 Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat interview and I'm talking with Natalie. Hello. Hello. Nice to meet you. Thanks for having me. It's great to have you and always great to talk to brand new MVPs weeks in. So thank you for joining me. For folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you and what do you do? So my name is Natalie Lainers. I'm from the Netherlands. I work for a chemical company as a power platform developer, but I didn't actually start out in automation. So I have a change management ITIL, it's more of a reporting IT background. And before that, I was actually a hairdresser. So I went from hairdresser. It's not often talked about is that that huge jump from hairdressing into technology. Oh yeah. Oh yeah. I went from all female education to a mostly male education. So I became a hairdresser, did that for a year, got back issues, neck issues. So I stopped, I quit. And then I did IT school for about three years. Then I started working in IT. I did change management, ITIL things. And I gradually rolled on to doing SharePoint management by OPI. I did a few info platforms. And then about three years ago, somebody gave me a call like, hey, there's a position open within the automation team. Are you interested? And I had no clue what it was. And I applied like, hey, I know Power BI. I mean, maybe that's enough. And they hired me. So I had to learn on the job. And through that, I got to know the community, all of the online learning and everything that's out there. Then I started my own website and lo and behold, became an MVP about two weeks ago. So that's kind of. Well, congratulations. Me in the nutshell. Thank you. You know, it's also, I love seeing, so a lot of MVPs that work for ISVs, independent software companies or consulting companies, it's always great to see MVPs that are out in industry. So actually doing the, not that the rest of us don't do the job, but it's just, it's a little bit different. You're in industry, you're out there with the company. So how important is that role? Like how big is it to have an automation team? How big is that team? What do you guys kind of own? We have quite a big, big automation team and our focus is on replacing legacy apps because we're quite an older company. And it's also on enhancing the productivity and doing different automation. So we get request after request, I'm currently working on six different projects. So it really depends on whatever comes in or we see a business need and whatever I learn on the job, I then convert into a blog post or in a session without company details, of course. But it's still, every time I learn a new trick, I try and share that out to everybody else. So in your company, I'm interested in this because from a governance standpoint, I mean, a problem for a lot of organizations where they have, you know, citizen developers across the organization could be developing solutions. Do they like centrally hand that off to you to own that or do you still have individuals elsewhere in the company that create things and that are then taken over and managed by your team? Yeah. So we have both. So we have applications that are created and managed by us and we have citizen developers or people outside of our team that do applications and then we help and support them. So we have both. Oh, it's very cool. Well, it's that's a hot topic. I don't know if you it's yet another thing to add to your list of things to go in and look at, but there's, you know, the formally, what do they rename themselves? You formally the patterns and practices team that would look at kind of, you know, the governance topics around power platform. There's also the maturity model efforts that are going on. Have you seen into those? So there's there's a lot to kind of sink your teeth into. Well, talk to me about like, what was your path to becoming an MVP? We did. What do you know, another year? Well, this past year, I was very, very lucky and fortunate to be going to the power platform conference in Orlando, Florida. And when when I got there, I was just so amazed that everybody that was there and they were sharing information, sharing, sharing is caring. And with all of the MVPs and Microsoft people that were there and I met somebody there that became my mentor and this person helped me out. And he was like, well, if you want to do a website, if you want to do sessions, go for it. So a month later in November, I started my own website, started sharing tips and tricks and tips that I had on the job. It's a good name drop, by the way. You can say who it is. Is it a fellow MVP or is it somebody to remain on? It is somebody within Microsoft that helped me out. And then from there, I started doing more. I did user group things. I started doing demos. And then this person was like, hey, I want to nominate you for MVP. And that was in March or in February, even. And I was like, no, I mean, I'm not ready. I mean, ready as you'll ever be, but it's more, I mean, I've only been part of the community since September, October or November. So I haven't really done that much in my opinion. But he's like, no, no, no, you've done plenty. I'm going to nominate you. And if it doesn't happen now, it will happen later on. And then two months later, I got awarded MVP. That is great. Well, yeah, I always tell people, too, it's like, look, it is a bit of a black box of the process and things around there. And they go back and they look at your prior year of work. But I mean, to your Microsoft contact, it was six months. Right. But the body of work is substantial. That doesn't matter around time. There's actually, there have been people, I know, somebody who left Microsoft in less than three months later, that they were doing so much in the community outside of their job as a Microsoft employee that it just it was substantial and left Microsoft pretty much instantly and became an MVP. But it's so I mean, that's why I say it's a black box. Like it's different for everybody and kind of the path to it. So it's always just interesting to kind of learn the path. And that, again, is say, you don't have to be an expert on all things, but the sharing out loud, making it very visible, the things that you're doing, and your learning journey. But that's what the community needs is more people sharing their journey. Yeah. And also, I mean, the word expert in itself, I mean, the technology is constantly changing. There's so many different changes and aspects to the technology. So if somebody asked me, hey, are you an expert in this and that? And my answer is always, well, I know a thing or two. Maybe I can help you because there's always somebody smarter or there's another change out there or different feature you haven't looked at yet. So I'm always kind of on the fence with the term expert. Yeah. And I will say that for MVPs, you have to be especially careful because I'll hear a question to something. And the first thing I think is like, all right, I remember how it was. I know that there's been a lot developed. And then I try to think, is that public information yet? And I have to go and search just to find out, OK, that is public. I could talk about that. And yeah. So I mean, there's definitely things around SharePoint, around Viva, things that I loved it. I'm waiting to be able to share this stuff when it becomes generally available. But that's yeah. So that's something that, of course, like I do monthly panel discussions on various topics. And I always give that warning and said, hey, MVPs and RDS that are out there. I don't know if you've familiar with the RD program, the regional directors. But be careful of your NDAs and be careful about what you're talking about. But well, let me ask another question. So what are you writing about, talking about? Like what are your passion, features, technologies right now? So my initial passion was Power BI and reporting and sharing on that. But when I actually started doing my blog, I realized I couldn't think of any content for Power BI to post. And I found myself posting Power Automate things because I was working on Power Automates for projects and got tips and tricks there. But I'm really passionate about helping other people. So I volunteered, or at least I offered to volunteer for all of the sharing and scaring sessions. I'm a mentor for somebody. And I'm always open to doing a use group session or being on a panel somewhere to try and share the knowledge. So it's not necessarily the technology that I'm focused on. It's more on explaining how something works in regular non-technical jargon. So my parents are both non-technical. You could say eight technical. And I'm used to explaining to them in regular language how something works. And that's something that I try and do in my blog posts and in my sessions as well so that everybody from every single level can understand what I'm saying and learn from that. Yeah. And speaking of using natural language, are you starting to use any of the open AI, the ChatGPT type capabilities to? A little bit. A little bit. Well, what I had last week, I had a query that wasn't working on Power Automate. And I asked ChatGPT, like, hey, write me a query that does this and this. And it gave me a non-existence PowerFX function. So it's not really there yet. So for some things, I'm using it. But mostly, I try and research on my own for now. Well, I think that's the good answer. It's like, that's the only answer right now. As a marketing person, go in and do things. It's great for idea generation. It's great for that kind of stuff. Like, I used it where I was creating a Chatbot. And I used it to help create some of the syntax. And it was correct. It worked. But it was a very simple request. But you really have to check the responses that you get. And I hear stories. I know this is a little bit different. But I hear stories about people that authored an entire book using ChatGPT. I'm just like, the time it would take to input everything to get some kind of unique and accurate result, it's almost not worth it. No, it's something that I may have used ChatGPT to come up with a session title. But beyond that, I don't go into the actual session slides or any of the information. So it's more getting a more creative input in doing a catchy session title rather than me trying to have it brighten my whole session for me. Right. No, it's great in summarizing the content that I've already written, where I'm writing the meta description for an article. And I need a certain number of characters. But yeah, no. Anyway, it's just always interesting to I know. Look, I know it's going to change rapidly. There's a lot more that's coming. And we'll see. I think a lot of people's perspectives will change once the co-pilot stuff starts going live. But we're all just kind of sitting together waiting. So yeah. I mean, I remember 10 years ago, there were these chatbots. I think she was called Evie. And Evie, back then, I asked her a question and she gave me a response. Then I asked her something else. And then I really got into the conversation that she was learning from other people. So she started talking about the force as in Star Wars. I was like, wait a minute. You must have gotten that input somewhere. So back then, even 10 years ago, 10 or 50 years ago, even, AI was already capable of learning. So I'm really excited to see what it can do in upcoming five years, 10 years. Yeah. Well, let me ask you a little final question here. I always like talking about the community stuff. So how are you involved? What are you doing locally and regionally? Yeah, so locally, I've been involved in only a few use group sessions. I've attended some community days. Globally, I've been doing a use group session, for example, for Orlando. I'm going to be doing one next week, which will be at my 1 AM till 3 AM. And I'm doing another one that's at my 6 AM, so with all of the time zones. But yeah, I've been involved with use groups and panels. And locally, I did one in Belgium in the Netherlands. And I went to Estonia for a conference. So that's only, as I mentioned, in his past few months. So who knows what will happen now? Well, with so much opening back up, it's great to see for folks that aren't aware, like the communitydays.org has that calendar. There's more and more events that are popping up. We're planning our event here in just South Lake City, Utah for February. So there's one in Miami that's happening a couple of weeks in front of us the next February. So it'll be nice going to Miami and speaking at event and then coming home. And we're doing, we always tie a ski day. We call it share ski to our event. But well, it's been great talking to you, great getting to know you, and hope to see you at one of these events. Maybe in Vegas for that power platform event, which is for folks that don't know too, that's the one that, the last one that sold out with 4,000. I think that they're increasing the attendance from their expectations are eight to 10,000 for this one. So it could be, I mean, it's at the MGM grant. So who knows how many people can fit in there. So yeah, I am really excited because last year, I was a first time conference visiting person, attendee at no clue what the community was and everything. I'm just all struck at everybody. And now this year, I'll be speaking and an MVP at the public conference. So I am amazed at everything and looking forward to giving back to the community. We'll be great. I hope to find you in the crowd down there if I'm able to attend that. So yeah, we're figuring out if we're gonna sponsor that or I might just be down there attending. So I drove down, it's only five hour drive. It's a beautiful drive, but I may be down for that. But anyway, well, Natalie, thanks so much for your time. Yeah, thank you so much for having me.