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 the Netherlands . She's a Power Platform Senior Analyst . She was first awarded her MVP in 2023 . The interesting thing and I'll get to tell us about it is her career change into her role . You can find links to her bio , social media etc . In the show notes for this episode . Welcome to the show , natalie . Thank you so much . Mark .
Thanks for having me . Good to have you on the show . Tell me a bit about life outside of technology . What do you do when you're not working on Microsoft things ? What do you do for food , family and fun ?
So for food , I've actually traveled quite a lot and I've been inspired I'm a travel spy to Thailand , to Turkey , to Greece , so I like to cook anything beyond or no Dutch food basically .
So it's all big flavors and lots of herbs and spices and that is also a way for me to relax after a long day of work , and me and my husband actually do Argentine Tango Tango in the past three years for his ligament , his ACL , so we actually had to quit lessons and everything .
But Argentine Tango is a big passion cooking , watching TV shows and taking care of my cat , who is currently taking a nap next to me .
Nice . How does Argentine Tango differ from ? Where does Tango originate from ?
So Tango , I think , is French , but the Argentine Tango originated , I think it was early 1900s I hope my dance teacher isn't listening and correcting me but it was actually originated by slaves who wanted to have a way to have fun and enjoy and enjoy the music . So they actually started Argentine Tango after hours on the streets just having fun .
And I got interested in it because of shows like Dancing with the Stars . But I thought Argentine Tango was this big , fleshy dance with big moves and legwork . And the first time I went to a lesson it was 1920s music . Everybody was 50 years older and I got like what am I doing here ? And then 30 minutes later , an hour later , I was told it was awesome .
People were so nice . I love music and we just started doing lessons from there .
Incredible , incredible . Now you're saying you've traveled a lot and I find a list of interesting countries and what you've said Where's your favorite country in the world ?
I would have to say Thailand , yeah , because it's so versatile . There's such a rich culture and food and people are really nice and you can do anything . You can go from a water park , you can go traditional , you can go to a jungle , to a pool , you can go to Bangkok , to a big town , so you can do everything .
I hear a lot of people , a lot of tech people , go there as an alternative lifestyle .
They've got good internet and things like that and they can , you know , if they can get work , remote jobs , you can get all their lifestyle of Thailand , but you can still , you know , earn your salary or however you work back in the countries that you could , you know , as long as you have like a remote position .
But I hear Thailand is one of those tech friendly countries in that respect .
Yeah , definitely . There's a lot of locations with good internet and the cost of living there for us is lower . So if you have your own wage , then it's definitely doable to get like a really big house stable internet and everything .
How did you get into technology ? What's your story of your journey to tech ?
Yeah , so that's actually kind of well , I think , interesting . So I became a hairdresser and when I turned 16 , I went to hairdresser school and every time the computer broke down I could fix it . And during my hairdressing school I loved it , being creative and working with your hands and doing everything . But within a year I noticed I was .
I started getting back and neck issues and so I've worked as a hairdresser for a year but then I had to quit . I can do one client to clients and then I'm done my shoulders , my neck , everything it just hurts too much .
So I went to a school like open day for education and I found IT education there and I started becoming interested in that and doing it .
And two and a half years , three years later I graduated and then I didn't continue with a higher level because they changed the course of the education from one year to two years by then and I wasn't looking forward to sorry my speech doing two more years at school . So then I just started working and I was working for an external company as a contractor .
So I got hired by an accountancy agency , a law firm , a bank insurance company . I've worked for UNESCO , and then Kumorsk came along , a chemical company and they hired me internally about four years ago now . So that's kind of been my journey . So I started out doing IT support , incident management , change management , more the IT operations side of things .
I started doing ITO courses and just interested in that , like MCSA exams and everything , and then gradually I started to do a share point designer , info buff , workflows , power BI . And then I just grew and somebody called me like hey , there's a position open on the automation team . Would you be interested ?
Like sure I am , and I figured it would just be Power BI and recording and a little bit of Power Apps . And it turned out 90% Power Apps , power Automates and a little bit of Power BI . But yeah , that's kind of been my whole journey , going from IT support , change management over to the Power Platform .
That's such an interesting journey and I love hearing of people changing their careers . You know into tech from something else and really doing well , and obviously you're doing great . Tell me about what are the typical use cases that you're building nowadays in Power Apps or Power Automate and Power BI ?
What are the business problems that you're solving at the moment ?
So we do all of our internal work . So it's for commerce internally , and we can do anything from a reservation system to a packaging specification system , holding a very specific product in information , or we have . Let me see what else can I talk about .
Well , it's more internal to our men , so our manufacturing , engineering of the different departments , whichever application you would like , but it's also replacing legacy applications .
So I had a bigger struggle in replacing a piece of legacy software that had a data back end from the 90s and I really had to ask an older friend of mine with experience of the past 30 years to actually get the data somewhere , which actually turned out to be me moving into SQL , doing a virtual table and resulting in me getting selected for the Vegas
conference on the virtual table session .
So you're doing that conference later this year , I am . It's actually in 50 days . Yeah , I know it's getting . My boss just said to me the other day I'll listen , I'm going to sort of bow us to go there in November . And I said I don't think it's in November , mate . I said I think it's in October . No , it's October . Yeah , that's awesome .
That's congratulations on getting to speak at that event . Do you prefer one technology over the other ? When it comes to the power platform , are you more into power apps or more into power automate ? Where do you you know ? What do you naturally lean into and enjoy more ? So ?
so I used to be a power BI person . Then I started working on a power platform , developing power apps using power automate , and I would say it kind of leaned towards power automate strangely enough , because there's just so many possibilities with it .
And last week I did my power automate exam and I learned to hold up more about RPA , and so I'm kind of leaning towards that right now . But I would say that one that I have least experience with is virtual agent , but it's , you know , I mean the whole platform . I've started diving into PowerPages as well .
I want to do a virtual agent for my demo for Vegas .
So it's a really interesting package . What you mentioned , you did your exam . That's the PL 500 , right Exam that you've recently just done . How did you find that exam ? Because it's one of the newest Power Platform exams out there . What was your you know feeling about the exam ? What were your thoughts and hindsight on sitting it ?
I actually didn't find it too difficult . I anticipated that it would be really RPA heavy which it is , but it actually it's actually not that daunting of an exam . It's if you know . If you know how a cloud flow works and a desktop flow works and the difference between those and the possibilities , then you can easily take the exam .
Of course , there's technical aspects and different scenarios , but it's I think it's a really good exam .
That's good feedback on it . Now you mentioned Power Virtual Agents , and so are you planning on building ? Did you say a scenario out for the conference ?
Yes , so I don't want to spoil too much , but I want to do a demo on Virtual Agents how it can use a team's adaptive card in a fun , fun , exciting way .
Yes , I think PVA and adaptive cards inside Microsoft Teams allow you to address so many different business use cases and it creates a great interface for people to work with them . I mean , I call them mini apps , right , adaptive cards and the flexibility that it can give you . Tell me how did you become an MVP ? What was that journey for you ?
Yes . So I went to the Power Platform Conference this past year in September I think it was and I was just in awe with all of the MVPs and all of the Microsofts there . And I took a leap of faith and I saw Jules Bernier-Davies-Bornert just sitting there with an empty chair next to them . So I was like wait a minute , can I sit here ?
And they were like yeah , of course , sure .
So I started talking to them and getting to know about the community and sharing and the ability to do sessions yourself , and I started getting more feedback from them from Azure , azure , moog , farland and many other people and during my very first speaking engagement , ben Blanco was also there and he actually gave me the Power Apps in a day training a year
earlier . So it kind of went full circle and I started talking to different people about how sessions work , how blogging works , how websites work and everything . And then around February , someone suggested to me like hey , I want to dominate you for MVP . I was like no , it's too early . I've only been in this world , in the community , for like four months .
I mean , being an MVP is probably your process , or years even . And he nominated me anyway . And then on March for my work . I got promoted . I got selected for the biggest sessions . I was guest on the Power Platform Connect and then , in June I think , I got awarded MVP .
Wow , that's so good .
Has that changed anything for you ? I've been really fortunate to do some of the NDA meetings and getting the additional information and perks of being an MVP . But I've also found that it's so much that it's kind of a bit of a struggle to keep up and to actually use that information that's out there .
But I'm just really passionate in helping other people and motivating them , for example with Microsoft exams . So I'm hoping , with me now being an MVP , that they can feel that they can reach out to me for assistance or guidance .
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 .