Content

Learn how to capture key knowledge from your employees (or yourself) in a short period of time using M365 tools like SharePoint, Stream and Teams Meetings. Speaker will share real-world examples for capturing:
• Routine tasks
• Historical knowledge
• How things are organized

Below are the questions and answers from the July 2024 Meetup Session.

Q. Tell us a bit about yourself? – City, family, hobbies, job title
A.  I live in Derwood, MD, I'm married with 3 rescue dogs (1 senior shelter dog and 2 recent adoptees from Spain). My job title is Modern Workplace Consultant and I work for Pait Group.
My hobbies include running (I coach in our local running club) and volunteering at hospice (visit patients weekly and give massages) and at a senior pet sanctuary (do pet medication prep, take photos of the animals). 

Q. Tell us something about yourself that not many people know about you?
A.  Which people? 😄 I'm kind of an open book personally, so those who know me know A LOT.  Something funny is that I went vegetarian in 2007 and vegan in 2014, but immediately before going vegetarian, I refused to eat vegetables. 😄 It's proof people definitely CAN change!

Q. What does a typical workday look like for you?
A.  I sign on and submit my timesheet from the day before, then dig in to messages and work on client projects. I have a somewhat unique method for tracking my time that works really well for me. (a challenge for many consultants I've talked to).

Q. 1st job out of college
A.  Project Assistant for a non-profit in International Development.

Q. Your 1st version of SharePoint that you experienced and what year
A.  SPS 2003 in the year 2005 (same year I took over as my company's Intranet Manager, a role I held there for 16 years).

Q. Last challenging project and why? (this should relate to your demo)
A.  asked to capture knowledge and process documentation for someone who is retiring at my client's company.

Q. What is the biggest mistake that your feel holds back your clients from the results they want (this should relate to your demo)
A.  in relation to knowledge capture? I think no one ever wants to spend the time capturing knowledge in the moment- often people wait until it's absolutely necessary, and then they have to scramble.

Q. Describe a SharePoint train wreck project, and what did you learn?
A.  What comes to mind for me was not truly a "train wreck" but a very frustrating project for an intranet upgrade. It was way back in my Intranet Management days, and the vendor we used to help with the migration seemed to plow ahead and blow through our budget very fast. There were a lot of communication issues on both ends, and I learned a lot from that experience, both about what we should have been doing on the client side and what the vendor should have done differently. I think that experience helped me be a better advocate and manager and client, and then when I became a consultant myself, I always remember what it's like to be the client. I try always to keep budget in check, communicate hours spent, check in the my clients if I worry a particular job will take more hours than they may realize, etc. I think open communication is vital to a successful project and great client/vendor relationship.

Q. Your favorite M365 feature/tool and why
A.  Stream, because I love video and the power of it as a communication platform. Stream is so accessible and easy to use, and there are so many awesome features they keep adding!

Q. Where do you think Microsoft is going with M365.. Be totally honest
A.  I'm not really sure, honestly. As a consultant who primarily help in the modern intranet space and empowering end users, I would love to see more attention to out-of-the-box enhancements in SharePoint and Teams and Stream, etc., that are not "premium" add-ons. I miss the days when I could say "you get all this with your subscription." Now it's "well, it depends what license you have" and "let me check" (because I cannot keep up with all the changes in what's included in what license)!

Q. What are the 3 cool features of the demo? 
A.  Just how easy it is to capture knowledge with M365 tools
Ideas to help capture knowledge from others who aren't comfortable doing it themselves (and how AI can help!)
The blessing and the curse with Pages for documentation.

Q. What is the sizzle? 
A.  Believe it or not, checklists! 

Q. What was your first job out of hire school?
A.  I did some campus jobs at school, and worked at a pretzel/pizza shop that I still love and go to when I can. More interesting may be my high school job- I worked at a monastery washing dishes. 🙂

Q. What are you working on to become a developer/consultant / CTO
A.  I'm trying to do more research into options for clients that will meet their needs and budgets. Things come up that are outside of my knowledge/current expertise, so I always try to take some time to learn more in those spaces.

Q. Where do you want to be in 5 years?
A.  Honestly, I want to still be consulting and helping clients as awesome as my current ones. I'm really happy when I see my clients happy! I would like to develop more content for the M365 Community. I've done many videos for my company's YouTube channel, but I'd like to start my own blog and channel at some point.

Q. What's your blind spot in your Microsoft knowledge? Pitfalls
A.  I am definitely more of the end user/power user consultant, so anything in development or sys admin/network side, I need help. As far as where I personally need to do more learning- AI. I am still trying to figure out who the current tools available will be most beneficial to me and my clients. There is so much to learn in this space, and it can be challenging when I'm spending most of my time deep in client work with clients who aren't yet getting into AI.

Q. Where do you source your knowledge? - Twitter- who do you follow, site urls
A.  I do lots of searches when troubleshooting, but I have some favorite go-to resources:
Mark Kashman's Intrazone podcast is AWESOME! https://intrazone.libsyn.com/
Collab365 Daily Digest: https://today.collab365.com/
Blogs, especially Gregory Zelfond (aka SharePoint Maven), Marc Anderson, and Sue Hanley
The M365 Roadmap and the Message Center.

Q. In your mind, if there was 1 song that could describe Sharepoint, what would it be? 
A.  I hate you, I love you (Not the lyrics but the name 😄) or maybe "love the one you're with"😄

Q. Where can people find you?
A.  LinkedIn since I don't do much on X, but I have accounts in both:

 https://www.linkedin.com/in/katweixel/

https://x.com/katscasa