CollabTalk Podcast at #MSIgnite: Inside the #MUGUT

Christian Buckley (@buckleyplanet) and Greg McMurray (@goyuix) at the Microsoft Ignite Podcast CenterIn this second CollabTalk Podcast recorded last week in Orlando at the Microsoft Ignite Podcast Center, I was joined up with good friend and fellow community instigator Greg McMurray (@goyuix) to discuss his experiences with building community. Greg serves as the president of three separate user groups in Utah, and somehow manages to hold down a full-time job as a senior software engineer AND has a wife and kids. Whether they ever see him or remember his name is debatable, but his dedication to building out the Microsoft community in the greater Salt Lake City region is certainly not up for debate. Greg was attached to the Utah SharePoint User Group for a number of years as a member and committee member, but took over the helm as President a little over a year ago — while also helping to start the Dynamics UG and also accepting the position of President for that group. If that wasn’t enough, he more recently grabbed the top post for the newly-formed PowerApps UG, which seems to be experiencing some rapid growth similar to the early days of the SharePoint community.

I got to know Greg almost a decade ago as members of the organizing committee for SharePoint Saturday Utah (#SPSUTAH), which will celebrate its 9th year in early February 2020, and will be moving to a 2-day format (Friday and Saturday).

Microsoft User Group Utah #MUGUTTo help promote some of our community activities, earlier this year Greg and I conspired to create the Microsoft User Group Utah (#MUGUT), a shell organization on the Meetup platform that is used to share details and cross-promote the various user groups, events, and other community activities across the dozen or more Microsoft-centric communities in Northern Utah. I invited Greg onto the podcast to talk about the formation of MUGUT, share his thoughts on the need to constantly refresh and renew our user group strategies to stay relevant, and to apologize to his family publicly for spending so much time away from home.

You can listen to the entire discussion here:

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Christian Buckley

Christian is a Microsoft Regional Director and M365 Apps & Services MVP, and an award-winning product marketer and technology evangelist, based in Silicon Slopes (Lehi), Utah. He is the Director of North American Partner Management for leading ISV Rencore (https://rencore.com/), leads content strategy for TekkiGurus, and is an advisor for both revealit.TV and WellnessWits. He hosts the monthly #CollabTalk TweetJam, the weekly #CollabTalk Podcast, and the Microsoft 365 Ask-Me-Anything (#M365AMA) series.