From Blogger to Builder: Power Platform, AI Bootcamps, and the 90 Day Mentoring Challenge

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FULL SHOW NOTES
https://www.microsoftinnovationpodcast.com/677

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani, a first-time Microsoft MVP from Singapore, shares his journey from blogging about Power Platform technologies to earning MVP recognition in 2024. His story reveals how finding your specialty and consistently creating high-quality technical content can lead to community recognition and MVP status.

TAKEAWAYS
• Started career at HCL Technologies as a Dynamics 365 professional directly after college
• Currently works as assistant lead engineer and manager in healthcare, focusing on model-driven Power Apps and Power BI
• Earned Microsoft's "Top 10 Bloggers" recognition for several consecutive months
• Blogs primarily about new Power Platform features, testing them in trial and preview accounts
• Recently organized an online AI boot camp in Singapore with 30-35 participants
• Recommends finding a niche skill where you can contribute consistently for 1-2 years
• Was nominated for MVP by Golokan Mishtan from Singapore
• Credits the 90-day mentoring challenge as boosting his MVP journey

OTHER RESOURCES:
👉 Microsoft MVP YouTube Series - How to Become a Microsoft MVP
👉GitHub: https://github.com/pavanmanideep 
👉Personal GitHub: https://pavanmanideep.github.io/ 

Transcript

Welcome to the MVP Show

Introducing Pavan from Singapore

Mark Smith 0:06

Welcome to the MVP show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called how to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, let's get on with the show. Today's guest is from Singapore. He's the assistant lead engineer and manager. He was first awarded as MVP in 2024. Blogging is his main hobby. Apart from that, he loves reading e-books and listening to audio books on Audible Me too. You can find links to his bio and socials in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Pavan.

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 0:56

Yeah, thank you, Mark. Thank you for having me in the show.

Mark Smith 0:59

Good to have you on. Tell me food, family and fun. What do you get up to in Singapore? What do you do for fun? Tell me about your family.

Life and Work in Singapore

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 1:07

So my family is back in India so I'm staying alone. So, apart from work, I usually try to blog things and try to learn as far as possible in Power Platform and Microsoft Technologies. So coming to my fun part, so I often try to go around and see places in Singapore, explore. Every I usually do every Sunday morning I go around and explore places in Singapore, mainly. Nice it's a nice city. Yeah, you have been to Singapore, right?

Mark Smith 1:51

Multiple times. Yeah, the last time I was there was December, before the lockdown pandemic.

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 1:57

Okay.

Mark Smith 2:00

And while I was there, I was actually piggybacking with my wife. She was going for onboarding because she at that time was, uh, onboarding to google in new zealand, and so they did all their onboarding in singapore. So I just went along, she had the hotel you know and hung out, and then I met up with all the the biz apps folks in singapore so we went out for dinner. Um, you know, down the waterfront there looking over to the you know the hotel boat hotel and yeah, all the community treated me, took me out for dinner and showed me a good time in Singapore. So that was was that 2020? End of 2019, December 2019,? Yeah, just before the pandemic. So it was my last international flight and after that it was game over.

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 2:47

How long have you been traveling to the United States? Right US.

Mark Smith 2:53

Yeah, so I'm back as of next week. I'm off. Are you going to the MVP Summit?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 2:59

Yeah, I'm planning for that.

Mark Smith 3:01

Nice, nice, I like it. I like it. Tell me, how did you get into IT. What was your journey just before BizApps, before Microsoft? What was your journey into IT?

Career Journey in Dynamics 365

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 3:13

No, I started my career in Dynamics 365 itself. So I'm out of my college and as a freshman I started my career as a HCL Technologies, so as a Dynamics 365 professional. I was trained on Dynamics 365 and then started working on the different projects there.

Mark Smith 3:37

What was your first project?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 3:39

So initially I was deployed to some Microsoft account. So I was working for WWLP Worldwide Licensing, which is a Microsoft internal project.

Mark Smith 3:54

What was involved in that project?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 3:58

So it's a kind of introduction to different modules and where I had got a chance to work on the learn. I'm just out of my college, right? So I just started my career at the beginning. So I have started working on some plugins and some other client-side functionality.

Power Platform Focus in Healthcare

Mark Smith 4:25

Nice, nice. And when you look at the stack of technology inside either Dynamics or the Power Platform, what is the main area you work on these days? Is it more Power Platform, is it more Dynamics? And if it's more Dynamics, is there specific apps that you work on more? Or, if it's a Power, do you work more with Power, automate, power Apps? What's the area of focus?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 4:50

So I mainly work on Power Apps along with Power BI. Work on PowerApps along with Power BI. I've been working with integration, with using some Kingsoft adapters, and all for different integrations.

Mark Smith 5:13

Correct me if I'm wrong. You work for a healthcare company, is that right?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 5:15

Yeah.

Mark Smith 5:19

Tell us a bit about the type of work that you do there in the healthcare space.

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 5:25

So it's day-to-day work. We'll be mostly on Power Platform, so we'll be using Dynamics 365 online and so it's all kind of normal stuff what we do as a platform consultant. So it's just mostly about streamlining the process of how the hospitality industry will work on that.

Mark Smith 5:57

Is it more model-driven side of things? Is it more canvas?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 6:02

It's kind of mostly model-driven app, very less canvas. Majority of the applications are only on model-driven app.

Mark Smith 6:13

How did you become an MVP? What was that pathway for you then?

The Path to Becoming an MVP

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 6:17

So, since beginning from my first company itself, from my bachelor's degree itself, I have a hobby of writing blogs, so that writing blogs has been like when I get free time I write a blog and slowly over the time it has been picked up and somehow Microsoft has awarded me like top 10 bloggers for the month. So for three, four consecutive months I got that award. So and that's how I got to know about local MVP community folks and those people. I has joined one session where how to become an MVP, where people from Microsoft, like many people, joined that session and they gave some good insights and that's how my journey to become an MVP started. And even, your course, the 90-day mentoring challenge also boosted my journey to become an MVP.

Mark Smith 7:33

This is so good. So is your main area of focus blog writing.

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 7:39

Yeah.

Mark Smith 7:40

Is your main focus is blogs, so give me an idea of some of the blogs that have you know, these ones that have got you top 10. What kind of topics were you writing about?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 7:52

So I write mainly on Power Platform and mainly Power Apps.

Mark Smith 8:00

Yes, power BI. But what's your process? What do you go and like thinking of the details here. Like often, people go. Well. How do I write blogs consistently? How do I come up with topic ideas? How do I do something on a regular cadence that obviously gets recognized from an MVP perspective? What's your system? What's your methodology? What's your process for creation?

Blogging Process and Content Strategy

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 8:26

So whenever we get some new feature or new enhancements coming down, so I like to block that down. I try to put that in my blog so that it's kind of a sense of satisfaction for me, so that I try to put that in my blog. So ideation, if you say ideation, will be mostly about the latest technology, latest features.

Mark Smith 8:56

So if a new feature comes out, is it a case of you going and trying it, playing with it, finding out how it all works, and then you write?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 9:04

Yeah, I'll be trying that out in my trial account. In some cases I have an account in US Preview region, so any new feature that comes in US Preview, so I try it out in that region and I put that in my blog and that's how I showcase to the audience.

Mark Smith 9:24

Nice, do you have a blog post on how to create a trial account, because it's been like almost over a year now and most people can't get trial accounts anymore that are freshers and coming in wanting to get going. How do they get a trial account if they are not part of a corporation?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 9:44

No, I don't have a blog post for creating a trial account.

Mark Smith 9:48

Are you going to write one?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 9:50

Yeah, that's good.

Mark Smith 9:53

See, my understanding is the recent way to do it is that you've got to create an Azure trial and then from that Azure tile you'll get, I think, a onmicrosoftcom domain and then from there you can then go and register for a trial associated to that account. But in the past you used to just go straight up and there would be a link and you could provision your Power Platform. But now it's a bit of a workaround to get it and I haven't seen anything recent where somebody has said here's, step by step, do this in azure, create it. Next step, do this, this and this. And I just think there's a lot of people still, you know, wanting access and yeah, what's a? Uh, an easy way that they can get that trial set up so they can do exactly what you're doing, which is trying out the ideas, the concepts and the tools before you use it.

Mark Smith 10:53

Another question do you have any passion projects, like anything that you work on, not for the company or anything, but in the software space? That's part of, obviously, is writing the blogs right, which is where you're testing things, but have you built any little apps that are just for you, that you use, even automations? You know a lot of people build automations to run their life when they know how to use Power Automate. Is there anything you've done in that space?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 11:21

No, not really, Not really, not really, not really. I didn't build any kind of other automations which I use in my daily life.

AI Boot Camp Experience

Mark Smith 11:33

What about AI? Is there anything you're doing in that space at the moment? Are you starting? You know, we've heard a lot now for two years in AI and AI in context of the Power Platform. We've got it in Power Automate, of course, and Power Apps and things like that. What are you doing to upskill in the AI space?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 11:52

So recently we hosted an AI boot camp in Singapore I think it's last Saturday, last Saturday and so I'm trying to upskill in AI using different. We have many, many things coming from Microsoft right on AI, so I'm trying to upskill using those tools and all.

Mark Smith 12:25

Tell me about that boot camp. What was the format of the day? When did it start? Because a lot of people are wanting to run boot camps for AI at the moment. Was that part of the global boot camp, the AI boot camp?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 12:39

Yeah, it's part of the global boot camp. It is organized in Singapore.

Mark Smith 12:44

How does the day run?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 12:46

It went quite good. It started from 10 and ended at 3. It's just for a couple of hours.

Mark Smith 12:54

In Microsoft Office.

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 12:55

No, no, it's purely online.

Mark Smith 12:58

No way, I didn't realize it was online. I thought it was in person.

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 13:02

No, it's online.

Mark Smith 13:03

I'm thinking more of a hackathon, but at a boot camp is it a case of different people presenting on topics and then people doing something? How does it work?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 13:12

Yeah, actually I was the organizer, but I did not make it to that event.

Mark Smith 13:19

So you corralled everybody and got them there. So how many people in Singapore got involved?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 13:25

I think around 30, 35.

Mark Smith 13:31

Yeah, yeah, yeah, Okay. That's very cool. I just think there's so much growth in that space at the moment. What advice would you give to other people that want to become MVPs would?

Advice for Aspiring MVPs

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 13:44

you give to other people that want to become MVPs. So we need to find that nice kineshi skill where they can contribute and they can make a difference. Either it can be a blog post or a YouTube video or it can be something helpful to the other people and I think when done consistently over one to two years, obviously you'll get recognized.

Mark Smith 14:07

And how was it who nominated you in the end?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 14:10

I was nominated by Golokan Mishtan, from Singapore.

Mark Smith 14:15

Ah, very good, very good. And how do you recommend people find somebody to nominate them if they are wanting to become an MVP people?

Pavan Mani Deep Yaragani 14:25

find somebody to nominate them if they are wanting to become an MVP. Either they reach out to us or if we see more of the content which is finding useful and more people are interacting with them, maybe we will try to reach out to them, say if you are interested to become MVP or not. These are the two ways Either they reach out or we try to reach out.

Mark Smith 14:49

Pavan, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. It's good to see the work you're doing in that blogging space. I love to see consistency on blogs and that creating content that's obviously high value to the community. With those successful months I've been in the top contributor um category. But thank you so much for coming on the show okay, thank you mike.

Mark Smith 15:17

Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application mbp mark smith, otherwise known as the nz36 guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffeecom forward slash NZ365 guy. Thanks again and see you next time. Thank you.