December 18, 2025 • 29 mins
Welcome to Episode 417 of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast. In this episode of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro Podcast, Jay Leask joins Ben once more as the two of them recap their experience at Workplace Ninjas US in Dallas, Texas. They discuss conference highlights, the unique hackathon, engaging sessions, the Clippy Bucks system, and the importance of community and inclusion. The conversation also covers upcoming events, memorable attendee interactions, and new traditions for future conferences.
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Show Notes
- Jay Leask on LinkedIn
- Workplace Ninja’s US
- Follow Workplace Ninjas US on LinkedIn
- Workplace Ninja’s US
- Microsoft Zero Trust Guidance Center
- Microsoft Zero Trust Assessment Tool
- Conditional Access
- Ben’s YouTube video on Authentication Context and Conditional Access
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:03):
Welcome to episode 417
of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro podcast recorded
live on 12/10/2025.
This is a show about Microsoft three sixty
five and Azure from the perspective of IT
pros and end users, where we discuss a
topic or recent news and how it relates
to you. Don't worry. I haven't kicked Scott
off the show. He'll be back on eventually.
(00:25):
But today, you have been joined by Jay
Leesk once more. We just wrapped up the
Workplace Ninjas US Conference, where we presented two
sessions, one on zero trust in Microsoft three
sixty five and the other one on conditional
access. Jay and I both thoroughly enjoyed the
conference, so we decided to sit sit down
and chat for a bit about the conference,
our experience, and just a little bit about
(00:47):
the sessions we presented.
Welcome to the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro podcast
where I have no idea which episode this
will be because I'm on interview number
interview conversation. Not really interview. Conversation number
something. Five, six. Let's call it follow-up to
episode 400. 410. You're very proud of episode
(01:08):
410, aren't you? I am. For those of
you that don't recognize the voice, Jay is
back without Joy, which means hopefully.
Aw. I'm like I don't mean to be
without Joy. Like, I'm happy. You are happy
without Joy Apple.
Should we clarify?
Good afternoon, everybody. This is Jay Leesk. It's
a pleasure to speak with you all again.
(01:28):
Has it has been a while since episode
four ten, but No. I well, it might
be by the time this comes out, but
it's only 04:16
is gonna just came out or came out
tomorrow. Yeah. There's one coming out tomorrow. I
realized Fantastic.
To come out tomorrow? I realized I have
one coming out tomorrow that I need to,
like, actually
do stuff for. Yeah. Because it's Wednesday. We
should probably, like, get into the conversation before
(01:50):
we lose your listeners. What do you wanna
talk about today? If this episode is after
the one I just did with Kat, the
listeners may all be gone.
Oh, that's beautiful. Yes. I just feel joy.
Somehow, we ended up on recording podcasts in
jail with Kat. Yeah. I don't know that
we should strive to lose them even more.
Well, to be clear with by what you
mean there, you ended up talking about what
(02:10):
it would be like to record a podcast
in jail. Yep. You didn't actually record a
podcast in jail. Okay. Okay. And are we
talking about, like, the m three sixty five
jail? Like, is this a Is there an
m three sixty five jail? There really I
mean, maybe something in some report in Sentinel
of some sort? I feel like there's an
MVP jail. There is there? I don't know.
I've said I think there's an MVP blacklist.
(02:32):
I'm gonna get in trouble. Do you wanna
start over? No.
Sorry. Just ignore that.
So it's a pleasure to be speaking with
you. We're at Workplace Ninjas US here in
Dallas, Texas. Today is, what, the December 7?
Six You're off by, like, three days. I'm
a fix my
watch. This my watch says it's the seventh.
(02:55):
And now we know why Jay hasn't been
showing up on time. He has his dates
and times all confused. Hey. It's +1, 234550
450. What? 450.
Yes. Yes. 450. Yeah. My bad. On the
December 10. Right. Right. Right. At the very
end of Workplace Ninjas. Yeah. Which was a
really great conference. It was. And next year,
I have permission from John to say this
(03:16):
because he's announcing it in the keynote or
later tonight Okay. That 2027
is at Scott's.
I think that's what he said, Scott's in
Scottsdale, Arizona. Like Originally named for Scottsdale
the February
2027.
Yes. Very excited to hear about that. Fourteen
months from now. Yeah. I'm not necessarily excited
(03:37):
to hear about Scottsdale. Although, the other people
involved are all excited about Scottsdale. I've never
been to Scottsdale. Acknowledging that I have never
been to Scottsdale. I just also never Isn't
there a golf course in Scottsdale?
Sure. I think there's lots of golf courses.
I thought there was a PGA Tour golf
course in Scottsdale. There could be. I don't
golf particularly much, so it's not a Wonder
(03:57):
if there's ninjas in Scottsdale.
There were ninjas here.
There were. I had a conversation with them
as a former
taekwondo student, and I may go back to
it. I was curious
what form of martial arts they studied, and
they just started listing things off. And I'm
like, okay. Well, I will never be a
ninja if that's the requirement list. I could
(04:17):
never do what they did. I saw I
could not see them because of the way
the layout was. Yeah. That was a little
awkward. Video of it. Mhmm. Yeah. I'm never
gonna be a ninja just based on that
video. Yeah. But should we just talk about
the should we do, like, a conference debrief?
Let's do a conference debrief. I think it
is. This out sooner than later than if
we're gonna do a conference. That's true. I
might flip this one. Maybe this one will
(04:38):
come out Episode four seventeen. Or I might
do this one tomorrow. I have time. Well,
if the other one might already be added
in. This one may have to come out
in a couple weeks or maybe even a
bonus one. I have enough interviews. I may
do a bonus one. Okay. So I'm curious.
I told this to Kat. I'm curious your
thoughts. I believe
I don't know a lot of people here.
Okay. So I'm a relatively new security MVP.
(04:59):
I come as people Are you security MVP?
Yeah. I knew you were an MVP. I
didn't realize you were security. Microsoft three sixty
five and security. Congratulations.
Round of applause. Sorry. Editor, please put a
round of applause in. Okay.
But I started as m three sixty five
in Teams. Yeah. My background is all SharePoint.
Right. I know way more people on the
modern work side of things than I do
(05:19):
security. Like, this group of people are all
new to me. Yeah. Me too. That being
said, without
knowing too many people here, like, I know
you and Kat and Lindsay Yep. And Mona
were some of the people here. And this
is one of the most fun times I've
had at a conference.
Yes. And I think one of the things
that was really interesting about it so day
(05:41):
one of the conference or the preshow day
was a hackathon, which none of us had
any information on going into. No. But we
were on the same team with Kat Yep.
And Kat of the episode of the future,
apparently.
And as we sat down and John explained
the rules to us, we had no idea
of what the heck was going to be.
And it was really cool to walk into
(06:03):
what I was thinking was a security minded
conference
and being encouraged for the hackathon to build
a solution, whether it be an agent or
an app or a website or whatever,
that helped to encourage
DE and I practices across your organization.
And that was pretty much the only rule
of, like, the goals that is. It wasn't
(06:25):
the only rule. It was the only goal.
Right. And the cool part was so we
had five teams. I'm explaining this to the
audience, not you. Because if I'm explaining this
to you, that's awkward. No. Explain it to
the audience for me. So there were five
teams
of
primarily
speakers with, I guess, one or two attendees
per group. And then
the rest of the people in the hackathon
(06:47):
were just attendees of the conference watching us
like cattle on a cattle drive Yes. Which,
I guess, as I think about it, was
a good way for them to get to
know us a little bit, which is cool.
It was. And I would be interested to
hear what the attendees thought. And If only
there was a mechanism
with which you could find that information. Well,
but not all the attendees were there. Right?
(07:08):
Right. It was kind of a pre day.
So I don't know. May what? There were
maybe
30 ish
attendees there? Maybe a few more, 40? Maybe.
Yeah. I had no concept of counting. Somewhere
in there. But I would say not only
and it wasn't that they were just watching
us. Like, it was in a bar Yeah.
With drinks and food. Yes. We started we.
I drink Coke. Other people started drinking. I
(07:31):
won't name any names. Mhmm. At, like, 9AM
Certainly not the people sitting at the table.
It started at 10AM. Yeah. Like, we started
drinking and eating, like, we I had a
breakfast beer. That's valid. And drinking a breakfast
beer at 10AM. Yep. Doing this hackathon.
The one that John had so John organized
this, had, like, a wheel that you could
spin to punish teams Yes. Or help teams.
(07:53):
Yeah. The one I think I wish you
would have done more to your point about
one of them was just, like, an interview
question or ask the speaker a question. I
think it would have been cool to do
have more of those where the speakers could
have introduced themselves to the attendees a little
bit more. Yeah. He made me get up
and tell a thing about me with no
background. He's like, tell the people something interesting
(08:14):
about you. I'm like, okay. But, no, it
was cool. It was like a pre party
Yeah. To the actual conference. It did give
us a way to get to know each
other, meet some attendees, meet some of the
other people before the conference started. So then
you come into the conference on day one,
and you're you already know people Yeah. Because
of just this Hangout hackathon day beforehand. Yes.
(08:35):
Now
then the conference kicked off
there. So it's a two day conference after
the hackathon
running, I think, about five concurrent sessions at
a time Yep. Four time blocks per day.
Plus today, there was an MSP track, which
I thought was really clever because a lot
of the attendees at conferences like this, you're
(08:56):
either you some of you work for a
company
to to do your own security or your
own m three sixty five management, and then
others, there's a large practice of MSP and
MSSPs
that are running this technology on behalf of
another org. And so it's
really interesting to see that was called out
as a top as a particular
(09:17):
track. Yeah. There's a lot of things, I
think, that were done really well about this
that made it I mean, legitimately just made
it a ton of fun. Yeah. Like our
sessions.
Yeah. Let me allow us to transition.
Our sessions. I have never had a session
quite like these.
Yeah.
The conference. Okay.
You're welcome, by the way.
(09:37):
Yeah. I think that's a combination of you.
No. It's that it is partly you because
we have a lot of fun with our
sessions. We do. Yeah. But part of it
was some of what John did with this
conference.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. The big thing that he
did to help the speakers engage with the
attendees And the attendees to engage with the
speakers. Yes. I think it it was a
two way
(09:59):
Yep. For those of you not looking at
my badge at the moment, which should be,
I'd say, a 100% of you. None of
you? I can make your badge,
the artwork Okay. For the episode. I love
it. In fact, you're already looked at it.
So the badge is magnetic,
which is pretty cool.
And there's your name and your company.
Mine has a big Microsoft tile, and yours,
(10:21):
of course, is the MVP tile. But then
there are these smaller tiles which are tradable.
And the
tiles have
if John made a unique value to them
in the sense that he printed more of
some than others, so there were rare ones.
And then as an attendee, you could go
buy
(10:41):
tokens of particular interest, whether it's a CoPilot
logo or a neurodiversity logo or a Disney
thing or a meme that's been turned into
a token. Really fantastic ideas all collected through
the speaker group. And then you to buy
the tokens,
you used Clippy Bucks. And Clippy Bucks were
handed out by speakers, and we had a
lot of fun handing out Clippy Bucks for
(11:03):
attending sessions or asking questions or simply, like,
I think we gave, like, 10 clippy bucks
to someone who stumped us with a question.
And then
someone else in the room educated us on
the answer. So it was really just fun,
a fun way to engage with people. Yeah.
And it wasn't just in sessions. Like, I
was walking around and people are like, hey,
(11:24):
you do this podcast that some of you
are listening to right now. I was like,
sweet.
They're all listening to us. Some of you
are listening to. This is why our sessions
went a little wild. Yes. I was like,
sweet. Here. Have a clip you back. Mhmm.
It was a lot of fun. Yeah. So
we did those are the sessions. We did
a zero trust session, which is a part
(11:46):
of the work of the session we did
at North American Collaboration Summit. Yes. And we
did this in Philly too. We did this
several times now. We didn't have So we
did it in I know. And then Philly.
We did the full day version of it
in Branson, and then we went back to
just the, like, one hour whiteboarding session here.
And the really fun part was we had
a couple of repeat people from Branson,
(12:08):
and one of them said this was he
learned even more this time. So we're getting
better or he was more receptive,
but it was a ton of fun. He
got bored listening to us for eight hours
and was like, one hour is all I
can handle of these two. But then I
really appreciate that you asked me to do
this is today,
we did a deep dive just into
(12:29):
conditional access.
And conditional access, when it comes to security,
conditional access is really fun because
after doing the zero trust whiteboard, you get
the opportunity to take all of the pieces
of zero trust and connect dots. And so
if you're any kind of neurodiverse
and you like to, like, connect dots on
things,
(12:50):
conditional access is, like, the place to deep
dive because you can do things like Jay
is authenticating, and he's authenticating on a corporate
device, and that corporate device is on
trusted or approved
network.
And he's trying to access
sensitive content,
and he wants to do a certain activity
with it. And when you connect all of
(13:10):
those different signals together, you can decide whether
or not he should be allowed to do
it. Yeah. I think it's one of those
areas that you could really rabbit hole on
in a bad way. But, also, if you
have really sensitive content, it's a really good
way to add protections to it other than
putting a password on it. So Yeah. And
it was the one today. We had a
(13:31):
plan for today. It went off the rails
so fast. Yeah. So it was I can't
remember. It was, like, the session title we
forget. Joke to people. People are like, what
session are you doing? I'm like, I have
absolutely no idea because I can't remember what
the title is. I just know the topic.
Yeah. We were going to
introduce kinda conditional access. Here's what it is.
Yep. And then just kinda walk through, here's
(13:51):
how you start building policies.
Yeah. We sort of got through the intro.
We got through the intro. Intro. Pretty well.
We got through that well. We went well.
But then you raised you asked, raise your
hand if you use conditional access, and literally
every hand in the room went up. I
think that's where it started. Because at that
point in time, I was like, I might
as well just walk out. You guys can
all just, like, teach your own class. But
(14:12):
at the same time, it was really cool
because everybody
was familiar with it. Yeah. And this is,
I think, where the Clippy Bucks really
drove engagement Right. Was,
one, people knew we would, like, make it
rain with Clippy Bucks. Some of them had
been in our first session, and they were
like, these guys give out Clippy Bucks if
(14:32):
I participate.
Yes. And I asked, who's those conditional access?
All the hands went up. And I was
like, okay. You got you all have clearly
done this. Yep. What do you wanna learn?
What do you wanna learn about? Yeah. And
even though they'd all done it, like, 10
hands shot up. Yep. Like, this is gonna
be interesting. So instead of going through it,
we got through a couple of them. People
(14:54):
had not seen agents with conditional access. That
was a big one. Yeah. So we were
able to demo some of that. Yep. But
the rest of the time, it was
driven by users just asking questions.
Well, and, actually, even that one, like, the
first big topic that came up was authentication
and context.
What are you trying to access, and what
(15:15):
can you lock down around that? And Jay
was like, hey, Ben. Yeah. Have fun. Well,
the funny thing is and that's on me.
Right? Like, so admittedly,
in this particular topic, I know
a broad swath but surface level detail, and
you know the topic deeply. You could have
run this by yourself. You were gracious enough
to bring me in because we have a
lot of fun together. We absolutely
(15:35):
we were told we have good chemistry this
week. We were.
I had literally just described authentication context as
an example without using that those words. And
then they asked me to describe and they
asked me those words. I'm like, I don't,
Ben, save me.
And then you then answered with what I
just described, and I'm like, oh, I could
have answered that. I just didn't know I
(15:57):
could have answered that. And so I learned
a bunch of stuff with more detail and
from a screen perspective too because I don't
live in this world. So that's also really
cool. So that was a big topic. That
was, like, a twenty minute conversation. Then we
had a topic around someone else brought up
the the context of, okay. So I have
someone who travels to
Russia and The Ukraine and this other place
(16:18):
for scouting potential employees, and
how do I protect what they're doing? So
we got to dive deep into
location based controls,
and then someone else
even the agents won. The last ten minutes
of the session, someone said, what can we
do with agents? And so even though that
was the one thing we had planned, we
just got this opportunity to deep dive on,
(16:39):
like, four scenarios
that, honestly, if if we had written in
the session, we're gonna deep dive on four
scenarios of your choice. Like, it would it
it was perfect. It was awesome. Absolutely. And,
again, I'm gonna hammer on this because I
would love to see more conferences do this.
I think the Clippy Bucks. Yeah. Like, people
legitimately have questions. Yeah. But a lot of
times, people are like, oh, I don't wanna
(17:00):
answer or I don't wanna ask. I don't
wanna seem stupid. I don't want people to
make fun of me. But because of these
Clippy Bucks, everyone's like, I want clippy bucks.
Yeah. I don't care. I'm going to ask
my question That's fair. Because I want a
clippy buck so I can go get these
tokens for these badge. One person had a
goal. They're like, I need to come out
of the session with, like, 25 flippy bucks
(17:22):
Right. Because I want to buy this token
from to take home to my daughter. Yep.
Yep. So we had to make sure they
didn't hog the whole session, but they were
full of they only had 25. I think
they wanted to get to 50.
Just looking at his badge No. How much
do they cost? Well, first of all, I'm
looking at yours because mine doesn't have this
description on the back. Oh. I'm I'm looking
at it because I didn't realize that you
(17:43):
have a the podcast that we are on
right now has a token. And it is
the only one. That was the only one.
Rare.
He made one just for you. Just for
me? That's awesome. But if you would have
sent in your picture, you would have gotten
something that I've gotten into. That's my fault.
Which Yeah. Now what's funny, I now have
a
silhouette that I would have submitted You could've
(18:05):
if I had that earlier. Phoenix twenty twenty
seven. There we go. But no. Because people
wanted those, they were not afraid
to ask questions. Right. In some cases, they
were even looking for how can I participate
in this session Yep? To get Clippy Bucks,
which I don't know I don't know how
all presenters feel. I won't speak for all
presenters. For me, I absolutely love it.
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Back to, I would absolutely do those sessions.
(19:32):
The problem is you don't know that. Yeah.
And I feel like of all again, of
all the councils that I've been to, most
participation
ever out of an audience at this one.
And I truly do think it was in
part due to Clippy Bucks and people just
wanting them and us being able to motivate
them. I may have even tried to bribe
attendees to steal Tim Tams from the session
next door to us with Clippy Bucks here.
(19:54):
For those of you who aren't familiar, Tim
Tams are a delicious chocolate treat. It's a
cookie or a biscuit because it's you're It's
not Australian, so it's a biscuit. So it's
a two layer biscuit filled with a chocolate
cream covered in a chocolate shell. And then
you can eat it normally, like, you would
just take bites of it. But there's something
called a temtem slam, where if you bite
off one corner and then you bite off
(20:15):
the opposite corner,
you can dip it in I do it
with coffee. Kids can do it with hot
chocolate or tea. You dip it in there,
and you hold it in there, and then
you use it like a straw. And it
melts the chocolate cream on the inside. It
softens the cook the biscuit. It makes it
delicious. It's awesome. Highly recommended. And by the
way, they sell Tim Tams at grocery stores
in America now. Not all. But there are
(20:36):
grocery stores. Find some. Yes. But yeah. It's
just
that type of stuff, though, made it more
engaging Yeah.
From all aspects by just having fun with
attendees with it to, I think, driving value
and learning Yes. Out of the sessions through
some of that participation.
Yep. There's also again, I walked into this
(20:57):
thinking it was a security conference, but there
was a women in tech conversation, which was
great. Yep. The conversation's the wrong word. There
was a session on women in technology, a
panel. There was also a panel on neurodiversity,
which I thought was really excellent. They had
three panelists up there with completely different perspectives
not perspectives, completely different Different experiences?
Thank you. With completely different please delete that.
(21:19):
They had a panel on neurodiversity
with three panelists with completely different experiences
in in neurodiversity
with the the way it showed for them,
the way it helped them, the way
it made the I guess, the way it
affected their behavior and their energy and all
of that. And they got to talk through
those experiences,
and I think everyone in the room saw
(21:40):
something about them represented on stage. And it
was super cool to see that at a
technology conference. I think it's just really great
to celebrate what makes us all different
and what
gives us our superpowers,
and it was really it was fun. Yeah.
And a big shout out to John for
organizing this and orchestrating
that part of the conference. Like, that was
(22:01):
super important to him Yep. Going into this
conference to have
that focus
and that that focus and that component and
that aspect to the conference the last couple
days. Yeah. Absolutely. John really busted his tail,
and his team
really busted their tails to make sure that
we had
an a venue, an opportunity,
(22:22):
a place of safety and connectivity.
It was awesome. So my hats off to
them. As someone who has run events not
of quite of this scale, but run events,
pulled schedules together, brought in sponsors,
this was a top notch community event. Yeah.
You have an event coming up. I do.
Are there gonna be Clippy Bucks? Not currently
(22:44):
planned. I'll say it that way. Although, I
don't know. Clippy Bucks might be J bucks.
J bucks. That's too much.
Anyway, so, yes, m $3.65
DC is coming up at the January. It's
a two day event.
I wanna say it's the January.
It's that Thursday, Friday.
The first day, Thursday is gonna be a
workshop day. Okay. So we have
(23:07):
two time slots, a morning workshop and an
afternoon workshop. Three hours each, we'll have lunch
in between. And then
I think we're running six workshops that day.
So three in the morning, three in the
afternoon. Okay. And then the second day and
they are separate tickets just because we wanna
make sure,
a, we don't have as much space on
the workshop day. We wanna give it a
little bit more intimacy
(23:28):
from an education and networking perspective. And then
the second day is all one hour panels
or workshop one hour sessions. And I think
we're targeting something like 50 sessions on the
second day. Nice. Yeah. And, unfortunately, none of
them are gonna be ours. You're running it,
and you have I don't present it things
I run. Yeah. Ours.
I had thought about it. And then you
went, I don't need to go to DC.
(23:49):
Well, it was a little bit late. I've
been doing a conference a month since
August. Yeah. And
As you all know.
Yeah. And then starting in February,
I have
one a one a month, February, March, April.
May, I think. May. I think. Yes. And
your family would like to see you? My
family would like to see me, and my
(24:09):
clients would like to see me get work
done. Yes. Which Yes.
I always go into these with good intentions.
So Yeah. Taking January off, so if you
want to see
a zero trust whiteboard or a conditional access
off the rails, I am officially renaming that
session. It's a good one to do now.
To condition Conditionally
accessed.
Un on on anyway. Yes. Yes. Off the
(24:32):
rails. I don't know when we're gonna do
it again, though. We don't have it. Like,
I have those conferences Yeah. But we don't
have our sessions at any of those. We
need to get on this. Yeah. I should
submit one for m three sixty five conference
Vegas. Maybe I can get us in that
way. When is that one? April. That was
in Orlando. No. Yes. I have a workshop
there. They already picked sessions.
They did, but Microsoft employee sessions haven't been
(24:53):
finalized.
Do you have some you should get one
in, and then I'll come do it with
you. Even if I'm not, like, formally on
the agenda, I'll just show up. Okay. I'll
get that submitted. We'll see what happens. Okay.
I don't know. I'm getting a little
a little sausage make there that maybe I
shouldn't be, but, yes, I will we'll see
about April. How about that? April in Orlando,
the other one we could potentially see about,
(25:14):
how do you feel about Chicago
in
June?
I have not decided if I'm submitting for
Chicago in June. I probably will. Okay. Which
means that I will be gone in February,
March, April, May, and June. Yeah. But those
are fun. Yeah. We should see about maybe
doing one in June, m three sixty five
conference in Chicago. Because that email and everything
just came out. Yeah. Well, either way, if
(25:36):
you're listening to this show by the way,
as an outside observer to the MS Cloud
IT Pro, even though I am a one
time host of the show, I will say
this. You people are awesome.
And I'm specifically referring to the listeners by
you people.
I've met, I don't know, like four people
at this conference. Shocked how many people here
Yep. Had listened to the show because
(25:58):
How many of them do you remember by
name? Love what? How many of them do
you remember by name? Jose.
Jonathan. Jonathan. From the Dallas Stars. I gotta
say that. I'm
a huge Dallas Stars fan. So to nerd
out with with one of the Jonathan, to
nerd out with you is a lot of
fun. So thank you for that. I fell
into your trap of naming names. And if
I forget somebody, I think Felix was one.
(26:20):
You totally fell into my trap.
If you met at the conference and he
forgot to name you here, it's entirely my
fault. It is Jay's fault. Blame him. You
can see what our sessions are like.
I feel like there was one other one,
and I'm sorry I'm forgetting names. I'm gonna
start writing them down. I'm gonna start writing
them down. Who I'm at. You should start
selfie ing. Okay. So here's the thing. Need
(26:42):
to selfie. New rule. If you meet Ben
at a conference, one, you have to say,
hey. I listen to the show. Give me
a sticker. That's the first thing. Yes. Absolutely.
Extra points if you ask for a clippy
buck, which he won't have on him. I
should be able to let him take some
hold. And then two, demand a selfie so
that he can post it. I know you
have social media. Yeah. Demand a selfie that
(27:02):
he can post on social media so that
he can start to to get to know
you all. Yes. And make me do it
because I get back from these conferences, and
I'm like, everybody's posting selfies, and I'm notoriously
bad Yeah. About selfies for So it whatever
reason. So if you're on social media and
you see this
oh, this is terrible. The lighting here is
awful. I'm not trying yeah. The right thanks.
(27:24):
No. Do that. That's where we go. So
if you
see this selfie
that we just took while talking about taking
a selfie, know that this is the new
tradition is you need to take a selfie
with this. And absolutely And Scott. I'm sorry.
Scott. Yes. And Scott.
I May maybe one week's episode, I'll actually
do an episode with Scott just for I
Scott is not gonna trust me anymore after
(27:45):
this week to do podcast episodes. He's gonna
start coming to conferences with me
just to
make sure I don't do anything I'd later
regret on the podcast. It's then mission accomplished.
Yeah. No. But I what is this? Absolutely
come up to me and Scott. Like, I
love meeting people and talking to people that
listen to the show. Yeah. And
(28:05):
I know from an attendee perspective, I have
been an attendee
where, like, do you see certain speakers or
podcasters, like, I don't know that I wanna
talk to them. I wanna Right. Stay in
my little bubble. Please don't ever feel that
way with Scott and I. Like, legitimately just
come up and say, hey. I listened to
the show, or I recognize your voice. That's
the most common one I get. I heard
(28:26):
that. Podcast. I know that voice. Yeah. That's
awesome. It's fun. I absolutely love it. Yeah.
So Alright. For that, we I feel like
we should wrap. We should because we need
to go find out who won Flip the
Awards. Okay. But it was neither you nor
I because we weren't nominated.
Yeah. I was kinda sad about that. There
should have been, like,
a new
new to the workplace ninjas clip Yeah. And
(28:48):
I was kinda new to the whole thing,
and I didn't quite know how nominations work
or how people got in there. Wasn't even
on my phone. Had I known, I would
have nominated you. You could have nominated me,
and we would have been in there.
It would have been a fix.
Listen. It's been fun. MS Cloud IT Pro
listeners, thank you so much for joining us
for another episode of Jay's Takeover on Hot
Stop. Takeover. Alright. Thanks, Jay. We'll talk to
(29:10):
you next time. Take care.
If you enjoyed the podcast, go leave us
a five star rating in iTunes. It helps
to get the word out so more IT
pros can learn about Office three sixty five
and Azure.
If you have any questions you want us
to address on the show, or feedback about
the show, feel free to reach out via
our website, Twitter, or Facebook.
(29:32):
Thanks again for listening, and have a great
day.
Welcome to episode 417
of the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro podcast recorded
live on 12/10/2025.
This is a show about Microsoft three sixty
five and Azure from the perspective of IT
pros and end users, where we discuss a
topic or recent news and how it relates
to you. Don't worry. I haven't kicked Scott
off the show. He'll be back on eventually.
(00:25):
But today, you have been joined by Jay
Leesk once more. We just wrapped up the
Workplace Ninjas US Conference, where we presented two
sessions, one on zero trust in Microsoft three
sixty five and the other one on conditional
access. Jay and I both thoroughly enjoyed the
conference, so we decided to sit sit down
and chat for a bit about the conference,
our experience, and just a little bit about
(00:47):
the sessions we presented.
Welcome to the Microsoft Cloud IT Pro podcast
where I have no idea which episode this
will be because I'm on interview number
interview conversation. Not really interview. Conversation number
something. Five, six. Let's call it follow-up to
episode 400. 410. You're very proud of episode
(01:08):
410, aren't you? I am. For those of
you that don't recognize the voice, Jay is
back without Joy, which means hopefully.
Aw. I'm like I don't mean to be
without Joy. Like, I'm happy. You are happy
without Joy Apple.
Should we clarify?
Good afternoon, everybody. This is Jay Leesk. It's
a pleasure to speak with you all again.
(01:28):
Has it has been a while since episode
four ten, but No. I well, it might
be by the time this comes out, but
it's only 04:16
is gonna just came out or came out
tomorrow. Yeah. There's one coming out tomorrow. I
realized Fantastic.
To come out tomorrow? I realized I have
one coming out tomorrow that I need to,
like, actually
do stuff for. Yeah. Because it's Wednesday. We
should probably, like, get into the conversation before
(01:50):
we lose your listeners. What do you wanna
talk about today? If this episode is after
the one I just did with Kat, the
listeners may all be gone.
Oh, that's beautiful. Yes. I just feel joy.
Somehow, we ended up on recording podcasts in
jail with Kat. Yeah. I don't know that
we should strive to lose them even more.
Well, to be clear with by what you
mean there, you ended up talking about what
(02:10):
it would be like to record a podcast
in jail. Yep. You didn't actually record a
podcast in jail. Okay. Okay. And are we
talking about, like, the m three sixty five
jail? Like, is this a Is there an
m three sixty five jail? There really I
mean, maybe something in some report in Sentinel
of some sort? I feel like there's an
MVP jail. There is there? I don't know.
I've said I think there's an MVP blacklist.
(02:32):
I'm gonna get in trouble. Do you wanna
start over? No.
Sorry. Just ignore that.
So it's a pleasure to be speaking with
you. We're at Workplace Ninjas US here in
Dallas, Texas. Today is, what, the December 7?
Six You're off by, like, three days. I'm
a fix my
watch. This my watch says it's the seventh.
(02:55):
And now we know why Jay hasn't been
showing up on time. He has his dates
and times all confused. Hey. It's +1, 234550
450. What? 450.
Yes. Yes. 450. Yeah. My bad. On the
December 10. Right. Right. Right. At the very
end of Workplace Ninjas. Yeah. Which was a
really great conference. It was. And next year,
I have permission from John to say this
(03:16):
because he's announcing it in the keynote or
later tonight Okay. That 2027
is at Scott's.
I think that's what he said, Scott's in
Scottsdale, Arizona. Like Originally named for Scottsdale
the February
2027.
Yes. Very excited to hear about that. Fourteen
months from now. Yeah. I'm not necessarily excited
(03:37):
to hear about Scottsdale. Although, the other people
involved are all excited about Scottsdale. I've never
been to Scottsdale. Acknowledging that I have never
been to Scottsdale. I just also never Isn't
there a golf course in Scottsdale?
Sure. I think there's lots of golf courses.
I thought there was a PGA Tour golf
course in Scottsdale. There could be. I don't
golf particularly much, so it's not a Wonder
(03:57):
if there's ninjas in Scottsdale.
There were ninjas here.
There were. I had a conversation with them
as a former
taekwondo student, and I may go back to
it. I was curious
what form of martial arts they studied, and
they just started listing things off. And I'm
like, okay. Well, I will never be a
ninja if that's the requirement list. I could
(04:17):
never do what they did. I saw I
could not see them because of the way
the layout was. Yeah. That was a little
awkward. Video of it. Mhmm. Yeah. I'm never
gonna be a ninja just based on that
video. Yeah. But should we just talk about
the should we do, like, a conference debrief?
Let's do a conference debrief. I think it
is. This out sooner than later than if
we're gonna do a conference. That's true. I
might flip this one. Maybe this one will
(04:38):
come out Episode four seventeen. Or I might
do this one tomorrow. I have time. Well,
if the other one might already be added
in. This one may have to come out
in a couple weeks or maybe even a
bonus one. I have enough interviews. I may
do a bonus one. Okay. So I'm curious.
I told this to Kat. I'm curious your
thoughts. I believe
I don't know a lot of people here.
Okay. So I'm a relatively new security MVP.
(04:59):
I come as people Are you security MVP?
Yeah. I knew you were an MVP. I
didn't realize you were security. Microsoft three sixty
five and security. Congratulations.
Round of applause. Sorry. Editor, please put a
round of applause in. Okay.
But I started as m three sixty five
in Teams. Yeah. My background is all SharePoint.
Right. I know way more people on the
modern work side of things than I do
(05:19):
security. Like, this group of people are all
new to me. Yeah. Me too. That being
said, without
knowing too many people here, like, I know
you and Kat and Lindsay Yep. And Mona
were some of the people here. And this
is one of the most fun times I've
had at a conference.
Yes. And I think one of the things
that was really interesting about it so day
(05:41):
one of the conference or the preshow day
was a hackathon, which none of us had
any information on going into. No. But we
were on the same team with Kat Yep.
And Kat of the episode of the future,
apparently.
And as we sat down and John explained
the rules to us, we had no idea
of what the heck was going to be.
And it was really cool to walk into
(06:03):
what I was thinking was a security minded
conference
and being encouraged for the hackathon to build
a solution, whether it be an agent or
an app or a website or whatever,
that helped to encourage
DE and I practices across your organization.
And that was pretty much the only rule
of, like, the goals that is. It wasn't
(06:25):
the only rule. It was the only goal.
Right. And the cool part was so we
had five teams. I'm explaining this to the
audience, not you. Because if I'm explaining this
to you, that's awkward. No. Explain it to
the audience for me. So there were five
teams
of
primarily
speakers with, I guess, one or two attendees
per group. And then
the rest of the people in the hackathon
(06:47):
were just attendees of the conference watching us
like cattle on a cattle drive Yes. Which,
I guess, as I think about it, was
a good way for them to get to
know us a little bit, which is cool.
It was. And I would be interested to
hear what the attendees thought. And If only
there was a mechanism
with which you could find that information. Well,
but not all the attendees were there. Right?
(07:08):
Right. It was kind of a pre day.
So I don't know. May what? There were
maybe
30 ish
attendees there? Maybe a few more, 40? Maybe.
Yeah. I had no concept of counting. Somewhere
in there. But I would say not only
and it wasn't that they were just watching
us. Like, it was in a bar Yeah.
With drinks and food. Yes. We started we.
I drink Coke. Other people started drinking. I
(07:31):
won't name any names. Mhmm. At, like, 9AM
Certainly not the people sitting at the table.
It started at 10AM. Yeah. Like, we started
drinking and eating, like, we I had a
breakfast beer. That's valid. And drinking a breakfast
beer at 10AM. Yep. Doing this hackathon.
The one that John had so John organized
this, had, like, a wheel that you could
spin to punish teams Yes. Or help teams.
(07:53):
Yeah. The one I think I wish you
would have done more to your point about
one of them was just, like, an interview
question or ask the speaker a question. I
think it would have been cool to do
have more of those where the speakers could
have introduced themselves to the attendees a little
bit more. Yeah. He made me get up
and tell a thing about me with no
background. He's like, tell the people something interesting
(08:14):
about you. I'm like, okay. But, no, it
was cool. It was like a pre party
Yeah. To the actual conference. It did give
us a way to get to know each
other, meet some attendees, meet some of the
other people before the conference started. So then
you come into the conference on day one,
and you're you already know people Yeah. Because
of just this Hangout hackathon day beforehand. Yes.
(08:35):
Now
then the conference kicked off
there. So it's a two day conference after
the hackathon
running, I think, about five concurrent sessions at
a time Yep. Four time blocks per day.
Plus today, there was an MSP track, which
I thought was really clever because a lot
of the attendees at conferences like this, you're
(08:56):
either you some of you work for a
company
to to do your own security or your
own m three sixty five management, and then
others, there's a large practice of MSP and
MSSPs
that are running this technology on behalf of
another org. And so it's
really interesting to see that was called out
as a top as a particular
(09:17):
track. Yeah. There's a lot of things, I
think, that were done really well about this
that made it I mean, legitimately just made
it a ton of fun. Yeah. Like our
sessions.
Yeah. Let me allow us to transition.
Our sessions. I have never had a session
quite like these.
Yeah.
The conference. Okay.
You're welcome, by the way.
(09:37):
Yeah. I think that's a combination of you.
No. It's that it is partly you because
we have a lot of fun with our
sessions. We do. Yeah. But part of it
was some of what John did with this
conference.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. The big thing that he
did to help the speakers engage with the
attendees And the attendees to engage with the
speakers. Yes. I think it it was a
two way
(09:59):
Yep. For those of you not looking at
my badge at the moment, which should be,
I'd say, a 100% of you. None of
you? I can make your badge,
the artwork Okay. For the episode. I love
it. In fact, you're already looked at it.
So the badge is magnetic,
which is pretty cool.
And there's your name and your company.
Mine has a big Microsoft tile, and yours,
(10:21):
of course, is the MVP tile. But then
there are these smaller tiles which are tradable.
And the
tiles have
if John made a unique value to them
in the sense that he printed more of
some than others, so there were rare ones.
And then as an attendee, you could go
buy
(10:41):
tokens of particular interest, whether it's a CoPilot
logo or a neurodiversity logo or a Disney
thing or a meme that's been turned into
a token. Really fantastic ideas all collected through
the speaker group. And then you to buy
the tokens,
you used Clippy Bucks. And Clippy Bucks were
handed out by speakers, and we had a
lot of fun handing out Clippy Bucks for
(11:03):
attending sessions or asking questions or simply, like,
I think we gave, like, 10 clippy bucks
to someone who stumped us with a question.
And then
someone else in the room educated us on
the answer. So it was really just fun,
a fun way to engage with people. Yeah.
And it wasn't just in sessions. Like, I
was walking around and people are like, hey,
(11:24):
you do this podcast that some of you
are listening to right now. I was like,
sweet.
They're all listening to us. Some of you
are listening to. This is why our sessions
went a little wild. Yes. I was like,
sweet. Here. Have a clip you back. Mhmm.
It was a lot of fun. Yeah. So
we did those are the sessions. We did
a zero trust session, which is a part
(11:46):
of the work of the session we did
at North American Collaboration Summit. Yes. And we
did this in Philly too. We did this
several times now. We didn't have So we
did it in I know. And then Philly.
We did the full day version of it
in Branson, and then we went back to
just the, like, one hour whiteboarding session here.
And the really fun part was we had
a couple of repeat people from Branson,
(12:08):
and one of them said this was he
learned even more this time. So we're getting
better or he was more receptive,
but it was a ton of fun. He
got bored listening to us for eight hours
and was like, one hour is all I
can handle of these two. But then I
really appreciate that you asked me to do
this is today,
we did a deep dive just into
(12:29):
conditional access.
And conditional access, when it comes to security,
conditional access is really fun because
after doing the zero trust whiteboard, you get
the opportunity to take all of the pieces
of zero trust and connect dots. And so
if you're any kind of neurodiverse
and you like to, like, connect dots on
things,
(12:50):
conditional access is, like, the place to deep
dive because you can do things like Jay
is authenticating, and he's authenticating on a corporate
device, and that corporate device is on
trusted or approved
network.
And he's trying to access
sensitive content,
and he wants to do a certain activity
with it. And when you connect all of
(13:10):
those different signals together, you can decide whether
or not he should be allowed to do
it. Yeah. I think it's one of those
areas that you could really rabbit hole on
in a bad way. But, also, if you
have really sensitive content, it's a really good
way to add protections to it other than
putting a password on it. So Yeah. And
it was the one today. We had a
(13:31):
plan for today. It went off the rails
so fast. Yeah. So it was I can't
remember. It was, like, the session title we
forget. Joke to people. People are like, what
session are you doing? I'm like, I have
absolutely no idea because I can't remember what
the title is. I just know the topic.
Yeah. We were going to
introduce kinda conditional access. Here's what it is.
Yep. And then just kinda walk through, here's
(13:51):
how you start building policies.
Yeah. We sort of got through the intro.
We got through the intro. Intro. Pretty well.
We got through that well. We went well.
But then you raised you asked, raise your
hand if you use conditional access, and literally
every hand in the room went up. I
think that's where it started. Because at that
point in time, I was like, I might
as well just walk out. You guys can
all just, like, teach your own class. But
(14:12):
at the same time, it was really cool
because everybody
was familiar with it. Yeah. And this is,
I think, where the Clippy Bucks really
drove engagement Right. Was,
one, people knew we would, like, make it
rain with Clippy Bucks. Some of them had
been in our first session, and they were
like, these guys give out Clippy Bucks if
(14:32):
I participate.
Yes. And I asked, who's those conditional access?
All the hands went up. And I was
like, okay. You got you all have clearly
done this. Yep. What do you wanna learn?
What do you wanna learn about? Yeah. And
even though they'd all done it, like, 10
hands shot up. Yep. Like, this is gonna
be interesting. So instead of going through it,
we got through a couple of them. People
(14:54):
had not seen agents with conditional access. That
was a big one. Yeah. So we were
able to demo some of that. Yep. But
the rest of the time, it was
driven by users just asking questions.
Well, and, actually, even that one, like, the
first big topic that came up was authentication
and context.
What are you trying to access, and what
(15:15):
can you lock down around that? And Jay
was like, hey, Ben. Yeah. Have fun. Well,
the funny thing is and that's on me.
Right? Like, so admittedly,
in this particular topic, I know
a broad swath but surface level detail, and
you know the topic deeply. You could have
run this by yourself. You were gracious enough
to bring me in because we have a
lot of fun together. We absolutely
(15:35):
we were told we have good chemistry this
week. We were.
I had literally just described authentication context as
an example without using that those words. And
then they asked me to describe and they
asked me those words. I'm like, I don't,
Ben, save me.
And then you then answered with what I
just described, and I'm like, oh, I could
have answered that. I just didn't know I
(15:57):
could have answered that. And so I learned
a bunch of stuff with more detail and
from a screen perspective too because I don't
live in this world. So that's also really
cool. So that was a big topic. That
was, like, a twenty minute conversation. Then we
had a topic around someone else brought up
the the context of, okay. So I have
someone who travels to
Russia and The Ukraine and this other place
(16:18):
for scouting potential employees, and
how do I protect what they're doing? So
we got to dive deep into
location based controls,
and then someone else
even the agents won. The last ten minutes
of the session, someone said, what can we
do with agents? And so even though that
was the one thing we had planned, we
just got this opportunity to deep dive on,
(16:39):
like, four scenarios
that, honestly, if if we had written in
the session, we're gonna deep dive on four
scenarios of your choice. Like, it would it
it was perfect. It was awesome. Absolutely. And,
again, I'm gonna hammer on this because I
would love to see more conferences do this.
I think the Clippy Bucks. Yeah. Like, people
legitimately have questions. Yeah. But a lot of
times, people are like, oh, I don't wanna
(17:00):
answer or I don't wanna ask. I don't
wanna seem stupid. I don't want people to
make fun of me. But because of these
Clippy Bucks, everyone's like, I want clippy bucks.
Yeah. I don't care. I'm going to ask
my question That's fair. Because I want a
clippy buck so I can go get these
tokens for these badge. One person had a
goal. They're like, I need to come out
of the session with, like, 25 flippy bucks
(17:22):
Right. Because I want to buy this token
from to take home to my daughter. Yep.
Yep. So we had to make sure they
didn't hog the whole session, but they were
full of they only had 25. I think
they wanted to get to 50.
Just looking at his badge No. How much
do they cost? Well, first of all, I'm
looking at yours because mine doesn't have this
description on the back. Oh. I'm I'm looking
at it because I didn't realize that you
(17:43):
have a the podcast that we are on
right now has a token. And it is
the only one. That was the only one.
Rare.
He made one just for you. Just for
me? That's awesome. But if you would have
sent in your picture, you would have gotten
something that I've gotten into. That's my fault.
Which Yeah. Now what's funny, I now have
a
silhouette that I would have submitted You could've
(18:05):
if I had that earlier. Phoenix twenty twenty
seven. There we go. But no. Because people
wanted those, they were not afraid
to ask questions. Right. In some cases, they
were even looking for how can I participate
in this session Yep? To get Clippy Bucks,
which I don't know I don't know how
all presenters feel. I won't speak for all
presenters. For me, I absolutely love it.
(18:30):
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you can focus on your business.
Back to, I would absolutely do those sessions.
(19:32):
The problem is you don't know that. Yeah.
And I feel like of all again, of
all the councils that I've been to, most
participation
ever out of an audience at this one.
And I truly do think it was in
part due to Clippy Bucks and people just
wanting them and us being able to motivate
them. I may have even tried to bribe
attendees to steal Tim Tams from the session
next door to us with Clippy Bucks here.
(19:54):
For those of you who aren't familiar, Tim
Tams are a delicious chocolate treat. It's a
cookie or a biscuit because it's you're It's
not Australian, so it's a biscuit. So it's
a two layer biscuit filled with a chocolate
cream covered in a chocolate shell. And then
you can eat it normally, like, you would
just take bites of it. But there's something
called a temtem slam, where if you bite
off one corner and then you bite off
(20:15):
the opposite corner,
you can dip it in I do it
with coffee. Kids can do it with hot
chocolate or tea. You dip it in there,
and you hold it in there, and then
you use it like a straw. And it
melts the chocolate cream on the inside. It
softens the cook the biscuit. It makes it
delicious. It's awesome. Highly recommended. And by the
way, they sell Tim Tams at grocery stores
in America now. Not all. But there are
(20:36):
grocery stores. Find some. Yes. But yeah. It's
just
that type of stuff, though, made it more
engaging Yeah.
From all aspects by just having fun with
attendees with it to, I think, driving value
and learning Yes. Out of the sessions through
some of that participation.
Yep. There's also again, I walked into this
(20:57):
thinking it was a security conference, but there
was a women in tech conversation, which was
great. Yep. The conversation's the wrong word. There
was a session on women in technology, a
panel. There was also a panel on neurodiversity,
which I thought was really excellent. They had
three panelists up there with completely different perspectives
not perspectives, completely different Different experiences?
Thank you. With completely different please delete that.
(21:19):
They had a panel on neurodiversity
with three panelists with completely different experiences
in in neurodiversity
with the the way it showed for them,
the way it helped them, the way
it made the I guess, the way it
affected their behavior and their energy and all
of that. And they got to talk through
those experiences,
and I think everyone in the room saw
(21:40):
something about them represented on stage. And it
was super cool to see that at a
technology conference. I think it's just really great
to celebrate what makes us all different
and what
gives us our superpowers,
and it was really it was fun. Yeah.
And a big shout out to John for
organizing this and orchestrating
that part of the conference. Like, that was
(22:01):
super important to him Yep. Going into this
conference to have
that focus
and that that focus and that component and
that aspect to the conference the last couple
days. Yeah. Absolutely. John really busted his tail,
and his team
really busted their tails to make sure that
we had
an a venue, an opportunity,
(22:22):
a place of safety and connectivity.
It was awesome. So my hats off to
them. As someone who has run events not
of quite of this scale, but run events,
pulled schedules together, brought in sponsors,
this was a top notch community event. Yeah.
You have an event coming up. I do.
Are there gonna be Clippy Bucks? Not currently
(22:44):
planned. I'll say it that way. Although, I
don't know. Clippy Bucks might be J bucks.
J bucks. That's too much.
Anyway, so, yes, m $3.65
DC is coming up at the January. It's
a two day event.
I wanna say it's the January.
It's that Thursday, Friday.
The first day, Thursday is gonna be a
workshop day. Okay. So we have
(23:07):
two time slots, a morning workshop and an
afternoon workshop. Three hours each, we'll have lunch
in between. And then
I think we're running six workshops that day.
So three in the morning, three in the
afternoon. Okay. And then the second day and
they are separate tickets just because we wanna
make sure,
a, we don't have as much space on
the workshop day. We wanna give it a
little bit more intimacy
(23:28):
from an education and networking perspective. And then
the second day is all one hour panels
or workshop one hour sessions. And I think
we're targeting something like 50 sessions on the
second day. Nice. Yeah. And, unfortunately, none of
them are gonna be ours. You're running it,
and you have I don't present it things
I run. Yeah. Ours.
I had thought about it. And then you
went, I don't need to go to DC.
(23:49):
Well, it was a little bit late. I've
been doing a conference a month since
August. Yeah. And
As you all know.
Yeah. And then starting in February,
I have
one a one a month, February, March, April.
May, I think. May. I think. Yes. And
your family would like to see you? My
family would like to see me, and my
(24:09):
clients would like to see me get work
done. Yes. Which Yes.
I always go into these with good intentions.
So Yeah. Taking January off, so if you
want to see
a zero trust whiteboard or a conditional access
off the rails, I am officially renaming that
session. It's a good one to do now.
To condition Conditionally
accessed.
Un on on anyway. Yes. Yes. Off the
(24:32):
rails. I don't know when we're gonna do
it again, though. We don't have it. Like,
I have those conferences Yeah. But we don't
have our sessions at any of those. We
need to get on this. Yeah. I should
submit one for m three sixty five conference
Vegas. Maybe I can get us in that
way. When is that one? April. That was
in Orlando. No. Yes. I have a workshop
there. They already picked sessions.
They did, but Microsoft employee sessions haven't been
(24:53):
finalized.
Do you have some you should get one
in, and then I'll come do it with
you. Even if I'm not, like, formally on
the agenda, I'll just show up. Okay. I'll
get that submitted. We'll see what happens. Okay.
I don't know. I'm getting a little
a little sausage make there that maybe I
shouldn't be, but, yes, I will we'll see
about April. How about that? April in Orlando,
the other one we could potentially see about,
(25:14):
how do you feel about Chicago
in
June?
I have not decided if I'm submitting for
Chicago in June. I probably will. Okay. Which
means that I will be gone in February,
March, April, May, and June. Yeah. But those
are fun. Yeah. We should see about maybe
doing one in June, m three sixty five
conference in Chicago. Because that email and everything
just came out. Yeah. Well, either way, if
(25:36):
you're listening to this show by the way,
as an outside observer to the MS Cloud
IT Pro, even though I am a one
time host of the show, I will say
this. You people are awesome.
And I'm specifically referring to the listeners by
you people.
I've met, I don't know, like four people
at this conference. Shocked how many people here
Yep. Had listened to the show because
(25:58):
How many of them do you remember by
name? Love what? How many of them do
you remember by name? Jose.
Jonathan. Jonathan. From the Dallas Stars. I gotta
say that. I'm
a huge Dallas Stars fan. So to nerd
out with with one of the Jonathan, to
nerd out with you is a lot of
fun. So thank you for that. I fell
into your trap of naming names. And if
I forget somebody, I think Felix was one.
(26:20):
You totally fell into my trap.
If you met at the conference and he
forgot to name you here, it's entirely my
fault. It is Jay's fault. Blame him. You
can see what our sessions are like.
I feel like there was one other one,
and I'm sorry I'm forgetting names. I'm gonna
start writing them down. I'm gonna start writing
them down. Who I'm at. You should start
selfie ing. Okay. So here's the thing. Need
(26:42):
to selfie. New rule. If you meet Ben
at a conference, one, you have to say,
hey. I listen to the show. Give me
a sticker. That's the first thing. Yes. Absolutely.
Extra points if you ask for a clippy
buck, which he won't have on him. I
should be able to let him take some
hold. And then two, demand a selfie so
that he can post it. I know you
have social media. Yeah. Demand a selfie that
(27:02):
he can post on social media so that
he can start to to get to know
you all. Yes. And make me do it
because I get back from these conferences, and
I'm like, everybody's posting selfies, and I'm notoriously
bad Yeah. About selfies for So it whatever
reason. So if you're on social media and
you see this
oh, this is terrible. The lighting here is
awful. I'm not trying yeah. The right thanks.
(27:24):
No. Do that. That's where we go. So
if you
see this selfie
that we just took while talking about taking
a selfie, know that this is the new
tradition is you need to take a selfie
with this. And absolutely And Scott. I'm sorry.
Scott. Yes. And Scott.
I May maybe one week's episode, I'll actually
do an episode with Scott just for I
Scott is not gonna trust me anymore after
(27:45):
this week to do podcast episodes. He's gonna
start coming to conferences with me
just to
make sure I don't do anything I'd later
regret on the podcast. It's then mission accomplished.
Yeah. No. But I what is this? Absolutely
come up to me and Scott. Like, I
love meeting people and talking to people that
listen to the show. Yeah. And
(28:05):
I know from an attendee perspective, I have
been an attendee
where, like, do you see certain speakers or
podcasters, like, I don't know that I wanna
talk to them. I wanna Right. Stay in
my little bubble. Please don't ever feel that
way with Scott and I. Like, legitimately just
come up and say, hey. I listened to
the show, or I recognize your voice. That's
the most common one I get. I heard
(28:26):
that. Podcast. I know that voice. Yeah. That's
awesome. It's fun. I absolutely love it. Yeah.
So Alright. For that, we I feel like
we should wrap. We should because we need
to go find out who won Flip the
Awards. Okay. But it was neither you nor
I because we weren't nominated.
Yeah. I was kinda sad about that. There
should have been, like,
a new
new to the workplace ninjas clip Yeah. And
(28:48):
I was kinda new to the whole thing,
and I didn't quite know how nominations work
or how people got in there. Wasn't even
on my phone. Had I known, I would
have nominated you. You could have nominated me,
and we would have been in there.
It would have been a fix.
Listen. It's been fun. MS Cloud IT Pro
listeners, thank you so much for joining us
for another episode of Jay's Takeover on Hot
Stop. Takeover. Alright. Thanks, Jay. We'll talk to
(29:10):
you next time. Take care.
If you enjoyed the podcast, go leave us
a five star rating in iTunes. It helps
to get the word out so more IT
pros can learn about Office three sixty five
and Azure.
If you have any questions you want us
to address on the show, or feedback about
the show, feel free to reach out via
our website, Twitter, or Facebook.
(29:32):
Thanks again for listening, and have a great
day.
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