How AI Is Reshaping Tech Communities

Mark Smith: 0:19
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. Today's guest is from Budapest, Hungary. He works as a freelancer on the Power Platform and he also is a Microsoft certified trainer. His first award is MVP in 2024,. Outside of work and tech, he loves traveling, hiking, biking. His passion for the arts draws him to concert and theater. You can find links to his bio and socials in the show notes for this episode as well. Mate, welcome to the show.

Mate Toth: 1:13
Thank you. Thank you, Mark, for having me.

Mark Smith: 1:16
Good to have you on the show. I've kind of known you for a good wee while now. When did we first meet?

Mate Toth: 1:21
I think it was 2022. I think it was one of the cohorts of your mentoring program, so I think it was 2022. I'm always thinking if it's 2022 or 2023, but I think it was 2022.

Mark Smith: 1:35
Nice, so the pandemic was well underway at that point. What I find interesting I always love seeing people become MVPs and then, knowing that they went through the 90-day mentoring challenge, I'm like, yes, another one. That is so, so epic. How did you first actually, before we go there, tell us about Budapest, tell us about food, family and fun?

Mate Toth: 2:03
Okay, budapest, beautiful city. I think you've been here before so you know it already. It's a beautiful city. It's a bit crazy these days. We just had a protest today, so they were protesting today but yeah, it's a nice city. Otherwise, we have better and better weather. I'm getting out of winter. We had a pretty cold winter this year but yeah, it's, it's beautiful. It's great to be here, great to be back to budapest always and food anything spicy. It could be hot or spicy, anything that is spicy. So I like anything from Middle East, from India, from China, from Thailand, from Indonesia, so anything that contains any spices. Think you already mentioned in the in the story.

Mate Toth: 3:00
But I, I do love traveling. I do love hiking, biking, doing, uh, sup, so stand-up, paddling on the lakes in in hungary and, yeah, organizing communities, doing some public speaking and a lot, a lot of other things. And family, uh, I have a girlfriend. We live together for, yeah, I think I think we just had our five years living together anniversary and yeah, we live together, we travel together, we do a lot of things together, so theater always together. But yeah, that's my three Fs for you. I love it.

Mark Smith: 3:35
Tell me what's the protest about for you.

Mate Toth: 3:42
I love it. Tell me what's the protest about? It's, uh, they banned the pride in in hungary and it's, it's about. It's about that. I think that's the main thing. And they, they're banning things and they just try to be out there to say that, hey, it's not cool that if we, if you are, suppress our rights, or something like that. So they were trying to block four, four of the four of the bridges for hours. So that was the. That that was the protest uh happening. So I could see it from the window, because I see two bridges from my window, so I was hearing a lot of police coming back and forth, a lot of flashing lights. But, yeah, I think it's gone now because they had the time until 10 pm, so it was stopped an hour ago.

Mark Smith: 4:28
So the big bridge I remember is there's a big green bridge. Is that right, an old bridge, that's green, yeah. And then I remember the ones up by the. Is it a big cathedral or is it the town hall? That's the very elaborate, right on the edge of the river.

Mate Toth: 4:44
The Parliament, the House of Parliament, I think.

Mark Smith: 4:46
Yeah, yeah.

Mate Toth: 4:47
Yeah, they didn't go there, they just had the big green bridge. Yes, it was blocked by the protesters. It was blocked by the protesters.

Mark Smith: 4:56
Yeah, okay, you're right, it's a beautiful city. Why I went there and why I wanted to go there is really bad in that we watched a movie that talks about the Grand Budapest Hotel, which, of course, is not set in Budapest at all, but it's just one of those quirky movies that my wife and I both love and you know it always had that ring, and so we used the opportunity when living in London to visit and appreciate. We did stay at a very nice hotel, we treated ourselves, but it also had, like this big um like spa, you know, a hammam, or like a hot book, yeah, yeah, which was amazing, amazing. And then I remember a rooftop, um like cocktail bar that was quite high up in the city that allowed you to look out, um, towards a river. That was spectacular, and then, of course, the grungy area of town was also very interesting as well. Very cool, very cool. How did you first get into the Power Platform?

Mate Toth: 6:07
I think it was back in 2018. I was working in a finance function and I just received a request from one of the managers to do something in Excel like a huge, huge Excel with 500 people and sending emails back and forth and I was like, maybe not. And that's when I realized that Power Platform is a thing. So I'm coming outside of IT. I was working in finance and photography before then and that's when I realized. But I always had this curious mind and oh, okay, there's this purple icon on the top left corner and clicked on it.

Mate Toth: 6:48
I think it was 2017 when I first clicked on it, but I couldn't do anything. And that's when I received that request in 2018. I was like, hmm, okay, maybe that's what Power Apps is for. And that's when I received that request in 2018. I was like, hmm, okay, maybe that's what Power Apps is for. And that's when I started. So I did everything in the default environment and doing everything in production, as you would all do. And yeah, I started with an app for 500 people and developed in production, but it went well. So that was my first start. And then I started to build more apps, more automation, and I think the rest is history right.

Mark Smith: 7:32
This is so cool that I've heard that story told by a few different people hitting that purple button and getting underway and and so if we fast forward to now, you're obviously an mvp for the power platform. Um, did you kind of never look back? Did you then just keep building solutions and developing your skill set? You know, from that point forward, yeah, yeah, of course.

Mate Toth: 7:57
So I I started to do, okay, let's, let's go in in the certification route just to make sure that I have, like the learnings in place, and I had more and more applications building and more automations built and, yeah, I became a certified trainer. I think it was 2022. And yeah, so I just started to dig a bit deeper, like, okay, what's in there in the Power Apps? And, yeah, I think I spent a lot of time on Microsoft Learn and I spent a lot of time in the community as well. We had a community in Hungary as well and also the international community, because I think that's it's a bit more, of course, wider than the pretty tiny hungarian community. So, yeah, I really enjoy, still today to this day, the, the international community, because it's it's really really good to learn from, from the best of the best.

Mark Smith: 9:26
Last time I saw you in person was in Vegas. Right, Does that sound right? The Power Platform, yeah, community conference. I noticed in your bio that you're very active in Toastmasters.

Mate Toth: 9:41
Why is that? Because of your mentor program. So I think this was the very, very first homework I would call it or assignment to go to local Toastmasters and we do have one nearby and I went there and I was like, okay, you know it's just clapping and a lot of formalities in there and I didn't go back for a month after my first Toastmasters event, but I felt it's a really supportive community and, in a way, it's your best audience because everyone's there to support you and help you through your own boundaries that you create for yourself. And yeah, it was great. Like I've done it for three years, like last week was my last time going for Toastmasters because I wanted to. I'm thinking to go for different kind of genre now, so I'm thinking about slam poetry or comedy or storytelling. So I'm still trying to hit different stages, but it was a great, great learning. So I just can't really thank you enough for just showing me.

Mate Toth: 11:00
I heard, heard it before, but since it was an assignment, I was like, okay, let's give it a go, and I had great friends along the way, great people to learn from, and I also I got back to speak Hungarian more because I think the last I don't know, 12 years, english is my main language or my work language, and I forgot a lot of Hungarian in the work context and I was forced, in a way, forced to to work more, uh, speak more Hungarian there, because it was a Hungarian club and it was a great, uh great way to to get back to hungarian. You know it sounds weird, right, but just to to use to use the phrases again, because it's so easy to switch back to english when you have a better phrase that works better in english than in hungarian and it's so easy to switch and people are just like hey, you are in hungary, try to talk in your native language. And yeah, it was a great journey for sure.

Mark Smith: 12:06
That is so cool. That is so cool. Who nominated you to become an MVP and what was that process like?

Mate Toth: 12:13
It was Izzy, I'm not sure if it's from M365. Katanich, izzy, dora Katanich, and she was organizing the Experts europe in budapest and I was so happy to see that, like an international conference is coming to, like we finally made it to the map of I mean, it's not power platform, right, it's m365 mainly, or modern workplace, or whole microsoft in that sense. And I was so happy and I was like hey, hey, it's so great, it's so great. And, um, I got selected first of all to, to to have a session, and then, uh, I was like their local helping guy, like, hey, I can, I can do this, because we had a big flood right before the right before the um conference itself, and I was like here, like I was like the weather guy Okay, now the Danube is pretty okay, the roads are closed, this tram is not going anywhere and things like that.

Mate Toth: 13:15
But, yeah, way before that we were having talks, when they were in Hungary to do the preps, and she asked me like hey, are you an MVP? I was like no, okay, I will nominate you because it feels like you are trying to do a lot for the Hungarian community. So I think that was really the process, because I was thinking for, like, I have a year compass, like a yearly planner, and for two years I think I put it as a goal, like I want to become an MVP. I want to become an MVP. And last year was the first time I didn't put it Because that's not my end goal. I just want to help people. I want to bring the international community to Hungary, just to have a international community to Hungary, to just, yeah, just to have a Hungarian community.

Mate Toth: 14:08
And yeah, last year I didn't put it in my goals because that wasn't my goal to become an MVP, just to really help the people. And that's when I didn't want to achieve that. That's when it happened. So, in that sense, I think it worked out because I had the right purpose, not just okay, I need that. Three letters on my LinkedIn.

Mark Smith: 14:31
This is so cool though. It's so cool that you know that story, that journey that you went on. What's your observation of the community now in Hungary? Is there a community of either? You know Microsoft people, because I'm finding, personally, the lines between M365 and business apps are blurring heaps, right as in. You know, if you come from a SharePoint background, which is in M365, right, you'll probably be building Power Apps and using Power Automate and things like that. And then now we have Copilot, and if you really want to extend Copilot, you're going to use a Power Platform tool, right, copilot Studio to do that, and I just find it's getting very hard to go. What is Biz Apps and what is M365? And even now, you know, with Foundry and Azure and stuff, it is becoming feel, uh, you know a contiguous story, um, from from end to end what? But what are you seeing in the actual people in the hungarian community?

Mate Toth: 15:36
hungarian community is, is really like a tough market to to just bring them together because it's such a small market and every partner everyone is just trying to to keep their shares of the market share in that sense and and also like to share knowledge. It's, I think it's not really in our blood. In that sense we are not really open as as a. In that sense we are not really open as as a society in hungary or as a yes, as people we are not. So like we are, we have, I would say, trust issues in in. In that sense, that's okay. Why, like we are trying to find like the what's what? What's your deal, why? Why do you do that? Why did you ask that question? What's what you really want? Even though we are direct, but it's, it's still like we are trying to like, okay, what's what do you really want? Why do you work for free? Why you organize events for free? What's what do you want to get out of this?

Mate Toth: 16:37
And it's really it was like in the beginning it was really hard to bring people together or just to have them share things, and but now I think it's getting easier and easier. They, they just it feels like they just get got our trust on. We got their trust and now we have more and more speakers coming along. We had, I think, the last two years, maybe 15 new speakers, like brand new speakers, showing their or sharing their knowledge, and we started to do like I am the leader of the Hungary Power Platform user group and we started to do like a roadshow. So we are going to Microsoft partners, we go to Microsoft and we go to end users as well, like companies and users, and we just bring it in to different people and to different groups. So it's not always at Microsoft in that sense. So we can just expand our growth. And now I think on LinkedIn we have 1,100 people, something like that.

Mark Smith: 17:44
Wow, this is amazing.

Mate Toth: 17:50
Yeah, they are not that active when it comes to in-person events, so we usually have 50, 40, 50, 60, depends but I think it's a great start or a great progress. It's a journey, because we started from a long way and I think during your mentoring program we discussed the language barrier. That's what we have and in hungary sometimes people in even in it they don't speak english at all or not well enough. So I'm also trying to break that as well a little bit, just to break that ice, because we do have a foreign community here as well expats who live in hungary and work in power platform, and I don't want to exclude them. So it just, yeah, I just want to have it as a melting pot and and I want to be inclusive, so sometimes I do it if, if I speak or someone else is speaking, we do it in hungarian, in english, at the same time not the same time, but switching and sometimes I'm like, okay, we will do it in english, but I will try to be as simple as possible so people will understand that english. So not that fast or or not use huge words or anything like that.

Mate Toth: 19:05
And yeah, it seems to be working. So there are more and more and, yeah, it's going well. And just to answer the original question, how those two are merging, we do have some people coming from modern workplace or SharePoint backgrounds as well. However, I can't recall if they have their own community for, like SharePoint or I don't think so. I think there is a separate community for Power BI they are pretty big and one starting for Copilot as well, and that's also like a Hungarian thing that we are trying to go separate ways and not work together in that sense, even though I would like to, but it just doesn't seems like it will happen that's it.

Mark Smith: 19:55
So what's the feeling then around artificial intelligence in hungary and ai? You mentioned co-pilot then, um, once again, I am seeing that you really can't be in biz apps or the power platform or or dynamics these days without AI being, you know, front and center. But what are you seeing in Hungary? What's the kind of adoption level at a national level? Are people getting into it? Are they freaking out? What's the kind of temperature, I suppose, of the population?

Mate Toth: 20:30
I think they are getting into it. So like even my father is playing around with Midjourney and Chet GPT, for example, just to see. So people are curious about it. However, most of the tools are not really good with Hungarian language, so even my Copilot Studio is not supporting it natively At this very moment. Copilot supports it, I think for a year now M365 Copilot but the Copilot Studio doesn't have it as a native option as Hungarian.

Mate Toth: 21:07
So it sometimes is a showstopper for big companies. It's like even in banks, like big Hungarian banks or other bigger companies, it's like Hungarian, only they don't have expats working for them, and I think that is a showstopper in that sense. But I think, like major telecommunication provider just gives out free, like, say, perpex, perplexity pro licenses for a year for all their subscribers and things like that, so they are trying to bring it in, and so I see to bring it in, and so I see both ends. People are really really into it and also people that are tech savvy have no clue about AI. So it's just a big opposite end of the scale, and so I don't think we have a huge adoption right now, but it's it's getting a hotter topic. So if I go to meetupcom. I look around, there are always, like every week there is something related to ai, either meetup or and it's it's not usually co-pilot, it's it's usually usually other other things that that um are happening.

Mark Smith: 22:24
So and have you personally started to incorporate ai into your life, into your work, into what you do? How, what's your kind of level of uh adoption? I suppose I like to play around with it, so I'm a pretty early adopter.

Mate Toth: 22:40
I I like to to play around with it, so I'm a pretty early adopter. I like to see what's happening in the field. I wouldn't say I completely put my life into AI, to use it in the extent I would say I would normally use it. I'm just trying out the new features, the new models, to see what's out there, to try to keep up. So it's not only Copilot for me or OpenAI, but to see other players as well. So I think I have maybe three or four like plus or pro licenses across the different providers just to see what's going on, how they evolve and what's good for what. Because I think it's getting to the point that, okay, this one is good in this, that one is good in that, and I'm thinking more like, okay, which model is good for what? And not just like a Swiss army knife in that sense. So I think that's my adoption.

Mate Toth: 23:48
I just play around, I use it a lot for certain tasks just to see how it can help my life or how it can really help others as well. And I really, because I have background in photography, I really try to see how it can work to create, creating things, uh, out of photos. I mean, I'm not 100 with it because of ethical or copyright perspective, so how it? How it's been trained like stable diffusion. Also, open AI Dolly yeah, that's a. That's a different story, the ethical AI in that sense.

Mate Toth: 24:33
But I just am fascinated a lot of times, like now with this new model on open AI image model. That it's crazy. I just loaded in like five or six pictures because I wanted to see something like okay, make it like this, with different people doing that, and I was like okay, they don't have extra fingers, they, they have good looking face expressions, it's, it's, it's getting there, like it's getting getting there really, really fast. And yeah, it's just really fascinating to me like how, how it's evolving like every day, literally every single day it's a, it's amazing that concept of mashing up multiple images and then creating something from them.

Mark Smith: 25:27
And yesterday I just, you know, gave it a logo, gave it some data off a product and I said create me an infographic. And I'm like the logo was perfectly reconstructed, the infographic was like it had chosen based on the text, the imagery, et cetera it would use. And I'm like you know, on the text, the imagery, etc. It would use. And I'm like you know, people like oh, it's slow, but that would have taken a graphic designer half an hour, right, not three minutes, but and I'm just like it's pretty fast in my mind as into what you're, you know, getting out of it, um, and then the other one.

Mate Toth: 26:01
I go back and forth as well, right? So it's just, you are there like okay, please do this, change that, and it's done. I mean, it's so fast to go back and forth as well, right? So it's just, you are there like okay, please do this, change that, and it's done. I mean, it's three minutes or two minutes.

Mark Smith: 26:10
It's making graphic designers out of us that weren't graphic designers and, of course, I bet you a lot of people take offense to that. But it's just definitely enabling people to do more that wouldn't have necessarily had the time or skills or money to do it in the past, and the technology's enabling that. So, Mate, I could talk to you for hours. Thank you so much for coming on the show.

Mate Toth: 26:34
Thank you very much.

Mark Smith: 26:39
Hey, thanks for listening. I'm your host business application MVP Mark Smith, otherwise known as the NZ365 guy. If you like the show and want to be a supporter, check out buymeacoffeecom forward slash NZ365 guy. Thanks again and see you next time. Thank you.