Shane Young on Power Platform Democratization

Podcast Episode! S2E3: Shane Young

James and I talked to Shane Young for the third episode in our second season: “Power Platform Democratization”. Shane is the founder of PowerApps911, helping clients with Power Platform training and custom app builds in the Microsoft universe. He’s a fun guy to talk to, and he’s one of the most informative people you’ll ever follow on Twitter or YouTube.

Highlights

• Shane is a “Microsoft nerd” — in love with it since the ‘90s
• Prior to PowerApps911, he ran SharePoint911. I’m sensing a formula.
• Digression into Ted Lasso
• Shane says he’s seeing about a 50/50 blend of IT folks and business folks in the Power Platform world
• Power Apps/Power Platform has 530+ connectors (as of the time of recording — more now!)
• Shane said “You’ll appreciate this as nerds” to James and I — and yeah. We did. :)
• Major customer moment(s) for Shane: getting past simply reproducing a paper form, and really unlocking the tech things that platforms add.
• Shane looks forward to continuous democratization of technology.

Money Quotes

Shane

You’ve got to be able to put firm rules around this thing [Power Apps] before you go.

Paul

People don’t realize how flexible they are, when it comes time to explain their actions to a machine.

The tragedy of IT is that some people [who only incidentally use tech] feel dumb because they can’t figure out the tools.