 Hey, everybody. This is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat. I'm talking today with David. Hello. Hi, pleased to be here. Thanks for inviting me. So David, for folks that don't know you, who are you? Where are you? And what do you do? Okay, so David Musgrave. I'm based in Perth, Western Australia. I am an MVP for business solutions. In particular, the Microsoft Dynamics GP product. And I've been an MVP since 2015. That was basically I had to wait a year after I left Microsoft before I could gain MVP status. Yep. Now I know that that's not always true. I've known a couple of people that left and very quickly got moved in. But I think that the practice is generally that it's a year. That's what I was told when I left Microsoft as well. Yes. I got told that there was a lot of calls for me to become an MVP because before I left Microsoft while I was still there, I was treated as an MVP. I was an honorary MVP with the with the MVPs and with everybody else. And when I left Microsoft, people called for me to be an MVP and it basically came back that it's based on my last 12 months of activity in the community and therefore I have to be out of Microsoft for 12 months. Yeah. So what's your focus area? So, well, basically I write add-on products for Microsoft Dynamics GP and I've been involved with the Great Plains product since about 94. Yeah. I remember when so when that acquisition was discussed when all that happened and teams started to and I worked with one team that sent people up to do some interaction with the product teams up in North Dakota. I still have never, it's one of the five states in the U.S. that I've never been to because other than, since I'm no longer with Microsoft, other than visiting the Dynamics teams up in region, there was never any other reason to go there. There's probably only two reasons to go to Fargo. Actually, I know I'll make it three. The people are lovely. So I have always loved going up to Fargo and catching up with the team. I have a lot of good friends there that were Great Plains or Microsoft employees or still are. But pretty well, I suppose there's another reason is there's a university. There's a university there. If you're involved in farming, they often have a lot of farming conferences up there because this is the Great Plains and there's a lot of farming related things. And then it's the second largest Microsoft campus now. So outside of Redmond, it's the biggest campus. I didn't realize that. Wow. Yeah. And they have a lot of other stuff there that is not Great Plains. I know they have a lot of office team teams there now and they have other business solution teams there as well for AX or FNO. And there's also sales and a lot of the partner support like the tele support for the tele-managed partners like those folks are out of that region as well. I know that they have phone teams there. Yeah. So I'm not exactly sure. I do know that some of it is related to office. Sorry, don't call it office anymore. Microsoft 365. You've got to get your branding changes. I'm not quite sure why they did that one though. I don't know either. Yeah. So I see events that started to incorporate the new logo with the Microsoft 365 logo as well. So like I was kind of fond of the office logo. I've got the, I have the black t-shirt with the white lettering says step into my and it has the office symbol. It was a great t-shirt. Well, I have a top from would have been from about 94, 95 that is says Great Plains and then Dynamics. So if anybody wants to know where the Dynamics name came from, it was all belong to Great Plains. And I quite will quite proudly wore that when they announced the Dynamics name. I visited the Sydney office and I wore that top just to annoy all the vision and exact to people that were in the office. Yeah, great. Yeah, going from for folks that haven't been to Perth have been Perth is so I've been twice out there for business and have some friends in the in the regions. And at one time I had I stayed over the weekend. It's one of those it's it. I believe it's like the most remote big city in the world. Yeah. And it's beautiful and I love we go up. I know what the park is where you get this park and all that right. It's just amazing there. But I was so I basically, you know, they're over the weekend meetings on Monday and Tuesday before flying back out. There's nothing going on on the weekends in Perth. Shut down. Yeah, it's probably better now but Perth can be quite quiet. It's it's there is stuff going on and there is stuff to do. But the the central business district of CBD probably shuts down a lot. You'd have to go to some of the more active areas on the weekend or evenings. I think it was a mistake as I was downtown and I didn't have a car. You could have walked to North Bridge, which is just north of the CBD and they would have been a bit bit of action up there. So, you know, that's where the nightclubs and the restaurants and stuff are so that, you know, there is there is things happening but Perth, you know, it's not it's a smaller city. It's not as going to be as active of something like Sydney but then you don't live in a concrete jungle either. Right. So, beautiful out there. So it is US so I'm used to, you know, you know, hot dry climates and I live in right now and I'm in Salt Lake City area so it's it's upper desert. And so like flying in and some of the places that I went out there's just beautiful love that. But yeah Perth can get really dry as well I mean it never gets free it below zero it never gets below freezing. I gotta be careful when I say that because for some reason you guys in the US user of a weird scale for temperature 32. That's I know what I know it I'm just teasing. I just it's like they're there as far as I know there's only three countries in the world that haven't don't use the metric system. And as far as I know they're all third world countries. So the. We get it never gets that cold, but it does get quite warm we we hit 40 which is about 100 I think in Fahrenheit. Quite often you can get in the summer. So we get quite dry but you mentioned Kings Park Kings Park is great because it's up on a hill and you've got a view across to the central business district, but also to south Perth. And basically the Perth is situated around the Swan River which is actually a flooded estuary. So it's a huge expanse of inland water and we have a lot of skiing and jet skiing and sailing and kayaking and all kinds of water sports and and there's cycle paths all around the river. It is a great city to live in and and just a great place to bring a family up. Yep. Well, what kind of so we kind of talked a little bit already about your path to becoming an MVP as far as after leaving Microsoft but what was what were the kinds of activities that you're involved in I always like to ask. There's always patterns of course with the MVPs brought those things but what was it that kind of that you the things that you did in the community to get involved. So, for those of you who don't know me I should go back a little bit in time but I've been involved with the the Great Plains now Dynamics GP products since about 94. I worked with a company called sequel technology for five years and about 90 from 94 to 99. And then I created Winthrop development consultants or Winthrop dexterity consultants, which was my business I ran that for two years and eventually I was writing I was being a developer and writing add-ons for GP. And then I sold my products to some to Microsoft some to another ISV and I was employed by Microsoft. And I, you know, when when the Australian GST came in I wrote as a consultant I wrote all of the specific handling for the GST and Microsoft employed me to look after that, as well as the other products the security related products that they purchased from me. So, I spent 14 years without a soul working at Microsoft. I was come back. I, by the time I was made redundant. My, I was ready for a change anyway and I'd already planned that I would restart my old business rebranded as development consultants I didn't have to explain what dexterity was being the programming language behind GP for those who don't know. I, while I was probably was mainly like I was always quite involved with forums and answering questions. And even before I joined Microsoft, I was, I went to the conferences and I presented some development techniques I actually worked a cross dictionary development technique out before it was even supported by the product. I didn't have a hack but it worked and it actually opened up a way for ISVs to write code that could work with other ISVs products. And so I presented that at conference sessions for then when I was with Microsoft for a while, I wasn't allowed to go to conferences because it didn't actually fit in with my role, as far as my management was concerned. So basically the Fargo team asked my management, can we have David come over and present for us. And I'm so glad that they did because that basically started my journey to become an MVP. Because then I started coming over and presenting and my sessions were the most popular sessions at that conference. So I got invited back. So then I was started seeing the community again and not just being hidden away in Australia. And I answered forums. And while I was at one of these conferences, I was taking a session on, it was actually, I was a student being taught some development techniques with Visual Studio working with GP. And during that session, the guy who was doing it had a blog and every now and then if something came up, he would just make a note to himself to blog something. And I had always said I didn't want to be able to do a blog. No one is interested in what I ate for breakfast. But then I saw the difference between a diary sort of blog and a technical blog. And that opened my eyes. And it was actually after that conference because what I used to do is I used to have, you know, some articles and I used to continuously or answers written in. It was actually a notepad, but I would go look up these answers and repost them on forums all the time and say the same things all the time. And so then sort of the light bulb went off and it was like, if I write that as a blog, I can now point people to the blog and just on the forum just say go have a look at this article. I think it answers your problem. And so suddenly I entered the world of blogging and, you know, it's quite a lot of work to write blogs, but the, you know, it's rewarding to see people get the answers they need. And when I go to conferences now, I get thank yous and acknowledgement from people saying that I've saved their bacon, which, you know, is wonderful. I go to conferences to grow my head size. So, you know, make it home, just get it get my head back into the plane and and that sort of lasts me another year knowing that what I'm doing is making a difference. So it basically ended up forums blogging presenting. And that was what was getting me noticed. So, and I was doing that while I was at Microsoft. It wasn't part of my role. And I got hassled by my management for doing this. And in fact, I also wrote some tools to to help the support team which then got released publicly and the community love these tools. And my management was saying you're spending too much time doing this stuff. But they didn't really have a leg to stand on because my team was meeting and exceeding goals all the time. So, you know, as long as I could make sure that my team kept doing what they had to do and I kept doing what we had to do. It basically meant that I could keep doing what I was doing. But a lot of it had to be done in my own time because management didn't back me up. That, you know, I so I've my blog has been going I launched it in spring of 2004. I've changed from tight pad over to WordPress and I've got it now host on Azure and thank you MVP credits for paying for everything. But, you know, with all that, during the time that I was with Microsoft as well because I had actually had a manager said like I don't want you wasting your time with without like what I do on my evenings and weekends is none of your business. Exactly. And so because I've always used it as a way to catalog like reading business and technical books and other interesting technologies and things that I would go and add in so it was a almost an extension of my memory, you know, by capturing that there. And a lot of what I do you brought up that point to but how you're you take notes on questions that are answers like the. So I do the same thing I now use one note to capture all that so I'll have all of my ideas and I'll jot down a few different notes I'll put a link to hey this this talk by this person this conference, they said these things and, you know, go check out their profile and get more information. So I'll go and capture all those things in one note. Then when I go back in looking what do I want to write about here and, and I'll find these pieces and be like oh yeah that's right I wanted to write about this and this problem that we, I had an idea for this. And of course I've also got the in addition to the one note I'm still old school have my spiral. It's a little difficult to get to but I do have a notepad with scribbles on it of things to remind me to and I just cross them off as I get them done. I do the same thing everything has. The, your one note list I bet you it's it grows quicker than you can, then you can write. It's very quick. And it's well that's one of the things that I do when I write one of the first things I always do and those that have seen these. I've mentioned this a number of times but I will often search first like researching to my own notes, like if I talked about it if I written about it because the other thing I do is I write my, my articles my blog posts all within one note. And when they're published, I'll usually remember to put the URL for the published article, but then I'll archive that so it's all still in one note. So I can go and search on my past writings as well as what's not yet been written just my notes and find pieces and because you know how writing is. Sometimes you have a complete thought, and you sit there you can just pound it out get that article out there, completely capture everything. Other times you have a few different thoughts, and it's best to not try to force it, but just walk away from it come back when you have some other thoughts about that thing and one note is filled with those partial thoughts. So it's great to be able to capture it and have that place and it's in the cloud so I can access that whether I'm on the road or at home. And, and often I'll go and I'll find pieces and I'll be like I completely forgot that I had written on a topic that I'm now interested in, in writing about, and so I can leverage those other notes, it's been a great resource for me. Yeah, I suppose my my writings are focused on GP tricks and development skill things that I've learned. They're focused on stuff related to my product range and one of my products has development capabilities so I've published lots of samples of the things that you can do with it then people can download those for free if they've got my tools. And then the other thing that gets covered is my hobbies. So, I did want to copy the couple minutes we have left we have to have to share I so we were talking before we hit record so I'm aware of what's happening here but so talk about your hobbies. Okay, so I mean I, I used to DJ, but that doesn't happen very much but if you were to come to my house I have got lighting lasers and lights and smoke machine and all kinds of fun stuff like that. Did we even get into that because that was we didn't get into that one because I've got a huge massive music collection so I, I have 120 kilos of vinyl in six boxes, all dance 12 inch remixes. And I have, I have SL 1200 guys so it's all dance I used to DJ so see. Yeah, I have SL 1200 turntables and a mixer. But I do it all digitally now I've got virtual DJ and a USB deck that allows me to do all the scratching and stuff so I don't have to try and try and scratch with a mouse it doesn't work. So but the yeah that doesn't happen all that often now. But what what I'm the other things I'm involved with is robotics. So my kids got involved with the robotics club at school. And that was involved in entering a competition called RoboCup Junior. So the Australian branch of that so there is RoboCup Junior in the US. And basically as a parent or mentor, you're not allowed to do anything. You can give ideas but there's no doing you can you know you're not allowed to touch. And so I a lot of the robots were built with Lego Mindstorms and so I ended up buying my own Lego Mindstorms set so I could play with my ideas. I've always loved Lego. I have Lego models in upstairs that I built when I was 15 that I have never taken apart. And so this gave me a chance to combine my love of Lego and my love of programming to create autonomous robots. And the robots have to perform various challenges in the RoboCup competition. I can't compete. It's only for school age kids from primary and secondary age kids. But by me playing with my own robots and trying to do the challenges, it means that I can mentor. And even though my kids are well and truly grown up and finish uni and in the workforce, I still mentor for the school that they went to. And we can show you some of the robots. I did go grab them. So I'll show you these two very quickly. These are actually sumo bots. So this is not for RoboCup as such. This is what we start our kids with. And it's basically they don't need to do any programming because the code's already in the brick for them. But they just need to build a robot that has to push another robot out of a circle as a sumo competition. And that's just a really good way to get the kids introduced to the robotics club having some fun and basically get their interest peaked. So we do that for the first few terms. And then after that they shift into doing actual RoboCup, which it can either be rescue or on stage, which is dancing robots. We don't actually do the soccer robots, even though there is a soccer competition as well. So but the robots. So this is using one of the newer Lego spike mine storms kits. But this is a line following robots. So we can see light sensors to follow the line. It's got a touch sensor so it can see if there's an obstacle directly in front. And once it gets to the rescue zone, it needs to have users ultrasonic to locate the victim, which is a soft drink can. And then it has the claw that can come over and then drag the can out of the danger zone. So that that's so but then we can go on so that this one is a little bit more complex. So a lot of similarities still has such touch sensors, but they they're floating so they can go over bumps. This one again has an ultrasonic sensor and a touch sensor. The claw mechanism on this one though is more interesting because just see if we can show you sideways. It is designed to be able to actually grab the can and lift it up and place it on a block which is a requirement of the open division of the competition. So and this one is created with an EV3 Mindstorms brick. So I've got a tractor robot similar sort of design. This has got tracks and it's got a spring loaded and you've got sort of you can see these guys sort of swivel to be able to go over rough surfaces. It has a claw mechanism which also can do the lifting. And this one actually it does have on the back even though it's on that way. It does have on the back a claw sorry a sensor so that this is going to lift in a second there. There we go. But this sensor on the back it's not part of the actual robot for the competition. But if I turn it round and turn it up and I pull this guy off, I have a little remote control and I can actually drive this guy around as remote control. But that's not allowed in the competition because in the competition everything has to be autonomous. But it just gave me it was like a little bit more programming when it's in standby. I can drive it around like a remote control car. So I think I'll show you one last one. This one is there's a video of this on YouTube because this is using mechanism wheels. So I don't know if you can see but the wheels themselves are made up of rollers at 45 degrees. This robot can move in any direction so it can it can rotate it can move sideways it can basically move in any direction. And I wrote a test for it which is what you see running on the YouTube video of it pretty well being a dancing robot because it can just move anyway at once. But this one was created for the maze competition where you're not following a line but a following walls and locating victims and it has a sensor array with ultrasonic heat and an optical camera. So this is getting a little bit more complex. So this is probably about $1200 worth of Lego. Wow. So it's it's a lot of fun. I know there's a few people like I'm over in the as originally a SharePoint MVP and there's a there's a few folks over in and this side of the MVP world that are really into Legos and robotics and and just a few of those things. And I know that's been a lot of money. There's a gentleman who's an MVP called Lars Clint and he he has an amazing Lego collection that he has posted videos on. And he has a whole room dedicated to Lego in our new house. I wasn't able to do that. That would have pushed the the marital boundaries a little too far. Yeah, I've already I'm my wife is constantly accusing me of being a hoarder. And I'm just like look I'm in a small space. I collect music. I have music instruments as well. And so she's like well you have to pick one and we move to the new beautiful place you're not going to bring all that's not fair. Yeah, how many kids have you got four but they're all gone they're all adults. Okay, you'll have to tell her that's like asking her when the kids were at home to choose one and leave the other three behind. I know. That's just not that's not fair. Yeah, which is why it's why I'm relegated to the basement now so it's contained all in one space but yeah. So I do have also this is a remote control toy. So this one's not autonomous it's got no no programming on it but it's remote control car with four wheel drive four wheel steering for the independent suspension. That's right. Yeah, it was why not right. So yeah, I don't actually have that much in the way of just general Lego models most of my models that I have related to robots. Or in this case I wanted to try some remote control cars, you drive them with the phone. So they're good fun. Yeah, good fun. Well, David really appreciate your ticket the time today and showing us some of your so your robots and but this also a picture of of your MVP experience for folks that want to get in touch or reach out to you what are the best ways to reach you. Well on Twitter I'm Winthrop DC. On. If you search my name David Musgrave you'll find me anywhere. My email address is just David at Winthrop DC dot com. I'm my blog, Winthrop DC dot com slash blog. Yeah, it's, it's all very easy to find me. I'm. Yeah, if you've, you know, Googled yourself with Bing, you'll quite happily see, you know, you turn up everywhere. Yep, of course. Well, David, thanks so much for your time and and I know that we're not we're I think we're another year of virtual MVP summit again but you know, I want world soon. Yeah, I would love to come to MVP summit I just need to be able to justify expensive trips I my trip to community summit this year cost me $9,000 in flights. So that's yep. Yeah, that's just ridiculous community guide to do that so yeah and I wasn't flying business or first you know. Well thanks so much for your time David. All right.