Dynamics Corner

Episode 321: In the Dynamics Corner Chair: Nurture and Empower the Future of BC and AI Innovation

• Tine Staric • Season 3 • Episode 321

Share episode

Have you ever wondered how AI and ERP can dance a tango that leads to innovation? We're not just theorizing; we're practically applying tools like ChatGPT and M365 Copilot, unraveling their capabilities to boost efficiency in both work and life. The episode is a treasure trove as we dissect the future of coding languages and celebrate the empowering potential of AI, Community Growth, Talent Development, and the Future of ERP Development With AI.

In this insightful episode, Microsoft MVP Tine Starič shares his journey as a Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central MVP. Tine's narrative is inspiring and practical. He also discusses how to get involved with Business Central. Listen to Tine's community and knowledge-sharing story and gain practical advice for your tech journey.

Send us a text

#MSDyn365BC #BusinessCentral #BC #DynamicsCorner

Follow Kris and Brad for more content:
https://matalino.io/bio
https://bprendergast.bio.link/

Kris:

Welcome everyone to another episode of Dynamics Corner, the podcast where we dive deep into all things Microsoft Dynamics. Whether you're a seasoned expert or just starting your journey into the world of Dynamics 365, this is your place to get insights, learn new tricks and hear from industry experts. I'm your co-host, chris.

Brad:

And this is Brad. This episode was recorded on May 1st 2024. Chris, Chris, Chris, it's already May.

Kris:

Oh, don't remind me.

Brad:

It seems like that the year just started yesterday. Yeah, thankfully for you. Hopefully the season's changing and you'll have some nicer weather. We had another amazing episode. We were able to talk a lot about the community, how to inspire younger talent to join the community, and also some good conversation about the differences between conferences in the United States and in Europe. With us today, we had the opportunity to speak with Tina Starch starch I think this is early.

Brad:

It's early dude, it's early in the morning kind of honey, because you're like pitch black and I'm frigging. Yeah, it's early in the morning.

Kris:

Hello.

Brad:

Daylight. Hello, good morning, good afternoon, good evening. We have the whole spectrum here. How are you doing?

Tine:

Good Afternoon here. So, I like it.

Brad:

That's good, that's good.

Kris:

It's early morning here, but not as early as it is for chris, but that's okay. Hey, can I? Can I say something because I just saw? I just saw. Congrats, my friend, thank you for getting mvp you got an mvp.

Brad:

Congratulations. I have not gone on. That's first. I have not gone on to any social media yet today, nor did I get on yesterday afternoon. This week has been a tough week for me, but congratulations.

Kris:

I'm just going to go with chris's words yeah, it was like the first thing I saw, like I just like maybe two minutes right before this started yeah, I've been an mvp for five hours that's it awesome I hope to be one of the first to congratulate you, chris.

Brad:

Thank you for sharing that. I wish I had known that. The big praise to you. So I'm sure you must be excited now with that news that you received this morning. It is the first of the month, so we should see quite a few new additions to the mvp crew. How are you doing? You recovered from your?

Tine:

jet lag. Oh yeah, it was. Uh, it went up to like thursday, friday and then after the weekend I was, I was fine again. So now I'm back to to the usual sleep schedule oh, that's good.

Brad:

That's good. I'm still impressed and in awe. I don't know, maybe I just don't have it anymore. Back many years ago I might have been able to do it, which is a. It's powerful. What we're going to talk about, uh, so you went from europe for a conference directly over two directions north america and san diego back to back and back, and that's quite a run for you. And, like I said when I said to you when I spoke with you in San Diego, I don't know how you did it, but you did, and you pulled off some great presentation on code review. I'm still referencing it when I have conversations with everybody. I have to talk with you about that afterwards as well. But before we jump into the discussion, would you mind telling everyone a little bit about yourself? Sure, who you are, what you do?

Tine:

So my name is Tina Stajic and I'm originally from Slovenia. So for the past almost three years now, I've been living in Lithuania to kind of see how other countries, how other people approach the same problems that we were doing solving it. Back in Slovenia, I'm more or less a developer in the BC world. Now I have the title of an architect, but I don't know. I still see the work as the same. Yeah, that's pretty much the professional side. Aside from that, what I really like doing is conferences, speaking, and I'm slowly getting into writing things. I think I've adopted this knowledge sharing part of my life quite well at this point.

Brad:

That's good and you do a great job at presentations. As I had mentioned, I had sat through some of your presentations and the knowledge sharing it's important and I've been doing a lot of reading on you know the mind and how you think and how you work and the chemicals that are released in your brain or the hormones I guess you could say not chemicals, but the sharing to a community is actually important to a person and how you feel with a sense of belonging and you make you feel good in the circle of safety and a number of things. So I do notice, in this remote digital world I guess everybody calls it where a lot of people are working remotely, that there's. We have all been finding ways to share and connect and get together, even though we're not in person, to get those hormones, um, that make you feel good. So it's another thing. So you also had moved.

Brad:

It's so many people, chris, move to different countries, like I mean I guess I keep saying it's from here in the United States. A lot of individuals move from state to state. So I guess it's similar but it's different. I mean because it's a state to a state. You're still in the United States. Each state has different rules, but generally speaking it's still the same type of culture. There's some differences between regions, but to get up and move from one country to another where you know there's different rules, you know legally that you have to learn to adopt to. From the government point of view. From the government point of view, from the cultural point of view, from the language point of view, there's a lot to it and I admire everyone who does that. I have never been brave enough to do that.

Tine:

So yeah, it's well.

Brad:

So I wanted to say that I don't know.

Tine:

A lot of a lot of people have said that to me like, wow, you're so brave, you were able to move. But I'm not sure. I honestly just don't think I've thought it through enough. I was like, oh, this is a cool idea, let's go with it, and over time you just see where you land. So it's not as like this huge change that you make.

Kris:

It's okay, let's's move, let's figure out the rest one thing at a time.

Brad:

That is. That's good. I think that that's important. Just jump and and head into it, um, and, like you said, see where you land and uh. So so your work as a developer, primarily, as you had stated, your role, uh, working with business central. How long have you been?

Tine:

doing it. The very first time I touched NAV was in 2015. I still remember it was the same year that I started my university and on the first day of university, all of the students, they have this huge party. And the next morning I came home and my father and my brother they were already in this business. So my father was a consultant, my brother he's a developer and I said come here. And I had to fix a report, I had to add a line somewhere, and that was october 2nd that I got introduced to this world of erp oh wow, you know the exact date.

Brad:

I would remember it too if you're asked to fix a report it's nice to see that your family brought you into it, because that's one of the topics that we wanted to talk about with with business, and I wanted to hear your story of what attracted you.

Brad:

And now I understand the story that your family brought you in. But what attracted you to jump into Business, central development or Nav Development, I guess back in 2015? And what attracts you to stay with it? Because you know, as the product has been around I know Microsoft purchased it in early 2000, but the product had been around even longer under Novision, and there's a lot of, I guess, old timers not to be disrespectful that are in the community, that are moving on because of age, they're retiring or they choose to do different paths. So there is a need to introduce younger talent to the pool to be able to support such a great product. So what is it that drew you to it? What keeps you to it? I have a lot, so many, questions about this, because we had some great talks about this, and what do you think can be done to attract others?

Tine:

so maybe if I start with what pulled me in and what kept me here, uh, so yeah I I started at that october 2nd, right the hungover morning, trying to fix a report, which nobody likes to do. I think my brother and my father had I won't say they had noble reasons to bring me in. Like everybody, they just needed more help, more work. So I was the free resource in that household and then over the years I've only worked like occasionally right if there were more reports to fix or some easy fixes to make. And, to be honest, I wasn't really good at it, partially because I had to learn a lot of those things on my own. Because at the time, in 2015, I was actually trying to study to become a math professor, which didn't really end the way I wanted it to a math professor, which didn't really end the way I wanted it to.

Tine:

So after the first year when I failed, I switched to economics, because in that one year I was already playing around with NAV so much that I figured, hey, actually I can teach myself how to code. This is fun, but I had no clue what it means to post an invoice. What does it mean to post? So at that time I then decided I like numbers but I want to switch to numbers with more meaning. So I started studying accounting and kind of take the path of let me try to teach myself how to code and let the university teach me how to post a document.

Tine:

What does everything mean in accounting sense? And like? The main reason was I always liked computers and with NAV, the simplicity of development is something that brought me in quite quickly. And then when you work with customers, you have this really short feedback cycle. But when I adjust the report, I can get an email within two hours, somebody saying oh thank you, you've done such a great job. And I mean, all I did was move some fields around, and that keeps the happy hormones flowing. And you like to do this more. So at some point, it's your dopamine.

Brad:

Is that what it is? It's the dopamine that gives you that short-term high. We'll talk about the others too uh, oxytocin, serotonin, and then the dreaded cortisol too, if we can jump into that, but we'll keep it away from psychology. No, but this is amazing um, yeah, so that's.

Tine:

That's kind of um. It was really good because with development you can do only, let's say, two hours per week and you've done something. I don't have to be at a job for eight hours each day. They don't need me for that amount of time, and that was really cool, so I could always work alongside my studies.

Tine:

But then at some point, because this first company was sort of a garage firm, I realized that we're not going to move to Business Central, and that's when I said, okay, let's find a proper partner. And when I was there, the biggest, let's say, revelation was wow, you can have seniors that guide you, you can have people to teach you how to do things, you can learn what you're doing wrong without breaking a production, and that was so awesome. I was like let's continue doing that. And that also then kind of led me to relocate to Lithuania in kind of search of new challenges and this kind of. The last part which I would say cemented why I want to be in Business Central is when I started going to conferences, when I saw the community, when it's like, okay, you have seniors that can help you, but now you can also have all of the seniors in this whole industry that are so willing to teach, to help, to suggest things, and I think I've never gotten off this high of community goodies.

Kris:

That's amazing because you do have you know. You get more courageous because you have people that can help and mentor you. I mean, I really you kind of came at the right time because the community has continued to grow and everyone's willing to share their knowledge. You know online and just about everywhere. You know I I wish I could say the same thing like that early, and I've shared that story before, but it's great to hear that you know you stuck with it and you had the senior, senior folks near you to help you through that. So that's awesome. It is pretty weird to go through a different path right, like what you thought you're going to do in life, and then you like find something that's like this is cool, I'll stay here.

Brad:

I wonder how many people actually do that. I've thought about that before. You had mentioned you started off as a math major and then, due to some revelation or some circumstance, you decided to change majors and your studies were on accounting, which is great for ERP. I mean, to do development and understand accounting is a huge bonus when working with ERP software. But I actually wonder how many individuals start off or even finish college or university and stay with that career, or if they switch careers. It's, it's interesting to see. I mean, I'm I don't know if any of us know, I'm just throwing that out philosophically, it's, it's something because I come across and discuss with many individuals how many you know they they had a change in career. Um, and it's chris's point, it's, it is. And you had mentioned the community.

Brad:

I, I think over the past several years it it seems to be growing closer, even though there's a global group now. Is that, you know? I don't know if that's because of the internet, I guess you could say in the open communication. Is it because the application is evolving so much that everybody needs to help each other in order to survive with it? Because everybody's working on implementing with customers and, to point, you don't want to break someone's production. So I think it's a point to me personally. It feels like everyone's getting closer and there is a lot of mentorship for each other.

Brad:

And it's not only I see it bi-directional as well, because some of the senior, older folks may not know or understand some of the newer technology, newer terminology, newer processes. So some of the individuals, such as yourself, when you go to the conferences yourself, you share and present and also train information. So with that, what do you see, or how do you think that we could get others like yourself into this community? What type of attractions do you think there could be? Because there is a challenge out there. Microsoft has the reskilling, the upskilling programs to try to attract newer talent to the space. But from your point of view, your perspective, from where you are.

Tine:

What do you see as some of the challenges and some things that could help with it? So there are a couple of angles. One that I have thought about a lot is, you know, from the university perspective, I'm an accounting major and honestly, I feel like in this business central world, it's easier to pick up business focused people and teach them how to develop, rather than picking up I don't know C++ developer and trying to bring them into AL because well, honestly, al is not the best language in the world and even I had a couple of points in my career where I was thinking should I stay here or should I go for a mature language? So one of the things and that's also something that we notice in our organization that if you bring people from Python into AL, sooner or later, if they don't have this interest for the business side of it, they'll move away again to building something with Python right, Because AL can only go so far. So I think that's one of it, that we shouldn't hunt for technical people. We should hunt for people with interest in business and try to upskill them to understand what we're doing on the technical side as well.

Tine:

Another one would be the whole community aspect. For me, for example, for a long time I didn't even realize that there are conferences. I didn't realize that there are bloggers, I didn't realize that there are webinars. Once I did, that opened my eyes so much and I don't really know how we could do that. But I do wish, uh, we could bring more, more younger people to the conferences to see there's more to this than just just an application. Right, you're not just posting an invoice, you're here doing this together with with everyone else. Uh, and that was we can. We can talk about that later, but that was a weird experience for me at directions north america, where two-thirds were about above 50 or something like that, and I would prefer to to have more people that are my age oh, that is wait.

Brad:

I have to say. I always have to say I forget the sound sometimes and I don't want to abuse it, but that's a.

Kris:

You hit on some key points.

Brad:

You hit on some key points because some of those challenges it is the exposure, it is the sense of belonging to a community. I think it goes back to where we are, where everyone now is predominantly remote and you don't have a lot of those interactions. I know someone like myself. It's not as difficult for me, I think, because I started my career and a majority of my career was in person, in office, where I had that in office discussion with coworkers, where if I had a problem I yelled over the. You know we had cubicles in the office I was in. I yelled over the cube to somebody and asked them for help, or, you know, we threw pieces of paper over.

Kris:

There's someone showing up at your desk, or you just went to get water.

Brad:

you know that's what the whole water cooler conversations come in, but you could sit and talk to them and I think that's a big portion that we're missing. And I realize that now, just with some interactions with younger talent coming into the industry, as well as some of the challenges of working remotely. But your relation of that to having the community and doing the conferences, it just hit me. It's impactful because it gives you the sense of belonging.

Kris:

Yeah, you also hit a key point too when you had mentioned that the younger talents should come from more of the business aspect and just upskilling them to learn how to do some development or getting into the functional side of things. And I think one of the things that I've noticed that what you've been doing is you've sort of combined that power automate, which is another area of the business too. So I mean, you kind of have to have somebody that can think about things as holistically in a sense. So but yeah, I'm just I was curious about your experience of North America and so there are a mixture of background Because, yeah, a lot of people that came from another ERP system too, going into Business Central and they're doing it successfully because, like you said, they have that business consulting mindset and how things should work for a business and they're just translating it into the development side of things as well I think, uh, so there's two things that that pop up.

Tine:

Um, first of all, if, if I come back to to the fully remote work, right? Um, that's something that we struggle as well. On the one side, I will always say that we, as employees, we need to have remote work. I, personally, I go to the office 90% of the time because my mindset is I didn't relocate to Lithuania to work from home. If I wanted that, I would stay back in Slovenia.

Tine:

But at the same time, if somebody would say, no, you now have to come back to the office, I'd be like, okay, let me see who won't force me back to the office. But at the same time, we struggle with the same thing. When we do knowledge sharing, when we try to have brainstorming sessions, it just doesn't work the same way because people are not engaged in those conversations, in those discussions. So we are trying to find a carrot to get people more well coming back to the office, at least for those events where I think it would be beneficial and I had, oh yeah, and to the point of having, like the business background, something that I I kind of miss in our current organization. We're so heavily developer focused that we don't really have a lot of consultants, and then a lot of people are left with just trying to figure out the business, and I would much rather have more seniors again, more people who you can ask, so all of those dinosaurs, as they like to call themselves. I think they have very much a role to play still it.

Brad:

it's important because also the applications evolving to where I don't see there to be a need for as much development as they used to be because a lot of the functionality is there. And then having business focused individuals, they think with using the application to solve the problem versus developing a solution, so then the aspect of development becomes a little more meaningful or valuable versus just redoing something or doing a function because you may not understand how the application works.

Tine:

I think in the US you have a much more mature approach when it comes to that. Again from my experience at North America, in US you're more willing to find a partner in ISV who has already done this, while in Europe I think we're more prone to. I think we can build this again on our own.

Brad:

I appreciate this and I want to make sure we don't forget. I want to also talk about the differences because, you understand, we had conversation between the North America conference and the EMEA conference or the European type conferences, because there are cultural differences between the US when it comes to business, centrally implementation, and in Europe, generally speaking. I know that it's not, you know, a cookie cutter for both countries. There are different organizations in each region, I guess you could say, but that was a nice way to put it because one of the differences is in the US, the partners aren't as small, I mean aren't as large, excuse me, we have a smaller partner base, whereas if you talk with some individuals, with the partners generally speaking, in the European region, they're larger partners. You know they have a large development staff, right, they have a large number of people. I think it might be attributed to what you had mentioned, it's ah, I can just create that, so. So to go back to what are your thoughts, you said you'd mentioned to have it's. It's a catch-22 in a sense, because you had mentioned to get the draw in younger talent that are more business focused versus technical focus, draw them into conferences, draw them into learning information about. You know we all laugh.

Brad:

Quote the community um, how can you, how do you see you can draw someone there, because that is difficult, because there is a certain point where they almost have to be either guided to it or they have to search for it. Right, they have to come across it somehow. So how? You were fortunate because your family was already. Your family was already involved and they brought you in in a sense by working on a report. But how could we get that information out there to others? Is it through university? Is it through, you know, tiktok or something like that, or you know? Where do you see or think, in your opinion, your opinion, this is what it is, you know a way to attract younger talent to come in and then to be able to mentor them to be successful with the application I'm not sure about tiktoks, but mainly just because I um, I've never searched for career advice on on tiktok, but maybe that is the future, who knows?

Brad:

well, I've never used it myself, but I just hear a lot about it.

Tine:

But I um, I would say the university career fairs are still the best way to go. I personally was exposed to many different industries just by going to the fair each year. However, I think it's important that you have enough time with with the students, right? Because if this is just some huge hall where there are a bunch of stalls, where there's a company after company trying to introduce you to a different industry, you won't remember any of those. Um. So, yeah, well, maybe my answer is I don't know either, uh, how to get more people, more people like me, in, uh, into this world yeah, I mean, we know what it attracted you and it's see, that's what I'm saying it is, it's sort of a catch, it's.

Brad:

It has to be something like you had mentioned the carrot, to draw somebody in. Then you have the opportunity to work with them and show, and you know that's what I mean. Is it university? Is it, you know, the job fairs? Because in some cases you have to be in front of somebody and I think now, with the digital world, it's in all this information. It's difficult in some cases to target and have people pay attention to that Because, again, it's, if you think back several years ago, when you first started with mathematics, if someone said, oh, come for this career in ERP software, what are the chances that you would have, you know, jumped on?

Kris:

A lot of us kind of came into the ERP space in happenstance. You know it's I certainly did not come across in my experience through school. You know it's never's. It's um, I certainly did not come across in my experience through school. You know it's never been an option that say there's an erp career that you can get into you, there's a consulting thing you can get into, uh, or development in erp you can get. It's usually been apps that you could build. You know, in the marketplace and all that stuff. Never been that case.

Kris:

And maybe that is one thing, that as a community partnering up with universities and finding ways to say, hey, where can we or maybe we do it individually. I mean go to a university and say, hey, I'd love to have a little booth to talk about ERP. I'm sure they're going to be like what is an ERP? But yeah, it'll be interesting to see where that path is going. I know that there's been talks about upskilling and putting someone through some of the classes for a year. But that's if someone knows about it, you know it's. Certainly they'd have to search for that, they'd have to Google for that or Bing it and I'll be curious of where talent's going to be coming from. But to your point earlier, it's like getting someone doing Python to do AL. It's going to be. I don't think that's the right path. I think it's going to be a lot of people coming from finance and people that does operations and things like that would be the people that would love to see yeah with the technical push.

Tine:

I think I had an interesting um a couple of weeks ago in in the days of nev. That was simple because the cal language was simple, and I'm not saying that al became much more complex, but it is growing, uh, and it is pushing us to to like this weird middle ground where it's not as easy to teach somebody from accounting or finance how to develop but at the same time, we're not the the strong programming language that somebody who's passionate about technology would would want to spend the rest of their their career in this. So I think I think it might be even more of a challenge than what we have right now.

Brad:

You hit that perfectly and that is a perfect analogy because the language it was that simplistic. You know, I almost think of like that COBOL type language where you have everything built within the application and people used to create crazy solutions, right, just because oh.

Brad:

I could just go in and just do this and done. And now it is in that it's moving to more and more of a contemporary what I Just because, oh, I could just go in and just do this and done. And now it is in that it's moving to more and more of a contemporary, what I call, you know, contemporary language. You know they are. It's still not C sharp but it does get converted into C sharp and built for the application, but it's becoming more and more that type of language. But it's not there yet.

Brad:

So, like you had mentioned someone who may have gone to university or have spent time working professionally developing with Python, c Sharp or some of the other modern languages, it's like a step backwards, I guess you could say in a sense. And then someone who has come from Cal or that business mindset they struggle in a sense because now there's more structure to it, right, there's more functionality to it, there's more, you know, c-sharp to it. I guess you could say. So that middle ground is a good analogy. It is moving. You know, I like it because it's my passion, what you can do with it. We just have to make sure that the language keeps up with being practical for what you need from the business.

Kris:

I am curious what your thoughts about you know for people that are coming in, maybe not jump into AL. I know you've shared a lot of power automate. You know that's kind of a low code. You could still create really impressive solutions to your day-to-day needs. So what's your thoughts on that? Would that be a good path for somebody to get into ERP, but not quite full development?

Tine:

I think it's a great start. Before I started working for a let's call it a proper business central partner, I was actually in a sort of like a sales and project manager role, which I didn't like, but still, I spent six, six months there and of course there were some things to automate. And I started looking at our automate andate and it was great. Right, I just put some things together and I automated things that previously took a lot of manual hours. But I didn't stop there and it kept growing and it kept growing and by the time I left I think like two or three months later, and I had to pass it over to someone else somebody said I'm not going to support this because it turned to Power Automate Flow, which had I don't know 18 if statements with everything just going. It was so big.

Tine:

I think that's kind of the problem with Power Automate for me, where it's a great start, but it's a great start where the scope is small. If you try to make it big, you won't be able to maintain that. So you know, I see the same. I see all of the benefits of how AL has evolved, because we need to maintain all of those things. So I don't really have the best answer here. Is it to to start quickly and then make a mess quickly, or is it better to start slow and maintain it for years?

Kris:

to come. That's a good, that's, that is a good point, I think. Uh, you're right, it can go pretty messy and if you're the one that's building it and trying to give it to somebody, yeah, it is going to be like how did you, you know? How do you document that?

Brad:

right, it's. It's not only documented that, but it goes back to the importance now of having a proper architecture or an architect, because sometimes, when you're developing you're going down this road either you don't know how. You always think you're about ready to cross the finish line, you're going to cross the't know how. You know you always think you're about ready to cross the finish line, you're going to cross the finish line, and then you find that you have further to go. So you keep building upon where you are. So is it, at some point, the proper tool to use for what you're trying to achieve?

Brad:

You may start off, you know, I see this with a lot of solutions.

Brad:

You start off with one requirement and then they build, and they build and they build, whereas if you now look at the whole end requirement, that may have not been the best solution, because oftentimes I'll say, oh, I would have done it differently had I known we were going to need to do this around and go well, wait a minute, you know now that we're moving into this additional requirement, it may be a few more minutes. This is what happens, I think, is it's oh, it's a few more minutes for me to add this it's a few more minutes for me to add this. It's a few more minutes for me to add this, but ultimately you're at a tipping point or a breaking point. It's like that bowl of rice right, you can keep dropping, put one grain on the whole bowl of spills. So I think it's using the right tool and being able to take a step back and say is this the right tool to use, or should we pull in other features from other applications, such as with workflows, with Business Central and Power Automate?

Kris:

I'm just on a tangent this morning there's a lot to consider, and one of the things that I'm curious, from your perspective too, is, uh, what you know, trying to get younger talents. They, they're going to see whatever's marketed out there and one of the most, one of the most biggest thing that's being marketed right now. Have you heard the? Have you heard about co-pilot? Right?

Tine:

yeah, I think there was a mention or two, right, so?

Kris:

I am curious what your thoughts are for, for you know, if anyone was interested in in maybe developing within co-pilot, have you played with it? Have you uh done anything around co-pilot with business central or even not in Business Central? Kind of outside Curious in your perspective.

Tine:

Yeah, I've played a lot with Copilot. Also, there was the hackathon from Microsoft, you know to just spend a couple of days and think about AI features in Business Central. Honestly, I think this is going to be really good because we can start solving a completely different set of problems. Now I am sometimes a bit struggling to find what are we going to build within Business Central, because I feel like you come up with best ideas if you're actually using that and as a developer, I'm not exactly using Business Central in the sense that I would know which functional parts would benefit from AI features. But I'm kind of applying the same thinking process to what I use in my daily life DevOps or VS code and things like that and there's so many opportunities and I'm excited.

Tine:

I want to build more things with AI, but I think it's something that the younger generation is going to be more willing to do, I think, Because if you don't know the old ways, then you're not really stuck to them and you are willing to adopt the AI much sooner. And especially when I talk with students, ChatGPT is so popular there right now because everybody has to write essays or master's thesis and ChatGPT now does that a lot of wording for you. So I think because, like ChatGPT and co-pilots are going to be part of the studies, it's going to be much easier for them to also move this mentality to the workplace move this mentality to to the workplace.

Brad:

This is where it's easier to adopt for the younger talent if the older talent can't let go of what they know.

Tine:

Maybe a question to you too how much do you two use co-pilots or chat gpt?

Brad:

oh, one, I have to say it. That's how chris got his name chris gpt, because one day, you know, when chat gpt became popular, we were having conversations and chris went from using uh, certain uh phrases to then coming up with you know many facts and many you know, like a thesis on it. So no, I joke with him on that. I use it daily, yeah, and several times a day. It's, it's to me, it's great for idea generation sometimes. And again, you, you summed up the words. It's.

Brad:

It's not like they'll write a thesis for you. You have to validate and verify everything that you ask. It right, it depends what you're asking for. Again, it's a tool. You have to use the right tool for what you're looking for. Uh, for with me, I use it, I still use. I talk with some who use copilot for searching. Now, instead of uh like google search or bing search. I still do a lot of Google searching, but I also do a lot of co-pilot for idea generation, or some quick lookups, or put togethers as I call it. I definitely create a lot of images every day, but as far as factual stuff, I'll throw in. You know I was doing some of the PowerShell the other day to you know, hey, how can I do this with PowerShell? You know regular expressions or or some other aspects.

Kris:

Yeah, I use it. I use it daily, just like what Brad's saying and that joke about Chris GPT. You know, I'll tell you, english is not my first language and sometimes I struggle, you know, quite a bit, believe it or not, sometimes I struggle even putting a few sentences together. So using ChatGPT at the early days really helped me kind of not only generate content in a sense of like how to say certain things, but it also gives me a good starting point of an idea. To Brad's point, you have to kind of validate what you're trying to convey and then you change it here and there. But it does give me a structure to start, as anything else, it's a tool for me to kind of save me some time.

Kris:

So it would have taken me time to kind of like, okay, how do I put this together? What's the best way for me to convey something? And then I would use Copilot to kind of help me structure that, to convey my ideas or what I'm trying to put there. So I do use it daily in a personal sense and also, you know, professional sense as well. So it really depends on what I'm trying to accomplish. So, yeah, and I'm not afraid of it, I mean a lot of people kind of scared what it can. You know what it's doing to uh uh in the world, but you kind of embrace. It's another tool that's certainly saving me a lot of time, even translation Like I. So I've had to use it to translate certain things to family members that, uh, where English is not the first language, I just say translate this to another language, and so I can help convey what I'm trying to say.

Brad:

I was going to ask that question. I have never used it for a translation. I was listening to you explain how, if English isn't your primary language, it helps you construct structure sentences. How was it with translation?

Kris:

It does a pretty good job in translating, because if you use like Google Translate, sometimes it's not exactly correct. So that actually does a better job of structuring of how a paragraph should look like in a certain language, versus Google Translate, where it's not always, you know, accurate or straightforward. So it is. It does a pretty good job day to day, day to day things. So even email composure. I mean, you compose an email, change a few things here and there, but hey, it's exactly what I'm trying to say here.

Tine:

So I think that's I mean, it's great to hear that you're using it every day, Because sometimes when I talk to people and I'm saying, hey, we're going to get M365 co-pilot, it's going to be great for you. As a project manager, you deal with a lot of email generation and preparing these reports and these reports Are you excited and like how should I use it? Now I have it, what do I do with it, what can you do? And I'm like everything. But you also need to kind of explain what is everything. How should people even start thinking about the challenges?

Kris:

That is interesting, your comment about using M365 Copilot for project managers. And so one of the things that I had conversation with somebody not from where I work, just an old colleague, not even in the space and we were having a conversation. It's like you know, you could use Copilot. When you have a recording of something like when you're having a project meeting recording, you can take some of that transcript or even any recording. As long as you have a transcript, you can feed that to a co-pilot and say, hey, I need you to summarize this. I don't have time to listen and watch this video that maybe you had a conversation with somebody I need you to summarize. Now, sometimes a project manager or somebody would have to summarize it of what they're trying to convey. Now you can take the transcript and say, hey, I want you to summarize this. That saves you so much time to do other things. So there's so many ways to use Copilot. It just depends on where you want to save time. So it's fascinating.

Tine:

Actually, to be honest, I still have not graduated from my university because I still have to write my thesis. But what I'm actually researching and trying to write my thesis on is how are elderly going to use JetGPT or GPT-enabled browsers, because you mentioned that, for example, you sometimes struggle with language and how to compose sentences, but with them it's the opposite. How do I put it in keywords? Because that's what Google understands. And now with GPT-enabled browsers, with Bing Chat, you don't have to do that. So I think, even in this part, it's going to be quite cool, because, I don't know, it's going to be more inclusive. Everybody can now search the internet without knowing how to search the internet. So it's uh cool times ahead.

Kris:

Yeah, it's like. It's like facebook right when. When. When facebook came out, uh, you know I I don't have facebook anymore, but when it came out, like I was in it, I thought it was pretty fascinating. Connected many people, even family members, across uh oceans, and my parents didn't know how to do it and now they're like on it all the time. So eventually they'll, you know, pick up of how to use it. But they're more in social media than I am. I'm not in so much in social media, so it's eventually they'll adopt. It may take, you know, a couple of years for them to adopt, but certainly an opportunity out there.

Brad:

Well, it's a whole new world. Brave new world. I don't know what to say there. To jump back, another conversation that we had and something that you were interested when we were talking with Directions in San Diego, is the comparing and contrasting. You had just come from a European conference and you have attended European conference and this was your first US directions that you had gone to. What are some of the differences that you noticed between those conferences? And also, just for to preface it, which conferences have you attended outside of the US?

Tine:

So what I did in the past and also what I'm going to do in the upcoming future are the whole Days of Knowledge tour, the European one. So Days of Knowledge, UK Days of Knowledge, Nordic Days of Knowledge, Central Direction, Zemilla, BC Tech Days and one of my favorite ones, Dynamics Lines, because it's in Slovenia. Those were the ones that I can compare the experience of Directions North America with.

Brad:

And what did you think was a big difference between Directions North America and the conferences that you attended?

Tine:

So I did already mention one that the attendees in North America were older than what I've experienced in Europe. I think it's also partially because the price of attending Directions North America is so much higher than somebody going to Days of Knowledge, which is the whole idea is to let's make it cheaper so more people can come to an event like that. Another huge difference was what type of people come to the conference. I'm used to more okay, of course you have sales and of course you have leadership, but there's also a huge part of developers and consultants that come to these conferences there in North America. Again, two-thirds were either sales or leadership, and so you could also tell that on the sessions. Not a lot of people attended the sessions. It was all about networking, it was all about doing business. So that was another surprise, I would say.

Kris:

Do you think, though, that's driven based on the agenda or content? When they see the agenda online, do you think companies now look at it and said, okay, who? This sounds like it's something that our sales engineers or leadership should know how to position their business based on the content that's being provided I don't think it's the content influences who goes to directions?

Tine:

because you know, I'm a developer and I could find sessions for me every hour, almost on every slot. Same for more power, platform things or consultancy things. So the content is there. I think it's becoming just more of the idea that directions oh okay, yeah, that's for leadership and sales, so it just goes on with that. So the company sends people that fit that profile.

Kris:

Yeah, that makes sense. I'm always curious. You know the early days of directions. As a technical person, I thought I learned a lot. There was a lot of technical content at that time. Now I did see a shift in that, I think, because a lot of things are still new. I think businesses are trying to figure out or maybe partners are trying to figure out how can we incorporate this into our business, and maybe that's where the shift is right now. Maybe it'll eventually shift back where, okay, now the dust has settled in some of these new things. Now let's send our technical people of how to develop something against it. I don't know. That's a. That's an interesting one.

Brad:

It's a tough challenge because it's what's the position for the conference and the attendees there and which type of business you are. I think if you're a partner that works on T&M, where you're taking individuals out of the office in essence to now they're going to a conference for several days, there's an expense to that and also you're losing the revenue that they would generate. I'm not saying it's a reason not to somebody, but it's a decision you have to make. Is is the investment that I'm going to make going to return more for the business versus not? Or also, is what you were talking about, is the content there appropriate for the individual that I'm sending? Because if you had mentioned days of knowledge, days of knowledge is primarily technical right Directions North America typically had been primarily, as you had mentioned, a sales networking functional type event.

Brad:

There are technical tracks, don't get me wrong. I'm not saying because I mean for the years that I've been attending, there's always been development type functions. But also, how many development type functions can you drop into hour-long blocks throughout the day, or 50-minute blocks of the day to have somebody be able to get the value out of it, to where they're learning something versus just being exposed to something. See, that's kind of a challenge that I see with it. It's, those sessions are 15 minutes long. How much will a developer or a technical person get out of it other than exposure? And that exposure is that already available to them through, like the Business Central launch events or through blogs, through other sources, that of information that shared.

Kris:

Yeah, that's, that's a good point. I remember, I remember there used to be an event, I think they, I think dynamics communities had put this out. It's called folk and I remember going to those events where there's 60, 90 minute sessions where it hits hands on you know their technical and functional areas of you know nav. At that time I'd love to see that come back where it's. You know it's a smaller event for sure, but it's more hands-on kind of things.

Tine:

So and Tina, you were going to say something. I apologize, no, no, no, it's fine. I wanted to add that you know it might be partially because of what we mentioned at the beginning that in US you are more likely to just pick up things from AppSource, pick up things from partners. You're not as inclined to build everything things from AppSource, pick up things from partners, You're not as inclined to build everything. So then you prefer the networking aspect and seeing what other partners have to offer, instead of building out the best development team that I can have. Of course, I'm on the side of let's learn. That's the best part, but I also understand that maybe that's not where everybody else is coming from well, I think it's.

Brad:

Then it's just a different audience. I mean, I think it does matter for your perspective because there are. I think it's individuals will gravitate to where they feel the it's best for them to be. That maybe, maybe there are two different markets for it. I know days of knowledge is going to make a trip to the us this year. Are you going to attend that? Uh, no fortunately it's it's tough.

Brad:

it's it's tough with the conferences because and I even think here there's a challenge I go back to what I was saying to send individuals to those conferences, because in europe, from my understanding, some partners will send, you know, 10, 12, 15, 8, you know a large number of people where, if you know I don't know if you noticed in the directions usa a lot of companies only sent a handful of people, or some companies sent one or two. So it's, it goes with, I think, the content, but also the cost. I think in the us it's a little more difficult because of the distance, that it's not like you can go quickly and come back. In some cases you spend a full day traveling to the conference, then you're there for the conference for several days, then you have to spend a full day back, whereas in Europe, from my understanding, the countries are a little bit smaller, so the travel between those countries is a little bit easier. Also, I think you have a better rail system than we have here too, so we pretty much drive or fly everywhere.

Tine:

I think the whole days of knowledge concept is what's going to make this better for everyone. I hope it grows even further to more countries, because if it's a local event, it's cheaper to send people there. And, of course, I get that. There's the cost involved and no revenues generated while you're at a conference. But what I see in conferences is also what we were talking at a conference. But what I see in conferences is also what we were talking at the beginning. This is the way how we can expose the more junior people that hey, there's more out there and that's how we can keep them here. So I think not only is there the part of we need to upskill people, because everything's evolving, everything's growing, we also want to retain people. And this is like two points upskill people because everything's evolving, everything's growing. We also want to retain people.

Brad:

And this is like two points that we get with these kind of conferences. Yeah, it is, it's a matter of perspective. We'll get there. One other thing to jump into quickly. You had mentioned you enjoy conferences, presenting a conference and speaking at conferences what?

Tine:

drove you to do that. That's actually. I liked doing presentations for some time, for I don't know for the last 10 years when there was a chance, I liked to present, even though I always got super nervous, I always liked the feedback at the end that, oh, this was good, uh. And I tried to be a speaker at tech days I think like three years ago and I wasn't accepted. And then I tried being a speaker at directions, emia, and I wasn't accepted. But then, luckily, one of our architects he, got two sessions accepted at um, directions, emea, and he didn't have enough time to prepare for both of them.

Tine:

So then they asked me hey, would you like to do one of these? On what was it? Business Central and Power Pages. Like yes, yes, and they haven't even told me the title at the time. They were just like, do you want to do a presentation at Directions? I was like, yes, I'll do it. You don't know what's what it's on, it doesn't matter, I'll do it. So they told me it's business central, power pages. And um, when, when I did that first session in a room of I don't know 200 something people, um, that was such, a, such a good experience for me that, even though I still get nervous every time I go on stage. I'm willing to spend as much time as it's needed to prepare and to deliver those sessions, because it's just, I don't know.

Kris:

I've never done it before I'm, I'm, let's go do it, uh, and it is nerve wracking. It's. You know what I mean Like public speaking is is not an easy feat to overcome. It takes a lot of uh uh, experience and courage to just even get up there, uh, and just go with it. You know so, uh it, you know. So that must have been nerve-wracking for you. It's 200 people in the first speaking session that's crazy that one wasn't.

Tine:

Uh, I didn't feel as nervous just because I knew how how important this is to me and I was rehearsing it days in advance by the time I actually did it live. I think that was my 12th, 13thth time. I've already went through the whole content and I just kind of trusted myself. I know how I want to present this. I know that this is the best that I can do, so that was okay, but it's still. I was, for example, talking with a couple of speakers at Days of Knowledge. It's interesting how, even if I do the same session on different events, sometimes I get nervous, sometimes I don't. Sometimes I feel like, oh, this went really well. Sometimes I feel like, oh, I should have done things better, I could have said other things, I could have used different words, even though the audience has no clue what I wanted to say in the first place.

Brad:

That's true. That is true with speaking. Sometimes you feel you've made a mistake and nobody will even notice it. It is a lot to speak publicly or to do presentations. It is also difficult in some cases. You know, I know I do technical presentations because you have a bunch of other individuals who are technical as well, who understand the content. Potentially some of the data learn as well. It's strange with me when I do it, I don't see anybody. It's odd. I feel like I'm up in front of an empty room sometimes, or I'll see one or two people, or maybe only one or two people attend, but that's uh, it's strange for me that's, that's a good point.

Tine:

Uh, when I was in UK I started doing a session I think it was on major blob storage, and I was quite calm, I knew what, what I want to say and then, about 10 minutes in, waldo walks into into almost the front row and sits down. Oh, my stress level just went three levels higher.

Kris:

That is nerve wracking.

Brad:

You're right.

Kris:

People are joining your session, are technical and they know their stuff sometimes, so that's nerve wracking.

Brad:

I can't imagine. Well, I'm glad that you are in the Business Central community. I've appreciated spending a lot of time with you and conversating with you and talking about the Business Central community and also the conversations we had about the conferences in person as well. I would like to congratulate you again on your MVP. It's a big accomplishment. I think it's very well deserved. I see a lot of the content that you're doing and what you're sharing, what you're doing for the community and keep doing it. It's inspiring and I like to see others become successful in their journeys With that. I appreciate you taking the time to speak with us today. Time is very valuable. It's once you spend it you can't get it back. It's not like anything else. You can return it. So for you to spend that with us is, I'm, greatly appreciative.

Kris:

Really quick, I would like to say. I think getting to meet you in person first before a podcast it's nice, because then people don't realize the height difference. You're pretty tall dude. That was, that was amazing.

Brad:

That is true, we did. We did take that picture and that was uh one of the points that you mentioned chris, and it is nice to meet with us doing this.

Brad:

We do get to speak with a lot of members of the community, obviously, and some we meet in person ahead of time and others we have the opportunity to meet in our journeys as well, and it's always wonderful to talk with everybody. Talk with everybody. How would someone get in contact with you to learn more about you, learn more about what you do, or also see some of the great content that you're putting out with your knowledge sharing.

Tine:

So I'm always available on LinkedIn and on Twitter. Anybody can reach out there About the content. I have my own blog. I don't know how to say it so that somebody would remember it. I'd say just follow me on LinkedIn and a new post is going to pop up sooner rather than later. And then anytime I do webinars or things that have recordings, everything ends up on the blog all the presentations, all the slides. And one thing that I'd like to say is we talked a lot about the community, and for me to be able to kind of grow with this community was that I was able to reach out to the MVPs, to other speakers, and I just like to say to everyone else that everybody here is really open to help and to answer questions, to help you become the next speaker, including me, I think, including you, Brad and Chris. So just reach out to people, send a message.

Brad:

Yeah, absolutely. That is a great note and again, thank you very much. We appreciate your time and all of the great things that you do for the community and for everyone else have a good day.

Tine:

Thank you for having me. Thank you.

Brad:

Bye, bye. Thank you, chris, for your time for another episode of In the Dynamics Corner Chair, and thank you to our guests for participating.

Kris:

Thank you, brad, for your time. It is a wonderful episode of Dynamics Corner Chair. I would also like to thank our guests for joining us. Thank you for all of our listeners tuning in as well. You can find Brad at developerlifecom, that is D-V-L-P-R-L-I-F-E dot com, and you can interact with them via Twitter D-V-L-P-A-L-I-N-Oio, and my Twitter handle is Matalino16. And you can see those links down below in the show notes. Again, thank you everyone. Thank you and take care.

People on this episode

Head Shot

Kris

Host
Contributor

Brad

Co-host