Cultivating Tech in Albania: Betim Beja's Journey from Microsoft MVP to Shaping the Tech Landscape and Power Platform Community

Today's guest is from Albania . Now that means you need to go grab Google Maps and go and search up Albania . It's in southeastern Europe . He's a principal solution architect . He was first awarded his MVP in 2022 . He's passionate about using technology to help others .

He is currently focused on helping local professionals in Albania produce high quality software and organizing events . He's the first ever Microsoft MVP in Albania . He achieved that , as I say , in 2022 . He's been renewed for his second year , which is an outstanding accomplishment . You can find links to his bio and social media etc .

In the show notes for his episode . He just told me he's going to the Dynamic Minds Conference in May 2024 , where I will be as well . Betim , welcome to the show .

So mainly most of the people are focused on outsourcing or consulting with other companies worldwide . Basically , the focus is to produce high quality software from Albania , but to also help everybody in the world to do the same . When I first started basically with open source and with contributions , it was when I got to see how fake XRM easy was built .

That was basically the thing that kickstarted my career in the Dynamics , because I got to understand a little bit of the internals of Dynamics just by seeing the way Jordy had mocked basically everything with his library and , yeah , that's pretty much it .

That was the spark , let's say , to help the community and basically you'll get a lot better yourself by helping others .

Mineral and yeah , albania is a small country but it has a very diverse geography . You can find beaches which are compared , usually , to Greece and to Sardinia in Italy , for example . Or we are in the Mediterranean , but we have the Adriatic Sea and the Union Sea , so you get sandy beaches , rocky beaches , basically all different kinds of beaches .

In this small place like Albania , as you mentioned , most people need to use Google Maps to understand where Albania is . Most Americans maybe , when you say Albania , search for Albany and yeah , usually I have to do the search and show them on my phone . No , I'm talking about this European country here .

We are not in the European Union yet and that's like a blocker sometimes . But yes , we are trying to grow . We are a next communist country and that has been something difficult also to overcome because , as mentioned , we are a small country and the market is really really small . So what I'm trying to do ?

I'm trying to grow a community , basically , and try to inspire other people to invest a little bit in showing that we also produce quality and not that you can find cheap labour , basically , which is the main reason why most companies might look overseas from Italy , for example , to Albania to find yeah , to find one .

I assume that it's similar to the experience of Montenegro , your coastline , you know the water , the Adriatic Sea Just a beautiful paradise , I assume , on the coast there . Tell me a bit about population sizing . Are you a large population ? Are you you know what's your adoption of Microsoft from a ?

Are you mainly do working with businesses locally , as in , so they're buying your services , or are you more supplying what you do to companies outside of your country ?

So we are basically forced to look to other countries for consulting , because and my main , basically my main engagement is consulting for an Irish consultancy Irish partner . I have my own limited company in Albania but it is growing really slowly because I haven't had much time to invest and because of all these difficulties that there is no local market .

So we have to look outside . But if you consider working for another country , basically most people prefer actually going there than working remotely , right ? So that's one challenge and that's one of the main reasons why I'm trying to grow a local community and to invest in the locals .

Basically , and hopefully even the local market will mature quick enough for basically for us to invest in local companies also , so to start building products . My short term plan I would say so in the next two years is to focus mainly on creating products on top of dynamics and not focus on consulting .

So currently I am like 80% consulting and 20% focus on creating products , most of which are open source , because that's the only way to market something from a small country like Albania .

And then , in two years or so , I'm hoping to have grown a team that has enough experience to actually build our own products and to switch basically to 80% products and 20% consulting .

Also , in the last year and a half or two years I have been also focused on PCF components and I built an open source library called Component Framework Mock which helps you basically write tests or storybook stories and you can basically develop your PCF component , gather feedback from all the stakeholders in your project without actually deploying that component in a

dynamics environment . You can publish your storybook with all the different combinations and all the edge cases probably of your component and people have the parameters there . They can play , even though they are not technical . For example , they can play with the parameters and give you feedback or suggest improvements or collaborate . Basically .

I saw the other day Tungy who is the originator of it , from France I'm pretty sure .

I saw him on LinkedIn call it XTB and I'm wondering if they're making XTB XRM toolbox , whether they're starting to rebrand slightly , being at the concept of XRM , which came from years ago Microsoft actually originally coined that term XRM , anything relationship management and I'm just wondering if now , because things have moved on , there's a lot of people in the

community that never heard of XRM because they're new to the ecosystem , since that concept was in market . So I don't know . Is it now called XTB ? Is that the new name for it ?

That's why I mentioned it .

So we decided to go there and he's so helpful that basically we are organizing the first Albanian Power Platform Summit 28th of October this year in Tirana , and the co-organizers are Jordi Montana and Cristian Fernandez , from Spain .

Also , I'm trying to make a big bang basically for this first summit because we have also invited Guido Prete from Italy and Olivero Drigas from Ireland , so there will be four MPFs .

If you could share the link to that event to me , I'll make sure I get it into the show notes so people can find it . You'll know that , of course , that Guido has gone and put up a website specifically for sharing events and where speakers can get involved and everything . So good work . I'm really pleased .

German companies mainly communicate in English or , in rare cases , in German .

I've done five plus three instead of three plus two , let's say , Bachelor and Master's degree . I graduated with maximum votes from software engineering and in the meantime , the reason why I took it a little bit slowly was that I was also doing Jiu Jitsu and I was participating in all the championships and I went even with the Italian team .

I went even in Germany and Slovenia to do some championships . I wasn't the champion usually , so there were lots of people more experienced than me , but I was a strong fighter . Anyway , I'm great . I won my first fight with only three weeks of training .

Full respect to you . I just want to talk about a second there . Your language , english , is a second language and how our community seems to focus around English . It's my native language . I take my hat off to folks that it's not their native language .

There's always this adoption of English , but I encourage you to produce everything you produce also in your native language . You'll attract people that are in your community . I've got friends in Japan , italy , spain , brazil , all over . I've often been asked do I have to learn ? Do I have to be really good at English ?

I'm not doing something because I'm not really good at English . The world is over-saturated with English speakers in the tech space . As a leader in Albania with your MVP title , etc . You have the opportunity to bring a lot of Albanians on the journey with you . Use your native language as well , because it'll build confidence .

They'll say , hey , he's like me , he's of the same culture , same country . If he can do it , I can do it . Let English be a secondary thing . I'm not saying move totally away from English , because you're obviously going for a global audience , but don't forget your native country , your people and how you can enable and power them .

You're so many steps ahead of them on your MVP journey , on your community engagement journey . I just think you could have massive impact on your own country .

The first time we organized it with Edith Kapsari , which is in Germany , never met her in person . She's an Albanian . She's working at a German company , head of the local division there . She also is a community superstar , even though she doesn't have an MVP award yet , I would say .

But we did that training in Albanian language , even though the technical stuff or the platform basically doesn't have an Albanian translation . And it would be a little bit strange because most of the terms don't even exist in Albanian language or sound too weird . If you talk about a flow , basically it would be like a river flowing .

As you can imagine , because it's a multilingual platform , they have got very good , tight controls around how you bring another language on so you could request those files , potentially , go through it , do the translation , get it validated by somebody else , because the last thing you want is an American translating to your language English .

Is this sorry , you're Albanian . Is this Albanian ? Is that what you would call your language ? Yes , albanian , yeah , so you don't want them doing the translation . Right , you do the translation and you go back . I think there's an opportunity there as well .

World is a little bit more complicated , I would say , because there is no official support for Albanian language yet there , and it is yet , but it is also a lot broader , I would say , in the technologies involved . So it would take a lot more effort , I would say , to actually translate the CRM or Power Platform .