 Everybody, this is Christian Buckley, doing another MVP buzz chat. I'm talking today with Shane. Hello. Hi, Christian. How are you? I'm doing great for folks that don't know you, the three or four that are still out there. Who are you? Where are you? What's with the dog? And, you know, tell us about yourself. There you go. All right, Shane Young. I am, I guess, currently a power platform MVP. Been doing this for a little bit of time since I believe 2005. So kind of started in the SharePoint world, went from the SharePoint world to the PowerShell world. Realized no one would pay for anything PowerShell. So I left the PowerShell world, found this power platform thing, and turns out I kind of dig this. So I've been doing this for a bunch of years now. But yeah, you know, I do consulting and do training. We got a YouTube channel. You know, if anybody wants to go click on that, right? I can always use more subscribers there. But, you know, I forget 15, 18 million views. I don't know, I've kind of a big deal on YouTube. You realize how important I am. I need to flash up on the screen. They don't, you know, who I am meme. Yeah. Well, yeah, I was like, somebody just asked me about, in fact, I was in Amsterdam a couple of weeks back and somebody asked about or showed, said I remember that kitten t-shirt. I'm like, yeah, I did those for Shane and Todd. Like, I literally, I created that. And for those that don't know what I'm talking about, it was a line art drawing of a little kitten with like sad eyes looking up. And it said like, every time someone does a single server install, God kills a kitten. Yes, that's it. So I used to bring boxes of those. I was like, you guys would do a workshop at like the SharePoint conference. And I'm like, here you go. Here's 200 t-shirts to give out. Yeah, that was a, that was a funny one. And that one, I don't know if you remember, right? But that's kind of based off of an inappropriate meme that was going around back at the time that we just softened. Right. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, that was, that was great. Right? I thought those were the days, you know, we had the SharePoint conferences, we had TechEd, right? TechEd was still a thing. Microsoft would let people other than Microsoft speak at their events. Like it was, it was a crazy time. Yeah, those are crazy days when actual practitioners spoke at conferences and shared experiences. Wow. Right? Like, I mean, that's a stone age. We don't do that anymore now, right? It's only people that have no idea how to use the product to talk about the product. Well, the other thing I like is people talking about product that they don't actually have yet in their tenants and they're not actually using it. That's always great too. But yeah. I always feel bad talking about like co-pilot, right? Because for so long, you know, all these co-pilot things showed up in the Power Platform, Power Apps, Power Automate, that type of stuff. But the rest of the world didn't have it. But there was so much demand in the U.S. for me to talk about. Like, I had to talk about it and he'll be like, I don't have it yet. I'm like, sorry. Yeah. Thankfully, I think the rest of the world finally got the Power Platform. Slowly. It's on the slow roll. It's coming out. Yeah, that's right. You know, people get to it now that it's out of preview. But so what's kind of it? So you've got the show. It's growing. You've got your little YouTube signage back there. So you're hitting some numbers. That's all very exciting. Kind of what are your, what's your passion topics? Like, when you are speaking, what are you speaking on? You know, it's changed very recently. So I mean, I love me some Power Apps, right? It was kind of what got me on this current road and love me some Power Apps. But really in the last couple months here, I've been trying to, you know, do more and more with this whole jittery of AI. I don't know if you've heard about this AI thing that's out there. I've heard something about it. Yeah. So I am trying to figure out now. It's easy to yell AI, but yeah. But I'm currently in the midst of trying to figure out like how to kind of teach the masses AI, right? Like trying to understand it, not at just the superficial. Yeah, it does all the things for all the people. Just play with it. But actually explain, you talk to it. What is it? How do you, you know, what it can and can't do? And I'm having a lot of fun. I've gotten really energized trying again to, you know, you can't teach it to a second grader. You can't teach it. So I'm trying to figure out how to teach AI to a second grader. Well, it's, this is one of those things where people need to understand that there's a fundamental change in the way that we're going to be interacting with our technology. And so it's evolving right now, right underway. And so like I've been doing that going out and read the blog post. I bought, I actually paid money for an early e-book of like how to work with your chat GPT when version four first came out. And so it's just, it is a different way and you get different results based on how you promise the art of prompting, which I think is actually the name of that e-book. So I call it learning to speak as a love language. You gotta learn how to talk to it in a way it wants to be talked to. But if you do, you can have a really good night. The other side of that too is it's like, remember the, the when it was at Microsoft that came out with the AI and they put it out there or and it very quickly was twisted and became dark. And because people kept feeding it just scary information and pointing it at the dark web and doing all those kinds of things to it. And I know just generative AI, does it respond the same way? Do you need to be nice to, do you need to prompt nicely say please and thank you. You know, I am very big proponent. I teach saying please and thank you. I have no proof it actually does a better job. You know, there's some rumors right now going around that say if you tell it, you're going to tip it $200. It'll give you a better answer. You know, I think it's interesting, you know, because you're right. Like the early AIs weren't really AIs, right? They were filling the blank AIs, right? Like he's like, Hey, Christian's going to ask me. There's lots. There are chat lots. I just learned right. Yeah. All right. And just dropping keywords to fill in the sentences, but that's not it anymore. I like now it's truly, I don't want to say it's sentient. It's not, right? But, but if you think of it as an intelligence that you're talking to, like, I mean, it can process what you mean, figure out your intent and all that. And then it can give you a new unique answer. You know, there's a lot there and we're, I think we're seeing that from all of its training, like it's learned, you know, well, humans, right? Like they work harder certain times of the day. So it works harder certain times of the day or, you know, they, people respond to either really nice or really mean, but it seems to respond better to nice and mean versus the middle. It's like, you gave me half effort. I'll give you half effort. Like, and I don't know how much that's an intention or if those are learned behaviors, but it's interesting to kind of watch. Well, it is the fact that, like I've been using chat GPT for about a year and a half. So again, before version four came out, been a paid user of it for doing because they're doing a lot of tedious things like doing marketing copy ads, doing social media posts, things around that where you can take something very complex and say, Hey, generate three quick tweets that are different, you know, around this, that'll, you know, optimize leverage these keywords, kind of you plug all those in that info in there and you can just keep asking it, you know, create another one, create another one and they're unique and you can do your A B testing and that kind of stuff. It's great for idea generation. And so what's great about that is again, is that you as a writer as a content creator, you know, we get stuck so much with, I feel like I'm writing the same thing. I want to, how can I express this differently? What's a new way to look at this? And so it's a great way to break out of that. And I, so my first thought though, thinking of the technology side, I'm not a, you know, power platform guy. I went in and did a couple of classes. I did one a week long class as I'm going in and kind of building out virtual agents build out the power app and I realized like the logic side of it, like you have to know what you're doing on that side of it. And I said, this, this could be a tremendous help for that aspect of solutions. I think you've got a great point there, right? And, and that's one of the things that I think we're going to, you know, as we evolve, right over the next year or two, whatever. Now between the advent of the low code, no code stuff, which is what power apps, power automate, you know, all my favorite tools are. And now we've got this whole generative AI that understands those tools. Like the, the information worker of the future, you know, should be able to go in, have a conversation with chat, GPT, co-pilot, Claude, llama, whatever you want to chat with, right? And be like, Hey, help me, like, here's Christian's great idea for a business app. Help me write this out. And, and that's, I think that's going to be a big shift. You know, I know a lot of you and I both got a lot of pro dev friends, right? And they are all like, low code, no code. Those are toys. Hey, they're not. And this is just going to continue to empower more and more people who aren't traditional devs to build really cool stuff without understanding, you know, memory pointers and dumb stuff. Well, that's, that's the thing is I always say that, well, again, I think that the no code is a lie. It's a low code, but the steps getting into that the first couple of steps are like, Oh, I kind of get it. And then again, you get into the logic. You get into, I want this to really do something. I want it to perform well. It's a huge step. It's a leap there for most people that are not coders. Yep. So this could really help. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And that's, that's the great point there, right? Is it's a leap, but now they've got a friend to help them make that leap. It's not, you know, go watch 200 hours of Shane on YouTube to figure out how to make that leap. Are you saying you don't want people to watch 200 hours of Shane? Um, yeah, it's 150 is enough. So if you get to 150 mark, you've got all the knowledge you want, but yeah, it's, it's fascinating though, right? Cause once again, you and I have been doing this for a long time, right? People can see the gray hairs that both of us are rocking. Um, you know, it used to be blog posts for everything, right? Like back in our SharePoint days, I had giant step-by-step blog posts on how to do this and how to do that. And to your point, it was a lot of work to write. Now, you know, I just hop in front of this camera and I say, Hey, today we're going to learn about, right? And we just jump in and it's changed the way that I teach and it's also changed the way that people learn. And I think, yeah, you know, I think this AI is going to, in a lot of ways, affect again. People are going to learn. So for somebody who is, you know, I'm sure you still, we, it's MVPs. We hear from people all the time asking questions. I don't know. Well, the last time somebody came up to you and asked about, well, what's the process of becoming an MVP? Like, what would you recommend for somebody to go and focus on or to pursue that path? What, how do you answer that question? You know, I literally got asked this at dinner last Wednesday, so I'm practiced. Yeah. You know, I think the answer that I give today, which is different than I used to give, is it's, you've got to go do something that is measurable. Like, if you're truly just like me, I just want to be an MVP. I don't, at all costs. Like that's just, I want that to be my job. It's go do something measurable. So go get into whatever form that Microsoft is the official form for that particular product and just start contributing like a mad man or just put your head down because then the day when they do come and talk to you can be like, look, I've got 712 kudos over here. Right. I've posted 4,009 times. Those are numbers that those MVP leads can say, Hey, Susie over here did 712 kudos. He's pretty easy one to make an argument for. Right. You know, the older guidance of, Hey, just go and speak and be part of the community. Like you should do that if that's your passion. Right. I could write because saying I want to just be an MVP to be an MVP. Like, you know, that's not going to end well for most people, right? But if your passion is helping people, teaching people, getting involved in the community, speaking at small events, speak what we share point Saturdays, right? They used to be our big jam, you know, that type of stuff, like that used to be a path, but you just find that that type of path is a lot harder to quantify than all your goal is is get the MVP. You can play a numbers game. I think well, it's tough now just with so many events and stuff like it's tough to get into a lot of them. There are a lot fewer than there were, you know, 10 years ago, you know, there's more online things to go and do, but you're right. But there are MVPs who don't speak at conferences that don't write a lot that, you know, like you could and whatever the forum is, and there's different forums, but like you could spend your entire, you know, a digital career inside of tech community answering questions and build a profile that way, just to your point, if you were in there, if you decided I'm going to be, well, great example is he was already an MVP, but as Hans Brender, who said I'm going to, he labeled himself Mr. OneDrive, but he went and focused on knowing everything about OneDrive and answering questions and creating content around OneDrive and kind of built it self fulfilling prophecy, you know, built it around himself. There is somebody who said to me and they recently became an MVP said, I want to be, you know, basically Mr. Syntax and I'm like, do it, like there's a shortage of content, tell the stories, like go and build it, be the go to expert on that product and then what do you do when the technology changes to what you said, like you've you've shaped, reshaped your career used to be a SharePoint administration guy. Many, many moons ago. Yeah. Right. And if you think about it, it was 2005 when I got my MVP, I was posting in news groups. I asked the guy I was talking to, he didn't even know what a news group was, right? Like that's how long ago it was, but to the quantifiable side, when they came and approached me, I had more, I had literally four times as many posts in that news group as the second highest person. I like it was, it was just a no brainer. Microsoft does a great job of identifying people, but man, it made their life really easy when they could just point to one giant number. You know, like today, my YouTube channel, I had 4.2 million views last year. Wow. I realized that everybody can make a YouTube channel that gets 4.2 million views. You probably have a lot more than that because you're. No, I do not. I do not. I'm actually relatively new to the, I mean, I've had some stuff, but I've never really built it up on YouTube. I'm a latecomer to that. So I'm more of a blogger. I hit my 20 year blogging anniversary in February. Well, congrats. And how many are you probably having clue? How many blog posts you've done? I have absolutely no idea. Thousands. Yeah, no, easily thousands. Oh, easily. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, no, but that's, but that again, I look, I would do that because I enjoy writing. I enjoy doing those things. It's so I'm not doing it because I would love to do more video production. Look at the people that have these skills like a Daryl Webster in the production value of the stuff that he does at a New Zealand. I mean, it's incredible. And the stuff that you do that Laura Rogers does. I mean, again, it's I need to increase the production value of some of some of the stuff. I can tell you, though, man, it is it is hard. Right. I look at some of those channels like Guy in a Cube is real big in the power platform. Right. Yep. And I look at his videos and I'm like, All right, content wise, you know, maybe, you know, we were similar, right? I think but but the production value that that dude has got is is tenfold mine. Right. And I've talked to Adam about it. I know how he does it, but there is so much work that goes into moving just incrementally higher on the production panel. Oh, it's just need to get to the point. See what I think the secret chain for you and I is hiring somebody getting to that point where somebody who because because I know I like Daryl is the same way is like because he's passionate about that and he does a great job and he cares about it. But I think that's the hobby part of that and I like I don't enjoy that. Like I hate PowerPoint like handed to somebody who can make it look pretty, provide the content, provide the words and I want to hand it to somebody that could then go in and execute on my vision. You're just a director. You've got the black sweatshirt on. It was just a turtleneck. You'd be even perfect. That's right. That's right. Close enough. I get the black sweater, but yeah. Yeah, I'm with you man and that and I think that's one of the hard parts about what outsourcing it right is letting go though, you know, like I look at the last video I edited and I'm just like they wouldn't have known that they should have spliced out that one word like, you know, I mean, but they probably would have but but in my head, I know on the planet, but me could understand that that one word can be dropped out to make this go more concise and feel better and I don't know. I like that's what scares me the most about trying to get someone else to edit it and in reality, they probably do a better job than I do. But in my head, you know, they've got the tools now that you literally that you can go in and edit the transcript and AI will actually modify the video, make it look and sound like that word you just removed or the word you added like it was there all along and I mean, it's not perfect, but it's good enough. Yeah, so we'll soon we'll be able to cut a video, go back and look at the transcript, delete the ums and Oz or a phrasing that was in there or hey, I got I said Steve instead of Stephen go in and modify that and it will just automatically change it within the video and then publish it'll we're getting there very quickly. Well, absolutely. I there's a tool that I tried a couple of months ago, um, page in or something like that. It was an AI tool that I uploaded one of my videos and it would just convert it to another language. I was going to convert it straight to Spanish and it like relip syncs your lips. Oh, I've seen something like that. Yeah, you know, and so I did it and I watched and I like, all right, that was fine. Then, you know, we've got a couple of people here that are native Spanish speakers and they're like, it's like 85 90 percent. Yeah, which is not good enough for me to release, but to your point, it's coming very fast. If they're already at 85 or 90 percent, how long before they're 99 cents and we're getting there. It's going to happen. Yeah. You know, and I don't know how much you keep up with a YouTuber like Mr. Beast basically, you know, spends a hundred thousand dollars redoing every one of his and the different languages. And yeah, he gets a hundred million extra views because he's got it dubbed in Spanish and French and German. And yeah, well, this just came up this morning. I mean, we're for writing articles on techie gurus. There's a couple of the authors who go and Hans is an example and he will translate any article he writes in English. You'll write rewrite it in German and republish it out there on his own blog and gets thousands more hits. So yeah, there's something to be said about reaching those other audiences. Yeah. And that's what I would love to do. Right. I get all the time. So with the power apps training, I said training that power apps 911.com. It's all in English because that's the only language my dumb butt can speak. But all the time people like people like, hey, we want to sign up a bunch of Spanish speaking French German people. And I'm like, just don't have a reliable way that I think I could press a button or even spend a few bucks and turn this into German that I would feel good about charging you money to watch like turning it into German that you'd watch for free. Yeah. But, you know, yeah, but we're close. I hope we are close. I mean, it was what was it build where Julia White a few years ago did the hologram that did the multi-language and stuff. Again, that was, you know, for a demo and and heavily curated. But again, they're working on it. We're close to it. I mean, I'm so excited. That's one of the things that I'm looking forward to is like the Star Trek universal translator, you know, in your phone having it right there. I mean, it's coming. It's coming fast. We're going to get that. Well, and that's it. So back to our generative AI or chat GBT. I one of my tips for people is stop thinking about translation. Like if you need to go write something in German, basically say, hey, write this in German from this region and then tell it what you want. And like the difference between the results of something that is written in English and translated to German versus something that is written in German or profound. Yeah. Chat GBT can do that today. So if you guys are in a multi language scenario, I would definitely recommend you give it a go. And right. And not only just say German, but if you can regionalize it and really get into different dialects, even in the U.S. You can tell it like I have another one of those in my demos in the class that we do, you know, write this for someone on the West Coast, write this for someone in New York and it's 99 percent the same, but just the little little touches dude once in a while in the Southern California one. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like, yeah, you know, go, go hit the go, you know, if you're going to take the afternoon off to go surfing, right versus go see a play in New York, right? Just little things that make it feel a little more familiar. No long way. Yeah. Agreed. Well, Shane, really appreciate your time. And as always, folks who want to get in touch with you, what are the best ways? Where are you most social? Where can people find you? I guess I was gonna say Twitter, but it's called X now. So I don't know. I still call it Twitter. Me too. Shane's cows on Twitter. You know, hit me up on YouTube. Like I said, I'd love to subscribe and watch her there. You got to get more of these play button things going on. And then, you know, if I can help you with a power platform, we still do all or not still. We do a lot of that over at PowerApps911.com. We've got training, consulting, project, mentoring, you know, you name it. If it has anything to do with the power platform, there and soon, don't tell anyone, but we're going to launch a bunch of AI courses here. So we won't tell anyone. Excellent. Well, thanks a lot, Shane. Thank you, Christian. Good to catch up.