With the 2015 holiday season’s festivities and celebrations giving way to the new year 2016, it’s time to put down that one last glass of Glögg and final mince pie and focus once again on the working world. The promise of a New Year always brings a freshness and new vision to the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead. For us at Rencore, this couldn’t be more true and we’re extremely happy to announce that Microsoft MVP, Erwin van Hunen will be providing us with a fresh approach to future work, by joining the Rencore team.
In a career that began with IBM technology and Lotus Domino, Erwin moved to the Microsoft world back in 2003. Already a member of three pretty exclusive clubs; the Microsoft MVP Community, a Microsoft Certified Master since 2012, of which there are just over 100 in the world, and being a member of the Office 365 Developer Partner and Practices (PnP) Core Team since 2014, Erwin brings over 20 years of experience and knowledge in application development to the table.
So without further ado, lets hear from the man himself. Our first question…
Why Rencore?
“For me that’s pretty obvious – it’s where the brains are right now. I remember reading an interview one day where the guy said, “the moment you feel comfortable with your knowledge, it’s time to move on”. I know by joining Rencore there’s people that can definitely still challenge me, which was a major factor.
The company philosophy is another area which was absolutely a factor. It doesn’t matter where you are, as long as you do your job. It’s a very modern approach to running a business”
What will your role be at Rencore?
“My official job title is Product Owner Transformation Tooling. A large part of what I do will be research and development (R&D) and using the knowledge I have from being a MCM and member of the Office 365 PnP team, to look at what’s happening in the world of SharePoint and Office 365 and make sure it reflects in our product”
What most excites you about the role?
“This might not be the sexiest of answers but one of the first things I’m really looking forward to is diving straight into the source code of SPCAF. It’ll be great to see what’s under the hood. I’m also looking forward to leveraging and mapping what I do with PnP to the product. The PnP program looks at making it easier to build solutions for Office 365 and SharePoint, and help people by defining common practices. My knowledge here can help with my work at Rencore.
The last thing is sharing my knowledge. I’ll be speaking and attending at a lot of conferences this year with the team and can’t wait to get started. My first official outing will be on Jan 15th in Helsinki, attending the Hackathon which should be fun. I’ll then be in Austin for the SPTechCon in February followed by a trip to Denver, for SPFest. Attending some great events really excites me”
How do you see SPCAF growing?
“The market is changing a lot and the way we use technology is changing an unbelievable amount. I see SPCAF growing an insane amount and following those changes and moving away from traditional old school style SharePoint development to new and different technologies that are new for SharePoint developers.”
And finally, how much are you looking forward to working with the rest of the team?
“An incredible amount. As I said it’s the brains and I’m really looking forward to learning and sharing with all the guys. Torsten, the most hidden of the whole team, is a visionary. To talk to him is amazing. With Hugh, the guy is so brilliant. To the level that when we speak, even after 10 minutes I need to shut down and re-process what he’s been talking about! Tobias, he’s an absolute driving force, it’s wonderful to see. And Matthias, I don’t think I’ve ever met somebody with as much energy, I don’t understand where he gets it from. We’ve organized two events together in the past and it’s been a pleasure to work with him. Even though I’m Dutch and he’s German (laughs), it works for us and I think we complement each other really well.
I can’t wait!”
