Dublin's Tech Scene and Pints of Inspiration: Michel Mendes' Journey from Brazil to Microsoft MVP and Power Platform Maestro

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 from Ireland. He works at Avernard as a senior consultant, modern workplace and software engineer. He has first awarded MVP in 2022. He is a Microsoft 365 Power Platform SharePoint consultant developer, working with Microsoft Technologies since 2008. He combined links to his bio and social media etc. In the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Michelle.

Michel Mendes: 1:31
Thank you, mark, it's great to be here.

Mark Smith: 1:34
Good to have you on the show. You're from Ireland, but that name doesn't sound like an Irish name to me. Tell me a bit about where you're from.

Michel Mendes: 1:41
Exactly, I live in Ireland, but I'm not from Ireland. I am from Brazil. I was born in Brazil. I worked with Microsoft Technologies for a long time, since 2008. Then I moved to Ireland in 2018, in the beginning of the year I was hired by an Irish company, did all my interviews online, applied for a visa. Then it was successful. I moved to Ireland. The funny thing is that now I am MVP in Office apps and Business apps as well. When I moved to Ireland, I moved to Ireland to work only with SharePoints. I started working with the Power platform in my SharePoint job. Then, as soon as time passed, I was more involved with BizApps. Now I fully work only with BizApps, not SharePoint anymore.

Mark Smith: 2:36
What a transition. Does that mean you're no longer building with SharePoint as a back-end or using Dataverse for everything, or are you still using SharePoint as your?

Michel Mendes: 2:49
Now, currently the project I am working with is PowerPages based on Dataverse only. There are the few SharePoint integrations, but the core of it is just Dataverse.

Mark Smith: 3:01
Tell me a bit about living in Ireland. What part of Ireland do you live? Is your family with you? What do you do for fun?

Michel Mendes: 3:07
Dublin. I moved to Ireland by myself. I was single at that time. It was a good point in my life to leave everything behind and move. What I like to do for fun? I like to meet friends and maybe go out for drinks, go to the gym that's pretty convenient. How can I say Not convenient? Traditional stuff, nothing special. I like to go to rock concerts. That's one thing I'd like to highlight about myself. I'm a big fan of metal concerts and rock concerts here in Dublin. It was good for me because I could go to a lot of rock gigs here which I couldn't go to the city, in the city I lived in Brazil, because most of the best bands they used to go only to Sao Paulo and Rio and not to the city I lived. It was a good opportunity here as well to me To go to rock concerts and also to travel around Europe, which is something I really love to do when I'm on holidays.

Mark Smith: 4:09
So all of those concerts, are they in Dublin or, as you say, across Europe? It's just so easy to jump on Ryanair and be in some other place quickly.

Michel Mendes: 4:18
I went to one concert outside of Ireland only. All of the other concerts I usually go there in Dublin. There's a lot of good concerts in Dublin. Have you done the electric picnics? I've never been to electric picnics. Do you believe that?

Mark Smith: 4:32
Wow, I've been to the electric picnics.

Michel Mendes: 4:35
There's lots of big bands like Metallica, Slipknot.

Mark Smith: 4:40
They all come to Dublin.

Michel Mendes: 4:42
They all come to Dublin.

Mark Smith: 4:43
Now you say you get out and like to have a drink, you wouldn't be able to be hard pressed to find a good place to drink in Dublin, wouldn't it?

Michel Mendes: 4:50
It's really hard to find, it's really hard to choose one actually.

Mark Smith: 4:54
Which one do you choose? Where do you go to? There's just so much choice, right?

Michel Mendes: 4:58
Yeah, anywhere around Temple Bar yeah. Yeah but there's a. There's a pub that I like a lot here. It's called the porterhouse. Like I'm doing free merchandising for the food because this it's a. It's a local, local Irish pub and they do their craft beers. It's my favorite one, you know.

Mark Smith: 5:13
Yeah, yeah. No, it's a great city. I do love it. My wife used to go there for a lot of her job. Well, we were living in London, and so I just tag along, just so as you can say you go drinking Temple Bar, and I'd always make sure our hotel was in Temple Bar. So yeah, good times.

Michel Mendes: 5:32
Yeah, and it's good because I live close to the city center so you know easy to go and come to Forbes. Yeah do you use the loose much, lou, as you mean the trim. Yeah sometimes, yeah, sometimes.

Mark Smith: 5:46
When I worked at Microsoft there, I always found I would always take that out to the Microsoft campus from town.

Michel Mendes: 5:52
You worked in Ireland from Microsoft, or do you work in the UK, and you used to, on Thailand?

Mark Smith: 5:57
No, I was actually when I did some work for Microsoft in Ireland. I was actually working in Australia and they paid for me to fly up to Dublin for a week and train a whole bunch of Microsoft partners in in Ireland around. Back then it was Dynamics 365 architecture of my training courses on for a week and then, and yeah, so I stayed in in the right in the center of town and would go out on the loose each day to To Microsoft.

Michel Mendes: 6:35
Yeah, I think that's the easiest way to go to the Microsoft office here. Yeah, I can easily go from the place I live to Microsoft's office by getting the Lewis. Yeah, it's the quickest, quickest.

Mark Smith: 6:46
So back in Brazil. How did you get into it? Oh Sorry, one thing, one question what's the best drink? What's the best Brazilian drink to drink?

Michel Mendes: 6:55
That's Brazilian drink to drink, I would say I'm not. To be honest, myself I'm not a fan of that. But I would recommend you try Kipirinha because everyone likes it. I Like. I just like beer. Honestly. I would like Brazilian beer but, to be honest, I'm not a big fan of Brazilian beers. To be honest, it's a hard to recommend.

Mark Smith: 7:16
Yeah, kipirinha's, you can't go past those. I always carry all the ingredients. I can make one anytime in my bar. But do you like it? Do you like your Guinness?

Michel Mendes: 7:27
I like Guinness. Yeah, I Like Guinness, and the Irish people are gonna complain about me because I love Heineken as well, so I like Guinness. I think my favorites are Guinness and Heineken. It's totally different. But if you mean that about the main stream beers, you know yeah, well, I was there, a member guy told me a joke.

Mark Smith: 7:49
He said what's a seven course Irish dinner? And it was a six pack of, yeah, seven pork course Irish dinner is a six pack of Guinness and the bowl of potatoes. I, it was an Irishman that told me that joke. So, yeah, yeah, I do remember it. Do remember it. Tell me what was your. How did you get into IT and M365, sharepoint, that type of thing? What was that journey for you?

Michel Mendes: 8:22
To be honest, my story is a bit awkward, because when I started studying for college I wasn't sure of what I would like to do, but I really liked to play with computer software and things like that. I did computer science. I studied computer science. At that point I didn't enjoy too much my college, but I was. You know. I didn't know what to do. I didn't know what to do, so I had to do a college course. I prefer to do that course than to do nothing, and it was on a federal university in Brazil, so I didn't have to pay to study. But at the end of the day, I think I learned a lot during my course and then I got a job in a Microsoft partner. I never touched anything Microsoft during my college course. So, like in my college course, I learned a little bit of HTML, js, css. I used to play with PHP. I learned how to program in Java. I never worked with any of those tech, but then I moved to that company and they hired me in a process that was a trainee process. So they basically hired people with no experience and they trained them in Microsoft for Microsoft technologies for two or three months or so, and then I joined that company as aNET developer. I worked for one year and a half or so as aNET developer and then SharePoint started to be trendy and they needed developers to work with SharePoint. So they kind of picked up the guys that. I think that they seem to be persons that were willing to learn a new technology, and then they moved to the I forgot the name of the department, but it was like SharePoint team or something like that. Then I started to work as a SharePoint developer slash consultant. That was working like that until 2017. And even in 2017, I had started with some contacts with Power Platform, but really few projects that I touched. I used a bit of Power BI. I developed some Power Automate flows, some small things in Power Apps, but really basic. And then that was the move that I moved to Ireland. Then I started to be more focused like divide, my focus between M2.65 and Power Platform In that company in Brazil I forgot to mention it. I started working. Obviously, at that point it was only SharePoint on premises, and then I believe it was around 2015, 2016 that everybody started migrating to SharePoint online and then that was the door to start working with Power Platform, because the easiest way to customize SharePoint at that point would be by creating workflows. If you mean low-code customizations would be by using Power Platform, and I always had the approach. I was a developer, but I knew how to do things using low-code as well, so it was like a mix and match. Whatever I couldn't do with low-code approach, I would do pro-code stuff to achieve what I needed. That's why I consider myself still a developer and consultant. I go a mix of both approaches.

Mark Smith: 11:36
What was that move like for you, going from Brazil to Ireland? What made you think that, hey, you were going to move countries and what was the process of when I said the process, what was the technical, what was involved in actually relocating, getting a visa, all that kind of things, and going to a totally different country?

Michel Mendes: 12:06
I would like to mention one thing before I explain the whole process, because I think I didn't do the decision out of nowhere. I already had spent some time on holidays in Ireland, so I liked Dublin, I liked the city and I started thinking, hey, I could find a job here in Ireland. Then I started applying to a few jobs online and at some point I was successfully known and the story is that company that hired me basically they asked for some paperships, some references to contact. Your references like probably you know, validative, what you're saying is true in the interviews, and all of that. But after I sent the information to the guys, they basically filled the paperwork in the Irish government and I have to do some bits by myself, so it's like a link to the form to continue providing information. So I filled it, the HR guy submitted it and then I kept contact with him over email. One month after that he notified me that the visa was approved. Like it's not the visa itself, it's a work permit, so it's a paper you prove that you had the job offered. Then it was approved. You can use that to enter Ireland. When you land in Ireland you have to then get that paper and apply for a visa. Then you get like an ID card to work in Ireland. And then when I moved I kind of had to schedule the appointments with the government, as everybody has to do, get my paper, then exchange not exchange but use my paper to get my permit to live in Ireland. And I had to move, find a house to live here, which is a bit complicated sometimes because there's not much houses to live. At that point it was okay for me because I shared a house, but it's not something I enjoy too much because that was a rough move in the beginning. Because I had my own apartment in Brazil. I used to rent it by myself and then in Ireland, as you don't find things easily, you have to live, sometimes sharing with other people. You have to adapt a little bit, but it was in the past.

Mark Smith: 14:20
Was the reason for moving because you loved Dublin and Ireland so much, or were you wanting to get out of Brazil?

Michel Mendes: 14:30
No, I didn't have any reasons specifically to get out of Brazil. I had a good life there. It was just in terms of I wanted a different experience, living in a different country and working and living in English, and that's actually it was tough to me because when I moved I actually I learned English when I was a teenager, so I was a bit rusty Right. I used to read a lot, watch a lot of videos. But as I joined a consultancy company, I had to ramp up really quickly to improve my English to a level that I could really work well in English and not only be a peer developer. That was initial struggle.

Mark Smith: 15:14
Have you traveled to Portugal since you've been there?

Michel Mendes: 15:17
I traveled to Portugal two times, yeah.

Mark Smith: 15:19
Yeah, do you like Portugal?

Michel Mendes: 15:20
Yeah, I loved it yeah.

Mark Smith: 15:24
I could see myself living in Porto Portugal.

Michel Mendes: 15:28
I never been to Porto. I went to Lisbon and to Albufeira, which is in a region called Algarve, the beautiful beaches right.

Mark Smith: 15:37
Yes, yes, I've stayed for a week down there on the beach here. Very nice, very nice, very cool, very cool. How did you become an MVP?

Michel Mendes: 15:47
During COVID I had a friend who was already an MVP, david from Alho, and he became an MVP because of blogging Right and he kind of I forgot the exact expression but he tried to motivate me to become more active with blogging and contributing to some community samples. There is a community called the Microsoft 365 P&P. Have you heard of it? They publish power platform samples or SharePoint code samples and things like that. I started to become more active with my blog and contributing to that community, so I think that was the main reason that made me become an MVP. I spoke in a few conferences as well. I'm always very active on LinkedIn and Twitter, but I believe the main reason was my blogging and online support to people, maybe answering questions on my blog on LinkedIn and all of that.

Mark Smith: 16:42
Nice. Of the suite of tools and the power platform, what's your favorite?

Michel Mendes: 16:48
Favorite, I'd say Power Apps, power Pages. It's not only one part of our pages in Power Automate.

Mark Smith: 16:55
Power Automate. Yeah, that's where you're mainly working, ms Des.

Michel Mendes: 17:02
Yeah, that's my main focus now. Currently it's mainly Power Pages based on Dataverse, a bit of model-driven apps as well. But yeah, I'm working on a project that's related to Power Pages but is heavily customized with custom JS, a lot of liquid codes in the pages as well, some integrations, which is nice for me, because I really like that pro-code set of things. I like to use Power Platform but also to be customizing real advanced development technologies or techniques. That's it.

Mark Smith: 17:37
What advice would you give for others that want to become an MVP?

Michel Mendes: 17:41
I think, at least from what I could see, what I spoke to people when I became an MVP, from what I see to from others that became an MVP as well, is to try to make your contributions meaningful. For example, in my case, I focus on blogging because that's what I find more comfortable to do. I think it's what I can write or produce that's more useful for the community. When I write, I write because I already have some content that I think that's useful for others. I'm not writing just because of writing. Some people I think they try to write or produce a lot of content just to get a high volume, but maybe it's not impactful. It's nice to see, if I follow my blog, the people making comments or the views or people finding my content from Google. It's really nice that you see the reach you have with your small piece of content. I really try to focus on things you are more comfortable with and you are more passionate about. In my case, I solve problems, write about the problems I solved or some tips. It's pretty much what I try to focus.

Mark Smith: 18:58
I notice that you have a lot of followers on LinkedIn. You've got over 11,000 followers. How have you built up that audience?

Michel Mendes: 19:07
Man. I write a lot of content for LinkedIn as well and my blog. Some of the posts, I see that, depending on the way I write, I actually try to write them very well written in a way that it's useful for people as well. I'm not only copying and pasting content, so I summarize them in a very useful way. I just feel like sometimes LinkedIn is a platform that helps your posts to increase a higher reach. So, depending on the post I write or I publish after I post something that has a lot of likes, I see a lot of people following me and adding me as connection. It simply grows by itself and I have the account since 10 years ago, I'd say, but I think since I became an MVP I think before I became an MVP, I had less than 3K followers yeah, and especially when I post individual, my own written content, I think it has higher reach.

Mark Smith: 20:13
It's definitely good to see that your audience is being developed because of the great content that you're producing, and I think it's a great tip there to aspiring MVPs that your stuff should be good enough that people want to read and engage with it and learn from it.

Michel Mendes: 20:33
Because it actually touches the point I was mentioning about not repeating or just posting by posting. So I have my own blog posts. That's one point, and the LinkedIn content that I post I try to focus on, even on news or tips that I find relevant. So it's just not some people for example, they have Power Automate posts that automatically post content that they find without even reviewing it. So I don't do it. I follow a lot of people then if I find something interesting, I save it, check it later, do some. I shorten the content a little bit to put what's more relevant and that's it.

Mark Smith: 21:20
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host Business Application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffeecom. Forward slash NZ365 guy. Thanks again and see you next time