Ayman El-Hattab

Office365

United Arab Emirates

Office 365 MVP Ayman El-Hattab is a recognized industry expert and a technology evangelist focused on helping organizations plan, design, develop, build, govern and operate enterprise collaboration solutions. During the past decade, Ayman has presented at many international and local conferences (including SharePoint Conference 2014, SharePoint Saturdays, TechEd events & others) covering a wide range of topics with a special focus on Office 365, SharePoint and Application Lifecycle Management.

A few days ago, Ayman received his sixth MVP Award (two for Office 365 and four for SharePoint) making him the only Office 365 MVP in Middle East & Africa.

What are you working on?

“Well, a lot of exciting stuff,” laughed Ayman. “Inspired by the discussions I had during MEA MVP Open Days, I returned to Dubai with several ideas that I immediately started working on. One of which is creating a complete course focused on ALM for Office 365 Apps, an area that is rarely covered in spite of its importance.”

“I’m also working on reviving some communities with the support of Microsoft UAE DX team, authoring technical content for O365 For All , SharePoint4MEA and MEA ALM Community in addition to preparing for two international speaking engagements that will take place soon.”

What does it mean to you to be an MVP?

“The MVP Award was a remarkable milestone in my career as well as my personal life,” explained Ayman. “The MVP Award gave me the opportunity to reach, influence and empower thousands of people across the globe, network with extremely genius IT professionals, engage with different product groups in Redmond, and fly to 25+ cities across 4 different continents for consulting opportunities speaking engagements, product launches, etc…”

“The amazing thing about the MVP program is it’s an award, not a credential. It’s always great being associated with such a smart and influential community; it’s something that I appreciate a great deal.”

What’s your favorite MVP moment?

“Two exciting moments happen every year; Seattle’s MVP Global summit in November and MEA MVP Open Days in March. The latest MEA MVP Open days were phenomenal as I had the opportunity to deliver two interactive sessions. In the first one, I shared with Middle East & Africa MVPs some tips and tricks for starting, running and managing successful user groups. The second session was focused on explaining the Office 365 benefit for MVPs. For me, the two conferences have always been an exciting platform for exchanging knowledge, engaging in deep technical discussions and starting new joint initiatives.”

What’s your favorite current technology tip?

“I truly believe in the two following quotes / tips:

‘Information technology and business are becoming inextricably interwoven. I don't think anybody can talk meaningfully about one without the talking about the other.’ – Bill Gates

‘Everything is going to be connected to cloud and data... All of this will be mediated by software.’ – Satya Nadella