Chris Huntingford Doesn't Believe in Citizen Developers

Neil Benson [00:00:00]: G'day and welcome to another episode of Amazing Apps. I'm Neil Benson. I'm a Microsoft MVP and I run Customery. And I'm glad you could join me today. This is episode 145. You'll find show notes, a transcript, and resources at amazingapps.show/145. My guest today is no stranger in the business apps community. He's a loud, proud, and tattooed South African, lives in the UK, builds Lego in his shed, and studies stardust at university. Can you guess who it is yet? It's the Platform guy, Chris Huntingford. Chris is the Low Code Lead & Platform Evangelist at ANS Group in the UK. I met Chris in 2015 when he was working for a Microsoft partner then he went to work for Microsoft. Now, he's back in the partner channel. He's also a Microsoft MVP, he's a conference groupie, he's a hackathon fanatic, and he's kind of like a bringer together of people in our community. Well, what does Chris make of citizen developers? We're going to find out in this episode. If you haven't met Chris or heard him yet, it's my pleasure to introduce him to you now on Amazing Apps. Chris Huntingford, finally, finally. Welcome to Amazing Applications, man. It's great to have you on the show.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:01:23]: Thank you, sir. I've always, I've loved the stuff that you're doing in the community and that so thank you for having me. It's super exciting. Super exciting.
 
 Neil Benson [00:01:29]: Well, we're gonna share some more of your background and what you're up to, and all the fun stuff that you do towards the end of the show. So listen into a retrospective section if you want to dive more into Chris's background. Chris, I want to start with where on earth you stand on citizen developers. Really? Is it a good idea? I think you and I have different points of view here. What do you think?
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:01:48]: I'm going to give you—so I've got a really gated opinion on this stuff and it's probably a little controversial. So I don't believe in the concept of citizen dev at all.
 
 Neil Benson [00:01:58]: What?
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:01:58]: Yeah, I'll tell you why, just hear me out. I think that citizen developer, the concept is a terrible idea. I don't use the terminology, okay? I use the terminology makers. That's the first thing. And the reason I use the terminology makers is because I think that anyone in the business that's making something is a maker, right? Whether you're really skilled or you have tons of pro code experience and you're an absolute legend, and you are the guy that can make all the digital bricks that we used in the platform, or you're somebody that has zero skill. So, like, I actually love the idea of an inexperienced maker coming in and building something from scratch where they don't know very much about Power Platform and low code. So, yeah, the term citizen developer, I hate the idea of enabling people I love.
 
 Neil Benson [00:02:44]: Okay, all right, fair enough. Microsoft doesn't always hit the nail quite on the head when it comes to naming things. So I appreciate you clarifying that for us. I still think citizen developers largely isn't a great idea. Here's why: if I was to open up Benson Budget Airlines, right, imagine I was going to fly people around Europe, would you fly with an airline that said crewed by holidaymakers for holidaymakers?
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:03:13]: No way for sure.
 
 Neil Benson [00:03:14]: You wouldn't, right? You want professional, trained aircrew piloting and stewarding that aircraft. I think certainly when it comes to building mission-critical enterprise applications, you want software professionals and architects and testers and analysts involved, people who've trained and know how to do this stuff, maybe even got some certifications. Come on, you wouldn't want somebody who's just learned an Excel macro and then jumped over into the Power Platform.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:03:39]: But dude, not everyone's a pilot, man. Not everyone's a pilot, okay? And not everyone has to serve food on the plane. When you look at an airline, there's lots of jobs that people do, and sure, it might partially be staffed by people that are holidaymakers, but maybe they work in marketing, maybe there's a different contingent of people. And this is why I love the idea of there's a job for everyone in low code, like there really is. There's a job for absolutely everyone. And you do need people that are the pilots, like you do need the Manuela Picklers of the world who know how to write reams and reams of code and who we do put the airplane in command of and say, listen, it's your job to take this heavy equipment and fly it somewhere. And you do get the people that fix the plane, but then you also get the people who say, hey, these are the holiday destinations we need to go to, and this is why we think we should go to them because I've been there and it was really kick ass. So my theory here is that citizen dev is not always about the people that are making the mission-critical things. They're about the people that are closest to the problem, that help understand the problem to solve. And in this scenario, it's understanding the holiday destination.
 
 Neil Benson [00:04:38]: Yeah, for sure. So I'm a big fan of having people who are going to use the application, people who got some kind of stake in the application. Maybe it's an IT security person being part of our team and doing the reviews and giving us feedback. Love all of that. But just when it actually comes to building the components, if somebody wants to solve a problem that their team has a local issue or a personal productivity challenge that they've got and they build an app to manage their wine collection or to manage their—I was going to say their CD collection, but beyond CDs these days, knock yourself out. It's better than Excel, for sure. But do you want to build your company's enterprise resource planning application on Power Platform if you just learned how to use it yesterday?
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:05:19]: Not a chance man. No ways. And I agree with that. And this is why we have like a tiered maker structure.
 
 Neil Benson [00:05:25]: Right.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:05:26]: So I'll tell you another reason why I don't like the concept of the word citizen developer, the term at least, is because it kind of takes away what a pro dev actually does. Like you can't just call everyone a developer. I think that those people have worked really hard to earn the title of somebody that can build something really in huge amounts of detail. Like I used to write code, okay
 
 Neil Benson [00:05:43]
 
 It's a scary thought. 
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:05:44]:Yeah, I know, dude. I used to work for Baland. I actually built stuff in Delphi 5.
 
 Neil Benson [00:05:50]: Wow, there you go.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:05:51]: Yeah. So that's why I don't refer to them as devs because I think it takes away from what a developer is. But yeah, I think we believe in a tiered maker structure. So tiered maker structures, you have to earn your way up and if you want to be building them brutal, awesome solutions, you got to prove, you got to get your spurs, man. And as you said, I'm not going to put a travel destination plan as the pilot of my plane. That's a firm no. But what I am going to do is go and chat to them and say, listen, we're the best destinations and get that information. And I think Microsoft called it a fusion team, which is I'm still not super convinced. I actually like the term but I don't know how realistic it is. So like I'm still trying to work that one out, but I think it takes all type.
 
 Neil Benson [00:06:30]: A fusion team for me, it may be a slightly different take on it. When I've got a Microsoft partner business and I've got my professional developers in the team and the customer says, hey look, I've got a couple of people who want to learn Power Platform. They might be, I don't know, Orland developers or Delphi or Pascal developers, right. And we want to cross train them. They're going to learn C sharp, they're going to learn Power Platform. And can they join you on that journey as you build the app? Absolutely they can. To me that's a fusion team. It's a Microsoft customer partner coming together. Can we get citizens onto that team or makers onto that team? For sure. I want to teach them how to do this stuff. I definitely want my customers to be self sufficient and be able to maintain, extend and support the application after we go home.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:07:12]: Totally.
 
 Neil Benson [00:07:13]: Have you seen any great examples of successful maker teams or apps built purely by makers?
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:07:19]: Yeah. Actually in our company, so we employ a lot of people that are ex customer.
 
 Neil Benson [00:07:23]: Right.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:07:24]: So we have a big split, yeah, we have a lot of people that are like long time in the partner channel who act as architects. And then we've got some folks that are ex Heathrow Airport, ex BBC that were makers and have earned their way up so they've gotten really good at making stuff. And actually some of them, oh man, they're insanely good. But I do think that that's worked really well. A great place we have seen a fusion team work, I can't mention company names on this was at the previous place I was at, we were working with an organization and we actually put a fusion team together to build out a number of their, some of the apps well, I don't want to call them apps, I'm going to call them solutions because it's never just an app, there's always bits and pieces to it. We put a couple of people together and one of the guys, his name was Andres. Man, he turned out to be insanely good at this stuff. Like he just picked it up and he was flying with it, which blew my mind. So I think it works well there. I think we've been doing it in Dynamics for a fair amount of time. So in the world of Dynamics, we had actually been doing fusion teams a lot longer than anyone thought. They just didn't give it a name. But we were always functionally working with the business to say, hey, what needs to go where? Why would you put it there? Do you want it in cornflower blue? It's just that in low code it's a little bit easier because people aren't so terrified of Dynamics. I think it's been around for ages, man.
 
 Neil Benson [00:08:39]: If a customer, let's say they had a sales analyst, right? And her job was to prepare sales reports for the sales team, she wants to join your CRM team. You're going to roll out Dynamics 365 sales across their organization. The customer wants her to come and join you. What kind of training and prerequisites and pathway would you ask her to embark on to train up in customizing Dynamic 365 sales and maybe doing some Power BB? What training courses and pathways have you seen work well for folks?
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:09:09]: So I actually do this with mentees at the moment. So the college I go to, I go to a school called Birkbeck and I work, I study planetary sciences. And one of my mentees, so I've taken him through this exact process and I say to him all the time, I'm like, the best way if you learn is to get hands on, as hands on as you can possibly get, right? So what you need to be doing is you need to be building stuff. So I give him what you call free builds. So there's that. And then I also got him to do, we started out doing app in a day, but he was fairly switched on so he could do that. I would not give that to a standard business user out of the bat, especially Power BI in a day. That's way too much. I think you need to do some very, very basic stuff like make a three screen app, very simple things, and start with that and build them up on the configuration side. Yeah. I also think that people panic a bit when they start using dataverse because they think like, oh, it's this crazy relational data structure. Yeah, it is. It's amazing. But like, it does take some getting used to. And data modeling to me is an art form. I think it's one of the most important parts of being able to build solutions. So what I would do is start them on the very basic, simple stuff. Maybe some Microsoft learning parts, like the fundamentals pieces, but even then it's still a bit much. Give them free builds, give them instructions. Like, I build my own courseware. So I've used that before and it's worked really well. And then drive them towards that, like, app in a day type approach where you're going through lab work and then say, okay, you've done some work. How about taking a look at the learning path for fundamentals? That's what I think works really well. Hands on, man. Every time, all the time.
 
 Neil Benson [00:10:35]: What's a free build? It sounds like climbing where you go without ropes.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:10:39]: Yeah, free builds are cool, man. So what I do is I'll give a set of instructions. I'm like, okay, here is a set of Excel data. I want you to take this data and I want you to build me something on top of it to help categorize the data or do something with it. So always start from a data set. I'm one of these people that builds from data upwards. I don't believe in design down.
 
 Neil Benson [00:10:55]: Right.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:10:55]: That's one of the reasons that projects get kicked out of infosec is because they don't get the data right up front and security. So I build data upwards, including, I do think, of design, but it'll always be in the middle for me. And yeah, I just get people going, hey, I get them to try stuff out. Trial and error. I don't mark their work, I just show them what I've built. And often I do build alongs as well. So I build with them and I say, hey, let's try this together. And that, I found gets really, really good feedback. I've got a different approach, I guess.
 
 Neil Benson [00:11:24]: Yeah, I love that idea of setting people real life apps to build. I think that getting hands on is really important and I think it puts all the theory in context as you begin to learn the theory.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:11:37]: That's exactly it, man.
 
 Neil Benson [00:11:38]: Here's the maker studio.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:11:39]: Yeah, I can't do this like intensely long learning path thing where you're just reading stuff. I think Microsoft are doing that 30-day solution challenge, which is really cool, man. Yeah, 30-day app challenge or something where you can go and build something in 30 days. But I've seen the content. It's actually really good.
 
 Neil Benson [00:11:56]: Yeah.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:11:57]: So I'd recommend that if you're getting start—
 
 Neil Benson [00:11:59]: I understand. Microsoft learn is phenomenal because it's easy to update and there's tons and tons of content on there, but I think you and I agree that learning by reading about it isn't always the best way to learn from most people. But creating videos, creating labs, just requires a heck of a lot more investment in Microsoft's part. There just wouldn't be enough content if they had to make that level of investment and everything.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:12:23]: No.
 
 Neil Benson [00:12:23]: Yeah. Interesting. There's so many ways now to fill in those gaps, to get that hands on experience, whether it's apps in a day or go to a conference and do a workshop, and there's tons of opportunities out there.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:12:33]: Oh, man. The best thing actually I can't believe I didn't think of this, but doing hackathons and participating in hackathons.
 
 Neil Benson [00:12:39]: You’re a massive hackathon guy.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:12:41]: Bro, I love hackathons. You know what, it's so funny, because we had never myself, Will and Kyle, right, so we kind of started doing this gosh when it was still CDs V1, and then in the transition phase, and we ran this hackathon called Demystifying the Common Data Service, and we literally had no clue what we were doing. We were just like, dude, we're going to make a thing. And we got, like, loads of people in the room, we gave them a use case and there were people that came out of that going, I've never used Power Platform before, this is awesome. And then we were addicted to it. But I think that seeing, we did a hackathon at South Coast Summit last year and we had, like, a lot of the NHS team, these guys are like, man, they're rocking it. They're absolutely loving it. They're building stuff, they're getting traction. I think that's a good way to learn.
 
 Neil Benson [00:13:24]: So tell me about the premise of a hackathon. You get a whole bunch of people together in a room for a day or two days, or how long does it typically last?
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:13:30]: Gosh, I think the longest we've done is two days. We try to keep it at a day, so we normally do 8 hours, except when they had Business Application Summit online. That was a bit crazy because we did a follow the sun 24-hour hack. So we'd started in Australia and New Zealand. Yeah. And we worked our way up into sort of APAC, India, then through to the UK. When we got to the States, Keith, Donna and myself were running the thing with Will kind of dotsing in and outs, and we were knackered, man. But the idea is to get as many random people as you can. Like, the way that this works is don't just get techies together. Like, you got to have lots of eclectic random people from different backgrounds, and then we break them out into really varying teams on purpose. So that they can start giving each other a bit of a poke and learning about one another. And then we set challenges and we're like, okay, let's build this stuff and see what you do. And man, Neil, the stuff that they come out with is bonkers.
 
 Neil Benson [00:14:26]: Do you watch Lego Master Builders, Australian TV show?
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:14:30]: Yeah, I have before. So I've watched the Australian version.
 
 Neil Benson [00:14:33]: Yeah, so it sounds a bit like that where they give you 12 hours to make a build. Here's the challenge. And in Lego Masters, there's a team of two people. It's already pre-formed, but you're taking a team of slightly random strangers with lots of different skills, throwing them together into a team and saying, here's the challenge, go build it. You've got 8 hours. Time starts now.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:14:51]: So, you know, we actually did that in the UK with Lego. We got a bunch of the—it was ages ago. So Anna Demini, myself, Donna Sarkar came over from the States and we ran a Lego hack.
 
 Neil Benson [00:15:02]: Awesome.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:15:02]: Brian Dang was there? Yeah, Brian Dang came over. We had loads of loads of Lego and we stuck a whole bunch of the Microsoft Insiders and a bunch of the Power Platform community, and we mixed them all together. And then we gave him a challenge and we were like, okay, the challenge is we're in, like, this desolate society and we need to clean up the planets. How are you going to do it? Build us a machine. Man, the stuff that came out of that hackathon, it was like watching toddlers. They were literally fighting over pieces. It was great. At every hack we ever do, there's a giant table of Lego for whatever reason.
 
 Neil Benson [00:15:33]: Yeah. Oh, man. I'm trying to think of what my kids would do if I took all their Lego to a conference. I don't think they'd be happy.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:15:40]: Mine’s not happy with me, man.
 
 Neil Benson [00:15:42]: No, maybe if I bought some new Lego for the conference and brought it home, that would be a better plan as far as they're concerned.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:15:48]: So that's how I get by. I just keep on buying those big yellow boxes. I'm like, oh, cool, a conference. I'm like, guys, can we just have like 100 quid to buy loads of Lego? And then I just keep on adding to the box. So it's getting huge now.
 
 Neil Benson [00:16:01]: Very cool. Well, before we go, we could spend the rest of the show talking about Lego. Let's bring it back a little bit to our beautiful makers. What's your point of view on supporting a community of makers with something like the Center of Excellence to help them with some guardrails about what good looks like? Are you finding the Center of Excellence is still as popular these days? Is it a good idea to deploy a Center of Excellence to support our maker communities?
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:16:24]: Yeah. Okay, so this is where it gets a little weird. I think that we are past that. I think that Center of Excellence, the starter kit is good. I think it's a great tool. But I think what a lot of people have done is they've distorted the concept of what a Center of Excellence is.
 
 Neil Benson [00:16:37]: Really?
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:16:38]: They think that installing the starter kit—Yeah, dude, they think that, okay, we've installed the starter kit, we're done. We don't have to do any more. Like, we've got all the visibility we need. But honestly, man, first of all, I've dealt with organizations that have up to like, twelve tenants, okay? And the Center of Excellence starter kit does not cut the mustard. It's just a part of a wider picture. So we came up with this concept of ecosystem enablements and what that means is that you're taking a combination of people, processes, and platform or technology to provide what you would call a wider landscape for a portfolio build. So actually, when you say guardrails, a lot of folks just think, oh, it's data policies, or security or maybe environments. But it's way bigger than that. There's so many things you have to take into account. I mean, solution sizing and monitoring. So I always ask organizations three things every time. I'm like, okay, so can you tell me what people are making in your business? Can you tell me who is making that stuff? And can you tell me where they're making it? If you can answer those three things for me very clearly and categorically and say that everyone is safe, you don't need me. And to date, I've never, ever, ever worked with a business, who can answer it. So I think that the CoE starter kit is a good way to understand what, where, and who. But then once you've got that visibility, then you start needing to go, okay, how do we ring fence all these cats and make sure that we give them a safe space to build? And unfortunately, the CoE doesn't do that. You have to provide that with process, and you have to provide that on your own with guardrails. So it's way bigger than just the tool.
 
 Neil Benson [00:18:10]: Yeah, maybe the clues in the name, right. It's a starter kit is a fair place to get started.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:18:16]: Yeah, I mean, installing it's great. You'll get the visibility you need, but you certainly won't get the people in the process part. And actually, can I tell you something? This is like, maybe a little bit of a tirade, but I think in the year 2000, when the clock ticked over, we all had this idea that technology was going to rule the planet, and it kind of did. And then in 2012, Capgemini came up with this idea called digital transformation. So actually, they coined the term and we were fixated on digital, and all we did was like transform digitally. But we forgot something really, really important. We forgot the people part. And the people part, unfortunately, is where we have lost a lot of developers. Like, we've lost so many developers and that's why we have a great developer shortage. We've lost so many people to digital transformation that actually we have a big hole and now we're going through this like weird global recession again and we're coming out, all eventually will and I think we have a chance to reform. And that's why I think that we need to stop talking about the word transformation and really think about enablement. And if you think about it, man, when Microsoft came out with Office, they didn't come out with any guardrails, they didn't come out with anything like that, they just said here, use Excel and Word and it went bonkers. If we are still talking about low code in five years time, we've done something wrong. I think that in five years time, man, or maybe ten or seven years, 2030, naturally people will be building apps and building flows and building things and we will progress out of that. And we are in the age of emerging AI where actually what we will need to do is let the AI do a lot of the work and we will then govern and maintain that ecosystem and enable people to build the things that they need to supported by AI. I know it's a tirade, I know it's a lot, but I think it's where we are, man.
 
 Neil Benson [00:19:51]: Yeah, I love it. I think we still got a huge way to go. I think of my daily life and filling in forms and talking to insurance companies and banks and telcos and they've all got massive multibillion dollar transformation programs that have been happening for ten years and there's still so many points of friction, so many paper things. Oh, I need a wet signature over here. No, you can't add a digital signature there like what on earth is going on? How come you haven't got to all these corners of your organization yet. And I think it's because they're taking this huge top down transformation approach, not like you're saying, which is just give frontline people the tools and empower them, allow them to go and fix the problems that the customers are experiencing.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:20:31]: Well, let me tell you something funny, man. We're seeing a shift in the way that customers are asking us for things now. They're not asking us to make apps anymore, they're saying how do we enable 1000 people to build solutions even in the tender requirements. We were chatting to an organization recently and they just said to us, “We don't need you guys to make the applications. What we need you to do is make the tools available and reusable so that other people can make the apps.” And if you speak to people like Mark Smith and Andrew Welch and Will, you will find that like the approach now was all shifting to the right where we are not managing these workloads anymore, but we are managing how do we actually help the wider organization enable. And the only way you can do that is through the enablement piece around governance, compliance. You get those guardrails in place, you get those processes in place, who cares how many apps they make? Doesn't make a difference. They can make a million of them, so yeah.
 
 Neil Benson [00:21:18]: I'm not seeing that shift. Maybe I'm just stuck with my head in the sand. I'm still working with customers who want my teams to deliver the big complex workload with deep industry expertise around marketing or sales, customer service or maybe a custom application. I appreciate there are organizations who are ramping up to build hundreds of applications. I was working with Microsoft, used to be called Microsoft Consulting Services, Microsoft Industry Solutions with a bank here in Australia. And so this bank has got a target of enabling a thousand applications from their legacy portfolio onto the Power Platform. That's one example I've seen. It's quite rare. Maybe I'm just in a different space in our community here, but I love that idea of organizations just saying, hey Microsoft Partner, how can you help us not build an application but build a thousand applications?
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:22:09]: Yeah, and I do, like honestly Neil, I think for 365 and like anything, so I have a I have a sliding scale of solution build and I do a thing called solution sizing where you start out with something like that's an extra small and no partner should ever build somebody an extra small. It's like why? I mean, I get there are some that will make money from it but that's a firm no. And people got angry. When I was working at Microsoft and I was talking to partners, I said to them, why are you making people 3-screen apps? They can literally go, the only thing you're doing is taking advantage of them, right? Like point them to that website, tell them to go and make the app and that's that, right? And they got angry with me because that's our bread and butter. And I'm like, but if that's your bread and butter in a year's time you won't exist. So when you get like smalls and extra smalls so it's moving up the scale slowly. So extra smalls are now gone. Smalls are going, smalls are more like, hey, we're going to build something very menial on top of a little bit more complicated SharePoint structure, but it's not really rocket science. That's going very quickly. In fact, I spoke to a customer today who's like, dude, I'm smashing out these database structures and I'm like, oh, that's my bread and butter, I shouldn't be letting you do that. And mediums, mediums will eventually go. Dynamics isn't a larger and extra large. So marketing, you will never ever, ever be able to rebuild and Power Platform if you even tried. Same with field service, same with something like omnichannel. Sales, I always beg to differ because I still think that you can probably do pieces of it but eventually it'll get to the point where from an AI perspective, dynamics is being like self customized, right. So you're talking to it and saying, I need this, I need that. But you still have to have the knowledge about what's going on under the hood and Dynamics. Power Platform, you don't, man. You're starting from a blank slate, so you can literally tell it what to do from a blank slate. Yeah.
 
 Neil Benson [00:23:49]: So I have a customer at the moment. They're a nonprofit organization and they're a member based organization, and they want to deploy Dynamics 365 marketing and portals, sorry, power pages. And one of the items in their product backlog, they came back and said, look, we just don't have the budget to do everything. We're going to have to draw the line here. One of the things below the line that isn't going to get built by us is an event registration app. Just something simple. So when a bunch of people turn up to an in person event, they can get checked in. It's like, well, okay, so you don't have the budget for us to build that for you, but if you can't build that app yourself by the time we're done, then we've done something wrong. So that's a really simple example of a small or an extra small. They should be able to do that themselves by the time we're done marketing and power pages.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:24:35]: But you're doing enablement there, man.
 
 Neil Benson [00:24:37]: Yeah. So maybe it's not the grand thousand apps transformation scale that you're thinking of, but we're definitely bringing customers along in the journey as well.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:24:46]: Yeah, I think it's the right thing, man. And I think ultimately we're going to be responsible for enabling businesses at a much wider scale and a much more governed scale. But I still don't think that when you get to the big chunky pieces, I don't think that companies will do it on their own. I think that we are a long way away from that. I don't think we're a long way from mediums, and the medium sizes kind of moving into the AI bracket, but things like the big solutions, we're pretty far up. What you can do is teach companies to customize or configure, but not go bonkers and balls to the wall and stop. Hey, I'm going to make an ERP. Yeah, cool. Well done. No, run away.
 
 Neil Benson [00:25:23]: Okay. So, Chris, that's been a fascinating chat. We've covered lots about citizen developers and makers and where you stand on that. Your vision for I guess you call it a center of enablement rather than a center of excellence. Is that the lingo that you're adopting?
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:25:37]: Well, I call it ecosystem enablement because the ecosystem can have multiple centers. So think about the ecosystem as the overarching layer, and then you can have multiple centers where you have multiple communities of practice under each one. So the way that I see it is that actually we're looking at a far bigger picture from a digital perspective, not just low code. It's all around like data security. I call it a tripod. I know it's hilarious, but it's data security and business applications and those three are effectively the core that make up the wider ecosystem.
 
 Neil Benson [00:26:07]: Have you got some time to spend with us in a little retrospective to get to know you a little bit better and want to jam in some of the conferences you're involved in, talk about more about Lego. 
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:26:15]: Yes
 
 Neil Benson [00:26:16]:I want to start there. You are one of the few cats who I've seen go from Microsoft Partner to working for Microsoft and now you're working back in the Microsoft Partner channel again. What's that been like? And would you rather work for Microsoft or a partner? Sorry, would you recommend somebody go to work for Microsoft or a partner?
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:26:34]: I think anyone in the partner sphere should get a little bit of a Microsoft under their belt and the reason is because you learn how the mothership works to an extent and there is a lot of good stuff that you need to know. But navigating that company is really difficult. 
 
 Neil Benson [00:26:49]: I can imagine. 
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:26:50]: Yeah, there's a lot of—you talk to one person and they know a quarter of something and it's like their real speciality and then you have to go to get to another person who knows a quarter of something and it's just hard to put pieces together. I do think that it's a good idea for people to go there. So if you have the opportunity, go and work there. It was great for me. From a corporate perspective, I'm not a match. I don't think that my approach is welcome in the subs, let's put it that way. I think at corp I'll be fine. I think in the sub level you got to be a bit more salesy and tactful, which I am not. It is what it is, man.
 
 Neil Benson [00:27:25]: The other thing is that you lost your MVP award while you were there, right? And then you had to come out of the Microsoft mothership and then win it back again. So congratulations on that, by the way. I'm sure there was no doubt about it. But yeah, it was strange having you leave the family for a little bit.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:27:41]: That was the thing I missed the most. So being there, I'll be honest, I had a lot more connection into Microsoft when I was an MVP the first time and I loved it. It was cool because I was chatting to you, I was chatting to George Dubinsky and Joel and Art, it was easy and then direct to the product group. And then you go to Microsoft and the product group are like, okay, this protocol here. And they're right because you're an employee so you have to follow the rules, so to speak. And I get it. Like, it makes sense to me. But it wasn't fun. So yeah, I mean I was lucky that I did have people to talk to in the product group that were really cool. So I got some good guidance from some really senior people, which is awesome. But yeah, it was the thing that I really missed the most.
 
 Neil Benson [00:28:19]: That's an interesting perspective, recommending that people go and get some experience at Microsoft. There's lots of roles there. Yeah, it's an interesting place, I'm sure. I wanted to thank you. I don't know if you can see these Lego letters behind me.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:28:32]: Yeah, the customery. I love it, yeah
 
 Neil Benson [00:28:34]: My kids got inspired. I showed them a photograph of something I think you had built, which was the word maker.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:28:40]: I'm a maker thing.
 
 Neil Benson [00:28:41]: Yeah
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:28:42]: I did. That's amazing.
 
 Neil Benson [00:28:43]: So I have a big folder on OneDrive with all my Lego photographs in it, and there's one just called Chris Huntingford. And I opened it up the other day, I was like, what have I got a Lego thing, Chris? And it was just this maker photograph. So I had zoomed in on your video background or something. You'd posted a photograph of it somewhere and I was like, oh, I'd love to build that with a customery logo. And my kids like, oh, we could do that for you, dad. So it took me months because there's nine different colors and I had to get enough pieces in all the different colors. I had to ship all these pieces in from all over the world. But, yeah, we got there and they built that for me. So thank you for the inspiration.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:29:15]: I love it. Oh, man, it's cool. I remember you sent me a picture of it and I'm like, oh my gosh, this is the greatest thing. I still have a little Lego man you gave me when I was at MVP Summit in like, 2018. I don't remember what it was.
 
 Neil Benson [00:29:27]: Yeah, I'm trying to figure out how to post them around the world. Oz Post changed the postage rate from about three, or about $4 international to $32. To ship a Lego figure that cost $5.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:29:39]: Oh, man.
 
 Neil Benson [00:29:39]: I need to figure out a more cost effective way of shipping them to get there.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:29:43]: Just rock up at events, man, with your bag.
 
 Neil Benson [00:29:47]: I sent about 100 over to Scottish Summit last time and there was a bunch of kilts as well. Lots of Lego kilts
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:29:53]: I remember seeing those little dudes around, man. I love them. Honestly, Neil, I think they're the greatest thing. When you gave me my little guide MVP Summit, I was like, yes. I've still got him kicking around somewhere. I think he's in storage right now because I'm in an airbnb waiting to move.
 
 Neil Benson [00:30:09]: Yeah, because you used to have a little studio out in the back garden or something, didn't you? 
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:30:13]: Yeah. So we sold that place. We're moving into Cambridge, and I'm hoping my family and I, we just yeah, we're chilling in an airbnb. We've been in the airbnb for about three months now, so we got one more month and then into the new place. So I have my old studio back with all my crazy shit going around. I'm excited.
 
 Neil Benson [00:30:31]: Very cool, very cool. Tell us about some of the conferences you've got coming up. You've just at European Power Platform conference, is that right?
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:30:38]: Yeah, I love that conference, man. I think I just love the organizers as well. They're so cool, they're a good team. I know it's a paid for conference and they charge for it and a lot of people don't necessarily agree with it, but I just think that they do such an epic job of making it awesome for speakers, for attendees. Everyone feels like they get their money's worth. I really like it. So, yeah, that one was good. And actually, man, I got to spend some really quality time with a lot of good people. And normally at conferences you kind of like feel as if you're everywhere, but this time I actually focused and hung out with loads of folks, which was cool. You've been to that one as well?
 
 Neil Benson [00:31:12]: No, I haven't. I went to one in Dublin, but I think it was European Summit when Dynamics Communities still existed or still run.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:31:20]: I remember that one. Yeah, because I saw you on the bridge.
 
 Neil Benson [00:31:24]: Yeah. So EPPC, you said it was a paid conference. Did more Microsoft customers go to paid conferences, do you think? Did you see a lot of customers there?
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:31:32]: Defo. I can 100% tell you now, paid conferences is far more like customer walk ins. 100%. I feel like they're quite picky about the speakers that they bring in and I think that sometimes free conferences, you can get away with bringing in new speakers a bit more and bringing people through, whereas these ones, you have to be super hardcore about the content you're in. So a load of my sessions got declined for that conference, actually, which is good. I'm fine with it. I know I need to just do a bit of work upping my game on my content, but yeah, man, it was really good. And I think the free ones you'll see a lot more partner. That's what I found because partners maybe don't want to pay the full boot for the other ones.
 
 Neil Benson [00:32:13]: Right. And a lot of independent consultants as well. So I think paid and free community conferences attract, do attract a slightly different crowd. I was asking some customers here in Australia if they would go to conferences, a Saturday conference. Most customers’ like, no, man, my team work five days a week. I don't really expect them to spend their weekends going to conferences, whereas independent contractors and consultants are like, yeah, I don't want to miss any billable work, I'd far rather go to a Saturday conference. And so it's an interesting feedback that I've had about the idea of putting—
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:32:46]: Yeah, and I agree with you. I think most customers want to just have their Saturdays off and partners are a little bit more like, yeah, it's easier for us to get there. I've seen both. I've seen the metrics behind both. I find it very interesting.
 
 Neil Benson [00:32:57]: Talking about upping your speaker game, you're going to be in Vegas in October. You're going to have to bring your A game for that one. I'm going to be there, hopefully going to be in your session. Tell us about what you're doing in Vegas.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:33:07]: I went to the first one, which was really cool. There was in Florida and I loved it. I just thought it was such a cool conference. And this year, it's weird, man. I didn't submit stuff that I thought I would get picked. I thought, okay, I'm going to go a little bit out the box here. I'm going to do stuff that I don't normally do. So I submitted one session with my friend Natalie and it's on adaptive cards, which is like not at all my thing, but it's cool because I think I'm going to bring, I'm going to bring a hugely different spin to the whole thing. Well, there's going to be two discussions to that session and one of them is not going to be overly positive and it's going to be around like, when to use them because I think that's like, sometimes people just use tech for the sake of using tech. So there's that one and then the other one is about ten things to avoid around app Armageddon and it's exactly what we were talking about, like the guardrails and stuff. Again, I think I'm going to take a bit of a poke at people because it's more like stop thinking about it as just an app. You've got to think around it as something much wider than that. And nobody puts governance in for Excel, so what's the problem?
 
 Neil Benson [00:34:10]: I love that. Yeah. I know nothing about adaptive cards. I'm looking forward to that session. I think Azure McFarland's got a session on adaptive cards for beginners, so hopefully make both of those and come away with a little bit more expertise because it looks like a really useful component in my kit bag. None of my sessions get picked up for Power Platform conference, so I just I get the luxury of just going as an attendee.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:34:31]: Not panicking about your session during the day, man.
 
 Neil Benson [00:34:34]: Yeah, absolutely. So my family and I were going to go on a road trip.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:34:39]: So you're going to bring the whole lot with you? You're going to bring everyone?
 
 Neil Benson [00:34:41]: I'm bringing my three kids, my wife and her parents. So they're not going to be at the conference. They're going to do like one or two days in Vegas and they're going to take off, leave me in Vegas with the crew and have a hangout with you all.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:34:53]: That's cool.
 
 Neil Benson [00:34:54]: And then come back back to Australia slightly after the family.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:34:56]: How long is the trip, the trip there is quite long.
 
 Neil Benson [00:34:59]: Yeah. It's a 15 or 16-hour flight.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:35:0]: Man, that’s—I'm bringing my Mrs with me and she's going to stay the full time and come to the conference.
 
 Neil Benson [00:35:06]: Very cool. Yeah, she's getting into Power Platform stuff, right?
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:35:09]: Yeah, she does a bit of tech, so she works for a company in Reading and they do like data backups. So she's mucking around with power bi and doing a bit of flow. So I'm like, do you want to come along? Just come and hang out. So, yeah, she's going to join. This is phase of ad. Like the sessions, you'll probably just go to a couple, but it's more for the interactions afterwards.
 
 Neil Benson [00:35:28]: I just wanted to see how life's going at ANS group. I had never heard of ANS until a couple of years ago. I think Adam Spurr took a job there and I look at it today and I've got 45 of my friends work there. He just acquired PreAct. Lewis is there. Dan Barber's just joined who, Dan and I were at Increase together 2006, my first ever Scrum project was working with Dan, seems to be going great guns.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:35:56]: And Kyle Hill. Kyle Hill’s just joined us as well. So Kyle's leading up enterprise architecture. Let's put it this way, I've never worked with this many crazy people in my life. Like, they fit my level of lunacy, which is cool, man. I mean, I love Adam. Adam I've always admired for years and years. I've always just thought, he's such a down to earth guy. Like, he's super straightforward. If he doesn't like something, he'll tell you. He's not a dick. Like, he actually gets the point across. Yes, he's hardcore, but he's also got a very high EQ, which is what I dig about him. So I identify with that. I like people who are able to get their point across but still keep their emotions. And I struggle with that. And yeah, when I left Microsoft, he's like, dude, I went to Avanade and he's like, why don't you come here? And I'm like, it was always between the two. I always wanted to either go there or Avanade. And I said, no, I need to just learn, get this experience. And then eventually I was like, no, I'm going to them. And I've always liked them. I like the vibe, I like the people, I like the straightforwardness, I like the Northern attitude. Yeah, I really like just the grit. And you know what the cool thing is, is that they're very like they just, yes, you work hard and yes, you have a tough time at work and everyone's there to support one another and pick each other up and everyone's saying thank you and helpful. But then, man, when you finish that, the beer just tastes so much better and that's what I love.
 
 Neil Benson [00:37:13]: Awesome. Northern pint of ale.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:37:16]: That's it, man. Well, not ale for beer. I've got very complicated taste buds, Neil. I drink lager and only lager.
 
 Neil Benson [00:37:26]:  Good for you. Well, I'm looking forward to buying you one. I'll see you in Vegas.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:37:29]: I can't wait to see you, man. It's going to be good fun. We definitely need to make sure that we pass some beers across many of those dodgy tables.
 
 Neil Benson [00:37:36]: Good stuff. Chris, thanks so much for joining us on Amazing Applications. It's been long overdue and it's great.To have you on. Thank you so much for joining me.
 
 Chris Huntingford [00:37:43]: Thanks for having me, man. I appreciate it.
 
 Neil Benson [00:37:49]: I hope you enjoyed that episode of Amazing Apps with Chris Huntingford. If you did, head on over to the Customer company page on LinkedIn. Follow the page and comment on this episode's post. If more people in our community discover and listen to this podcast, we'll be able to attract more and more awesome guests like Chris to share their knowledge and experience with you. In the next episode, we've got a professional Scrum trainer joining us. He's also a Microsoft MVP, but he's not a business apps MVP. In fact, he reckons you're mad if you're building apps on Dynamics 365. Follow or subscribe to the show so you don't miss that one. Until then, keep experimenting. Bye for now.