The Power of AI and Automation - Sudeep Ghatak's Stellar Journey from Microsoft MVP to Principal Architect

Mark Smith: 0:37
Welcome to the MVP Show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, let's get on with the show. Today's guest is all the way from New Zealand. In fact, he's just down the road from me, so to speak. Well, at the other end of the Island of Mon, he works at Theta as a principal architect. He was first awarded as MVP in 2023, so he's brand new into the program. He loves playing guitar and currently taking violin lessons very unique with a seven-year-old daughter. He's author of the book Microsoft 365 and SharePoint Online Cookbook. Check that out. We probably will talk about that. You can find links to his bio, any of his social media assets, etc. In the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show,Sudeep.

Sudeep Ghatak: 1:46
Thanks, Mark. Thanks for having me here. Good to talk to Kiwi on the other side of the screen.

Mark Smith: 1:53
It's interesting because most of my calls are always to the northern hemisphere. It's a little less to the southern hemisphere, so good to speak to somebody in the same country. I was on the private meeting where you got welcomed into the MVP program that we run locally, which is great to see. Tell me a bit about when you're not doing MVP stuff, when you're not doing work. Tell me a bit about food, family and fun. What do they mean to you?

Sudeep Ghatak: 2:23
Yeah, so I'll first talk about my family. So I live here with my wife and two kids. My parents and my brother are in India, in a state called West Bengal. And what I do in the free time? Well, like you already mentioned, I love music. So I sing, play guitar and play violin to some extent, so it's more like a creative outlet for me. And my other keen interest is in astronomy, and it's because it's a culmination of all the knowledge that we have acquired and it's like the last frontier and all these mundane things like our egos, our material achievements they just like vanish when you look at this night sky. So I listen to lectures by Neil deGrasse, tyson, lawrence Cross, brian Green and all those guys. So those are my key interests, if so to say.

Mark Smith: 3:28
And so that comes on. What under the heading of astrophysics? Is it Astrophysics? That's great. Yeah, nice, nice. Neil deGrasse, and man, a legend, man, that guy, the stuff that he comes out with, and it does you know, because some of his shows, when you listen to it, you realize how much of a spec you are on the landscape of the universe, right as an individual.

Sudeep Ghatak: 3:54
And the good thing about his how he makes it sound so easy. Like you can't get your head around some of these concepts in astrophysics, but he makes them appear so easy, so that's what I like about them.

Mark Smith: 4:09
Yeah, so true. Tell us about your book.

Sudeep Ghatak: 4:14
Yeah. So I wrote this book along with one of my colleagues ex-colleagues who I used to work with and we were being approached by a publisher. He asked us if he would like to work on this book. It was a big challenge to begin with, because my son was born in the same year and I was handling multiple things, but in my mind I just thought that I should give it a try. I don't know if I'll be able to write another book in my life, so why not give it one go? So eventually, that book did well, and now I'm working on the second edition of the book, which is due to be published later this year.

Mark Smith: 4:58
So why are you working at Theda? Surely you should be retired by now with all those royalties from your book.

Sudeep Ghatak: 5:04
No, no, I love the work that I do. It just keeps that creative thing in you burning. That's the reason I love. I don't know if there are many people who love what they do, but I certainly do. Yeah, I enjoy my work.

Mark Smith: 5:23
Love it. Perfect, I was actually. I was joking there about how writing a book makes you rich because it doesn't right. You don't earn a lot of money off your book writing.

Sudeep Ghatak: 5:35
No, and you end up paying more taxes, that's all.

Mark Smith: 5:38
Yeah, yeah. Do you have more people download the Kindle version or more people get the paperback?

Sudeep Ghatak: 5:49
When I last looked at the report, the Kindle versions were sold more than the paperbacks.

Mark Smith: 5:55
Yeah, yeah, and that makes sense, right? People, particularly from I, want to search. I want to jump into a particular recipe that you created in that book. You want to be able to do it quickly or search it up rather than, you know, thumb through and I mean and having those books on your bookshelf. You know I had to get rid of my like those big type of cookbooks a long time ago because they take up so much space. Yeah, okay, that's cool. That's cool and I think you know it's an admirable. You know honor to get a. You know the title of author. Get that out there. I see you've had 224 ratings, a 4.4 out of five stars, so the book's obviously done very well, yeah, yeah, and that's prompted me to write the second one. So that's yeah, that's it Is it going to be an extension of this one, or are you going to lean heavily into Power Automate?

Sudeep Ghatak: 6:51
It is going to be. There would be some recipes that will be obviously updated based on the new stuff that has been released. Covers some aspects of AI. It is going to have chapters on Viva, which wasn't there back then. So there's some additions to the book, yes, but some of the content would be the same. It's just an updated version of that last book.

Mark Smith: 7:21
In this book you covered Power Automate formerly Microsoft Flow, power Apps, power BI, power Virtual Agents. Do you go deeper on any of those more than something like Office Delve? Is Office Delve still a thing, that people still use that functionality?

Sudeep Ghatak: 7:36
No, so Delve is going to be in the appendix in this book.

Mark Smith: 7:42
Yeah.

Sudeep Ghatak: 7:43
Like Power Automate, power Apps, they deserve a book of their own. So it's not possible to cover all the aspects in just one chapter. So it is going to be what I've tried to do. There is, try to cover the main aspects of these applications but at the same time add some insights that comes from the experience that you have gained working on this. So giving them some tips that, if you're trying to do this, probably try this way, not that way, that sort of thing.

Mark Smith: 8:18
Yeah, so are we going to see a dedicated chapter to co-pilot.

Sudeep Ghatak: 8:23
Not a dedicated chapter, probably a mention, because it's evolving, so not that much. We are at the stage where we're trying to limit. That was another challenge with this book that this Office 365 space is so rapidly emerging that it's very hard to keep up with it when you're writing a book.

Mark Smith: 8:48
Yeah, All of Eva products. Yesterday at Ignite, they announced, of course, the co-pilot for Office 365, which is another add-on skew which is going to impact a lot of those traditional products like Excel and PowerPoint and Word, which I think is awesome because they need to upgrade. There's so much more that you can do now with these large language models and applying them with the technology. I think your book is definitely robust, I see, as in the broadness of topics that it covers In the Power Platform space. What's your go-to tool? Do you do more Power BI stuff? Do you do more Power Automate stuff? What's your deep skill area? Is it one or two of those products? How do you describe it for yourself?

Sudeep Ghatak: 9:49
Yeah, it's primarily Power Automate. Obviously, with Power Automate comes Power Apps. I would say Power Apps and Power Automate. That's my core skill.

Mark Smith: 10:01
In your career have you worked much with Nintex?

Sudeep Ghatak: 10:04
Yes, I have.

Mark Smith: 10:07
K2, those type of products.

Sudeep Ghatak: 10:09
I haven't used K2 as much, but I have worked with Nintex quite a bit.

Mark Smith: 10:15
Are they all irrelevant now that we have the power platform? Power automate forms over data using power apps.

Sudeep Ghatak: 10:22
You know I often think that question like it might be very hard for the Nintex sales team to make a sales pitch now with power automate being there and and I mean back when I used Nintex, licensing was one of the key concerns and this when they brought the subscription model, it was getting even harder for me to Push Nintex to a customer when I'm talking to them. But with power automate, there are these connectors, available connectors, and and obviously licensing is again another aspect when it comes to premium license and not this is an all, but I haven't Felt the need to move away from power automate at this stage. I think it's a pretty good platform at the moment.

Mark Smith: 11:15
Yeah, I totally agree. And and when it comes to licensing, being the licensing is so reasonable when you do a true ROI calculation On it, the benefits far outweigh the cost and the value that you get. How did you become an MVP?

Sudeep Ghatak: 11:35
Yeah, so I mean I have been actively Participating in the community since 2019. I used to run a user group as your user group as well in Christchurch and I would blog about teams, sql, power, bi and etc. And I got nominated back then, but my nomination was unsuccessful. I was told that I am all over the place. I have to pick one dedicated area for contributions, and so I directed all my focus to the power platform and Eventually, my contributions got noted. I received my first MVP this year and hopefully continues.

Mark Smith: 12:18
Nice, nice. And I just realized at the start, when I introduce you, I said you're at the other end of my island, but I'm in the North Island and you're in the South Island, right in Christchurch. That's great. Yeah, how long you've lived in Christchurch.

Sudeep Ghatak: 12:31
I I have lived over 10 years now. I arrived here in 2012.

Mark Smith: 12:38
Wow, so you've seen a lot of rough times then, and then did you come after the earthquake or before? I?

Sudeep Ghatak: 12:45
came just after, right after the earthquake. So I was been asked this question that are you making a good decision to move to New Zealand now that, yeah? Yeah, I'm sure yeah, but I think I made the right decision. I love this place and I Love I wouldn't move away from Christchurch. I don't want to move anywhere else at the moment.

Mark Smith: 13:08
Yes, yes, beautiful city, beautiful city. Just just a shame. All that, the tragedy it's had and in, really, the last 12, 13 years combined, tell me you win you. Were you surprised at anything when you joined? You know, you became an MVP. Is anything been a surprise to you now that you're, you know, part of the club?

Sudeep Ghatak: 13:36
No, I wouldn't say that it's still overwhelming. There's so many invitations that I receive like on different about these teams, invites for PGI events and all. So it's it's. I'm still getting my head around. What are the things I should be participating in? What is I should be staying away from? So how to use my time in a better way.

Mark Smith: 14:04
Yeah, yeah. What's the needs talking about? There are. As an MVP, you get access to the Microsoft product teams of various product groups and you get to have live sessions with them as part of being an MVP, give them feedback and inside about the product before it's released all of another NDA, but, of course, very insightful and Very helpful to one's career and where you spend your time or where you spend your focus, based on what you see happening, as, as you've got, you know, moved into this role. What do you see as the greatest Contributor to you receiving the MVP? Was it the book? Was it your contributions in the forums? Was it blogging videos? What was it for you?

Sudeep Ghatak: 14:50
For me it was primarily my book and the contributions in the Power Automate forums. So I've been on the leaderboard for quite some time and Probably I think that's the primary reason why I got my MVP. I see my MVP this year.

Mark Smith: 15:08
Yeah, yeah, totally makes sense. It's interesting that you said and I'll in, it just came back to me. You said before that you were all over the place when it was, you know, came to your submission. One of the things I've highlighted is that if you want to become an MVP for the first time, you need to Choose a lane and stick in the lane. In other words, you need to. If it's gonna be a zoo, go all in on Azure. If it's gonna be m365, go well one. And that. If it's gonna be power platform or dynamics, go all in on that. You can't afford to be a little bit here, a little bit there across all those technologies because when, when Microsoft come to making the decision about choosing, it's very difficult to them to go okay, who chooses there? Is this enough for that category? And if you're spread thinly, you don't get enough Compared to everybody else performing. So now, once you're in, that changes. Once you're in, you can start to diversify, and so it doesn't mean you have to. You know, if you're a, if you love Whole bunch of stuff around, mixed reality and as well as power platform or something else, doesn't mean you can't continue to explore that, just when it comes to your contribution, commitments at the start, it's really important to be focused on the one one area. So who nominated you?

Sudeep Ghatak: 16:29
I was nominated by Nate. He's also an MVP, he's in the States and he's writing this book with me.

Mark Smith: 16:37
Oh, very good. So the second book you're writing, he's, it's it's three of us me, nate and Gaurav.

Sudeep Ghatak: 16:47
Ah, gotcha, gotcha.

Mark Smith: 16:49
Very good, very well.

Sudeep Ghatak: 16:50
It's easier when you're splitting the workload right across three Third of the book each yes, yes, and, and we wanted to everyone to focus on one particular area so that we can cover everything, in that we can be across everything that's going on in that space.

Mark Smith: 17:09
I like it. I like it very smart, very smart. I, how deep are you personally getting into the area of AI?

Sudeep Ghatak: 17:16
Not much. I'm still exploring. I would say I'm in the exploratory phase. I'm just trying to come up with use cases real use cases that we could have for AI. I look at all the case studies that people are doing with AI. Some of that is scary but at the same time some of that is quite innovative. I'm just exploring the area. I haven't done much on that as yet.

Mark Smith: 17:50
I'm talking about personally here rather than in business. Are you using it in any part of your day-to-day life? Or perhaps you are using it in business, but I'm not talking about as part of a piece of power, automate or something else. Are you practically using it to make your life more productive yourself?

Sudeep Ghatak: 18:14
Yes, certainly with chat GPT. It's so much easier to use it. I've been using chat GPT when I'm doing SPFX component. I'm not a good developer, I would say, but now, as long as you can explain what you're trying to do, you can get it to do that for you. I think it's a very good enabler. It helps you as long as if you know in your head what you're trying to do, you can get it done with things like this.