This Could Have Been An Email

Do you see those coffee mugs and memes on the internet “This meeting could have been an Email” or “This meeting could have been a [teams] post”

 There is a reason for those.  Workers who want to work in a modern way or workers who employ technology in their companies do not take to productivity time being pulled away for redundancy or for interactions that can be satisfied with a quick exchange or a solution/system that can report on what is discussed or reviewed.

 Now that being said, there is an old-school approach of hey face to face / in person will hold people accountable for [insert reason for meeting here] or Hey noting like an ole fashioned collaboration session.  Certainly, there are critical times for those types of meetings/events, though look at what is really being accomplished and some of the unintended consequences of holding these meetings regularly.

Shocking Waste of Time 

For every minute of meeting time, attendees may take up to a quarter to half of that time to ‘prepare’ for each meeting on our schedule, depending on your role and the type of meeting. As Calendar.com and Forbes articles suggest that there is a minimum of 9min per meeting for the average worker around preparing for a meeting. Roughly 35 - 50% of your work time is prep with the average worker clocking in 12 hours per week leaving only 28 hours for productivity activities or revenue-generating tasks.

“Most of us spend a ridiculous amount of time in meetings. While this can vary, if you’re in middle management, it’s probably around 35% of your time. For upper management? That figure jumps to 50%. It’s also been found that the average person spends 12 hours per week preparing and attending meetings.”

— https://www.calendar.com/blog/perfect-amount-of-meetings-per-day-backed-by-science/

Improper Use of Time Will Cost Your Organization Employees

Workers will tolerate meetings if they have to, what they will not tolerate is their time being wasted. Meaningless meetings alongside meetings that can be satisfied with an email or group message are not only the best use of time for your costly resources. Organizations not only need to portray they value their workers, but they also need to demonstrate it and make them feel valued.

Meetings outside the regular operating hours will create mad or despondent workers. It is one thing to hold a meeting for a multi-time zone attendee list now and again, it is another to expect workers to cough up their personal time on a reoccurring basis.

Consider those meetings where everyone stares at a report or dashboard. How productive is reading as a group the results of data points? Maybe you cloak this as a strategy call to determine what to do with those data points is that what really happened. What likely happened is the attendees were only partially present until their turn came and then tuned back out. This was not an effective use of people’s time.

Embrace a Modern Approach

Organizations are taking many approaches to align business objectives with sensitivities to employees and their time. There is no doubt there is the need every so often to shift a meeting time or have a reckoning meeting especially when a course correction is required, though consider the following the next time you make a meeting or reoccurring event:

• Can this be an email

• Have you considered an organizational approach to ‘No Meeting [insert day here]’

• Is this something that is tracked digitally that we can message as needed about

• If you need a status update what is the most effective way for all to update rather than personal preference

• Have you considered the timing and how it will impact your workforce’s schedule and opinion of your company or you specifically

• Scheduling a meeting to ‘Give Back Time’ if it doesn’t apply or becomes shortened is disrespectful

• Factor in your meeting length and opt for 20min or 45/50 min meetings to allow your staff to pivot without being disorganized

• Have pointed meetings and reckonings but does the whole team need to attend

• Look at your attendee list and if it is appropriate

On a Personal Note

Staff and employees will judge you on how you handle their time. There will be murmurs and grumblings if you have redundant meetings or the appearance of wasting time, micro-management, and overall ineffectiveness. This will impact your ability to be taken seriously and lead not to mention the turn-over rate of your staff.

Take each meeting personally and ensure that you are bringing a forward-thinking modern approach to your interactions and employ some of the tools at your disposal to succeed!

H2IT - Transfer Teams Call Or Add Additional Content To A Meeting

Shortly after Microsoft released Teams, there was an option on your mobile device to put your phone in Companion Mode, which was pretty awesome, in theory. There were some bugs and disconnects from my personal experience, though not limiting at all. With all the advancements in Teams in the past year this feature is a must-have, must-know feature! You know in order to take the dog out, get your Prime delivery, or take the meeting on the road in the event you pack a tight calendar.

When you are in the meeting open your phone and select the Teams Mobile App. Ensure you are in your tenant! The majority of the readers may just be in one, their organizations. I happen to be in several of them.

When you open the app you will see the below when your meeting is already in progress and you are joined from your computer

You will see that there is a banner across the top the title of the meeting already in progress and the if you want to “Join to share content or continue the meeting on the device”.

No worries if you miss the banner or accidentally hit the close “X”, you can always navigate to your Teams App Calendar and select the meeting from there for the next bit of magic.

By selecting Join on the banner or navigating to the meeting manually you will be presented with two options:

Add This Device

Add this device will keep your computer session as is and add your phone or tablet to the call as an additional device. When this option is selected you have the opportunity to turn on your camera on your device, turn on audio (potential feedback loop), share screen, or other content such as a mobile app.

When you're done with the mobile just hang up on the mobile-only and everything will keep on as it was previously.

There are many use cases for this option:

• Turn on the camera to show something to the meeting that would otherwise be difficult using your computer camera

• Demonstrate how to use an app on your phone or test a feature

• Share a picture taken in the field or on your device

• Endless possibilities

I frequently have used this feature to explain something with a video feed that I would otherwise have to take a video clip or picture and upload into the team making a huge time suck coupled with awkward silence.

Caveats

When you add a device keep in mind the following:

End your session on your device, we all know what bad things can happen with an open line

You will have TWO participants in the meeting with your name

Normally the joined devices start with selfie camera mode - keep that in mind if your background blurring for a specific reason, hey we won’t judge

Transfer To This Device

This is as simple as the title. Your call is moved from your computer to the device and the computer side is closed.

There are many use cases for this option:

• Have to run the pup outside for a Bio Bark

• The schedule is packed and you have to leave the office for another appointment and need to close out the current meeting

• Been in the office all morning and need to source additional caffeine

• Endless possibilities and excuses

To sum it up, these are now native features of Microsoft Teams and they truly are as straightforward as they are labeled.

During a recent recording for MA-ITShow, I did an impromptu demo of the Add Device feature and we clipped it out below for your viewing pleasure!

You can add additional inputs from the same account in a Microsoft Teams meeting to explain something you're looking at, share a camera or just for the fun o...

Cloud Cost Control

ALL IT PROJECTS HAVE SOME SORT OF ECONOMICS AROUND IT. SOMETIMES SIMPLE BUDGET APPROVAL IS ENOUGH, OTHER TIMES A FULL ANALYSIS OF THE SERVICE COST + CONSULTING RESOURCES + INTERNAL RESOURCES + OVERHEAD CHARGES NEEDS FULLY FLUSHED OUT. REGARDLESS OF THE APPROVAL TYPE, THERE IS ONE COMMON TONE TO LEVERAGING CLOUD OR SAAS SERVICES, COST, AND COST OVER-RUN.

So how does one easily get your arms around costs in the cloud and importantly how do you keep things from spiraling out of control? The answer seems obvious, buy a tool. It is not that simple. Let’s break it down.

Use Case #1 - All In Azure

You have a cloud tenant in Azure and your CFO is asking you to provide forecasting on what the spend will be per month and quarter in Azure. You have several virtual machines, storage, networking, many web apps, and a couple of Microsoft SQLDBs. You have a couple of developers in house but rely on external teams to assist with your cloud needs.

THE TOOLING

Azure Cost Management in your tenant will report on usage and the associated costs. The good news is that since all of your cloud footprint is in Azure, you can TAG all of the resources you have deployed so you can further breakdown what is consuming your budget.

Since we mentioned budget, you can create budgets for items and subscriptions where alerts on budget thresholds will fire as well as create actions that can act on these alerts.

Azure Advisor will also make recommendations to scale your resources down or up based on use. We always recommend that a full review with one who knows how this will react should be consulted.

THE COST

I love giving good news! If all of your resources are in Azure there is no additional cost. this is included in with your tenant/subscription.

Enhancements

The detail you will get is fantastic and aligne with the need. If wanted to go next level you can add additional Azure services to assist with getting deep insights that may assist with obtaining additional budget or justify the spend. Azure Monitor will add more telemetry about your deployed workloads and provide operational alerting. If you have a committed spend or Azure is on your EA you can have a Development designated subscription that will allow for a lower cost (as long as you do not make the service a production service).

Use Case #2 - Hybrid Cloud or AWS

You have a hybrid cloud that has resources in both Azure and AWS. You were an early adopter of cloud and AWS but since have deployed all new workloads to Azure. You have to maintain the workloads that are in AWS until a migration plan is approved and a migration project’s budget is approved. You need to provide a comprehensive report-out of all cloud spend to finance as well as for future budgeting purposes.

THE TOOLING

Azure Cost Management will provide the same functionality as we discussed in Use Case #1. Where there is a departure is the AWS workload. This tooling can reach into your AWS instances and aggregate the spend, as well as take imports of any budget you may have. The departure between the free cost for all in Azure and the AWS workload will be described below.

THE COST

Cost Management, at the time of publishing, for AWS workloads is a percentage of the AWS spend of any resource under management. Please refer to the below link to obtain up to date pricing.

Azure Cost Management Pricing

Final Thoughts

I do not have the urge like many who are Consultant Architects to overly complicate this topic. It is very clear and public that Microsoft sees cost management as something that is native to having services and should not be an additional charge. I agree with this approach. Microsoft needs this data to know what to bill you and having the transparency of what those numbers are and actually make the recommendation to lower a resource costs them money. But it gains them confidence in their customers. Yes we have projects around this very topic, but not to sell a solution, but rather fine tune the service and make sense of what the data means to them.

Personally I love the service. It keeps everyone in check. You can even create wonderful PowerBI dashboards and reports to make it pleasing to look at. Once it is all said and done by leveraging Cost Management you will be armed with information to chargeback, justify, budget, and remove the mystery.

-Michael Askins - Technology Architect

@primed3

www.ma-itpro.com

#Azure #costmanagement #AzureMonitor #cloudyn

Microsoft Teams Pro Licensing, More License Layers

Microsoft has announced that there is intentions of adding another service tier to their widely adopted collaboration platform Teams.

This new platform is to include webinar features as well as telemetry and insights on your meeting through meeting intelligence. These features are a must-have for the platform to be more than a central location to access data and apps as other solutions already have options like Goto Webinar.

It is unclear if this is a reshuffling of the Teams Live Events or a more intuitive management of live events to be more like the traditional webinar experience.

These premium or niche features added to this service tier will bring the Teams solution to a three-layer model. Teams Free, Teams, and the new Teams Pro ensuring that all levels of the ecosystem have solutions available.

The Case for 20min and 45min Meetings

The Case for 20min and 45min Meetings

We live in a remote world now. I am not sure that if we were not a majority remote workforce this article would be written, or if it would, I surely would not feature it. The content here would be added to a much larger idea like Time Management - respecting others. Hey, I think that maybe an upcoming article. Back to reality, this remote world has opened our eyes to things like how to be more effective, respecting boundaries, and Time Management.

The days of old would have been constantly running at a breakneck pace to finish up a meeting only to run or digitally join another only to say “Sorry my last [insert activity here] ran over”. The brain would be shifted from a very high gear to a completely different set of gears equally high. Executing thought and technical architecture at the highest of levels that command the rate in which I would be paid for just being present.

We all have been in these situations and let’s be honest here, we all know after we felt clear and absolved of our tardiness or just joining in time our eyes wondered to the notifications of follow up emails from the previous meeting with take-aways and thank-you’s, The real offense comes at the end of the meeting. Undoubtedly you may be distracted by queueing up that next call. You may even shout out the obligatory “I have a hard stop”. The voice on the other end will chime out with 2min left in the meeting that they acknowledge said hard stop, “out of respect for time”… Yet the meeting just rolls on past the end and you are late yet again. You feel overtaxed. Your bladder is hating your and your tea or coffee stares up at you near empty and cold.

I submit that if you were to run a tight ship on your calendar this wouldn’t happen. That would be like saying the sky is blue though, wouldn’t it? Unpacking these scenarios there will be a few common threads. The first one surrounds either a point of pride for some or the downfall for others and that is the multitasking myth.

There are no such processes or subroutines in the human mind that allows for productive multitasking. Yes, you can do more than one thing at a time but your attention, real mindful attention is a single thread constraint of the brain. Starting a task like deploying a DevOps script to run and at interval check on it while having a conversation about the merits of Peer to Site VPN networking in Azure can be done because your focus and attention start the DevOps task which is largely a self-sustaining autonomous set of tasks. A blip or two of your brain’s processing is dedicated to the quick glance at the screen looking for a red or green indicator next to the job. It is not a very complex action. By modern approach, I suppose you can call it multitasking, it is not really.

I don’t call jumping from one VM to the next and back again doing configuration or app deployment multitasking. Again your attention, eyes, and hands are only dedicated to one process at a time. I am sure that this is resonating in some capacity with you either being an offender or offended by this. You ask “Ok I get it but attention can’t be the only casualty of tight meetings” You are correct there are a couple more things that lay in the grave next to your ability to accomplish things effectively. Your reputation.

Not being 100% present will impact your job. You will either look scattered or risk missing a critical point of information that is a detail you may misspeak or have an action item/follow-on you’re going to miss. Your personal brand will be crafted in ways that you will not like and potentially cannot recover from. Snuggling up against your effectiveness and reputation will be opportunity.

If you are constantly taxed, not available, and exhibit a lack the ability to get things done properly you will be either passed over for career advancement or not given access to opportunities with new technologies and showcase your abilities. Seems trivial, though as someone who manages people, I want to enable people who focus on positive and repeatable results but understand their own limits. Those who know their limits manage to this, others will have to find this out or be coached. An unwanted side effect if these behaviors is termination.

So now that I have gone entirely too far from your meeting running long to losing your job, let’s get down to business on how to best avoid these scenarios. First off, you will have meetings run long and over regardless of what you do. It is unavoidable. Putting a few things in place can help you be more together like building time in your calendar to get yourself in order. If your scheduling how about scheduling a 20minute meeting over a 30minute meeting or a 45minute meeting over an hour meeting.

If you're at the mercy of others for scheduling or if you have some policy that requires defined blocks try to put focus time on your calendar in the late morning or midday and later in the afternoon. This will allow you to review your notes and do same-day follow-ups.

Ideally, I would like to shorten the meetings to 20 and 45 respectively (or some interval that provides a buffer of time before your next activity). By doing this, it will allow you to split the time between wrapping up offline activities from the ending call and teeing up what you need to do for the upcoming call.

A few simple techniques like these will have you not look put together, rather you will be together and mindfully present for the topic(s) at hand. There are some organizations that have already encouraged this behavior and others that leave it up to the employee to manage their time only to look at their results.

I want you to be your best so pick what fits your work style best and try it for three weeks. Not a couple of days, not a week, yes three weeks. Behaviors take time to be altered just as time and cycles are required to determine effectiveness. Again it will not be the case where everything will fit nicely in these approaches. Manage to the exception and not the rule.

-Michael Askins

Follow @primed3

Become a Patron!

#TimeManagement #ITPro #BusinessSkills

National Coffee Day - Show Some Appreciation

It seems like every day is National Day of something, the reality it is a National - Something day every day. There are several websites dedicated to what topic your first social post of the day should be. Recently I found out that Daughter’s Day was followed a couple of days later by Son’s Day. Tomorrow (as of the posting) will be National Chewing Gum Day. Let us not forget that October has more than Halloween. We pick up National Taco Day and National Sausage Pizza Day which is just a mere month from September’s National Cheese Pizza Day.

It all seems a bit much, doesn’t it? I could carry on highlighting the various and sometimes humorous National Days and their World Day counterparts but that would be a mere diversion to the original intent of this post. It is National Coffee Day! I do like a good espresso (which has its own day in November). Making a run to the locally-owned coffee shop I had heard of this national day of appreciation and thought should we be biting on the marketing ploy that is a national day, or should we maybe use these days as a means to show someone appreciation?

It is far too often that we can overlook someone who has gone the extra mile or is constantly working predictably well. We sometimes take their work ethic or just the fact that they are there for us for granted. Find someone who makes a difference in your day and show them you are grateful for them by giving a simple token of appreciation. A random gift card on the national coffee day (or whichever day you choose) will be an unforgettable gesture.

This is a perfect opportunity to scare up some loose bills and send over an e-gift card to your coffee shop of choice. Yes, the big chains like Starbucks work in a dispersed environment but consider a local business if you can physically drop off a card (socially responsible ways please). I am sure the local workers and owners would appreciate every bit of business.

As I anxiously await National Tea Day, I give you this parting thought. When was the last time you did something for someone where you had no direct benefit? Try that sometime this week and let me know in the comments on Twitter.

-Michael Askins

Follow @primed3

Become a Patron!

Managing Time - A Virtual Conference Story

I am sure that you have seen my user accounts blowing up the internet this past week with blogs updates podcasts and other digital mediums. This is as I like to call it, the most wonderful time of the year. The conference season is soon coming to a close. There are a couple of larger ones left, but in this pandemic mode we have been in it seems that events at scale are happening more often. With these events comes the challenge of fitting all of your existing activities around the virtual conference.

What, if any impact did this virtual conference have on my schedule. I had declared that my schedule was to be mostly Ignite related and put the block in Outlook accordingly. If there is a client need or immediate crisis I would pivot accordingly. All seems fine, go for launch!

We promised regular tweets, blog posts, and a daily podcast called the daily download. This was to be capped with a closing live recording with several guests discussing the news from the event among other topics. There was a lot of content and activity around this event which in turn had several weeks of coordination and planning. All of this planning made it easy for the team, right? We all seemed to have this under control.

I had built my sessions, had my schedule for my presentations that were related to the event, and all of the above prep was in full swing. Session notes were taken and my scheduled client interactions have gone as expected, and success was near at hand. Until…

A major client issue came up. My scheduled posts were not getting out. Two of the sessions I had signed up had technical issues. I needed these sessions for a few recordings and writings due out that night. It had become apparent that the rails we were on could not be found.

I build in a buffer in my schedule for moments like these individually but all three firing at the same time?

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“When you attend a virtual conference there are many things that can throw your time management approach to the wind.”

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When you attend a virtual conference there are many things that can throw your time management approach to the wind. Home distractions, existing obligations, and other’s expectations that your remote and can just ditch the conference to tend to other things. Attending a conference be it in person or remote, there are goals of skilling up, making connections, and potential new partnerships. When the conference is a paid conference you want to get your money worth of content. Sure you can grab the sessions later, but will you really? We are off script and I can see an enjoyable week evaporative in front of me.

Using my tried and true techniques I applied and adapted some time management techniques to allow me to put our three simultaneous urgent items in a good place. I adapted my contingency plan’s contingencies.

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Managing Time for Virtual Conferences

• Notify anyone who needs to know you are not available except for urgent items

• Block your calendar and apply an Out Of Office autoresponder

• Setup your attendee area with everything you need to keep from wasting time hunting down charges, snacks, and drinks

• Turn off notifications on devices during key presentations

• Come up for air and check-in with work and family during lunch or break

• Save key presentations or find alternative replay times to ensure you get the messaging

• Build-in time for physical and mental health - you can always take this back for emergencies

• Have a second session scheduled in case the one you wanted to attend did not meet expectations -DO NOT waste time on something that does not apply to you

• Enable others to make decisions and bridge the gap of your missing daily activities

• Trust your team

• Plan as much as you can in advance

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The Client issue required me to be on a call to regroup, so I suggested a time that was between a break and not as critical session. I ensured the session was added to watch later backpack AND added the replay to my event schedule. The remediation or decision point was required interaction so I didn’t worry, one of my able team members was able to pivot to making sure it was completed.

Just after the call, I did a couple of quick replies to have meetings related to some of my IoT projects for the next week and not during the conference week. It is ok to say you are not available if the situation is not a ‘down’ or critical one. Every project is important, however, if you can make things more comfortable without sacrificing the project timeline, make it easier.

You will find making the time for the project will result in better interactions with those on the project. Your time, mind, and attention will be clear and you will be present for the meeting or activity resulting in quality time spent. If you wrench those interactions where they just fit, you will find yourself jumping around which appears disconnected and inefficient.

Doctor Who Dalek

I was able to take a moment to walk away from the conference and computer for a moment to settle my brain. This allowed me to regroup and look at why the posts and other website technical bits were not functioning. I could have just jumped in throwing switches and levers to ‘make it work’ ala David Tenant piloting the TARDIS in Doctor Who, but pausing if for a minute or three with a change of scenery allowed me to approach the issue with a clear and settled mind. This approach is a common theme with me. I like to stop, settle, observe, then remediate issues with this approach.

So what did I do to accommodate a virtual conference, work obligations, and issues? We had planned in advance as much as we could so I would not be spinning as much time making content for online posts. We had agendas made for all activities both pre-produced and live. Thought was put into building our session schedules and my calendar of events for the week. Small blocks of time were preallocated for check-ins, physical and mental health, and time buffer. I had contingency plans for key/core sessions that were must attend.

I am certain as the day is long the week would have been a near loss or poorly executed if I failed to take some of the measures discussed. It is easy for things to go sideways and have the just roll with it approach. You will find you will look and feel more put together if you manage your time around events. Others will notice too!

-Michael Askins

Technology Architect - CTO

@primed3

IN/maskins

#Conference #technology #professionaldevelopment

Virtual Conferences - My take, So Far

This year has been the year of Remote. Remote Working, Remote Access, and Remote conferences. We have seen many in-person events transform to all digital events. Many of these have been near flawless. Certainly, there is a timing thing now and again with the occasional green screen showing in the background due to a blip here and there, but for the most part, these events have been stellar.

I attended the first real big event at-scale which was Microsoft Build. This was the formula for all events Microsoft has had, or at least they were based on build. Built on Build, the Application conference added a few more things logistically. Then Inspire, the Microsoft Partner Conference (WPC) layered in interactive breakout rooms for sessions (all based on Microsoft Teams). I have been pleased with the execution.

What have we been missing?

The community aspect is there but not the same. Sure the MS Techcommujnity and RT Chat are nice, but I do miss meeting new people, vendors, and future clients at these events. There are still opportunities to do this but much more difficult than someone wheeling up to a charging station and chatting about each respective one’s business and creating a connection.

Another aspect that will be missed is the ability of a service provider to have an in-person event / happy hour / meetup at these large scale events. I have had one every year for existing clients and potential clients at Ignite (or tech-Ed or MMS) since I have been going over the last 10ish years. These types of events help solidify your partnership with your business contacts. I would be as bold to say that I have had the event costs (tickets, airfare, evening event) completely covered for me and my team that I have taken with just one project that came out of hosting one of these less formal evening events.

<continue below>

Microsoft Partner Conference - Inspire

What have we gained?

These events, at least this year, from a Microsoft perspective, have been cost-free. Which has included many more people than in previous years. The opportunity to gain insight and access to materials to a much larger group of people will increase adoption. Other vendors have done similar approaches while others are taking a hybrid approach where there is a core set of sessions and presentations that are free with registration and more exclusive content requires a paid-for pass.

Getting away no more…

I know a subset of tech peoples that love the conferences so they can get away from the office, essentially a paid trip to learn. they love the fact that they are away from the trudging through the workweek and can hang out at vendor parties or just be away. I am not one of those people, I tend to like being with my family. Though I do love travel, I (pre-pandemic) used to be on the go a whole lot. In fact the last Ignite I had a business trip the week prior and was home a whole 28 hours before getting on a plane to Orlando for the week. So it is easy to say that the logistics of the conference, though cool and great, is not among the top missed things about conferences.

Undesired consequences…

One of the things I never really took into account is the sheer amount of movement that one does at a large scale event. 10k steps are easy to accomplish. Getting up early and being cattle herded into the breakfast and lunch lines with a well thought out portion-controlled meal, kinda took for granted too. I can say that attending from home has the snacks and drinks at hand and my but planted for 18hours a day.

Sure some conferences build in time to move and other fun type sessions though it is worth noting that in the past you attended what you could and picked the rest up at another time. Microsoft has the same content presented ‘as the sun rises’ so you can attend those sessions you had to previously choose to skip. Good thing right? Well yes and no. You do get your content but it is at the cost of staying awake much longer than one should. They are on-demand so why attend. If you are trying to stay on the leading edge you have to recieve the messaging, ingest, process, then record and evangelize. It can take a toll.

Conclusions

I beleive that this change to virual is a good thing and dont know how we are going to go back to the way we have done it in the past. There are trade offs but the cost does not outweigh the gains. As the next conference looms closer I will stock up on my snacks, buildin some exercise and me time, and get ready for the marathon.

Should it Stay or Should it Go?

Follow the below link to a recent post on tech choices that were executed during the COVID-19 crisis.

This is a good framework on keeping or undoing changes that were deployed to keep businesses going.

TASE Architect Blog Post

Launch of MA-ITPro

We are developing the new site

Here is it