From Nigeria to MVP: Oluwatobi Yusuf's Tech Ascendancy and the Growth of the Power Platform Community

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 Nigeria. He works at AXA as a team lead in business process re-engineering. He was first awarded as MVP in 2022. He's a low-code advocate, developer and consultant for about three years. He is one of the community leaders at the Nigeria Power Platform User Group. You can find links to his bio and social media in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Oluwatobi.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 1:32
Thanks for having me, mark, it's a pleasure to be here.

Mark Smith: 1:36
It's great to have you on the show. Before we get started, tell me a bit about you. Tell me a bit about food. What food do you enjoy eating? What do you do for fun? Anything about your family and friends?

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 1:57
Food for fun, I would say. I read a lot of tech blogs. I started watching football. I stopped watching it for a while. It's been like two to three years. In my country, this land, we use football is not for the weak, it's for the strong. It's something I keep representing. My country got to define it in Afgan. I'm really delighted to have supported it to get through to this stage. I didn't get a call, but maybe they really did great. I really smile getting to see what they really are completely here. The other thing I do for fun I attend events. I'm a fan of networking and connecting with people, sharing knowledge. I'm also a community, even outside of tech community. I see a very nice conference coming up. It's something I definitely would jump on and attend.

Mark Smith: 2:57
What did you say? Your favorite food was.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 2:59
Okay for food beans and plantain, Fried plantain, Beans and fried plantain yeah.

Mark Smith: 3:11
Nice as in, my kids love plantain. I enjoy it as well. You fry it, you say.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 3:21
Yeah, you fry the plantain, you cook the beans, then you fry the plantain and put it around on the top of the beans. Now, traditional would be more like in a circle. It's always nice, it's a culture, it's very delicious. It's done very, very well. There are different types of beans. You have to normal beans. You have to recall it. It's a funny thing. I don't know if it's funny, but it's really nice when you eat it together with fried plantain. I'll give you a treat.

Mark Smith: 4:02
Nice, Tell me about how you got into tech.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 4:05
Yeah that would be right. From my undergraduate days in school, I didn't just get into it, I was an expert in engineering, so I have an engineering background. Towards my final year, this set of people came to my school not into the school. They all decided to come to the tech club Because tech wasn't really, you know, it wasn't a big thing at the time. It wasn't popular as it is now, you know, with tech rules and tech series and all of that playing around. It wasn't like that then. So I was in school final year. So they created this tech club beside my school and you know the total was teaching Python and, you know, r. Then at the time, and my friends happened to be about it when they joined For me, I was just, you know, doing my team.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 4:57
Then my friend introduced me to the course. She was part of the first course. I went to that school, I applied to the first course, became a student and told me it's a great program. You learn to load and things like that. And that's how I joined the tech of the following course and that's how I started learning Python. You know, I learned Python. I learned Python and R study at the time.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 5:19
Then, towards the following semester I did a bit of C sharp. Then after that I graduated from school, went on to do a bit of my country. We do what we call the youth service. We're here after I graduate more like a seven year country and most times we are kind of posted to teach. So I'm posted to teach in school and after that, you know, I was able to get this opportunity to instan at the company and the reason I got the internship was because of my background knowledge in C sharp, which I go to a lot of the schools on. Yeah, so as I got the internship, I'm from there. I've been growing in the tech field.

Mark Smith: 5:55
Very good. So how did then that take you into the Power Platform?

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 6:02
Okay. So for the Power Platform, I did know about the Power Platform until 2021. So 2021, yeah, and it was really funny because the complainer brought me in at the time, you know, as an intern. When they took me in, they brought me in as a software developer intern and those like three months internship, what was the last month? The manager worked up to me and told me, oh, it could be. And then Power Platform was even popular in Nigeria then and this was, you know, 2020, 2021. Yeah, 2021. So Power Platform wasn't really popular, you know again, for some countries or some companies or say, you know, it was not more. You know, so we knew nobody was very well in Nigeria as of now.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 6:52
So it was the first month I think we still got the power platform, a Power Platform, power Platform. I just checked what it's about, you know, yeah, you know on the first, you know, check what's about on that. So, out of curiosity, I was like, what is Power Platform? So I went, I did some research. So then, you know, we had this template. It was just, you know, the Power Platform. We had the. It was there called Common CDS. We had CDS. We had the Canvas app, as well as the Assistant. They had PowerSporter. Then I just went in. I stayed around the templates that were existing there For just the last month of my internship and that was it.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 7:36
So I had the internship, I went to my service and I was sitting by myself again because I was doing that at five times. So after I was done with my service, I had a complaint called one internship and they asked what is the power platform in-frame at the time? So this was like a start-up but they are like a Microsoft partner complaint. So they were looking for interest for power platform and they asked me I got a power platform before and I said yes, I put out 10 flicks. I've done this. I've done the same thing.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 8:05
I was out, you know the broken in, but at this point, or this organization, I now really learn to what the power platform is all about. Then I only put out a template. But coming to this company, you know I was able to go to a lot of training resource. I was able to do another resource that made me like the tool and then say jumping on project. So they come to me, they do like projects, I'm going to make plans. So I was like who was the issue what do you need to automate? What do you need to build an app around? Because when I got to jump on the model, you don't want to accept a service management. So then when I automated some services for some financial institutions and that's like very deep and deep into the power platform, Wow, that's that's.

Mark Smith: 8:54
Yeah, that's an interesting journey. Right now. What's your focus mainly on is, you know, on the power platform, you have Power Apps, Power Automate, power BI, power Pages and, of course, copilot Studio. Where do you spend most of your time at the moment?

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 9:12
Okay, I'll jump to rocket. I will say the top of the list will be Power Automates, then Power Apps, power BI and Copilot Studio, where Power Pages you know Power Pages are trying to take fresh. You know like I'm still looking for how to adopt to you can say some brain value, but Power Automate is definitely number one. You know, I feel it's something every organization can jump on. If you are not using any of the power platforms, power Automate should be something because they are automating a process and they are making the process seamless. And the very important thing is most of the applications or solutions are built that I believe are the biggest impact I've ever thought on and the funny story is they are not the most technical. So you would see simple automations like the off-boarding process or on-boarding process for an organization and the function is simple as that For just your reporting, normal reporting, you know that kind of thing. And by doing the very good organization then and they are still using this world document here, so on you know, get the reports for everybody. Then at the close of business the person will go around and see get different reports. And I was like they want to call one note and they are following it and I was able to get the reports together and every, each staff can just jump in at the close of business. You know they can automations, they can notify them. They are made at the close of business or bits dashes. So at the close of business each staff does get their notes. They click on the link in the mail and they will be the staff on the list. So now that would or one person going to meet all of the same numbers to get the report was eliminated.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 10:54
And you know, some times you know you don't even get to see people. Maybe they come to the office or something else. You cannot get them on the call, they are shit and all that Right now, wherever you are, you see the mail from the leadership and it's on you to obey the shift, not on one person. So the third part I think that was one of the key things that really drove me back.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 11:15
You know, with that man hours, you know that was seen in the week was off me, I think in the person's personal day, like the person's phone are padded, you know general of the issue post, but with these eliminated at that time and the person just goes to the phone, the post. Each person goes down in the post and at the end of the day they are seeing as more than one choice in man hours padded in a week. You convert that into or take that man hours into something else in the business. I'm sure you know that with the business more productive so that, like I said, most of the solution are leveraging for the next time. They are not that much you know if somebody can jump on.

Mark Smith: 11:53
Yeah, real good, real good now you're. You're obviously heavily involved in the Nigeria Power Platform user group. Tell us a bit about that. How successful is it? What do you? How often do you meet? What do you commonly do?

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 12:08
I would definitely would want to be the shout out to like the phone. You know the one of the founders, or founders, of the Nigeria Power Platform community phone. You also have the brand brand, the brand you do. They are the likes of Bola Ewaju in Hokkae and Dibidabo, who have also contributed very much to the community standing today, I was voting to be community leader from 2020, so we are going to meet, so I think, july also, and I have over a thousand members and you know we've been running our program every year, so every month, so we have the bootcamp coming out the next and you know we try to want to add the data you know, but I'm not going to attend and generally we try to encourage the community because it's a communication and it has really grown because right now we no longer do it. So then, when 2019? I think we've been coming to respond to that, and then we have one location in Lagos. Right now, we are in over nine states and we have, like I said, over a thousand members and we have the bootcamp going on in those nine states. So, while we are in our bootcamp this year, between the both in Lagos, we are running the same bootcamp also in Badon, we are running the same bootcamp in order to get a good state and order. You know there are nine states. You know Shostik, also in Oyo state, also in different states. I love green. You know two different areas of the country, so they're going to respond to all of these things and it's really growing and talking about activities. Now, the bootcamp definitely it was a sensitive thing to empathize with. You know the knowledge of our platform, but we all know that it has been all of these things maybe.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 14:07
So what the community has going to have to do is to create a section to become a community strategy in 2022 where we are diamountly meeting. So we are meeting twice a month and we categorize this meeting into the beginners and the intermediate class. So beginners are people who have more idea of this too, but want to learn. So we add a track for the power arts and power to meet and we add another track for the power bear. You know those impressive games. You can add it to some of them.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 14:37
So we add a beginner and intermediate class. So classes for the power and power bear, and we add a beginner and intermediate for the power bear, also making it to classes and load this class twice in a month. So we guide them step by step, not taking them to the big step, and we give them assignment, you know, guide them on this journey and this is not just one percent job, it's all of us and all the community with us. We come together to try to tell them then our schedule, because a lot of us also work in the same places and we find a way to play more of this in our schedule and we are moving people with that. You know, and we did that till the end of the year to cure for that year and end of the year. You know, we empower people and we let them know at this point that we are good enough to go through the substitution exam and once we get this substitution exam, then we can do stuff like the job.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 15:34
I love that system. Yeah, some people have already put in some jobs. They add more idea of power platform for the team for the bootcamp, the students for the bootcamp. We've been a classie and right now they are fully on the team for the entire occasion.

Mark Smith: 15:51
Well, it's impressive, and it's impressive growth and great that you're offering so much content to educate the community and give people advantage. The final question I have for you is what was your process to becoming an MVP and what do you like about being an MVP?

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 16:21
I would say I was even considering becoming an MVP because it was in my mind that becoming an MVP would definitely add to my dreams. I was looking at it like, oh, I didn't even have ideas. I applied for it. I was like pushing it. One thing I really noticed was that I'm someone that, like you know, empire myself. I'm someone that, like, I'm still on. I'm someone that, like you know, never knew who I was. So, when it comes to the biggest thing in the Microsoft space and the ecosystem, it's one of the things I keep myself impressed with. And I was doing that and I was taking it for the number three. On my LinkedIn page, on my Twitter page, I was talking about all of these things you know, microsoft was dropping all of these small ideas and things like that and I was passionate about community. That's why I was being a passion. You know, it wasn't because I wanted to apply for the program, it was only because I was being a passion. So it was something I was doing and putting out there.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 17:17
Then I got a message from an MVP, one of the entities, saying that who should I be considered, you know, being or joining the MVP program? I'm like, seriously, I've seen players come to me like young I'm those two years, they end up coming too, and I joined 10th and so on. So that's like going to three years or a year plus. I feel like that's a lot to learn. And I said they're doing good. You know already working on a transition and doing a lot then, and so you can do this. It's something that I can jump on and you know, I'm pretty sure that it will also give me that exposure and that will take me to work on a job at the end of the program. It can't be me, that's for you. I can't do that that fast.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 18:00
So I'm going to talk about the issues, the issues, the exposure issues you get to see. First off, I think I'll talk about the fact that you can talk to the product owner. So now, when you see a challenge or something, you know what, you'll find the access, the access of an entity to talk to the product, the product thing, that, oh, there's something wrong with this product or you really can't work on this product, and the product can also have in the open mind to misting products as entity. You know, oh, what do you have to see? What do you think? What are you really wanting to do to that and the take on the contribution. That's definitely what I'm trying to do.

Oluwatobi Yusuf: 18:32
And then another thing that will be something that will definitely keep me going to keep pretending I remain my entity. And then another thing that maybe be the exposure. I would say maybe I'm on this show because I'm an entity, so I said I need a lot of exposure. I've gotten from different places, people inviting me to speak at a event, and from sexual, because I'm also an entity, and the only positive part is that you get into any new product. So, before Microsoft releases anything that makes it the best, go to person. So, being an entity, we have been told about it. So these are the new products and the new features that are about to be on our products. What do you think about this? I don't know, and they're always open to feedback, to get feedback from the entity. So these are things I really enjoy being an entity.

Mark Smith: 19:31
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.