Eric (Waldo) Wauters on The MVP Show

[mark]: 1:15
today's guest is all the way from belgium he's the owner of dine and the managing partner of factor business solutions as a first awarded is v p and two thousand seven so this guy is a veteran had it a very long time he's very active in marsov business sorry mac dynamics in a v community where he tries to solve technical issues and thrives on sharing his knowledge with other dynamics n v enthusiast is the author of power shell tools and you can find all the links to his bio blog twitter linked in et cetera in the show notes for this episode welcome to the show eric

[waldo]: 1:52
hello well you can call me waldo honest the community calls me waldo so it makes sense that i speak as well and maybe i need to up date my b as well because i notice now since you have been reading that that i need to up date that dynamic naftodenamic business set

[mark]: 2:14
correct correct correct that's the journey we've all been on right those that have been in the the community a long time

[waldo]: 2:20
exactly

[mark]: 2:20
tell me where does where does the name waldo come from

[waldo]: 2:25
that goes back in my well when i was twelve or thirteen years old um in my childhood in fact that i was playing basketball and my mates it was back in the days when family matters was on i don't know if you remember that show and

[mark]: 2:43
i don't remember

[waldo]: 2:44
there was waldo geraldofaldo on that show and he was a little bit goofy and yeah let's let's just say that my team mates found myself also a little bit goofy so eric and walters which is my last name turned into waldo quite fast that to call me wlthough and i'm still wallow for them i started to use that name in the community as well and i've been doing that ever since

[mark]: 3:11
that's so cool that's so cool so tell us a bit about life and belgium family what you do when you are not you know focused on community activities or your business

[waldo]: 3:23
well absolutely nothing no no i am doing stuff obviously i have three kids i have three sons and they all play basketball so kind of like inherited that from me i guess and that's pretty much what i'm doing spending time with my kids and at the basketball

[mark]: 3:49
tell me about three d printing though

[waldo]: 3:52
yeah that's true that's also what i do as well i'm actually printing as we speak i don't i hope that you don't don't hear that but yeah i've been yeah it's it's let's say it's an addiction so

[mark]: 4:10
yes

[waldo]: 4:10
i started as a just an interest like like what is that i bought my first printer quite some time ago i think three or four years ago on christmas eve and i think i have been printing non stop since then trying to achieve you know as good and as quality as all possible i don't really care what i print as long as it's printing is producing something and ah well getting the quality good as at all possible you know a treaty printer is the easiest employee ever it works twenty four hours for our seven basically and never complains lots of

[mark]: 4:49
hm so what are you print oh

[waldo]: 4:55
things i have a few designers that i that i use a lot and it usually is kind of let's say figure in from marvel and these kind of things and once in a sometimes i also print stuff for the community by the way so there is someone for instance that designed a business central logo but then as a fidget spinner and that's something that i've been actually printing quite a lot for the past couple of months and then i basically just hand them out because what do i do with just now as i said as long as long as the thing is pretty and i may

[mark]: 5:40
nice it's an area that interests me and and i just want to you mentioned that you you have designers that you so do you do the design work yourself or do you always look for an external designer that's created the three model and then you i take it import it somehow into your system and and you can set up printing

[waldo]: 6:01
mostly i just basically i am a patron supporter of a few designers and i basically just print like stuff from them and i do design sometimes simple things for myself in fusion try sixty like the business central logo and i have like a few things like chips and business central logo and these kind of things that i do also print i'm a little bit i'm not that good in designing but i can do the simple stuff

[mark]: 6:31
it's cool the reason to interest me i've just looked at whether i should get a three d cutter um and sorry well it's not three d cutter it's a laser cutter and so it'll

[mark]: 6:41
it'll cut through around up to twenty mile thick and of course you know you can cut anything out of it so you talked about logos and stuff my mind straight away was like maybe the power platform logo i could do that because it'll actually it'll do all the shading et cetera on the top of the wood as well in the way it burns to different depths and then it would could cut it totally out of the wood as well so you've given me some ideas but it's the hardest thing finders finding which is the which is the right device to buy first

[waldo]: 6:41
are cut

[waldo]: 7:12
a few devices a treaty or later curses on my wishes s well but there are quite some good devices follow makes mus it's got tested i think one of the later cuts

[mark]: 7:30
very cool very cool very cool tell us about how how your journey started into i assume it was n v back in the day how did your career take that pivot how and you know obviously you've come up to

[waldo]: 7:45
i didn't really well how it started i remember i started like conti you think to be so very well known in the diner source of our community it was a form let's say one of the only forms i think together with an usingotnet where we could contribute and we could ask questions and try to get help on anything related but nap vision at that point dynamics and have a little bit later and after asking lots of questions and being helped you know you get better and you see questions that you actually know answer for it you basically just start to answer questions as well i think that was like in two thousand three or two that i started contributing on that but always with the name waldo so i basically have been using an wall from the start and then i think it was back in two times and six i did my first convention it was with my company factor that i went to and some go i think it was yes and i got some weird feed back from when people from emvypese that were pies back in a day i was not in two thousand and six and i said like i've heard that you need to change your name because they cannot find although they don't know who you are and i want to award you with with the v p award and i was like well that's i'm very honored if lord looking for me but no i will not do that waldo and they can simply find me on the form if they want to message me and yeah then back in a year later that somebody seemed to have i still don't know who that was but i think somebody who i would do that yes ou can do you can i forgot the english word

[mark]: 9:52
that's all right

[waldo]: 9:55
well

[mark]: 9:55
you can do an alias

[waldo]: 9:58
you can now you can tip someone somebody who would deserve

[mark]: 10:01
ah nominate

[waldo]: 10:03
to be nominate that's the word i was looking for anyway i got a nomination for someone that will know what it was and then m yeah the ball started willing has been rolling ever since yeah

[mark]: 10:16
yeah it's interesting the whole alius because you know i go under an alias as well in mind three six five guy and i do that because my name mark smith was so common that that i needed something to stand out and you know when people searched for it so i think that's cool that you have you have stuck with a name that came from your childhood all the way through tell us about the journey of navyeda to b c i know that in the community there was there's some rough times maybe even some rough times and microsoft in that transit and with the various leadership that were in place at the time what's been the journey like for you into the business central product

[waldo]: 10:56
well i've been focusing on a technical part and to be honest i try to well let's say not to focus too much on what might happen and just focus on what happened and then do that and back in the days even up until i think anything classic clients i think from it's a five to zero everything moved very slow and it was very easy to keep up with any types of changes and then when we got into the role tale of clients naftwothousand and nine um that's where really things started to go let's say faster and now it's it's a complete other ball game all these different technowlodge is that chemical play now back in the day i've been using navasion when miosof did not buy no vision yet so i did let's say experience the transition but i was not really um busy with what is behind the scenes i mean i'm aware of project green i wasn't really really looking into what it means for me or what it might mean for me or it's a going to change enough vision going to change or disappear or being replaced at that point i was really doing anything with that i would just try to focus on the bancal part

[mark]: 12:33
good what part does what what part does the power platform now play for business central

[waldo]: 12:43
bigger and bigger part you shouldn't ask me by the way

[mark]: 12:50
why

[waldo]: 12:50
i'm

[mark]: 12:50
is it why is it

[waldo]: 12:52
well i think i'm a low people think that i'm a little bit negative against the power platform in general and i can i mean let me try to explain for i'm not negative against the power platform i think it's an amazing concept where a lot of people can be and can build solution against the one question i still have and it's not answered yet well it's starting to be answer let's say in the last couple of years is that its power form a solution or a product or can it be part of a product or is it still just solution right and i'm better min that like how i see it today and this is going to change in the near future absolutely that i'm sure of that but how i see it today is that i can definitely see some solutions that i would use the power platform for in combination with business central and that's mainly customer specific non business critical part of the entire let's say software a customer but i cannot see it today as part of a product for the simple reason if i build a product in business central if i would like i need to maintain a product is going to get up rated automatically in sits and all the and all those kind of things and i need to main i need four on prim even as well at least in my company if i would include power anything or ultimate power as power whatever spar as the product that means i need to maintain the grade for that our part as well and as far as i know and i could be mistaken today i think i'm not that is not possible i cannot automatically do for me anything power is a solution but not part of my software yet that's kind of like where i'm at the power part but it's getting more and more important and we are now in my company we are doing prove concepts with different parts that we might be able to use in our it built on pot power be but also power as and even power ultimate yeah

[mark]: 15:19
ah no i thought i think you've got a very good view on it and and always like hearing people talk about it that's not just you know tilting the company line so to speak but you want to understand or have a different view tell me about power shell you know power she says is a phenomenal tool when you're you want to deploy multiple envie and you really it's such a flexible tool that you know we can use in assess world you author power shall tools tell us a bit about your experience with power shell power shell tools and and how important is it for for people working on really any dynamics and our power plant a project to no power shall

[waldo]: 16:08
power shell and i think people that follow me a little bit in the community know that it has been quite a important part of my life let's say as a profs you know simply because it automates right so i started with poerchell back in the days when my soft was announcing the fact that we need to be repeatable we need to be as repeatable as at our post bill and was back in the days when we were using seaside and an old client where repeatability was very difficult to achieve and we got some new tools or shell commands that where we could do stuff with an that's where i started to pick up power shell such so i basically just created life scripts to ompletelyotomate great flow because that's what's in my view also what repeatability is all about to be able to first implement as fast as possible but also get everyone as fast as possible through the newest release so that that's yeah and i've been like ultimating the crap out of business central as much as i as i could um yeah i'm still basically doing that although i must say since that freddy christian suformostof started doing to help and the hole that's also just not just it's actually a huge set of powrcelscripts on top of basically to connect business central with docker being able to deploy i also script to upgrade script to deploy that's where i started to use that library and basically built less of my library which makes a lot of sense because the more that my self provides it makes sense to use that what makes up that's supportive

[mark]: 18:07
yeah good it's good just to such gears as we draw to a close the value of being an m v p and been awarded the v p you know ave just gone through a new cycle the start of this month and you see a lot of excited people renewing and um and some not so how important has the n v p program been to you over your career over the last fifteen years s

[waldo]: 18:34
well it as defined for a big part the way i articipate in the community so is it important absolutely for me it is important because it's not for business because i do not get any and at this although i'm training here and there and absolutely this is this is absolutely not my main business i do that like it like ten percent of may be less than ten percent of my time but how do you it gives me a lot of let's say motivation right it's a it's an absolute honor to be an vpi's'it's not for granted i mean there is every year that that cycle that you say and if you didn't do anything that basically will make you not being an any more so yeah it's an honor and as long as i can motivates me as long as it's makes me do what i do it's not big i mean i'm not contributing because i'm an nvpbuturell is otificational to be yeah it's not i mean i don't have it for my business absolutely not for my business doesn't real i don't really um benefit from it me personally let's say maybe my company does i don't know i don't sell i don't know i mean i don't know that i'm sure is locivation yeah

[mark]: 20:26
well though thank you for coming on the show

[waldo]: 20:29
thank you for having