Vivian Voss on The MVP Show

today's guest is from denmark she works as a business architect at alta people she received her first n v p award in february twenty twenty two outside of work her words she spends time with her little trouble maker son and husband while trying to squeeze in some knitting and crocheting she loves travelling discovering new and exciting places in the world you can find her in twitter at vivian t and and her website at vivian dot tamon dot com welcome to the show vivian voss

thank you very much it's great to be here

excellent it's good to have you on the show i always love talking to people from denmark i've got two nephews that live in denmark with their mother and well they're not they don't live with the other any more ones in the military and ones in and media they're actually growing up guys now but yeah and i've loved my time visiting denmark but first of all before we go there can you pack for me vivian teamin because i got confused with your name vivian voss is

yeah

on the name but your team an is the actual handle

yeah well things happen when when you get married

they do

even eva is actually actually my maiden name i'm originally from astonia so having the name movin team i was actually when i started getting into community so that was when i created the website twitter handle and then when then i get married changed my name and though okay use the same one and then ever since been thinking that i should probably change it because every place is like wait name is maybe in furs why is that name so so you get to explain a lot but i actually think it's kind of fun

yeah i like it

because

it's goodit's

it's different so

a good

it's

conversation

not something you

piece

are

right

over they it is it's a good style at least

yes tell me about what you do when you're not doing it related things so tell me about the three f food family and fun

well actually i was about to answer when i'm not doing it then volunteering in it so but food family of ton i love food i'm cooking especially if i have a recipe in front of me then it usually turns out the best

yes

were usually trying to make foot together

yes

with a family it can really really busy recently so enjoying the few moments that we can spend as a family of three my husband is a developer working

well

in it so we're both also having our job as hobby so we're taking the small time that we have to other things so that's kind of what we have figured out cooking with me and a three year old son he he's kind of getting more interested in the fact of what is it that the moment are doing at the kitchen at once a not always

always

a safe option to have him there but trying

yeah

to always a learning moment i see also when we figured out that there's some stuff laying around like oh yeah you shouldn't touch that part so so yeah we're taking the whole food and cooking experience also as a family time

i like it i like it

otherwise

the

it's fun as already you mentioned i love traveling it has of course been a bit handicap the past few years now but i did that a lot before i also like to combine it with volunteering was volunteer at the rio degineero olympic summer olympic games in two thousand sixty

wow

got to experience speech vally ball at the cobacabanna beach could not be a better play to do that it was completely amazing and then i wrote a book about it so i like to push my

wow

boundaries let's put it that way so yeah

yeah

tried to find new things they haven't tried and then do it either fail or succeed but then i can say i've tried

i love it i love it wrote a book that's incredible it's a lot of work right

oh yes at the moment i think it's the half point point when you figure out is the reason why i'm doing this we why did you say yes to that at the moment you actually it published the moment you can see it in in stores or someone actually willing to pay money for it is as a really great feeling

yeah yeah tell me about astonio is that where you said you came

yeah

from

yeah born and raised in born in de which is the southern part of esthonia but primarily most of my twenty years

yes

that i lived in astonia ave been living the capital talent it's a very nice country it's almost the size size wise it's similar to denmark people wise in denmark you have around five million in the stone have point three million people very different lots of nature trees and we have wife everywhere

wow

one one point of that we attract people that a song attracts people is the fact that you can be in the middle of the forest enjoying bird sings and animals and then oh yeah i'm connected to if

wow that's cool that's very cool

that's so that's that's pretty pretty nice were actually like it married in austonia in southern austonia so i also got to bring the danish family over to sonia to show where i come from and he and they are absolutely loving the nature the people in austonia so it's always a good thing to

yes

show other people from other countries to the ragons and and where

what

maybe from a country that people haven't been visiting yet

exactly

so there's there's a lot of prejudices or ideas of how a country is and the it's good to see that people are like wow moment

tell me about how long does it take to get from denmark to astonia i like is it is it a direct is a direct flight or is it multiple

you can get the direct fight from copenhagen to talent which is around one and a half hour not that long or you can

you

take the adventurous trip where you can take a car or a land transport through germany and poland and the baltic countries which will we managed to do it in one and a half day but that is then driving most of the time we did actually have one night when we were sleeping next to the trucks very and not you call it safe feeling between them but but it was a very adventurous

i bet i bet tell me about alpha people and the reason i ask is you know i've been working in dynamics since two thousand and three so quite a while alpandyouknow i'm based in new zealand but through my career i've seen the name alpha people pop up time and time again more and all in europe actually tell

yeah

us just give me a bit of a background of alpha people and particularly what they do in the business application space

alpha people is originating from denmark it was founded in copenhagen and then it has kind of spread all over the world we have offices in europe germ and switzerland and the u k as well and then there's a to huge a presence in the southern america where where they actually have kind of their own company and it's actually one of the biggest dynamics houses that they are in southern america so that is it's over all a huge company in denmark rat trying to recreate the

yeah

a very amazing people that have actually been working with business applications for the past ten fifteen years getting on board and actually working together trying to break the silos of which is the fan and the sales part i think that is actually pretty amazing and also yeah on dynamics carm and marketing myself but actually getting to work and hear about how people work with fan or on the r p p side of things as actually it really exciting and also to get to work together

yeah i totally understand what you mean because my entire career has

i

been

yeah

built around the customer engagement products and and very much you know started off in cars base and of course power platform now but in my current role now i'm finding i'm doing a heck of a lot now in the f and o space and it's exciting it's cool it's like i think more and more microsofps move to break down the piece ram kind of silos at the product level has kind of led to it happening out in companies like the ones we work for tell me so so where the people do you do things other than

yeah

non microsoftech

not really if we

yes

take asia if we take other areas than it has been part of a bigger solution that we're trying to the issue we're trying to solve with a customer it is

the

primarily a dynamic or power platform that

well

we are were focusing on

well and i find it interesting that you say that you've got a big presence in south america so like is it argentina or

its brazil

brazil okay brazil because i know of one brazilian

oh

v p he originated from their lives in malburnnow diego but i don't

light

see massive presence

yeah

in the in the community of brazilians and or

no

you know people from the rest you know i know of other south americans that are you know living in spain for example

yeah

and they they are you know big in the in the bizet space but

yeah

yeah it would be good to see you know a greater presence in the community because i think you know diverse cultures always brings something new and unique to the bazepsumspace tell me about

definitely agree

how did you get into dynamics how did you actually know what was and i'm talking about the very first thing was that that point of exposure to dynamics

oh

how did that happen

yea that was

i was

two thousand fifteen i had just yeah i was during my practical placement there while studying for my bachelor

thank

of sales and marketing international sales and marketing and then i actually was working as a marketing assistant doing pretty pictures putting up stories and everything so i was sitting together with the sales team time and time again i heard them whining about a system something that

think

they had to feel an information nothing was working but the buses were always at their back they had no idea why they needed to do that and it was like again i had time aside from the from the works that i was doing so just look into the system what is so terrible about it and so i started off looking into it as from the user

it

a point of view and i thought it was

it

wasn't that bad but when i started more listening to the sales people i figured out it's because they have actually never gotten training in and then i then a bit deeper thing like okay what is the system who is owning it in the company and what is kind of the story behind it and figured out that the whole problem was the fact that absolutely no one wanted to do any about it no one wanted to take a responsibility for it or train anyone in it so it kind of made sense that no one

well ye

pretty programme

many

very pretty very i like that some customers right now called the dynamics that we have at the moment very corporate they have probably definitely not seen the two thousand eleven version so i would call that a corporate one but but then

yeah

i started looking and then i came up with something called the serum university where we took all the sales people who took all the functionality they was there and the i created kind of kind of like microsof learn is now for the sae sales team created some programs they even got a nice diploma in the end and they loved it and that we also kind of built upon so every time there came a new update or feed you that they went through a new model that they passed and then they

i like

they

it

could put it behind their desk say ho i've passed that so and the great part what i think is is it about the whole thing is that now i left for another company and five years later i could still hear i still have context there i can still hear that they're still running the ceram university so having started something

to

that actually still seeing value and

yeah

this is a great feeling

i love it i love it so so starting from there how

you

did you then switch to you obviously

yeah

your an architect now how did that journey to architecture come to from from doing that training to ultimately becoming an architect

well i quit that job when i went to be to be a volunteer in the summer olympics that so i took a month in brazil where i was traveling around rio and then was a volunteer and when i came back

i am a

then i had some time to think what i wanted to do but one thing i knew was the fact i wanted to research more on the dynamic area about the car mire so i took a long shot really long shot when i applied for a job as a technical consultant in a company in southern denmark on a island called el in the company called line which is producing yeah lineal actuators too desks and everything that you basically need to make moving and and i actually got the job which was one of the best experience in

yah

dynamics yeah so yeah i started actually writing about the things that i learned because working with a system

came

that was that old because in two those fifteen two thousand eleven version was already prety old

yeah exactly

and and then the problems that they raised and the solutions i could find and so that was afterwards i also led a project where we upgraded to two thousand sixteen

thank you

and in the end also ran up went through a project where we actually moved from on premise to online so within those six years or five years that i was with that company i actually managed to go through huge projects and steps in dynamics and followed the yeah i travel also that the product has one through itself and different possibilities and feed is that have come and are continuously coming from now

i like it i like it vivian i feel like i'd talk to you for ages because it's like in my mind i'm like i know i've run out of time but i'd like to talk to you about dynamics marketing and your experiences with that of course you speaking at scottish summit or you're involved in scottish

yes

summit as well which

yes

i think is fantastic it's great to see that in person vent you know been run in person this year again which is exciting before i let you go though tell me any advice you would give to others that think that they perhaps want to become an m v p

go for it but what it is just do what you love do it with passion if you just started flogging if you just started the interacting with the common it don't dare to ask anyone people are super amazing i was totally terrified of ever for everyone myself but just getting the first introduction saying you will soon within the community and everyone is so amazing

yes

so you love it efinitely go for it