Carike Botha's Journey from Marine Biology to Power Platform Success in South Africa

Today's guest is from South Africa . She works at iSolve as a software development consultant . She was first awarded her MVP in 2024 . You can find links to her bio , social media , et cetera , in the show notes for this episode . Welcome to the show , Karik .

We haven't had one yet because it seems like the clients have only picked up on power apps recently , like start of last year , and really picking up the pace this year . So I think our community is a very rapid-growing one at this stage , but it feels a bit behind if I look at the communities from overseas .

Right , but it is growing and that's the exciting part . I'm very excited about that . A lot of people are starting to talk about Power Apps , power Automate , especially with Copilot Studio as well , now entering the game .

So tell me about your family , tell me about the best food to eat in johannesburg and tell me what you do for fun awesome , so , um , so , actually I live with my aunt and my cousins and , uh , close close to them .

And we've got some cat children and doggy children in the house , so we love both cats and dogs . Uh , for , for the parties who love either or please don't come for me we've , we've made a rule in the house that the animals will get along , irrespective of the the stereotype behind cats and dogs .

Um , yeah , and uh , yeah , I am a very religious person as well , so I , I , honestly , I , I fervently enjoy talking about the things of the Lord . That gets me excited . And then food is second on my list . Absolutely enjoy having a good meal . You know , something cheesy , something rich , creamy , absolutely love that .

But funnily enough , my favorite dish is not a South African dish , it's actually Korean food . I love myself a good bowl of ramen , so yeah , and we've actually seen them popping up in South Africa more frequently , so I'm very excited about that .

When I returned to New Zealand after being away for it was over eight years and I noticed how many new ethnicities had moved into New Zealand Like it was quite different over that period of time than when I left it was quite noticeable . So definitely the world is becoming a big mounting pot , as one of the famous New Zealand singer sung some years ago .

Tell me about how did you get into tech ?

Like yeah , that's kind of the idea that I had about being a marine biologist . And my dad , being in tech himself , was like , no , you're gonna go into tech , that's where your career path is taking you . He made me do an aptitude test and the aptitude test ruled in his favor . So I was like , oh , darn it , okay , let's do this .

So I actually didn't , um , enjoy tech at all when I was in school . I was petrified of the exams . I thought like being a grown-up or being adulting is going to be very similar to school . And after school I realized like , oh , adulting is actually a lot more fun than school . And I went through a bit of up and down , like in my tech .

Career path started out as a SharePoint administrator . Still love doing it to this day . Then I went a little bit into some C Sharp ASBnet . I enjoyed doing it , but the opportunities weren't as many . And then Power Platform was born and I started playing with it and I just fell in love with the platform .

So ever since I've adopted that platform , that's been the main focus . Like I can still do everything else , but I preferred working in the Power Platform main focus like I can still do everything else , but I preferred working in the power platform .

I think it becomes confusing to to clients who is like but SharePoint is a form as well , so why do I need it as a power app ? Um , those kind of like , identifying when it's the best kind of scenario to use which um . But I found myself I don't use power bi a lot . I'm really not .

My reporting , the reporting element is really not my strong point and um , I've really been enjoying dataverse as of late . So , um , but I mostly , I mostly use power automate more than anything else and I love um playing with the ai side of things , so fiddling with ai builder and seeing what that can do awesome , awesome , okay , so that's .

But um , we deal with a vast set of clients , so anything from insurance to banking , even like the marine industry , which is very interesting , and it's so interesting to learn from all these different kind of industries and just see how they all work . Essentially , in the end it's all processes , automation .

But just to get down to the nitty-gritty side of things and understand how the company works , now everything gets put together , it's just amazing and how the company works , now everything gets put together .

What springs to mind when you think about tools that you just have to have to make you more effective in what you do ?

I wouldn't say that I use From a non-Microsoft tool set . I wouldn't say that I use a lot of non-Microsoft tools . Like , my daily life literally consists of Microsoft tools . But I do use some like task orientation the name escapes me right now that is not Microsoft driven . So , for instance , don't use to do , I'd rather use that one .

I can't believe the name escapes me right now , but we've used that , like as a community , to to manage ourselves . Like sort out the venue , sorting out the food . Who still needs to do what ? We just found that to be very easy . And then , um , yeah , the rest of the time I literally just use Microsoft things . Yeah , yeah , yeah .

Sap or pega or service now , or you know , blue prism from a automation side of things , or oracle um , what , what do you see in the market ? Is microsoft quite dominant there , or what's your feeling ?

So there's most of the clients that we work with or people that I talk to , always use SQL , but here and there you've got your Oracle and then we've also got obviously , our IBMs on the side as well , which does with the private clouds . You know that's not necessarily like your Azure or your AWS .

There's also a nice uptake , I would say there's like a balance between aws and azure on this side of the world . So , um , because of the , there's a good balance between , like your aws users . There's a lot of um , especially banks , that use aws , a combination of azure and aws .

So , um , yeah , I think it's a nice balance , but microsoft definitely being the the top .

It was all part of that career shift that I had , because I was sitting one day and I was like I don't know if I want to be a SharePoint administrator for the rest of my life I don't see myself retiring at this and I started going to community events .

And the one year I remember very clearly I think it was in , I don't want to lie , I think it was 2014 , there was a Microsoft Ignite in person and after I attended that I was hooked by the community and I just loved seeing the MVPs because at that time um , before COVID the MVPs in South Africa there were so many of them and they were really so

inspirational . They were showing us all the cool stuff that you can do with tech . And you know , when you got that in some imposter syndrome you feel like I don't want to go to this community because I don't know enough . I feel like I'm going to be like the odd one out amongst all these smart people .

And I remember very , very clearly I was going to it was still the MS Doug , so Microsoft developer user group community . I got there and then Matthew actually works for Microsoft . He asks me well , what do you know ? I said , well , I don't know anything , I'm just here to learn . And he's like well , you're at the right place , I'm so glad you joined us .

And that made me feel so welcome . And after that I started getting very involved in the community . It took me a long time to actually present myself because I was so you know that once again that fear . You think back to school , when you had to do your school , your in front of class speeches and it was petrifying and um .

And then COVID happened and I actually did my first presentation and I was like , oh , this isn't so bad and um , but yeah , I've always been involved in the community . The MVPs , also of South Africa knew me by that time and I think after COVID they started asking me it's like listen , when are you going to start filling in the form for MVP ?

And I was like well , I don't even know where to begin , I don't know how this works .

And they they actually started nominating me and they were like one of my friends actually started a hashtag because I was so reluctant to fill in the form and she started a trend where she goes like hashtag , fill in the damn form , and that's how I eventually got to just completing the form , but being recognized by the community and that was such a privilege .

So if somebody from either microsoft or another mvp needs to nominate you , you need to then fill in the form , um , accepting you know that , the nomination . Now , following that , you've got a list . You know all the contributions you've made . You've got a list . You know all the contributions you've made , particularly over the last year .

When we think of contributions for what you do , what's your focus ? Is it , is it more , user groups ? Is it more ? You know forums ? Um , you know feedback response . Is it more blog posts , youtube , what's what's your thing ?

So I'm very involved , like arranging events and getting new people to come and talk , inspiring the community to come and give a presentation , you know whether it be a beginner level or expert level , but my thing is all about the networking and connecting with the people in person . So I have considered the YouTube thing but haven't really got into it at all .

I've tried the blogging , but I'm really not a writer of note . I'd rather go . I'm a talker , so if I can talk and have a conversation with anyone , that's . That's my space .

But this conversations that we've been having is since we've done the certifications for Power Platform , so that's kind of ticked off the list and we feel quite adequate in that space . I mentioned to them that what I would really like to upskill on is definitely from an Azure side of things .

So , and something that I really like but I'm a little too scared to go into fully yet is security .

I actually thoroughly enjoy talking about security , finding out about security and how things work , and I feel it's such a critical thing for Power Platform as well , because oftentimes we get all the marketing about how Power Platform is amazing and it's so quick to build apps . Yes , it is , but we don't talk about security enough .

So that's kind of my focus is to just upskill on the Azure side of things and maybe get a little bit more , a little bit more knowledge on uh security I love it .

What my observation is is that big companies , they buy on risk mitigation and the security story is the biggest risk mitigating story that you can have around the power platform and so , um , I think that's smart right , as in , you know , particularly if you're going to deal with you know the , the types of , like rand bank or any type of financial institution , any

anybody that's dealing in a lot of you know personal uh information or pii information from customers . Security is going to be right up there at the top of the stack , and I find people that are , as in organizations . I find that is the fastest way to close a sale . Is the security discussion right ?

Risk mitigation , as in , businesses don't buy so much for opportunity , they buy to avoid risk , and the security story of the power platform is becoming more and more robust all the time . Um , this has been great . Um , talking to you , do you travel internationally ? You speak at any international conferences ?

You going to any of the microsoft events like mvp summit or anything like that ?

And they're like , seriously , just don't talk to strangers , come on .

Right , they can travel to Hawaii , they can travel to Alaska , but everything's there .

And then , particularly , I was talking to this one guy which I knew had served in the military and of course , it hadn't dawned on me when you get flown into a military zone , nobody checks a passport , right , you're part of the military , so there was no need for even you know , to have a passport on military deployments and stuff .

And so I found that very interesting , because I think , when you come from the ends of the world , like you know , I do in new zealand it's like's like my kids you know , I've got my I think six months old was the youngest my child got their passport and they did an international flight before they were nine months old .

You know , we'd gone to Australia at least , and it's just , I don't know . I feel that when we're in the bottom of the world , there's a thing in Kiwi , kind of psyche , that as soon as you finish school , you're out of here , you're going to the Northern Hemisphere , you're going to London or Europe or something like that .

It's like to escape the cabin fever of being controlled in this tiny wee country at the bottom of the world . Yeah , it's built into , built into our psyche .