It's been a while, but next week European SharePoint, Office 365 & Azure Conference returns! Last time I was an attendee at the beautiful and warm 2014 Barcelona edition, this year I'll be on stage at the beautiful but cold Copenhagen edition.
If you are attending, don't hesitate to say hi or stop me when I'm walking by, I'd love to connect! Or you can join me for my session "Learnings from a Microsoft 365 Developer Moving into the Power Platform", Tuesday at 14h in room T25.
The organizers asked speakers to answer 5 questions about 3 weeks ago, but with some luck I can still aim for the participation trophy 😅. So here goes, my take on the 5 questions for #ESPC22 speakers:
#ESPCC22 session recommendation
What a brutal task to pick one session from that whole list, so I will pick two: one I have seen before and loved, and another one that I don't want to miss!
The One I Have Seen Before: Power Automate Desktop – Lessons Learnt after a year of RPA Automation by Tomasz Poszytek, Thursday at 11h45 in room Th16.
If someone asks me about RPA in Power Platform, I think of Tomasz. He is super knowledgeable, a great presenter, brings stories from the trenches, all sprinkled with som humor. Must see!
The One I Don't Want To Miss: Dataverse Model-Driven Apps – 101, by Sara Lagerquist, Vivian Voss, and Guro Faller on Tuesday at 10h15, in room T2. All three are amazing people, funny, smart, and experienced in Model-Driven Apps and Dataverse. I will support my friends, and learn new things about a topic I'm only recently using myself: what more could you want from a session?
Can you briefly discuss a project you are most proud of?
There are many projects I'm proud of like the Case Management System on SharePoint 2013, using the K2 workflow engine. It required hours and hours of .NET Reflector diving to understand, replicate, and modify standard SharePoint behavior. Fun times 😅.
More recently, I'm proud of the big Capital Expenditure application my team built on Power Platform. It's a perfect example of fusion development, with low-code and pro-code working together to achieve the best possible results.
What is your favourite film?
I seem to be switching favourite films regularly, but overall I like Lord of the Rings and the Star Wars series. Besides those two, I was a pretty big fan of V for Vendetta as well: especially the song BKAB by Ethan Stoller in the closing credits stuck with me.
This is no simple reform, this really is a revolution
What is the best career or life advice you have received to date?
Build a network, invest more in it than you take out. You never know when you may need someone else, and at least you'll have built up some credit.
If you are only taking, people will feel used. You have to contribute to make it mutually beneficial.
Do you have any tips on receiving the MVP award?
The MVP award should't be a goal on it's own, it should be something you get awarded for things you already love doing. If it's a target but you aren't fully feeling it, it becomes a burden and a chore, and it's no more fun.
Of course, you can have ambition and share them with MVP's you trust. You'll need them to nominate you, and often we don't know someone isn't an MVP (yet) and we assume they are. If you get that feeling, don't hesitate to subtly let us know so we can get that nomination process started 😉