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On this special episode of First Ring Daily, we are joined by good friend Stephen Rose and talk Ignite, hybrid work, Teams, and the good times ahead.
Make sure to check out Stephen’s podcast too.
dougkinzinger
<p>Steve’s always a fun guy to be around for sure!</p>
pecosbob04
<p>What was the movie again (listened @ 2x)?</p>
Paul Thurrott
Premium Member<p>Close Encounters of the Third Kind.</p>
pecosbob04
<p>Thank You! I should have picked up I did hear the Dreyfuss reference.</p><p><br></p>
erichk
Premium Member<p>I’m also digging that cover art of Rush: Permanent Waves in the background.</p>
iantrem
Premium Member<p>Close Encounters was on the TV last weekend in the UK and was as good as I remembered it. The scene of utter chaos in Dreyfus’ character’s home hit a little more closely now I have kids of my own.</p><p><br></p><p>I now want Steve’s t-shirt!</p>
wright_is
Premium Member<p>It was on TV here in Germany as well a month or so ago, although I wasn’t at home that evening.</p><p><br></p><p>I have to watch it again. I haven’t watched it since the original release, so I would have been 9 or 10 at the time. It was a great film, but it was also boring in places for a 9 year old, but it still left a lasting impression on me.</p>
harmjr
Premium Member<p>Watching Brad during the <span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">Close Encounters discussions LOL. </span></p>
mark1080
<p>I don’t understand the shunning of email, and the embracing of chat style communications (Teams and other I.M’s like Slack etc)</p><p><br></p><p>I feel that the ever present personality of chat type of communication is somewhat OCD and creates an anxiety about checking in all the time.</p><p>The example he mentioned where an employee of a company who actually had an email address claimed ‘we don’t use email here. That’s just rude / negligent.</p><p><br></p><p>I think email is good becaue it can promote the crafting of a succinct message, rather than the ‘stream of conciousness’ that occurs on chat apps.</p><p>Also provide and extremely handy history of the subject.</p><p>Also, being in Australia, the time zones are not always convenient, so you know that sends and replies will happen at a time convenient to the individual.</p><p><br></p><p>Of course I have used Teams, and found it somewhat clunky, and definitely not agnostic to people – requiring often opaque sign-in’s if you don’t already have a 365 account.</p>
erichk
Premium Member<p>I agree. Even my boss has said to me Teams is now the best way to get a hold of him. I like Teams fine, but I don’t see why e-mail has to become a thing of the past just yet.</p>
wright_is
Premium Member<p>We use a mixture of Teams and email. Email is for formal or business relevant requests or information, Teams is used for quick messages that need a quick reply.</p><p><br></p><p>Producing a new invoice layout, a quick Teams message to a colleague to ask which field they want to be used for something.</p><p><br></p><p>A request for new user licenses goes via email, because it needs to be bumped up the chain of command and then sent out to the company providing the licenses. That provides cross-team documentation automatically, because it is forwarded with the relevant history at the bottom.</p><p><br></p><p>Likewise, our AV software sends an email when a machine encounters malware. We answer in the departmental chat when we contact the user, to let the others know we are on the case.</p>
mark1080
<p>That makes sense. No point emailing random / small comments or questions internally.</p><p>I will start using Teams for that</p>
mark1080
<p>I have started using Teams for quick person to person chat – Q & A type stuff, and it works really well.</p><p>Doesn’t clutter up your email</p>
sgbassett
Premium Member<p>Paul, you mention Orlando as "not a particularly interesting place." That is only because the conferences are usually at Disney, on International Drive, or the Convention Center. Those places are not the real Orlando. Orlando is a large and growing city with a long history and many interesting places to visit beyond theme parks and convention centers. Downtown is vibrant and many of the neighborhood surrounding downtown, with their older home, brick streets, and large oak trees with Spanish moss, are indistinguishable from revered Southern cities like Savannah. There are many parks and lakes in and around the city center. We live in an area just southeast of downtown that features many square miles of interesting Mid-Century Modern homes. Ours was built in 1958. </p><p><br></p><p>So the next time you are in Orlando, take an Uber or Lyft into the real Orlando and leave the mass-produced sameness of the theme parks behind. </p>
Paul Thurrott
Premium Member<p>Fair enough!</p>
allen_maloy
Premium Member<p>That Microsoft 365 Knowledge series Paul/Stephen did last summer was great.</p>
wright_is
Premium Member<p>Being around other people at work is how you learn to work as a new employee, especially directly out of education. You need the social cues, to see how other people are working. Ghosting was something we used to do, you spent the first week on the job literally "looking over the shoulder" of a colleague, you followed them around, you saw how they worked and what their tasks were.</p><p><br></p><p>That was a quick way into the job.</p><p><br></p><p>An hour round-up every week on Teams doesn’t cut it. Likewise, calling the colleague every 10 minutes with a question is annoying for both sides, the "phone" is constantly ringing, having a permanent video channel open is also a pain. Actually being in the office with them is actually less stressful and more informative. You can see when the colleague is busy and note your questions and ask them when the current task that needs concentration has finished, for example.</p><p><br></p><p>If you are already comfortable with the job, and the type of job allows it, then remote working is perfectly feasible. </p><p><br></p><p>We have a new PLC engineer and assistant IT administrator in the US. He is over with us, in Germany, for the next couple of weeks, to see how things are done here. He has been doing 6 months of Teams work and working with the IT managed in the US, but it was decided that he still needed to come to us, as he has a lot to learn and you just can’t do it at the end of a video link.</p>