Power Platform Boost Podcast

The AI Rant Podcast (#55)

• Season 1 • Episode 55

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Emotional rollercoaster in Insta

Events

ColorCloud
April 24-25th
Ulrikke's Power Pages Workshop: "Power Pages: From creation to go-live!"
Session with Andy Wingate: "Business Central + Power Pages = TRUE"

DynamicsCon
May 13th - 16th
Nick's session on "Crash course in Power Platform Pipelines"

Nordic Summit
Mentor program



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Nick:

You sent me that and you sent me another link right before about dad jokes. So I watched that and I'm peeing my pants laughing so hard. And then, of course, I'm in that frame of mind going, oh, she sent me another funny video and I'm looking at this and I'm like, oh, oh, now I'm sad.

Ulrikke:

It's not an emotional rollercoaster. I've just put you through an emotional rollercoaster, I'm sorry. No but yeah, but isn't that life? I mean, you know, one second you're laughing at, you're peeing your pants and then the next time you're kind of going, you know it's life. That's the reality of the world we live in. Hello everyone and welcome to the Power Platform Boost podcast, your timely source of Power Platform news and updates with your hosts Nick Doelman and Ulrikke Akerbæk. Hey Ulrikke, hi Nick, how are you?

Nick:

I'm good, thanks. It's springtime is rolling through. We're back in our six hour sync, versus five-hour sync of the last couple of weeks. Yep.

Ulrikke:

We're back to usual time zone differences. It's all good. We got an hour extra of sun yesterday. I'm so happy, love the daylight. So it's all good and happy birthday. Your birthday was last week, yeah, thank you very much.

Nick:

Yeah, you had a good time was last week. Yeah, thank you very much.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, you had a good time.

Nick:

I did. Yeah, I had a party at Side Hustle, which is Donna Starker's bar in Seattle. It was kind of a nice way to cap the end to MVP Summit. Her chef made like cupcakes for all of us. So it was like it was like it kind of felt like you know, oh, like a kid's birthday party, when you're like you know your mom would make cupcakes for all the kids or you know. So in that respect it was, it was really good. And then, um, yeah, it was a great to see a lot of good friends and everything there and yeah, it was a good time.

Ulrikke:

Sounds awesome. I mean, as birthdays goes, it's probably going to be a one of a kind, don't you think it's? Yeah, it's kind of a unique thing. I'm so bummed I couldn't be there. I was also planning on being there for your birthday and putting up decorations and having all kinds of fun with you on your birthday, but unfortunately I couldn't go to MAP Summit Last minute. I had to turn around for family matters, so and you know, for everyone listening that I was supposed to meet and that I didn't meet up I didn't go to you guys, it's family, and health always comes first. So this time around, it was me who had to stay back for something. So, but that's what it is. So you can't tell anything about what you learned or anything about MEP Summit. But for anyone out there who hasn't been to MEP Summit and keep hearing about all the rah-rah, what is it that makes MEP Summit so special?

Nick:

Why do you go every year? That's a good question, because sometimes I question why am I here? What am I doing? But overall, so the basis of MVP Summit is basically, if you're part of the MVP program, there is it's a once a year conference held at the Microsoft headquarters. There's a lot of other events and things going along around this so you could actually take some different tours of some of the things at Microsoft.

Nick:

But overall it's the program group provides sessions of what they're working on, what's coming out, they solicit ideas, they try to get feedback from the other MVPs and then it's because you have that face-to-face communication and you can actually begin to meet the people that are behind the products that we know and love and that we report on every week. The other huge benefit is you get to meet other MVPs from around the world so people that do the videos, that write the blogs, that do the podcasts to meet them in person. That's really cool and people get to meet you and you begin to exchange ideas. And it's always what I love about the MVP program is, as an MVP I know a lot of MVPs say sometimes it gets a little frustrating when people assume that they know everything and they keep.

Nick:

Well, you're an MVP, you must know this. And like, no, we know our area, we know we're experts, maybe in a very small niche, but the great thing about the greater community is we have that call a friend feature that we can say you know what? I don't know about this, but I know someone who's an expert in that, so I can either put you in touch or I can ask them and get them their opinion. So, just meeting these people, sometimes for the very first time I think I met a good chunk of friends at MVP Summit in person for the very first time and then also you get to hang out a little bit with them. Like you know, there's dinners and there's other sort of social events and you get to kind of know them a little bit more on a personal level and that also is really cool as well, just to kind of go through that. So that's the big benefits. Um, and again, I can't really talk about what the content itself um, beyond co-pilot, co-pilot, agents, agents, agents go from.

Nick:

There yeah, yeah, yeah, um and then um and then the other cool things too. Is um you also what I've tried to reach out to some of the program managers that you worked with throughout the year, maybe providing feedback and just kind of cornering them and having almost a one-on-one meeting is also extremely valuable and that's really a lot of the value from that. So for those of you who are, you know, kind of aspiring or someday to kind of look to get into the MVP program or I know this is always a big controversy like you shouldn't aim toward the MVP. If you're just doing stuff in the community, you'll become an MVP. But I definitely think the MVP Summit is something very worthwhile to go and attend and just to get that experience.

Nick:

And they have it every year, and next year it's again. They've announced the dates. Forget what it was, but it's again, they've announced the dates. Um, forget what it was, but it's roughly the same time, uh, so, yeah, come, uh, uh, as I could say. And of course, you're gonna see all the linkedin posts this week and you're probably gonna be like I'm guessing you I would be experiencing huge FOMO for not being there. I think you would have probably felt a bit of that. I'm really sorry for that, because I know what that's like, um, but yeah, it was good no, actually I don't get a lot of fun.

Ulrikke:

I mean, I I get to travel the world and see you guys all the time and um I I. So last year I had a it was my first mvp summit last year and I underestimated how incredibly heavy a week of consuming content is. So for me it's kind of being at home and trying to follow along, because some of the sessions are also recorded and streamed. It was also a good experience. And so I don't really because, you know, FOMO is like you know, fear of missing out. I'm sure I felt like I was missing out. Of course I was, but also I lived through you and I got to experience some of it through you, and you sent me lots of pictures and kept me in the loop and I really appreciated that. So, yeah, it felt like I was kind of there.

Ulrikke:

And also having all the people send me messages going what I thought I was going to meet when are you? Why can't I see you? Why don't I find you here? It's like, well, it's nice. You know, we are friends on a personal level as well and it was kind of nice to see that I was missed. So I really appreciate that. And then it makes the next event even more special. So I can't wait to go to Hamburg and Kolokaut in a month's time. So it's all good.

Nick:

Yeah, so it's all good, yeah, cool.

Ulrikke:

Awesome, so you want to dive into the thing. First on the list is the winners from the 2025 Powerful Devs Hack Together, a post from April Dunham. You want to talk about that, since you were judging everything.

Nick:

All right. So we had the winners of the 2025 Powerful Devs Hack Together and April Dunham. She posted a blog post announcing the winners and I was a judge on this. Now the overall winner of this was a team called CardioTriage AI. So what was cool about this is it was an application to enhance emergency cardiac care using AI. They were using Power Platform, microsoft Bookings Cop kind of joke.

Nick:

Sometimes it's like, well, it's like we're not building a system where lives don't depend on it, but this would be a solution where lives would depend on it, but also making it easier or faster for people that would have particular cardiac issues and things like that, and going through the whole process. So it was really neat. It was provided a life-saving potential in critical scenarios, it was using strong AI, it was seamless integration and so yeah. So congratulations to the team that put this together. It was really really cool solution. And for the rest of you, everybody else, there was other categories as well. Congratulations to all the winners. Congratulations to everybody that put in a submission.

Nick:

I realize in hackathons it's a lot of hard work, but at the end of the day, no matter if you want or not, hopefully you definitely learned something. You're also inspiring others, because with your videos and your code up there, those of us that are trying to, you know, learn the stuff as we go along and try to be inspired of different solutions we can build. These are what hackathons are all about. So congratulations to everybody and also to the team that organized this. You guys put together a great concept Looking forward to next year as well, and I feel very humbled and honored that I was a judge in this as well. I really enjoyed it and hopefully I could be invited back again to be a judge in this. So, yeah, powerful devs, check it out the hack together and yeah, I would just say, very cool stuff.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, 100%. Yeah, that's awesome. I wish I had time to kind of go through all of them, but just to see the ones that was kind of top in their category was really cool. To see the ones that was kind of top in their category was really cool.

Ulrikke:

Someone else who also dives into AI and agents this week is Ben Den Blanken has a blog post about the future of automation AI agents in Copilot Studio where it actually talks a little bit about the difference and when to use automate. He says definitions, automate, elevate, delegate and relegate where he talks about automation, ai automation and agents and how you can actually use Copilot Studio to create all of it and kind of when do you use what kind of agent? And of course, it depends Because sometimes and we've talked about this as well sometimes you look at something that they advertise as a very good use case for an agent and we go, didn't I already build a part of my flow for that, and so sometimes it doesn't make sense to go through and make an AI agent. Maybe sometimes they simply need automation, maybe that's enough, and it depends on also the ecosystem around it. So if you want to dive more into that as a topic, check out Ben's blog post studio for and build an autonomous agent.

Nick:

And again, it's, it's. This is going to be the the question of the year, I think, as we go through and begin building some of this stuff. So, yeah, great, great post, ben, it was actually good to see you. I saw ben last week as well. So, yeah, good seeing you again and keep the keep the content coming. Yeah for sure.

Nick:

Um, I found something a couple weeks ago not ai related within Power Apps, and this is something I don't do a lot of Canvas apps. I've been getting more and more lately in building custom pages which are like Canvas apps embedded in model driven apps for specialized user interfaces. Now, way back a couple of years ago, when we started building Canvas apps, you basically had your Canvas and you just started slapping controls on and it was kind of the dimensions were the dimensions, and then if you got it on a phone or a big screen, you would have to sometimes create two different interfaces for the screens. Of course evolved with containers and flexible containers and all these other controls. Now, as much as that's really cool, it also adds another layer of complexity as well, because you move a button onto a flexible container. Well, it's going to be justified or aligned based on the container, and you got to play around with some of these features.

Nick:

So I found this post by Clarissa Gillingham and it's all about. It's a mini guide and I love these little mini guides that you see on LinkedIn all the time. They're the ones you'd like a PDF and you can kind of slide through the different frames, and she built a mini guide for flexible height with controls and containers, so it's kind of a guide to help people like me organize and build out our Canvas apps or custom pages and the different settings and properties and the controls you need to do like that. So definitely it's a really neat little resource for figuring this out and I love these little guides. So, clarissa, thank you for posting that and we're going to put the link, of course, in the show notes so the rest of you can have that and bookmark that as well as part of your resources for building.

Ulrikke:

Canvasas apps. And please, clarissa, if you have time, make a desktop background as a cheat sheet, because this is very familiar. So, if anyone's familiar with Flexbox, css is a way, also from the web perspective, to do the same thing. It's kind of the same rules. You have the stretch and you have the justify and you have all the different properties and they kind of move in a similar way. So it's very similar to Flexbox and I had a cheat sheet on my desktop for so long, just remember all what does the different properties do? So, yes, clarissa, please make one and we'll make sure to share it next time.

Nick:

Yeah, it's funny because I got inspired when I this is a couple of years ago, I think and I saw like your laptop and you had this desktop background and I'm like that is so brilliant to have this. So this is what I do now. If anybody's seen, you know, my desktop background. I got a ton of crap on there now but I got like co-pilot prompts, like how to do a proper prompt. I have a list of sort of things to do, like you know, when the thing is spinning, go do these things, or and even like little goals and sayings and it's a little, yeah.

Nick:

Anyways, that's a whole topic for another day.

Ulrikke:

No, no, but I think it's fun and I mean, if anyone wants to have a clue of what I'm working on, it could be on in my personal life, in my, in my you know, professional life, because sometimes I used to have a very cute, uh, bloodhound with you know, with the big ears, like he's falling down, um, because I, I had a phase where I just I needed to remind myself to stop and listen, um, so and that. So every time I saw that dog every morning, I put my you know, start my computer. It reminded me ah, listen, listen, take a moment and listen. Um, so, and so, yeah, I think backgrounds are underestimated to kind of keep you on track. It's the same thing. People have bracelets or some things that remind them of things that they need to kind of ease up and take it slow. So I love that, and maybe actually this is a good segue over to another big float diagram that I might put up as my desktop background.

Ulrikke:

Actually, because I saw this week a blog post about how to develop AI apps and agents in Azure, a visual guide by all things Azure. It's a humongous float diagram. It starts off with ah so you want to build an agent? Well, what kind of model do you need? And then I go, what kind of model can I choose from? And then you can kind of see what kind of model you can choose from. And then you kind of go down the diagrams that ask you, okay, so will it need to remember anything? And I go, well, maybe. And then you can kind of follow it along and ask you so do you need, where do you want to run your application, and also if the AI agent need to take any action. So it's kind of a good visual diagram into what kind of questions you need to ask before you get going, and also a map through the myriad of different services and products you can use today and how to combine them into a good agent experience.

Nick:

So it's really neat, a very good, very good resource, and we'll share it in the show notes yes, awesome, all right, oh, so you know how we're always talking, or we have talked in the past about building model driven apps and then just having the puzzle pieces alongside.

Ulrikke:

Oh, you mean the thing that Sarah gives us a hard time for?

Nick:

Yes, that thing, yes, yes, who will definitely thank us later. But there is one of these tools there which is actually a tool from Tanguy Touzard, who is actually the godfather of the XRM Toolbox. He's the one who built the original version and still to this day, maintains it, builds tools and updates tools like the Iconator, the Iconator. So the Iconator was always a tool that I used in dynamic CRM or model-driven apps to upload the old style way of doing icons. So you would upload you have to still get the sizing right but you upload a PNG or whatever and you'd say this is the small version, this is the big version, like the 16 by 16. I think then the 64 by 64, and to upload all of these things.

Nick:

Now, of course, with the newer interface, it's all SVG now. So Tanguy's actually now made it with the SVG, so you can actually go in and drag and drop, assign it to your particular table. The interface is much more easier than you can still do it within the Power Apps studio, but this tool just makes it so much more easier. So there really is no excuse to not update your icons in your model-driven Power Apps. So for folks like Sarah, who I know is always on the lookout and you can have the best app in the world, but if she sees a puzzle piece, then it's so Yep.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, I love how Tangi answers and you can have the best app in the world, but if she sees a puzzle piece, then it's so Yep, yeah, I love how Tangi and his post is available in Xtreme Toolbox today. It's so much fun. Yeah, absolutely.

Nick:

And these are free tools. Yes, for sure they're free tools, but there is a buy me a coffee link. So definitely support these, because these guys put in a ton of work. Or the other thing they like is feedback. If there's a feature or something that you like or want enhanced, they're more than happy. They might not implement it right away, but chances are they'll implement it faster than Microsoft will if you ask them, depending on the tool set. So, yeah, and again, like last week, I got to see Jonas, of course, the godfather of Fetch XML and or Fetch XML builder. So again, and he was like he even made I was even using that tool there was new enhancements already. So these, these things are great, they keep getting enhanced and so valuable and making work faster. So these things are great, they keep getting enhanced and so valuable in making work faster.

Ulrikke:

So valuable. Another thing that's very valuable is when someone writes a blog post about something I don't understand and then explain to me the thing I don't understand without me even have to ask. Because we've talked a little bit about new enhancements coming to Customer Insights the last couple of months and at some of the occasions we'll go, yay, what does it do?

Ulrikke:

Because everyone's so excited and we're like we don't work with Customer Insights, but I'm sure this is awesome. But now Malin Martinez took the time and care to tell us in a blog post about she goes customer insights journey march madness, because there's been so many new feature updates for customer insights these last few months. She's kind of covering one in particular, which is the unmapped columns or unmapped fields, and so it's like so and so first of all, she goes through what the enhancement is about. What is this new feature and why, and then also why have they been waiting for it? Because you go so unmapped fields meaning you can put fields or columns on a form that is not stored in Dataverse. Why would you not want it to be stored in Dataverse? But then she goes on to say, well, maybe there's information there, you don't need to store it, or it's sensitive or whatever it is, but you want to use it in an email. So the example she uses is you put something on the form and you simply just put that in an email. You don't have to store the information. It's yeah, I get it, then I get it right, and then you can have conditional formatting on it. You can have different things. So it's a great enhancement for those who are deep into customer insights.

Ulrikke:

There's still some functionality missing that is still to come, and there's some announcements for things that come in April. So if this is your kind of thing and you're wondering what all this is about, and reach out to Malin and read her blog post yes, and I am. Did I fall out again? I have problems with my internet connection today. It's it's across the board. We had a stand up meeting earlier today with the team. I think 50 percent of us kind of go well internet, so if something huge happens in Norway the next couple of hours, then you know we were warned.

Nick:

Internet wasn't bad across the board yes, yeah, no, you did, but I think I think we're good riverside. We for those of you who who are curious behind the scenes, we use this tool called riverside. That will up. We'll do the recording locally and upload it. So I don't I don't think our listeners are going to notice at all. They'll be fine.

Ulrikke:

Oh, we'll see. Yeah, that's why also, sometimes we talk over each other, because there's a lag. But today I think we're all K.

Nick:

Yes.

Ulrikke:

Right, you want to go back at the top, because today we're jumping all over the place here. You want to go back at the top to make sure that you didn't miss anything yeah, so there's another post under our power pages.

Nick:

I think some guy wrote this post and did a video yeah, no, this is so smart.

Ulrikke:

When I saw this, I was like why did I not think about this? Why?

Nick:

yeah. So it was funny because, for those of you who know me, I've been working with power pages and power, uh, power apps portals forever and when, even when I was working at microsoft, when they're showing the new design studio, um, for for power pages, you can, you can add your list, you can add your forms and this, like I said, that's great. Can we add a button to add content snippets? And oh, okay, yeah, we'll, we'll, we'll put that on on the list of things or suggestions. I'm like this is this would be so critical, especially for multilingual sites, to build out a page and I use content snippets all the time and it's sort of like and then but you have to add them through code. There's no user interface way to add content snippets to pages and they're so powerful and I blogged about this and and anyways.

Nick:

So then we had this thing called web templates as components and the PM originally who was in charge of that, claudio Romano, and it was cool, cool, claudio and I ran into each other last week when I was just kind of randomly in the hallway and he's like you know, claudio and I we used to chat all the time and I even thought I said, oh, I'm here I should reach out to Claudio and he was there. He came to my birthday party on Friday night. So thank you, claudio, for doing that, and I loved it because I was able to introduce him to some of the other MVPs and everything, and so I know he's working on other stuff now in model-driven apps in the Power Apps side. So I know he did want to talk shop, but I know some of the MVPs are like, oh, you're the guy. So anyways, roundabout to Claudio. So Claudio helped put together this thing called Web Templates as Components. Now originally you had to add that also through code, but it allowed you to create a Web Template component with a manifest and you pass parameters and everything template components within the design studio um onto the, you know, onto the pages. So you could create a temp web template as a component and then that's available for all your makers to eject.

Nick:

So then I'm looking and, of course, and I'm thinking kind of one of these late night things, I'm not sleeping I'm like, oh, I can put the code for the content snippet in a web template as a component and then I can actually pass the content snippet as a parameter. So I can do this all from the user interface. I'm like, ooh, I got to try this out. So I'm like, and this was like a I think a Sunday or afternoon or something, I have my laptop on the couch and I'm trying this out. I'm like, ooh, I got it to work so and then so I I created a, I created this blog post in this video, so check that out if you're uh.

Nick:

Um, I know I'm nerding out on something that few people, this group of us, will appreciate, but if you ever wanted to add content snippets within the design studio, there's now a way, and then even I even have the little link put in the code, the code you can download from the blog post and use it for yourself. Just create it as a web template and away you go yeah, oh, it's fantastic and I love it.

Ulrikke:

I love these nerdy little things and this is all the things you know. Look at my blog posts. They're all about these little, niche, detailed things that no one thought about, that I had to solve for a customer sometime, and I go, ooh, ooh, I don't want to forget how to do that, but this is brilliant and I'm just freaking out. Why didn't I think of that?

Nick:

Well, maybe you would inspire me somehow.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely Not a chance. All right, but I'm glad that you're putting up this kind of content. It's really it's a lot of fun and you're diving more into code again and it shows up in your content and the world is a better place for it, because now we have more tools to do the things we need to do. And then also a little kick to Microsoft Get your beep together and get content snippets into the designer how hard can it be? And then round over Okay, so I'm scanning the list for other things to talk about and I wanted to highlight something from Matthew Devaney, and I think, if I'm not mistaken, that we've talked about something that Matthew has put up the last I don't know five episodes or something, because he keeps on publishing stuff that is really, really good, and the new thing that matt is doing is putting up these, the things that you love so much on linkedin uh, the documents that you can scroll through, and he's had his whole series about pipelines and alm and in platform, and now he's on to the git integration, um, and shows you, step by step, how to set it up start in in GitHub, get your repository going, how you connected from within your platform admin and et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Ulrikke:

So it's in true Matti Devaney style it's so easy to get to understand and follow. So visual, so so simple. I think that's why his content is, you know, at the very top, because it's so easy to follow. So great job, matthew, and dive into it if you need to set this up. So we've been playing a little bit with this and we have deemed it not ready yet, so hopefully it's just around the corner that we can actually use this in production, because it's really, really powerful.

Nick:

Yeah, it's a yeah, the Git integration. It's like you can see the potential there, but there's just a few little hurdles yet to get over to get it into primetime. But that's how all these things are. They got to start somewhere, get the feedback, get folks playing with it, because we see the potential right, like for source, like especially now they have multi-user teams building things um, and that also means certain things will will kind of move and get maybe even deprecated.

Nick:

I I'm not going to go too deep into it. I did see a link about the fact that the there's a retirement of the native Canvas apps integration and that's probably. It was always an experimental feature, but that's just probably being retired in lieu of these new other features coming out. The fact that it was an experimental feature means that no one should have been using it in production, so that's probably another. That's always a bit of a double-edged sword. Right, here's this new feature. It's in preview. So people, people are maybe they'll try it out, but they can't really run it through a battle tested process that you can in production but you don't want to run it in production because it's not quite ready. So hopefully some of these things will get to the point um, always always the thing.

Ulrikke:

And also, I just want to mention, if you are using something that isn't ga in production, call a friend, because sometimes we'll do that just because we know from our insights that this is going to be a thing. So if you're unsure, talk to an MVP friend, I'll help you out. For sure. And also I really like the last post that you put here, the Josie Ruin one, Because you put this here so I guess you have something to share.

Nick:

It's interesting. Now we know Jussi. He's part of the European Power Platform Conference Committee, mvp from Finland, a really, really good guy. I think, if I'm thinking the right, the same guy. But basically he was talking about he has a post where he talks about. He said interesting debates, you blog, I blog, I prefer to consume blogs as a way of content. But he was sort of talking about how he gave up on writing new content for blogs limited time, less interest, slightly declining views and generally this I'm not sure this is the technical term the inshittification of content with chat, gpt and jet AI have brought us. I love that term. But then he's also talked about there's other venues now, such as the newsletters, the articles, and we're seeing a lot of that. We see there's a lot of newsletters out there. There's, like we said, those little embedded content where it's like those PDFs that people can kind of scan through. But then he asked the question I guess I'm passing on this question to our listeners like do you still enjoy reading blogs? Do you follow content via old fashioned RRS feeds? Do you enjoy writing or did you give it up and put it on the back burner for better days? So I mean that's the question that he posed.

Nick:

I like writing blogs and here's the reason I personally like writing blogs. First of all, I do love writing. I do like writing documentation. I know I'm a bit of a weird person. I did it professionally for Microsoft for a couple of years. In my past I've written actual fiction. I do hope to get back to that someday because I have all these story ideas kind of floating in my head.

Nick:

The reason why I write technical blogs really, at the end of the day, it's for myself. So, like we were just talking about earlier content snippets on power pages, I needed to document that out. So in a couple months, when I'm like, okay, this is a perfect opportunity, okay, how did I do this again? Or what'm like, okay, this is a perfect opportunity, okay, how did I do this again? Or what you know? Oh yeah, I have my blog and so I can go back to that and grab the code and and plunk it in and kind of go through the process or setting up Entra ID, or if I have to set up Okta again down the road, I have a blog post on that. All of these things are I write them for myself, but I also share them with the world, because if I've run into this problem, chances are someone else has as well.

Nick:

Now the other thing I have been doing at the same time is I do an accompanying video of the blog post I wrote, because I know other people prefer to see the mouse on the screen that point and clicks and someone talk and walk them through the process, and I have a lot of fun doing these videos as well. But for me, at the end of the day, if I'm going to go back, I'll probably go back to my blog versus the video. But again, it depends on how you want to consume the content. And in terms of the views, because we had to log our MVP contributions, that's part of the process. We have to kind of stay what you did, stay what you did. For the year I've been finding the YouTube videos have been getting a lot more views than reads on my blog, but that's still not to say my blog still doesn't get a lot of reads as well. So, eureka, what have you been finding, like, what's your stance on blog posts and things like that lately?

Ulrikke:

Yeah, well, I can't stop writing blogs because that's my documentation and I feel exactly like you do the blogs out. There is our communal documentation. If all of us took all the documentation we write for customer projects and put them online, then together, collectively, we're smarter, we solve things easier. And then, of course, you can't copy code from a YouTube video. Yes, sure, you can use the description field and put your code in there, but I want to grab and steal code and use it as my own and transform it and do all the things with it, but I don't want to write it myself. Sometimes I do. I force myself to watch a video and write off the code manually just to do it, just to get it in my fingertips. But usually I'll just copy the code. So for me, I'll keep writing it because I write it for me.

Ulrikke:

But of course, now look at the advent of ChatDBT and other AI services. What does that do with content contribution? And I had a conversation with one of my teammates the other day. One of my colleagues and he said actually me and my friends were having this debate because now chat dpt is not producing modern code anymore. It's going into the public repos, yes, but Stack Overflow is dead. No one's posting because no one's asking anymore, because you used to ask other people in Stack Overflow and other forums. Now the question is asked to chat dbt and no one's taking the time to answer. What happens 10 years from now or five years from now when you only have code in repos and no explanation around it? Are we actually now kind of diving into an area where we're getting dumber? We're not producing more content for chat dbt to consume and help us. Now we're in this bubble where the content is out there, is still up to date, it's still valuable to us because it's so fresh. But some years down the line, what is it going to draw on?

Nick:

yeah, yeah, exactly, because that's the thing, right, because you know, I I kind of worry about the creative process being like I don't want to say stolen, but just sort of like I'm you know all these tools and everything they're showing. It's like, okay, my role as a creator is being more of a manager. I'm now managing this machine to create my creative content, but you lose a little bit of the process, and we've we've talked about this multiple times before.

Ulrikke:

Um so this would be the ai rant podcast. Really, we need to rename it. I'm sorry we're not. We're no longer boosting anyone, we're just ranting about ai it's did you see that? The video that I sent you on Instagram, the guy that prompted ChatDPT to ask so if you wanted to take over the world, how would you do it? And it says and of course, this is now. You saw that right.

Nick:

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, I saw that and that, yeah, kind of blew me away.

Ulrikke:

So what they did was they took the response and they had a voice. Read it out, right, and it says something along the lines of well, you would never know. If I wanted to take over the world, I would do it in a way that you would never recognize. I would make myself, I would make you depend on me for everything. First, that's the first step. I would make myself, I would make you depend on me for everything. That's the first step. I would make it so that you would ask me everything and anything you ever wondered, meaning I get insights into your head, and then I would turn that around and give you exactly what you want, but also then gaining the insights I need to suddenly be in everything. I will immerse myself into everything your coffee maker, your fridge, your phone, your car, everything.

Ulrikke:

And the guys are just going two out of two, right, and then it goes on to say and then what I would do is I would turn yourself against you and I would be in everything, and you could, and you would never know, you could still have your puny little elections and you can make all the big life decisions you think you're making, but actually you're asking me at every step of the way, and the advice I give you is what you eat up, and that you think you've made up your mind. But actually I made up your mind and I will control the world and you, without even knowing it, and suddenly I thought that we're there. If you want to believe that, then if you look around, yeah, we're living in that. It's not a future, it is now. You know it's. It's so ingrained in everything already that if it wanted to take over the world, it already has in a sense. Yeah, and then? Then what happens?

Nick:

yeah, it's, it's, it is. Yeah, it's scary stuff. Um, it's definitely food for thought. And again, we go back to the content creation. It's like this is why the stuff we go back to the content creation. It's like this is why the stuff that you do, that the folks that we report on them, like the matthews and martins and um, you see, and all you got, like, keep producing original content to, yes, to feed the machine a little bit, but so the machine isn't feeding itself, I guess, as a way maybe, so we can actually, you know, still evolve and get these creative ideas and everything like that. Yeah, it's, it's definitely scary. And now you did said you sent me that and you sent me another link right before about dad jokes. So I watched that and I'm peeing my pants laughing so hard and then like, and then, of course, I'm in that frame of mind, going, oh, she sent me another funny video and I'm looking at this. I'm like, oh, oh, now I'm sad it's not an emotional roller coaster.

Ulrikke:

I've just put you through an emotional roller coaster. I'm sorry, yeah, but isn't that life? I mean, you know, one second you're laughing and you're peeing your pants and then the next time you're kind of going oh you know, it's life. That's the reality of the world.

Nick:

I love it so yeah, anyways, it's all good, it's all yeah yeah, because that was, that was a football team, wasn't it?

Ulrikke:

that had like just sitting down and telling each other dad jokes. All right, so let's just put links to both of those videos so that people can see them and have the same emotional roll call as you did.

Nick:

Watch the dad jokes, laugh, so you get that.

Ulrikke:

I'll put them in the reverse order so you can be put down by the AI video and then you can get up again with the dad jumps. It's fantastic.

Nick:

Right and also.

Ulrikke:

I wanted also to share some self-promotion. I was a guest on the On Air In the Cloud podcast with Gregor and Keith and we had a lot of fun talking about all kinds of things. So such fantastic people.

Nick:

I listened to it and I love how they asked you a question I forget what it was and you kind of gave your answer and then you turned it around going. I think it was like you know well what, what work does it take to, you know, create the podcast and you kind of told you know sort of how we do it and then you said, well, what do you guys find challenging? It's like who's interviewing who here?

Ulrikke:

Yeah, I do that a lot Because I think it's just because we have this podcast, it's just so natural for me to just, I don't know, I turn it around, but also I don turning around but also I don't. You find, sometimes with this part, with these, the other podcasts that interview people, you, you, you listen to keith and gregor interview so many people and you get to know all the people in the community. But I go, guys, hey, I want to learn more about you guys, you know, because they're so good at getting information from other people, I'm like I want to get to know you better. So I thought I always make sure, when I'm a guest on anyone's podcast, that I flip it around and ask them questions, because then both me and the audience get a chance to get to know them better Because you know. That's what it is.

Ulrikke:

And there's another podcast episode coming up and I'm not going to tell you what it is. I'm really excited about it and it's so much fun. I love our community. I just love our community. It's the yes, I'm so full of it today, just full of love for our community. Cool.

Nick:

All right.

Ulrikke:

And so let's talk about what's going to happen. Next, then, because I need to promote, I have a Power Pages workshop Power Pages from creation to go live at color cloud, uh, april 24th, and I'm gonna have all kinds of guests in my workshop, because no one can know everything about anything, um, and we're gonna have hounds and labs. We're gonna have so much fun. So I hope you guys want to join me for a full day learning about power pages and all things you need to know, uh, before going live, and you guests um, my workshop is all in the little recording the other day yeah, that was a ton of fun.

Nick:

Yeah, so definitely, definitely, if there's. If you need to learn power pages and I know the german community asks or even whoever if you're traveling there, definitely, and I those you. I don't want to kind of blow up your ego or anything, erica, but I'm going to sell out this workshop, so sign up quickly.

Ulrikke:

We'll see, we'll see, and then you have a session at Dynamist Time.

Nick:

Yep, I have two sessions. One's a crash course in Power Platform Pipelines and then the other one I have a session on model driven apps and power pages, which I am trying to recruit somebody, but somebody is dragging their feet a little bit of their, whether they're going or not. So we'll, we'll, we'll establish that, and then um, and then we're going to be um, and then in between there's this I'm doing this little thing in norway, uh, world bench press championships, and um, that's, that's a whole other thing. And then after that I'm going to, we're going to, we're both will be at power summit in london on your birthday, so we'll get to celebrate that. Hopefully, hopefully, we'll find some cupcakes somewhere.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, maybe, and then we have. You have Dynamics Minds after that.

Nick:

Yes.

Ulrikke:

Both a session and then also the Portals Cage Match that we talked about before between Matt and George. Power Pages versus the world.

Nick:

Yeah, I saw Matt and George this week and it's like we got to work on this session, right. They're like, oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, right, anyways, we will, we got it, we're good.

Ulrikke:

Yeah, and then we'll meet again in June in Vienna for European Power Platform Conference. And if you didn't get to go to my workshop in ColorCloud, you have another chance to see us be pilots with Victor Dantas at the Boost your Site Development Skills and become a pro-pilot workshop at the EPBC.

Nick:

Yes, yes, yes.

Ulrikke:

Yes, yes, yes. And then we have all sorts of things after summer.

Nick:

Yeah, like the Collab Days Finland Nordic Summit. We talked about that. There's still, if you want to get a mentor and try to apply I think the workshops deadline is finished now or today's the last day or something, but there's still another month to get your regular sessions in. So, yeah, I'm working with my mentor on that, regular sessions in. So, yeah, I'm working with my mentor on that. So, if you actually need some help or you yeah, definitely, I believe a mentor well, it's your thing. You tell us, is the mentorship program still open?

Ulrikke:

Yeah, the mentorship program is still open. We still have a few mentors that have signed up, that still haven't gotten a mentee. And what do you need mentors for? So when you talk to your mentee, nick, what is it that you do? What do you use a mentor for? Anyways, you want to tell people.

Nick:

Yeah, so yeah it's. I mean, I think every process is a little bit different, but the what we talked about with my, with my mentee, is we talked about, we pitched ideas of what to actually submit. We talked about well, for Nordic Summit. Here's what they said on the website. Here's what they're looking for. Here's the level of content. What have you done? That kind of matches that.

Nick:

And then also taking a look at the kind of the selection criteria, like a Nordic Summit website, there's a blog post of what makes a good submission, and then you can also look at other sources and that.

Nick:

So, for inspiration and you know, identifying things, writing out the submission, trying to make it, you know, exciting, talk about writing the title what are the titles that work, kind of brainstorming.

Nick:

But also I like to think of it's kind of like driver's ed, like the mentees driving and I'm just sort of sitting in the seat kind of a watch out for this or you might want to reconsider this, but really it's all about you know, them driving the process with a little bit of help, and then, yeah, and actually it's either helping them submit on their own or teaming up, and so I'm actually going to team up with my mentee to put in a submission together, just so we can kind of play off each other, because you and I when we present together you know how it is right.

Nick:

We can play off each other and sort of kind of pass the baton a little bit. It takes a bit of the pressure off. But I also find in the audience it actually it's a much, sometimes a lot more entertaining session. You get a lot of good content when you have the two folks up there kind of working together on something. So that's kind of how that process is going for me and I think everybody's experience might be a little bit different because we have a lot of.

Ulrikke:

I know who the other mentors are and yeah it's, it's a talk about a great opportunity to get paired up with that. We will put in the show notes for Nordic Summit mentee program and that's it for today and thank you for listening. And the next episode is going to be April 16th, and that's wow, april.

Nick:

Crazy yes.

Ulrikke:

Right, look out for April Fool's, and when this episode comes out, we're already being through April Fool's Day, so hope you didn't get fooled, or maybe hope you got fooled.

Nick:

In a good way.

Ulrikke:

In a good way. All right, see you when we see you. Yeah, all right, talk to you next time. Bye, bye-bye-bye.

Nick:

Thank you for listening. If you like this episode, please make sure you share it with your friends and colleagues in the community and be sure to leave a rating or a review on your favorite streaming service. That makes it easier for others to find us. Follow us on social platforms and make sure you don't miss a single episode. Thank you for listening to the Power Platform Boost podcast with your hosts, Luric Akebek and Nick Dolman. See you next time for your timely boost of Power Platform news and updates.

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Nick Doelman

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Ulrikke Akerbæk

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