From Teaching to Tech Leadership: Sean Astrakhan's Global Journey to Solutions Architect and AI's Role in the Future

Mark Smith: 0:01
Welcome to the Copilot Show, where I interview Microsoft staff innovating with AI. I hope you will find this podcast educational and inspire you to do more with this great technology. Now let's get on with the show. Today's guest is from Los Angeles, California in the United States. He works at Microsoft as a team lead for solution architecture. He worked as a teacher lead for solution architecture. He worked as a teacher before becoming an engineer. He's a YouTuber course creator specializing in turning makers into solution architects. You can find links to his bio, his course, social media, et cetera, in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Sean.

Sean Astrakhan: 0:41
Thank you, mark. It's an honor and a goal to be here and I'm here.

Mark Smith: 0:45
Yes, you're here and such a great topic to talk about, as in, I've had a range of people go through the 90-Day Mentoring Challenge that had then were either also doing your Solution Architecture course, which I think is fantastic, and I was getting really good feedback from the people that were attending your course, and so that caused me to reach out. And I was getting really good feedback from the people that were attending your course, and so that caused me to reach out. I see that you also work for Microsoft, and so I just thought, hey, it'd be great to get you on the show and get to know you a little bit, and so I always like to start with food, family and fun. They're my kickoff questions to really allow folks to understand who you are, your sense of place in the world and what spins your wheels when you're not working.

Sean Astrakhan: 1:30
Yeah, so do I just answer what is my favorite food, what's my family life and what do I do for fun?

Mark Smith: 1:36
Anything you want, mate, the floor's yours.

Sean Astrakhan: 1:38
All right, I love Mexican food. I think that's the greatest food ever invented. Every single American I have ever met when they live in a different country and I ask them what they miss about the United States, sometimes, before even saying friends and family, they say Mexican food Adore it. That also, I guess ties with my family. I have very international roots. I was actually born in Russia. I came to the USA when I was four. My wife is Ukrainian. I'm going to let that settle for a second and for fun. We do love to travel and I obviously love technology and teaching. I love dance and that's always been kind of one of my favorite hobbies for years and I still do it, even though I'm like very old now, but I continue on.

Mark Smith: 2:21
Wow, we can unpack a lot there. So first of all, what part of Russia were you born?

Sean Astrakhan: 2:26
in St Petersburg. I mean, if you know your history, Leningrad, which lets you figure out my age.

Mark Smith: 2:32
Personally, I find St Petersburg one of the prettiest cities in Russia.

Sean Astrakhan: 2:38
Absolutely.

Mark Smith: 2:38
Even over. I know that. You know Moscow has some amazing architecture, train stations and things like that, and Red Square and what's the building next to Red Square? What's it called?

Sean Astrakhan: 2:50
The Armitage.

Mark Smith: 2:51
You know where, the actual where Putin sits? What's his government? Oh that, it's a big red wall around it. I forget what it's called.

Sean Astrakhan: 2:59
Man, now I'm blanking on it. Yeah, I'm going to be so embarrassed afterwards. Now I'm blanking on it. I'm going to be so embarrassed afterwards, it's all my family when they listen to it.

Mark Smith: 3:05
Yeah, lenin's tomb is up against the wall of it type thing where he's, you know, in state. Oh, the Kremlin.

Sean Astrakhan: 3:11
The Kremlin. There we go. What are?

Mark Smith: 3:13
we doing. That's literally, yeah, the Kremlin, yeah, that's it. So, yeah, I love in 2017 and I just felt, and I said to her while traveling, I don't think we're always going to have the freedom to travel in Russia, and so I really we did coast to coast of Russia. We started in Vladivostok, went across and so, yeah, leningrad, I mean, and do you know what probably appealed to me most about going to Russia? A song about Leningrad.

Sean Astrakhan: 3:44
Oh which one.

Mark Smith: 3:45
You know is it. Billy Joel has a song.

Sean Astrakhan: 3:48
Oh, that one About Leningrad yeah.

Mark Smith: 3:50
You know I loved that as a teenager, that song. It's had such emotion in it, you know.

Sean Astrakhan: 3:55
Yeah, I thought you were going to say Beatles, back in the USSR.

Mark Smith: 3:58
No, no, no, no, that's fascinating. Billy Joel, yeah, I think it was Billy Joel, right, that song, that song Leningrad.

Sean Astrakhan: 4:05
Yeah, I can't remember. I'm actually looking it up now Someone can fact check us on that one.

Mark Smith: 4:10
But anyhow, dancing, what style.

Sean Astrakhan: 4:12
So I started in salsa and kind of merengue, because of all I adore Mexican food and you mentioned I was a teacher. That was my first career. I taught Spanish.

Mark Smith: 4:23
So I lived a teacher.

Sean Astrakhan: 4:24
That was my first career. I taught Spanish, so I lived in Mexico. I spent some time in Spain. I loved Latin dances and then, once I learned to code, I felt so empowered that I could do anything. So then I decided to learn to breakdance, which I never got that good at all. But it's when you learn one thing, it empowers you to learn the next thing, and then you just keep going and then that led into learning hip hop, like choreographed hip hop. I was with a team. I was the worst one on the team, I was in the back of it if I even passed the audition. So I don't want anyone getting impressed, but yeah, I still love it, I still do it and yeah, it's a big part of kind of expression and art for me.

Mark Smith: 5:05
Nice, nice. My son, 19 years old, just came back from Hip Hop Champs in Melbourne, Australia. He won two gold medals. But he was in US last year doing the Worlds and I think he came second or third in Worlds. But yeah, he's been doing it since four years old and, it's amazing, this year at university he's in a full male troupe, which normally it's always been him and, you know, 18 girls. He was like you know, it's very unusual to get a high density of males, it seems, into hip hop dancing, but this year he's in an all male troupe as well, which is pretty amazing.

Sean Astrakhan: 5:43
I love how international that dance has gone.

Mark Smith: 5:46
Yeah, then the crazy thing is about a year and a half ago started on Tik TOK and now like, he's got videos that has like 8 million views and like multiple videos like this and he'll like he'll even do a 22nd dance in his dorm room and, yeah, people go crazy over it. They've never heard him speak, so they don't know he has an accent. One of his concerns is the time he goes to have to speak in front of a camera because everyone will have a picture or an idea in their head how he probably sounds. Right, you know he's never needed to talk on camera because it's always dance to music. But, boy, he's in constant supply of streetwear clothing and he gets paid about $500 US for every 20-second dance he does on TikTok by either a music, an artist that wants him to dance to their song and or some fashion brand that are trying to get their label out and market.

Sean Astrakhan: 6:40
Wow, so what you're saying is me and you are in the wrong line of work.

Mark Smith: 6:44
Yeah, it, Wow. So what you're saying is me and you are in the wrong line of work. Yeah, Honestly, I've said to him, because we're going to talk about courses, I've said listen, mate, in your summer break let's sit down, let's do a course, six-week course on how to get into hip-hop dancing. Let's put it on for $45.

Sean Astrakhan: 6:58
Those hundreds of thousands of teenage girls that follow you particularly in the US, will grab their parents' credit card and buy en masse and you'll cover your university costs Right. It's a no brainer. Imagine getting paid $500 for 20 seconds of work. There's that line.

Mark Smith: 7:15
Yeah, it's crazy, it's crazy, it's crazy. Well, it's intermittent though, but that's what I reckon. If you did a course, it'd be nuts. But anyhow, I don't know, I'm going to convince him. So tell me about what you do outside of the architecture course that you've been running for some time. What are you doing outside of that? What do you do for Microsoft? What else do you do?

Sean Astrakhan: 7:38
Yeah, so at Microsoft. To give an understandable analogy, imagine if you had an app where you wanted to go and find a restaurant recommendation, but the back end of that to actually give you that restaurant recommendation was quite, quite complex. And you still look at what restaurants you've already been to. What food are you interested in, what language do you speak, what is trending right now, which restaurants are achieved certain status or paid into that. All of that complicated matching used to be done manually, so a lot of what I do at Microsoft is building all the automations to make that happen.

Sean Astrakhan: 8:14
Now, obviously, microsoft doesn't have a restaurant app. That's not actually what I'm saying, but that's like the analogy and what I've understood of my NDA and what I'm capable of sharing is these types of automations. It's all power platform. To clarify, I contract for them, which is perfect because it allows me to have my course, pursue things like an MVP, and then, in general, even though it is a contracting, it's still full time. I have a team, I have to lead them, and it's exciting. It's the first time I've ever truly really liked my job in tech. I've been in tech for 10 years and to be in a place where it's like I have respect, I have good pay and it requires minimal work, because when you really work hard for two hours, focused, and you architect it right like that's all you need, I feel like you can do your whole job. All of us can do our whole job in two hours a day yeah, that's a whole nother story and I totally agree.

Mark Smith: 9:15
But tell me about how do you define solution architecture when you talk, you know, because if I think of the thought bubble of solution architecture, I think of enterprise architecture, I think of architecture, I think about real world architecture, blueprints, design I think about. I'm going through a house build. So I've had an architect working for the last three years on my design and they don't just look at you know where we're going to put a window here or there. He's come out. He's surveyed where the sun at different seasons sets and rises, how high it will be or low it will be on the horizon and how that'll affect heat load. So there's a lot of aesthetics in what he's doing.

Mark Smith: 9:59
More than just building the house, he's thinking about how will it be lived in all year round. What will be that experience? Will I look out at a neighbor, or could windows be positioned in a very specific way so I don't have to observe my neighboring properties? Things like that, right, a lot of things that you expect an architect to bring to the table, and so I often relate what we do on the power platform or with Dataverse, particularly in that context of real world architecture. How does that apply and what's that role? But I'm interested to understand how you would define architecture, solution architecture and enterprise architecture, and is there any other type of architecture I've not thought of?

Sean Astrakhan: 10:43
Right. I think I love the analogy with the house. To start that off, I think a good architect would not sit in front of you and be like tell me what house you want and I'm going to go build it. They do everything you said, which is like do you want to see your neighbors? What are you trying to get out of this house? What is your day to day that you would like to see? What is your day-to-day that you would like to see? What is your current house not giving you?

Sean Astrakhan: 11:12
So a lot of people explain a solutions architect starting from the word solutions, which is my favorite part of it, which is nothing to do with tech. It's purely what is the business goal? And the business goal is either two things You're either saving them money or you're making them money, and then from there, that makes your job very easy. It's how is the technology in this case Power Platform going to get them to those two goals? And you can become very talented in just that area and build a whole career just around the solutions part and not even get super technical. A lot of people become consultants or sales engineers and they don't even really get into the architecture part.

Sean Astrakhan: 11:49
To be a solutions architect also involves the second half. Now I've said before that a solutions architect knows, sees the big picture, sees how all the systems integrate. They are across the power platform. They don't necessarily specialize. I want to share some other ways, which is that if we compare it to a maker, so a maker knows features. A good maker knows a lot of features. An architect knows limitations. They know what the tool cannot do. A maker will tell you all the ways to solve a problem with the power platform. A solutions architect will tell you when not to use the power platform. And I think those differences are huge. And to be a really good solutions architect is starting with the solutions understanding what the business goal is and how is anything that you're going to build. Will that actually create any tangible, measurable output, usually in the form of money or time saved, and then which solution will get them there and which solution will not get them there. That's a solutions architect.

Mark Smith: 12:58
Interesting. So one of the architectures that I didn't mention there was ecosystem architecture, and I find that this is a natural transition in business applications and you know I've spent over 20 years now in biz apps and there's this whole, I feel, move now where For many years I just locked myself into biz apps. Right, I could build anything on Dynamics back in the XRM days and did, regrettably, and then with the Power Platform, same deal, but now I am finding more and more you can't really. There's probably a need much more to build for the unknown, and this is where I think platforms come into play, like the Power Platform, like Fabric, like M365, right, really bringing all of Azure into play. And in the enterprise it's around creating an interconnected, linked set of platforms that you then can solve any business problem or take advantage of any business opportunity on and in place. Do you see solution architecture sitting as a subset of that, or do you see solution architects, based on their level of maturity, as in all, longevity, moving more into much more a platform play than a workload play?

Sean Astrakhan: 14:20
Yeah, so what I love about solutions architecture is, as you put. It can have a lot of definitions here. In terms of my personal definition, you have to pick one genre, the genre being Microsoft, not really AWS, for example, and within Microsoft, what you just mentioned is a ton of different tools. If you are in Power Platform and you don't know the full capabilities of Azure or Fabric, you will be doing a disservice to your company. If you're trying to do everything in AI Builder and you're not even aware of what Azure AI Studio can do, or you're just stuck with the out-of-the-box tools of, like Copilot Studio, while you are missing out and will probably be having your customers pay way too much when there's these other tools, that it's not just necessarily like a license feature, but what they could do for you.

Mark Smith: 15:17
Yeah, I like that. One other thing I want to throw into the mix. I like that.

Sean Astrakhan: 15:23
One other thing I want to throw into the mix TOGAF. What are your thoughts? So TOGAF as in like entire, that acronym around architecture and like best practices and all the like documentation that goes with it All certification.

Mark Smith: 15:32
You know I've had architects that have worked for me in the past that when we talked about their creative they have wanted to get TOGAF certified and I always felt that TOGAF was much more of a yesteryear architecture model and there's about five or six of them out. You know the DOD have their own standardization around architecture but TOGAF specifically seems to over the years I've observed has bubbled up to be something that I've noticed my solution architects have, you know, come to me to say, hey, will the company fund me in getting certified in TOGAF? And TOGAF, I feel, really came from an on-premise world. Now the latest version of TOGAF is definitely cloud-enabled, but I just don't know whether it has the value that it used to have in architecting solutions at scale.

Sean Astrakhan: 16:20
Yeah. So TOGAF comes up for me a lot where my students ask me is this class going to teach me that? Will this help me get a TOGAF certification? And every once in a while I keep my eye on TOGAF and I try to see what I can pull into it. I honestly feel like the Microsoft Well-Architected Framework provides the same, if not more, and where it crushes compared to TOGAF and I am ready to be completely rebuked for saying this is how it shows use cases and does the and this is amazing like the pros, cons and the like give and take of.

Sean Astrakhan: 16:58
If you implement this, this is what you sacrifice. If you implement high security, you're going to sacrifice speed. If you build in a lot of speed and try to move forward faster, you're going to sacrifice your security model and flexibility, and I find that so much easier to understand and so much more practical versus ToeGap. I felt like when I even tried to implement it into just like day to day in either my consulting projects, I felt like when I even tried to implement it into just like day-to-day in either my consulting projects or even when I could start putting in the course, I felt like I was going through like a lot of documentation hoops that were helpful, but I felt like I was just spending so much time documenting and not enough time taking something practical and using that as a framework to build solutions.

Mark Smith: 18:09
Nice, you brought up two things. Well, you brought up one thing which then sparked another thing Well-architected, which is obviously something we're seeing a lot more focus placed in the Power Platform, and my understanding, the architects behind well-architected came from Azure well-architected and bringing the learnings across from there. And the other part then that sparked was also success by design right, which Microsoft publishes around. I think it's 30,000-odd BizApps-type projects that have been run over the years and the lessons learned and that is a constantly evolving piece of work as well. Tell me about Power Platform while architected.

Sean Astrakhan: 18:47
So when I looked at it, when was like announced a few weeks ago, I immediately looked at and I thought okay, was it only? Announced a few weeks ago that's when I first heard about it.

Mark Smith: 18:57
I could have been late to the game, but that's when I saw it like heavily advertised and everyone talked about it yes, yes and if it was announced any sooner than, like I've been on linkedin.

Sean Astrakhan: 19:06
I've been waiting for it nah, sorry it was.

Mark Smith: 19:08
It was an MVP summit that I, which was back in March, and that would have been on the NDA, of course then at that point. So that makes sense.

Sean Astrakhan: 19:16
Yeah. So when I first came to it I looked at it and I was like, okay, is this going to be kind of like fluff or is it just?

Sean Astrakhan: 19:23
going to say some best practical without having the actual practicality. And when I looked at at and I was like, okay, security, that I expected to be there. But once I went in there I was like, wait, cost optimization is in there. Like, budget is in there. Like licensing, as in the framework is aware how confusing licensing is and how you need to consider that from day one. And you need to consider things like, yes, sharepoint is free, but will that actually get you there? And then will you violate the other pillar of this well-architected framework around security. Like, wow, that's actually helpful. And it was really nice for me to take snippets and pieces of that and be like, okay, how do I make it so anything I missed in my course is covered by this? And then B, how can I already say very proudly that, looking at my syllabus, like we're already getting into all of these aspects of it? And then especially the things I hear so many like architects talk about, like performance, scalability, like optimization, like those are lovely buzzwords, but do you actually?

Sean Astrakhan: 20:27
understand those and is there a link from Microsoft where you can just send it to someone and say this is what I'm talking about, this is why we need to do it, so you're not just kind of like a talking head in a meeting. You have Microsoft's backing around doing this.

Mark Smith: 20:43
I like it. I like it, and let's talk for a moment about your course. How did it come about? Why did you create? What was your why for creating it?

Sean Astrakhan: 20:52
I think so. I'm going to quote Franco here. Why do we have all these local tools and all of these optimizations and all these automations that anyone can do and we're all still working over eight hours a day and still not seeing our families? That's insane.

Sean Astrakhan: 21:08
So, these tools are supposed to take that away and make our lives easier, and so I thought through it more and I spent so many years of my career trying to prove myself working really hard. Mark, if you name a stack, I've worked at it. It was, I think, a horrible career move where I jumped around so many stacks and it worked so many jobs. It looks cool on my LinkedIn and it gave me terrific three-dimensional understanding of so many areas of tech. However, it was not worth the money and it was not worth the time, and it kind of dawned on me after a few years that wait a second the best architect I've ever worked with. Why are they only working a few hours a day? Why are they making so much money and everything is effortless? How are they so confident in meetings? Yet they've touched the technology so minimally, and I'm sure you saw this in your Dynamics days. I felt like I was a Dynamics 365 sales pro 10 years ago. I thought that was my thing and I'd be in meetings and there would be architects who are literally suggesting solutions and frameworks and plans that were better than mine in dynamics and I knew they had barely touched dynamics. It was driving me insane. And then I was like wait a second, there are best practices here. They're like performance, scalability, all of that Like what does that truly mean? How can that be broken down?

Sean Astrakhan: 22:29
And then once I started kind of thinking like them and modeling like them, that's when my career changed. I got my Washington Post job, I got my offer from AWS, I got my Microsoft job. Now I've managed tech teams on two different startups now and all of that allowed me to have great pay and a very light schedule, and I want that for everybody. So I'm like look here, give me $450 or pay whatever you want. We do sliding fee because I don't want to like inhibit people. Join me for 10 weeks and I will get you to the same place. And that's what we do. That's what I wanted for everyone. I wanted everyone to work less and get paid more money. Now, if any of my corporate clients are listening, what I help people do is architect flexible solutions at the enterprise level with minimal development time and maintenance, and identify strategies to minimize costs through licensing there.

Mark Smith: 23:26
That's it. Tell me, you know, when you look at the folks coming through this course so far, my observation of my career is architects come from two distinct groups. They come as in this is in the power platform space and those that have been in for a while. They either come from. They were originally what I would call a functional consultant, so somebody that could do everything configuration, write no code, and they were brilliant at producing applications, you know, from a model driven perspective. And then the second group were developers that would write plugins, that would you know workflow assemblies that would do your data migration, that would do all very heavy lifting stuff on projects, and they would become architects.

Mark Smith: 24:11
So these are the two people groups I would see come through, and my experience was often the functional were much more relatable to the business. Right, my developers. That would be something that when you know a developer came to me and said I want to become an architect, the key area I knew would have to work on would be communication how to communicate with the customer when they're seeing you as now the authority on it. What's the type of person, what's the persona of people coming through your course that are getting massive value from doing it?

Sean Astrakhan: 24:44
Yeah, that are getting massive value from doing it. Yeah, so going back to TOGAF if they come in and say I want to be TOGAF certified, know everything about that, or I want to become really good at Business Central and that's it, I'm like, okay, hold on. Do you care about people? Do you like working with customers? If you don't, I don't think you should be a solutions architect and I don't think my pro course would be a good fit for you.

Sean Astrakhan: 25:04
The second part of that is do you not only want to work with people but also be very technical? Do you enjoy being confident in a room? Do you enjoy stepping back and identifying the solution that's going to be best for them? And, most importantly, do you like having your hands in pretty much every aspect of the power platform and beyond what you just mentioned? Right now, I'm not at all surprised that the functional consultants did well, because they usually, by being a consultant, are already good with people. They just need to tweak their technical skills and they need to understand again solid principles. They need to understand data migration, syncs we can work on that but at least they have the customer piece.

Sean Astrakhan: 25:45
The people who enter my program. I've been very surprised. I originally said like have a couple years experience in the power platform and I'll get you up there. Word spread. I have people who've been already solutions architects. They've been in it for like eight years. Some of them know deployments data pipelines way better than me Like Parvez is in the program. Some of them know deployments data pipelines way better than me Like Parvez is in the program. And then like Rafsan, who does all kinds of incredible project management and construction and more in the Power Platform Husienov, I hope I'm not mispronouncing his last name.

Sean Astrakhan: 26:18
He comes into it and then he also is trying to beef up his technical skills, so he's in there as well. So I think it's anyone who wants to be very technical and want to have that customer facing piece. That's why I've noticed this coming through. And if they want even more of the customer facing piece and even get better at consulting like there's only limits, like I'm keeping you technical so if they want more than that, I of course recommend your program or tell them to go get experience like working with customers. But yeah, that's who's coming into the program.

Mark Smith: 26:50
Nice. How much are you thinking of an evolution in what you're doing now in the world of AI already known? If they haven't been dabbling in ai prior to the last 18 months, there's a now, another learning curve for them to understand the ai challenges. Because you know companies are coming forward and they're going, hey, we need ai. And you're like, yeah, where? What do you mean? We just need it, like there's no, okay, do we have a problem that we're trying to solve or do we have a market opportunity that we're going to go after? That's why we need AI. It's no. The buzz on the street is if you're not in AI, you're going to get left behind. And so I see once again the role of the.

Mark Smith: 27:37
In my experience, although PMs would like to think that they are the backstop on a project, for me I've always put that role with the architects right. I don't care how agile up the wazoo you think you are, and that we need to bow at the religion of agile or whatever project methodology. When I go and buy a television, I don't care how the manufacturing was done, I want to know does it look good? Does it function? Can I watch TV Right? Where I've seen the religion of project.

Mark Smith: 28:10
Methodologies sometimes overtake the actual project and you know we've got a delivery, we've got an outcome to do here, and so I always feel that my architects are always the authority ultimately on a project. And actually I will link into experience and the role of experience. You know I've had, across my career, been developing on, let's say and this was the XRM type story did one project come out of it and want to be promoted to architect and I'm like mate, you need to get some bruises from the field, you need to do like 10 or 15 projects, projects you need. You know I would always go. I want to see somebody with five years experience at least just to how you, you know, have you had some rough waters to be in on projects and stuff to then put you in the role of senior architect on a project? What's your experience around the difference between, I suppose, academic knowledge and then practical boots on the ground, multiple projects in the field, experience?

Sean Astrakhan: 29:11
Yeah, and I'm happy to also answer your question around where is the role of AI for solutions architects today? But I'll start with this experience. Yes, there's something to be said of experience and like you got to taste it, you got to make mistakes. Of experience, and like you got to taste it, you got to make mistakes. If you haven't been scared of being fired, you have not worked on a large enough project and you need to go ask for that, that's one like a forest of wisdom is worth, like a needle of experience, like if you have to have actually done it.

Sean Astrakhan: 29:43
However, I will add this you could have 10 to 20 years of experience in the power platform and be creating garbage and unusable applications and still making the same exact mistakes. You can have three years in the power platform and have what I call like a smell for code, and you can smell if it's good or it's a direction, a good direction to go in. You have the intuition for it and I've seen newcomers to the Power Platform have that sense and I don't know what to call it, except maybe an art and they're already thinking business-wise. They're already starting to suspect like whoa, whoa, whoa, we're loading a bunch of records into the Canvas apps. Won't that break? I don't know how it will break.

Sean Astrakhan: 30:27
I don't understand memory leaks, I don't understand JavaScript, but something feels wrong and that's where I'll say. Nothing will beat experience, but years of experience does not mean you will be great.

Mark Smith: 30:37
I like it. Now I'll go back to my AI question.

Sean Astrakhan: 30:40
Sure For AI. I think it goes back to the idea that solutions architects, we need to know the limitations. I hope I don't get yelled at for this, but I'm open to being proved wrong. I think Copilot is a little how do I choose my words carefully here? It's incredible. I love it. Everyone should use it. We're all excited about.

Sean Astrakhan: 31:02
I worry it's sending the impression that it is way more powerful than it actually is. I would love someone, because I've literally had to build the AI module recently and I revisited all of these to make sure that it's still where I thought it was. I find it quite underwhelming. I think Copilot in Dynamics 365, and oh, I can type into it and get results like wow, you helped me not use the filters and it's slower. Like I don't get that. I think what will really be exciting is it's like I think it's the most recent wave four, where copilot is going to give you suggestions on what you should do with your data or your business, like these are how many leads are like left undone, like okay, but Copilot, I'm working with plumbers.

Sean Astrakhan: 31:49
Go find out trends in plumbing, compare that to my current clients and how many of my plumbing clients based on their activity on LinkedIn. You think I should say this like go do some stalking. Go help me think. Don't just be a glorified search tool. That's what I'm excited about and I think the ultimate thing solutions architects need to think about besides, what are the limitations of this? So they're not over promising it and they're not just blindly following demos which is something I've seen is they obviously need to get their hands with it and tinker with it and then find out how. Wow, this is a lot less than I expected. But but the question, the big question they need to be thinking about and this is where I kind of think about this almost daily which is what is AI going to replace? Where do I fit in and, most importantly, what will AI not be able to replace?

Sean Astrakhan: 32:41
I have my own thoughts to that In terms of just tech, because nothing I said is that new of a question. The ultimate thing to think about is how do I structure my data to make it most AI accessible? The fact that I have a copilot in SharePoint and a copilot in Dynamics 365, and they're not talking to each other does not help me make this unified thing. I think still, the most powerful unifying application is Power BI, because it can do that and it can bring that all together and that's why it is the number one tool on the power platform. No surprise, and to think through, how can I get all my tools talking to each other, make it AI-able and have my AI be able to query and get all that? Right now, I've only been able to see that successfully done by going through Azure and really going through like pro code, unfortunately, but I think that's the thing that solutions architects need to be thinking about in terms of AI.

Mark Smith: 33:34
I like it.

Sean Astrakhan: 33:34
Final words, thank you so much, mark, for what you've done for the community. Thank you for recommending my course. I'm very honored to be here and I am so grateful that the course has brought so much for people and that they've talked positively about my course to you and I'm going to continue on recommending yours. And it is so cool, not just like course, course, course, bye, bye, bye, but just how there's so many amazing resources available, and I think that's what makes the Microsoft community really awesome, and it's been really cool to be a part of something where it's so easy to learn and how there's just so much free stuff.

Mark Smith: 34:13
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host, Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. Is there a guest you would like to see on the show from Microsoft? Please message me on LinkedIn and I'll see what I can do. Final question for you how will you create with Copilot today, Ka kite?

Final question for you how will you create with Copilot today, Ka kite?