Infectious Enthusiasm for SharePoint and Beyond: Anouck Fierens' Rise to MVP and the Evolution of Digital Workspaces

Mark Smith: 0:37
Welcome to the MVP show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, let's get on with the show. Today's guest is from Belgium. She works at Walthell as a modern workplace consultant. She was first awarded her MVP in 2023. Hopefully I've got that right. Her main focus is SharePoint, microsoft, viva and the Power Platform. When she's working with the Power Platform, she focuses on Power Apps, mostly Canvas apps and Power Automate flows. You can find links to her bio, social media, show notes, et cetera is where you'll find all that. Onuk welcome.

Anouck Fierens: 1:32
Hey, mark, I need to correct you. It's not 2023, but 2024. So I just became an MVP this year.

Mark Smith: 1:41
Fantastic, Fantastic. So you're obviously not worried about renewal at the moment. All us MVPs that have been routed worry are we still in the game or not?

Anouck Fierens: 1:51
Yes, I'm not worried about it. So for me it's my first time. I received it in March this year, so I'm happy with it.

Mark Smith: 1:59
Congratulations. It's really exciting to get nominated and go through the rigor of it and then get into the program. Before we get underway, tell me a bit about you in three areas food, family and fun. What do they mean to you?

Anouck Fierens: 2:19
I like Italian food, Always good to go there and always good for dinner. I live together with my partner no kids Very nicely here in Belgium. We are very good. We do lots of fun things. Belgium, we are very good, we do lots of fun things. And for fun, I have a charity event that I'm working on together with my partner. We try to collect money for children with burn mosques. So that's what we do. But next to it, walking, riding the bike, bike riding all of that kind of things is all fun.

Mark Smith: 2:57
Nice, nice. So no mention of Belgium beer or Belgium chocolate.

Anouck Fierens: 3:02
No, not for me. Maybe the chocolate, yes, the beer, no, I would rather have a good glass of wine.

Mark Smith: 3:11
Where's the best place to visit in Belgium?

Anouck Fierens: 3:16
For me it will be Ghent. Many people will say Bruges, but I prefer to go to Ghent instead. So if you're ever visiting Belgium, go there. It's a very nice city. You have the water sites as well, but you have all the new in the city. So some old parts are being combined with some new parts the history of there and of course, there are a lot of smaller places to have a drink or eat something.

Mark Smith: 3:46
Nice, nice Bruges, of course is where I've been. I went to the common one. When traveling through, I was going from London, my wife and I did a day or so there and then we went on to the Netherlands after that. Tell me about your journey into technology. How did that come about?

Anouck Fierens: 4:10
My journey in technology started already with going to high school. I studied in applied informatics, so I was actually a developer. So I started 14 years ago as a SharePoint developer and now I'm more growing to the low-code no-code platform and Power Automate and Power Platform. But I have been developing for a very long time and it started with SharePoint 2007 development so a very long time ago, and I saw the entire evolution. So it's very nicely done and I was always interested in development and that's why I started my education in it. Um, why I don't develop anymore at this moment? There is so much you can do with the power platform, so why would you do it yourself? And you have the combination of the Power Platform together with SharePoint, so it's so powerful to work in and it's so nice to do the applications in there and to see what you can arrange and do in it.

Mark Smith: 5:25
What type of projects stand out for you that you've been involved in, Kind of like what was the use case Don't worry about who the customer or the company was but kind of like what are the things that you enjoy most when building solutions with this technology?

Anouck Fierens: 5:43
I think it will be the combination of going to the customer, having those discussions about what they want and try to figure out how you translate it and see how you can do it in the tools you have available and then start working, start building on them and just the entire projects from the start until the finish. I do like those kind of things, so not only developing it and delivering it, but just being involved in what is the requirement and how they are going to use it. So I do give trainings as well.

Mark Smith: 6:23
So I saw you know I mentioned there that Microsoft Viva. Now I think there's. How many Viva products? Are there? Five or so now? What particular ones are you working with?

Anouck Fierens: 6:36
I was a very big fan of viva topics, but viva topics will be retiring, so that's pretty sad, but yes fine it's.

Mark Smith: 6:45
It surprises me that it's retiring right, because now with ai and if you look around, anything with ai, document automation, viva topics now could be have AI apply at all and it could be a very, very powerful story. So I'm surprised they're getting rid of it now.

Anouck Fierens: 7:01
I am wondering what they will bring in place of it. They will bring something to replace it, but we don't know what.

Mark Smith: 7:09
Copilot topics.

Anouck Fierens: 7:12
Maybe, maybe no, I don't know. Maybe maybe no, I don't know what I other use. I don't use many Viva tools but I don't have the customers for it that they're going to use it. But Viva Connections is a very nice one to start implementing in organizations. Why I refer to Connections? Because many of the organizations have a license for it and can start using it without knowing it, and that's maybe the smaller step to go to the viva platform, like viva learning or viva goals yeah, yeah, I've not.

Mark Smith: 7:54
I'm interested in learning more about viva, learn um, you know, as a, as a lms, and but I haven't haven't come across any projects that's used v and you know, is it easy to use? Is it complex to use? Because nowadays there's so many LMS-type platforms available online at very low cost that are very robust. They do everything you need it to do. But I'm trying to get a project internal to Microsoft at the moment with VivaLearn, just to see you know if it's fit for purpose.

Anouck Fierens: 8:26
Yes, so do I. So I hope to find some projects where I can combine those kind of things, and it would be nice for me as well, because then I start learning about it and you can give better advice to customers yeah, I like it how.

Mark Smith: 8:45
What was your journey to becoming an mvp? How did how did the whole concept of an MVP get on your radar? What was the path for you to the point that you got awarded?

Anouck Fierens: 8:56
I started ESPC 2022. I had a conversation with Maureen and he was like why don't we go to give a session together and you start speaking? Maureen and I, we have worked together, we know each other for a long time and I was like at that point it starts thinking about yeah, maybe I need to start speaking at conferences, show my knowledge to other people. And then I started to contact the bivouac belgium information worker group that is also organizing the collapse days here in belgium, and in february of 2023 I had my first talk with them. So I had my first presentation and it went very well. So the first time I was unsecure and but it's starting with just getting those talks out, going to the events and start speaking. And then I was like, okay, the speaking is very nice, but there needs to be more. So I started my blog and I start writing some articles about things that I see that it's for me figuring out and not always the easy way. And then I was like, but if I have those issues, other people will have, so why don't I tell them about how I fixed it? It's maybe not the best solution, but it's working.

Anouck Fierens: 10:31
And then, at a point in time, the beginning of this year, no beginning of, yeah, 2024,. I started a podcast as well, together with Steve Dolby, the podcast Fusion Talk, where we're trying to combine business and development together to start working about how to fix things, and it's not always very technical, but we do. Also, how do you do a good brainstorm session to find out what users want? Because there's not a lot of information about it and everybody does it on its own way. So we started to talk about that and we have our podcast out.

Anouck Fierens: 11:18
And then in November last year, I was nominated for the MVP award. It was not my main goal, but, yes, it's very nice. If you then receive the email of somebody that's nominating you, it shows you are good in what you are doing and you are getting that way. So, yes, and that's what I want to do inspire people. So don't be afraid, just do whatever you like to do. And if you really want to have that mvp award, it will come at a certain time, a point in time so good, so good.

Mark Smith: 11:55
Just on your podcast, let's uh, let's make sure everybody knows where to find it. So it's called fusion talk, and is it in the apple uh store? Is it on Spotify?

Anouck Fierens: 12:09
It's on Spotify, it's on the Apple, it's on Google Music, it's all on the major platforms, and we have FusionTalkbe website where you can go, and there you have links to all of those kind of platforms as well, so you can find it.

Mark Smith: 12:26
We'll make sure we get that in the show notes for the uh for this episode. So check it out there. Um fusion talks. Um dot b. E is where you'll find that if you're going to look it up online. But, um yeah, lock in and and start listening to a few episodes. It's so good. I always love hearing um more people doing podcasts and stuff, because it's such a great way to learn information, particularly when you're traveling or something like that.

Anouck Fierens: 12:51
There's there's such a good tool it's amazing to listen to those kind of two podcasts in the car or in the plane when you are traveling, so I do like them as well. Um, and it's a fun way of learning. So you don't need to be focused on the screen, you don't need to read everything through, so, yeah, Is your podcast audio only, or do you do video as well?

Anouck Fierens: 13:18
The podcast is audio only, but we are also doing a YouTube show. It Defends, and it's every two weeks that we try to record and it's just about one governance question in Microsoft 365. We did a recording yesterday and it was all focused about OneDrive yesterday, a governance question about OneDrive. So we have the host, steve Dalby, and next to it we have a few people, three people that are doing a little quiz, answering questions, and we need to give each other some scores and the best one wins.

Mark Smith: 14:03
So, yes, it's always fun to do, very cool. Are you still doing conference, speaking at conferences and things like that?

Anouck Fierens: 14:10
Yes, I do. I have done a few already this year. There's still a few coming. The next one, um, coming up is comes first. Where's that? It's in london. It's in the mercedes-benz world stadium, and I will be speaking there about viva connections, sharepoint internet and viva connections, but I will also be the host of comes first tv, so we will be making live TV on YouTube as well, that's so cool.

Mark Smith: 14:45
That's so cool. If I can digress slightly, tell me a bit about the technology you're using for the TV or for the live TV. Do you do anything with the tech, or is that all set up for you? Do you just host?

Anouck Fierens: 15:00
I'm just hosting it. I make sure there is the schedule. We have the speakers in there, the sponsors in there. We have the conversations, like we are having now, about what they want to talk about. So I don't know anything about the tech that's some other people doing this.

Mark Smith: 15:16
Nice, nice. So you're the face of it.

Anouck Fierens: 15:20
One of them.

Mark Smith: 15:20
yes, yeah, very cool, very cool. Are you going to Dynamics Mines later in May in Slovenia? No, so close for you. It's only a short flight, wouldn't it be from Belgium?

Anouck Fierens: 15:33
It is, but at the end of May I have my charity week, so I have one week of working for my charity event. So it starts from Saturday until the next week, Sunday. So yeah, I need to be there.

Mark Smith: 15:47
That's fair enough. A question I have is about when you became an mvp. Were you surprised about anything? And you know um? You obviously got access to dl's, which give you a fire hose of information constantly coming in from the product team. You get a lot of um software you know to. You know complementary um. What's been the biggest surprise for you in becoming an mvp?

Anouck Fierens: 16:16
I need to say the amount of emails you receive in one week. It was crazy at the beginning. Um, until I had my rules and outlook in place, it was really crazy, but now it's fine, and also a little bit surprised about how many tools you get available to test and play with, where otherwise you always need to have a trial license of one or two weeks and then need to start removing them. And, yes, it's very nice that you can have them now and just play with them and discover what's in it and give good advice for customers for it yeah, nice, did you get a chance to go to mvp summit?

Anouck Fierens: 17:02
no, I was too late.

Mark Smith: 17:04
Too late because, yeah, rewarding.

Anouck Fierens: 17:07
So I was rewarded in March and then the registration was already closed, so otherwise I was probably been going.

Mark Smith: 17:18
It would be nice, hopefully, as in well there will be next year. The pandemic is the only time I've seen it shut down. I'm glad it's all back live again. It's absolutely a well worth event to attend. Is there anything else that you would like to share with the community before I let you go? Just for new?

Anouck Fierens: 17:42
people in the community. Don't be afraid to do anything. Don't let you hold you back while writing a blog or starting a podcast. Just do it. It's nice. Maybe it's not the best at the beginning, but you will learn and you will notice what people are wondering and you will get feedback of everyone. And it's so nice to be in this community because it's so a close community, an open community. Everybody is there for everyone. So just get in there and do what you would like to do and don't be afraid for it.

Mark Smith: 18:20
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffeecom forward slash NZ365 guy. Thanks again and see you next time. Thank you.