 Hey, everybody. This is Christian Buckley with another MVP buzz chat. I'm talking today with Mike. Hey, how's it going? Hi there. Hi, thanks for having me, Christian. So people don't know who you are, where you are, what you do. Why don't you give us that rundown? So my name is Mike Hartley. I'm known as kind of heart of the Midlands in the community. So I'm based in Rugby in England, so home of the great ballgame. And yeah, I'm a big fan of Microsoft community. I always joke that I'm kind of the cheerleader for the Microsoft community, but without the pom-poms and the mini skirt, because that's definitely not an image anybody wants in their heads. And so, yeah, I've been working with Dynamics since, oh, version three. So quite a long while. Nobody else was working with Dynamics. Yeah, yeah, basically, basically. And yeah, taught myself the whole thing and got into it that way and then kind of dipped in and out as global economy rose and shrunk and all that jazz and found my way back into the wonderful world of 2011, then 365 and power platform and here I am today. And so you earned your MVP is business applications. Yes, it is business apps. Yeah, it's a growing area of the MVP community, but you know, it's funny. So I left Microsoft in 2009, went to work for a little Microsoft partner in downtown Seattle doing SharePoint migration and then got acquired 10 months later, but we had built our entire online presence around Dynamics and Hyper-V as well. And so we were doing demos and building out some really slick stuff. Although we had a small office in downtown Seattle and the servers for our Hyper-V were running there in a giant box. It was like quite, but you could feel the heat, the waves of warmth. Yeah, that from across the room. And when we got acquired, we tried to convince the acquiring companies, company Acceler to like, take a look at what we did with Dynamics. And I mean, you breathe on our website and it was automated and it was just a beautiful solution there. And they're like, no, moving to Salesforce completely. Oh, it was interesting like throughout. So I had been, you know, to pre COVID been attending in person. Every one of the partner conferences and every year I would spend time with the product teams going through and trying to understand what's going on. Is this the year? Is this the year that Microsoft breaks out with Dynamics and what's going on and are the investments there? And one thing I could say is like two years ago is the last in-person event. It was really starting to move in that direction. It was, you know, Microsoft's taking it seriously. I think a lot of that had to do with really since Satya came on board and came from that side of the business that Satya and James Phillips as well. Yeah, really driving it and pushing it forward. And I think the whole power platform just that that explosion of the whole citizen developer kind of ethos and mentality about building this open platform, which it always makes me laugh because CRM 2011 was kind of dubbed as XRM. You can do anything you want with it. It's designed more as a framework and that's what everybody did with it, which is why you've still got people who are still using it today. And then of course along comes power platform and it's like, well, actually, yeah, we were kind of doing some of this stuff back in 2011. You're talking about entities, which of course we now call tables in Microsoft parlance, but you're talking about entities and all this lot and we were doing that and it's been really funny to watch people get to grips with something that's just been kind of stuff that I've actually really enjoyed using over the years because it's just so easy to build stuff out so easy to get stuff out the door quickly that users can get to grips with nice and easily. But with power platform, all of a sudden it's not just business case. It's everything. It's people doing it for hobbies. It's I mean, I've I've got my home inventory. I've got barcodes that I scan in and I've got my home inventory in a power app and and all this sort of stuff. So it's really, really been cool, cool to say. Yeah, I know that there's a lot changing to the fact that a lot of friends that had moved years ago over into kind of the DevOps world and and Microsoft didn't have for a long time like a really strong voice or story over in the pure DevOps. So you had people that were hardcore community people Microsoft, you know, ecosystem people that were like, yeah, my business shifted over this direction. I really don't pay attention to what's happening in the Microsoft side of things, but there's power platforms you talk about and with dynamics, you know, in general, there's more and more of interoperability and data movement in between and of course partnerships with all the big players and sharing of data. There's an announcement of so New Relic just did like an acquisition and are doing more integration across with teams and power platform because they're seeing that, well, hey, collaboration is really important to the DevOps world. And there you go, you have data platform and business applications, you know, MDPs that are right in the middle of all of that mainstream mainstream DevOps activity. Yeah, exciting things that are happening. Yeah, yeah, and it is. I mean, it's just it astounds me what you what you can actually kind of do with it. And I mean, I've I've spent the last couple of years in particular focusing a lot on accessibility and building accessibility a fellow MVP, Mark Christie. He asked me if I'd look after the accessibility track at Scottish Summit for 2020. So rounding up speakers doing all the usual evaluation what have you and people always say I'm the kind of person who doesn't go half measures. I go all in on something. So it's like, OK, well, if I'm going to do this, I'm going to find out about the subject. I'm going to do a bit more in depth and I'm going to dare myself to speak on the subject as well. And so as I've been pushing forward, it's just finding ways of moving the business application space into a more accessible area for people who might have things like color vision deficiencies or color blindness as most people would know it or people who use keyboard navigation instead of mouse. It makes me laugh. That does because I was a keyboard jockey going way back when back into my childhood and late 70s and what have you it was all keyboard. There wasn't such thing as a mouse and you'd write code moving through the years in Visual Basic and Delphi and all those cool things and you'd have your tab stops just purely as a matter of course it was natural because a lot of us were keyboard jockeys. We still used our keyboards rather than our mice and as we've become more windows oriented Mac oriented app oriented. We don't use keyboards much which if somebody can't use a keyboard sorry can't use a mouse. Their experience of navigating apps can be really challenging. I mean I sit there and I try using the keyboards and navigating it's just like I I know I can grab my mouse next to me but I'm like no I'm going to make this work and I can't with a lot of stuff and it seems like that all people using screen readers. Yeah and it's it's just exploded and it's become a real real big passionate thing for me. It's just it's kind of the main thing that I speak about events and the main thing I'm blogging about or publishing content about I mean I do a lot about mental health and diversity and inclusion and things like that but accessibility is probably my number one topic in terms of blog posts going out there these days and stuff that I'm talking about and and it's just amazing what you can build with the tools that we've now got it's it's it's exciting it really is exciting. It's good to see you know at through the events of stuff on Microsoft is focusing more and highlighting that kind of content as well. It's interesting there was a building. I think it's with Microsoft is expanding on their main their original campus and they've torn down all these small buildings and building the super campus but one of the one of the buildings there like building 23 or 25 or something like that was where a lot of the accessibility like the lab was and so I had a friend that worked in that for a different group but in that building and I like went and visited him had lunch one day and I'm like you know what what's going on over in this site is like have you not been in here like come take a look at this that we spent about 45 minutes walking through looking at a bunch of the solutions Microsoft of course has been involved in a lot of that with like keyboard design and the unique the ergonomic stuff and you know but thinking about how it's great to see all those examples and from a product like a hardware standpoint. But just something as simple as the fact that in a you know Microsoft centric you know device and system you have the keyboard you have the mouse but I also like find when I'm working like I touched my screen a lot where I remind myself oh yeah this is not a touch screen that I'm more Oh I do the old song but when I'm working there it's like I find like I'm sure if I set up a video camera like the way that I work especially on my laptop and I'm going between touching something flicking moving things around mouse and keyboard controls of those different things depending on what the activity is but how much that's evolved and changed so that it allows people that are keyboard centric that want to be able to do things without moving especially I have my older brother had severe carpal tunnel he was artist and had that issue and so understanding you know that not moving you know having the movement and be able to do things be the keyboard versus the the mouse versus purely in touch screen it's just it's amazing and change dynamically depending on if you undock and move things around to make it more accessible as well some really cool things that are happening in that space. Yeah and again I think I think again such in a Della has driven it driven an awful lot of this. I mean that you go back a couple of years and the Xbox team release the adaptive controller and I remember seeing the advert with the kids who were gamers wanting to play games with all their friends but they might have limbs missing or or what have you and they weren't able to play or and all of a sudden you've got this adaptive controller and you just I mean I I I to this day I cannot watch that advert without crying because it just it and and then you take something that's as complex as that in that it allows them to plug in all the devices that suit their needs and their their requirements but then they turn around a couple of weeks ago and they announced the surface adaptive kit which is a bunch of stickers it's nothing more complex than a bunch of stickers but it just changes the way that people can use their devices and it's like okay this is kind of end to end thing you you're looking at devices you're looking at gaming you're looking at hardware and then you're looking at software I mean Windows 11 the amount of accessibility that's baked into that is is mind blowing I mean I've been running the preview on multiple devices ever since day one and I came to do an actual complete clean install off USB stick couple of weeks ago and first time I'd run the complete out of box experience booted and the first screen it's talking to you and it's talking to you about enabling accessibility features whereas with Windows 10 you had to go through about two thirds of it before you even got and the first voice you heard was hi I'm Cortana it's like all of a sudden the shift and it it's brilliant because as I talk to talk about this more and more and as I talk to people more and more I get people coming up to me and they're like yeah actually you might not believe it but I use these tools and yeah actually I that's really cool for me that helps me a lot and then I get other people who are just like wow we never actually realized but okay we're going to start investigating this and and it's really cool I mean you've got people like Donna Saka who is just I mean she's a force of nature she is she's formidable but she is just really driving it forward and and the accessibility team at Microsoft is just growing from strength to strength and the people that are coming in on board with it and everything else and you you've got Jenny Flurry and all all that and it's really exciting it's we're starting to see technology I mean the geek in me almost thinks it's bringing us back to Gene Roddenbury Star Trek vision of technology where it includes everybody it doesn't exclude it's used to include everybody I mean what in Mike I think you probably agree with me the first company to get like the little device where I could touch it and I could be like Cortana like right there how would that be have that connected why doesn't that device exist yet I know I know I'd love that I would absolutely love that I mean seriously it's somebody needs to come up with that because it will sell out immediately if all it does is connect to your phone and you have to have your phone within three feet of your whatever fine have my phone in my back pocket have the communicator right there be able to do translator services like right there directly to my earpiece and you think about that as well though I mean having having the translator services all of a sudden you're an in-person event so you go to some of the big Microsoft events when we get back to being in person again and you're able to communicate with people who you might not be able to communicate with because you've got the translator right there and you can communicate it there reminds me to is that I mean the Cortana stuff I know it's a lot of times it's gone under the radar but the voice controls is another accessibility you know set of options that are out there like I have her turned off here on my my machine just because it's super annoying to then talk about Cortana and then have her interrupt like I the others are listening so I'm oh yeah their name yes oh yeah I never say the names but it's it now it angers me when there's like an add-on TV or something that comes up and they do that and they think they're being funny and clever by doing that is just super annoying oh yeah so that's really cool though one of the things that so I do productivity tips so I've done webinars for years around this I have a good friend Tom Duff and he and I do content and things together around that and some of the most popular topics especially when we go and present live or we pull productivity tips across you know in the entire stack so office apps all the various you know desktop apps word PowerPoint one note we talk about exchange and SharePoint all those kinds of things but the accessibility issues again you don't you don't think about how pervasive like the need is for these things and might be people that that don't consider themselves or aren't physically impaired in any way but say you don't just find myself more productive and able to do something that's just a more natural way for me to work and interact with machines that kind of goes back to your point of what we see is we're starting to see we're starting to see a like a more of a merging of the human centric design that we've talked about for my entire career we've talked about that kind of thing and then hey look at this it's a new colored button in a browser like yeah that's that's not up yeah that's not what we're we're talking about but you know you have a lot of the IOT and the wearable devices like that movement is is starting to some cool things about that but there was still always kind of a disconnect between yes but the way that we really work I like what Microsoft is doing with like Viva and and saying that well we need to better understand you know within the context of these enterprise applications that we're working with how are people actually working what needs to happen next is the merging of this accessibility wearable IOT in with what like Viva is trying to understand about the nature of collaboration and yeah in communication that side of things yeah definitely definitely I know where that's what I'm sure Microsoft is is looking at that maybe it's a Microsoft research thing I'm sure they are I'm sure they are yeah well just we've got a couple more minutes but you know what was what else would you say about like your path to becoming an MVP because when did you earn your MVP and so first of October so yeah yeah it's so new my it still squeaks when I say it it's in fact I actually got my box through the from FedEx today so it kind of became a bit more real when I actually open the box but yeah I mean really my path has has been through just that passion for accessibility there's not many people in the BizApp space or power platform world really being overly vocal about it I mean when I get passionate I get passionate and I scream it from the rooftops I'm banging on doors I'm I'm I'm I'm slamming on desks and say look you've got to let me speak about this and there's some really cool stuff out there but they're not necessarily the people who would shout about it whereas me I'm kind of just like no no come on this has got to be important so that's really been the path for me is that accessibility and working with the community mentoring people just lifting people up and helping events work working with events working with some really fantastic people out there to just say how can we drive this forward what can we do how can we do it better and just that that constant learning that you're learning from me but I'm learning more from you at the same time and it's just that that sort of ever increasing spiral of learning that's going on it's been absolutely absolutely fantastic well and it's great to see to the attention being you know that again just it's an area where you know if people don't have their their needs meant to attend an online or in person event for example and usually they don't speak up about that and so to find that kind of that that that section of the community you know they're finding a voice for hey here's different ways of doing things and and people do need to be more vocal around hey this would really help me this is great that we're doing this and and you have to approach it the right way because people I believe have good intentions like we're we're trying to do things out the community we're trying to put things on there it's like but if there's something that's missing there just say hey you know it would be great there's this segment that is not able to participate in the same ways here's the way that you could go in and do that the fact that we have more tools we have more options we have more ways of of getting involved it's good for the community across the board so really appreciate the work that you're doing there. Thank you and the one thing I would say is don't be afraid by the size of it it's never going to be perfect nobody is ever going to achieve perfection with accessibility because it's not possible. But just take those first steps just getting to have it some work towards it and each time you do you you one step further away from where you began and it. It's just well worth doing. Agree is a might really appreciate your time Mike and and for people that want to find out more about you get in touch with you what are the best ways to reach you. So it's rather confusing but I am. I am hot three six five but that's H A R T not as in hot it's hot as in a stag and also part of my surname so H A R T three six five on Twitter or go to H A R T three six five dot co dot UK you can find me on LinkedIn Mike B Hartley I'm all over the place if if you search for accessibility and Mike Hartley you guarantee to find me and I'd love the people to connect with me talk to me I'll answer questions I love conversations I'd love to and thank you for having me. Well thanks for being here and we'll hopefully catch up with you soon. Yeah that'd be great thank you very much.