The Intelligence Age

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https://podcast.nz365guy.com/136

• Saurabh’s brief introduction about his life – originally from India, presently residing in Seattle, WA, his family background and how he spends his time when not working. 
• Career background, how did he start working in Microsoft 18 years ago 
• When and how Saurabh got involved in Microsoft PowerApps 
• How the program PowerApps Champions started, how it works, and how did it come together to what it is at present  
• Discusses Citizen Developer, Pro Developer, IT, COE, Community and Partner
• Talks about the opportunities PowerApps provides to help people in their career 
• How Azure ISV’s consider CDS, the opportunities that are available and the benefits they provide so that they can look at the journey of becoming a Power Platform
• Talks about creating business value
• How Lauren Taylor discover PowerApps 
• Link for Sameer’s first episode here.
• Sammer and Saurabh talk about 30 PowerApps Champion stories in 30mins. 

Presenter – Sameer Bhangar 

1. London Heathrow Airport – Samit Saini 
2. Tacoma Public School – PowerApps Youtube – Lauren Taylor  
3. Autoglass – Autoglass (part of Belron group): call centre and field technician apps – Martin Lee – A PowerApps Software developer 
4. Hawkary Pharmaceuticals – Mohammad Alkhawaja – Sales and Marketing Manager

Presenter – Saurabh Pant 

1. Schlumberger – Hundreds of apps with thousands of monthly users 
2. James Matson – Pro Dev 
3. Inter Pipeline – Enabling bottom up innovation 
4. TransAlta – Hydro monitoring 

....More stories are available under customer stories here.

Resources

PowerApps Customer Stories

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/135

• Jason’s family background – living on the East Coast of Canada in Saint John, New Brunswick   
• Talks about FAMILY as the Centre of his world  
• A brief introduction about his career and his speciality as a developer  
• Shared his journey as an MVP of four years  
• Jason’s experience working directly with customers for twelve years in Dynamics   
• His thoughts on what it is like working remotely
• What his typical day looks like when working remotely 
• The tools he uses to communicate with his teams  
• How he handles interviews and things that you need to take into consideration when hiring employees to work remotely  
• Shares his opinion when a candidate is not a good fit for a remote work  
• What he can recommend to people considering working remotely or considering building a remote team   
• Shares his thoughts on how he hires people  
• What he does to be active in a forum   
• His contributions across EFASL  
• What he is doing as a Moderator  
• Recommendations to people who want to get involved in forums 

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/134

• A brief introduction about Lucy's life – personal background and her favourite place she has ever visited  
• Career background – from being a Business English Teacher to working in Hitachi based in Europe as a Presales Architect  
• How she started working with Microsoft Dynamics 
• Lucy's shares her responsibilities and job role as a Pre-sales Architect
• Discusses what skills someone should develop if they want to move into a Pre-sales 
• Tools she uses to get a better understanding of industries terms or acronyms
• Discusses how often she uses the LinkedIn navigator   
• Training and Certification she has taken around pre-sales   
• Talks about her technical skills   
• Discusses other roles that typically a part of a Presales engagement  
• Lucy's recommendation for those who wanted to be in Presales  
• Shares her experience during her interview with Hitachi  
• Shares how to deal with unpleasant people to be successful 
• How Lucy celebrates her wins and how she gets on after her defeats   
• Lucy's recommendations on third party solutions  
• An introduction to Introhive 

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/133

• A brief introduction about Sara’s life – lives in Stockholm, Sweden, talked about what’s awesome about her country –having to experience 4 seasons – winter, spring, summer and fall 
• Talked about the events that changed her life 
• Her thoughts about becoming an MVP – benefits – realization – frustrations 
• Who nominated Sara to become an MVP 
• Discusses Sara's seven speaking engagements since November – what changes happened to her career and the most memorable speaking engagement she had 
• Shared her views on Personal Brand – What is No-Code customization   
• Her journey on NO CODE ADVOCATE  
• Talks about her personality 
• Sara’s advice to people who are not technical but wants to become an MVP 
• Where Sara sees herself 2 years from now and where she thinks her career would be going based on reflecting from the last 12 months 
• Her recommendation to people wanting or considering becoming an MVP – 
• What she thinks about the Orlando event – The biggest User Group Summit
• Will Sara change anything about her career? 
• If Sara could write a book what would it be about? 
• The best compliment she has ever received? 

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/132

• James shares his personal life and family background  
• Professional background – all about the world of ALM Administration and his journey to PowerApps Team  
• Discusses the area of the Power Platform he is responsible for and his role  
• PowerApps Team responsibilities and the team’s goal  
• Shares the PowerApps team’s mission  
• His thoughts on Admin and ALM   
• What's involved in managing and nurturing the rolling out of business applications for enterprise when it comes to Governance and Administration?   
• Discusses the of the Building Centre of Excellence   
• Share his ideas on the role of Azure DevOps   
• Explains the functionality and content of Office 365 and his goal  
• What is most significant to him from the public announcement made  
• Discusses big challenges his team are going for   
• How a PowerShell be used and plans to expand on this  
• A brief introduction on the Microsoft Lifecycle Services, its origin and what is changing 
• Discusses ISV and scripted deployment   

RESOURCES

PowerShell Community
PowerShell Documentation 

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/131

• A Brief introduction about Jukka’s life – lives in Finland, got married in July, the company where he is working, his role and his specialties.  
• Being an MVP for 7 years 
• Shares his views on the MVP Program 
• Jukka’s advice to people considering to be nominated as MVP – what they should do     
• Part of the MVP he feels he has struggled with                                                                               
• Talks about what benefits Microsoft gets from providing free MSDX, office 365 credits, covering the cost for the MVP Summit for 3.5-4k people, hosting for the hotel cost, etc. 
• What's the tangible benefits Microsoft gets from the community engaged in responding to support calls? 
• Jukka’s main contribution comes from his BLOG – Surviving CRM                                               
• Discusses his top referral sources driving traffic to his site  
• His thoughts on the unified interface and the looming end of the legacy web client. Is the market ready for it? 
• If he could solve ONE world problem what would it be? 

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/130

• Sug Sahadevan’s life – originally from India, born in Singapore and lives in London – what is so special about his place – things he enjoys doing during his free time  
• Founder of the company Testhouse Ltd 
• Discusses the processes involved in Software Quality Assurance for Dynamics 365 projects
• What makes up the Quality Assurance Process 
• Discusses defying product acceptance criteria using a quality guide  
• Talks about the functional testing and business requirements 
• Presents on the business impact – how efficient it is and how user-friendly it is 
• Explained what ISTQB certification and how it is implemented  
• Discusses automated testing and how he sees that process working on a Dynamics 365 projects  
• The benefits of hiring an Independent Quality Assurance provider for Dynamics 365 projects  
• Understanding the importance of business requirements  
• Biggest challenges he is currently facing working in this industry 
• Discusses on the risk-based approach when it comes to testing  
• Shares his ideas on how he prepares Power Platform when it comes to QA 

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/129

• Abraham Saldana background – about his family, lives in Dallas, the US in 2000, born and grew up in Mexico – left in 1998 and moved to the US and what made him decide to move to Texas.  
• Is he working on a Customer project or Microsoft Partner?  
• What made him decide to work with Dynamics?  
• Moving from Dynamics to PowerApps  
• What does he love about his job?  
• The top three benefits he gets from becoming an MVP   
• What are the difficulties he had encountered during his involvement with Dynamics and CRM?  
• Discussed his journey to becoming an MVP  
• Advices Pablo Peralta gave him to become a successful MVP  
• About the changes that had happened to him since he became an MVP what enjoys him the most.  
• Advice he can give people in SharePoint who wants to learn CDS  
• What can he recommend for people who wish to become an MVP?  
• What are his contributions to the MVP Community?  
• About which season fits his personality and why 

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/128

• A Brief Introduction about Jon’s life – Canadian by blood, lives in Washington, where his interesting family name came from, family background and educational background. 
• What he does when he’s not working 
• Jon’s biggest life goals 
• How he started working with Microsoft and his main area of responsibility 
• His thoughts on the recent changes to the Microsoft Business Applications MVP Program in respect to Flow 
• How Microsoft flow started and its relationship to Dynamics 
• Describes what Microsoft Flow is and its importance in relation to workflow 
• Resources and training available for the community 
• Discusses the most significant changes that have happened within Microsoft Business Applications in the last two years 
• Jon’s recommendation to people who want to get involved with Microsoft Flow 
• Shares his view on the origin of the story of Flow 2.5years ago 
• Discusses the beauty of Flow 
• How he manages his Blog, YouTube channel and his Flow Videos 
• On what social media he uses regularly 
• Discusses the tools he uses on Twitter 
• Importance of YouTube in the community 
• Talks about what he does on LinkedIn 

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/127

• Keith Whatling’s background – where he lives, career background and how long he's been an MVP 
• Charles Lamanna’s tweet about Keith Whatling 
• What he does with PowerApps and how he started with PowerApps 
• His thoughts on becoming an MVP 
• Value of being an MVP to their career 
• Passion for the community and focus around the technology area 
• Explains what a PowerApps Champion Program is – what the App for the community 
• Criteria on becoming a Consultant 
• How special the PowerApps Champion Program is to Keith Whatling 
• Requirements in becoming an MVP 
• Discusses how PowerApps Champion program is also about Adoption & Governance
• How he feels being part of the MVP Group 
• The key person for him to join the Microsoft side and Keith’s view on the Champion Program 
• Keith’s view on what he thinks needs to happen for the MVP Program to be modernized 
• His struggles in finding meaning in the world of MVP 
• Celebrities he follows on the news 

Resources:

• Interesting article Keith Whatling wrote: Templates for Humanity 

If you want to get in touch with me, you can message me here on Linkedin.

Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith