Office Development MVP 2019-2020
Last July, I received a message from Microsoft that once again I’ve been re-awarded the Microsoft MVP title for Office Development.
The new house for Office development
Last year, when I received my MVP award, I wrote how the Office ecosystem but also Microsoft at large were going through a huge shift, becoming more open and embracing social media and open source. Looking back at the past 12 months, it feels that the changes have settled. The Office dev ecosystem has found its place, making exemplary use of the different communication channels and engaging the dev community: from the various open-source initiatives on GitHub to regular community calls spanning all facets of Office 365 development, from SharePoint Framework to PowerShell.
Two faces of development
Last year, for the first time in my life, I took a job where building solutions on Office 365 is no longer my primary focus. Instead, together with Rencore, I’m helping organizations to control their SharePoint and Office 365 environments. An intranet that leaks your data is not a good place to collaborate and there are plenty of intricacies in both platforms that can cause trouble down the road if not addressed timely.
I’m still regularly experimenting with Office 365 and researching the different scenarios of how organizations could get more out of their Office investments. But instead of building the final solution, I’m writing the specs, planning the work and ensuring that we’re solving the most urgent of problems that our customers experience.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m still developing. For the last year, together with Velin Georgiev, I’ve been heading the Office 365 CLI initiative, where we aim to allow users on any platform manage their Office 365 tenants and SharePoint Framework projects. We’ve made some great progress and will soon be releasing version 2 of the CLI which contains improvements for the things we have learned in the almost 2 years that the CLI exists.
Weekly highlights
One of the things I’m looking forward to every week is the SharePoint Dev Weekly show Vesa Juvonen and I are doing. Every week, we go through the latest community contributions, highlighting them and getting them additional exposure. It’s awesome to see what cool things people in the community build and that the stream of new things never stops. Every week, there is something new we can discuss.
Thank you!
Recently I’ve been pondering about the time when I received my MVP award for the first time, got the opportunity to attend the first MVP Summit where I pretty much didn’t know anyone and how much has changed since then. I’m grateful for the opportunities the award and the community gave me over the years. It’s a true pleasure to be a part of the Office dev community, especially now, where sharing has never been as easy and as welcome as ever before. Thank you for having me!