 Hey everyone this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat and I'm talking today with Deanna. Hello. Hello. It's great to have you and for folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you and what do you do? Nice to meet you. Thank you for inviting me. So my name is Deanna Birkelbach. I'm from Germany. I'm here since 24 years already, originally coming from Romania. So if you know Dracula Castle, I leave about 30 kilometers from there. I leave it back then. Is the country as dark as it is in all the movies? Is this portrayed? No, not at all. Not at all. It's very light and very welcoming people and it's actually a ski. I don't know how you pronounce it. So it's in the mountain and it's a very nice place to have the holidays. Very nice. As I said, I'm in Germany since 24 years. My husband is a German so I've moved here and yeah, I work for Orbis in Germany since 22 years. So almost my whole life. Congratulations. Yes. Thanks. I know you being 24 years old. I mean, that's a long time to start working it. Yeah, my second life started since I moved to Germany, right? Great. Yeah. So the whole life. Yeah. So I started to develop with Dynamics 1.2. So from the beginning, I'm a web developer, made some web programming before and starting with the first version of Dynamics. And after that, following all the path to all the version of Dynamics CRM and Power Platform. And of course, now I'm very passionate about the programming part of Power Platform. So basically PCF. I make a lot of, in the community forum, you can find me answering questions because I'm very passionate about PCF part. And yes, second time MVP. And that's, I think that's all. Yeah. Congratulations. You know, having attended the Microsoft partner events, so Microsoft Inspire and Ignite, of course, those types of events, it was always frustrating to see the lack of support and expansion of Dynamics. Microsoft made some early on. Microsoft made some acquisitions and expanded out the Dynamics platform. Of course, Power Platform is taking off. So it's very exciting to see the growth. And some people aren't aware of how much Dynamics is that whole space is really growing, not just the Power Platform, but Dynamics 365. It's really gaining ground on its competitors, which is exciting to see. And then of course, the Power Platform, which is just exploding within the community and tremendous opportunity around that. So it's exciting to see that. So see that, yeah, you have your profiles, the PCF lady. Do you do a bunch of other things around community and on YouTube around that brand? Yeah, YouTube too. But basically, I saw my passion is writing blogs. That's the part. I think making videos about how to program doesn't bring you very far. So from the beginning, I like watching videos myself when I want to learn something. When it's about coding, I think the best is to have a blog or the GitHub repository, have a look yourself, stuff like that. So I'm more on that direction. Well, so you could talk about it all you want. And you can share examples of that. But people when you're talking about coding, they want to see the code, they want to see the script, they want to see the examples and work through it. So what was your path to becoming an MVP? Hard to say. And so I'm in this area since a lot of years. I just did my job trying to stay on the age, but I wasn't looking outside. But I think it's what the growth of our platform actually, because in the beginning, you heard a lot the citizen developer, and you don't need a developer anymore. And was the point where I started to look, it's that really true, because as a developer, you know what you did before, and you start to think, how will you ever do that with low code? There is a little more than that that you could do or you need to do. And there was the point. So there was no idea of fusion development back then. So I started to say, okay, so there is a lot more, there. And I don't read a lot about that. So I'm going to do myself some something in that direction. And it was the first time I saw the PCF, so PowerApps component framework, the base part of PowerApps, so the building bricks, if I can say it like this. And it was the point where it makes sense, again, that you can do both, you can do low code, you can do ProDef, you can mix. And it's a very good advantage of having both. But yeah, so I started to write some blocks. That was the starting point. There are a lot of questions from customers and partners around the world on this topic of what does that actually look like? Like the low code, no code, the blending with our developers. And some solutions are very simple. And a lot of the ideas of the low to no code is that, hey, anybody, business users can go in and very quickly automate different aspects of their job. But when you start, what inevitably happens with a lot of those solutions, somebody in the organization, a higher up says, that's fantastic. We need everybody to be able to go and use that. And then they find out that, well, the way that you built it may not scale the way that we need to be an enterprise supported. And what are our governance practices around all of these citizen development efforts? Can we support this? What if somebody who built 20 of those that leaves the company? Like what happens? This is a supportable model. So that idea of how do we bridge that gap between user-generated automations and what we need to support within the enterprise and the governance around that is a really hot topic right now. Definitely, I'm not that much in the governance. I'm more in the product part. In the past, I wasn't in consultants before that too, so developing. So I thought that's the point I'll never understand to the end. So just have an idea. It's enough for me. They are colleagues who are taking care of that part. But yes, it's very important. But also as a developer point of view, when you start and decide where you take the low-code and where you have to go to pro-code, it's pretty tough decision. And there are so many possibilities. I think you need a lot of experience to make the right decision. And maybe there is not the right decision, because for a lot of solution, you can go with a lot of ways. So since you've been with your company for a long time, how did you guys handle that? So how do you manage that? The governance. Well, from your perspective, not necessarily the governance, the program player over the top of it. But did you look at it from more of a programmatic, I guess that's a back way, back to what I'm saying, the governance around that. But how did you approach that? What's been your experience? Yeah. It depends. It depends on a problem to the other. I think that it's not the right answer for everything. But we take a look together to a pro-dev and a low-coder and a consultant. We decide where is the point where low-code is pushing the limit. Because that's the point will be hard to maintain and will hard to have a good performance. And there are some points where you say, that's not the right way. You have to go to Azure or there are so many possibilities. And yes, we decide from problem to the other and experience. Yeah. I think that's the key is having the conversation around it. As a governance guy, something that I think is lacking from a lot. There's not one right programmatic approach to this. It's the key is that there's dialogue that's happening and that you adjust based on what's needed by solution. But yeah. Anyway, off that topic. So what are you passionate about right now with all the announcements that we have ignite that's going on this week? So what things are you excited about in the roadmap? Of course, PCF. I saw last week already that in the documentation that the PCF will be available also for portals as a data set PCF. So a big announcement there. But I think there are a lot more to come. I'm not sure what's what ignite will bring to us. But I'm also I like a lot the idea of converge app. So one app, you don't have to decide from the beginning if it's a canvas app or a model driven app. It's just an app and you take the best of both words. And also from the programming perspective. I do make a lot of PCF so pro code. But I love the possibility that low code it's bringing me to customize that PCS. Because in the past, we have to make some tricks to define some some configuration in JSON or XML or stuff like that. And now we have the possibility to use the platform and configure like that. And that's that's very maintainable that way. So custom pages. I look forward to see what's bringing to the to the programmer or to the maker. And of course, PCF that would be the most interesting parts. Well, like anybody that's watching this post ignite, make sure you go in and check out there's a number of places to go and look. Certainly go out to Microsoft tech community and search on ignite 2022 announcements for power platform. You've made that as your, you know, your search, you'll find I'm sure plenty of the blog posts and all the official announcements. And I think that they're doing a, I don't know if you follow the book of news links that come out of these shows. That's always if you go to, you know, Microsoft ignite 2022 book of news, that that should also be published out that will, you know, encapsulate all the announcements across all the different product areas. Well, the last question for you, Deanna is that so what kind of what's your involvement with the local regional community? I don't speak that much. So I don't make a lot of activities in that direction. I just I'm actually, how can I say a virtual MVP born in the time of the virtual time. So it's not that much locally that I do. I speak to some conferences, but yeah, and that in that direction, not that much local. No, that's, I always say that, you know, be becoming an MVP. It's a, it's a black box. I mean, Microsoft, they're, they're all, it's not like there's a checklist of things that if I do these 10 things, I will get becoming Microsoft MVP. It's, it's different. And so there are people that, you know, back in the day, we were 100% of their contributions were in forums. They never spoke. They didn't write content. They weren't creating videos, but they were almost every day in their answering questions, technical questions within the forums. There are those still those kinds of MVPs that are out there. There are some that are like me, I'm more on the marketing, the front end side. I've been a product evangelist. I'm not an engineer. And so I rarely demo things, depending on what I'm talking about. But I write a lot, create a lot of videos, speak at a lot of events and things. So there's all different types of, of contributions. And I think that's the nice part because you can pick what's best for you, what you can do the best, and you still have the chance to make, to make a difference. Exactly. Yeah, it takes, takes all types. It takes a village to build a community. Yeah, that's so I have, I have full respect for somebody who is able to do that. But I think you have to, to have some talent and organizing stuff. That's not me. So, yeah, everybody. I like your, your point to this, like you need to like you do you all do me, you do you, you know, like it just to be yourself. And I think that's a, it's an important part of this as well is that, like when I talk about community, not meaning to like put you on spot that you're not presenting and doing that, the kind of things like the fact that you're blogging and creating videos and participating like that's all community activities. And you don't have to be out front. In fact, one of my favorite MVPs, I won't name him because he's a shy person, but he abhors doing public speaking of any kind. It does everything behind the scenes. But when the product teams at Microsoft have questions and others within the industry, like we reach out to this MVP and ask those deep technical questions. It's always, I always like to identify those, who does Microsoft go to to answer questions about their own products? And if it's an external person, like an MVP, that's somebody that you should get to know. They usually know a lot about their topic. Yeah, exactly. Well, go ahead. Just want to say a community forum. It's also a direction where I do a lot of stuff. And as I said, just, I think only about two or three conferences a year, because I do prepare a lot for them. So it's every time something new, but the rest are blogs, videos and stuff like that. Yeah. Well, hopefully as things get back underway, events are starting to fill up again. I'm happy to see the in-person events happening and hope to get out to your part of the world soon. I know I'll be over there a couple times this next year, but Deanna, people want to find out more about you or follow you. What are the best ways to reach you? So the Twitter or LinkedIn, that's Deanna Birkelbach. And the same about DynamicsPCF Lady, and you can find my blogs or my YouTube videos. And the same in the community forum, Deanna Birkelbach. I be there to answer your question and for that part. Excellent. And of course, I'll have all of her social contact information within the blog post and out on the YouTube video. So Deanna, really appreciate your time connecting today. It was nice to chat to you. Thank you. We'll talk to you soon.