Critical Thinking in the Age of AI Automation

Mark Smith: 0:14
Welcome to the Ecosystem Show. We're thrilled to have you with us here. We challenge traditional mindsets and explore innovative approaches to maximizing the value of your software estate. We don't expect you to agree with everything. Challenge us, share your thoughts and let's grow together. Now let's dive in. It's showtime. Alright, welcome back, welcome back. Three of us on to night for me To do to morning this morning for you in Venezia is right, and so you can see the sun's gone down. Where I am it's a lot darker and it's all nice and shiny in Spain. I don't know if anyone picked it, but you like my new little, my rocket to the moon back.

Ana Welch : 0:55
I do like that.

Mark Smith: 0:56
It's a nice little addition. You like my new little, my rocket to the moon back. I do like that Nice little addition, I do like that I just picked up recently as a little backdrop item, but with that we've got an exciting week and like next week not quite next week, but by the time we record another episode we will be all in person again Probably try and get an episode recorded like we did last time at Dynamics Minds in Slovenia.

Andrew Welch: 1:22
Well. So I wonder, when you were doing the open there, it did occur to me I wonder how many longtime watchers you probably you wouldn't pick this up if you were just listening but I wonder how many longtime watchers of the show have noticed that we've traded in? Those of us in Europe have traded in our glass of wine during the recording and we're now drinking coffee. So we flipped the script. We are now recording these regularly in Mark's evening and our morning, but so we're a little more hyped but a little bit less wine.

Ana Welch : 1:56
We're a little more hyped but a little bit less wine. It's also based on how we all function right. I function not at all in the evening, but you two seem to have a second wind.

Andrew Welch: 2:13
So I now work. So we live in Spain primarily, but we work with people all around the world. So I have this, this schedule now, where on Tuesdays and Thursdays usually um, I kind of you know, don't start my day until around around noon I take care of some family things that that need to be done, whatever, and then I work into the evening. But I am such a long time night owl I work so much better in the evening, right that you know it's 11 o'clock at night and Anna will come in and be like, are you almost done? And I'm like, oh, come on, I should work for hours more.

Ana Welch : 2:50
Yeah, that's very true, that's very, very true.

Mark Smith: 2:53
That's interesting that, like once, I hadn't picked that up about you guys, like your differences, because I am, according to my aura ring, one of only 10% of the world that functions extremely well at 5am, and so I get my best work done in the morning part of my day and then the rest of it is all bonus time if I, if I can keep the energy you know cranking.

Ana Welch : 3:15
Wow, that's amazing. I am actually, according to my aura ring, my chronotype is evening. What does that even mean?

Mark Smith: 3:24
That means you do your best work in the evening.

Andrew Welch: 3:30
That is false. Shut up, Andrew. My ring just says that I'm married. It does not pontificate on my chronotype or other physical traits. It just tells the odd girl, or sometimes boy, at the bar get away, get away, be gone with you.

Ana Welch : 3:52
You don't know how people function differently, how like people function differently. But also I do feel like I do my best work in between, I don't know 3.30 and 7. But is that even evening? I don't know, we don't know. That's nap time, that's afternoon, right? That's siesta time in.

Mark Smith: 4:13
Spain, which is something I wish we rolled out worldwide. Siesta time in Spain, which is something I wish we rolled out worldwide. I couldn't believe when I walked the Camino in Spain for 33 days and you would go into a town just on 12, let's say, 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock in the afternoon, and you'd want to go to a cafe and they're all closed and you're like I'm a customer who cares, nobody cares.

Ana Welch : 4:37
We don't right, but siesta time is one but like, and then after siesta time you like sleep later in at night, right? So I today I went to uh drop off our daughter at uh school, uh, which happens at nine. Like nowhere in the world does school start at 9, but over here it starts at 9. Coming back, I wanted to. I wanted to get a coffee for us. Only none of the cafes open until 10 and I'm like this is coffee people, how do you?

Ana Welch : 5:16
yeah but listen, taxation is really high, so I guess that's how we we function. It's a good thing.

Andrew Welch: 5:24
Rodley, can we just all stop to reflect now? Anna and I did not get to walk the Camino in Spain, but but Mark did and his wife Meg was along.

Mark Smith: 5:44
You and I did that together right.

Andrew Welch: 5:46
Can we just all reflect on a time before we had, you know, four year olds, when things like walking the Camino was a thing Three days. Right Could be done.

Mark Smith: 6:02
How could you do that now, right? Just wow, mind blowing.

Andrew Welch: 6:06
Now it feels like a victory when one of us says I'll get the kid ready for school this morning.

Mark Smith: 6:10
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's not me. I can never sleep in. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's something now trading. Who gets to sleep in?

Ana Welch : 6:18
But also it's like it's so hard. It's so hard Like, for example, yesterday was a really, really, really busy day and we solved a lot of things and I had a lot of intense phone calls yesterday, right, and yet my daughter came home from school and she needed her nails clipped and I swear to God that was the hardest job that I did yesterday.

Mark Smith: 6:43
It's hard work, little kids. It was absolutely not.

Ana Welch : 6:46
It was absolutely not planning a massive project. It was that.

Mark Smith: 6:54
Yeah, I had to add something Before we talk a bit about Porter, porteros and uh, dynamics, minds and the epicness of this conference. Um, I had a long time listener, put in my diary a meeting this week because I've gone and set up on linkedin then you can book a meeting. It goes straight to my calendar if there's a spot free and you and it works for you. And so this, you know it's, it's always I feel a bit like gambling going on these calls because I have no idea who they are right, and um, yeah, city is a long time listener to the show. He's got an isb business and a a geography in the world and wants to know you know how we could work together.

Mark Smith: 7:35
And I find it's, um, it's. You never know who's listening to these things, right, like he'd said he's been lurking for years. Um, and decided, hey, why don't reach out and see how we can help? So if you're in that position, we're always open to having a chat if we can help you in any way on your project. But let's talk about slovenia, the conference of all conferences when it comes to being able to mix great content, epic speakers and then every evening's a carnival.

Andrew Welch: 8:09
It says something about Dynamics Minds. So we're recording this on the European morning, friday, the 16th of May. So we've got next week. This coming week ahead is Microsoft Build and then the week following that is Dynamics Mines, and I think that it says something about Dynamics Mines that we've got Microsoft Build standing between us and Dynamics Mines and we're talking about how Dynamics Minds is this, this absolutely epic event. So you know, if you've been, if you've been following along with us over the last couple of years on this show, you know that that we love, we love that event and we love the organizers and we love that. We love the town. So the conference is held and it's a massive conference, relatively speaking, it's held in a small town, right there's a little.

Ana Welch : 9:03
By the way, sorry to interrupt you. There's a little Disney short about a little boy in that town. Wow.

Andrew Welch: 9:13
Is there.

Ana Welch : 9:13
Yes, and it looks exactly like that, like even the little shops. It looks exactly like that, like even the little shops. It's exactly like that. It's a little disney short about diversity.

Mark Smith: 9:23
It's so good I've gone and watched a bunch in the last couple of weeks. Well, because my megs encouraged me to um of travel videos of portarosh and just to check out, you know, show her like remember last year we had a lobster dinner and we were like I was like, look at that, that's the restaurant. They're on the water. We had our lobster dinner.

Andrew Welch: 9:45
Well. So, for those who are maybe coming for the first time, or you know, I remember the first year that we did this we didn't, actually I didn't venture out of the hotel much, no, you didn't. And then the second year I realized what a mistake that is. So the hotel complex, it's not one hotel, there's the main hotel but then there's multiple. It's part of a resort, so to speak, there right on the water on the Adriatic Sea. But it's located on this little peninsula that is between roughly between Porto Roche and another town called Piran. So, even though the event is in, I guess, like the postcode or the boundaries of Porto Roche, piran is actually the town that most folks walk to, and you can walk right along the sea right along the water.

Andrew Welch: 10:35
Yeah, exactly, and you can walk into Piran. So if you're attending this event this year, I really encourage you to find some time to go. I cannot with that.

Mark Smith: 10:49
Can you see that? Trophy yes, this is the only trophy my podcast has ever received and it says here Dynamics Minds, the most magical podcast, mark smith. And uh, I didn't even know I was going to be awarded this. I didn't go to the event the first year.

Mark Smith: 11:04
it ran, but of course people quickly chimed in on social media that I'd won this award and, um, yeah, it's the only award this podcast has ever received, and how epic a design is that. I just it's amazing. And so they hooked me when they asked me to actually go the following year, which they actually asked me to go the first year, but I was like it's too far away and my kids were too young. But I'm pleased this is my second year going and, man, I'm looking forward to it.

Andrew Welch: 11:36
Mark when he was given well, not given, but when he was awarded his award for his podcasting at the event last year. He was not at the awards event because he was off with anna and me and chris and I think will was there, I think keith walling and donna was there as well like it was this crowd that we had gathered and we were all off slaughtering live lobsters for our dinner.

Andrew Welch: 12:02
Um, they were swimming about a tank and chris was delighted by this. It was like he was gleeful. He'd never. He's just this giant lobster trying to escape. When they brought it to him to pick out, it's like trying to crawl across his table, and he was. He was delighted by this.

Mark Smith: 12:19
It's a great event. It's a great event and congratulations whoever took the award on my behalf last year. I heard it involved a lot of chocolates and stuff like that, but well done, I'll try and make the awards this year. I heard Birdie told me that somebody else on this podcast might be getting an award, so let's see what happens. Let's see what happens.

Andrew Welch: 13:14
Yes, I'm sure that William will be very excited.

Mark Smith: 13:17
He will be ecstatic. I'm looking forward to actually seeing William's partner at this event. That'll be the first time I meet her. She's very cool, very smart she's yeah she's very cool hey, but tell one thing I want to crack on. As in, we're running something at this event, right. As in, we're doing a lot of speaking at this event. Um, what is the? How did it come about, what is it and why is it, uh, important?

Andrew Welch: 13:45
mark's like how did my idea this was mark's idea to do this?

Andrew Welch: 13:49
Mark? Mark's like someone tell me about my idea. So, at Dynamics Minds, we've been, we've been working with the organizers who, like I said, we love them. They're, they're great, and we, we, we've organized this year what we're calling the executive forum. So, the executive forum I don't think that they've done anything like this before. It it's aimed at um. It's aimed at at technical and business leaders, um, who might be attending though Of course I I believe that all are welcome. Um, and the the executive forum is a series of four sessions that we're going to be sharing and they're all thematically linked, right. So they are, and I'm going to just pull up the list here so I can read them to you. Specifically, monday, at it looks like 2.15 local time there in Slovenia, with a session called the Microsoft Partner of the Future, and then the next day there will be a session at nine o'clock called Building your Microsoft Partner AI Practice. Anna, you're presenting that one. Is that the one that you're doing with? Who else is joining you for that?

Ana Welch : 15:16
I think, chris.

Andrew Welch: 15:18
Chris, okay, and then later in the day there is the Microsoft Partner Execs. So later in the day, at 2.15 on Tuesday the 27th, there's the Microsoft Partner Exec's Guide to Trustworthy AI, and I think that one is Anna, chris and Ioana is doing that Okay.

Mark Smith: 15:37
That's right. Can we just explain?

Andrew Welch: 15:39
who Ioana is.

Mark Smith: 15:39
Yeah, because the guests might not know.

Ana Welch : 15:44
Ioana is responsible for a lot of the transport AI work at Microsoft. She's right there making sure that all of the Microsoft products are safe, that they give you good results. Very much involved with the process of checking these things over and over and over again, being on call to like double, triple, quadruple, check everything that goes out. So one of the pioneers to actually figure out how do we even do this right. So, iwana, she's been guiding us through this whole process because nobody knows right. So she's been guiding us through this whole process because nobody knows right. So she's been guiding us through this whole process. And after we say, look, this is how you should build your practice, we're going to go in. And I was going to say, look, there's got. There's like nothing left behind, there are no secrets. This is how you do. You do the thing. We're very, very grateful and privileged to have her.

Mark Smith: 16:56
Yeah, awesome.

Andrew Welch: 16:57
Yeah, and then we'll finish on the forum. We'll finish on Wednesday at 315 with a session the closing which is becoming a truly strategic Microsoft partner. So, yeah, we've got four sessions as part of the executive forum Microsoft partner the future, building your Microsoft partner AI practice. The Microsoft partners a partner execs guide to trustworthy AI and becoming a truly strategic Microsoft partner. So you know, the executive forum is part of the partner biz track, the partner business track at the conference. So you know it's, of course, quite partner oriented.

Andrew Welch: 17:39
However, if you're not a partner and you know you're, you're if you are a technical or business leader from, say, a Microsoft customer I would say that this is definitely these sessions in the forum are something you should definitely attend, because I think it will help you understand what you need to know in order to select the correct Microsoft partner going forward for you and we've talked a lot about this on the show all of the changes in all of the changes that I think the partner community in that particular sub industry within, you know, within Microsoft, is undergoing. It's tough times for those partners, not because business is bad, but because business is changing so much and many, many organizations are simply not set up to be able to absorb that change, and that's what we're going to be exploring. So we'll really try to help partners become the partners that they need to be in the era ahead, but also help customers understand what they need to know to discern the truly great partners from the mediocre ones.

Ana Welch : 18:52
Right, and that's not just, and that's not all. Those are not all of the sessions that we're doing. We're actually doing a lot more, yeah, so that's just the forum right, that's just the executive forum.

Ana Welch : 19:12
Forum right, that's just, that's just the executive forum. But the the point is, within the executive forum, we are taking our partners and customers on a journey, right, so we are doing a whole thing why partners need to change, how they need to change, right? And then what are the things that you know our work must include from now on? So it's not just about how the partner changes their culture, but it's also about some brand new practices that we're going to include, which invariably means that we need to exclude other stuff, because people don't want, all of a sudden want to just randomly pay more so that you can keep your traditional way of doing things, and then adding all of the trustworthy AI stuff on top of it. And, by the way, you need to add all of the trustworthy stuff on top of it because you will be touched by all of these tools and practices and so on and so forth. But apart from that, we have like Chris isn't here right, for example, right now, but he's going to be involved in the keynote and then he's going to do like an agent framework session as well, and then he's going to do an expert partner also.

Ana Welch : 20:31
So it's a really, really busy week for us. What other sessions are you going to present, mark?

Mark Smith: 20:40
Meg's coming with me. She's doing one on AI adoption Amazing.

Ana Welch : 20:45
She's doing a session.

Mark Smith: 20:46
And then what I'm doing is one on 10 things that you need to do. This is aimed more at the consultants that are going to be there to take your career to the next level. It seems a lot of people are starting to become hyper-focused on or concerned about their career futures at the moment, and so it's an interesting topic. It's an interesting time. We've seen over the last week what 6,000, 7,000 people laid off from Microsoft and if you're watching LinkedIn you can see there's some upset people out there and can't kind of reconcile what it means, and I think it's more important than ever that you've got to realize you've got to take ownership of your own career.

Ana Welch : 21:31
No one owes you anything.

Mark Smith: 21:32
Your employer doesn't owe you anything, and it's really important that you develop a mindset of constant learning, because we don't know what the future holds, and so I'm really hyper-focused on what you need to learn to be relevant in the future, and it's actually it's what I call like mindsets that you need to develop rather than going out and learning a particular skill. It's around what I call mental models, and that you should be running in your day-to-day to prepare you for the future. But I did do listen.

Ana Welch : 22:09
I want to share something that's so interesting. Wait, give me an example of a mental model.

Mark Smith: 22:15
So a mental model would be the concept of learning that what I've learned up to this point is probably not going to make me employable in five years' time. So if that's the case, you've got to switch off, a switch from a. You know, you went through school, you went to university, you got your degree and you kind of. If you look at the how people's lives run, there's that big education piece before they go into their career I feel like sure you're just going to keep running that now as in, keep re-educating but also developing, like one of the mindsets I think is really in critical, critical to develop. When I said critical in, I'm like did ai just plug into me because I just noticed that's one of the words it uses a lot. Lady, it's critical that you do this. It's critical as in um, as in just when, when you're working with it. So it seems one of the little bugbears at the moment um, like the em which I was talking to you about earlier today, andrew, the, the. But the thing is is that when you get an answer, you need to be responsible enough to validate the answer with the ai solution.

Mark Smith: 23:23
One examples I give there was a police officer that arrested somebody because they were using AI to serve up who needed to be arrested. Like that's very high level. I'm talking about the arrest profile photo. Looked nothing like the individual, but however the camera work or in the country was working, it said that was the individual to arrest. So they arrested the dude and like it goes to court and the judge goes. How could you think? Like the profile pic and the person don't even look anything the same and the the officer's defense was well, the system told me it was him.

Mark Smith: 23:59
So I just and it's like this kind of full abdication of well, the technology told me so. Therefore I will obey it and not and devoid my critical thinking. And so one of the mental models is that you need to become. If you've never been a critical thinker and you've been a passive absorber of the world around you, you need to become. If you've never been a critical thinker and you've been a passive absorber of the world around you, you need to change it because, more than ever, there's going to be a lot that's out there to manipulate your thinking, and AI can do it so effectively and will do it even better in the future, and so you need to develop a mindset to question.

Mark Smith: 24:31
I say question everything, like go hang on a second, is this right? Is the reason for me getting this answer? Am someone trying to influence me? Does someone make money off me doing what's been recommended, et cetera. And it's these little thought processes that make. And it's so hard today, like because you know when Trump was coming into his position earlier this year, et cetera. I was like, how do I find a news source that's not biased? That's not biased, that's not either going one way he's an idiot or the other way, saying he's the Messiah. And it's like how do you find a news source? And I've found it very difficult to there isn't one.

Andrew Welch: 25:05
Hey, there isn't one On that topic. I feel like the line.

Mark Smith: 25:09
It's like you take that now and amplify Anybody can that now on, amplify, anybody can generate any type of news and manipulate anything. And you know, I just think, yeah, we've got to develop mind, mental models that allow us to act with a lot of thought, and how we interface with everything going on around us in the world. And now that's a rant, it's a rant and I don't want to no, I love it.

Ana Welch : 25:35
I'll definitely be in that. Uh, in in that session I've got much to learn.

Mark Smith: 25:42
It's, it's, it is awesome, the. The other thing yes, I want to show you something funny, um, which which is? It came to me. Um, I was, I had somebody on a podcast and after that that podcast, I put up this picture and this is, by the way, my first post on LinkedIn, I think pretty much this year which is the Power Platform, the vibe coding for the enterprise. But the whole idea of this Power Platform, vibe coding for the enterprise, and the discussion I was having with a CVP at Microsoft about it, was that you know, the future of the Power Platform, I think, is not going anywhere, but the way we build with the Power Platform, I think is going to dramatically change in the next three years. That's my observation.

Ana Welch : 26:29
It's already changing right.

Mark Smith: 26:31
There will be a tooling, but none of us will be working with it. And so I had been seeing some stuff on vibe coding. I had whipped up a website the other day in literally 10 minutes with a prompt and deployed it across the city and around the world in that time public-facing. It was a 30-plus page website and it looked freaking amazing from a prompt that I gave. And so then I go on to this call I and what adorned on me the more I see microsoft put ai and co-pilot into the interfaces and, you know, the ability to prompt a build.

Mark Smith: 27:08
I am wondering whether the power platform literally will become the five coding platform, and why I say for the enterprise is because it has all the enterprise governance and stuff built in. It has the, you know pipelines, alm, all that type of great stuff supporting, and I think that perhaps where we have had low code, no code in the past, I think that might be. It could potentially become the vibe code platform of the past. I think that might be. It could potentially become the vibe code platform of the enterprise, but with that enterprise governance, security, rigor, all that built in.

Ana Welch : 27:43
It's got one more thing that you didn't mention. What was that Integration?

Mark Smith: 27:50
It can integrate.

Ana Welch : 27:51
Yeah, yeah.

Mark Smith: 27:53
It just integrates.

Ana Welch : 27:54
You think the ALM isn't good enough? Great, it just integrates with another ALM system yeah, it just integrates. You think the ALM isn't good enough? Great, it just integrates with another ALM system. Yes, you think that the automation isn't good enough? Awesome, for that specific use case, we use another technology. You believe that you need a more advanced ML piece of software functionality? You need to train a model. You need to do something fantastic. Awesome, because this is what you will be doing, instead of coding our back by hand.

Andrew Welch: 28:24
Yeah, well, well, and there is, and I know we're gonna have to wrap up, we're gonna have to wrap up here. But you know, we've been, we've been having a, I've been having a long I'm trying to think of what to call it. I don't want to call it a debate, but kind of a long debate. Right, one of the clients that I work with and that Anna works with as well, they've, a while back, made a big decision to go with, go with um uh power platform for some of their big enterprise app development. They actually hired a partner, a Microsoft partner, who was. It was the worst partner performance I have ever seen. I, I, I think essentially, this partner took millions and millions and millions of dollars, put it in a bag and set fire to the bag. Um, that was their primary achievement, um, so you know this is obviously a lot of money in the meantime they made a lot of money, right?

Andrew Welch: 29:29
Don't cry a tear yeah.

Andrew Welch: 29:31
Um, but they, they absolutely fleeced their, their client Um, and and it was horrible um, which is part of the reason that Anna and I have been helping that client work through this.

Andrew Welch: 29:43
But this has left, in the minds of some of the folks in this organization, has left a really bad taste for power platform. I think that what they don't understand is that what they don't understand is that they they did not have a bad experience with the technology. They had a bad experience with the partner who was implementing the technology. So go all the way back to how we started this discussion. But, in any case, one of the sort of, I think, red herrings that the naysayers in this organization who are not very enthused about Power Platform have thrown out is that, oh, it's not scalable, it's really meant for citizen developers and basic sorts of things and it's not enterprise ready. And they've actually cooked up these wild wild architectures to get around using Power Platform that will cost the organization orders of magnitude more to implement. So, anyway, I loved when I saw the other day the Forrester Wave.

Andrew Welch: 30:48
If anyone's familiar with those studies, right, a new Forrester Wave study out that rates Power Platform as the best offering in terms of strength of strategy and strength of offering, which is how Forrester Wave works, the best offering in low-code platforms for professional developers, and I thought this was a really I loved seeing this and it reminds me I actually need to share this with um, share this with with our clients. So, on that note, beautiful with that.

Mark Smith: 31:22
We'll uh see you next time. Um, hopefully we'll get a session in at dynamics minds we're on the same room, like we did last year. That was fun. Um, perhaps we'll talk about the inspiration that dynamics minds uh gave us to launch our own conference um later on in december this year. Um, that is going to be off the richter epic of epic, of epicness. That's something to be epic.

Andrew Welch: 31:51
Um, I'm so looking forward to it with that mark smith's body has been inhabited by Chris Huntingford's language Bye guys, Bye.

Mark Smith: 32:00
Thanks for tuning into the Ecosystem Show. We hope you found today's discussion insightful and thought-provoking, and maybe you had a laugh or two. Remember your feedback and challenges help us all grow, so don't hesitate to share your perspective. Stay connected with us for more innovative ideas and strategies to enhance your software estate. Thank you.