The Making of a Tech Luminary in Ghana and the Art of Community Engagement - Silvester Akakpo

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 Ghana. He was first awarded his MVP in 2023. He's a software developer, video game enthusiast and a community advocate. You can find links to his bio and social media in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Sylvester.

Silvester Akakpo: 1:25
Thank you so much, Mark. Thank you for having me.

Mark Smith: 1:29
It's a pleasure to have you on the show. Tell me, before we get into your journey of becoming an MVP and getting involved in Microsoft technologies, tell me about food, family and fun. What do they mean to you?

Silvester Akakpo: 1:46
Yeah, family first. My family is everything. I'm a father of two, a very beautiful daughter and a young man. I got married recently, I think this beginning this year. My family resided in Togo. I was born in Togo, raised in Togo, I went to school, education, everything in Togo before I moved to Ghana somewhere around 2010, 2011. My father is originally from Ghana, but he also lived this most part of his life in Togo before relocating because of work to Ghana After my studies. I have to also just follow his footsteps, being close to him. In our culture it's very important for the young man to be close to his father, to learn and to get some values from him. I decided to also follow that footsteps With my little brother. We are all living in Ghana now, but we have some of our family in Togo. About food I love a lot of continental dishes. I'm not too much in our local dishes here. I do very little of the local dishes. I'm a borrower of the rice kind of stuff, spaghetti kind of stuff and all the cholof that comes with it. For fun, yeah, for fun. Video games yeah, I love video games, I play a lot of video games. If I'm not before any screen or any computer, I do football, I play football, I play soccer, then I do a little bit of swimming and I love also traveling.

Mark Smith: 3:37
How big is football in your culture?

Silvester Akakpo: 3:40
Well, most of the young guys here, you know, is the main sport, well in Africa, in the part of our region, is mostly football. Because every young guy that you meet around the play football. And you know my early days, my young, younger age on, in my younger age, most of the thing that we always gather to do is to play football. So after school the only thing that you can take off is to play football. So I've grown with that culture. You know, everywhere I go, any environment I find myself, I try to find a pitch, I try to find people that play football so that whenever I'm not doing any of the core stuff that I'm doing work related or maybe playing video game I'm on the field playing football. Yeah.

Mark Smith: 4:33
Well, that's interesting. And on the video game side, like what's your number one go-to game?

Silvester Akakpo: 4:38
It's FIFA Of all time, Of all time Not just recent, but all time it's FIFA, football, fifa, yeah.

Mark Smith: 4:46
Isn't that right, wow?

Silvester Akakpo: 4:48
So you play football. Well, yeah, yeah.

Mark Smith: 4:52
Yeah, that's very cool. That's very cool. So tell me, how did you get into IT? How did you particularly? How did you get into Microsoft Land? Where did you discover it? How did it all of a sudden make something you came aware of and pursued as part of your career?

Silvester Akakpo: 5:09
From the beginning. To be honest, it was not really my thing. I saw myself growing to be a pilot. You know I'm always intrigued by airplane. You know how to move those big engines and all that. But somewhere along the line I have an uncle in Germany, mr Kappokofi Emanuolo. He was a software developer. He moved to Germany, he was a software developer, he was a Java certified developer. So whenever he comes back you know I was in primary back then so whenever he comes back, he often tell me about technology, google and all that you know. So somewhere I grew, I finished my education and I moved to Ghana. So this is the time where most of us we are looking for some orientation, something to do. So we don't know, we just follow the trends. So whenever your friend is doing something, we all want to do it. And back then I think I remember is we have civil engineering. So all of us you know that, completed school, we're gearing towards the civil engineering course because, well, all your buddies that you went to school with, you play football with, all of them are doing civil engineering. So when they asked me, the first thing that came to mind was civil engineering. But when I moved to Ghana because my father his line of work is. He mostly worked with air conditions and all that, so he has access to people's office and he grew that keen interest in computers because when you see people processing documents and all that, then you're like one of those days he came back I was like I'm not interested about IT. You know computers. Whenever I see people doing using computers to do things, it makes me feel like you should try one of those things. And yeah, that's how come. It wasn't really something that I was so much into, but well, I just decided to do it for the old man and, trust me, that was the best decision ever. And especially on the Microsoft stack. Yeah, on the Microsoft stack I happened to meet a man, abou Konde. He was the first MVP in Ghana. He was my teacher back then when I went to school. I went to IPMC, so back then I was offering hardware networking and I was also doing software engineering. So he was my teacher from the hardware networking side and we grew close because he speak French and I also speak French. So for one reason or other he trusted me to do some of the errands and we grew very close and I noticed that everything that Abou does is mostly Microsoft. He is your Microsoft guide to go to. So it was contagious because I was always with him, so I learned how to also pick that interest in Microsoft technologies. Since that day I really got stuck and that kept me going.

Mark Smith: 8:34
So in that journey then, how did you get? Because, like Microsoft's big right, there's a lot of areas that you can be in. You can be on the infrastructure side of things. You can be in a Zura M365. How did you come to the Power Platform and dynamics?

Silvester Akakpo: 8:49
Okay. So that's where my actual company come to play. So Because I was close to a boo, you know, sometimes in our part of the world we also work with a lot of recommendations. So it's not just you go and drop a CV, but you know there's, there's some soft skill that need to come with your CV that makes us, an employee, want to take the gamble of employing you. So Because of a bull line of work he happened to has a lot of connections. He knows a lot of people in the IT space because he was also one of the few people that was very much Certified on the Microsoft stack. So he has a lot of certification, so he knows a lot of people. So one of those days we had a conversation and he just pointed me like what am I doing? Even prior to that, after I finished my level 100 at IPMC, I was offered to be a teacher because they define me to be Brilliant. I was doing well with software coding and all that. So they saw my enthusiasm and they wanted to offer me a job. Then I had to decline it because there were some factors that didn't play well with my situation at the time. So Abu told me that I should just hold on, he will find something for me. So he talked to another person who is actually the MD, the director of operation of Microsoft I city solution, where I'm working. Actually he's the CEO and he, the man, called me one of those days and asked me if I'm interested in a project that is trying to, you know, build. I was like okay, because I didn't really have any real work experience per se in a corporate world, so I just decided to follow him. So he gave me the tools. He introduced me to Dynamics, business application. So he introduced me to dynamic traces 5, customer engagement, so customer service, sales marketing, the daho stack. Then later on I happened to notice a power platform that came a little bit after I joined them. So that's how come I got to Know about Microsoft and especially the business application side in your years of working in this space, do you, do you have a favorite product?

Mark Smith: 11:21
do you have a favorite dynamics product? Do you ever set favorite one of the? You know whether it's power apps, power, automate, power. We are, you know we're. Where do you excel in then? What? What technology do you like the best inside business apps?

Silvester Akakpo: 11:36
Okay, I started my journey with dynamic traces 5 or 6 yes, sales. So I had to. You know I Spent a lot of time. One good thing that I Actually feel very thankful, grateful to my company is that they gave me ample time to learn, because back then in the company there was absolutely no one who was in charge of business solutions. So it looks like they put me in a container. I'm alone. Then I just have to try, and they give me a lot of time to be able to learn. I, at my own pace, make sure I understand the technology. So I spent a lot of time with dynamic Traces 5 sales, learn how to even create, try to adjust some of the processes to our processes in Ghana here, even the tax component to make sure we align the tax component to the Ghanaian kind of thing. So it was a bit difficult because I didn't really understand the platform. That's my first time. Then I moved to customer service. So customer service really got interesting because sales was kind of a bit difficult to understand how to move from maybe leads to opportunities, bring opportunities, to quote, you know, that whole business process flow. It was something very difficult for me to grasp but with customer service I got to understand that, ok, every customer that you have may raise a ticket against a particular product. You need to manage all those tickets as cases, you need to route them, and I think one thing that actually also got me promotion was that I was able to build a Power Apps portal not a Power Apps but a CRM portal back then for customer self-service Exactly, customer self-service. I was able to build it and to even allow some customer to sign in and raise tickets, check their ticket status and all that, and I felt very, you know, the interest really picked up from there and I think a year later on Power Apps, I got to know Power Apps. I think Power Apps was in the system since 2016, but I was more focused on dynamic Traces 5. And we needed a solution that could easily respond to our market. Because of the price component, it's difficult for some company to buy dynamic Traces 5 here, so they were looking for something that is very affordable and very easily customizable and all that. So that made us as a company shift our focus a little bit from the base app in general to the Power Platform. So that's how my journey started with Power Platform, and since then we've done so many lovely and nice stuff on the Power Platform.

Mark Smith: 14:33

And so if you had a new customer today and they wanted to build a solution that was quite sophisticated let's say it was for a government department, for managing feedback from the public what technology would you use when you think about that? What do you think would be the right fit? What questions would you want to ask?

Silvester Akakpo: 15:01
Okay, first we really need to understand the process, what the what's the feedback is for, because sometimes one thing that I notice with custom answers that they want to automate some processes, but some of those processes they are, let me say, rudimentary, so they need to be optimized first. So we need to make sure that, well, you want to automate the process, but internally, have you optimized the process? Is there a way you think of doing the process in a In a more efficient way? We understand that first. So we gather the business requirement, we understand what they want to do and from there we sit with the team and see, okay, what is the best way. But looking at the scenario that you presented, for a government Institution that wants to take feedback from the public, that means anybody now that is supposed to actually respond To the feedback or to the survey is supposed to respond anonymously. Because we can really. They don't, they can't be authenticated. So I will definitely go for forms or maybe, in case they want to do something, while that, we can go for customer voice.

Mark Smith: 16:17
Awesome. Okay, so you're across those type of products as well as an as a part of your tool set. When it comes to to building power apps, I Is your focus more a model driven or more on the canvas app side of things?

Silvester Akakpo: 16:33
More on the canvas app, but I have intensive experience also with the model driven because I started with dynamic 3cs5 and so I was exposed to back then common data services that became later on that other. So I have a little experience with model driven apps but in our scenario Most of the app we build, these basically come us up.

Mark Smith: 16:58
Interesting. How did you become an MVP? What was that journey for you?

Silvester Akakpo: 17:03
good. I think until 2015-2016 I didn't really know anything about MVP's, even though I read blogs and stuff. I feel MVP is just a title, kind of title that they give to people in some Companies. So till then I didn't really know it was an award. I feel more Maybe it's a title you they give to some people, maybe there's a particular exam that you have to write In order for you to attain that. I thought of it to be a certification, but all those things other perception change when I, when I got close to a book on day because I think we started a journey together he called me to say, okay, well, he wants to build a community because he feels there's no real Microsoft community back then in Ghana and we needed to also put Ghana on the map. We needed to give mentorship. We need to be ready to give Leaders, yeah, mentorship to those younger ones and give them some kind of orientation. They need to look up to some people. So we needed to have a basis, a foundation for that kind of ten. So let's create a community. And Later on I get to find out that, okay, most of those people that handle community as we know them from the rest of the countries in the world. They are mostly either MVPs or regional director. They are well vested in the technology. So well, it got me look for more answers. And later on, well, abu had the chance to be nominated as an MVP and he explained some of the concepts to me like well, mvp is mostly because you do something to the community. You use your free time, you know you, you are vested in helping people to understand the technology, be through blogging, through YouTube or even through hand doing events, online event or in person event, all sort of way you can support Microsoft agenda for it to reach more people.

Mark Smith: 19:22
So that's how come I got to know about the award scheme and then tell me about being nominated and tell me about becoming. You know what was the process to becoming an MVP?

Silvester Akakpo: 19:35
Okay, I think my first nomination got. I got my first nomination somewhere around 2021. If I'm not mistaken, early 2022. But it didn't work out very well because my contributions were not enough. Because back then I was organizing event. I was mostly the lead organizer of Microsoft user Organa. So I was organizing event, I was making sure everything goes normal. But it's not really about just organizing event. It's about being a subject matter expert, about having that capability of handling a community, showing something to the community. So for folks out there that think, okay, you just need to build a community and that is all, I think you need to first understand the technology that you have a community for and you need to create events, make sure you host events that allow people to learn something. So I organized events and it I wasn't the one that was mainly speaking, but I'll just the one, the orchestrator, at the background to make sure everything goes on well. So it gave me some kind of exposure and I felt, okay, maybe I should be MVP, but it was wrong because I got it so wrong. Then, I think after a year, I started being very active on the Power Apps community. I became a super user somewhere last year. I became a super user because I was very active. I had solutions here and there. I was very active helping people here and there. Then I got noticed and somebody said, okay, look, you've been doing this for a while now. I think I should nominate you. Back then it was Eric Enchi. He was also he is also a Ghanaian MVP, so he nominated me and together with him, with another recent MVP, ahmed Saleh Chesco Ayi Enchi, we host monthly digest, which we have been doing for a while now. So it has been really consistent. We often get some guests, some MVPs, to come and speak and we speak alongside with them, and that all contributed and, aside from being a super user, the fact that I organize now events and I'm also a speaker on those events and I also do blogs sometimes. So all those contributed to me being awarded MVP Fantastic.

Mark Smith: 22:13
Fantastic. Last question I have for you is what advice do you give to people wanting to become an MVP?

Silvester Akakpo: 22:24
First, I think you need to be very selfless. You need to always have that in you to help people, because there's a say in French that says en forgeant, continue en forgeant. So as long as you are doing something, you become very, you become good at it. You become very, very good at it. So while helping people to understand the technology, you also helping yourself first, because you are getting to understand more, more and more the technology. So for those people that aspire to be MVP, I would just tell them that whatever knowledge that you have, be it later, try to put it out there, because there's somebody that is also starting his journey and need to have that insight that you have need to start from scratch and maybe your content you might feel that is not really appropriate, maybe is at the beginner level, but there's a lot of folks out there. If you look at even the PowerApp program that Microsoft is championing right now, there's a lot of people that really don't know about the technology and they want to learn about it. So once you have the will to help people, once you have the will to put something out there, your effort will be noticed. Whether by Microsoft, by somebody, somebody will see. Your consistency is key. Somebody will notice it, and well, if things work out for you, microsoft will also definitely notice you, and I will.

Mark Smith: 23:57
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. Bye.