The vision behind #PerthMVPDay

Hi, I’m Terrie Culmsee. I work for Seven Sigma Business Solutions, a boutique management consultancy in Perth, Australia and my role is quite varied. In one day I could wear 4 different hats. Exhausting? No — I love it; It gives me a holistic view of the running of a business and where improvements need to be made, what the solution could be AND the opportunity to build that solution. Who wouldn’t love that!

I took a 3 year sabbatical from Seven Sigma and since my return a year ago, I’ve gotten to know the Microsoft community more. But the one thing I didn’t know anything about was who are the other Perth MVPs (apart from the one I married (Paul Culmsee) and the one we sired (Ashlee Culmsee). What are their specialties? How do they work? And most importantly, what are they like as people? Are they nice people like the Culmsee family obviously are, or are they jackasses ;) ?

I recently found out Perth has 7 Microsoft MVPs living among us — 7 extremely clever people who, on top of their commitments to work and families, have committed themselves to helping the community, sharing their expertise with the world. They give up their personal time to help others because they are passionate about what they do, they love sharing what they know with others, expecting nothing in return, apart from the satisfaction of knowing that they had a hand in solving someone else’s problem. How unselfish is that!

Not so long ago Paul Culmsee himself didn’t know the others apart from Wyn Hopkins. He’d heard of a couple, but had not met them. And so the #perthmvpday was born. For months I had a vision of a collaborative relationship between the MVPs themselves and connecting them personally with our Perth Microsoft community.

For the Perth MVPs, I saw them getting to know each other on a personal level. On the professional level, I saw them working together to best serve the community, including clients. I could imagine any one of them saying something like “Hey, Terrie, here’s what you do in Dynamics, and for the Power BI issue, go see X.”

For the community, I saw them connecting, face-to-face, with the people who’ve been part of their learning journey.

You might ask why I didn’t just contact the MVPs and get together for a meal or something. Would you turn up and meet strangers when your schedule is so full, it’s literally bursting from the seams?

An event seemed to be the way to go. An event would be the first step to bringing our MVPs together, providing them with a purpose for coming together. An event would also deliver my vision for the community, providing them with access to all Perth MVPs under one roof for the first time. The event would just be about the MVPs and the community; a casual affair, with no marketing, advertising banners, etc to distract the community. And if it was successful, I wanted to bring it right across Australia.

Meeting Shiva Ford late Feb this year was serendipitous. After telling Shiva my vision, she said, “Well, let’s make it happen. Let me know what I can do to help.” She discussed it with the other Perth MVPs, provided us with a Teams space to communicate and plan, and we ran our inaugural #perthmvpday, entitled “Innovating Workplace Productivity with Perth MVPs” on Saturday 25, sponsored by City of Canning, Microsoft, Modis & Becloudsmart.

110 people registered, with 30 last minute cancellations, the final attendee count was 45 plus our MVPs, Wyn Hopkins, David Musgrave, Sameera Perera, & Deepak Maheshwari, and Peter Schmidt from Microsoft presenting the intro. Unfortunately, Martin Abbott and Ashlee Culmsee could not make the event. I personally would have liked over 50 for the turnout, but was advised that for a free Saturday event, that was a pretty good number. Our last session was the MVP Q&A panel for any last questions. There were plenty of questions throughout the sessions, and I thought we’d wrap that session up within 5 minutes. Boy, was a wrong — it went over 30 minutes! Feedback of the day was great. For many, it was the first time they could see the connection between each platform, and how they could be utilised together to achieve a great solution.

The MVPs also learnt a lot from each other. Here’s Paul’s take on the event. I picked up similarities between David, Wyn and Paul’s history — their journey into technology and love of Lego. I couldn’t stop smiling when Wyn presented — he used Star Wars references, while Paul (although not in this particular session) switches between Star Wars, Lord of the Rings & superheroes!

I would love other areas to deliver something similar with the goal of connecting local MVPs to each other, and furthering their connection with the community. If you would like to run a similar event, here are some tips:

• Create a virtual discussion & planning space — Teams is great (for ANZ, Shiva Ford has already created a Teams channel for each city). Add Planner to your channel.
• Decide on a theme/topic (#perthmvpday was workplace productivity)
• Introduction: Provide an overview of how the platforms connect to achieve your theme
• Program sequence: Start with platforms that serve front end users, then ICT, then wrap up with governance.
• Streams — The one stream approach worked well for #perthmvpday. The audience got an understanding of the connection between the platforms, made them aware of available platforms they hadn’t utilised before and how they could use them. For the speakers, they were able to share their knowledge with everyone who attended.
• Sponsors: Ensure you mention your sponsors’ generosity in your marketing material, posts, registration site, etc. But on the day of the event, make sure they know it’s about the MVPs and the community, not them. So be clear, from the beginning that there will be marketing banners at the chosen venue.
• Please use #[city]mvpday hashtag

Let me know how you go. And feel free to contact me if you have any questions. Have fun and get connected!