Mats Necker on The MVP Show

[mark]: 1:30
today's guest is from Hamburg Germany he is the sto at k and k customer engagement he was first awarded as n v p in twenty twenty two surprisingly because i thought he would have got a lot earlier i mean that i've seen him active in the community he's working for over ten years with micrsovbazeps as a solution architect and developer you can find links to his bio linked in all those types of things in the show notes for this episode met welcome to the show

[mats]: 1:57
mark thanks for having me excited to be here

[mark]: 2:01
good to have you on the show now if i got this right is it Matt like Matthew or Matt

[mats]: 2:07
it's actually mats but

[mark]: 2:08
Mats

[mats]: 2:08
i get asking a lot so for example jomaybealso mathias that's kind of like what people always assume here that's just the apbreviation i think it's actually a scandinavian name and i think my there was a female tennis player called mat my dad was a big fan for that how i got the name he

[mark]: 2:25
right right and so hamburg germany that's were you live it's a it's a big

[mats]: 2:31
yes i was

[mark]: 2:31
port city right

[mats]: 2:33
it is it is it's e nough of germany i was actually not born here a few calumets to the ofstal but yeah living here it's quite some years it's a great city

[mark]: 2:43
yeah i love it

[mats]: 2:44
you can visit me at some time

[mark]: 2:46
i've been there

[mats]: 2:47
awesome

[mark]: 2:48
i visited hamburgh in twenty seventeen i think it was that i came through before i moved to london and spent a couple of days there around the city tasting a great food you know checking out the whole harbor and i remember going down the waterway and there's a sorry down through the right hand side the harbor and there's a statue of pope is that right down there down that part of town

[mats]: 3:14
oh yeah actually

[mark]: 3:14
yeah yeah yeah yeah so yeah we enjoyed we definitely enjoyed our time there so what what do you get up to when you're not doing work what do you what do you do for entertainment you know tell us a bit about your family and a bit about life in hamburg

[mats]: 3:29
uh yeah well one part i love living in the city so i came from a smaller city and actually moved here saying okay i want to go to a big city i think hamburg is the biggest in germany so actual i kind of like all the social cultural things you can do in a city like going out with frans a lot of musicals for example big

[mark]: 3:49
nice

[mats]: 3:50
musical city i think next to london actually one of the biggest here europe we have well then i mean doing corona a lot of changed for free time for me so i was like i really really happy again i could go snow balling this er this first time after a couple of years so that's what i'm doing a lot i mean next to like the default things like i like being watching serious on that flax

[mark]: 4:17
nice

[mats]: 4:21
a lot like all kind of fantasy novels that kind of stuff

[mark]: 4:26
i first met you from memory as we talked about this but before the show in london at a hackathon put on by those crum guys back in those in the day i think that was twenty eighteen type time frame and how you stood out to me apart from your being quite tall and the other thing that stood out is your team beat my team and that hack thorn so you came first place i came second place

[mats]: 4:53
oh we did that's actually the first time i met the community you were living back there in london at that time right i remember i was so impressed with kind of like you guys in london guys and gods because there were so many people there working that and being at the hecafirm sharing having a great time as remember you took me to a german pub afterwards that was really kind of like the london experience i got basically but that was actually quite impressive that's something i haven't known it haven't known at least hamburg in germany back then the community wasn't at that level and i guess is special in that case but i got really got me excited

[mark]: 5:35
so what's changed i'm interested to know like what the community is like in hamburgh because around that time a couple of major things happened around that i'm pretty sure either that year or the fall and year or maybe just a year before so the scottish summit kicked off for the first time and i went to that that became a big deal yeah london had a good user group but really it seemed to be and those two three years everything just exploded right the community took off you know the big events now happening in the u k both in scotland and down southampton recently of course and then what are you seeing happening more in germany or even in europe from a wider footprint perspective when it comes to things like the power platform

[mats]: 6:20
yeah i think the po platform is very deciding thing though so i started at the dynamic side specificly back then at n v so i started in the financial

[mark]: 6:30
well yeah

[mats]: 6:31
on the financial side of things silly and then i think like five years back and like i said i know this back ten dynamic says that looks interesting and then later on there can depart platform and that's in germany one of important parts for the community there because to the power platform suddenly it wasn't just a dynamics community but i got to meet a lot of people from the ship on side for example for example thomas la on he's from hanover which is by twain like one and a half hours from here and i met him at a pop from event and hamburg and i think this only could happen because the power platform was there suddenly it wasn't just like the nemics people on the one hand share point

[mark]: 7:10
exactly

[mats]: 7:10
people on the other each of them had confidences the papttform really changed that in order to we had the same kind of events we could go to the same communities we could exchange in

[mark]: 7:22
so what do you what do you feel in your journey are you more now still working on the dynamic side of the house or do you find there's more pure play power platform what you're doing day to day

[mats]: 7:35
so when i made the change basically with another college of mind we co found the company k customer engagement so it's part of the knkagowhich is mostly bacteand focused on p which is now bis and we said well we see there as a market for dynamic science so we started as i would say classical dynamics partner and we had a good timing in that way that we started without any on primer stuff that could be put for just on the cloud which has

[mark]: 8:00
brilliant

[mats]: 8:00
helped us a lot but it wasn't power platform back then so we built kind of is v stuff were focused on the media publishing in the stream so big publishing houses use our softer and so we always have the dynamics core where we kind of build stuff on top but what we quickly discovered to help that form that it helped us expand our products to p nobody would buy a dynamic license for because it's quite expensive so it's usually like the hard core seller they get a dynamic sate license and with the pop that from licenses we could kind of pandlethat in our products and also kind of extend or expand the footprint or how many people were working with the soft air and so nowadays i feel like we're shifting more and more doing a lot more power platform than we used to because there's lot of cases where just works where we got for example having these canvas as imbedding them and these model with epps and being able to do use cases which you hadn't or couldn't do and just model with them first party as so it's still a lot of dynamics for me but paul platform is gaining on that or gaining traction

[mark]: 9:07
and are you generally always using the data verse or are using other data sources as well

[mats]: 9:12
yes i'm a very committed fan of the data so that's a lot of discussions or debates on that but i like to day there was a lot i think it increases your development speed a huge amount obviously it's a great data but there's a lot kind of like hands off you don't have to worry over pack up that kind of stuff there was a license obviously attached to it but i would say like i'm coming from the dynamic side of things so the data verse licenses always seemed like really really cheap to us because we were used to the first party

[mark]: 9:41
exactly

[mats]: 9:41
licenses and looking

[mark]: 9:42
exactly

[mats]: 9:42
at that we are like oh well this is almost for free let's use that

[mark]: 9:47
it's so true just back on on the community tell me about about the community in germany you know what do you seeing

[mats]: 9:57
i think i got a lot of traction during the last years as i said when i was twenty eight in london there was community going on but it wasn't on the same level and it was more rational nowadays so a lot more going on with user groups popping up ntroconaacul like in two weeks will speaking at the hamburg use a group

[mark]: 10:17
nice

[mats]: 10:17
which fellow b p s got going here also colon has to use a group now hand over so there's a lot munich is also a big part also more communities happening and i feel like for germany it's it might be different than for example new zealand or because a lot of people here like have content also in german language not just in english so obviously

[mark]: 10:39
of course

[mats]: 10:39
we have people doing both but you always can understand that it's easy especially if you get into a new topic to discover or consume content in germ and that's wot i feel like some p say well mabbe decide we do content in german but obviously a lot of people don't know them because they are just known in germ they're pretty

[mark]: 11:00
yes yes

[mats]: 11:00
popular her but outside of jermy like oh yeah i think i heard about him

[mark]: 11:05
yeah but the thing is is that you know i think it's important that you do you know as much as possible in your native language you know you're spanish speaking you should do it in spanish if you portuguese should be portugal i think that there's been too much of and also kind of people worried about all my english is not good so i can't contribute or can't engage but i think people naturally pick up and learn in their native tongue right so i think it's great that you're doing it in german and it should be that yes they might not have the global exposure yet but you know i think that's even changing i think that you know microsopthis seeing as i'm talking about the team that award nvpsare starting to see the nuances in the different geographies where people are having a mass of local impact and the whole idea of the v p program was always about local impact you know in its early days is that you're an extension of microsofften to market that they might not have a big footprint in so i think that's great i think it's great so do you guys run any kind of events in germany around you know power or dynamics

[mats]: 12:17
yeah quite some not the same scale as you mentioned south coast or scottish summit i hope yet but it's growing but it's not on the same level but i like to see how it's also microsop for example you mentioned that is more and more invested we just said ignite and i think that's the second stands local original spots where we had content in german also actually quite nice i had a session there in german because anise

[mark]: 12:44
nice

[mats]: 12:45
to be honest my block is on english i do most of my speaking kind of because i got to the community to the london connections mostly so that's actually one of the points i'm trying to do more and what i like about the other german ps because they are much bete connected here in germany which is great because that will increase our community here in Germany

[mark]: 13:06
so true what what are you most focused on at the moment like what excites you about where microstoff is going with the technology what what you know if we looked at the next three to six months what do you think you'll invest your time in um from a from a skills development perspective

[mats]: 13:26
actually at the moment it's a sure so basiclkindof like i always like to have side projects i'm really kind of like interested in ten different things at the time and at the moment i'm doing a lot with because i see that it's a cool like it's cool to kind coming from the point as can tell it's cool to double amount of that a lot more possibilities there but it also integrates really nicely we have data and kind i extend where you hit limits which is naturally for a local loco and then but you can still extend at end with ease so that's somethin where personally at the moment spending quite a few of time learning different stuff so for example i mentioned my block which hasn't got a lot of lough block wise latently but what i'm doing at the moment i'm looking for example at these gem stack things similar to port so you can lie ildupsasthatic side static webapscool stuff blocks them and it's quite nice kind of like as sounds a bit strange but like next to my day job where do like dynamics pulp platform really focus on it's something else to do and i like i'd like to do that at a moment tropic that's probably the next half a year where a lot of my focus will be

[mark]: 14:39
like it like what what excites you at the moment about what mikseffis doing in the power platform space what what new features do you see coming that you you you are looking forward to

[mats]: 14:51
i would say it's integration or the embedding of the different parts of the pale platform into each other like five years back when pups are from cup or also a dynamic pen was invented was basically a marketing label on top of different products michael of had which made it quite hard to explain to somebody why they wouldn't really work nicely well together and that's changing a lot i mentioned we've met canvas ps it's pay that's something we also in our products used a lot that we don't just say it's just a model of a it's just a canvas app but it's theme together and then you embettepabi we put on top of that and have paul automat everywhere and i see that micro investing a lot of lot of time into making that really smooth and it's becoming more and more of a pulp platform where there not barriers in between these products but you really can pick and choose the right tool for whatever and you have that makes it even more powerful and also kind of like saying for example more like a generalist it's easy to get into the different parts you don't need to be a specialist and power to imbed it in your dynamics e if you just want to have a bit of reporting in there

[mark]: 15:58
yeah yeah exactly exactly so yeah that's that's a very good point that that whole integration story and using all the pieces um when when you look at your data day job are you doing are you doing any consulting work are you more selling at you absolutions because you mentioned that you're in a niche there that you're a nice that you're targeted on m yeah

[mats]: 16:26
so as the co i'm mostly responsible for our product so we have priatlyaco product ing to different projects but i work also a lot in these projects um and i like it a lot and especially this connection or when you go into exchange with your actual customers what do they actually need not what you thought would be a cool feature and shows the real cited they're like well i don't see the value of that and getting in these discussions and see also in the day to day job but small things might be improved which make their life a lot lot easier so i do that a lot as well because i like it a lot it's fun and i think it's also quite important if you really want to do this product well you need to understand how you use this work and think you can only do that if you talk to them not if you just look at them from the outside and think what they might think

[mark]: 17:23
so true if people you know you've been in v p for a couple of months now what's what's what changed in becoming an MVP for you

[mats]: 17:35
well at the beginning it was a bit like shocked at how much information gets thrown at you like there is a new microsofnewsletter distribution list you get on there is a new slack group you get ted to so that's it's quite a lot beginning to process also figure out okay what to do when i don't know how many nights i spent trying to catch up with all the stuff there at some point realizing okay that not a sustainable way you can pick and shoes what you can do there so that was tuff something but also exciting me a lot was actually the community of em think big advantage of the whole program kind of you get to meet and to connect with a lot of these and we piece have tremendously experienced in that group and are all very friendly very helpful so that that was kind of like what after this first shock of information what you get to realize and i like to spend time of them so i went to sketch summer to the south coast it's also a nice thing that you know more people just by kind of like being in this network and being connected there which year really fun

[mark]: 18:45
in closing what advice would you have for other people that want to become MVPs

[mats]: 18:53
um i would say just stop just start sharing so whatever you do whatever excites you what stop start sharing it even if it's not kind of like the the really cool new thing a lot of stuff if you figure out at some point trying just something o this floor if i do it like this works on that up if you put that out it will help a lot of people even if it's for you something is figured out that's not really worth sharing this is this is known to a lot of people usually it's not there is a lot of people who will profit from that and once start also with these small things getting worth for debt it kin like picks up if it makes fun to you it has to be fun because otherwise if it's just work you can't sustain it i think for a long time but if you start with the small things and discover okay this is really something which excites me what i like to do i think then it will pick up and kind of like gets you to new things you will get in contact with using groups for example some people started asking me if i wanted to speak somewhere it was like a completing new experience and i i don't know we saw for example your block there can you show that to us and so i would say yeah stop i don't know why keep saying stop start that's the start sharing star sharing what you do talk about it now this working out loud ing of connect to community i think

[mark]: 20:17
i like it

[mats]: 20:17
that's a great way of starting

[mark]: 20:21
matt thank you so much for coming on the show

[mats]: 20:23
thanks for having me mark