Martin Drab on The MVP Show

[mark]: 1:33
today's guest is from the Czech republic he's a free lance software architect and developer for dynamic three six five finance and operations he was first awarded as MVP in twenty thirteen he has written houses of messages and various forums hundreds of blog posts release several development tools and spoken at conferences he loves many outdoor activities such as hiking cross country skiing drinking check beer and you can find links to his bio social media et cetera all in the show notes for this episode welcome to the show martin

[martin_dr_b]: 2:09
thank you for inviting me

[mark]: 2:11
good to have you here and good to speak to somebody from the check republic and one of my first employees in new zealand and one of the businesses that i ran was from the check republic she still lives here she actually lives down the road from me so it's there's a connection there

[martin_dr_b]: 2:27
the world is really small isn't it

[mark]: 2:30
yes it is it is i enjoyed my time in the check republic my wife and i went there when we were living in london and we sampled a lot of your great food and great beers we did a whole food tour around them city and prague and it was just it was amazing tell us about food family and fun for you what do they look like do you do when you're not working

[martin_dr_b]: 2:54
eh well i lived in the kay and few other places before but now i bought a few years ago just before karen i bought a house in park so i live there and now i've you know i need to vote garden and cut grass and all that but othervise other body's before my wife we spent lots of time outside doing hiking and like now we were this year be very hiking in norway on but we go for vic also a lot to like sandstone areas in chekpablik and so and sometimes if we have for portunity we go to for some beers of course

[mark]: 3:45
nice nice most important most important how did you how did you get into technology how did you kind of career start down this

[martin_dr_b]: 3:58
well yeah i started don't know i started becoming interested in these things or at high school i started doing some html and looked a bit into see but i did really did an i think on that but i worked more with webteck rags from h m l i moved to bet to p h p my cecorthis kind of things but then yeah studied java at una but then already during my studies i ran into what was at the time called accept later dynamic ages and now part of dynamic three six five so yeah that's you know i got the job like because one one of my friends volker so i do part time job as a developer and well it's still what i'm doing more or less in these days eighteen years later

[mark]: 5:00
how much has things changed you know from that original exapteproduct to what you see now in dynamics three six five finance

[martin_dr_b]: 5:11
oh well that's completely different you know there are still parts that are the same but it changed enormously at the time it was basically a client connecting directly to data based and then actual application layer was interduced we are in cloud the whole old client for decomasabandoned and now we have fair application is in web client all the tooling change the product is much much bigger than it used to be it as also to be used by bigger companies who projects are getting mor complex at least some of them so it changed a lot on derry's also more people involved and we have also lots of new resources for you know when i started wasn't much information to get their barn many block uh there was one usnetform this also changed a lot can have

[mark]: 6:25
yea what what from the technology changes and the impact that they've had have you seen a increase of people coming into the community and developing on the platform and new people all the time are you seeing a lot of people that have been doing dynamics a xexapter or finance they're doing it for a long time like your eighteen years or are you seeing a lot of fresh new people coming into the industry working with the technology

[martin_dr_b]: 7:01
i would say that most people are new wish so you know i think i don't i don't have numbers but i think that there are more projects more people involved so obviously they can be old or old and there some old people also move to to utter all other projects or types of technologies yeah well mainly people i think come from from like ante their clients companies have some needs to maintain stuff there but ah you know i see some small fracture a small small part over the board and i don't know what s going on in all projects so i don't have any numbers so but definitely it grew and it need to dope more people

[mark]: 8:09
that makes sense are you seeing the use of you know we've heard a lot about microsof power platform and low code are you seeing that used with on the finance side of things more like particularly power automata seeing automation been done and touching the data that would sit in finance or um or are you seeing apps been built the power as being built over data sets that might sit in the finance system

[martin_dr_b]: 8:40
currently i don't say that much and it may be different on some other projects but what i see so far it's not used very often on in some cases it makes sense so for example the usually built like system integration then like and like self service integration what power ultimate is about but in some cases i see see opportunities where it would be would be useful both for like people to do stuff by themselves business users to set up for full empower utomateetetera and also what we could provide a let's say implementation partners or so regarding you know stanton poveraps or poverups embedded in no on like paper b could you know not only replace some existing reports but give people much more power like having interactive reports and nicervisualizations and these kind of things so i don't see it so far too much i think it's going to change at least i hope because it would be useful in some cases

[mark]: 10:08
and what you're seeing you know coming out in the future from microsoft in the space what what excites you what are you most looking forward to around new features or expanding product sets or whether microsopis acquiring companies to fill gaps in the product kind of what are you looking forward to most in the coming period of time

[martin_dr_b]: 10:31
well well i don't really know but the two things the time i'm interested a lot regarding area of integration where i'm involved usually quite a lot uh it's integration we like and change feeds and these kind of things because that foot allow as certain things that are quite difficult at the moment yah and the whole the whole data plot data verse and how it well there is a long term idea that it will combine data from different sources from different dynamic applications at tera i see more and more integrate from a final site as well like virtual entities and business events that should be visible in data verse and then obviously it unlocks opportunities for using it from paveraps this kind of things so i you know i'm not looking at it with a particular scenario in mind but i'm interested in what this will actually allows yeah we have some obviously some things already in place but the the road map is um full of features that we expect in future so it yeah

[mark]: 12:04
good you've been an m v p for what about ten years now must be in eleven years does that sound right

[martin_dr_b]: 12:12
yea i have it officially for nine years

[mark]: 12:17
nine years okay

[martin_dr_b]: 12:18
yes

[mark]: 12:18
tell me that that's a long time there's a lot of nvps that are relatively new in the program these days and that's a long period of time what what have you noticed actually first how did you become an MVP what was that process of becoming an mvp for you

[martin_dr_b]: 12:35
ah well i don't remember

[mark]: 12:39
that was a long time ago

[martin_dr_b]: 12:42
well yeah little someone some mvpnonominated me and obviously then i had to provide information about my community activities in past year and ah i'm quite active in in forms which helps me to provide you know high numbers of something so yeah i think that definitely helped and then now it's a routine at every year but information about what i did it used to be done in excell or something now we have website for it nothing nothing difficult and then i wait for microscope to evaluate it and so far every time they decided that it's good enough

[mark]: 13:38
it's good in looking at the program over over that long period of time nine years what's your what's your observation of it what's your what did you really like that's not there now what do you wish they would change what you said bring back what does that look like for you

[martin_dr_b]: 13:59
well for me by far the biggest benefit of being mvp was the mvp summit because there was opportunity to meet in person other n v ps meet eople from fromicrosof to talk about stuff like you know but how exactly certain things are implemented what provide feedback what we would like to change what you like et a terra yea because of ovid vp summits were done by like by virtual events un that's just not the same thing at all feels like another online conference yeah so that's something i really dislike and i'm i'm disappointed that i am not getting any information about next mvp summit so i'm a bit afraid that it will be virtual again let's let's let's see

[mark]: 14:58
i would agree with you i'd agree with you that that's what i'll be i feel that's definitely the way it's going tell me about

[martin_dr_b]: 15:06
tell me about

[mark]: 15:07
people come to you and ask how you know how do i become an mvp can you nominate me to become an mvp something that quite commonly i find happens what's your response to people when they ask these things

[martin_dr_b]: 15:22
well it actually it doesn't happen to me that often but if i feel that personal thus does a lot of good work then fine i can nominate it's up to microsoft to decide whether it's good enough or not when people ask me you know how i could be could become MVP say okay just just provide some value to community and so you can like going to forum that's that's very easy thing so you see someone struggling with something you have some idea what all they could try or you already have an answer you can go start chatting and even if you don't have answer but you have some some leads some some suggestions that's are they very often helpful or you know doing writing block posts or whatever getting involved in local community everything counts

[mark]: 16:33
yeah what's been the impact on your career you've been mvp do you think it's enhanced your career or or nothing much really what's your thoughts

[martin_dr_b]: 16:45
i don't really know i was surprised that he sometimes like in top interviews people just had no idea what an MVP means i live in the ward where i expected everyone knows what it is about it's not another case always yeah and you know sometimes i get joe by you know companies asking me directly that they want me for for some task but i don't know how much its have something to do with m p because i'm already quite visible even without without the title so i don't know

[mark]: 17:28
yeah good last question and what's your focus for the you know what skills you're developing at the moment what's your focus for the next twelve months or so that you want to either skill up in or take a look at a new technology area or you know work on might be just a private project that you're working on you know like automating your home or something like that what's what a focus for you

[martin_dr_b]: 17:55
well currently it's mainly main mainly things regarding asier so now there was a challenge on microsoflarn regarding sure develops so i took that one when i get

[mark]: 18:13
nice

[martin_dr_b]: 18:14
free example will i will pass the certification so there i learn some new stuff about kit gat gihaprelease management i'm not involved heavily in these these days well vice most of the stuff ad for me well regarding sara i still have things that i need for integration i was looking into configuration service for example um yeah these kind of things are by i don't know well when when i will run into something that i need for my work i will look into it i don't have any exact plans