Krishna Rachakonda on The MVP Show

[mark_smith]: 1:47
Today's guest is from Texas in the United States. He is a SharePoint and Power Platform solution developer and architect at CompuSoft. He was first awarded his MVP in 2021. He's a big fan of the Power Platform and all the technologies surrounding it. He's implemented many solutions in the space. He's also an international speaker at various SharePoint Saturday events, Office 365 events and user groups. You can find the links to his bio in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Krishna.

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 2:23
Thank you, Mark.

[mark_smith]: 2:24
Good to have you on the show. I'm interested in talking to you and I always like to discover a bit around your origin. Where did you come from? Based on your name, I assume that you come from somewhere in Asia. Can you tell us a bit about where you originated?

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 2:44
Definitely and before I start it was a great privilege to be part of your show I Was following your all the podcast and it was really wonderful to know about a lot of other MVPs

[mark_smith]: 3:00
Thank you.

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 3:01
and a lot of things and it was really great. So coming back to your question. I'm from southern part of India That's where I from near to Vishakapatnam in South Asia. That's where I'm from and I came to US almost like 13-14 years back. Yeah and finally settled down and I have two kids, two daughters, wonderful daughters. So yeah it's been a long journey.

[mark_smith]: 3:36
wow Very nice. Very nice. What's, when it comes to what you miss from home, home, what do you miss the most?

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 3:46
Definitely all parents staying with the parents for a long time and all my friends, school, college friends and relatives, all the places where I grew up and visited throughout my early life. I really miss them.

[mark_smith]: 4:07
I bet. I bet. When you're not, you know, when you're not spending time with your family or doing work, do you have any hobbies or anything like that you work on?

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 4:14
Yes, I really love gardening especially during spring to fall season. I in my backyard I grew, I mean I grow a lot of Indian vegetables.

[mark_smith]: 4:26
Nice.

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 4:28
And that's actually it's a dual purpose one is a stress buster. The gardening is stress buster. So that's another way and especially in the weekends. I play some gully cricket as well.

[mark_smith]: 4:43
Awesome. Like every good person from India, they play cricket, right? Tell me, I mean, cricket in New Zealand is a big deal as well, right? Because as it is in Australia and of course the UK, tell me about this garden and what type of, and the reason I'm asking, I garden as my stress relief as well. So I grow everything from seed and I have a little greenhouse and then into the garden. Tell me about the type of vegetables because I'm interested to see, you know, because obviously different climates and things affect

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 5:25
All right.

[mark_smith]: 5:25
what you would have in India to what you've got there. So what have you got in your garden that's typically of Indian origin?

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 5:36
I because I live in Texas here it's the atmosphere weather is pretty much close to what we have in India so the weather is really hot and I mean not cold definitely so the the vegetables mostly I grow are in southern part of India or throughout India you will find a lot of these vegetables. Most of them are creepers so you need a lot of trellis to hold very long creepers and they all mix up so many times.

[mark_smith]: 6:22
Do you grow curry?

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 6:27
what curry

[mark_smith]: 6:28
Do you grow curry? Any curry plants?

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 6:31
Yeah, eggplants, okra is another curry.

[mark_smith]: 6:37
I didn't know that. I didn't know. I've just gone and put my first curry plant in. They say that sometimes it will flavor all the other plants around it as it impacts. And so I'm looking forward to see at the moment, I don't know, it's about that, you know, yeah, high about a half a meter high. And so I'm looking forward to that because it's And, ah, it's, you know, I don't think anything beats fresh turmeric, right?

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 7:13
Absolutely, absolutely. I mean when you talk about leafy leaves like the curry leaves is one and the mint, mint is also extraordinary like very Smelly and very beautiful like when you grow get it from your garden and use it. It's awesome

[mark_smith]: 7:37
100% you know I want to get to the point that all my vegetables are pretty much coming from my garden I'm working on that. It's a journey because every time you plant something you know sometimes it just doesn't work the way you thought it was gonna work and You know you're

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 7:50
Right. That's true.

[mark_smith]: 7:50
always tackling. I'm always tackling pests Um, and then there's the right balance of fertilizer to you know and the and of water, of course, so very interesting very interesting Tell us about how you got into technology

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 8:02
Oh, technology back in college, when I was studying my plus two, after my plus two, then I started my undergrad and during that time, I was started getting, I mean, I was introduced to some of the computer languages like basic, Fortran, COBOL, and C languages during my undergrad. into mathematics and statistics during that time my computers was not my major but because that time in India like a lot of people were learning computer keeping the future in mind so I also joined but it was definitely like I used to enjoy the technology because a lot of algorithms and all driven like mathematics driven and statistics and other things so I used to enjoy I started and after that I really got into a computer degree. It's called Masters in Computer Applications and then I seriously pursued further into it for three more years and then started in Java when I was in college and after that that was the time Microsoft released C-sharp. C-sharp 1.0 we used to, I used to enjoy that C-sharp because it was the syntax, the modeling, the oops concepts and everything was pretty everything is same as Java so I used to enjoy working in that so from then I stick to Microsoft

[mark_smith]: 9:45
Nice. How did you end up getting into SharePoint? I take it that was where you kind of moved into ultimately the power platform, but was it from a SharePoint side of things?

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 9:55
Yeah. So when I was actually, I was into all these Microsoft technologies, but primarily I used to develop some kind of in-house tools by using C sharp and Windows applications and ASP.net and all of that. I used to work for a product based company and I used to automate all of their process and also providing some testing in-house tools by using all of this technology. So while I was working on it, I was introduced to the SharePoint back in 2007. And then that was the very first time I saw something like a content management and which was pretty easy to handle. And that time also it was okay to work on. But that's when I started looking into SharePoint. But eventually a lot of requests are coming through, are coming to my plate and I became SharePoint developer and not just user interface but I used to write all of SharePoint form solutions and timer jobs, event resist, those kind of all server side code and all.

[mark_smith]: 11:11
Interesting. And so when did you start transitioning to the Power Platform?

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 11:18
I worked in SharePoint for more than a decade and suddenly one fine day Microsoft announced there were some Microsoft webinars and all happening and when we were trying to upgrade SharePoints one version to another version and all of that after 2013 version 2016 was announced and the in SharePoint especially info pathforms were used extensively and SharePoint designer workflows, but There was an announcement that in after 19 version or something they are not no more going to support designer workflows and all of that and also There was a news about info path but was not sure what is coming. But still I was working in SharePoint and I happened to work with Reza Dorani probably, you know, right? Reza Dorani. So I used to work with him. So that time I was given a Power Platform project and he was my mentor that time. And he actually also saw the to come up. So he introduced me to that and then he helped me learn a lot. Before he was very active in the community, he used to help us so much. So he was a very great mentor. And then that's how I introduced, I worked on a business application and then after that I didn't even look back from then. It's been four and a half years, something like that. So it was a great learning and working with him that time.

[mark_smith]: 13:21
That's that's that's so good. That's so good. So tell us about what what are you typically doing day to day now? Now that you've you know, you've been working with the technology obviously for you know, four or five years What do you what's your main things that you do day to day?

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 13:37
One thing is, even though my background was SharePoint, I never considered that as my main technology foundation. But because my main technology foundation is.NET and C-Sharp and the basic coding skills. So I never left that. So one thing is as part of my day-to-day activity, almost like four years, and what is happening right now in the market, even though one feature is released by Microsoft, 10 different clients in the community, 10 different people use the same feature for 10 different use cases. So trying to learn from each other's samples and all of that. So getting updated is definitely one of my activity every day. Second thing is how I can provide the best. single day as part of a consultant one. So I try to advise them what's coming next and how they should prioritize choosing in different data sources and all of that. So nowadays I'm doing kind of less, not less definitely, but moderate hands-on work in end-to-end development of business applications and process automation. So investing more time in, as an evangelist or architecting the solutions

[mark_smith]: 15:14
Yes.

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 15:14
and enlightening the clients what is coming next and how they can govern their platform, how they can adopt the platform in a much because we have the center of excellence tools with different so many components and add-ons. So how they can leverage them to utilize and plan for their future. creating all of that.

[mark_smith]: 15:39
nice. One thing you mentioned there was about keeping yourself updated. And you know, particularly about what's out in the community, what's what's your technique? Like, do you have some software tools around that? Like RSS readers? Like, what's your technique for your daily and like, and how much time do you spend? Because I think this is an area that a lot of people don't realize is that and what you did last year doesn't count anymore. It's like you've got to constantly be evolving your skill set. So what's your kind of pattern or what's your, what's that task that you do repeatedly daily that and kind of like what tools are you using to do it?

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 16:25
There are multiple things that is not a single Single item there are I do follow a lot of other MVPs and Microsoft Twitter handles and LinkedIn handles and all of that So I'll keep my all those social media like a Twitter LinkedIn They keep on opening like they are in my on my desktop every time when something comes up I okay, I will cue them up to my learning time Not necessarily that we have to go in depth and read every single article word by word, but at least continuously get the summary out of it. And if it is interesting to me, I will make that a list for my weekend demo or a POC kind of opportunity or maybe after hours work or something like that. I do kind of lead our platform presentation team, like a presentation every couple of weeks. I mean, I need to coordinate with other resources to present and talk about latest updates or show some demos and all of that. So that actually also motivates me to learn from the community and come up with some new samples what is Microsoft releasing, which are in preview or experimental and general available. Based on that we can recommend to the customer as well. So I do present, I collect that news every week and accumulate that and present in that session as well.

[mark_smith]: 18:14
Nice, nice. That's brilliant. That's brilliant. It's a good routine to have. So who nominated you? How did you become an MVP? And yeah.

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 18:28
So as I said earlier, I used to work with Reza Durrani. So he nominated me. And yeah, and the way I became, initially my dream to become MVP was not in last four, five years. It was there almost more than a decade because I used to follow Andrew Connell, a SharePoint MVP that time. and MVP for sure. I do a lot of presentations and all of that. I used to read all his SharePoint books and all of that and I used to dream like

[mark_smith]: 19:06
nice.

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 19:07
I don't know the channel how to become MVP but because when I was working with Reza he became MVP and then he shared his success story. I mean I Being in consulting job, we need to keep up to date, right? ourselves. So I felt like anyway, like we do that up to date. I mean, we try to keep ourselves up to date. So why can't I get the same up to date activity from the community? So then I started getting engaged into multiple power apps and power automate, power virtual and all of those user and started answering questions, I used to put almost like, I mean, I spent like an almost a year to reach up to the level of a super users in those communities and all of that. It was really, I mean, whatever, if I need to learn from a book or a blog or something, probably I wouldn't learn so many use cases if I don't step into the community forum. community forum every single day if I read 10 different posts I will learn 10 different use cases. I used to learn like maybe one year of work within three months something like that I really enjoyed it. So slowly once I got activated I mean I became active in answering all those questions then I started getting involved into local user groups and speaking all of

[mark_smith]: 20:56
Nice.

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 20:56
that so Speaking is definitely a great activity. I say we have so many thoughts in mind, but you need to channelize that in an appropriate way to make the audience appealing and then so that they can take back something that they never learned before. So, I mean, there are so many presentations around still,to be unique and different and more interesting. So that's a differently a lot of learning present skills that we I mean I learned a lot of skills while presenting or speaking.

[mark_smith]: 21:42
So good. Krishna, thank you so much for what you've shared. I think you've given lots of tips. I've got a lot of learnings today.

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 21:51
Thank you.

[mark_smith]: 21:52
I'm going to go out and find Okra. Okra it is, right? Okra, I need to get that in my garden. Thank you so much for coming on the show. I really appreciate it.

[siva_sai_krishna_rachakodna]: 22:02
Yep. Thank you so much, Mark. And also on top of it, before I close, I do one more activity called Power Apps for Kids. I do the training for the kids who are like mostly in high school and college students so that they can do some science projects in by using these apps and or the college projects and all of that I do every year at least for a season. So, my website is like krishnarachakonda.com if anybody is interested, please check that site as well.