From Blogger to Builder: Power Platform, AI Bootcamps, and the 90 Day Mentoring Challenge

Episode Transcript
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Mark Smith (00:06):
Welcome to the MVP show.
My intention is that you listento the stories of these MVP
guests and are inspired tobecome an MVP and bring value to
the world through your skills.
If you have not checked it outalready, I do a YouTube series
called how to Become an MVP.
The link is in the show notes.
With that, let's get on withthe show.

(00:31):
Today's guest is from Singapore.
He's the assistant leadengineer and manager.
He was first awarded as MVP in2024.
Blogging is his main hobby.
Apart from that, he lovesreading e-books and listening to
audio books on Audible Me too.
You can find links to his bioand socials in the show notes

(00:53):
for this episode.
Welcome to the show, Pavan.

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani (00:56):
Yeah, thank you, Mark.
Thank you for having me in theshow.

Mark Smith (00:59):
Good to have you on.
Tell me food, family and fun.
What do you get up to inSingapore?
What do you do for fun?
Tell me about your family.

So my family is back in India so I'm
staying alone.
So, apart from work, I usuallytry to blog things and try to
learn as far as possible inPower Platform and Microsoft
Technologies.
So coming to my fun part, so Ioften try to go around and see

(01:33):
places in Singapore, explore.
Every I usually do every Sundaymorning I go around and explore
places in Singapore, mainly.
Nice it's a nice city.
Yeah, you have been toSingapore, right?

Mark Smith (01:51):
Multiple times.
Yeah, the last time I was therewas December, before the
lockdown pandemic.

Okay.

Mark Smith (02:00):
And while I was there, I was actually
piggybacking with my wife.
She was going for onboardingbecause she at that time was, uh
, onboarding to google in newzealand, and so they did all
their onboarding in singapore.
So I just went along, she hadthe hotel you know and hung out,
and then I met up with all thethe biz apps folks in singapore
so we went out for dinner.
Um, you know, down thewaterfront there looking over to

(02:23):
the you know the hotel boathotel and yeah, all the
community treated me, took meout for dinner and showed me a
good time in Singapore.
So that was was that 2020?
End of 2019, December 2019,?
Yeah, just before the pandemic.
So it was my last internationalflight and after that it was

(02:45):
game over.

How long have you been traveling to
the United States?
Right US.

Mark Smith (02:53):
Yeah, so I'm back as of next week.
I'm off.
Are you going to the MVP Summit?

Yeah, I'm planning for that.

Mark Smith (03:01):
Nice, nice, I like it.
I like it.
Tell me, how did you get intoIT.
What was your journey justbefore BizApps, before Microsoft
?
What was your journey into IT?

No, I started my career in Dynamics
365 itself.
So I'm out of my college and asa freshman I started my career
as a HCL Technologies, so as aDynamics 365 professional.
I was trained on Dynamics 365and then started working on the

(03:34):
different projects there.

Mark Smith (03:37):
What was your first project?

So initially I was deployed to some
Microsoft account.
So I was working for WWLPWorldwide Licensing, which is a
Microsoft internal project.

Mark Smith (03:54):
What was involved in that project?

So it's a kind of introduction to
different modules and where Ihad got a chance to work on the
learn.
I'm just out of my college,right?
So I just started my career atthe beginning.
So I have started working onsome plugins and some other

(04:22):
client-side functionality.

Mark Smith (04:25):
Nice, nice.
And when you look at the stackof technology inside either
Dynamics or the Power Platform,what is the main area you work
on these days?
Is it more Power Platform, isit more Dynamics?
And if it's more Dynamics, isthere specific apps that you
work on more?
Or, if it's a Power, do youwork more with Power, automate,

(04:47):
power Apps?
What's the area of focus?

So I mainly work on Power Apps along
with Power BI.
Work on PowerApps along withPower BI.
I've been working withintegration, with using some
Kingsoft adapters, and all fordifferent integrations.

Mark Smith (05:13):
Correct me if I'm wrong.
You work for a healthcarecompany, is that right?

Yeah.

Mark Smith (05:19):
Tell us a bit about the type of work that you do
there in the healthcare space.

So it's day-to-day work.
We'll be mostly on PowerPlatform, so we'll be using
Dynamics 365 online and so it'sall kind of normal stuff what we
do as a platform consultant.
So it's just mostly aboutstreamlining the process of how

(05:52):
the hospitality industry willwork on that.

Mark Smith (05:57):
Is it more model-driven side of things?
Is it more canvas?

It's kind of mostly model-driven app,
very less canvas.
Majority of the applicationsare only on model-driven app.

Mark Smith (06:13):
How did you become an MVP?
What was that pathway for youthen?

So, since beginning from my first
company itself, from mybachelor's degree itself, I have
a hobby of writing blogs, sothat writing blogs has been like
when I get free time I write ablog and slowly over the time it

(06:40):
has been picked up and somehowMicrosoft has awarded me like
top 10 bloggers for the month.
So for three, four consecutivemonths I got that award.
So and that's how I got to knowabout local MVP community folks
and those people.

(07:03):
I has joined one session wherehow to become an MVP, where
people from Microsoft, like manypeople, joined that session and
they gave some good insightsand that's how my journey to
become an MVP started.
And even, your course, the90-day mentoring challenge also

(07:28):
boosted my journey to become anMVP.

Mark Smith (07:33):
This is so good.
So is your main area of focusblog writing.

Yeah.

Mark Smith (07:40):
Is your main focus is blogs, so give me an idea of
some of the blogs that have youknow, these ones that have got
you top 10.
What kind of topics were youwriting about?

So I write mainly on Power Platform
and mainly Power Apps.

Mark Smith (08:00):
Yes, power BI.
But what's your process?
What do you go and likethinking of the details here.
Like often, people go.
Well.
How do I write blogsconsistently?
How do I come up with topicideas?
How do I do something on aregular cadence that obviously
gets recognized from an MVPperspective?
What's your system?

(08:22):
What's your methodology?
What's your process forcreation?

So whenever we get some new feature
or new enhancements coming down, so I like to block that down.
I try to put that in my blog sothat it's kind of a sense of
satisfaction for me, so that Itry to put that in my blog.
So ideation, if you sayideation, will be mostly about

(08:52):
the latest technology, latestfeatures.

Mark Smith (08:56):
So if a new feature comes out, is it a case of you
going and trying it, playingwith it, finding out how it all
works, and then you write?

Yeah, I'll be trying that out in my
trial account.
In some cases I have an accountin US Preview region, so any
new feature that comes in USPreview, so I try it out in that
region and I put that in myblog and that's how I showcase
to the audience.

Mark Smith (09:24):
Nice, do you have a blog post on how to create a
trial account, because it's beenlike almost over a year now and
most people can't get trialaccounts anymore that are
freshers and coming in wantingto get going.
How do they get a trial accountif they are not part of a
corporation?

No, I don't have a blog post for
creating a trial account.

Mark Smith (09:48):
Are you going to write one?

Yeah, that's good.

Mark Smith (09:53):
See, my understanding is the recent way
to do it is that you've got tocreate an Azure trial and then
from that Azure tile you'll get,I think, a onmicrosoftcom
domain and then from there youcan then go and register for a
trial associated to that account.

(10:15):
But in the past you used tojust go straight up and there
would be a link and you couldprovision your Power Platform.
But now it's a bit of aworkaround to get it and I
haven't seen anything recentwhere somebody has said here's,
step by step, do this in azure,create it.
Next step, do this, this andthis.

(10:36):
And I just think there's a lotof people still, you know,
wanting access and yeah, what'sa?
Uh, an easy way that they canget that trial set up so they
can do exactly what you're doing, which is trying out the ideas,
the concepts and the toolsbefore you use it.
Another question do you have anypassion projects, like anything

(10:57):
that you work on, not for thecompany or anything, but in the
software space?
That's part of, obviously, iswriting the blogs right, which
is where you're testing things,but have you built any little
apps that are just for you, thatyou use, even automations?
You know a lot of people buildautomations to run their life

(11:17):
when they know how to use PowerAutomate.
Is there anything you've donein that space?

No, not really, Not really, not
really, not really.
I didn't build any kind ofother automations which I use in
my daily life.

Mark Smith (11:33):
What about AI?
Is there anything you're doingin that space at the moment?
Are you starting?
You know, we've heard a lot nowfor two years in AI and AI in
context of the Power Platform.
We've got it in Power Automate,of course, and Power Apps and
things like that.
What are you doing to upskillin the AI space?

So recently we hosted an AI boot
camp in Singapore I think it'slast Saturday, last Saturday and

(12:14):
so I'm trying to upskill in AIusing different.
We have many, many thingscoming from Microsoft right on
AI, so I'm trying to upskillusing those tools and all.

Mark Smith (12:25):
Tell me about that boot camp.
What was the format of the day?
When did it start?
Because a lot of people arewanting to run boot camps for AI
at the moment.
Was that part of the globalboot camp, the AI boot camp?

Yeah, it's part of the global boot
camp.
It is organized in Singapore.

Mark Smith (12:44):
How does the day run ?

It went quite good.
It started from 10 and ended at3.
It's just for a couple of hours.

Mark Smith (12:54):
In Microsoft Office.

No, no , it's purely online.

Mark Smith (12:58):
No way, I didn't realize it was online.
I thought it was in person.

No, it's online.

Mark Smith (13:03):
I'm thinking more of a hackathon, but at a boot camp
is it a case of differentpeople presenting on topics and
then people doing something?
How does it work?

Yeah, actually I was the organizer,
but I did not make it to thatevent.

Mark Smith (13:19):
So you corralled everybody and got them there.
So how many people in Singaporegot involved?

I think around 30, 35.

Mark Smith (13:31):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay.
That's very cool.
I just think there's so muchgrowth in that space at the
moment.
What advice would you give toother people that want to become
MVPs would?

you give to other people that want
to become MVPs.
So we need to find that nicekineshi skill where they can
contribute and they can make adifference.
Either it can be a blog post ora YouTube video or it can be
something helpful to the otherpeople and I think when done
consistently over one to twoyears, obviously you'll get

(14:05):
recognized.

Mark Smith (14:07):
And how was it who nominated you in the end?

I was nominated by Golokan Mishtan,
from Singapore.

Mark Smith (14:15):
Ah, very good, very good.
And how do you recommend peoplefind somebody to nominate them
if they are wanting to become anMVP people?

find somebody to nominate them if
they are wanting to become anMVP.
Either they reach out to us orif we see more of the content
which is finding useful and morepeople are interacting with
them, maybe we will try to reachout to them, say if you are
interested to become MVP or not.
These are the two ways Eitherthey reach out or we try to

(14:47):
reach out.

Mark Smith (14:49):
Pavan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.
It's good to see the workyou're doing in that blogging
space.
I love to see consistency onblogs and that creating content
that's obviously high value tothe community.
With those successful monthsI've been in the top contributor
um category.
But thank you so much forcoming on the show okay, thank

(15:11):
you mike.
Hey, thanks for listening.
I'm your host businessapplication mbp mark smith,
otherwise known as the nz36 guy.
If you like the show and wantto be a supporter, check out
buymeacoffeecom forward slashNZ365 guy.
Thanks again and see you nexttime.

(15:33):
Thank you.

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