 Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat and I'm talking today with Barrett. Hello. Hi, how's it going? Going well. So Barrett, for folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you, and what do you do? Yeah, my name is Barrett Blake. I am located in Columbus, Ohio area. Excuse me. As far as, you know, what I do, I do all kinds of things, you know, I'm, but I also do a lot of hands-on coding, do a lot of stuff for in Azure, Logic Apps, Power Automate, Azure Data Factory. All that kind of stuff, C-sharp, still do quite a bit of C-sharp around the edges as well. So that's a little bit about me. As far as, you know, my journey, I've been involved in the .NET stack and Microsoft stack for almost 20 years. Almost my entire professional career started off with VB.NET, my first job out of college. After that, I've been pretty much C-sharp ASP.NET ever since. I've been doing a lot of that stuff as well as SQL Server in Azure the last 10 years. Oh, sorry. I was just going to say that, you know, it's interesting because you see a lot of people, a lot of stories popping up of where the, like the power platform, building business applications is like creating careers. People that were, you know, on the edges of tech and then kind of are finding a very rapid path, a career path for themselves in the business application space. Yeah, very much so. Yeah, it's one of those areas that has been a lot of focus for Microsoft especially, but also in general, you know, the whole low-code, no-code solutions have been a huge focus the last five, six years. And I've found a pretty good niche there myself, you know, doing a lot of that stuff, doing a lot of blogging about that, speaking at conferences and just getting involved in the community around that area. It's a really fascinating thing. I think it's fantastic. It's great for people who don't want to have a whole in-depth coding career but still want to be able to do a little bit of technical stuff and it's a great area for them to focus. Is there anything different around managing people developing these kinds of solutions than it was previously? Yeah, I mean, there's quite a bit of difference I think, you know, just because you don't need to have as much focus for the people who are working on that stuff, you don't need to have as much focus delving into the real deep technical details. You know, you just need to really, the focus needs to be on, can you think logically? You know, can you figure out how, you know, what's this step, next step, next step, next step? And if you can figure out what the steps are, you know, where your data or whatever it needs to be, needs to move from place to place to place and how it needs to transform as it's going along. You can just figure out those things then the whole, you know, low-code platform makes it really easy to do that kind of stuff yourself. Sir, cool. So what kind of stuff are you like writing about and speaking about right now? Most of my speaking and blogging of the last couple of years has been around Power Automate. But I have done a bit of Blazer recently, something I've been really focused on learning, you know, being able to do C-Sharp in the web browser on the front end as opposed to just being server-side. I think that's really fascinating. It's one of those things that, it's had some, you know, bumpy starts, but it's, I think it's one of those things that's ready for primetime now. It's one of those things that you can actually put into production applications and make it work very well now. So what kind of solutions are you, so what are you doing for like, you know, internally or for your clients right now? Yeah, most of the focus for as far as clients goes is around dynamics and supporting infrastructure, you know, the integrations with external systems, that kind of stuff. Just basically being able to move their data from place to place and manipulate and organize that data in the best ways possible in the most efficient ways. You know, you go into these companies and they've got 20 different systems that all have different types of data, a lot of duplication of data between the things. And, you know, they've got one system for their customer rewards and one system for their, you know, their client information and another system for their human resources. And none of these systems really are doing a good job of talking to each other and, you know, power platform and Azure data factoring. So those other solutions that have come along in the last five, six, 10 years have made those kind of integrations moving that data back and forth a whole lot easier, a whole lot more fun. Yes, it's amazing though that the stories have not changed. The details and how you solve them is, you know, changes, but when I got involved and was doing data center projects, data center consolidation projects in the mid to late 90s, you know, it was the same story is that you'd see all these home built solutions, more home built than third party solutions. Yeah, that's diversified. But bringing those together consolidating data, giving people a unified experience, trying to reduce the cost to maintain all the disparate systems that are out there. All those stories are pretty much still in place. Yeah, I mean, that's, I think another one of the great things, you know, 10 years ago, if I had to move data from one system to another, I'd have to do, you know, write a custom solution and take two, three months to do it, or in, you know, C sharp or SQL server or whatever it might be. And, you know, I can go in there in an afternoon and Azure data factory and do the same thing that took me three months, 10 years ago. It's great. I love it. Well, and plus, depending on the system and there's a lot of third party tools to move. So actually, where I got, I started out as a SharePoint MVP, working for a migration vendor. And so, yeah, to see how that's come along where people come from these obscures, I mean, occasionally people would come to me and say, Oh, we're on this system, I'm like, I have never heard of that thing, I have no idea what you're talking about. Well, does it migrate over? It's like, how would I know that? I don't know, because, you know, but it's, yeah, the endless complexity is job security for many of us. Yeah, and then there's still the pain points, you know, there's a system a couple of years ago that had no APIs, no external connections whatsoever. And I had to write a custom solution to actually go into the database that was on the back end and figure out where to find the information I needed. So, you know, there's still a lot of painful things, but thankfully most modern systems are including those kinds of APIs that are needed to interact with one another. And then you just got those middle platforms that make it easy to actually connect to them and move it. Yeah, that was it was, I think that the idea of the old school thinking for those vendors was that, you know, lock customers in and we started to see that transition. It was like 20 years ago where customers kind of pushed back and said, No, we want an easy way on and off if we need to. If we outgrow, if you don't fulfill your SLAs, whatever, we need to be able to get back out of that system. Yeah, exactly. Well, very cool. So, so, Barrett, what else are you doing out in the community? What's what's kind of your activities? Yeah, I'm spending a lot of time doing speaking, you know, podcast videos, do some of my own videos. I like to speak at conferences. I spoke at probably think four or five different conferences last year. It's one of the things that, you know, I kind of looked at my career four or five years ago and I realized, you know, I've taken a lot from from technology, but I haven't really been given much back. And so I decided that there was time for change. So I started getting involved in user groups, started going to conferences, started speaking at conferences. I'm also a part-time teacher with one of the boot camps. And so, you know, I spend evenings and Saturdays doing some teaching stuff as well as, as, you know, providing time for those who are trying to transition their careers from, you know, whatever it is that they're coming from into technology. You know, I like to set aside some time each week to speak to people online and just do one on one mentoring sessions with people who are looking for that kind of thing. I do keep an open calendar so that people can sign up for times to do that. And it's been amazing. I've talked to so many different people who are coming from so many different backgrounds in the past couple of years, you know, teachers, nurses, manufacturing, whatever it might be where they've gotten fed up with the career, the path that they've had and wanted to get into technology. And I try to be a mentor and encourage in whatever way I can to help them along that path. Well, that sounds like a clear path for MVP. I mean, it's a brand new MVP because you just got it this month, right? Yeah, yeah, it's actually just a couple of weeks ago. Congratulations on that. Yeah, it wasn't, you know, like I said, my whole background is Microsoft, but Microsoft stack, but it's never been a priority for me to pursue MVP or certifications until the last couple of years when I thought, you know, that's the way to go. I was talking to somebody last week interviewing who's been a five or seven time MVP and kind of made a similar comment. He actually said that, you know, paraphrasing but like somebody who wants to become an MVP likely won't become an MVP. It's like that's the sleeper cell for people that they find there's, there's something to be said about having a bit of humility but finding people that are doing it for the right reasons not because they're seeking after that. Yeah, exactly. And so I always say that, like, even if this ended this run I'm on as an MVP, if it ended I'm still doing the same stuff I will continue doing the things that I do I'm not doing this for the MVP I'm doing this because this is what I'm passionate about. Yeah. Yeah, completely agree with that. That's the right way to go. It was very cool and I also see so you have some so you've got some stuff in the back. Oh yeah. So, so here's the difference between us up my wife is a designer. She took down all my stuff. So I had quite a bit more. I always a joke that so I've got Grogu of course behind me, but that was my wife left it up as a joke. And I'm just like no no no you put it there so my designer placed it there. I'm not touching it so it's it's been there so she every time she comes down here. I'm in the basement, and she'll complain about about that but once a while I'll slip something else in and she'll call it out she's like nope you added that back down off there so. Yeah, especially like the Legos and stuff that's so I've really kind of gotten into the last couple years I used to have a bunch when I was growing up and my parents gave me away when I went off to college and same while it was just for my kids for I but you know the last couple years I'm like yeah I want to start getting some of those for myself and start building them again. There if you if you've not seen there's the new well new it's a few years old now but SNL did a skit of the adults that were into the new Star Wars stuff and kind of encroaching on the kids. If you go look up you know SNL Star Wars collectors. It's hilarious a little check that out. But you know did the same thing like my wife is just up we're getting ready to move early summer. And so she's like started now because that's the way she thinks she's organizing but I've got a couple boxes where when the prequel movies came out so when was that in the 99 days or when that happened I had little kids I went and bought a bunch of the stuff that I had when I was young and and but what we did is we took off all of the guns all of the removable parts like gun turrets on spaceships and all the things that would fall off or break off or get lost. We took them all off of them so we gave them these bare bones like the Millennium Falcon that didn't have the top flap didn't have the guns on it. The kids always complain about that like you'll thank me for it. We have them all in these boxes so we put them all back on. So I just did just in time for my kids who are three or four of whom are now married and two of them have kids now and they're like yeah dad I don't need these Star Wars things. So really I let them play with it for a few years so I could then have them again I guess. But it's all good for the for the grandchildren they'll be there. Yeah, yeah that was one of the things I kind of was sad to see him go out especially especially one set in particular there was a set that I had Lego when I first got into Lego when my very first big sets was called the Galaxy Explorer. It was like their first big spaceship kind of Lego set and they actually re released a new version of that this past summer and I've got it's actually behind my head you can't see it right now. But it's kind of incredible to see them kind of going back and revisiting some of the old stuff. Yeah, I'm just happy that the, I think it was the McFarland toys that really kind of took it to the next level with the level in real and realism and that changed. I know I know we're getting way off topic on that but that changed. And you don't have to be into spawn and I had a ton of the spawn, you know the McFarland toys the spawn stuff the level detail around those. I actually collected I was working for the phone company just side story here really short, but I was working the phone company and I got my first week and I noticed people had like the shelf with all the stuff there at the phone company. And I was like, well I don't have anything so I went and purchased a bunch of the spawn characters for the shelf and people would walk by and like what is this depth shelf or whatever. You're not familiar with spawn you go look up your toys and spawn and you'll see what I mean. So I didn't do it because I was into it, but just so I had something and then just kind of make fun of it of the process but now I just like everybody. I've collected things. Mine is a Lord of the Rings stuff. So that's what was up there all taken down. Maybe someday. Yeah, my other big collection side from the Legos is the model trains I got a huge collection down down the basement so. That's very cool that can be the expensive hobby is a very expensive hobby yeah thankfully most of what I have inherited from my father when he passed but he collected most of his life but I've also had quite a bit to the collection myself so. That's very cool. I really appreciate your time today for folks that want to connect with you reach out to you what are the best ways to reach you. Yeah, the two places I'm most active around LinkedIn and Twitter I mean Twitter is at Barrett Blake just my name to ours one T also bear Blake dot dev is my blog site. You can get to all my links from there as well. Awesome and of course I'll have the links out on the blog post out of buck the planet comment on YouTube as well so you watch or listening to it'll also the links will be out on on the podcast so well bear really appreciate your time today and hopefully will have a MVP summit this year. I don't know about in person I think it's going to be virtual again but eventually. We can start getting back into you know one of the things that I'm involved in is I'm on the board for a JavaScript conference here in Columbus that we've been trying to get off the ground and first year is great and second year is pretty good and then of course covered and we had to actually had to cancel last year but this year we're on and going to be doing it. Number seem to be on the right for in person events so yeah we're planning ours here locally as well. Hope so yeah it seems to be bouncing back and I hope it keeps going. Yep. Alright well thanks a lot Barrett. Thank you very much appreciate it.