Hey-o! Hi there! Hulloo! How do you do? I’m Cat!
Currently I am a Senior Software Engineer for Hitachi Solutions America, Ltd., based full-time in Florida. Yes, that place. Home of alligators, pythons, sharks, snakes, and Florida Man stories…
I decided to start this website and blog after attending the Microsoft Power Platform Conference 2022 in Orlando, and realizing that I could continue my community building activities for Government Community Cloud (GCC) tenant users through this platform.
Now, you might be wondering why I would need a platform to continue my community building? On Friday at the end of the week of MPPC22, I accepted an offer of employment from the California-based MSP, Endsight, to be a Power Platform Developer.
I was leaving the employ of the State of Florida after almost 15 years. I was officially switching careers. All because of the Power Platform! 🤯🥰🎉
Did I go to school for this? No.
Did I receive any formal training in these skills? Also, no.
My background includes a BS degree for Biology with a minor in Chemistry; a BA degree for Studio and Fine Arts (that I still have not re-applied to the university in order to apply to graduate… 😕 I should really do that); 11 years of professional experience in water compliance and regulation; with another 4.8 years in organizational development.
So, how did I learn to use the Power Platform tools? Well long story short, I self-learned:
- SQL and database structures using Microsoft Access and Oracle SQL developer;
- Form development and process automation from Excel, VBA macros, plus some SharePoint;
- HTML, CSS, super basic Javascript and jQuery from SharePoint 2013 On-Prem.
To help understand some of my findings, I would definitely lean on developer friends and mentors from time to time. Mostly, though, I had a self-driven need to prove to myself that I could make things easier for others, and a strong obsession with throwing figurative spaghetti. 😅 I found my way into the Power Platform tools via Power BI and have not looked back since.
I intend for this blog and site to act as a resource for anyone working within a GCC tenant to get information relevant to their environment, or (even those outside GCC) to understand the basics for working with data in the Power Platform.
As of June 2023, I received the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) award for Business Applications for my contributions to the community!
I have a strong belief that we simply don’t know what we don’t know, and having a place to go to reference the basic information alongside tips and tricks for making the tools easier to use, will be a key factor in helping to transition regular everyday business users over to power users. That these users will feel empowered to take charge of creating quick, creative, and inexpensive solutions to long, unimaginative, and expensive business processes.
If there’s ever a question or concept that you’d like me to talk about, please reach out! I really do love to help others work through a problem they might be having. 😊