Copilot Beyond Tasks: Build Agentic Workflows

00:00:06 Mark Smith
Welcome to the MVP show. My intention is that you listen to the stories of these MVP guests and are inspired to become an MVP and bring value to the world through your skills. If you have not checked it out already, I do a YouTube series called How to Become an MVP. The link is in the show notes. With that, Let's get on with the show. Well, welcome back to the MVP show. Today, we're heading to London to talk to Neil. Neil, welcome to the show.

00:00:40 Neil Fluester
Hey, Mark, good to be on here. I'm excited to talk to you and talk about the whole MVP community.

00:00:46 Mark Smith
Yeah, sounds good, sounds good. So first of all, you're living in London. I left London in 2019. The end of 2019, just before the pandemic, I moved back to New Zealand. Love the city. Been back once since returning home. But tell us about food, family, and fun. What do you get up to when you're not working?

00:01:07 Neil Fluester
Well, you know, are we called Poms over there? I don't know. I mean, yeah, us Brits love talking about the weather. So we could start there. I'm guessing it's nicer where it is for you over there. And it's your summertime. We're going into autumn and winter. So it's cold, it's wet, it's grey. It's just how we kind of roll. And what can I say about me? I'm a bit of a nerdy geek. I've been in the world of UC, AV, video conferencing, IPTV, multicast streaming for way too many years that I can remember. And yeah, literally earlier this year I awarded my MVP. So I'm really excited about that. And then for hobbies, I guess I make a nuisance of myself on social media. I love a bit of home automation with Home Assistant. and big into boats. So yeah, if I'm not messing around with Teams and Microsoft stuff, then I'm generally messing around with Volvo Penta engines and solar panels and lithium polymer batteries and boats and engines and stuff. So.

00:02:10 Mark Smith
Are we talking about electric boats?

00:02:13 Neil Fluester
No, it's. A motorbike, but it's got quite a clever automation system and lithium batteries and solar and inverters and chargers and stuff like that. So yeah, it's a bit, it's a bit geeky.

00:02:29 Mark Smith
I just had solar installed yesterday on my property.

00:02:33 Neil Fluester
Nice. What did you get? Are you Victron or what are you? What's your?

00:02:37 Mark Smith
Sig Energy.

00:02:39 Neil Fluester
Okay, I don't know that one. I mean, there's some great, there's a great guy, he's actually in Australia called the Off-Grid Garage. And that guy, he's a German guy, but he lives in Australia and he's like completely decked out his like garage with lithium batteries. And he's got like three or four different solar on his garage roof and stuff. And he's really cool down there. But you get a better sun down there, I think.

00:03:03 Mark Smith
We get a lot of sun. That's what hit me when living in London. I couldn't believe that it was dark at 3 p.m. in winter. Blew my mind.

00:03:11 Neil Fluester
Our clocks went back like a week ago and it was just like depressing that, oh, it's four o'clock and it's dark now, pitch dark, so yeah.

00:03:18 Mark Smith
Crazy, crazy, crazy. Tell me about Copilot. What are you doing in that space?

00:03:25 Neil Fluester
So it's interesting. I think when we first kind of connected up, I was kind of working as a bit of a freelance. So I was doing some freelancing between roles. I've recently joined a small company. I don't know if you've heard them, they're called Logitech. Yeah, there you go. It's just the thing. All my friends are like, you know, I said, I'm going to go, oh yeah, we used your mice. It's like, yeah  So we're, I'm getting much more into the kind of personal workspace side of things since joining. So I'm head of portfolio, not just for my world of UC and VC, but also in like, yeah, keyboards and mice. So I'm really interested interested as to, you know, how we can actually work with Microsoft and Copilot and try and ease that kind of user experience and that user journey of how they kind of engage into Copilot, how they're interacting it. Because now we're creating the input devices, whether that be the keyboards and the mice, but also, you know, the microphones and headsets and things like that. So it is interesting and I think, you know, my, I think I'm quite old. I feel this kind of AI thing. I'm a bit of a luddite, so I use it as a bit of a do engine. So it's continuously, Copilot, do this for me, Copilot, do that for me. If I mention the A word, she'll pick up in the other room, but I've been using the A thing for quite some time. And again, it's a do engine. You just say, turn the lights on, turn the lights off, add this to my shopping list, play me this music, and all that kind of stuff. And I think my initial use of Copilot was very much the the same, write this e-mail better for me, or can you design me a logo, or can you write me a banner, or can you tidy this up? So it was continuously a do engine. And I guess I'm trying to cross the chasm to where we move from that just getting it to do stuff. to enhance me. I haven't got into the whole agentic piece, so that's really something that I want to kind of lean into and try and pick that up. So that's, I guess, where I am on my journey with it. And it's funny, so I only... picked it up quite recently because as I say, I've always been concentrated on the Microsoft Teams side of things with Polycom previously and Plantronics and then Crestron. So to me, Copilot is more in the meeting room. And again, it's the exciting piece around transcription, transcribing, the translation stuff is just blows my mind, but the whole speaker attribution piece and being able to now actually say, you know, Neil said this in the meeting and, you know, Mark said this in the meeting rather than, you know, meeting room X. So the fact that you can kind of opt in and train it and teach it your, you know, linguistic style and your tone and it can then identify you, I think, again, is really powerful. But I need to now learn again how to go from the meeting into the desktop and to use that into my everyday work and to try and get it to be more than just a, can you sort out my terrible grammar and bad British spelling, you know?

00:06:39 Mark Smith
Why isn't like one space that I'm surprised Logitech hasn't leaned into is- If we're going.

00:06:47 Neil Fluester
To talk roadmap, we're going to get in trouble, okay?

00:06:49 Mark Smith
What I'm surprised they haven't leaned into, and there's been kind of like, it's been an opportunity that's been on the table since 2020. So it's a five-year opportunity that's been missed, I feel, by Logitech, and that was teleprompters for Teams.

00:07:07 Neil Fluester
Okay, interesting. Yeah, there is one other vendor that does them, or has one, I know of.

00:07:13 Mark Smith
Well, I'm in front of one, right? That's why I've got perfect- I thought you were free-forming.

00:07:17 Neil Fluester
I thought this was a riffing chat. You're reading off the scripts.

00:07:21 Mark Smith
So no, what I'm saying is that I have your Teams, the Teams, like let's say we're in Microsoft Teams. I always have my people right in front of me because it means I can maintain eye contact. I've got no script on screen, so I'm not using the teleprompter function, but Elgato- That's.

00:07:38 Neil Fluester
What he's telling you, everybody.

00:07:40 Mark Smith
Elgato brought out the stream deck. Sorry, there's this teleprompter, I don't know, maybe two years ago. I actually got an MVP summit two years ago because it wasn't available anywhere else in the world, outside the US, and I had another MVP, I had it delivered to his house so he could bring it along to Summit for me. And it has been absolutely amazing. Like, you know, so many people go, why, you know, how do you, you're never looking off, you're always focused. And I do a lot of presentations, sometimes up to 400 people at a time on a call for four hours in the work I've done with Microsoft and training their staff and things like that. I just find it's amazing, and I'm surprised Elgato, from a gaming perspective, leaned into the space and did it, but I think it's the biggest and best business tool out there to create the closest we can to a human connection without being in the room. Right? And particularly, like I've done one-on-ones with employees and things like that through this, and being able to be able to gauge their reaction always because, you know, I'm looking into a camera behind a reflected screen. Now, I've got to just brought out the XL, which is 15 inch screen, right? 1080p, like, I mean, I'm trying to buy it as soon as I can get it because The only drawback to the small screen, it is bloody small. And so it's fine with only two people on. But if you've got 50 people on, everyone's just a, you know, a postage stamp. Do they still do postage stamps? I don't know. You know, it's that tiny. They've probably got the king on them now, the queen though, so. Yes, But so what I'm saying is that, because Elgato kind of nailed the gaming mouse, it's probably considered one of the best gaming mice in the world or mouse in the world and the keyboard. And I just thought, the natural peripheral extension to OWN is this kind of... And the crazy thing, if you had power tools on your desktop or operating system or other tools, the traditional teleprompters, none of them did the screen reflection without needing another piece of software. where Elgato have a built-in through the USB-C connection, then it automatically, it's a reversed screen, which is just mint.

00:10:01 Neil Fluester
It is a, I haven't actually played with one. They did offer me one a while back and I kind of... past on it because I do a fair bit of filming, but I generally tend to kind of riff just off the cuff rather than reading off of a script. But I was talking, Tom Arbuffnott's a good friend and fellow MVP, and he was talking about it the other day in the Excel. So I'll probably get in trouble, but it's a cool thing. And yeah, I think it potentially is a gap. Luckily for me, it's not. So we have different portfolio parts of the business, so I'm just on Logitech for Business, not in our gaming or in our B2C side. So again, I guess it would be in there because we've got obviously our Blue Yeti products and Ultimate Ears and the gaming side of the house.

00:10:45 Mark Smith
I didn't realise Blue Yeti was Logi. I didn't realise Blue Yeti.

00:10:50 Neil Fluester
Yeah, Blue Yeti now is Logitech now. It was an acquisition again before my time.

00:10:56 Mark Smith
I think if you put the whole gaming stuff aside, as a business tool, any remote worker should have a a prompter, and not for having teleprompter, just so you can eyeball a camera without always feeling like you're looking over your screen to look at what the meeting agenda is today or whatever. You can be looking directly to the audience that you're engaged with. Yeah, I mean, very rarely do I ever put out an actual use the prompt function with the software. It is just the team's experience straight back at me and just creates a much more personal connection.

00:11:35 Neil Fluester
I'll put in a feature request specifically for you. It would be a pleasure.

00:11:41 Mark Smith
You'd have to do something better than the Elgato for me to switch though. I'm just saying, as anybody in the comm space, it's a massive peripheral white space. Like don't even go after the gamer market, just go after the business segment, sell that story, that's the story.

00:12:00 Neil Fluester
This is an interesting one. So, okay, so here's, well, I'll throw some product stuff your way then. So what about, so I'm battling at the moment with webcams. So I'm trying to think to myself, you know, 'cause every laptop's got a webcam built in. So quite, but you know, you've got your rucksack or your bag, your laptop bag that you carry from home to the office if you commute. So you're gonna, a mouse is kind of a given. You kind of like the trackpad on a laptop is terrible from a productivity standpoint. So you would take a mouse. So you chuck a mouse in your bag, you would have that space for your mouse. You'd have that weight for your mouse. Headset. You probably would have a headset because you don't want it coming out the speakers and the microphone or laptop.

00:12:45 Mark Smith
Correct, in a private space, yep.

00:12:47 Neil Fluester
Keyboard and webcam, I'm trying to work out, and I'm interested, I'd be interested to the audience feedback if there's a comment facility, if they want to comment below. I was, again, for me and for you, yeah, we do this stuff and I've got a podcast mic here, I've got actually a mirrorless camera here I use for a USB HDMI capture. So I've got set up to have a bit more of a premium high-end setup. But again, when it comes to webcams, most people go, Well, the one that's built is good enough. And you see these terrible cutouts in Teams where you see they've gone for the virtual background and there's all the tears because the lighting's terrible. And so Teams is brilliant at doing that. We used to use green screens for all this stuff and Teams is great. You can't imagine the fact that you've got a virtual green screen now in Teams, but It's garbage in, garbage out. You've used a terrible 720p camera with terrible lighting in your laptop, it's gonna look junk. And then the other thing is, I had a call the other day with a guy, and people watching, obviously listening, sorry, you won't be able to see this, but the whole call was like this, because he's looking at his screen, but his camera laptop was here, and it's like, just put the camera, where you're looking, but would you, Mark Smith or any of the audience watching this, how much would you, what do I have to do to earn the space and wait in your bag for you to carry around a beautiful 4K Brio camera in your bag versus that total? terrible camera that's built into the top of the screen that is an afterthought by most of the laptop vendors.

00:14:28 Mark Smith
I think it comes down to education. I have three Logitech Brios.

00:14:33 Neil Fluester
Thank you very much.

00:14:35 Mark Smith
Right. And the reason is, is that the last big event before, I've had them for over five years because the last big event before COVID hit for me was in Florida. And I was in Florida. And the conference organizers, I'd work with them to get a area right in the middle of the expo hall. And I just had two chairs with a banner backdrop advertising the event, et cetera. And I had three Brios set up into my laptop. Nice. Clip-on microphones and... Microsoft executive that would come along, boom in the chair, like you can see a 30 minute interview between me and Charles Lamanna, the head of, I mean, I think he's got almost 8,000 staff report to him in Microsoft in his org, and sit down, have an off-cuff conversation, and they're all done on those 4K brios, all just on these tiny one stick, you know, tripods. So it was kind of like nobody could see all the tech. But the tech was just amazing. And I just had a friend, and we would just alternate in and out, and we would switch cameras. So I had one Brio did a wide shot, the two of us on the screen, and then the other two Brios were individual, right? So cut right in. And you would think we'd had a massive professional camera rig. All of that fitted, as you say, in my rucksack, just like that was three cameras, two LED spots, and I had a little mixing console desk and my laptop. That was it.

00:16:12 Neil Fluester
Beautiful.

00:16:13 Mark Smith
And we live streamed, live streamed the whole lot and as well as recorded and got up later.

00:16:20 Neil Fluester
Yeah, I mean, there's obviously some edge use cases like that, but I guess in the day-to-day, I guess you look at the kind of 80-10, 90-10 rule, 90% is going to be VC using Teams or other. video conferencing applications, the 10% is going to be those use cases like I want to stream, I want to use like a town hall meeting, webinar, whatever it might be. So I get it for that. Again, I'm just trying to work out how we get use, how do we earn that space in the bag? Because again, you wouldn't leave the house looking terrible without your hair down and your makeup or, you know, a good suit and looking sharp, but you'll turn up to a Teams meeting looking terrible.

00:16:59 Mark Smith
If you built into it a the some little LEDs. So I mean, if you're, like, I can remember my last call was MVP Summit last year where I was on the road and, you know, laptop and I was in a dark hallway and the bit that was letting me down was, you know, it would've been just a little bit of lighting and you think you can get the camera, a few lights around the edge, power it through the single USB-C kind of connector. and tout it as your, you know, it's almost like you want to be able to easily mount on anything. I think you got the mounting right that I think it's, you know, rather than trying to make a camera to be for the gamers as well, just sell it as a business camera anywhere and you need, you know, get that messaging right. You know, I think that you would have a market, yeah. Yeah.

00:17:59 Neil Fluester
Yeah, again, it's an interesting one, because of course, the other thing, mice and headsets are wireless, whereas a webcam's wired. So again, is it that friction of like, oh, laptops don't have any ports?

00:18:10 Mark Smith
USB-C though, right?

00:18:11 Neil Fluester
Yeah, it should be. Again, it should be really convenient. I'm just I'm just trying to work out because I see so many people joining calls. looking terrible from their laptop cameras. And I'm just, it just pains me, like, for.

00:18:23 Mark Smith
And see, that's the marketing. Stop sucking on the way you look, right?

00:18:27 Neil Fluester
Yeah, exactly. That's what you want.

00:18:29 Mark Smith
Not 10 years off your life, you know, look like you're a tech expert, you know? I mean, I think there's, you know.

00:18:34 Neil Fluester
Yeah, you wouldn't leave home. looking terrible, so why would you turn up to the meeting looking terrible?

00:18:41 Mark Smith
Definitely opportunity to be had there, I think. Definitely opportunity.

00:18:45 Neil Fluester
Second feature request from Mark coming in to Logitech for another new webcam. Yeah, This is just your chance to just say what products you want and we'll develop them for you.

00:18:57 Mark Smith
Now those Brio cameras though, boy, you've got your money's worth as in from a longevity perspective. As I just said, working out, that must have been over five years ago that I did that last gig. It would have been in 2019, it must have gone from the UK over to Florida. And yeah, with three of them with just little Elgato captures, I think I used on them into my laptop.

00:19:22 Neil Fluester
An OBS or Streamlab or whatever on your laptop to just switch between the streams and stuff. Yeah, no, it's perfect. It's great.

00:19:28 Mark Smith
It's a little switcher. I think I used Stream Deck at the time, just to switch between. No, sorry, not Stream Deck. I used, oh, what's the free streaming software? OBS.

00:19:38 Neil Fluester
OBS, OBS. Yeah, OBS, yeah.

00:19:40 Mark Smith
Just OBS. Yeah, it worked well, it worked well.

00:19:43 Neil Fluester
Yeah, and of course, we've got Windows Hello on them.

00:19:45 Neil Fluester
So, you know, the ability to, for our, from our MVP Microsoft side, you know, that ability to have all that security capability, ease the login, you know, it's great.

00:19:56 Mark Smith
I think it's white space waiting for Logi to take on.

00:20:02 Neil Fluester
Loving it. Again, I'd love to hear from your viewers as to, you know, what we can do more around webcams, because I think as I say there.

00:20:08 Mark Smith
Happy to field test anything you send my way.

00:20:11 Neil Fluester
Well, are you going to Ignite, by the way?

00:20:13 Mark Smith
Nah, heck no. I'm staying out. Just between you and me, I'm staying out of the US.

00:20:18 Neil Fluester
Okay, all right.

00:20:19 Mark Smith
I've been there once this year. And as in, I'm just like, I'm registered to go next year in March, and I'm just...

00:20:31 Neil Fluester
Oh, for the MVP summit.

00:20:33 Mark Smith
Yeah, MVP summit. But even last MVP summit, I came across the border out from Canada on a busload of MVPs that we'd done the Canadian summit prior. And it's the weirdest feeling. I've been going to the US every year, if not multiple times a year for 15 years. But apart from the COVID time, right? Never missing a beat. And it's just this, it's feels weird now at the moment.

00:21:02 Neil Fluester
Friction.

00:21:03 Mark Smith
Yeah, yeah.

00:21:04 Neil Fluester
That term again.

00:21:05 Mark Smith
Exactly. And it should be friction free, right? Travel nowadays. I feel in the world.

00:21:10 Neil Fluester
Can I ask you a question? You asked me about Copilot. I just turn the tables on you. What do you think when I say Copilot?

00:21:17 Mark Smith
Well, I just wrote this book on it.

00:21:20 Neil Fluester
I didn't prompt him for that, by the way. You put it on your Christmas list, on your Amazon. Have you got a book and a DVD coming out for Christmas, Mark?

00:21:28 Mark Smith
Microsoft 365 Copilot Adoption: A Practical Guide for Business Leaders and Consultants. So my wife and I just wrote that. Well, just, it took an easy half a year to write it. And it's just been published, so.

00:21:41 Neil Fluester
And where can people get a hold of it?

00:21:43 Mark Smith
Amazon and everywhere else, every book retailer has it, so.

00:21:47 Neil Fluester
You can pay me later.

00:21:49 Mark Smith
Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

00:21:51 Neil Fluester
Do I get signed one?

00:21:53 Mark Smith
If you want, as I can do at the MVP Summit if you're there, and I'm there. Actually, we just had to sign, I think, five of them. So they're published in the US, they're printed in the US, so they got sent to the US to us. I had to sign, my wife and I co-authored it together, so we had to sign them and send them back because last week was a Power Platform conference in Vegas, and they wanted to do a video with a bunch of executives all holding a signed copy of it. But the crazy thing is even to ship into the US now, to send the books back and the value of them coming out, like a printed book, let's forget the IP piece, right? It's $3. $3 US. To send those five books to the US costs $300. Mind-blowing, right? It's insanity, isn't it? Absolutely. It's because, do you know anything under $800 now going back into the US has a tariff on it.

00:22:53 Neil Fluester
Tariffs on paper now.

00:22:55 Mark Smith
Some countries are refusing to post to the US. I think France just came out. They're not allowing any packages to go to the US, as I'm from citizens. Outside of commercial?

00:23:04 Neil Fluester
Just pack 'em in a suitcase and fly there.

00:23:08 Mark Smith
The British Postal Service will be turning in their grave.

00:23:11 Neil Fluester
Absolutely. The Royal Mail.

00:23:13 Mark Smith
The Royal Mail. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, so just before we wrap up, 'cause we've easily riffed through, just one little thing, on your home setup tech. So have you configured all that yourself?

00:23:27 Neil Fluester
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:23:28 Mark Smith
So I-- Are you using HomeAssist?

00:23:31 Neil Fluester
Home Assistant, yeah.

00:23:32 Mark Smith
So I'm running on a Raspberry Pi or what?

00:23:35 Neil Fluester
No, I'm on a x86, it's running on an i5 at the moment, so I'm running it on as a virtual machine in, what's it called? It's not, I mean, it should be in Microsoft, obviously, but not, it's a free one, can't remember what it's called.

00:23:48 Mark Smith
No, something like that, you want it on something lean.

00:23:51 Neil Fluester
Yeah, so I've got Frigate on there, which is running an NVR for all the CCTV cameras, and then I've got Free NAS, I think it's the NAS. And then it's running Home Assistant on there. And then that's got then the Zigbee Z-Wave for then most of the devices. And then there's a whole bunch of scripts that then connect into-- I pull data off of all different types of sources. The best one, because I'm now going back into an office, putting the local train times real time into the Home Assistant. So I've got like one dashboard on my plate, it tells me my battery levels, it tells me how many watts I'm on the solar, it tells you when the next train is from the station. It's brilliant. You build your own dashboard and yeah, I love it. Really, really nice.

00:24:37 Mark Smith
So has solar taken off in the UK?

00:24:40 Neil Fluester
Yeah, it's not. I mean, the UK and solar really is where we are in the hemisphere. I think I've got something like 1.2 kilowatts of solar and on a good day, I'll get about 200 watts out of them. It's like, It's summer, it's summer, because I mean, I think the challenge with solar is that you've got the ratings of the panels. If you're in Nevada, you're pointing them directly at the sun, you know, with the wind behind you on a Tuesday in the middle of summer, you might get the output wattage that it tells you. But for the real world, when it's a little bit overcast and a little bit kind of gloomy and they're laying flat down on the flat roof rather than angled at the sun, you're probably best at getting about 10% of their rated output. So yeah, I get my 1.2 potential kilowatts, certainly now in the winter, I think I saw about 250 watts max peak output today. So yeah, it's not, yeah, in the UK, it's a challenge. There was all these grants and you see people on the roofs and stuff like that. But again, any free power is free power at the end of the day. So I'll take it if it tops up. Again, I think you need to go big. You need a big spot. People do it on the roofs. If you've got the right facing roof and stuff like that, you can get a decent amount. But I think the first thing to do is to reduce your output first and then try and be as lean as you can with regards to what you're using. It makes the solar a lot easier. But yeah, no, UK is not Nevada, so it's not...

00:26:24 Mark Smith
So true. And I've seen the ones in Nevada, and my gosh, it's like a blinding light though, you know, these big arrays that they put in a desert with the, just incredible, incredible.

00:26:33 Neil Fluester
But it's like, it's just, I just find it interesting and fascinating. It's just, again, one of those technologies that I think is... That and lithium batteries. I mean, again, I started off with like radio controlled stuff with like lithium polymer batteries back in the day. And now lithium iron phosphate is the new chemistry that everyone sort of loves because it's super safe. It doesn't blow up. And it's really got really great density of storage in it. And yeah, you can do some quite cool stuff. And the cost of it is just so cheap per kilowatt. sort of battery walls you can get now. And the battery management systems are, you know, so, so affordable. It used to be really expensive, but now you can you can knock up, you know, a large amount of kilowatt. Again, check out off grid garage. He's got a goodness knows how many, how many kilowatt hours in his garage that he's sort of knocked up. Again, it's all coming out of somewhere in China, probably. So, yeah.

00:27:35 Mark Smith
Neil, thank you so much for coming on the show. It's been awesome talking to you.

00:27:38 Neil Fluester
Thanks for having me, Mark.

00:27:44 Mark Smith
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host, Business Application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the nz365guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffee.com/nz365guy. Thanks again and see you next time.