[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, we're here in Seattle for MVP Summit and I'm here with Mark Rackley. Mark, do you want to introduce yourself?
[Mark 00:35]
Sure. So like she said, I'm Mark Rackley. I am a modern work solutions architect in the COE at Avanade. And I've been an MVP now for, this will be my 10th year. Yeah, thank you very much. Well done. If they don't kick me out. So maybe nine and a half. We'll see. We'll see. But yeah, I've been in the SharePoint space, Teams space, Viva space, now CoPilot space, and whatever comes next, we'll see.
[Zoe 00:58]
I think it's all copilot now, isn't it?
[Mark 01:00]
It is all copilot.
[Zoe 01:01]
With that, I've got one question for you. What does copilot mean to you?
[Mark 01:06]
Money. No, I'm.
[Zoe 01:06]
Kidding.
[Mark 01:08]
So copilot means a lot of things to a lot of different people. When I hear the word copilot, I think about all the things that it could mean. I think about the fact of which copilot. What do you mean by copilot? Are you talking about creating your own copilot? That's what maybe we used to call it a bot. Are you talking about copilot for Microsoft 365 or whatever they decide to call it today? Are you talking about Bing Chat or whatever they're calling it today? So I think that's a big problem is like, what exactly is copilot? So when you say, what do I think about copilot? I think there's a lot of confusion out there and I think that's where we can really help people understand what exactly copilot is.
[Zoe 01:46]
Yeah, I think that's like one of the most common questions I've asked in the last year when someone talks to me about copilot, which copilot are you talking about? Okay so next question, how have you used Copilot and how has it made a difference to you? Like give me an example, something that it's done for you that was really impactful.
[Mark 02:05]
So I think first off the biggest thing with Copilot is remembering to use it and that's still the hardest thing for me is remembering to use it. But one thing that I use it for often that has saved me is I'm not a very well organized person. I've got very few character flaws but that is.
[Zoe 02:21]
One of.
[Mark 02:22]
Them, so what I'll do is I need to find that presentation that someone shared with me, so I can actually go to Copilot and say, I'm looking for the presentation that was shared with me last week from Zoe, and then it'll find it, that's one of the cool.
[Zoe 02:35]
Things about it. I mean that is a superpower isn't it, you can't remember the name of it, you know your words and it just gives you it in seconds. Okay so you mentioned confusion already, but when we think about Copilot, what are you worried about?
[Mark 02:51]
Well, besides pricing.
[Zoe 02:53]
This is not a licensing podcast, by the way.
[Mark 02:57]
I am worried about pricing, so I've got a couple of concerns. One of them is pricing, because I think we're creating an environment where the price is to a point where you're not going to license everybody in your organization, but that's also creating an inequity in your organization.
[Zoe 03:12]
The haves and the have-nots.
[Mark 03:13]
Right, right. So if someone in the same position as me has a license and I don't have a license and they they get a promotion was because they had a little edge in the technology space. I mean, I think that's gonna cause a lot of people some concerns, and it's something we gotta figure out how to get the power of generative AI into everybody's hands, even those that don't have copilot. Like, there's a lot of solutions we can build around.
[Zoe 03:32]
Yeah, and it doesn't have to be copilot for M365, you know, depending on people's needs. There are levels of copilots that can serve their needs. And with that equity, one of the things that I worry about, so that you talked about the promotion, like who gets promoted faster, but equally from a manager's perspective, how do they actually do the performance development of people when they've got some people with it and some people without, in a way that's fair.
[Mark 03:59]
Yeah, great point.
[Zoe 04:01]
Okay, so last question. If you had a magic wand, what would you like to see next?
[Mark 04:08]
I would like to see Copilot be able to be grounded correctly on the content. I want it to be grounded on it. That's been my biggest frustration since day one, and I think it's something that needs to be solved. We're looking at extensibility, looking at graph connectors, we're looking at just our content that I want access to. The corpus of what I want access to is not the same that you want access to, but we very likely have the same exact content we have access to. So that is a problem that until Microsoft can figure it out well, it is going to limit the value that makes me think that is my go-to tool all the.
[Zoe 04:46]
Time. Yeah, brilliant. Good answer. Well, thank you, Mark.
[Mark 04:50]
Yeah, thanks for having me.