Cultivating Tech in Albania: Betim Beja's Journey from Microsoft MVP to Shaping the Tech Landscape and 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 Albania. Now that means you need to go grab Google Maps and go and search up Albania. It's in southeastern Europe. He's a principal solution architect. He was first awarded his MVP in 2022. He's passionate about using technology to help others. He is currently focused on helping local professionals in Albania produce high quality software and organizing events. He's the first ever Microsoft MVP in Albania. He achieved that, as I say, in 2022. He's been renewed for his second year, which is an outstanding accomplishment. You can find links to his bio and social media etc. In the show notes for his episode. He just told me he's going to the Dynamic Minds Conference in May 2024, where I will be as well. Betim, welcome to the show.

Betim Beja: 2:00
Yeah, nice to be here, Mark. Hopefully we can make it to the Dynamic Minds. Obviously, currently I'm focused mainly on organizing one summit in Albania, the first. I'm doing lots of firsts lately because Albania is a small country and there is not much investment from other companies because the market is small also. So mainly most of the people are focused on outsourcing or consulting with other companies worldwide. Basically, the focus is to produce high quality software from Albania, but to also help everybody in the world to do the same. When I first started basically with open source and with contributions, it was when I got to see how fake XRM easy was built. That was basically the thing that kickstarted my career in the Dynamics, because I got to understand a little bit of the internals of Dynamics just by seeing the way Jordy had mocked basically everything with his library and, yeah, that's pretty much it. That was the spark, let's say, to help the community and basically you'll get a lot better yourself by helping others.

Mark Smith: 3:46
Tell us before I grill you and I know it's early for you, 5am in the morning there and this is your obviously first call of the day, waking you up but tell me about food, family and fun and what is the best thing to do if I was to visit Albania. So family.

Betim Beja: 4:05
Basically, I have a family of 4, I have a daughter which is 8 years and a son of 5, my daughter has a Japanese name because I love the culture of Japan, never been there, but it's one of the places I would like to visit in the near future. And, yeah, my son has an Albanian name, but he's called Rubin, which is Ruby the. Mineral and yeah, albania is a small country but it has a very diverse geography. You can find beaches which are compared, usually, to Greece and to Sardinia in Italy, for example. Or we are in the Mediterranean, but we have the Adriatic Sea and the Union Sea, so you get sandy beaches, rocky beaches, basically all different kinds of beaches. In this small place like Albania, as you mentioned, most people need to use Google Maps to understand where Albania is. Most Americans maybe, when you say Albania, search for Albany and yeah, usually I have to do the search and show them on my phone. No, I'm talking about this European country here. We are not in the European Union yet and that's like a blocker sometimes. But yes, we are trying to grow. We are a next communist country and that has been something difficult also to overcome because, as mentioned, we are a small country and the market is really really small. So what I'm trying to do? I'm trying to grow a community, basically, and try to inspire other people to invest a little bit in showing that we also produce quality and not that you can find cheap labour, basically, which is the main reason why most companies might look overseas from Italy, for example, to Albania to find yeah, to find one.

Mark Smith: 6:49
The closest I've been to your country is Montenegro, so I've been on your border. I haven't been to Greece, which is on your southern border, correct? Your northern border is Montenegro, your southern border is Greece, so I kind of been. I assume that it's similar to the experience of Montenegro, your coastline, you know the water, the Adriatic Sea Just a beautiful paradise, I assume, on the coast there. Tell me a bit about population sizing. Are you a large population? Are you you know what's your adoption of Microsoft from a? Are you mainly do working with businesses locally, as in, so they're buying your services, or are you more supplying what you do to companies outside of your country?

Betim Beja: 7:40
Basically there, since Microsoft has two parts of dynamics, so CRM and ERP. On the ERP side, I'm not really focused on that, but there is a lot of market in Albania locally. But on the CRM side, the market hasn't matured enough to properly invest in the CRM and they are missing a lot. So we are basically forced to look to other countries for consulting, because and my main, basically my main engagement is consulting for an Irish consultancy Irish partner. I have my own limited company in Albania but it is growing really slowly because I haven't had much time to invest and because of all these difficulties that there is no local market. So we have to look outside. But if you consider working for another country, basically most people prefer actually going there than working remotely, right? So that's one challenge and that's one of the main reasons why I'm trying to grow a local community and to invest in the locals. Basically, and hopefully even the local market will mature quick enough for basically for us to invest in local companies also, so to start building products. My short term plan I would say so in the next two years is to focus mainly on creating products on top of dynamics and not focus on consulting. So currently I am like 80% consulting and 20% focus on creating products, most of which are open source, because that's the only way to market something from a small country like Albania. And then, in two years or so, I'm hoping to have grown a team that has enough experience to actually build our own products and to switch basically to 80% products and 20% consulting.

Mark Smith: 10:19
When you say open source, is that sitting on XRM Toolbox?

Betim Beja: 10:25
So I have had different areas. Basically where I'm focused Mainly it has been XRM toolbox tools. I have two. I am mainly focused on fixing other tools or improving other tools, not only on my own tools. Also, in the last year and a half or two years I have been also focused on PCF components and I built an open source library called Component Framework Mock which helps you basically write tests or storybook stories and you can basically develop your PCF component, gather feedback from all the stakeholders in your project without actually deploying that component in a dynamics environment. You can publish your storybook with all the different combinations and all the edge cases probably of your component and people have the parameters there. They can play, even though they are not technical. For example, they can play with the parameters and give you feedback or suggest improvements or collaborate. Basically.

Mark Smith: 11:47
That's amazing. It's a PCF, of course, a massive growing area, people to develop and really create very unique interface experiences Interesting. On the XRM toolbox, friends, I don't know if you have noticed Do you think XRM? Have they renamed that recently? The XRM toolbox, I think it's called. I saw the other day Tungy who is the originator of it, from France I'm pretty sure. I saw him on LinkedIn call it XTB and I'm wondering if they're making XTB XRM toolbox, whether they're starting to rebrand slightly, being at the concept of XRM, which came from years ago Microsoft actually originally coined that term XRM, anything relationship management and I'm just wondering if now, because things have moved on, there's a lot of people in the community that never heard of XRM because they're new to the ecosystem, since that concept was in market. So I don't know. Is it now called XTB? Is that the new name for it?

Betim Beja: 12:52
I don't think it's up to me to confirm if that's a new name or not. Basically, I'm just building some proofs on top of it. I think Jonas Rapp might have something to say about that, because he always has something to say about the naming right. He just people how to say it properly and it's one of my heroes, basically Jonas Rapp. That's why I mentioned it.

Mark Smith: 13:25
He's a rock star.

Betim Beja: 13:26
Yeah, he's really inspiring it and he was one of the people basically that I've been following. A lot that inspired me into giving back to the community, along with Jordi Montana from FAKE XRM easy.

Mark Smith: 13:43
And Jordi, amazing guy as well.

Betim Beja: 13:45
Yeah, since I mentioned Jordi, basically I went to Automation Summit in the UK this year and the main purpose that I went there was to meet Jordi Montana. Both we had no sessions basically to present there, but we just attended so that we could meet each other, because we have been talking since 2019, but never met in person. So we decided to go there and he's so helpful that basically we are organizing the first Albanian Power Platform Summit 28th of October this year in Tirana, and the co-organizers are Jordi Montana and Cristian Fernandez, from Spain. Also, I'm trying to make a big bang basically for this first summit because we have also invited Guido Prete from Italy and Olivero Drigas from Ireland, so there will be four MPFs.

Mark Smith: 14:57
I just spoke to Christian yesterday and you mentioned that Guido is an. I mean, he couldn't ask for a nice guy in the community. Guido has absolutely been around a long time. A rock star knows his stuff. Full respect for him, without a doubt. So I think you've got the ingredients. If you could share the link to that event to me, I'll make sure I get it into the show notes so people can find it. You'll know that, of course, that Guido has gone and put up a website specifically for sharing events and where speakers can get involved and everything. So good work. I'm really pleased.

Betim Beja: 15:40
It's the first place where we have put it right in the community.

Mark Smith: 15:44
Eventsit with this website Is what's the main language spoken in business in Albania?

Betim Beja: 15:54
So we basically have our Albanian language but since the dynamics is not with, it doesn't have an Albanian translation and since most of the consultants are working for Italian companies, german companies or the UK market or Ireland, so most are basically communicating in English or in Italian. German companies mainly communicate in English or, in rare cases, in German.

Mark Smith: 16:35
Now, when you write your blog posts, your content, etc. Are you writing it in English or are you writing in your native language?

Betim Beja: 16:42
I am always writing it in English because I want to reach globally. Basically, I've done the first presentation, I've done it in PowerSaturday, italy, and I've done that in Italian language. Basically, I've lived eight years in Italy. When I was at the university I took it a little bit slowly. I've done five plus three instead of three plus two, let's say, Bachelor and Master's degree. I graduated with maximum votes from software engineering and in the meantime, the reason why I took it a little bit slowly was that I was also doing Jiu Jitsu and I was participating in all the championships and I went even with the Italian team. I went even in Germany and Slovenia to do some championships. I wasn't the champion usually, so there were lots of people more experienced than me, but I was a strong fighter. Anyway, I'm great. I won my first fight with only three weeks of training.

Mark Smith: 18:13
That's a pretty clear message you've just sent out that anyone wants to mess with you. They're going to take on a Jinjitsu master and let's see who stands from that. I've always thought Jinjitsu, out of all the martial arts, is one of the martial arts skills to have. I've been to one Jinjitsu class, that's it. It wrecked me and I didn't go back. Full respect to you. I just want to talk about a second there. Your language, english, is a second language and how our community seems to focus around English. It's my native language. I take my hat off to folks that it's not their native language. There's always this adoption of English, but I encourage you to produce everything you produce also in your native language. You'll attract people that are in your community. I've got friends in Japan, italy, spain, brazil, all over. I've often been asked do I have to learn? Do I have to be really good at English? I'm not doing something because I'm not really good at English. The world is over-saturated with English speakers in the tech space. As a leader in Albania with your MVP title, etc. You have the opportunity to bring a lot of Albanians on the journey with you. Use your native language as well, because it'll build confidence. They'll say, hey, he's like me, he's of the same culture, same country. If he can do it, I can do it. Let English be a secondary thing. I'm not saying move totally away from English, because you're obviously going for a global audience, but don't forget your native country, your people and how you can enable and power them. You're so many steps ahead of them on your MVP journey, on your community engagement journey. I just think you could have massive impact on your own country.

Betim Beja: 20:18
Yeah actually so. Blog posts, I've always written them in English just for the reach the target audience mainly was there are not that many developers. My target audience is mainly developers. I try to simplify their life basically. But I've also organized app-in-a-day workshops for free in Albania twice. The first time we organized it with Edith Kapsari, which is in Germany, never met her in person. She's an Albanian. She's working at a German company, head of the local division there. She also is a community superstar, even though she doesn't have an MVP award yet, I would say. But we did that training in Albanian language, even though the technical stuff or the platform basically doesn't have an Albanian translation. And it would be a little bit strange because most of the terms don't even exist in Albanian language or sound too weird. If you talk about a flow, basically it would be like a river flowing.

Mark Smith: 21:45
Here's the thing back in the early days of my MVP, mvps were often asked to help with translation. This is back before Power Platform was in the Dynamics days, so there is potential, if you had the means to do it, to create those translation files that can actually help Microsoft get that. As you can imagine, because it's a multilingual platform, they have got very good, tight controls around how you bring another language on so you could request those files, potentially, go through it, do the translation, get it validated by somebody else, because the last thing you want is an American translating to your language English. Is this sorry, you're Albanian. Is this Albanian? Is that what you would call your language? Yes, albanian, yeah, so you don't want them doing the translation. Right, you do the translation and you go back. I think there's an opportunity there as well.

Betim Beja: 22:47
We have ERP, which is actively being used in Albania, and basically one of the companies that I used to work for. They actually have translated NaVision, or Business Central, now in Albanian language and they have published it in the marketplace. So everybody that is using Business Central can use the Albanian language Because they have already invested in the CRM. World is a little bit more complicated, I would say, because there is no official support for Albanian language yet there, and it is yet, but it is also a lot broader, I would say, in the technologies involved. So it would take a lot more effort, I would say, to actually translate the CRM or Power Platform.

Mark Smith: 23:46
For real, for real. Betim, it's been a pleasure to have you on the show. Time is flowing, we're at time. Thank you so much for coming on and, as I say, I look forward to meeting you in person at Dynamic Minds in May next year.

Betim Beja: 24:00
Yeah, I will try to participate, even if I don't get a session there. I will try to participate as an attendee, just to make this happen. I will meet you in person.

Mark Smith: 24:42
Thank you, thank you.