new team, my manager and director are people I know and have worked with/for before. I hope to go more into my return to Microsoft on this blog as well as what I can about my projects. Some of you may wonder if I am going to be attending conferences like MS TechEd. I have been fortunate enough to have permission to attend conferences. So, expect to see me out and about this year.

Wrapping this us, I want thank my manager and the folks at Radia for the trust and collaboration I had with them while I was there. I also thank my new manager and director for the new opportunity ahead of me. I also thank all my friends that have believed in me and pushed me forward.

Onward and upward.

New Year, New Thoughts

So I post again to the blog. Many of you might be asking where I have been. Many of you might not care. I can accept both sides of the coin on that. It is something that I have been coming to terms with for a while now.

Before and after MS TechEd 2013 in New Orleans, I had a fire to get this blog up and rising. I thought I wanted to use this as a platform for my passion around technology and trying to energize people around me. I went to TechEd and learned a lot but also got to network with some of my "chosen tribe" of IT Professionals from around the world. Events like TechEd make me really sit back and acknowledge my spot in the world while enjoying myself. Many people disbelieve me when I say that I pay for it out of my own pocket and use PTO to attend. I feel that strongly about the experience you get there and the training offered through the sessions, labs, vendor discussions and testing opportunities. I came home excited and wanting to share that excitement with the world. Then, it happened.

At first, Microsoft pulled the TechNet subscriptions from IT Professionals. I understand that this is a way used by many pirates to get licenses to illegally sell but it is used by both IT Professionals and IT Departments to setup testing environments for the systems they have and future desired systems. If my company did not have our TechNet licensing, we would not have looked at SharePoint 2010 for some of our internal needs nor would we have done anything on Windows Server 2008 or 2008 R2. Luckily, we made monies available to get a MSDN account for that work to continue but other companies may not. The response we get from Microsoft is to use the limited day demos. I am sorry Microsoft, those are not functional enough for companies to create testing environments to test integrations and patching. What became worse was the patching errors that started in August and September. Many products had patches that were rolled back because they damaged environments. If we all had proper testing environments, we could find that out before going to production.

If the TechNet wasn't enough, Microsoft Learning tried to slip out their cancellation of the MCM/MCA certifications on a Friday night before a 3-day holiday weekend. Much has been written about this and many MCM/MCA's are upset to say the least. While I do not hold a MCM or MCA, I was building an education track to get one in SharePoint. Some of you may know that SharePoint is near and dear to my heart. It is an underused technology that gets vilified quickly by users. Many times, the configuration and management of the SharePoint system is what the users hate, not the product itself. But I digress. With this announcement, I put my education and certification plans on hold. I am re-evaluating them as we speak but they are vastly different than when I started.

What I feel through these actions is much like what Rod Trent wrote in his September 2, 2013 piece, "Does Microsoft Hate IT Pros?" and Paul Thurrott wrote in his September 30, 2013 commentary "What's Next for IT Pros?", is Microsoft trying to kill the IT Professional. In a way, yes they are. Microsoft is seeing a new future in the cloud and that IT Professionals should embrace this. In some ways, they should become "cloud developers" using PowerShell to manage systems where the infrastructure is a black box layer they need not worry about. For startups and companies with minimal regulations, that is a wonderful story. But to companies with heavy regulations, like SoX, SEC, HIPAA, Hi-Tech, and such, cloud computing is something that just does not make sense today. I can see that they have something in mind for IT Professionals but they are not saying what and that is the key issue.

They need to communicate to their base users, the IT Professionals. Let us know what is going on, what is coming down the pipe other than just cloud computing. Give us more clarity for that higher level of education. One good thing they have done is things like the Microsoft Virtual Academy. This resource has been a boon for many IT Professionals and I do encourage everyone to run over and check it out. Also Microsoft, remember that while developers can expand your platforms, IT Professionals ensure they get deployed into companies. The free stuff at Build would be nice to see at MS TechEd as well. The Surface offer was a great one but then to see developers coming back with 2 free tablets, that did feel like a solid hit to the stomach. Who ensures that the developers have platforms to develop on? The IT Professionals, that's who.

Now, I have got my words out. It has been 6 months in coming. What I can tell those of you that like to read what I write is that I will be writing again. I hope to write one good article per month that has some length to it. At the same time, I plan to use my blog as a "cheat sheet" for me as well. When I hit a brick wall, I plan to blog how I either worked around or knocked it down. To that end, plan to see a lot of how-to's and reviews as well. I have gotten some fun stuff since July and plan to get more. If you have any ideas, do not hesitate to let me know. I am open for just about anything.