From Mechanical Engineer to Power Platform Enthusiast: Navigating Robin Rosengrün's Tech Journey

Mark Smith: 0:37
Welcome to the MVP Show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, let's get on with the show. Today's guest is from Germany. He works at ENVW as a low-code enabler. He was first awarded his MVP in 2023 this year. He's a Microsoft Power Platform enthusiast and a YouTuber. You want to check out his links to his bio, social media, youtube, etc. We'll have him in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, robin. Hi. Thanks for having me. Good to have you on. What part of Germany are you from?

Robin Rosengrün : 1:32
Southern Germany, around Stuttgart, you probably may know it, in Zindelfing, the town that's where all the nice Mercedes cars are built, the E-Class and S-Class. I'm the only one in this town who isn't into cars, I think, and who isn't working for Mercedes.

Mark Smith: 1:49
I had a nephew that lived in Stuttgart, so very close, yeah, so familiar with the area. Tell me, what do you do when you're not working, when you're not doing stuff on the Power Platform or your day job? What do you typically do for food, fun and family?

Robin Rosengrün : 2:09
Well, family I have a two-year-old son and a seven-year-old daughter, so that is lots of time I spend with them. Yeah, that's cool. Of course, I have some hobbies. Recently, luise Frese you probably know her she made me run again, so I'm betting with her who runs more consistently. I love mountain biking. I love the mountains. As you know, stuttgart is very close to the Alps and that's cool. Just one and a half two hours drive and you're in the Alps. I love the feeling when the mountains rise in front of me. Yeah, really like that, really looking forward to hiking this summer with my colleagues again.

Mark Smith: 2:56
I love it. Tell me, how did your technology career start?

Robin Rosengrün : 3:01
Well it's a typical IT career, but probably lots of MVPs actually follow this career. So not traditional IT background. I studied mechanical engineering in Stuttgart and I wanted to do something with renewable energies and had a lot of simulation of hydroturbines. Finally started getting an engineering position at ENBW around 10 years ago calculating the natural gas networks in and around Stuttgart. One thing led to the other. There was an access database. Like 10 years ago I had no idea how access worked. The person who built it left the company. So, typical situation I was the one who picked it up and looked into it, did more and more with it and always thought there has to be a better way than Microsoft Access and was looking for a cloud tool. Then, five years ago, we transferred to Microsoft 365, and, yeah, there was Power Apps. Look into it and never let it go since then.

Mark Smith: 4:18
So interesting because my job I see so many customers that still use access databases. One of the biggest questions we get is how hard or how easy is it to migrate from that to the Power Platform, to put that data model inside Dataverse and to Power Apps, to the forms piece, get in Power Automate and, of course, all of a sudden it becomes a full collaboration tool right, which you didn't have an access. When you're working with folks that ask you that question around access to Power Platform migration, what's your typical response?

Robin Rosengrün : 4:55
Well, I'm not a consultant, but the classical response it depends. People build so many logic into these access databases, so bringing the data model into Dataverse is one hour normally yeah, so it really quickly. But, yeah, building all the logic can be from very quick because you can throw it away because you don't need it anymore or there are better ways to do it in Dataverse to things that are practically impossible with with the normal power platform and you need you would need other tools. But I'm actually right in the middle of such a project with with a former colleague. Yeah, and I think yeah, it's that case where we are throwing lots of logic away and we found easier ways to do it. So, but this, as you said, I'm an Apler, so I'm trying to make him build the whole thing, so it takes a little longer, but I hope the reward will be even bigger because they have more than one access database and I hope he takes us the second one alone.

Mark Smith: 6:05
I like it. I like it. So have you found any limitations? So so you know you had VBA right, would have, would have been used for logic in access. Is that right? Yeah, and, and so we obviously can't bring that into the power platform. And then the other thing a few field types, right, are a bit different to what you can represent in access, as opposed to what you can do in Dataverse.

Robin Rosengrün : 6:31
Yeah, but no real limitations there. But the major change I'm coming more from a canvas apps angle normally, but doing lots of Dataverse model driven apps as well, converging those two together and, yeah, so I'm building more logic in PowerFX for the last five years and the biggest difference was there's no real possibility to to loop through or to make a normal while loop in in PowerFX. So that was kind of strange, but got used to it and thought my ways around it.

Mark Smith: 7:07
Have you requested it? Have you requested that the product team? Is that kind of a use case that potentially they could look at and and implement, or is it not on their radar?

Robin Rosengrün : 7:19
I think it's on their radar. I've seen it up there. Well, my hopes are not that high that the actual ideas get into the product, unless it's on their roadmap anyways. But yeah, for the few cases where I really need a loop where it's processed sequentially, I built a workaround that was one of my first YouTube videos because I discovered how to do it very impractical way, but sometimes you really really need it. And yeah, I found it out. And then I thought I have to share this with the world because so many people requested it already.

Mark Smith: 7:55
I like it. I like it. I took a look at your YouTube channel. Is every as in? You're obviously targeting at the German audience. Is everything in German, or do you do any in English?

Robin Rosengrün : 8:06
It's half half. I was doing a lot of beginner videos in in German, but then when I think I have something special that is more niche topic but is for a broader audience than I do it in English, like I have lots of SVG content and that it's really niche special and yeah, there's not much of that content anywhere on YouTube, so I do those in English.

Mark Smith: 8:35
It's good. I think it's really important that you do content in your native language right, because English is generally well served globally and I always like to see in individual countries and cultures it done in their own language so people can pick it up a lot faster rather than having to do that translation in mine from English back to their. You know their native language. So I think I think it's awesome that you're doing it those videos in German because there would be a big market opportunity, particularly with SAP sitting in Germany, you know, as its head office. We're seeing these days many, many SAP customers now adopting the power platform right and really extending what they can do on that SAP data set into the power platform. So good work, good work.

Robin Rosengrün : 9:20
Yeah, that was actually my angle, because I started with Canvas apps, like probably everyone else, with Shenyang videos, and I had many colleagues who didn't follow him because yeah, because there was a language barrier, especially in German. Not everybody is comfortable in watching English tutorial videos or reading English blogs. So that was my angle starting with YouTube really and, yeah, doing lots of beginner stuff in in German.

Mark Smith: 9:50
Yeah, so good. In the Canvas app front, are you using any design tools to create your user interfaces, like Figma, adobe XD, anything like that?

Robin Rosengrün : 10:04
I work a lot with UX designers in my company and I get a lot of Figma files. But when I'm wireframing I usually directly do it inside of Canvas apps, because I'm just so much faster and then you can build some logic like going through the screens, and yeah, that's just nice too, so you can show someone, share the app with someone. It's so much nicer than the Figma file. Yeah, nice.

Mark Smith: 10:31
Do you see any? Where are the gaps in the Power Platform that you would like to? If you know a few. If you got to control the roadmap, what would you be putting in the roadmap for the Power Platform?

Robin Rosengrün : 10:48
Yeah, I'm a big Canvas app guy, so I'm really eager to see where the modern controls are heading, because that's a major upgrade and it will include some form of theming. I've wrote a longer LinkedIn post just a few days ago about their roadmap and how. I hope that it will be good. And yeah, finally give us a theming options we were desperately missing for the last six years since it existed. And yeah, and then better and even more converging model-driven apps and Canvas apps. So give us better ways and more out-of-the-box ways to combine those two. Like, if you want to have a pop-up Canvas app in a model-driven form, you still need JavaScript code, which is yeah, I figured out how to do it. They're good tutorials, but I see how it is hard for newer users to get that done and integrate into forms and better. Give us a better native way to do that and stuff like that.

Mark Smith: 11:58
Nice, anything else you'd have on that roadmap?

Robin Rosengrün : 12:03
Actually not. Actually, I think it's heading in a really really good direction. There's so much stuff there. We just have to figure new ways out to use it. To use it, probably I will. If you're giving five minutes to think, I will think of 10 different things right now, or not.

Mark Smith: 12:25
That's a good. That's a good.

Robin Rosengrün : 12:27
Spontaneous.

Mark Smith: 12:28
Tell me about how you became an MVP.

Robin Rosengrün : 12:33
Yeah, that just happened somehow. When I started making YouTube videos, I didn't even know that MVPs existed. I didn't know that that was a thing. But when I started with Power Apps shortly afterwards, when I started getting into the community, then COVID hit us and, yeah, there were no in-person events. So probably a good thing, because at that moment I connected worldwide to people and across Germany, people five, six hours away from me. So I got to know most of the German MVPs really nice people who got me convinced to come talk to user groups and stuff like that. So, yeah, but how did I actually become an MVP? Probably doing more and more YouTube stuff at some point. Getting nominated by Luise earlier talked about her and yeah, doing more and more stuff. Yeah, crossing my fingers and it worked out. And yeah, so adding something more to YouTube, like speaking online, speaking live sessions and then somehow it worked out.

Mark Smith: 13:54
If you're asked to do a session to a new audience, it hasn't heard you before a speaking session, so it might be a virtual session or in person. What's your typical process for one? Deciding what you're going to speak on and then assembling your talk, your presentation, that type of thing. What do you typically do?

Robin Rosengrün : 14:15
Yeah, luckily I have lots of slides that I use inside my company and I have like to go to topics like the digitalization movement inside a company and making makers do it, so like business makers, citizen developers do it. And, yeah, lots of Microsoft speech, like the AppGap challenge. But I see in my company that stuff is real and that's some things I like to talk about, because I work a lot with IT department and they only see the tip of the iceberg, the stuff where that is already in SAP systems. But the last or two years before I got the Enabled job, I worked in the business, so I saw the bottom of the iceberg and that is filled with access databases, excel files, processes where you send mail from person A to B inside the company and so on, and yeah, there's just lots of potential for digitalization in each company, in every company I'd say. So, yeah, that's the one thing I love to talk about, and the other thing I'm passionate about is about UI and UI UX, accessibility in Canvas apps and that type of stuff. So if I'm more in the business setting, it's probably the first one. If I'm more in the Power app setting, it will probably be the second one.

Mark Smith: 15:47
Excellent. You mentioned the AppGap challenge. What's that?

Robin Rosengrün : 15:52
The AppGap challenge is, like I said, the bottom of the iceberg, where all the Excel files are and every process has like a digital footprint and we need to store that data somewhere. And the business users don't have endless possibilities. They usually have the best possibility that they have Excel at the moment if they are not into the Power platform or other low code tools, but normally they don't have that and can't use that. But we need to get all these data that we store in Excel files and we need to organize it, store it in databases and build relational databases out of that. And we have so many Excel files in every company that the IT personnel is not sufficient to tackle this problem even remotely. So this is the challenge. We have so many digitalization projects and the workforce that natively does that is not enough. So, yeah, we need to enable our citizen developers, our business people, to do that and, yeah, the challenge is that we don't have enough people and how we tackle it. Yeah, we enable more people to do it.

Mark Smith: 17:09
From the business side of things, Nice, Now you've got an interesting job title low code enabler. What's that? What's that involve? Is this a role we're going to see more inside businesses?

Robin Rosengrün : 17:23
Yeah, I hope that in every bigger business I do lots of stuff, from doing some like lighthouse projects in my company to sometimes first level support for people. You just need some help nurturing a community inside of a company and just accelerating that process. Because I will think and chain young talks a lot about this that we are only at the beginning of the process. So people adapting the power platform because it's only like six years old, I think. So we're really at the beginning of the process and people will come over time, but my responsibility is to accelerate that movement and to get to speed things up. And, yeah, this job I just love.

Mark Smith: 18:16
So how do you do it? How do you speed things up? How do you get more people involved? How do you? How do you what are the conversations that you're having that move people from liking or just working with excel or access and and all paper based processes and you know, as you say, all those emails back and forward that have some information in them? How do you move them to the vision of you know? Using a platform and ecosystem of tools like the power platform, rather than stay with what they know, because people write inherently, no matter how bad what they know is, it's what they know, so they're comfortable with that right and that's why we have, you know, the need for adoption and change management and things like that. How do you? What are some of the tools? You use it? What's the? How do you think about these things?

Robin Rosengrün : 19:07
First of all, you need to find the right people. Power apps or programming power apps, developing power apps, apps in general, is not for everyone, and that's okay. We don't need everyone to participate. We need everyone as a user, but not as a maker. But we need the people who did those excel processes. They they didn't. They weren't born with an excel skill set, but they trained themselves like actually the same thing, like like with power apps. We just need to give them a push in the in the right direction. So I would say it's most of it is intrinsic motivation. People normally are these kind of people love learning new stuff. They love doing something, something else than their normal day job. So, yeah, creating things, that's that's just a beautiful feeling and it's what I hear over and over again people who just want to finish that up and Keep working until late in the night just because they want to finish it and they are so fascinated by that. I wouldn't make people do it, but I love that. I hear that story so much people Sitting there late at night building canvas apps or something like that. So people, people actually want to do it. But yeah, I have to show what is possible and I have to speed things up, accelerate things a bit, get their bosses to give them a little more time to to learn new stuff and begin earlier. Like with our students, we try to teach our all our students that the power platform exists and teach them the basics. So, yeah, get a real grassroots movement going and then get, create a community of people, because that's actually the best thing when they don't ask me, but ask each other, talk about it and help each other out. And that's what we're seeing more and more. So I'd say the first people, that's just a numbers game. We are 20,000 people in our community. There are just people who love doing this stuff. You have to find them, help them, touch them and grow the community.

Mark Smith: 21:25
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffeecom forward slash NZ365 guy. Thanks again and see you next time.