[Kevin 00:07]
So Zoe and I recorded a whole load of mini-interviews at the MVP Summit, and we thought rather than build those into a few larger episodes, we'd release those to you in short little snippets like this. So enjoy a set of our interviews live from Seattle with various people from Microsoft and MVPs. hope you enjoy them.
[Zoe 00:29]
Hi this is Zoe and we're here at MVP Summit in Seattle. Today I'm joined by Daryl, would you like to introduce yourself? Yeah.
[Darrell 00:36]
Hello everyone I'm Daryl as a service, I am a change manager, adoption specialist, I like creating videos, I like helping people make the sense of technology. It feels like.
[Zoe 00:45]
That's really important in this copilot era. Absolutely.
[Darrell 00:48]
I think that adoption is a huge piece about people trying to get the most out of copilot.
[Zoe 00:55]
Brilliant. Okay, so first question, what does CoPilot mean to you?
[Darrell 01:01]
A family of CoPilots, if I can call it that. I know that this could be a confusing term, but CoPilot to me is it's AI-powered, AI-driven technology that can be used inside apps, or it can be used alongside apps. Now, I can tell the difference. You've got inside apps, could be Word, could be Teams, could be Outlook, or alongside apps is the M365 chat copilot. There are other copilots for other products, and you can create your own, so yeah it continues to grow.
[Zoe 01:33]
And it is definitely quite confusing I think. I really like the way that you talk about it as a family though.
[Darrell 01:38]
So what?
[Zoe 01:39]
Are your own experiences with copilot that you feel have have made a difference to you.
[Darrell 01:46]
I as a consultant appreciate some of the time-saving ways of using Copilot in meetings for example. I know it's a popular one and I'm also lucky enough to have Teams Premium to combine. There are some overlaps but yeah that's a whole other podcast I guess. And yeah the experiences that made a difference to me, I appreciate being able to ask questions of the meetings that I have so it's it's one thing to have a big transcript and maybe even AI driven notes that may or may not pick up the important things but I can drill into that and I can ask for some more insights. And do.
[Zoe 02:25]
You tend to do that during meetings, after meetings? Yeah it's.
[Darrell 02:29]
Both. I know there's some times where I might ask during a meeting did I miss any questions or catch me up what did what did my off-sider say about something because I wasn't listening closely enough and thankfully it's a private experience so she doesn't have to know.
[Zoe 02:47]
So with this whole CoPilot overload that we're seeing at the moment, is there anything that you're particularly worried about or that you hear from clients as a consultant?
[Darrell 02:58]
Look the the launch of CoPilot was exciting I think we've seen this with a few products in Microsoft where they get excited and they make great videos that set a vision and then when people open them up and try to use them it's not quite as they expect. What I am concerned about, I guess, is at the moment, and I'm sure they'll improve it, but just trying to make that experience consistent where you're using Copilot. And as a change manager, if I'm trying to train people about how to use Copilot, I don't want to have to say, well, it can do this over here and that over there, and the chat experience or whatever is treated differently.
[Zoe 03:34]
Yeah, I think that context, when I've been helping people from the start of this journey helping them understand that the way they prompt so where they use it has to be contextually different to the app they're in.
[Darrell 03:45]
But that's.
[Zoe 03:45]
A product limitation. It shouldn't have to be like that, but helping people actually understand that I think is key.
[Darrell 03:53]
I'd add that I respect that each copilot in a app is going to have its own special superpowers. So you it's of course you're going to be able to ask create me some slides or give me some analysis on an Excel spreadsheet. You can't do that in Word necessarily. But the consistency, excuse me, around create, summarize, share, getting insights, all of those things need to be reasonably familiar experience wherever you use Copilot.
[Zoe 04:20]
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. So this has been, keeping our NDA, this has been a very full week, shall we say. So making sure that we do keep that NDA. What are you most excited about, What are the things that you really want to see next?
[Darrell 04:39]
You know, I talked about consistency and it's promising to hear, and you would expect this, that they know this. They're going to work on it. It is their goal, Microsoft's goal, to try and make that a consistent experience. That's exciting to me. I also am excited about the other possibilities of what AI could do to save us time and what kind of insights it could give. Seen some great things here, of course we can't talk about it, but looking forward to seeing hints of it in the product soon. I would add that if you are going to start with Copilot, don't forget change management. Get people alongside you who know how to train you, get you up to speed, also that they'll guide you along a journey that will make it relevant and contextual to you and your business. It's one thing to learn how to to do a prompt, but get someone to help you read through and understand that story and refine that prompt in the context of your own work.
[Zoe 05:38]
Perfect. Brilliant, thank you for joining.
[Darrell 05:40]
You're welcome.