Microsoft MVP Ed Gonzales on advocacy, user adoption, and exploration

Microsoft MVP Ed Gonzales (LinkedIn, Twitter)is not a professional developer, but his willingness to dive into new technology has helped him steadily expand his expertise from the Dynamics 365 product line to the Power Platform, Teams, and beyond. He recently told MSDW about his journey to becoming an MVP, with his time spent championing Microsoft tools at his day job while challenging himself with new tech at other times. He documents his latest explorations on his blog, The Flying Polymath, like an increasingly sophisticated bot that pulls in a range of Microsoft technology based on his own exploration and input from others in the community.   Show Notes 1:15 - More about Ed's day job, including his efforts around CRM adoption. 4:00 - What it's like being a CRM administrator and advocate, while also promoting Microsoft productivity tools. 7:00 - Creating realistic incentives and assistance from prospective users. 9:30 - On his efforts to gain support from management 12:30 - Ed's thoughts on the D365 product direction and efforts to encourage power users and makers 15:30 - User adoption milestones in the context of digital transformation 18:15 - Exploring and collaborating on the Power Platform as a non-developer through the birthday bot 25:00 - Applying information learned from experiments to real business cases. 26:00 - Where is Teams going in combination with enterprise systems? 32:00 - Other parts of the Microsoft tech stack that Ed is excited about