Hi all, Salvatore here. This is just a quick video to answer some questions I keep getting online. First, why am I so interested in India? Well, you know, why wouldn't I be? In the last few years, I've become especially interested in the question of how India is able to maintain a democracy as such a poor country. India is the only country with anything near its GDP per capita that has 75 years of free and fair elections. I find that uniquely important as an area for study for comparative sociologist, and so I've focused on it. Second, am I in favor of nationalists in India? Look, I have no position on Indian politics. I know I've been followed by a lot of people who are, you know, nationalists or patriotic or Jai Hind. You know, fine, that's great. I have nothing against that. Everyone's welcome to follow me if you oppose the current government of India. If you're anti-national, if you're, you know, Pakistani, Chinese, I don't care, please follow me. And I'd love to interact with you. You know, not a problem. Third, what is my agenda on Twitter? Well, my agenda as an academic has been to expose hypocrisy, to fight against mendacity. That is, in each of the topics I've taken up, I've simply wanted to counter the existing narrative where I found that narrative incorrect and substitute a research-based fair alternative narrative. I'm thrilled to be able to do that with India, but I've done that in all my work. Please go back and look it up. I'd really appreciate it. Fourth, answering tweets and following back. Look, I've been gratified to have 45,000 new followers in the last month. It would take me a month just to press the follow back button 45,000 times. So please forgive me if I haven't followed you back. And if I don't answer you back, it's because I'm getting, you know, one, two, three thousand tweets a day. I can't answer them all. I'm very sorry. If you want to reach me, just email me or DM me. My DMs are open. It's not a problem. I always love to hear from everybody. Fifth, am I a Trump supporter? First, I don't accept the premise that it is somehow evil to be a Trump supporter. I mean, half of America's Trump supporters. But that said, I don't particularly support or condemn Donald Trump. And simply for not condemning Donald Trump, I have somehow been classed as alt-right. Look, call me what you want. Read my work. I stand by everything I've written. And finally, Thiruvannathapuram.


Hey everyone, this is Christian Buckley with another MVP Buzz Chat and I'm talking to you with Liji. Hello. Hi, Christian. It's great to have you.  Why don't you give us a lowdown? Sure, sure. First of all, thank you for having me on the show. It's a pleasure to meet you coming back after a long holiday after the 4th of July. So my name is Liji Thomas. I'm a manager with Bellorum Reply. Bellorum Reply is a digital transformation firm based out of Kansas City in the US. I recently relocated to the US last year and I'm an MVP in the AI space at Microsoft. Very cool. And so what's your role? What do you do at your company? So I started off like 15 years back as a software engineer and I moved up the career ladder and today I manage a brilliant branch of software engineers. So on the technical side, I work mostly on the on the Microsoft stack on the AI projects and other web projects as well. So on the AI stack, again, mostly focused on the Azure cognitive services, pod services, etc. Well, it's an interesting space and one that's expanding pretty rapidly. In fact, one thing that we see for those that aren't familiar in the MVP program, and every few years, they'll kind of rejigger the naming conventions and the kind of the buckets, the categories that each of us are in. AI is one of those areas where it's kind of spread across different areas. So it's newer to have an AI standalone category, but there's still some data platform people, developers, other engineering roles. There are people that are in cloud and data center management that do a lot of AI and are leading more heavily that direction. People that are over in the Azure category. So what was kind of your focus? What kind of brought you into the MVP world? Right. So you're right. In the AI space itself, it's a it's a huge space. It's all encompassing up a lot of technologies in there right now, particularly from the Microsoft stack. For this area, you have Azure cognitive services, cognitive search, bot service, and of course, Azure machine learning. My focus has been on the first three, which is cognitive services, bot service, and cognitive search. So even beyond that, now that you see the proliferation of low code and no code tools, you see that AI is being more democratized and is available to citizen developers or everyday developers, as they call it. So I don't know when or how that will come into the picture, but then you see the AI is being used across the breadth of the spectrum right from low code, no code to custom AI, which is using Azure machine learning. So my focus is again, more on the AI as it pertains to the development stack, which is by using simple API calls like cognitive services, bot service, the development of virtual assistance and conversational agents, cognitive search capabilities and that area. My journey as an MVP is going to be a little longer answer than that probably. So as I said, I've been in this space for more than a decade right now, and a majority of that has been fortunately on the Microsoft side. So I'm a little biased on the Microsoft stack, I would say. So being heavily involved in working with this stack and AI used to be, went from a hype to a reality just in a couple of years by now, but even before that was something that I fell in love with way back in school and college. So fortunately, I've had the opportunity to work in this space and to actually build apps in this space and this is beyond POCs and prototypes. So I think clubbed with that my passion for sharing of knowledge in the community. I introduced me to a lot of other opportunities, getting to meet people in the community, sharing that knowledge and be doing that for a lot of while when a couple of MVPs who are out there kind of noticed and they reached out and they supported me in terms of building additional opportunities for me, sort of mentoring me in terms of, hey, you know what, this is something additional you could do to add value to that and sort of like that. So that's when, again, that relationship flourished and they nominated me as an MVP and then I come into the club. But before that, for years, a lot of this groundwork that we do with or without the MVP badge is just learning and sharing that knowledge that you approve with the community. Yeah, it's, well, that's consistent. We were just joking beforehand that with the renewal process that of course you're brand new, you're not going through the renewal cycle here, but on an annual basis, as MVPs get renewed or not renewed on July 1st, typically around the beginning of July, we're still waiting here, we're on the 5th and waiting for those emails. But that, it's a great way to kind of reflect on things that just the process of the course of the year. But it's also, I think those that recognize, hey, they may not be doing the same volume of writing and speaking and mentoring, like things with work pick up, and so there are people that lose their MVP, but for the vast majority of us that don't like throw ourselves into a pit of despair at losing our MVP. It's, I always tell people, it's like, look, regardless of the plaque on the wall, this is the way that I operate. This is the way I automatically, I share, I collaborate with the community. I'll be doing this after I'm an MVP, you know, regardless until I retire. After I retire, I don't know, I think my time will be spent collaborating on projects with grandchildren, but that's it. Until then, you know, we're just going to keep on doing this. So usually, so people ask, I'm sure people once you earned your MVP came up and said, well, what's the secret? What's the, what are the three things that I should go and do? What's, how do you respond to those questions? Oh, absolutely, absolutely. I will tell you. And I, to be honest, after the longest time wondered, though I've not probably asked someone, I've wondered like, what does it take to be in the light club of like MVP? It's a black box. I would just tell you completely. That's why I like, I like getting different perspectives. Like, what do you think it is? What was it from your perspective? I will, I, so when I got the MVP, I tell you that the way I came to know of it, and probably many others as well, is from a tweet that, hey, you know what? Congratulations, your MVP. I knew for the longest time that I've been, the whole nomination process itself takes a couple of months and they go through the audit interview. It's, it's, it's not a simple process at all. So I come to know from a tweet that I am an MVP. And then I'm like, I spent about a good 10 minutes on that email. And I'm like, I hope they didn't get the name wrong. I hope they didn't get the email wrong. I wonder if that's ever happened. Like, oh, sorry, we sent you that email. I reach out to my CPM and I reached out to my other MVPs. I'm like, okay, so this is not a hoax. So, but jokes apart, yes, there were a lot of people after that reached out like, what certification do I need to take an MVP? What program do I need to do? Like, the three or four things that you need to do an MVP? I think the best answer that I've got is the one that I've asked my CPM in terms of, you know, without me just even asking, I think probably she just figured it out from my face. It's like, you know what, you probably want to know what you did to become an MVP. And then she gives me that list of just the line activities that I had submitted as part of my nomination process. And the one thing that I still remember her told me, to be renewed as an MVP, what you need to do is just continue doing the great stuff that you've done. You don't have to do any superhuman thing here. It's as simple as that. You don't have to do anything beyond that. What got you here is being a community leader. And you keep up that passion and that perseverance in giving back to that community, marrying technology and people wherever you go in the best possible fashion is what you got, is what got you here, is what's going to keep you renewed every other time. But of course, in interactions with the community and product groups is a different thing. But all up, that's the simple thing that I tell people as well. Like you said, the plaque on the wall is on one side with or without a badge, would you do it? If you would do it today, if you would do it tomorrow with or without that badge, that's probably fine yourself as an MVP. The MVP will come eventually someday, but then focus on giving back to the community. I love what you said about marrying the technology with the people, because that's it. It's everything that you're doing for the community. It's a, I think another mistake that MVPs make as far as the renewal process is that all of the, as you're starting to learn, all of the NDA calls that are happening every week, there's so much that's going on, the volume of those. And sometimes I feel so guilty, like I'm not able to participate in just in my field, in my area, for me, SharePoint and Teams related, yammer when they have them, but really Teams and SharePoint. And I'm not able to join every one of those calls or watch all the recordings. And I feel the guilt around that. But that is just the benefit of the program. You can't lose sight of what really matters is the core of what you're doing, as you say, as what got you into the program in the first place. It's the blog posts, it's the videos, it's the community events, the user group participation, the leadership that you're showing, all of those things, that's what gets you in and sustains you. Now again, it is a black box. So there's other factors which you and I have no idea that Microsoft has. I think it's generally known that there are some areas where there's a lot of MVPs and Microsoft is not as keen on adding a lot of new ones. And there's other new burgeoning areas where they're like AI, I think it's a great opportunity. Azure, there's still tons of opportunity. Things around the power platform, there's tons of opportunity for people to step up, show that leadership, get involved in the community, and produce, and then be recognized for that, where it's tougher to become like a PowerPoint MVP or even some areas of Office Apps and Services where it's pretty crowded right now. But there's also a lot going on. So I like anything. I don't pick what I am interested in or write about or speak about or talk to people about, help people about, based on what I think is going to best position me for next year's MVP. I'm working on the stuff that I am passionate about. And I think that's my word of advice for people. Yeah. And that's probably the sad news as well, right? I mean beyond the point, you really cannot build an MVP up from scratch, 80 to 90 percentage. You need to have had that passion for lack of a better word, again, marrying people and technology. And then the MVP or the specific route to that would just show you that navigation path from there, but then some things that are just so difficult to build right up. So I like that 90% passion, 10% strategy. I love the strategy, yes, I would think, and then not with zero strategy, but yeah. It's good to have a, well, like I said, so there's something that I do, like I don't know what you do. And maybe this is as you continue moving forward, but something that I've done throughout my 10 years as an MVP, and I did a couple of years prior to that, is I started on a monthly basis cataloging all of my activities. And I'm not doing it to like, hey, world, look at what I did. It was purely for my own brain to keep organized all of my activities. And about, I don't know, six, seven years ago, I started posting it as a monthly blog post at the beginning of each month with all of my articles and all of my slide decks and presentations and webinars, just collecting all those things. So I can one, as part of the renewal process, I can go and plug those more easily into the tool and keep track of those contributions. It's also a great tool just for me to go in and kind of remind myself where I've been. And so I don't know if you do any tricks like that to keep. You know what, I was just thinking about it as we talked about the renewal process today morning, I'm like, I need to take a stock of what's, you just cannot improve what you cannot measure, right? So you need to be able to, at least for your own self documentation, keep a list of all those activities and stuff, and it's gonna just help your renewal process at the end of the year as well. So keep a stock, but I think that's a great idea. I would definitely follow suit stuff. Yeah, you need to take a look. If anybody that's watching, you go to BuckleyPlanet.com. And if you go over to the keywords on the right side and find like the, like, what do I call it? I don't have it up in front of me, but like the monthly thing, whatever monthly it's up there. And you'll see the queue of all those. But it's great to be able to go back and say, what was I working on in December?  What did I go and create? And so I'll often go and be able to pull things for, for like social posts and like, I want to, you know, evergreen content, I want to share it out again. It's been, you know, several months from that, or it's just a reminder of what was I working on? And can I leverage old writings old, you know, six months ago, so old, not fresh, but to, to leverage that content for new, for new articles as well. And put, has my thinking changed on any of those things? Absolutely. Yeah. How often do you even look around for your own car keys, right? You just forget when you've done or how you actually solved that problem last time around. So you write for yourself first, then for others. That's why I'm also a one note user for that exact reason. I like, well, often if I'm searching for research, because I use it. So I use it in all walks of my job and I use it in personal life as well, is that I'll go search there first, and I will often have notes on a topic or several articles that I have, I've written in one note first, and then published on the blog or some other site for my company. And then I'll archive it, I create a folder where I save all of those published works, usually with a link to it. But I'll go search there. It's been just a fantastic research tool as well. I am so glad you say that, Christian, because I'm glad to meet another person who takes one note as a productive application.  I'm like, I use one note. Does that even count? But I think I found that to be super useful. I like having tabs and it's like, I literally live in one note. So yeah, it's open all day, every day. In fact, I've got right open right now and I have my blog calendar up and I'm looking at what's coming up, what my plans are for the upcoming week. So yeah, it's a great tool. Well, Leeji, really appreciate your time and getting to know you and hopefully we'll see you next year at the MVP summit. Oh, yes. I can't wait to see all the MVPs. It's been remote for the longest time I will think about time we got together. Well, definitely. And for folks that want to find out more about you, maybe connect with you, what are the best ways to reach you? So I'm out there in LinkedIn, pretty lazy on Twitter, but then LinkedIn, I would say. And my official blog post is LeejiThomas.com. Excellent. And we'll of course have links to all those up in YouTube and on the blog. Leeji, really appreciate your time today and let's connect soon. Thank you, Christian.


this not the cutest thing it is a hard to find stuffed animal I don't think I could find any like it got it at the bin sold it for $32.50 and the buyer paid shipping hey Bolo buddies thanks for watching all right you guys in this video we are gonna talk about my bread and butter Bolo's items that I sourced cheap and sold for a profit on eBay I'm gonna tell you where I got it what I paid for it and what it sold for these are items that I sold for $35 or less and I call these my bread and butter Bolo's so the same person bought these little hats little tykes apple grove pals two hats police and soldier now I had no idea what these were I'm pretty sure that I probably used Google lens but one key factor is they say little tykes on them so that did help if you don't know how to use Google lens it is like one of the best reseller tools and it is absolutely free I do have a video that teaches you how to use it if you type in Bolo buddies Google lens it will pull it up on YouTube and that is definitely a video I recommend you watch if you're not using Google lens so they bought this hat and then they bought these two little toys these came out of a thrift store mystery box I think all of the both of these did and this is what they look like I sold both of these I'm sorry the hats were $9.25 and then because they paid full shipping for the hats I discounted this to $5 because they paid shipping on both and then I shipped them together so that's how we worked out the discount on that so um yes same buyer on both those items but this is another one I had never seen before H U I L E toys is the brand so have you guys ever seen these pretty interesting right this is a daisy kingdom 18 inch doll outfit if you guys don't know daisy kingdom is typically a Bolo if you see that brand look it up I did not know that doll clothes were made by daisy kingdom but apparently so I got this at a garage sale for four dollars I did pay up a little bit for it because I knew that I could do pretty well with it or I had a feeling I guess I shouldn't say I knew but I sold this for $35 plus shipping this next one is another four piece bundle this is disney jr bluey queen bingo plush dog with tags so you've got the two plush stuffed animals I got those at a thrift store for a total of three dollars for the pair this one here came from a thrift store also and it says that I paid three bucks for it and it is the jungle book plush stuffed stuffed animals right there itty bitties by hallmark on the original packaging pretty cool right this is a lula row classic and the reason I picked these up they took forever to sell was because they were disney and this one was bambi and I'm sorry but I don't care if you don't like this brand that is cuteness right there look at that that's so cute and they also bought the mickey mouse so these were three dollars a piece at a thrift store and I have a video on this I got these a long long time ago and you know what I totally just lied to you I had my numbers wrong I thought it was wrong I paid a dollar for these at a thrift store and I got this at the bins I kept thinking I thought I got that at the bins in my head and then I'm like no I wrote it down these were three dollars a piece at a thrift store so I gave you the wrong information but the buyer bought all four of those items for 60 dollars and 45 cents and when you add items to your cart on first class items or ground now ground advantage it gives you a five dollar shipping discount so you pay five dollars in most cases if it doesn't give you the shipping discount then it glitched or one of your items that you added to the cart doesn't apply and then in that case you would just message me so yeah 60 dollars and 45 cents and they were all in for 60 to 20 with discounts these are wiz kids hero clicks and these are the replacement parts so I bought a whole bunch of these in a mystery box from Donna Telebotelino on her youtube channel and I sold the other like a big set of them I think for around $100 you'll see those in another video and they were a big money bolo because I sold them in bulk these were broken so I decided hey I'm just gonna see if anybody's gonna want these stands and these parts that are broken and sure enough I sold it for $12 and 40 cents and the buyer paid shipping the next item is this jimboree strawberry baby plush rattle fruit with a face stuffed toy and it is hard to find so I did put rare in the title I don't think I could find another one like it I got it at the bin sold it for $15 plus shipping Victoria's Secret scarf and beanie this is the second one I'm I have sold I am now out of stock I got these at a garage so I did pay up five dollars they were new with tags really great purchase sold it for 31 plus shipping the next item is this animal alley border collie black and white puppy dog plush stuffed animal and anytime I can find stuffed animals that look like people's animals I pick them up because you know what people want things that look like they're animals realistic is a great word to put in the title I did not do that here sold this for $12 and 40 cents paid 50 cents at a garage sale the buyer was all in for 2247 the next item is this lol surprise interactive kitty this was just a bread and butter major bread and butter $5 and 58 cents and the buyer paid shipping but it's a little animated cat it's from lol surprise so it just I think it might move and talk I can't remember this here I got it a garage sale for a quarter this is the same garage so I think that I got all of those really cool Trekkie cheese items but I sold this for 22 dollars and the buyer paid shipping it's a new old stock Winnie the Pooh from 1997 and it is goodie brand always always always look up goodie brand I don't think I found any comps on this so I priced it high does have some damaging on the packaging but the bow was fine the next item is this vintage little tykes blue roof dollhouse white railing replacement part and I've sold two and I have two more available this is this is an example of parting out a house and the house had damage if I remember correctly I don't remember all the details but I parted out the little tykes house and you can make some good money parting out that house take it down to the bones um all right let's see I sold it for 15 dollars and the buyer paid shipping the next item is this chosen gray mouse plush fluffy fuzzy stuffed animal is this not the cutest thing it is a hard to find stuffed animal I don't think I could find any like it got it at the bin sold it for 3250 and the buyer paid shipping the next item is this royal escort jack the mouse mini action figure from Cinderella and when I tell you it's mini it's teeny teeny tiny um I paid 25 cents at a garage sale for this and I sold it for 11 dollars and 70 cents the buyer was all in with tax and shipping for 1833 uh cake topper is another good thing to put in the title this one the simpsons crusty the clown um a viewer sent me a box of a buddy mail and it was plush and I believe it's MSG's treasures on ebay if I remember correctly I always have a hard time remembering her ebay store name or its estates or something like that but uh she sent me a buddy box and you guys can check that out if you would like I do have it on the did I say MSG isn't that salt what is MSG oh my goodness what is MSG she was what I found also known as sodium yes salt that's not her name it's AEG AEG estate treasures maybe that's it oh my goodness but anyway there's a whole video of me unboxing it you guys can go check it out and um her ebay store is over there but how funny is that sold this for 10 dollars in the buyer paid shipping uh definitely not MSG I don't even know if I said that now I'm just questioning myself the simpsons crusty the clown 2018 this is a charming tales I'm sending you my love and I got this at a thrift store for three dollars sort of for twenty six dollars plus shipping here is another replacement part uh this one is from the play school doll house right here you can see it is the frame piece on the back it will give you a piece number right there you can put that in your title this also had a lot of fading and I still sold it for 17 plus shipping what I will say is this is kind of annoying to to ship I usually have to make a box the next item is this mary engelbright poster books fall open 11 by 14 made for st louis library public display and it even had damage I got this at the goodwill ben sold it for 24 plus shipping anything mary engelbright people like the graphics uh definitely look it up bill to bear workshop nintendo ds game this is how I do my photos for games I got this for 50 cents sold it for 26 dollars then the buyer paid shipping and I paid 50 cents at a garage sale the next item embroidery floss more embroidery floss I have 16 more available this is color 321 red and I sold this for $10 and the buyer paid shipping and that's for 12 skeins skines I forget there's a big debate about that mega blocks dragons replacement parts in complete these are just parts just parts I knew I could sell them I knew it um got it at the goodwill ben sold these for $15 plus shipping they are mega blocks lego same things replace replacement parts do sell now what I will tell you is a lot of times they are long tail which means they take a while to sell this is a vintage goodie hair comb slot or side comb faux tortoise shell small mini and it's not very big guys but it is marked goodie and these are a nice little bread and butter bolo sold it for $14 and 26 cents and the buyer paid shipping and I don't remember where I got that one all right that concludes this bread and butter bolo video let me know what you think let me know if any of these surprised you check out the links down below for other things I use for my reselling business check out google lens it's a free source that you can use to help you identify items and look up comps all right you guys thank you so much for being here and thanks for watching