5 people who inspired me in 2019
As we move forward from 2019 into 2020, I wanted to write about the people that inspire me, the people who, when I see them do something, I want to shout it from the rooftops because it energises me to do more than what I am doing. This list is people who do brilliant things, are amazing people and if you are not following them on Social, LinkedIn or Blogs you really should. In no particular order, here are the people who truly inspired me in 2019.
Emma D’arcy
I had the pleasure of meeting Emma at Summit EMEA in Amsterdam earlier this year and this woman is incredible. Emma works for ClickDimensions, a major player in the Microsoft Marketing space for D365 CE and her love of the community and enthusiasm is contagious. Emma has given several talks on Imposter syndrome, something I constantly battle with and her help and guidance has helped countless people feel valued and worth something. Emma is constantly learning and then teaching what she knows to others, her blog details some of her journey through the Power Platform and is a fantastic read.
Joe Griffin
I may be slightly biased about Joe as I work with him on the D365 NW UK committee but this guy is a machine! Constantly blogging (weekly for years), constantly speaking in all the UK D365 UG’s as well as events in Brussels and other parts of Europe. This man is slaying the Power Platform scene. His is one of my go to blogs when I do anything with Power BI, but his talks on Azure are fascinating. Joe is definitely one to look out for in 2020.
Mark Christie
Mark is someone I’ve known personally for a couple of years, but known about for a lot longer. He was first brought up in conversation with a friend of mine, Iain Connolly, when we worked together and since then, I’ve watched Mark speak, bring together all aspects of the Power Platform and Azure community with his 365community.online site, running an amazing free event in Scotland this year and planning the fantastic event called Scottish Summit in 2020 (tickets here) which will be incredible. Mark is a juggernaut and after being awarded an MVP in 2019, is just going from strength to strength
Malin Donoso Martnes
I met Malin at D365UG Focus in Brussels in October and she is incredible!! I’d known of her for a while but i’d not had a chance to meet her in person until this year. Malin is known as the Talent MVP, the first person to be awarded an MVP for her contributions to the community on D365 Talent. Malin is an amazing speaker, bringing real world examples to her talks and guiding people through the process. Malin also create a blog post every work day for 6 months on Talent, I just about do 2 a month, so that is inspiring in of itself! It was this that inspired me to do my #MSFlowVember series where I created a video every day for a month on Power Automate.
Now that Talent has been announced to go into deprecation, her focus is turning to D365 Human Resources, the successor to parts of Talent.
Jon Levesque Twitter
Jon is another person I had the pleasure of meeting in Amsterdam at Summit EMEA earlier this year. Jon is a Senior Power Platform Evangelist at Microsoft, focusing primarily on Power Automate. Jon is the kind of guy who, when he enters a room, you just feel the energy and enthusiasm! Jon is a speaker at events, has a YouTube channel and is a photo/videographer; his drone footage is amazing. I’ve watched a lot of his videos over the last year and his Motivation Monday series really struck a chord with me. The best video for me was this one where he talks about what you do is good enough.
As someone who always compares himself to others, I often struggle with the idea that anything I do is good enough and therefore I don’t do something and use that as an excuse. I have numerous blog posts which never made it on the site for this reason. After watching this video, I felt like I couldn’t let this be an excuse I use anymore, so I started my YouTube channel, I found some video editing software which did everything I needed and I launched it. It’s not the most technically savvy videos, there’s no fancy edits, no drone footage, but it is good enough. It gets all the information across to people in a way they can digest it and it does exactly what it needs to do, teaches people.
If you ever get a chance to see Jon speak in person or meet him, i’d highly recommend it! Also, check out his YouTube channel, it’s really helped me.
These are just my top 5 inspirational people in the Power Platform community this year, but i’d really like to hear yours.
Ciao for now!