Creative BOOST (#76)

Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_02 (00:00):
And then also piggybacking a little bit on the
thing we talked about last time,does it enhance our creativity
or does it reduce ourcreativity, creativity?
And I think actually just ustalking about this now enhances
the fact that it does boost ourcreativity when we can play with
all these things and it kind oflowers the barrier to for entry
and it kind of lowers thethreshold for everything.

(00:21):
It makes it not so scaryanymore.
And yeah, I'm like you could sayI'm buzzing.
So yeah.

(00:58):
And we're live.
Hello, Nick.

Nick (01:00):
Hey, live live or recording.

SPEAKER_02 (01:03):
Recording.
We don't do live.
We can't do live.
We don't know how to do live.
We may crack the quote at somepoint.
But it looks like it looked likeyou were searching for the
button, so I just pushed it forus.

Nick (01:13):
I was actually searching for something else, but it's all
good.
We're good.
We're we're Art We all.
Happy New Year, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 (01:21):
Yeah, happy new year.
I think we hit people's umtemples at New Year's, actually,
last time, last episode.
But uh yeah, happy new year.
Yeah.

Nick (01:30):
Well, I was I was talking to a friend of mine in the gym
the other morning about becauseI hadn't seen her since like
before mid-December, said HappyNew Year.
And she goes, Happy New Year.
And she goes, at what point dowe stop saying Happy New Year?
So we we decided, me and her, myfriend Roshni, who um probably
doesn't listen to the episode,even though I I did point her
towards it.
And then we decidedcollectively, we said, okay,

(01:51):
January 10th, that's the cutoffday.

SPEAKER_02 (01:53):
Wow, that's really soon.
And then I also saw, yeah, Ithink so.
And I mean, because you know, ifI haven't talked to anyone, I'll
just go January, you know, atthe end of January, I'm kind of
over it.
But if I haven't seen somebody,but yeah, I guess it's it's
getting to that point.
And I also saw in the in thechat, one of the WhatsApp groups
that I'm in, someone said happynew year, and it was like, I

(02:15):
don't know, 8 a.m.
the next day for me.
And then they got shit for thepeople are like, what are you
going?
Where are you at?
Uh, you know, uh New Years islike yesterday.
And then someone went, uh, no,you kind of go happy new year
for a long time after NewYear's, and then like there's
this big rant back and forth,and I was like, Well, if this is

(02:36):
what we have in uh disagreementon, then the rest of the world
should be all good.

Nick (02:40):
I mean, sure, the rest of the world is good in a sense.

SPEAKER_02 (02:45):
Or not at all in another sense, but that's for
another podcast that's leavingout.

SPEAKER_00 (02:50):
Totally not this one.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (02:51):
Not this one.
This is politics free for themost part.

unknown (02:55):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (02:56):
Well, politics in the power platform, there's a
lot of that going on.
I think we have a bit of a, youknow, if we're gonna look at the
polarization and the left wingversus the right wing or the
legacy wing versus the futurewing, we are kind of in the
middle at the moment in thepower platform where we have
these all these new shiny toysthat we can play with that

(03:17):
aren't really GA overall yet.
And then you have the old way ofworking, which we're kind of
sick of and we know it's gonnabe kind of not what we want to
do going forward, but we can'treally use new stuff yet because
it's not GA.
And yeah, so that's um that's myawkward segue.

Nick (03:35):
Cool, but I think but I think a lot of this new stuff we
can incorporate into the old,which I think when we look at
our very first article on ourlist um from Ben Ben Den Blanken
from the Netherlands.
Of course, we both know Ben,super great guy.
Definitely, I know Ben listens,so hey Ben, thanks for
listening.

SPEAKER_02 (03:53):
Hey Ben.

Nick (03:54):
Yeah, and he he wrote a really cool blog post.
I think we both saw it.
Yeah, do you want to kick offand talk a little bit about what
Ben was talking about?

SPEAKER_02 (04:03):
Yeah, so Ben was going through he dove into
GenderTube pages and thenlooking at adding them to a
model-driven app and then andkind of pinning them against
custom pages.
So I think it's a very good uhblog post.
He uses a soccer team player,NFL players dynasty ring
rankings as his uh use case,which is a good idea if you want

(04:25):
to dive in and play withsomething new, always have a
good use case in mind.
And he built a generative pagearound it um to kind of see what
it could do, what thelimitations were, where he hit
some snags, and then he showedus the learnings in his blog
post, which I really like.
And um, Ben is always reallygood at I'm such a nerd.
I love it when people write blogposts and they kind of have uh a

(04:47):
little quote here, a littleimage here, a little frame here,
you know, and Ben is very goodat that.
So reading his blog post doesn'tfeel like reading this blow of
text.
It's it's broken up into veryedible pieces and it's easy to
go through.
And and maybe it's just becauseour minds work the same, but I
always find that Ben's articlesor blog posts kind of flow very
naturally.

(05:08):
So, what do you what did youthink?

Nick (05:10):
No, it was really good and it it reiterates what I've
always said to people too.
Like, oh, how do I learn thisstuff?
And for me, I'm a my fingers onkeyboard type learner.
I think we'll talk abouthopefully we'll have a chance to
talk about that more later inthe episode where we talk about
hackathons.
But what I liked about Ben had apersonal project, an NFL fantasy
player pool.
I know people that are reallybig into fantasy leagues, um,

(05:32):
especially the National FootballLeague and football, like it's
huge in North America.
So it was actually a bitsurprising to see a European
kind of focus on this a littlebit, especially for American
football.
But again, it's just taking thatpersonal project and looking at
looking at your day-to-day.
It's like, okay, what can I do?
What can I build to make my lifeeasier?

(05:52):
And whether it's building appsor agents or even websites,
maybe if you're trying to learnsomething, I always find a case
of find a problem and then solveit and then makes it so much
easier to learn because you'redoing the research, you're
working with the different AIagents to get to a point where
you can actually begin to buildall of this cool stuff.
So good one, Ben.
I really enjoyed that blog post,you know, for those reasons as

(06:14):
well.

SPEAKER_02 (06:15):
Yeah.
And he lists learnings, and thenyou kind of have a bit of a
conclusion at the end.
Will I keep building custompages?
Probably not.
And the future is generative.
So that's uh the the short of itfor from Ben.
And uh very good blog post toread through for sure.
And also we have another blogpost about generative pages.

Nick (06:37):
Yeah, and I think this is what I think this is going to be
a bit of a theme for the nextfew months of now that
generative pages, it is GA inthe US environments, and
hopefully it's rolling out toother places soon, because I
mean there's a ton of use casesthat just keep cropping up.
Now, this one was uh fromRashika Shoderi, and she's on
the PowerCat team.

(06:59):
Of course, people are from theCanvas app side are probably not
that people are on sides.
I think I use all thetechnologies, but but people
working in Canvas apps going,oh, generative pages looks
really cool.
I wonder if we could utilizethat.
And she explains a way about youknow being able to build a
generative page, but actuallyembed it in a Canvas app, which

(07:20):
I thought was genius becausethis way you're now beginning to
go a little bit outside of thelines of the coloring, which is
great in terms of beginning tobuild, and there might be some
definite solutions where agenerative page just makes
perfect sense.
And then partially, I thinkwe're gonna see eventually
people kind of migrate away fromCanvas apps into this more, like
we said, this new world ofbuilding power apps in general.

(07:43):
But this is a way that it canstart introducing things, still
use the existing Canvas appinfrastructure, but enhance it
using some of those new tools.
So, Rashika, great post.
It was really good.
It was very well laid out aswell, step by step with code
snippets.
You know how I love seeing codesnippets and blog or blog or
post articles like this.
So if you're building Canvasapps and you want to be able to

(08:05):
utilize some generative pages,definitely check out her post
and hopefully you can build someamazing things and enhance your
existing Canvas apps.

SPEAKER_02 (08:12):
Yeah, and I think also it bridges the gap in a
very interesting way becausefrom the announcements and kind
of how this has been laid outand communicated to us, code
apps are supposed to kind ofreplace Canvas apps and then
generative pages, they liveinside a model-driven app.
So when she mixes to do things,of course, if you want to
replace Canvas apps with codepay code apps, you have to know

(08:32):
your code.
You have to know how to start inVisual Studio.
You don't have to have thecapabilities of creating a code
project.
Yes, you can vibe code it, butyou still have to kind of, it
feels more Debbie, right?
So some people will feel alittle bit alienated by that.
So when she has this verydetailed kind of, this is the
steps, this is where you whatyou do, this is where you put in

(08:53):
this and that and makes it work,it kind of bridges the gap
between Canvas apps andmodel-riven apps and the new way
of working in a very nifty way.
And I love seeing kind ofworkarounds like this, and
especially when it's fromParcat.
It's like, yes.
Um, and I saw Nikiza Polyakov'slittle loveless comment at the
bottom is like extraendorsement.

(09:13):
Yes, team, stick together andlet's find these workarounds.

Nick (09:18):
Absolutely.
Yeah, very cool.

SPEAKER_02 (09:20):
Yep, definitely.
And I saw another thing that'skind of, I don't know,
surprising, maybe not the rightword, but I saw a post um that
is called Dataverse ERDVisualizer.
See your data model, understandyour data.
And then I thought, surely wehave this already.
And then someone went along andcreated, so this is Alan
DeGusto.

(09:42):
He made his own, of course, vibecoded React thingy that you can
connect a Dataverse and then youcan see your whole data model in
an ERD diagram.
And I thought, dude, we got thisalready.
But what he points out is thatum he knows about so I started
to read through, kind ofskeptical, thinking, if this guy
doesn't know about plan designerand the new ERD diagram thing

(10:05):
you can do there, then this is abit waste of time.
But then he says, no, actually,when you work in a very so
imagine you have an old an oldCRM dynamic 365 implementation,
and you have this huge complexdata model, it's kind of naive
to think that you can justcreate a push all that into one
solution, then create plan fromsolution.

(10:26):
It's not gonna be as dense, it'snot gonna be as feature dense as
what he created.
So this is one of those I wantto document the existing thing
and also maybe adopting asolution from someone else with
lack in documentation.
And you want that dynamic ERDdiagram, kind of how is things
related to one another.
And then yeah, so that's why hemade a tool that kind of

(10:49):
enhances and and kind of bringsthat same plan designer kind of
look and feel, but then makes iteven more dense and more future,
more future dense.
So he has a very good blog postwhere he talks about kind of why
he created it, the process he'dgone through uh thinking about
this, and also how to startusing this new tool that he

(11:10):
created.
And a video this is a lot of AI,uh, the whole blog post thingy,
you because you recognize this,right?
So it's it's um AI buff.
It's gonna buff I find that'swhat I you know you write, you
read something that AI created,and it's always a bit it has a
added, which this very much dohave.

(11:32):
Um so it's very long and veryextensive, but also very good.
So actually, kudos to you, Alan,for bringing this out there and
enhancing on something that wedon't have already.

Nick (11:42):
Yeah.
No, it was really cool.
I saw it as well.
I meant to download it andactually install it because in
one of my projects I do need toget, I mean, I've written, I've
drawn out the data modelalready, I think using Miro or
something like that, but it wasa case of because it was the
same thing, I kind of thought,oh, I can just load my solution
in plan designer and go fromthere, but it just doesn't do
the greatest job in the worldwhere I'm always open for tools.

(12:05):
We talked about Louise'sfreezes.

SPEAKER_02 (12:07):
Mermaid to dataverse.

Nick (12:09):
Mermaid to Dataverse tool as well, which it works just one
way at this point.
I know she was working ongetting it to work the opposite
way as well.
But to me, and you've heard methis in projects, me almost
ranting about it is like getyour data model sorted first.
If you can get your data modelsorted, and this again, you
know, I keep probably repeatingit, people probably sick of it,

(12:30):
is where we need the SIS thesolution architects and people
like this, because AI can helpyou define your data model, but
it can help you.
It can't, if you let the AIcreate your data model for you,
you're you're you're intotrouble.
Like even with plan designer,and you know I'm a big fan, I'm
still the biggest job I find inPlan Designer is fixing the data
model, bringing in existingsystem tables, relinking things

(12:52):
together.
So a tool like this, especiallyif you're kind of going into
projects, like the last twoprojects I'm well, the two
projects I'm working on now,they're existing systems.
They've been built by otherconsultants before me.
We all and we all thinkdifferent.
And even that's a whole otherthread I might just kind of pull
in this episode as well aboutthinking different, how the AIs
think different.
But being able to pull this andget that information in front of

(13:13):
you.
And I'm very visual, I think youare as well, seeing those boxes
the way it's laid out.
And again, this is anotherexample of using the new tools,
the the vibe engineering or theAI assisted coding or vibe
coding, however you want to callit, of being able to build
tools.
So we're also going to see awhole new generation, I think,
of tools, even in existingthings.

(13:35):
And we'll talk probably seguenext to XRM Toolbox.
But now with these tools, a lotof people that have great ideas
are getting over that littlecusp, that little barrier that's
always been there.
I've met Alan, I know Alanfairly well, but I'm not sure
what where he sits on thedeveloper spectrum.
So this is still very cool tosee.

SPEAKER_02 (13:54):
Yeah.
And he also mentions the XRMToolbox extension that you can
use.
But yeah, of course, that'sbuilt on that's existed for a
little while already.
This is brand new and it's veryAI driven, an MCP server and all
that new shiny tool set.
So yeah, definitely somethingalso very easy to build on.
So yeah, I uh absolutely am allfor it.

(14:15):
So that was a segue over to yournext thing, which also has to do
with Xtreom Toolbox.

Nick (14:20):
Yeah, so this is our friend Matt Collins Jones.
And Matt actually he calls outthe very first slide says, I am
not a developer.
He says, I don't claim to be adeveloper.
I've designed things, I'velearned how to code certain
things and got better over theyears.
But I am someone not someone wholives in the I integrated
developer environment day in andday out.
Um and of course the rise oficonic.

SPEAKER_00 (14:49):
Yes, what is IT?

Nick (14:53):
So, anyways, but he goes, which which kind of blew me,
because I have a bunch of XRMtoolbox ideas in my head.
And I've always I've seenpresentations by our friend
Jonas Rapp and a few others.
And I'm like, okay, I need somelike I need to sit down someday
and start building out this, youknow, some of these XRM toolbox
ideas I have, right?

SPEAKER_02 (15:12):
Is that above or below?
It's uh above or below learningto play the guitar.

Nick (15:18):
It's probably above somewhere.

SPEAKER_02 (15:21):
Okay.
Okay, above or below learning toweb develop.

Nick (15:26):
Oh no, that actually is a little bit higher, but we'll
talk about that as well.

SPEAKER_02 (15:29):
Okay.
So right in the middle.
Okay, nice.

Nick (15:32):
I mean, you know how it is, right?
Like I'm sure you have extra youhave extra toolbox ideas that
pop up in your head too, right?
We've we've talked about this.
Would it be good?
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (15:41):
No, I mean that's the tangy and yeah, and the all
the other guys.
I mean, come on.
It's just too dev for me.

Nick (15:48):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 (15:48):
Okay, move on.

Nick (15:50):
So, anyways, Matt goes through the whole process and
creates a plugin.
And again, it's talking abouthis journey, about things that
didn't work, um, things that didwork, about using the latest
template for Visual Studio 2020,realizing, okay, that actually
is not quite compatible yet.
Because the XRM toolbox is builton the Windows Presentation
Foundation, which is a littlebit of an older legacy way of

(16:11):
doing things.
That's why the user interfacelooks a little twins-ish, to be
fair.
But, anyways, he went throughand then kind of got to a point
where he actually had and hasthis thing called the flow
solution finder now sitting inthe XRM toolbox.
So this is awesome, Matt.
Um, this is something I I knowthat people would love to get.
So it's a great blog post abouta journey of going from a I know

(16:33):
nothing, but this is like Isaid, building a project that
you want.
Here's my here's my pain point.
How do I solve it?
And these tools get folks likeyou know, Matt and just over
that cusp and over the edge intobuilding some amazing things.
And this is what's reallyexciting me about all this new
stuff coming out.
So yeah, great to check outMatt's uh blog post and check
out his solution as well.

(16:54):
And then yeah, I'm very curiousto see what I think the XRM
toolbox still has a lot of lifeleft into it.
And now that we have tools andpeople like Matt that are
sharing what they're learning, Ithink it's gonna open the door
to a lot more very valuabletools and building power
platform solutions uh with theXRM toolbox.
And yeah, so good job.

SPEAKER_02 (17:13):
And I love that this he put the prompt in there.
It's like build me an XRMtoolbox tool that allows me to
see a list of all the cloudflows in my environment, add a
column to show me what solutionuh that the flow is included in.
And if it's as easy as that, itactually runs off and it does uh
the majority of the thing itunderstands.
I think you can put it abovelearning to play the guitar

(17:34):
really easily because it doesn'tseem like it's such a um a
massive amount of work.
That's my first point.
And then my second point issomething that I talked to a
customer and a colleague aboutyesterday.
No, when uh earlier last week,what the hiss it, what's my
name, Murdo.
And and that was because he washe was telling me he was diving

(17:54):
into um to PowerFX and he wasusing uh uh kind of uh Marshall
Theory specified uh co-pilot oruh chat GPT or something, and he
said it didn't really do a verygood job.
So he's like, well, read thedocumentation, give me some
examples, do, do, do, do, do,and I just couldn't really grasp
it.
It made a lot of mistakes, itmade a lot of assumptions

(18:16):
because, of course, withPowerFX, you have three
different areas that you canapply PowerFX to, and all three
is kind of different.
So the syntax you use for aCanvas app won't necessarily
work for power pages, which is asubtle little thing that AI
doesn't really catch.
And also we found it didn'treally find a lot of resources.
And this, so he he asked meabout it.

(18:37):
I said, Do you know what I'mmissing?
Is there a big repositorysomewhere that I'm not finding?
What is the thing?
And I said, actually, I thinkthis is part of the in Norway we
say beer natya, beer favor, kindof the we are shooting ourselves
in the foot a little bit becausewe've stopped creating blog
posts, we've stopped writingabout the things that we
discovered because we think ifI'm able to vibe code this in

(18:59):
five minutes, who needs anotherblog post?
Today, I was researchingsomething for a presentation I'm
doing this year, and I workedwith Chat DPT on it.
And now that you can see thereasoning that it's doing before
it's giving you the answer, thethird resource it pulled out was
my blog post.
And that just blew my mind.
And then I thought, Jesus, Ihaven't made a blog post in like

(19:22):
eons because I'm thinking, likehe did, we don't need to blog
anymore because AI will learnabout everything.
But then back to something wetalked about earlier this year,
who's gonna make the crazythings that AI is gonna we need
to we need to continue to buildthis repository that is the
internet to keep enriching theAI service.

(19:43):
It'll only be as good as thething we feed it with.
And if we stop feeding it, Ithink I underestimated how
important it is that we keepfeeding it.
So when kind of Michael's gogoes and look at all these
things and he goes, Well,there's been a lot of external
toolbox tools.
Created already.
I'm sure the dev's got itfigured out.
I'm not a dev.
I'm gonna see if I can do this.

(20:05):
And he can with an easy, easyprompt and some fiddling.
And he thinks, maybe, I don'tknow.
I haven't talked to him, but thereasoning might be this is very
easy for me to do.
It didn't take me as long as itwasn't as hard as I expected.
I'm sure anyone else can do itas well.
But just the fact that he putthat into words and it put it
into a blog post and shared itto the world, it creates so many

(20:27):
good ripple effects.
He posted online and he showspeople like me, I'm not a deb.
I could do this.
Maybe you can too.
So he kind of opens the box andhe he lowers the threshold for
anyone that thought that thiscan't be done, it's out of my
reach.
It prompts me to think, oh,maybe actually I could do
something like that.

(20:48):
That's one.
And then he puts it into wordsand he he keeps feeding the AI
with these things.
And I love to see that.
So I think this is my verylong-winded way of saying, keep
producing content, people.
Not just because I do this, wedid this podcast and I love
sharing it, but feed the beastsand feed it with your voice and

(21:10):
your way of thinking and yourreasoning and your context and
your experience.
Keep feeding it because we allbenefit.
And if we stop, then we alllose.

Nick (21:20):
Yes.
Rant check.

SPEAKER_02 (21:23):
Check.
That was me.
You're up.

Nick (21:25):
Yeah, yeah.
Well, no, but it's interestingbecause I mean, I didn't, I
mean, talk about a bit of ashameless self-promotion.
I didn't put this link in ourshow notes, but I'll talk about
it anyway.
Um, so last over the theChristmas break, I created a
video and a blog post, and Ispent probably the most work
I've ever done in buildingcontent for just the one video

(21:46):
and one blog.
And it was basically taking aPowerPage, creating a PowerPages
single page application or bringyour own code to PowerPages.
And I learned a ton of things.
Because if you had asked me ayear ago to write a React
website, I wouldn't even knowwhere to start.
But this one I went through stepby step, same thing, very kind
of similar journey as Matt did.

(22:08):
I thought I'm going to buildthat same sample site that I've
built a hundred times, givingthe PowerPages talks using, you
know, the standard way orwhatever the regular way.
But then I did it through kindof GitHub Copilot and then went
step by step and going,thinking, what do people want to
know?
First off, how it works, how toupload it in PowerPages, what's
the benefit?

(22:28):
So I basically created a site.
And then first off, just createda very simple React site.
And funny, looking at some ofthese other videos and things
about getting started with codeapps or PCF controls.
Everybody like realized, hey,we're all starting from the same
thing.
We're all loading Node.js, thepackage manager.
We're all uh creatingTypeScript.
It's creating the samestructure.
And then we all branch off toour different areas, whether

(22:50):
we're creating PowerPages or aPCF control or a code app.
And then what I also found, sothen I talked about how to
connect it to Dataverse becauseobviously in the PowerPages,
that's the benefit.
And then the authentication.
Now that was the interestingone.
I had to reiterate a few timesto get the authentication going.
Um and then, and then basicallygot all that wired up.

(23:10):
Did of course the web roles, thetable permissions, the whole
little bit.
A couple of things I learnedthrough this.
First off, make sure yourrecording works in Camtasia
because you could talk for 20minutes without the record
button being hit.
That's frustrating to say theleast.

SPEAKER_02 (23:24):
And that's why your friends hit that button for you
sometimes, but okay, you let meknow next time and I'll go in
and hit it for you.
It's fine.

Nick (23:30):
Perfect.
But then also, and then ofcourse, by doing it multiple
times, this was the interestingpart.
And I was actually talking toBenedict Bergman about this as
well.
I rebuilt basically, I kept,once I had it all generated, and
again, took a few iterations,generated one for the blog post,
created through the process tocreate it for the video.
Of course, having to backtrack alittle bit.
But then I also, at each step ofthe way, I actually told GitHub

(23:52):
Copilot, create me a prompt thatI should have used at the very
beginning to create this bit ofcode.
And I actually put that promptitself in a markdown file in the
GitHub repository I put withthis.
But wanting to see it work, Iactually use those prompts again
when I kind of did the one ofthe one of my many takes, the

(24:13):
video recording.
But each time, if I put maybethree of these sites side by
side, they're the same butdifferent, subtly different.
It's the same way if I actuallygave three different developers,
okay, this is my spec, go buildthe site.
And it all came backdifferently.
And I'm sure if someone took theprompts that I created, they're

(24:34):
going to get slightly differentresults again than what I got.
So this is sort of the otherthing that we're kind of the
world we're living in.
It's yeah, it's great that wecan prompter way things, but
also understanding what's goingon in the background, especially
in the authentication part.
There was, I looked at the codeand like, why isn't this
working?
And I actually had to go in abig long chat with GitHub
Copilot.
Okay, this is why it's notworking.

(24:55):
And it was like thinking, hmm,maybe try this, maybe try this.
It was almost very weird.
It was almost like working withsomebody.
And then finally said, Well, youcould try this, but this seems
to be an older way of doingthings.
And I and that part worked.
And surprise.
Surprise.
So then I actually made surethat that idea was incorporated
in my prompt.
It was like the login URL orsomething, or the log out URL.

(25:17):
Make sure it's using this URLfor the logout based on blah,
blah, blah.
And then from there createdthese prompts.
It was also interesting.
This is the very first,probably, well, maybe not the
first blog post, but it was ablog post where you know me, I
always like to paste code, codesnippets.
I pasted prompts.

SPEAKER_00 (25:34):
Yeah.

Nick (25:34):
And I remember last year with Victor Dantest, he did a he
did a presentation.
And it was like, there's always,can you share your deck?
Can you share the code?
It was like, can you share yourprompts?

SPEAKER_02 (25:43):
Yeah.

Nick (25:45):
That's sort of uh the the way this is going.
So overall, this is um again,I'm probably going down a rabbit
hole here, but seeing peoplelike Matt, there's another uh
post we'll talk or another videowe'll talk about about building
PCF controls.
All of a sudden now, and likewith Alan's thing as well, these
tools are allowing us to getover the over the hump.

(26:05):
And we're gonna, and in and forme, natural language is the pure
version of low code.
So we're using natural language,but I also think it's important
to have some of those technicalskills to know what's going on,
but also to do it, like yousaid, creating content.
Going through, I learned a ton.
I learned a ton about how Reactworks, I learned a ton of how
authentication works, I learnedmuch more about the Dataverse

(26:28):
web API and how it interacts.
So these are this is the greatthing I love about this vibe
engineering as well.
And people like Matt and Alanthat are building things and
Ben, for that matter, as well.
We're we're upping our skills bydoing it.
And by upping our skills, thatjust is going to turn into
better code and being able to domore things because I think
where yes, AI is doing a lot,but there's still no shortage of

(26:50):
ideas and things we want tobuild.
And now this is enabling a lotmore people to be able to build
stuff.
So yeah, yeah, that was sorry,it was my little segue.
Wasn't a rant, it was more of athis is this is what Nick
learned over the this is what Idid during my vacation.

SPEAKER_02 (27:05):
No, that's great.
Uh yeah, I absolutely love it.
And I think, yeah, we're gonnaput some links in the show notes
as well if you feel comfortablesharing it at this point um to
the the things you built.
Uh, because this is soimportant.
And I love the fact that yousay, you know, it seems like
we're all starting from the sameplace, and then we kind of just
and then we learned so much kindof on our way.

(27:26):
But I think this is essential.
I I've started in a new projectnow, a PowerPages project, where
actually it's very littlePowerPages, more React.
And of course I'm out of mydepth, but I see the way that
this guy is working with AI andkind of him and AI have this
little project and they'rehaving so much fun.
It's actually really hard to getinto it because they're just
moving so fast that it's up toand they got it and got it,

(27:47):
everything in his fingertips.
And I'm like, hey, what are youdoing?
Hey and I go, and I look and Igo in my co-pod and I go, get up
to speed, find out what they'redoing, get read all the docs,
what happened since last lastFriday?
To try to keep up because I'm50% in a project, meaning every
other day.
So every other day when Iconnect to it, it's like, oh, he

(28:09):
refactored everything.
Oh freaking hell.
And then kind of, yeah.
So it is very interestingkeeping up with this as well, I
find, because my mind is stillthe same.
It's the work at the same speed,it's it still works in the same
way.
And some things I take longerwith, and some things I have to
learn, and and some things I'mgood at, something I'm not as

(28:29):
good at.
So I've yeah, that's kind ofbeen on my mind lately.
How do I keep up with someonewho's kind of in it and it's
very quick and and I'm notkeeping up?
So yeah, that was kind of thatcame to mind.
But yeah, freaking fantastic.
I can't wait to see what you do.
Okay, let's move on.

(28:49):
Trying to find a good seguehere.
Yeah.
So can I just share somethingthat is a bit um that inspired
me this week?

SPEAKER_00 (28:56):
Yeah, for sure.

unknown (28:58):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (28:58):
I saw a post from from the C Ram Ninja AYY that we
all uh know and love.
Uh he has now been on a tourthrough the new AI
certifications from Microsoft.
So he shared a blog post aboutthe AI transformation leader and
how he so his blog post is kindof a um a bit of an overview of
the certification, what it'sfor, who it's for, and then also

(29:21):
what it entails in terms of whatyou need to go through to to um
to pass it and the mindsetbehind it.
He goes through what he um wentthrough to learn about it, and
then he also lists the other onethat he's gone through.
So this is AB731, which is theAI transformation leader, but
there's AB Um 900 and uh AB100,uh agentic AI Business Solutions

(29:46):
Architect and BusinessProfessional, and there's a lot
of new AI uh certifications,which really got me excited
because then this is a way forus to be.
We're consultants andarchitects, but I think it's
also very valuable to lift youreyes a little bit, lift your
gait, take a step back, kind ofgo into the persona of a a
leader, a business leader, andhow you should think about AI

(30:09):
and transforming your businessand how to work with it, because
it will influence and give yousome context into your own work
and how to think about how toalign and talk to stakeholders
and that kind of thing.
So it reminded me that exams andcertifications exist because I
haven't done one in a while.
So it's kind of a slap in theface and also a bit um
inspiring.
So thank you, UI, for that.

(30:30):
Um and yeah, so I just wanted toshare that.

Nick (30:33):
Perfect.
Yeah.
Oh, just I just got all thepower platform ones renewed over
like last couple of months.
And now here's a whole set ofnew ones.
But yeah, I agree.
These certifications kind offorce you to put eyeballs on new
content and new ways and giveyour exposure.
So when we're having thoseconversations with clients,
going, wait a minute, thisreminds me, oh yeah, I saw this
while studying for an exam andthis could apply here.

(30:55):
Again, best way to learn fingerson keyboard.
But sometimes you got to knowsomething to start, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 (31:01):
Yeah.
And also it's a bit crazy if youkind of look at it from another
perspective.
It's a bit crazy that createexams and certifications about
this stuff because it changes soquickly.
But also the thought leadershiparound it doesn't really change
that much.
So if you want to go in and becertified in some type of
technology now, I think that'sout of date much sooner than

(31:22):
this.
This is more business context.
This is more your role as anarchitect.
This is what you need to knowabout kind of the workings
around AI and how to think aboutit, which will apply to even
though they upgrade to no G GPTsix, it will still apply.
So I think this is somethingthat I'm that's why I got

(31:43):
excited about it, because thethought leadership around it
will kind of have a longerlifespan, so to speak.

Nick (31:49):
Yeah, and also a good career uh thing to have in your
career, a feather, good careerfeather in your cap, something.

SPEAKER_02 (31:55):
Yeah.
So if you need that, then haveat it.
Um definitely.
So uh next on the list iscodaps.
So we talked about generativepages, and now we have a blog
post about code apps.

Nick (32:08):
Yeah, so this was Charles Sexton and Josh, Josh Giles,
Josh Gills, Josh.
Sorry if I mispronounced yourname, or this is what we do on
the podcast.
We mispronounce names.
Charles and Josh.

SPEAKER_01 (32:21):
Yes.

Nick (32:22):
So I think this is uh, I think part of a series of videos
they're doing.
And this is this is great.
It's just Charles and Josh justtalking, but going through code,
kind of going through theprocess from me just naming on
about creating a PowerPagessingle page application to
almost to myself.
This is Josh and Charles.
They're talking through theprocess of creating a code app.

(32:42):
And at this point, they'rereally just getting the
fundamentals.
And this is where I said we'reall starting from the same thing
because they're like they openup Visual Studio Code.
Yep.
Load Node.js.
Yep.
So far, we're all on the samepath.
And then they start a Reactproject.
Yep, so far, so good.
And then they veer off, okay.
Here's how we load it up as acode application.
Okay, here's where the fork inthe road branches from code apps

(33:06):
versus PowerPages single pageapplications or PCF components,
as we'll talk about in a fewminutes.
But is this very interesting?
Because, like, oh wow, we're allkind of starting from the same
spot here.
And this is where I think it'simportant to kind of understand
a little bit about you, don'thave to be like a React expert
or a TypeScript expert, but kindof understand that this is the
code that's being generated.
And you can read through it andthen being able to have those

(33:27):
intelligent conversations withyour pro devs to bring them in
to do the heavy lifting thatlasts 20% while like it's so
it's the same story we've alwaysbeen doing, but now the low-code
tools are changing a little bitand per and and we're actually
coming to our developers withhere is actual code versus here
is a black box that you'll haveto integrate with kind of thing.
So they do a very clear, verygreat step-by-step video.

(33:50):
And I they do, I'm reallylooking forward to their next
one as they continue on thisjourney.
So if you haven't seen that,definitely check out that video
if you're just getting startedin this stuff.
And again, it really shows aboutthese barriers being lowered for
folks that have been working inthe low code space for a long
time that these things aresomewhat accessible.
Don't get scared with VisualStudio Code.

(34:12):
It's actually, yeah, it's a biguser interface with a lot of
code.
Once you get into it, I don'tknow.
I find it a lot of fun.
But again, that's just me.

SPEAKER_02 (34:21):
Yeah, no, I think that goes for a lot of us.
And it's like I said, it seemsscary and overwhelming, but if
you give it a go, I think a lotof people would be surprised to
actually how accessible it is.
So yeah, definitely with you onthat one.
Great job.
Then let's talk about somethingelse.
Let's talk about language andadaptive cards.
I came across um blog post byAdi Le Bowitz, which talks about

(34:48):
um the adaptive cards.
So you can now adaptive cardadaptive cards have been around
for a very long time.
It used to be about gettingsomething in an email and you
could um show up in a differentway, or you get an um approval
flow or something through aflow, and it will you could
create a card in a visualizationaround it.
Now the use case is more with uhcopilots and agents where you

(35:11):
can customize the UI, you havethis little card, and you can
choose if you want an image, alink, some text, some buttons,
some call to actions, stuff likethat.
Now, up until this point, therewas an there, no, sorry, there
was an announcement, I think acouple of weeks ago, that now
language support in CopilotStudio agents have been
improved, which is a new andgood feature.

(35:33):
So that's also worth mentioning.
So multilingual agents is now alot easier than it used to be.
But still, adaptive cards, youwould actually have to develop
and and configure each card foreach language.
So if you like you and me havethe same thing, right?
You live in Canada, you need tohave everything in a Canadian
and in in Canadian French,French Canadian.

(35:58):
I in Norway, we all also alwaysdo Norwegian and English,
sometimes also Swedish.
It depends.
So that's a lot of work tomaintain.
But now they found a solutionwhere you can actually use one
card and you have this almostJSON setup where you can
configure the different labelsin different languages.

(36:19):
So you have one card and thenyou have one translation file
that includes all the labels inthe different languages, and
then you kind of just referencethat label in the card.
Does that sound familiar to you?

Nick (36:31):
That sounds very familiar, yes.

SPEAKER_02 (36:34):
How am I saying this before?
And like, this is code, this isthis is contents of the Pets in
PowerPages.
This is what we've done forages.
So, you know, it's just okaythen.
And this is uh, so of coursehe's using uh Klingon from no,
not Klingon.
It's not Klingon.
That's uh what uh Star Trek.

SPEAKER_00 (36:56):
Star Wars.
Oh, get your get your get yournerd right.

SPEAKER_02 (37:02):
Jesus Christ, I'm such a bad nerd.
Minus points for me.
Never mind.
What's the language in Lord ofthe Rings?
Come on.
I need to find out.
He said it's here somewhere.
Because he actually translatedit into that into Elvish, maybe?
Yeah, let's go with Elvish.
Probably not that.

Nick (37:21):
Oh, you know, it was a type, yeah.
Translate the card he translatesto Italian, but yeah, Striderk
is called compassion.
Oh, it's just some of the names.
Okay, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (37:33):
Oh, okay.
Anyway, static adaptive cardsnow appear in localized files,
no complex card managementworkflow needed, and mixed
content is localizable and usingset text variable.
So that is the big takeaway.
So thank you for that great blogpost.

Nick (37:49):
Yeah, and I think he's all also from the cat team, I
believe.

SPEAKER_02 (37:53):
Oh yeah.

Nick (37:54):
Yeah, I think so.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (37:57):
I I love that you get your people right because
I'm I just got to.

Nick (38:01):
We'll fact check that, but I think so.

SPEAKER_02 (38:03):
Yeah, okay, good.
Sounds good.
Do you want to talk aboutPowerSp component next?

Nick (38:08):
Yeah, so again, this is kind of on the journey of, like
I said, the the creating of youknow Visual Studio Code, getting
Node.js installed.
And then here's the third forkin the road that we saw.
And this is uh a video, it wasactually hosted as part of
Hudang's Power Academy.

SPEAKER_02 (38:23):
Power Academy.

Nick (38:24):
And he posted this, and he even said during this recording,
um, he said, Oh, I'm gonna postthis on YouTube because it's so
good.
And the person that's runningthe presentation is Nuno
Subtilt.
Um, and I I believe I think I'vemet Nuno somewhere um in the
back of my head.
But, anyways, he goes throughand goes very step by step, a
great presentation, um, explainswhat PCF components are, but

(38:48):
goes through and builds a verysimple one.
And I know you and I have beentalking for a year that we're
gonna build PCF components.
So I I looked at this, I'm like,oh, and again, this is like this
isn't as hard as I always maybeenvisioned it to be.
I remember seeing uhdemonstrations years ago.
I think Jason Latimer did one ofthe very first demos I seen on

(39:09):
building PCF components, going,okay, I need to I need to sit
down and do this.
This was six or seven years ago,and here we are.
Just need these refreshers everyso often.
But it goes through step bystep, explains it.
He builds a very simple PCFcomponent where you actually
type in some text and it willactually update the colors of
that text within themodel-driven app based on what

(39:29):
he did.
And it's very easy to follow.
And it's just it's just one ofthose videos that it just sort
of like, yeah, you could sitdown and it's just so well done.
So, Nuno, thanks for uh beingable to share that.
And of course, Hoodang forposting that on the YouTube for
everybody to see.
So if you do need to build PCFcomponents or want to learn, I
highly recommend that's a greatplace to start and get you going

(39:51):
on building PCF components.
And again, it's all part ofthis.
I think it's very clear this isagain part of that journey of
I've never built.
An XRM toolbox tool before, butI can do it now.
Never build a code app before,never build a static or uh it's
not a static, a single pageapplication before.
These things are becoming moreand more accessible with these
tools that are coming out, whichI think is just it's just going

(40:13):
to be a good thing overall.

SPEAKER_02 (40:16):
Yep.
I completely agree.
And uh as like I said, when yousee the same thing over and over
and you kind of lower thatthreshold, it doesn't seem so
scary anymore.
Um and it is the entry toeverything.
So maybe we'll finally getaround to it.

SPEAKER_01 (40:30):
Maybe.

SPEAKER_02 (40:31):
Or or maybe we don't have to anymore.
Maybe it's not the thing wethought it would be.
Next on the list is alsosomething kind of blast from the
past.
Um if adaptive cards isn't uhold enough tech for you, then AI
Buuilder should be, because AIBuilder is probably the oldest
AI capability in the box.
I played with AI Builder 10years ago or more.

(40:54):
Um and it's quietly and kind ofa little bit subtly under the
radar, evolved and grown intothis great tool in the toolbox,
which is overlooked so often.
And now Marlene Martinez hasdone a blog post series about
the kind of the elementarythings of the pilot platform,

(41:15):
and kind of and then she'sasked, um, co-pilot, explain it
to me in the simplest term youcan.
Explain it to me like I'm a10-year-old.
Explain this to me like it's Ineed to use it, and it's the my
first day on the job.
And then she's also reaching outto community members.
I think we mentioned some of herblog posts in the past.
Yeah.
To kind of get a feel of okay,what does it do?

(41:36):
What is it for?
Give me a use case, kind of giveme the rundown.
And in this blog post as well,there is a no-code AI sheet
sheet by AI Builder to kind ofmap out what you can do with it.
So AI Builder is great forprocessing documents to process
text and and do some umsentiment analysis on it.

(41:56):
It can generate AI text andsummarize, create drafts.
It's very good with text andunderstanding sentiments and
also analyzing images.
So when I used it like 10 yearsago, we used it to um uh um
chihuahua or cookie to determineif it's dog or cookie.

(42:17):
We fed it images of Chihuahua orsomething.
Hot dog, not hot dog.
Exactly.
So dog or not dog or cookie ornot cookie.
Yeah.
We also used it to detect uhgraffiti out in the city.
So we would take images ofgraffiti around also, and then
we would put it into this folderand map it and and tell it to
have something to reason over orto learn from.

(42:39):
And we would tag it withdifferent uh graffiti groups.
And then we would we launch thatto the public, and public could
take images, upload it to thisAI tool, and the AI tool would
tell would map to the locationthat it was, and then also tell
you which group it would be.
And so you actually could getthis grid of we didn't fulfill
the project with a POC, but youcould get this grid then of

(43:01):
where do the different groupsoperate, at what time does new
graffiti images come up or newgraffiti comes up?
And there's a whole lot ofthings around it for the the for
the city of Asle to uh to kindof have a little bit of an
overview.
But this has grown a lot sincethen and it's a great tool.
And I thank you, Marlene, forbringing our attention to some
of these little bit under theradar forgotten gems in in the

(43:24):
platform for sure.

Nick (43:26):
Yep.
The the blog was the series iscalled What is This Tech and
What Is It Used For?
So if you're new to the PowerPlatform, this is a great, great
place to start because I thinksometimes the fundamentals get
lost in the co-pilot mix.
And even though this is AI, Ithink it had some of the
licensing issues, was probablykind of what hindered it a

(43:46):
little bit at first.
But um, it's funny, she evenlinks links to a few different
blog posts and resources aswell.
Great post, Mullen.
Keep up the good work.
Looking forward to more.

SPEAKER_02 (43:55):
And then speaking about licensing.

Nick (43:59):
Yeah, this was kind of a big one.
It's generating a bit ofchatter.
So basically, the Power Apps perapp license is being pulled from
new users.
So if you're a brand new projectand you hope to use the Power
Apps per app license, you haveanother two weeks where you can
still buy this brand new.
But then after that, for newcustomers, it's going away.

(44:21):
The difference between the PowerApps per app license and the one
that I think most people shouldbe using, in my humble opinion,
the Power Apps Premium licenseis the per app allows you your
user to access one specificpower app.
Used to be two, but then theywhat they did is they halved the
price and then limited it to oneper app.

(44:45):
So if you're in a corporation oran organization, you build one
power app and your users havethe per app license, then they
can access that app, but theycan't access anything else, any
other power apps.
So I mean it's great for anentry level.
It's great if you have that oneuse case.
But then for I think not double,but four.

(45:06):
So I think it's like five dollsretail, translate that into
whatever your local currency is,where a power apps premium
license retail is$20.
So four times the amount, butwith a power apps premium, you
can have an unlimited number ofpower apps.
Your users can access multipleapps, integrated apps, the
Outlook connector, all of thesethings, including even accessing

(45:26):
a PowerPages site for if it's aninternal site kind of thing.
So it's going away.
And then they're basically, ifyou so if you want to go in a, I
think a, I don't even call it alow cost option, but it's pay as
you go, meaning you just pay forthe licensing that you're using,
or you update to the Power Appspremium licensing.
So I think a lot of people kindof got their hair on end a

(45:47):
little bit thinking it's goingaway.
It's not, from my understanding,from what I've read, it's not
going away for existingcustomers.
Existing customers, if theyalready have per apps licensing,
they'll be able to continue torenew those, they'll be able to
continue to reuse them.
I understand they'll be able toeven increase the numbers for
time being anyway.

(46:07):
But if you're a brand newcustomer, you won't be able to
get it.
It is uh definitely this is theevolving landscape of the power
platform and licensing as italways is.
There's not a lot ofcommunication out of Microsoft
beyond it changing the licensingguide.
Because it's not a change to,it's not changing existing
customers, that's kind of whythey're holding back on any kind

(46:29):
of big announcements.
Understandably, they don't wantto cause a panic, but I think
sometimes not having enoughinformation causes some panic or
uncertainty.
But that is also the Microsoftlicensing in general.
There's always uncertainty ofwhat's really going on
sometimes, and you're trying toalways figure out what licensing
you need or what you're entitledto and that kind of thing.
So, yeah, that was sort of somenews that kind of kind of

(46:52):
quietly came out more throughthe community than from
announcement from Microsoftbecause of the most up-to-date
licensing guide that just gotreleased like a few weeks ago,
as it does every month, Ibelieve.

SPEAKER_02 (47:02):
Well, we've seen this trend for a long time
because this hasn't been so whenyou've gone to powerapps.com to
and kind of the the marketingpage for PowerApps, the
PowerApps Power App licensehasn't been showcased at all for
a while.
So, and and also when thepremium was announced, this was
kind of a big deal than then wethought it was gonna go away and

(47:23):
created a huge swarm aroundthat, which is a a while back
now.
And it's like you said, they theanswer to this is that yeah, you
can go, you can get them throughpay as you go still.
So if you just give them accessto that one app and they have
pay as you go, you only pay forwhat you use, being kind of the
the way to mitigate this, butalso it's the communication
around it that I think rubspeople the wrong way the most.

(47:44):
It happened very quickly andunder the radar, and it wasn't
like I said, it wasn'tannounced, and I think that's
what people are reacting to morethan anything, um, which is
understandable.
Cool.
All right, very, very good.
I just wanted to to touchquickly on something.
You know the Cobalt StudioAcademy that we are uh gonna do
a workshop on?

Nick (48:04):
Yes.

SPEAKER_02 (48:05):
Yes, so the and I this is just for our listeners,
don't tell anyone else, but thisis public online, but it's not
being announced, so I can'treally kind of say anything kind
of big, but so I was on apartner call just this week, and
then Scott Giroud presented atopic around code interpreter,

(48:25):
and then he said, This is thepreview of content that's gonna
be in the new commander versionof the the academy.
So it's kind of a preview thing,uh, and you can get access to it
if you want, uh, but it's kindof under the radar.
So I think they share the link.
So if you want to get access tothat and you're kind of waiting

(48:46):
for the commander thing and youcan't wait and you want to get
some insights, then go to thethe tech talks recording.
They have all the recordings uponline and and look through it
and see what you can find, andthen you can actually get a
little sneak peek.
So it's um we'll put a link tothe recordings page on uh the
show notes, and then you canfind your way from there
yourself.

(49:07):
How's that?

Nick (49:08):
Right.
So and if you haven't startedyet and you're looking to the
Agent Academy and you you needto book some time, I highly
recommend booking it for Aprilat Color Cloud, where you and I
are gonna walk through uh dothis as a workshop.

SPEAKER_02 (49:25):
So we're gonna do the recruiter part as a
workshop, full day, you and mediving in.
Oh, I can't wait.
It's gonna be so much fun.
Um and I also wanted to lastbefore we go, wanted to shout
out to Sharon Smith and SandraKeel.
We last time we talked about, orI had another rant um about it

(49:46):
happens every so often, aboutpresentation formats where I
want to see, and now I know callfor speakers for ePPC is almost
up.
Get your beeping sessions in,people.
I'm on the content team, and um,I've set aside like my life for
the next two weeks to go throughthe bazillion submissions that
we get, and I want to seecreativity and people thinking

(50:06):
outside the box.
And Sharon did a huge post whereshe quotes me.
So she's been into thetranscripts and she pulled all
the things I said literally fromthis podcast last time.
Put it into a LinkedIn post,which I'm I I freak out a little
bit about, I must admit.
I just don't know why.
I just don't think about thisbeing transcribed and put on the

(50:27):
internet forever, and it freaksme out a little bit, but okay.
But also, she put in a huge blogpost and then she yeah.
So, and we had a hugeconversation about it there.
So I love that.
So thank you, Sharon, forpicking up something we said and
posting something else and thenkind of dragging us into the
conversation.
I absolutely love it.
Um and also shout out to Sandra,which I was introduced to this

(50:49):
week.
She's a big um Minecraft nerd,so now I can segue to your
shirt.
Why do you wear that Minecraftshirt, Nick?

Nick (50:58):
Why am I wearing that Minecraft shirt?
So next week I will be travelingand participating uh on a team
for the Arctic Cloud DeveloperChallenge, which of course the
theme is Minecraft, which Ithink, if I remember correctly,
we were having drinks in withthe whole I somehow I invited
myself to a dinner for theorganizing team last summer or

(51:21):
last spring.
You guys were all thinking, oh,what are we gonna do?
And like I just, I don't know,was it me or you that said, What
about Minecraft?
And then it kind of exploded, oror we were trying to find better
ideas than My Little Pony, andMinecraft is one of them.

SPEAKER_02 (51:34):
Yeah, I think I can blame you for this one because I
had them convinced about MyLittle Pony, and then you came
in with that idea, and then Iwhen you said it, I was like,
that is the best idea ever,because the Minecraft movie just
came out and everyone's kind ofraving on about it.
It has kind of a new life.
You get these waves of things,and Minecraft's very much can I

(51:55):
go get something?
Just hold on, just hold on.
Okay.
So now you can tell the people ajoke while I'm getting
something.

Nick (52:02):
I don't have my dad joke book here.
We have the ability to edit aswell.

SPEAKER_02 (52:06):
I know, but I keep on this one.
Okay, are you ready?

Nick (52:10):
Of course I'm ready.
Yeah.
Oh, that is so cool.
That is so awesome.

SPEAKER_00 (52:17):
So this little boy is going to follow though next
week to be part of AT! Me and mykids made it.

Nick (52:24):
That's awesome.
That's so cool.

SPEAKER_01 (52:27):
Okay, so if anyone wonders what I'm doing when I'm
not working and not recordingthis podcast, I'm making um
Minecraft animals out ofcardboard boxes and painting
them.

Nick (52:37):
Okay.
I'd like to do that.
So I would just say, like, yeah,that that's really cool.
I spent my weekend actually uhgetting, well, not I didn't
spend the whole weekend.
I spent a few hours and got aMinecraft server up and running
on Azure and looking at thevarious APIs and MCP servers and
all of these other things.
And I got my in-house residentMinecraft expert to log in and
check it out, get the thumbs upin terms of performance and

(52:59):
everything because I am doing myMSDN subscription on my Azure,
kind of keeping an eye on thecredits.
I think it cost me 15 cents anhour or something to run this
Minecraft server.
But yeah, um, and then met withthe team on Friday.
And yeah, pretty, prettyawesome.
Pretty bunch, good uh good groupof guys.
So I think uh yeah, we got someideas and some creativity
flowing.

(53:19):
So looking forward to that.
So by the next episode will bethe I think to be the Monday
after.
So maybe in a little roughshape, but we'll be able to
report on the results of allthat.

SPEAKER_02 (53:31):
Or maybe actually we postpone it and we do a little
recording at ACDC.
How about that?
That would be a lot of fun,though.

Nick (53:37):
Well, yeah, we could do that too, for sure.
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (53:39):
Yeah, we could.
And also I just wanted to say,because of course, we had a
participating participationmeeting this week to kind of get
everyone involved and to to giveall the information.
Bring your bubble booksa and etcetera, et cetera.
And also then, and then JoeGriffin's on the call and he's
like, um, so uh will there beany?
I expect there will be someMinecraft stuff going on.

(53:59):
And I'm like, yeah, uh, theremight be.
And then actually we announcedat that meeting that we have
created, or rather, Scott Girohas created the management
system where you claim yourpoints for the whole hackathon
inside Microsoft.
No, sorry, Minecraft.
I need to break.
Inside Minecraft.
So actually, every team needs tohave at least one person in

(54:19):
Minecraft to have a dedicatedserver.
They've gotten bananas.
I think he has all these kidswho've made these.
There's a church, there's avillage, there's a thing.
And then one of the otherjudges, Frederick, turns out he
loves Minecraft.
So he spent the last two weeksin there building a whole
village.
It's absolutely insane.
And I'm like, and then we talkabout these with people, and it

(54:40):
keeps popping, people keeppopping up in our community
going, oh, I'm a Minecraft dad.
I'm developing things all thetime.
I build a computer in Minecraft,I build a CP.
It's like, what?
Yeah.
I did not know that Minecraftcould do that.
I don't know.
Why don't we all just live inMinecraft?
I'm like that at this point.
I'm like, if I could, I wouldjust, I would just, I would quit
my job and I would just playMinecraft for a living.

(55:01):
I absolutely love it.

SPEAKER_00 (55:03):
Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 (55:04):
Yeah, that's me.
Still working on survival.
But uh yeah, but I'm gettingthere.

Nick (55:10):
Awesome.
No, it's cool.
It's great.
And so far, like even gettingthis server, like I had to brush
off my Linux skills andeverything, and just to get this
up and running.
And again, co-pilot helping meout along the way, kind of
breaking those barriers down andum learning a ton.
So looking forward to next weekto dive into that and seeing a
lot of friends and yeah, seeingwhat uh what crazy stuff we come

(55:32):
up with.

SPEAKER_02 (55:32):
Yeah.
And then also piggybacking alittle bit on the thing we
talked about last time.
Does it enhance our creativityor does it reduce our
creativity, creativity?
And I think actually just ustalking about this now enhances
the fact that it does boost ourcreativity when we can play with
all these things and it kind oflowers the barrier to for entry
and it kind of lowers thethreshold for everything.

(55:54):
It makes it not so scaryanymore.
And then yeah, I am like youbecause I'm I'm buzzing.
So yeah, can't wait! I'm soexcited for to see you.
You're gonna come here and it'sgonna be so much fun.

unknown (56:04):
Yep.
Cool, cool.

SPEAKER_02 (56:05):
All right, until next time, people, peace out and
have fun with your Klingon andyour Minecraft, and we'll see
you next time.

unknown (56:12):
Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_02 (56:13):
Bye.

Nick (56:14):
Thank you for listening.
If you like this episode, pleasemake sure you share it with your
friends and colleagues in thecommunity.
And be sure to leave a ratingand or a review on your favorite
streaming service.
That makes it easier for othersto find us.
Follow us on social platformsand make sure you don't miss a
single episode.
Thank you for listening to thePower Platform Boost Podcast

(56:35):
with your hosts, Lurika Akebeckand Nick Dolman.
See you next time for yourtimely boost of Power Platform
news and updates.

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