 Hey, this is Christian Buckley with another MVP Buzz Chat and I'm talking today with May. Hello. Hi, how are you? Thank you for having me today. Doing well and for folks that don't know who you are, where you are, what you do, why don't you give us your background? Okay, sure. So my name is Mayil Hadri. I'm from Saudi Arabia, Middle East. And actually, I'm a digital analyst within Schumberger Company. I have five years experience with different two projects within oil and gas industry. And I started my journey as a board addict and now I'm MVP. That's great. I know it's a very fast growing community around the power addicts and a lot is happening there. A lot of great community discussion around that. I know a lot of community activities and events that used to be like very SharePoint or then Microsoft 365 focused are have expanded and now include power platform and, you know, so there's just more and more of that happening. What was kind of your path into becoming an MVP? So actually, as I mentioned, I started as a board addict on the social media. So before actually, I saw our digital engagement manager, Alan Chai, he was posting a lot of things within our Yammer. Yammer, it's similar to the Facebook, but it's for organization purpose presented about a platform to the power addicts community, the hangout session, all this stuff. So actually, I was like super jealous that I wanted to be part of this amazing community. How can I be brought outside of my company? Because I'm very famous within my company on Yammer as on the internal social media that we have it. So when I saw him that he posting a lot of things, I asked him like what should they do to be part of this power addicts community? Is there any specific process I need to follow? And he told me just create your Twitter account. And start to post and share your knowledge through the community and the people they will start to recognize you. And from there, I start to post a lot of things related to power platform, the troubleshooting, a lot of things related like for power apps, I build a lot of apps and share it through the community. Then I learned a lot of things from other people actually. And even I start to speak a lot of conversation with other community. And now actually, I build my own community, I call it sharing is caring with a meetup with more than 500 members. So a lot of things like it's coming because of the positive vibes around me because of the support that it happened within this amazing community. And from there actually, the people they start to ask me, did someone nominate you to be as a MVP? A lot of people they start to recognize me that I can be an MVP. To be honest, I think I was MVP. And why do we have MVP? Then Alan, he talked to me that because he is already an MVP, I think for two years, and he told me like MVP, actually, it's a Microsoft program. He started to explain to me the whole process that we have with Microsoft. And I said, whoa, so I already am ready to be an MVP. He said, I'm going to nominate you. And yes, he nominate me for the first time. And I still remember within the community that someone is in nominate me and I'm going to fill the form. I get a lot of feedback like, oh, you are not MVP, not yet. So they was like surprised about how I'm not MVP for a long time. So I get the confidence that so I will get it for sure. So actually then, many people, they come to me every month. I remember every month for email, just wait for the email, you're going to receive it. If not this month, maybe next month, till the September. So I still remember my reaction when I received it. I was driving on my car. Actually, it was first of September. And when I received it, I started to cry actually, because it's my month and my birthday on September. I'm going to share the video later on with you. It's really a crazy video. And I was really crying and I was surprised that finally I get it. Because I don't know that we have an MVP. When I start to share my knowledge, I'm not sharing my knowledge to get some awards actually, because my purpose to share my knowledge to others, because this is me, I really like to share my knowledge, to talk to the other people, other culture, other countries. So this is the main idea to become a famous or share my knowledge. So this is my story in a short way. Yeah, it's a very common story for MVPs. And I know that there are, there's nothing against people that say, I really have a goal of becoming a Microsoft MVP and getting involved with that. If I say the only thing wrong with that is if you're not kind of already set up, you're not already doing those kinds of things, giving back to the community, because the majority of us, and I say this often is that we would be doing the exact same things. We would be creating this kind of content, doing the community outreach, engaging and talking with each other and with inviting everybody in whether or not we had the award. It's, you know, so it's great to have that recognition. And there are certainly, there are great perks as you'll come to find out about being an MVP. For sure, there are benefits to being a member of the community. But again, it's, it's, you were already doing the work and that's, I had the exact same response. I had a number of people that were like, I thought you were already an MVP. And, and I can't believe you're an MVP. And because I was already doing the volume of work and the activity. And, and while I thought it would be nice to become, I mean, I was just, was going, you know, full bore, full steam ahead, whether or not I was an MVP. Yeah. And actually, when I get it, I will email with the MVP. I have been checking through the site that how many MVP we have within Saudi Arabia. We have only three males from Saudi Arabia. And it was like, if I become an MVP, I'm going to inspire a lot of women that around us and especially within Saudi Arabia. So now many people from Saudi Arabia, they start to ask me how, how I can apply to this program. And I'm super happy to help them. What kind of fact do you need to follow to be part of this community and how they can share their knowledge, even if they don't get the MVP award? So, yeah. Well, that's that's a, it's a great, I think that's something that, you know, a lot of MVPs focus on as well as a great thing to focus on is, is looking and finding other new MVPs. And so, I mean, it maybe that's just advice for anybody that's out there that is doing a lot and wants to get more involved and is interested in potentially becoming one is to talk to an MVP, talk to me, talk to myself about, you know, well, what is the process? What is the volume of activity, the types of activities that would be considered as contributions that would, you know, that could help to help you stand out and potentially become one and then potentially have one of us, you know, nominate you as well, because you do have to have a current MVP. I don't know if it's past MVPs because there's, there's actually, here's another thing, I don't know if you're aware of this, but even if you, you know, don't sustain your MVP and say, let's say your job role changes and you're just not able to do as much with the community, but there's the MVP reconnect program. So you're always, you know, plugged into a community and there are some perks, some benefits to the reconnect community. But again, once an MVP, always an MVP, you have the ability to participate in that, that community aspect. But, well, very cool. So, so what is your, what's your day job? What do you actually do? So actually, my current position, it's a digital analyst within Chemberger company and my main job now to focus on Power Platform, how I can automate the task for any product line or any department that we have it. For example, if they have any, like a manual process, I help them to, to make it as much as automation process by using a different platform. And actually I get my position, this position because of Power Platform. Before I was working as an ITO on site support, yeah. So when we start to have a Power Platform tools within Chemberger company, I get this position to be part of it. I started to post a lot of videos related to Power BI on Yammer. So Yammer, actually it was my first tool to share my knowledge within my company. And I was still ITO on site support. I show them like how we can do a troubleshooting. And I don't have any idea about Power Platform. Power apps and power automate a lot of tools that around us. And I was lucky that they, they provide us the license within my company. And I start to learn it by myself getting a support from Microsoft learning and a lot of documents that we have it available. Then I start to share my knowledge through the Yammer. And from there, the digital engagement manager recognized me and he put me to be as a digital analyst within Saudi Arabia within Chemberger. Yeah. That's really cool. So do you have any advice for somebody who is maybe they've started to play with the technology? Like, do you have any recommendations? If you could do it all over again, where would you have started with learning about Power Platform? So if you are new to the Power Platform, I really suggest for you to open Microsoft Learn. It's really a good side that you can learn a lot of amazing things for different tools, not only Power Platform. I started by learning all these tools by using Microsoft Learn. Plus, we have a lot of amazing people on YouTube. For example, if you are new to Power Apps, we have Shane Young, he is amazing person. I learned a lot of things from him actually. And on all my books, because really, if you are a beginner, you can learn a lot of things from Shane Young. So we have a YouTube just search like about Power Apps or anything that you are looking for. And you're going to find a lot of MVPs, a lot of people, like even they are not MVP, they are posting and they are sharing their knowledge and you can start from there, Microsoft Learn, YouTube. And if you have a Twitter, just search about Power Addicts, there is a lot of things that are available there. If you have a question, you can post it there. So now with the social media, you have like a full package to learn and you have everything free for you. Just make sure that you have the opportunity to learn. I know that like the Facebook, the Power Platform community out in Facebook is huge. I don't remember the numbers, like some like 30 or 30,000 people within it. So it's a great place to go. A lot of people just post questions and do that. Of course, you have your tech community, you have, there's other resources for that as well. Other places where you can ask questions, but then go and learn. But if you're trying to build a solution for a specific problem, it's probably been built before and there are people that you can talk to and get advice from of how to move forward and solve for that problem. So there's a great community and people should definitely leverage that community. Yeah, the other thing about. Yeah, like Power Apps Gallery, there is a lot of templates available there. You can just download it to try to test it out by yourself and you can customize it. I did a lot of things before getting the templates that are available on the Power Apps Gallery or Power BI. Yeah, why create something new when you can go and leverage the work that others have done around that? One thing I was going to say that I, like I know Shane, unfortunately if he sees this, his head will get even bigger, you know, around the place for Shane, but Shane is fantastic. And he, of course, his training courses are excellent. I've known him for many years and he does a great job. So definitely need to somebody should go and follow Shane for sure. But YouTube has been kind of become the default for there's a question of how to do anything. It's where I go first now. If I'm fixing something in my car, if my dog is sick and I'm trying to determine what it is, like I go to YouTubers. It's funny. Actually, last week something really fun. I need to change the battery of my key for my car. And I don't know how to do it actually. Recently we were allowed to drive within Saudi Arabia and I don't have any idea how can I change the source that I have it on the front of me. It's YouTube. I would like how can I change the battery for my key car. And we have 100 resource so YouTube is really a good resource for anything. Yeah, it's amazing and how obscure the topic that there will be multiple entries out there for that how to do that thing. So yeah, I was just looking that I was looking for there was a Twitter thread of like what was your first computer that you've ever had and you have so much younger people than myself and we're talking about you know my first version of Windows was you know Windows version eight like and but anyway so like and I of course that my first computer that I worked with was I think the model came out in 1980 and so I started using it 81 82 and as it was this old Commodore pet computer and of course then you have somebody who's even you know older than me talking about using punch cards and things you know before that but what's amazing is that I was just like well what was the version that I was using going back and doing the history and trying to find in the version of of that and then finding videos of people that are that have found and restored like why you would want to go back and restore that computer with the old version of basic 4.0 and you know but there's people who have done it and do a walkthrough of that and and so I spent about you know about an hour looking up and just kind of going down memory lane looking at because people had created these great videos I was able to relive my junior high years yeah well very cool so so what's next for you on the community activities are you venturing out to any events or everything still pretty much online for you yes actually for the upcoming actually I have a plan for each month and every month like I have eight sessions for two main topics four sessions for power a platform like about apps power PI or anything and the other four topics actually related to the books like leadership like on September actually I did eight sessions one for value proposition canvas book and actually it helped us to how to use the process to develop any project or any application so I'm trying to put like a campaign between the books that I'm reading plus the board of platform to to make sure that I can improve my skills in both area on the management on the leadership plus the power platform area so this is my every month plan and also I have my my like a schedule for each month like what kind of post that I need to post it on a twitter linked in I'm super active on twitter linked in and recently I create a tick tock account I'm trying to share my knowledge even on tick tock because I saw that a lot of people they are super active in tick tock so why not maybe we can share our vibes and our sharing is kidding on tick tock and invite people to be part of this community so this is my target now to to reach out the people on tick tock on instagram and but for sure I will be super active on twitter linked in and meet up yeah yeah that's it's interesting I know there's a lot of like I'm I don't you utilize you know tick tock I certainly you know consume some content through tick tock I know there's people that spend a lot of time on instagram stories and I know facebook has their version those kinds of things and and I don't do any of those things I just I don't have time or personally interest however you know there's reasons for going and utilizing those as you said that's people are spending a lot of time they're consuming content through those platforms and you need to go and share through those platforms where people congregate exactly yeah so this is my target I have that within the tick tock in instagram to reach other people and maybe in the future I'm gonna I'm not sure if you are familiar with the snapchat snapchat it's like another platform it's many people they are super active within Middle East but it's not for only sharing knowledge they are sharing other stuff and for me I think it's a good opportunity to show them how we can use this platform in a good way to share our knowledge to learn from each other so yeah hopefully I can do it they do more well we'll have to we'll look for that well may I really really appreciate your time spending some time and getting to know you and and sharing some of the work that you're doing and we're we'll certainly have that with the blog post that's out on buckwheatplanet.com you'll be able to get all of May's contact information so I think like most mbps you are happy to hear and connect with anybody that reaches out to you I'm assuming yes yeah yeah so for sure they can reach me out any on any social media I already put it on everywhere yeah excellent and then of course if they have questions about power platform you have another resource in a new mvp to go and and connect with so May thank you so much for your time today thank you thank you so much for having me I really enjoy it thank you so much