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Crafting Inclusive Technology with Passion and Community with Cat Schneider
Crafting Inclusive Technology with Passion and Community wi…
Send me a Text Message here FULL SHOW NOTES https://podcast.nz365guy.com/637 Discover the inspiring journey of Cat Schneider, a senior soft…
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Crafting Inclusive Technology with Passion and Community with Cat Schneider

Crafting Inclusive Technology with Passion and Community with Cat Schneider

Send me a Text Message here

FULL SHOW NOTES
https://podcast.nz365guy.com/637  

Discover the inspiring journey of Cat Schneider, a senior software engineer at Hitachi Solutions America, as she shares her remarkable career transformation from working in the public sector to becoming a passionate advocate for Power Platform tools. Through her engaging story, you'll learn how a mentoring relationship at the Florida Department of Transportation ignited her interest in Power BI, leading to the creation of a community with over 300 active users. Cat's enthusiasm for integrating these tools not only revolutionized her organization but also positioned her as a sought-after speaker at conferences and opened doors to multiple job offers, including one from Microsoft. This episode is filled with insights into how passion and community can drive innovation and success in both personal and professional realms.

We also tackle the significant topic of accessibility, particularly in the public sector, with a focus on making digital content and laws available to all. Cat sheds light on the challenges posed by Florida's sunshine laws and shares her experience forming a user group dedicated to UX, UI, and accessibility. Highlighting the fun yet exhausting world of conferences, she brings a sense of humor with tales of dressing up as a dinosaur, while also sharing her pet projects involving Power Apps and electronics with Arduino and Raspberry Pi. This episode promises to leave you inspired and motivated to explore the transformative potential of technology in creating inclusive and innovative solutions.

In 2024, we celebrated seven years of the Microsoft Business Applications podcast. Now, we step into 2025 with a fresh new name. 

Welcome to the Microsoft Innovation podcast! Our new name reflects a broader vision, exploring the intersection of people, business, technology, and AI. 

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Thanks for listening 🚀 - Mark Smith

Chapters

00:31 - Power Platform Enthusiast Kat's Journey

10:24 - Importance of Accessibility in User Groups

24:13 - Exploring Power Platform and Beyond

Transcript
WEBVTT

00:00:01.826 --> 00:00:03.431
Welcome to the Power Platform Show.

00:00:03.431 --> 00:00:04.945
Thanks for joining me today.

00:00:04.945 --> 00:00:11.449
I hope today's guest inspires and educates you on the possibilities of the Microsoft Power Platform.

00:00:11.449 --> 00:00:13.868
Now let's get on with the show.

00:00:13.868 --> 00:00:26.230
Today's guest is from Florida in the United States.

00:00:26.230 --> 00:00:29.690
She works at Hitachi Solutions America as a senior software engineer.

00:00:29.690 --> 00:00:34.451
She's a co-leader of the Power Platform UI and UX and Accessibility Global User Group.

00:00:34.451 --> 00:00:43.030
She is an experienced data specialist with the Power Platform, sharepoint and Teams, and she's worked in the public sector for around 15 years.

00:00:43.030 --> 00:00:46.146
You can find links to her bio and social media in the show notes for this episode.

00:00:46.146 --> 00:00:47.469
Welcome to the show, kat.

00:00:47.469 --> 00:00:48.591
Hey, thank you.

00:00:49.051 --> 00:00:50.581
Good to have you on Now.

00:00:50.581 --> 00:00:55.829
We'll say I'm no longer in the public sector, but I was in the public sector for close to 15 years.

00:00:56.179 --> 00:00:57.122
Yeah, as in.

00:00:57.122 --> 00:00:59.490
That's where you worked right before you were.

00:00:59.490 --> 00:00:59.850
Yeah.

00:01:00.200 --> 00:01:03.223
Yeah, before I made the jump to the Power Platform.

00:01:04.626 --> 00:01:05.046
I love it.

00:01:05.046 --> 00:01:07.349
I love it Food, family and fun.

00:01:07.349 --> 00:01:08.209
What do they mean to you?

00:01:09.251 --> 00:01:18.108
Oh, food is one of my happy places Pretty much anything and everything other than seafood, especially.

00:01:18.108 --> 00:01:40.718
You know, considering I'm in Florida, you would think seafood would be a thing for me, but no, I got over that pretty quickly as a kid Family, just spending time with my family doing things, learning things, whatever, Traveling and all that Fun traveling and yeah, nice, and you obviously do a bit of travel for work as well.

00:01:40.759 --> 00:01:44.710
Right, were you most recently at the Power Platform Conference in Europe?

00:01:45.480 --> 00:01:46.867
No, I was not there at that one.

00:01:46.867 --> 00:01:48.253
I was trying to get to that one.

00:01:48.253 --> 00:01:50.623
Actually, I was most recently in Canada.

00:01:51.105 --> 00:01:52.588
Yeah, what was that one?

00:01:52.588 --> 00:01:53.632
What's a Canada?

00:01:54.001 --> 00:01:57.310
That was actually for a work trip, it wasn't for a conference.

00:01:57.310 --> 00:02:14.132
Okay, got to go up there and hang out with M Darcy at a client's office for a day, with m darcy at a client's office for a day, and you know, just got to meet some really cool people from a company that I was some semis formally associated with in my public supper days.

00:02:14.132 --> 00:02:17.906
Um, beginning to see them on a different side of things.

00:02:18.126 --> 00:02:23.241
So nice, kind of nice how did you get into the power platform?

00:02:23.241 --> 00:02:24.861
How'd you get into the Power Platform?

00:02:24.861 --> 00:02:26.324
How did you get involved with it?

00:02:26.843 --> 00:02:35.669
So it was actually through a mentoring relationship that I had with the CIO at FDOT while I was working there.

00:02:35.669 --> 00:02:41.875
Very first meeting that we had, we were talking about you know, what was it that I was interested in?

00:02:41.875 --> 00:02:45.076
What was I wanting to do with this relationship?

00:02:45.076 --> 00:02:47.824
How was I wanting to spend the next six months?

00:02:47.824 --> 00:02:51.212
And you know, kind of what was I working on at the time?

00:02:51.212 --> 00:03:00.413
And I was like, well, you know, I was actually just in the middle of watching a Power BI video and he was like, really, would you be interested in a license?

00:03:00.413 --> 00:03:02.842
We happen to have one extra license right now.

00:03:02.842 --> 00:03:16.407
And I was like, yes, please, spent the next month working in that and then ended up presenting that to the statewide OIT meeting and everybody just went crazy over.

00:03:16.407 --> 00:03:17.771
It, thought it was the most amazing thing ever.

00:03:17.771 --> 00:03:22.491
And we ended up starting up a community of practice a couple of months later.

00:03:22.491 --> 00:03:25.245
So, yeah, it was that.

00:03:25.245 --> 00:03:27.389
And then straight into Power Apps and Automate.

00:03:27.931 --> 00:03:29.163
Wow, so sorry.

00:03:29.163 --> 00:03:30.388
Where were you working at that time?

00:03:30.388 --> 00:03:32.706
That was Florida Department of Transportation.

00:03:32.706 --> 00:03:34.884
Excellent, the Florida Department.

00:03:34.884 --> 00:03:40.062
So you were in public sector and you started tinkering with Power BI and things just took off.

00:03:40.243 --> 00:03:40.463
Yeah.

00:03:41.045 --> 00:03:42.650
That's cool man, that's really cool.

00:03:43.010 --> 00:03:43.611
It went crazy.

00:03:43.611 --> 00:04:10.867
We were a Tableau agency for the longest time and then ended up just wanting to see what we could do with Power BI and very quickly realized that we had so many more avenues available to us going the Power BI route than staying with Tableau.

00:04:10.867 --> 00:04:15.465
So we ended up, I think, starting out with 10 users in our community of practice, and by the time I left, which was about two years later, we had over 300 active users in our community of practice.

00:04:16.125 --> 00:04:17.088
Wow, that's amazing.

00:04:17.088 --> 00:04:20.422
So you've used a term now a couple of times community of practice.

00:04:20.422 --> 00:04:21.023
What is that?

00:04:22.084 --> 00:04:32.649
That was where we were basically teaching ourselves and teaching others within our organization the platform Power BI.

00:04:32.649 --> 00:04:42.673
And then we eventually because I pushed a lot on OIT I was like, can we please make this a Power Platform community of practice?

00:04:42.673 --> 00:04:48.502
You know, power BI is great and all, but we are a SharePoint organization.

00:04:48.502 --> 00:04:53.130
Power Automate and Power Apps is integral in us.

00:04:53.130 --> 00:04:59.350
You know, doing this, it doesn't make any sense for us to just focus on Power BI, can we please?

00:04:59.350 --> 00:05:09.480
And so I finally, after enough asking and begging and poking and prodding the right people, I was able to get that to come into fruition.

00:05:09.480 --> 00:05:26.702
So we had a teams group and then several channels dedicated to the various applications and it's kind of like a stack overflow, except you don't have to try and dumb your information all the way down because you're working with people who know your organization and know your data.

00:05:26.702 --> 00:05:28.269
So it was.

00:05:28.269 --> 00:05:34.870
It was nice because people could just go out there drop a question and people could respond that had any kind of information.

00:05:35.071 --> 00:05:43.767
So so just give us a highlights tour, whistle-stop tour of public sector to Hitachi.

00:05:45.271 --> 00:06:03.687
So I was present, like I presented, at a Microsoft event that was specific for transportation organizations, and then I presented in a larger regional conference for the various tools that we were using in the Power Platform.

00:06:03.687 --> 00:06:11.624
And then, shortly after that, I was presenting at the Microsoft Power Platform conference that took place in Orlando in 2022.

00:06:11.624 --> 00:06:22.665
At that point in time, I had a job offer from one organization and in the middle of that conference, I had a job offer from Microsoft as well.

00:06:22.665 --> 00:06:29.295
Conference, I had a job offer from Microsoft as well, and I was like mind blown.

00:06:29.295 --> 00:06:39.233
One, the conference was amazing, but two, I had two job opportunities for the Power Platform at the end of this conference and I had to make a decision.

00:06:39.233 --> 00:06:46.281
So, wait, I'm out, looked at it both, both organizations and I finally I said thank you, Microsoft, but not right now.

00:06:47.163 --> 00:06:49.807
Um, and so I went with the smaller organization.

00:06:49.807 --> 00:06:52.153
It was the MSP or what is it?

00:06:52.153 --> 00:06:55.495
Multi-services, something or other.

00:06:55.495 --> 00:06:57.641
I forget the nomenclature Yep.

00:06:57.641 --> 00:07:14.471
Yep Acronyms elude me but um did that for about just about a year and a half before Matthew Devaney reached out to me and said hey, would you be interested in coming to work with me over here at Hitachi?

00:07:14.471 --> 00:07:17.723
And I was like sure, why not?

00:07:17.723 --> 00:07:21.949
So we, we did the interview.

00:07:21.949 --> 00:07:25.636
I talked joel lindstrom and he talks about you all the time.

00:07:25.636 --> 00:07:28.529
He has nothing but great things to say.

00:07:31.524 --> 00:07:48.021
Um, and then you know, we I've been there since april so, wow, so it's relatively new, a hitachi piece yeah, when I uh was at mvp summit back in, I had actually just left that organization that I went to start with.

00:07:48.021 --> 00:07:55.161
And then when I got back from MVP Summit, there was a couple more weeks and then I started at Saatchi.

00:07:55.802 --> 00:07:57.505
Wow, wow, that's so cool.

00:07:57.505 --> 00:08:07.384
So if I was to ask you what's top of mind for you right now, we're, you know, into the start of September We've got Power Platform Conference coming up in Vegas.

00:08:07.384 --> 00:08:10.375
You've done your first half year.

00:08:10.375 --> 00:08:15.387
What's whirling around in your mind when you look at the next six to 12 months?

00:08:16.129 --> 00:08:24.069
Probably it would have to be like a pro code version of Power Platform, power Apps specifically.

00:08:24.069 --> 00:08:31.788
So you know, they presented that code view and I think Yannick and myself both got super giddy.

00:08:31.788 --> 00:08:36.826
I think I sucked all the air out of the room when they announced that because I was like, oh my God, are you kidding me?

00:08:36.826 --> 00:08:42.548
We can just use YAML and do editing right in the browser Like this is insane, this is incredible.

00:08:42.548 --> 00:08:43.772
Please can I have this now.

00:08:43.772 --> 00:08:59.005
So I've been super excited about that and all the possibilities that come from that, because I prefer to build my apps in Visual Studio Code and then bring them back into the Canvas editor for fine tuning if needed.

00:08:59.005 --> 00:09:00.886
But it's just.

00:09:00.886 --> 00:09:12.274
I find it a lot easier because I can essentially make snippets of code, put those in there and voila, now I have Canvas components.

00:09:12.955 --> 00:09:13.535
That's very cool.

00:09:13.535 --> 00:09:18.104
In the intro we talked about UI, UX, global user group.

00:09:18.104 --> 00:09:34.634
So it's interesting because you talk about working in Visual Studio and very much in potentially the code layer of things, but UI and UX is very much at the experience layer, the presentation layer of an application.

00:09:34.634 --> 00:09:37.152
What are your thoughts in this space?

00:09:37.152 --> 00:09:37.793
What's happening?

00:09:37.793 --> 00:09:52.946
Tell us about that user group, why should people get involved with it and what are you seeing happen around this discussion area of UI and UX from the lens of the power platform and I mean that in the broader sense.

00:09:53.307 --> 00:09:53.506
Yeah.

00:09:53.506 --> 00:09:57.816
So I've always kind of just been interested in accessibility.

00:09:57.816 --> 00:10:06.078
Just working in the public sector, it is a huge part of anything that I was doing when I was putting anything together to go out into the public.

00:10:06.078 --> 00:10:14.259
So it was always making sure that whatever web pages we made out there available to anybody, those were hugely accessible.

00:10:14.259 --> 00:10:25.168
Any documentation, any Florida rules, statutes, whatnot we needed to make them accessible to anybody and everybody, whatnot we needed to make them accessible to anybody and everybody.

00:10:25.168 --> 00:10:33.091
Because there's a big thing, especially in the state of Florida, is that we've got sunshine laws, which means anything and everything that's made has to be publicly available.

00:10:33.091 --> 00:10:40.552
So even if it's publicly available, it still requires it to be accessible through federal laws.

00:10:40.552 --> 00:10:47.109
So I've just always had accessibility like ingrained into anything and everything I've been doing.

00:10:47.109 --> 00:10:56.456
So it was one of these things where it was like when I see something that's not accessible, it kind of just makes my skin crawl just a little.

00:10:56.456 --> 00:11:01.631
Yeah yeah, because I'm just like it doesn't take much effort to make something accessible.

00:11:01.631 --> 00:11:05.499
It's when you don't know what you don't know.

00:11:05.499 --> 00:11:13.105
That's when it gets to be a bit difficult because you don't know that you haven't made something accessible.

00:11:13.365 --> 00:11:16.895
So I've always kind of wanted to put this group together.

00:11:16.895 --> 00:11:24.552
I was talking with Christine Kozilewski she's going to murder me for butchering her last name.

00:11:24.552 --> 00:11:41.085
I was talking to her and Donna at the first Power Platform conference, like we should totally put together a user group specifically dedicated to this, and just the three of us got super busy, never had time to put it together.

00:11:41.085 --> 00:11:59.032
And so then Charles and Anya they had reached out I want to say, back in April, may sometime about wanting to put together a user group for UX and UI, and they thought it would be really cool for myself to get involved, and I was like, well, 100% down for it.

00:11:59.131 --> 00:12:03.548
Can we also include accessibility and can we make this an official user group?

00:12:03.548 --> 00:12:07.173
Let's go through the whole process of getting it set up through microsoft and whatnot.

00:12:07.173 --> 00:12:10.851
So we did that and we've been loving it ever since.

00:12:10.851 --> 00:12:20.491
We've had two already incredible presenters besides ourselves, because you know, anya and charles themselves are awesome presenters.

00:12:20.491 --> 00:12:26.139
I usually just try to go for whatever's going to make people excited at the time.

00:12:26.139 --> 00:12:37.815
Yeah, yeah, yeah, but you know we've got Donna, sarkar and Sean oh, my goodness, I forget his last name, like Astrakhan.

00:12:38.576 --> 00:12:39.158
Yeah, I don't know.

00:12:39.245 --> 00:12:42.172
He's a new MVP, I think, as of last month.

00:12:42.231 --> 00:12:49.416
Yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, of course, heck, I hope he doesn't hear me say I don't know who you're talking about.

00:12:49.416 --> 00:12:52.172
Had a full-on conversation with him the other day.

00:12:52.552 --> 00:12:52.874
Oh.

00:12:53.054 --> 00:12:53.716
Yeah.

00:12:55.306 --> 00:13:03.056
But yeah, we've got those two coming up here in a few days and then some really exciting presenters for the next couple of months.

00:13:03.056 --> 00:13:08.312
Nice few days and then some really exciting presenters for the next couple of months, so nice.

00:13:08.312 --> 00:13:15.404
I'm just, I'm really excited about this group because it gets gets more people like ui, ux and accessibility at the forefront of their minds whenever they're they're building these applications.

00:13:16.787 --> 00:13:49.011
So and it's not nice it's not just like we don't intend for the user group to be just how do you implement UI, ux and accessibility for the end user, like we're also considering it from the perspective of a fellow developer who may have to come in after you Like making sure that you're also implementing stuff so that those users, the developers themselves, don't just go what is happening here right now?

00:13:49.354 --> 00:13:51.731
Yeah, how do you handle things like time zone?

00:13:53.366 --> 00:13:54.230
So right now.

00:13:54.424 --> 00:13:55.649
Meaning that you're right across the globe.

00:13:55.971 --> 00:14:01.735
Yeah, you and I were, I think, 12, 10 hours difference, something like that.

00:14:02.817 --> 00:14:03.812
Mm-hmm, it's 1 pm my time.

00:14:03.812 --> 00:14:04.783
Yeahhmm, it's 1 pm my time.

00:14:05.065 --> 00:14:07.693
Yeah, and it's 9 pm my time 9 pm.

00:14:07.913 --> 00:14:10.057
Yeah, New York right.

00:14:10.520 --> 00:14:10.985
Yeah, new York time.

00:14:11.904 --> 00:14:16.692
But then you've got London, which right now is 2 am, and isn't Anna from London?

00:14:16.692 --> 00:14:18.869
Yes, and Charles.

00:14:19.770 --> 00:14:27.674
So Charles, I think, is in UK, Anya's in Scotland, yeah, so you know they're.

00:14:27.674 --> 00:14:31.068
They're on London or British Standard Time, summertime right now.

00:14:31.068 --> 00:14:41.072
Yep, um, and so we've tried to stick to a general time zone um, we just, which is what like?

00:14:41.113 --> 00:14:41.793
what time do you do?

00:14:41.793 --> 00:14:42.556
You do, you do it live.

00:14:42.556 --> 00:14:43.417
You use a group.

00:14:48.485 --> 00:14:50.663
I have a whole set of notes here to keep track, so we're trying to go for it.

00:14:50.663 --> 00:15:00.932
I think it's 3 pm Uh UTC or if the show is on a weekday and 4 pm UTC if it's on a weekend.

00:15:00.932 --> 00:15:10.621
Um, the only difference is we've got several really incredible speakers who are on your side of the globe that we're trying to get on the show.

00:15:10.621 --> 00:15:18.019
So we're actually going to change it up a little for December to get it in a time zone that's applicable for them.

00:15:18.019 --> 00:15:35.019
So it'll be a little later for us and I say a little later, several hours later, but at least it'll be in a time zone that folks in Australia, new Zealand, philippines, those areas it makes more sense for them.

00:15:36.325 --> 00:15:39.948
Nice and it pretty much exploded, didn't it, when that user group was launched.

00:15:39.948 --> 00:15:43.597
Didn't like 300 odd people like sign up pretty much straight away.

00:15:44.144 --> 00:16:01.577
So our very first meeting, we had over 300, I think 50 people who'd registered for that event and over 150 people actually attended, and I was just like okay, like yes, this is great.

00:16:01.577 --> 00:16:02.020
We were all kind of freaking out.

00:16:02.020 --> 00:16:03.056
We're like, oh my God, if we have 350 people on the first call, that's going.

00:16:03.056 --> 00:16:03.203
This is great.

00:16:03.203 --> 00:16:03.768
Like we were all kind of freaking out.

00:16:03.768 --> 00:16:08.172
We're like, oh my God, if we have 350 people on the first call, that's going to be a lot.

00:16:09.154 --> 00:16:17.732
Yeah, yeah, doesn't it show, though there is an absolute gap in the market for this conversation?

00:16:17.732 --> 00:16:18.674
100%.

00:16:18.674 --> 00:16:19.177
It's interesting.

00:16:19.177 --> 00:16:34.414
I was talking with a PM at Microsoft and he was on the design side of the things and he was lamenting he wished that for every engineer, developer, engineer in Microsoft there was a UI UX designer.

00:16:34.414 --> 00:16:38.871
The product would be absolutely amazing, but unfortunately that ratio is not there.

00:16:38.871 --> 00:16:41.351
Yeah, and for years.

00:16:41.806 --> 00:17:01.687
It's funny, when you talked about usability before, I remember sit in seattle years ago having the whole discussion around what was then dynamic crm not being compliant to the various just the simple usability kind of like, just the baseline of usability standards that were available.

00:17:02.109 --> 00:17:10.200
Yeah, um, and it's funny because in recent months, I have experienced usability, I suppose, a lot more from screen reader point of view.

00:17:10.200 --> 00:17:31.534
So something I've only found out really properly, I suppose, this year is that I do best from auditory listening, not from actual eyeball reading on screen, and so so, for example, I just had a a about a 50 page pdf document that I needed to go through.

00:17:31.534 --> 00:17:35.371
Typically in the past I would be lucky to get to page two as a technical document.

00:17:35.371 --> 00:17:45.803
Um, it was around um, geotechnical stuff, which is, of course, not my subject matter expertise area which could get very dry quickly.

00:17:45.803 --> 00:17:53.226
I'm able to drop it into a screen reader and stay riveted for the full 50 pages because, oh, I get it.

00:17:53.226 --> 00:17:59.828
I can see where this is going, it makes sense to me and those really hard to pronounce words the screen reader does really good.

00:17:59.848 --> 00:18:02.363
Yeah, you don't have to worry about, you know, getting tripped up.

00:18:02.363 --> 00:18:03.085
Like how does that?

00:18:03.085 --> 00:18:04.911
That's what is that saying.

00:18:05.380 --> 00:18:17.108
Why is my brain trying to go down here when I'm up here and yeah, but now I notice when I go to read websites, particularly blog sites, heaps of them from a screen reading perspective.

00:18:17.108 --> 00:18:39.424
Whenever you come to like a picture in the content, it will then go and start reading out the html or css, which is just totally disruptive when you're like in the flow of whatever the post is about and you just see how important it is, like that's something from visually, nobody would see, you know, any impediment in the design.

00:18:39.424 --> 00:18:46.673
Yet from usability perspective I'm always like, ah, shit, now I've entered and like when it's every like paragraph that there's a new image.

00:18:46.733 --> 00:18:50.346
Well, yeah, that's painful, yeah yeah, and now it's important.

00:18:50.506 --> 00:18:51.407
Yeah, the screen readers.

00:18:51.407 --> 00:19:01.022
Now you can actually tell them you know, skip over images or you know only, yeah, only say you know the important part of the specific image.

00:19:01.022 --> 00:19:03.349
Like they've got all kinds of different tools now.

00:19:03.800 --> 00:19:16.074
So mine, mine does all that, but for some reason, if if that site has not been like you know it's, sometimes it just injects it in yeah, man, yeah, that would be rough.

00:19:16.655 --> 00:19:26.424
I I must say that it's painful yeah, and so that's why I'm a big advocate of both interface design and user experience design, because I think they're just so.

00:19:26.424 --> 00:19:42.817
One of the quotes I've used for years with the consultants I've worked with is that long after you're gone from the project, someone is going to be using this interface, this experience you've created, and if they're cursing whoever invented this, that's bad.

00:19:42.817 --> 00:20:07.251
Right, that's bad, because what you might find quick and easy to do and you checked a box, that that feature was added, or that line or that text, or that checkbox or that dropdown, whatever it was but if you've not done it in a way that you've understood how this person's going to use it every day, you could have just added five minutes to their life, as in, I sucked out of their life doing this because you didn't think about that.

00:20:07.251 --> 00:20:07.512
Yeah.

00:20:07.914 --> 00:20:10.182
It was something that you just needed to get this thing done.

00:20:10.182 --> 00:20:17.508
You needed to tick that box to say this is in there, and you didn't think about how's the person going to use it?

00:20:17.508 --> 00:20:24.912
Nine times out of 10, you're going to end up in a situation where somebody's trying to create some other application to not have to deal with yours.

00:20:26.381 --> 00:20:28.489
I'm interested to know how you handle conferences.

00:20:28.489 --> 00:20:31.670
You know you had the deal come together for you at conferences.

00:20:31.670 --> 00:20:34.888
And a couple of things.

00:20:34.888 --> 00:20:38.590
One, how do you prepare to speak at a conference?

00:20:38.590 --> 00:20:40.700
What's your strategy?

00:20:40.700 --> 00:20:42.546
Do you start with a blank slide deck?

00:20:42.546 --> 00:20:44.942
Or you know what is the process that you go through.

00:20:44.942 --> 00:20:48.470
And then what do you do at conferences?

00:20:48.470 --> 00:20:54.648
And what I mean by that is what fun extracurriculars do I have?

00:20:54.648 --> 00:21:06.732
Not so much that, but like, how do you make sure that you come away from a conference feeling like and it is that that that was so well worth going to, that was amazing.

00:21:06.732 --> 00:21:08.046
Like I want to do that again.

00:21:08.046 --> 00:21:10.385
That's a no-brainer that I'm going to be back next year.

00:21:10.385 --> 00:21:12.289
Yeah, tell me a bit about that.

00:21:12.490 --> 00:21:13.152
So all right.

00:21:13.152 --> 00:21:18.251
So presenting it really just depends on the topic.

00:21:18.251 --> 00:21:26.019
So if I've already got a presentation that I've done on the topic, I might use bits and pieces of it.

00:21:26.019 --> 00:21:40.390
Um, sometimes I'll start from a blank slate and incorporate the overarching ideal, but not necessarily any previous content, and other times it's well conference.

00:21:40.390 --> 00:21:48.207
They said they wanted this particular bit, so I'll just do that Most of the time.

00:21:48.207 --> 00:21:54.090
I'm still working on trying to get selected for specific conferences our platform conference.

00:21:56.382 --> 00:21:57.768
I thought you did get selected for it.

00:21:57.960 --> 00:22:10.055
No, I wish, I so wish I had gotten it, but it seems like or I heard some rumor that there was not as many community-specific sessions that were selected for this one.

00:22:10.700 --> 00:22:13.849
What's community mean, as in non-Microsoft delivered sessions.

00:22:14.259 --> 00:22:20.834
Yeah, it's more like people-based sessions versus technical sessions.

00:22:21.640 --> 00:22:24.148
Gotcha, and so there was less selected for this event.

00:22:24.400 --> 00:22:35.653
Yeah, and a lot of what the mode, or I should say the majority of the content that I put up is more people-based and community-based than it is technical-based.

00:22:35.653 --> 00:22:51.782
There are several sessions that I'll put in that are technical-based, but there's also several sessions in this particular conference that are almost the exact same as what I had put in, but they're from more prominent speakers, people that they're familiar with.

00:22:51.782 --> 00:22:56.309
So I'm like one of these days I'm going to get in there.

00:22:57.311 --> 00:22:58.153
Are you still going, though?

00:22:58.153 --> 00:23:00.034
Oh yeah, a hundred percent, yeah, yeah, yeah, it'll be awesome.

00:23:00.034 --> 00:23:02.316
Oh yeah, 100%, yeah, it'll be awesome.

00:23:02.902 --> 00:23:12.487
I think probably the thing for me as far as like, what is it that I do at conferences that I just have to go back again.

00:23:12.487 --> 00:23:24.009
Probably the dinosaur situation that I started out with Chris Huntingford at Microsoft Power Platform Conference 2022 gotta run around as a dinosaur.

00:23:24.009 --> 00:23:25.164
It's kind of expected now.

00:23:25.164 --> 00:23:27.386
So shenanigans is a big thing.

00:23:27.386 --> 00:23:31.269
Making sure that you know I'm bringing the shenanigans, which.

00:23:31.891 --> 00:23:32.211
Nice.

00:23:33.282 --> 00:23:45.670
It's been said that it's kind of expected, like if I don't have shenanigans, like at some point in time that there's something wrong I've been kidnapped, body snatched something.

00:23:45.670 --> 00:23:51.671
So we'll definitely have the Velociraptor at this conference coming up.

00:23:52.373 --> 00:23:52.613
Nice.

00:23:53.400 --> 00:24:01.359
But yeah, no, it's really just about having fun and getting out there and seeing people and you know just meeting and greeting.

00:24:02.282 --> 00:24:04.690
Are you an attendee and what I mean by that.

00:24:04.690 --> 00:24:08.648
You're going because of the sessions, yeah, or are you going because of the people?

00:24:08.829 --> 00:24:34.188
I do go because of the sessions, but I go because of the people, yeah, the people that are at the conferences, which is crazy because I am wholly an introvert.

00:24:34.188 --> 00:24:46.775
So when people are like what I'm like no, I am INFP like I am an introvert very much, conferences do take it out of me.

00:24:46.775 --> 00:24:55.924
So when I get back from them I'm like please nobody look for me or ask anything of me for the next month, like just yeah please don't.

00:24:56.565 --> 00:25:05.516
But I think what happens is my ADHD pulls me into that extroverted type personality, if you will.

00:25:05.980 --> 00:25:06.905
For a period of time.

00:25:07.740 --> 00:25:17.788
And it's enough to drain my social battery, enough where I don't want to see anybody for a month, but I just I enjoy the dopamine rush that I get from attending him.

00:25:18.690 --> 00:25:21.694
So yeah, nice, yeah, nice.

00:25:21.694 --> 00:25:32.442
Final question I have for you is around the power platform as a whole and where are you investing your time in the next six months, like, where are you going deeper in the technology?

00:25:32.442 --> 00:25:41.275
Forget about what you're doing consulting for customers and things like that but what areas are you drilling into and building your skill set out in at this time?

00:25:42.116 --> 00:25:47.384
so there's a couple of things I like I've been saying, I think, for the last year and a half.

00:25:47.384 --> 00:25:54.363
I was going to go for the pl200 and I have yet to go for the pl200 okay.

00:25:54.363 --> 00:25:59.769
So there's that, but mostly what I'm trying to do it.

00:25:59.769 --> 00:26:06.715
It sort of started out as a consultant project but turned into a pet project.

00:26:06.715 --> 00:26:24.575
That's now also turned back into a consulting project, um, where I'm starting to do essentially a code review for power apps, like how do I tell from this particular Canvas app what I'm working with?

00:26:24.575 --> 00:26:34.428
So I definitely want to do the PL 200 route, but I'm more concerned with, when I open up an app, what are the things that I should be concerned with?

00:26:34.428 --> 00:26:35.746
What are my data sources?

00:26:35.746 --> 00:26:38.868
How performant is my application?

00:26:38.868 --> 00:26:57.169
Where are the things, my gotchas and ha-has, and how is it that I can get this information out of here in a quick, easy and reliable manner so that I can start to understand what I'm working with and be able to work with it a lot quicker?

00:26:57.670 --> 00:26:58.972
Are you creating a tool to do this?

00:27:03.300 --> 00:27:04.363
a tool to do this.

00:27:04.363 --> 00:27:06.967
Funny enough, it's an excel workbook.

00:27:06.967 --> 00:27:13.546
Excel excel is my first love and I don't know that I will ever give it up, but yeah, I'm.

00:27:13.546 --> 00:27:18.278
I'm using excel to do that it's a versatile tool it very much is.

00:27:18.278 --> 00:27:23.810
I was actually building, quote unquote, power apps in Excel before power apps was a thing.

00:27:24.893 --> 00:27:26.404
Yeah, no, I get that.

00:27:26.404 --> 00:27:27.167
I get that.

00:27:27.167 --> 00:27:31.592
I have been known to play with tools outside the ecosystem.

00:27:31.592 --> 00:27:42.515
My current favorites that I'm learning at the moment are makecom, which is Power Automate, and a thing called Airtable Airtable.

00:27:42.535 --> 00:27:42.955
Airtable, so itable.

00:27:42.976 --> 00:27:45.847
Airtable, so it's like Excel on steroids.

00:27:45.847 --> 00:27:51.646
So it's like an Excel that's also a database, but like massively API driven, oh wow.

00:27:51.686 --> 00:27:51.827
Yeah.

00:27:54.862 --> 00:28:07.486
I spent probably eight hours yesterday on modeling stuff out and using APIs and branching and various things to, yeah, build out automations, particularly automations that involve AI.

00:28:07.486 --> 00:28:10.585
Oh, wow, but yeah, I could you know.

00:28:10.585 --> 00:28:20.086
In my mind I'm like you could be doing this in Power Automate and you could be doing this in Power Apps, but it's funny how, yeah, sometimes other tools can be quite attractive.

00:28:20.086 --> 00:28:24.903
Oh yeah, they have their things that make them, I suppose, real super easy to use.

00:28:24.903 --> 00:28:32.652
And when you're just building personal projects and not for a customer, how you handle security is different.

00:28:32.912 --> 00:29:23.902
Yeah, right, exactly Because there's only one authenticated member it's me, there's nobody else and therefore you know you handle things differently yeah, when it's, you know um not client or public facing or any of those type of things yeah, I will say um fun thing that I'm actually getting myself into right now is I'm learning electronics wow, that's so cool so I found this organization called inventorio and they teach you basically how to incorporate Arduino boards, raspberry Pis, you name it, how to incorporate that with Python, and I think C sharp is what they teach you, and they do it using storyline formats and they do it using storyline formats.

00:29:23.922 --> 00:29:47.124
So the one that I first got about a year and a half ago is called 30 Days Lost in Space and the story is you're on a ship, you're on your way to meet up with the rest of the crew and you've crash landed on a planet and now you need to you know, ship fixed in order to be able to meet back up with the rest of your crew.

00:29:47.124 --> 00:30:20.773
And it's like it teaches you you know how to make led lights light up and how to you know do all these fancy, crazy things and so cool, all in an effort so that I can learn how to you know connect my power apps and power automates to the real world, my kiln that I have for making ceramics, so that I can actually have a fully automated kiln, so that I can, you know, make my ceramics how I want to make my ceramics.

00:30:20.980 --> 00:30:21.882
That is so cool.

00:30:21.882 --> 00:30:22.983
I love that.

00:30:22.983 --> 00:30:24.988
Thank you, Kat.

00:30:24.988 --> 00:30:26.892
I'll see you in a couple of weeks.

00:30:26.892 --> 00:30:27.633
Yes, sir.

00:30:29.339 --> 00:30:30.762
Thank you for having me.

00:30:30.782 --> 00:30:31.923
Hey, thanks for listening.

00:30:31.923 --> 00:30:37.071
I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy.

00:30:37.071 --> 00:30:41.560
If there's a guest you'd like to see on the show, please message me on LinkedIn.

00:30:41.560 --> 00:30:45.047
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00:30:45.047 --> 00:30:47.431
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00:30:47.431 --> 00:30:50.295
Stay safe out there and shoot for the stars.