 Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley, doing another MVP Buzz Chat. I'm talking today with Lewis. Hello. Hi, Christian. Thanks so much for having me. So, Lewis, for folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you, and what do you do? Yeah. I'm Lewis Babert. I am a recent, or as of recently, a Microsoft Business Applications MVP. I'm also a Power Platform consultant and working at a Microsoft partner in the UK. That's very cool. So, when you talk about Business Applications MVP, what does that mean? What's your focus in the business app space? So, I'm mainly around the Power Platform space, slightly less Dynamics 365, but I do dabble in that a little bit in the customer engagement side. So, mainly the low-code space, Power Apps, Power Automate, Data Analytics, and Power BI, all of that fun stuff. It could be confusing for folks because there are people who are in the Power Platform space, that you just mentioned, that are more on the Dynamics 365 side of things. There are the Business Applications, there are Data Platform MVPs, and of course, once you're an MVP and you're in a space like I'm in M365 Apps and Services, and there's a lot of us that are focused on the Power Platform as well. And so, the focus of those areas where you come in might be different from what you eventually go and do for folks that are wondering and seeing like kind of the different areas that people come in through. So, what are you doing? What's your day job like? So, I mainly focus on, I'm primarily on delivery. So, I do slightly less of the architecture kind of side of like designing solutions. I'm more the actual developer when it comes to delivering solutions for our customers. So, I primarily work with Power Apps and Power Automate delivering canvas apps, model-driven app solutions, which sort of touches on the Dynamics 365 side a little bit. I occasionally do sort of step into the Power BI side. I don't really that often come across Power Virtual Agents or Power Pages yet. But so, I'm mainly sort of focused on the canvas app, model-driven app, Power Automate and Power BI sort of areas. You know, one of the things, there's so many great stories of people that came even from non-technical backgrounds that kind of discovered Power Platform and are building careers out of it. It's a really rapidly growing community area, of course. And there's a lot of great folks that were former MVPs that are now inside of Microsoft that are helping drive like that. Like Heather Cook, for example, that runs in engineering, does all the evangelism around community for Power Platform is a former MVP and longtime friend. Damn it, yeah. I know that as a brand new MVP, one of the things that you'll hear from a lot of people, I'm sure you're already hearing in the last week from people wondering like, what was your path? How did you become an MVP? What else can I do? What are the best practices? So what are kind of your answers for that? Yes. So I suppose I'll sort of, you know, start at the beginning of my journey. See, it hasn't been that long yet. So I sort of stumbled upon this space a little bit by accident. It wasn't really me going and finding it. It was more someone kind of asked me to take a look at something and here we are. So I was doing over COVID. I used to be a performance swimmer for my local performance swimming club. And I stepped out of that just before COVID hit. And so the swimmers across our club, they basically went into doing like online zoom-based fitness sessions with our coaches. But I was sort of still around at the club. I was doing some volunteering before COVID hit on poolside. But you know, once COVID hit, that was completely gone. And I wasn't going to be the coach that was there leading an online fitness session because I wasn't, you know, qualified in that area. But I did manage to get in touch with some of our club committee and our treasurer, who I started helping with a little bit of administration and just day-to-day club running sort of tasks. But I think one of the first things that I noticed quite quickly was that we didn't have any sort of like, you know, one platform for email, for collaboration, for just storing files, anything. We were all using like personal email addresses. You know, there was nothing in place. So I basically, you know, did a bit of research and went and found Microsoft 365 and basically said, hey, have we got a little bit of spare money for this? And can I give it a go and implement it? And, you know, it took like a couple of weeks of me going, oh yeah, by the way, we still need to look at this. But then eventually they were like, okay, yeah, go for it. And then I think I had like everyone's mailboxes, migrated, you know, teams deployed and all of that kind of stuff within like a couple of days. And then we just built on from that. But then at the same sort of time, I was in sort of sixth form in the UK or in I think other places in the world just called high school. So the US, I know they called it high school. And they, you know, in sixth form, you take our school took a very holistic approach to learning. So you weren't just there to, you know, go to your different classes and lessons and learn the subject. You'd also get stuff like, you'd hear about volunteering opportunities and all sorts of kind of extra stuff like that. And, you know, you get the kind of stuff like I could help out with a coffee bar at lunch or you could do some litter picking and all sorts of stuff. But I was like, well, hey, I've got these extra skills that I've gained through doing some stuff over COVID. And whilst, you know, my school cohort was completely written off because we were like that one at the end of our program. And they basically said, well, we'll give you predicted grades and you don't need to do anything else. So I didn't do, I had nothing to do over that period. So I was like, well, hey, I used this time to look at some stuff with Microsoft 365. And I know you're on Microsoft school. So is there anything I can help with there? And they basically said, well, over COVID, we obviously some students have fallen behind and that kind of stuff. And we're now, you know, covering this tutoring initiative that's sort of funded by the government where for those students who have fallen behind, we're providing extra support to them. But we have no way to, you know, log all of that data, book in sessions make safeguarding reports if there's an incident and keep track of progress and all of that kind of stuff. And they were like, but we've seen this button in Microsoft 365 that says power apps. And we have this SQL server over here. So we've got some data on these students because they're all part of our existing trust anyway. We basically want you to try and build something that will let us, you know, solve our problems here. And I was like, okay, well, this is like, you know, a big step forward than what I figured out so far. But I said, hey, look, I'll look at it and see what I can do. And this was alongside my high school sixth form studies that I was, you know, doing it as normal. Yeah, it was just like your, well, it's like doing a side project while having a full-time job. Yeah, literally, exactly like that, 100%. So I went away and, you know, my first month or so, I was like, hey, they want to, you know, keep all this data in SQL, which I haven't ever seen. They haven't given me access to. Somehow I need to try and figure that out. It looks like I have to pay for licenses for that. And that's not even free. So I'm real stuck on how to actually get started at the moment. And then eventually I just thought, okay, I'm watching these YouTube videos. People are, you know, creating these SharePoint lists and tying them to Canvas apps and just starting to build something. I was like, you know what, let's give it a go. Let's not worry about, you know, what they've said to start with. Let's just actually figure something out first and then I can go back to them and be like, well, hey, we could do it like this instead because your volume of data isn't actually that huge. So this is an option. And they didn't want to pay for licenses, of course, because, you know, in education, there's just not the funding for that. But then my journey sort of basically worked on from there. I continued to develop my skills in Power Platform and I ended up building, well, they did actually pay for licenses in the entire way. So I did actually end up building a data-verse solution for them with a model-driven app user interface and some Power Automate in the back end. We did some Power BI reporting as well. And that was my first sort of solution with them. And then I got in touch with another team that was part of our trust and they were the data and digital services team. And I was almost kind of like an employee alongside my studies. But I basically became part of that team and we built something like 10 solutions on Power Platform across our multi-academic trust. So it was awesome. And I kind of knew someone from my swim club who was one of the directors at the Microsoft Partner I work for now and basically just ended up working at a Microsoft Partner straight out of school. And that's where my journey sort of continued from. I mean, I did also have, just before I went into that position, I had one of my solutions from my school featured on Microsoft's less code, more Power. And so that was really cool doing a webcast with Donna Sarkov. So that was awesome. And then now I basically, I sort of started my blog at the beginning of last year or maybe December of the year before. I think it was actually Boxing Day of the Christmas Day of the year before. So I've been going just a little over the year. So that's sort of where my community work started. And then I just sort of started engaging more and more with the community. Last year I spoke at Microsoft Ignite, which was awesome. You know, I'm this year I'm doing 365 blog posts across 365 days, which is great. I'm on month 17. I just wrapped up doing the exact same thing. I'm going for September. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, that's awesome. I definitely need to go check that out. As you know, how hard that is to do that. Oh, yeah, absolutely. Do you know Tracy Vanderskiff out of South Africa, fellow MVP? It rings a bell, yeah. So Tracy did that. So she has that mark. I'm going for 731 so I can beat Tracy. But but yeah, I mean, it's so it's a yeah, we should have a separate conversation around that. And yeah, and and it takes a lot of prep and obviously, you know, ongoing. But that's very cool. You know, I was just thinking, though, how it's a couple of thoughts like one, no one talks about the fast track from swimming to power platform. Why is no one talking about that? You know, yeah, yeah, absolutely. We need more swimmers in tech. I mean, come on. Yeah, exactly. It's a bit of an unheard story, I suppose, a little bit. You know, there was definitely that huge bit in the middle of my school that helped out so so much. But there's something to be said about about taking. I mean, there's a difference when you're learning something is kind of on the side in this extracurricular. When you're able to fold it into your day job or in your case, you know, into your schoolwork and doing something on the side where you're actually living through it. I mean, that's one of the problems when I always advise companies that are looking at trialing technologies like don't do a throw away or a fake project to test. Like you have to pilot with something that's real. That has, you know, you have a desired outcomes that you there's meaning behind going and investigating that solution. But you learn so much better when you apply it. Like I started my first company, a real company with co-founders was started during graduate school. So again, it started as projects. It started as theoretical. And then we said, hey, this is actually an idea for a business. And we went and started down that path. And again, you when you when you are put in kind of everything into that, which is part of that that work practice. And you think about it differently than you do if it's throw away or not a real pilot. Yeah, I mean, it was so great that obviously I've gained so many skills through doing that and gained a career out of it. And they have been left with like 10 solutions that, yeah, they didn't need to hire like a really expensive developer for. So I think it's a bit of a win-win there. I mean, you know, they might not have like the most amazing governance piece around it and all sorts like that. But I still believe that even now, with my knowledge, now those solutions are still really quite good for what they need. And yeah, they're very basic level, but, you know, to match their requirements, they're not bad. Well, that's that's part of being a consultant as well, is going back. And if you're still advising them, if you're doing any work still on the solutions that you developed, but as the technology changes, as their requirements mature, there might be other opportunities for you to go back in as a consultant and help them. Yeah. And and then another common consulting thing, which you'll experience a lot of and is that, you know, they don't provide the upkeep that's necessary. And so it gets messier. And then they then need to hire you back in to clean up, you know, their lack of governance and management of those solutions. So there's lots of opportunities. Yeah, 100 percent. You know, you know, they not everyone will know about that piece of like, let's not just let everyone go crazy and not, you know, lock anything down, but still give them that empowerment to do to do stuff with the technology. You know, they might just say, OK, here, have everything. And then they find, oh, well, we actually want to do this properly now. And it looks like a bit of a mess. Yeah. Well, very cool. So so from a community standpoint, like, what are you doing out in the community? I mean, you're blogging, you've done a night. I mean, doing a session, hanging out with Donna Sarkar. I mean, that's a big way to kick off your community career. That's all very cool. Yeah. But what's kind of your what are your community activities? What are you doing out there right now? Yeah. So, I mean, obviously, that webcast with Donna was was fantastic to kick things off. And I'm really grateful to her for that. And so that that was awesome. And then obviously, I've started my blog as well. I mean, I'm running a user group in my local area for Power Platform and Dynamics 365, which is quite cool. We have sessions with MVP speaking with community contributors speaking with all sorts. And these are people that aren't just like completely technical. They're people that are in like the finance industry and work closely on Power BI sort of stuff. And so not everyone's like from a technical background, which is quite cool. So we do have like quite a good range of sessions. I'm also co-chairing NHS in power this year with someone else in the community and someone from Microsoft. And it's basically sort of an initiative and a community piece to empower the public NHS workforce, which is the National Health Service in the UK, and give them something else, you know, that they can look at alongside their sort of frontline then their work. And we're also sort of planning to do stuff. We're planning to do stuff like daily or weekly lunch and learns, all sorts of stuff, you know, hacks, all sorts of stuff that can give them that little extra bit and also allow the wider community to pitch in volunteer for different events, you know, they can suggest solutions that they might want to offer to the internal community of the NHS on Power Platform and all sorts of stuff. So that's a really cool thing that I've been lucky enough to be invited to do this year. I'm trying to think of some other. Oh, the other stuff, I mean, you know, you know, you get that sort of list of stuff that you've got to fill out when you're nominated for. I know we're it's the annual review process and go through it. I've heard. It's yeah, the because you've got to add everything in online form and don't leave it to the end recommendation because everybody's on there. It slows down the system. It's painful, like get it done as early as possible. Yeah, I think I'm just going to try and keep my activities like up to date as I go on. That's the best way to do it. Yeah, I mean, I've done a couple of other things as well. Like I've done a couple of webcasts. And virtual roundtables, you know, different things like that in the community, which is quite cool as well. So yeah, quite varied stuff. I'm probably missing out quite, quite a lot. I know that my activities is going across like four or five pages. So I'm definitely missing probably quite a lot. But yeah, that's yeah, a little bit of an overview. Well, that's I mean, if you're attempting to do the 365 and 365, then yeah, to pace yourself. I mean, you're doing a lot that is right there. But well, Lewis, I really appreciate the time you took to to get to know you and learn about some of your activities for folks that want to reach out and connect with you. What are the best ways to find you and reach out to you? Yeah, absolutely. You can have been best way is to head over to my blog locoedluis.com. I've got my links for LinkedIn, Twitter, all sorts like that on there. My tagline is locoedluis. So you'll find me on Twitter like that as well. I mean, Google search for that. You can probably see that's easy. Yep. That's absolutely. Tagline locoedluis. Well, Lewis is great connecting and we'll talk to you soon. Awesome. Thank you so much, Christian.