The Future of Work: Remote Insights, Low-Code Innovation, and AI Trends

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. I'm excited to be talking to today's guest, as he comes from Greece. He works at Node4 as a cloud. He works at Node 4 as a cloud integrator. He's the sublead and senior Microsoft Azure architect. He was first awarded as MVP in 2024. He does a lot with the Power Platform as part of his role and he is the cloudopzonecom founder and one of the moderators of the Microsoft Wiki community and Microsoft Q&A. You can find links to his bio social media in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, George.

George Grammatikos : 1:26
Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much, Mark. I feel very honored to be invited and to be part of today's MVP show hosted by you. It's great to be here.

Mark Smith: 1:44
Thank you. Thank you. I always love exploring the lives of the guests that come on the show and I have not had many people from Greece, so I'm very excited. Greece is one of those countries on my bucket list both my wife and mine to come and live for a month to six weeks. We're hoping that 2026 is the year we do that. Next year it's going to be Italy for a month, so Greece is our next stop after Italy. So, looking forward to that, Tell me, before we get into the area of technology that you specialize in and what you do technically, Tell us about food, family and fun. What do they mean to you?

George Grammatikos : 2:22
Yes. So family here in Greece is something important, and I assume that for everyone in this world. In terms of my personal life, I'm a single, I don't know if that is good or bad I'm a single. I don't know if that is good or bad, but thank God I have two amazing nephews, two boys, to which I literally devote a lot of my time in my life. So, you know, we go on trips, we watch football games, we play basketball football, many, many, many other activities. I teach them and I'm mentoring them a lot. So, for example, I teach them useful stuff such as computer science. Let's say stuff such as computer science. Let's say I'm talking about clouds, potential dangers on the internet In general.

Mark Smith: 3:35
I'm trying not to be just a rankling, but something more. When you think of Greek food and your favourite dish, what is it?

George Grammatikos : 3:44
I think I'm blessed to have been born and raised and living till now in Greece. It's a Mediterranean country with loads of history and famous cuisine. For example, it combines fresh seasonal ingredients. Greek cuisine includes a variety of dishes, such as seafood squids, shrimps, sea basses and also I don't know if you know it, but I'm saying that because you are you want to travel in Greece. Greece has around 6,000 islands and small rocky islands. So yeah, and bear with me, I haven't finished yet. Greece produces feta cheese. I don't know if you have feta cheese in New Zealand.

Mark Smith: 5:07
Yes, yes. In my refrigerator I have feta cheese. Yes, yes, yes, yes.

George Grammatikos : 5:13
We have delicious meat such as lambs, goats I cannot say chickens, because they are all over the world and other dishes I could mention are the famous spanakopita. Have you ever heard about this? It's a savory spinach pie with feta cheese wrapped in crispy phyllo dough. I don't know very well that.

Mark Smith: 5:47
Yeah, yeah, that's correct. We call it phyllo pastry.

George Grammatikos : 5:52
Yes, Living in Greece makes me a person who loves good and tasty food, but I also tend to taste food from other countries. But in the end, you know, I end up being lucky, because I consider Greek cuisine is one of the best, if not the best.

Mark Smith: 6:15
So I live, my closest town to me is 40 minutes away, and the number one restaurant is run by a greek person and it's called acropolis is what they call the restaurant, and it is the best food, absolutely the best food, in our region, and and it's all Greek.

George Grammatikos : 6:37
Typical tourist name for a restaurant.

Mark Smith: 6:40
Yes, yes, yes, yes. And, of course, all the artwork is islands and the famous places of Greece. But yeah, just the food is amazing. The host and owner of the restaurant she is just amazing. The host and owner of the restaurant, she is just amazing. She is the epitome of an outstanding host, as well as serving amazing food and amazing cocktails.

George Grammatikos : 7:07
Really, I wish someday I can visit New Zealand and come and find you and we can come and visit. We can go and visit the restaurant.

Mark Smith: 7:19
A lot of Greek people have left reviews saying best Greek food they've ever had outside of Greece. So tell me, how did you get into technology?

George Grammatikos : 7:31
I never had in my mind to be a technology professional, to be a technology professional, but you know the life, for example I don't know if this is correct, but the life here in Greece. It's not that easy and you cannot find a very easy job with good money. So I sat down and discussed this with my parents when I was younger. We decided to start looking at training about technology, computer science especially. So here I am. I've started my. Actually my background is technical because my first job was to assemble computers, hardware. So I started from hardware and then I moved to networking, because I got CCNA, and then, yeah, cisco, and then databases, sql, and now no, there is another step, azure, and my last step, which is business apps. So it's a chain.

Mark Smith: 9:22
Yeah, yeah, how did you specifically get into business apps?

George Grammatikos : 9:29
about six years ago, I left Greece for business reasons to work remotely for Tisky. Now it's Node4, which was yeah. So, in terms of Node4, now it's a company that focuses in providing IT services, specializing in hybrid cloud solutions, data center hosting, connectivity, cybersecurity. It's an opportunity for me to start working with newer technologies, because here in Greece, new technologies and ideas are not so easily adapted, so that's why I decided to work abroad to get actually a flavor of other markets, like UK's. I was helped in the beginning of this career. I was helped a lot by my team members, especially by a person who is the director of the Power Platform practice and he's an active, fast-tracked, recognized solution architect in Power Apps and he's a best friend of mine. His name is Kos Belis and I'm telling you this guy is amazing and I think you should invite him on a podcast. Trust me. Trust me, yeah.

Mark Smith: 11:24
We'll get him on, so is he UK-based?

George Grammatikos : 11:26
He is UK-based. I'm Greek-based, Greece-based.

Mark Smith: 11:30
How do you find it working for a company in another country working remotely?

George Grammatikos : 11:36
It's not bad, it's very good. The only thing that bothers me is that I'm working from home, so I spend the most time of my life at home. I spend the most time of my life at home, I mean, here is the place where I'm sleeping, I'm eating, I'm working, I'm doing everything, but it's it's good, because sometimes I'm traveling to UK for customers, for or for visiting friends. So so it's good for someone to choose to work remote. I mean, for me, it's the best, because I live in Greece, I have the sun, I have the good food, I have my friends, my family, and sometimes I can move on and go to the UK to visit customers, colleagues, friends.

Mark Smith: 12:36
Yeah, I like it. I like it. It sounds amazing actually. How did you first find the job there? Did they come and find you? Did you just apply for a job? How did that original relationship start?

George Grammatikos : 12:54
I was looking that time. I was looking to find another job because, as I mentioned earlier here in Greece, technology is not. It's not the best part for the businesses. So one of my friends and colleagues went to UK and find a good job in T-Sky. So he told me a morning that they are asking for a new Azure engineer. So I just applied, passed the interviews and here I am. But I've started doing Azure, but now most of my time I spend most of my time doing business apps.

Mark Smith: 13:53
What do you in the past year? What have you been doing in the area of AI?

George Grammatikos : 14:00
In the area of AI. Not much. I couldn't say that I did a lot of things. But I've read a lot of of things. But I've read a lot of pdfs on my computer and I'm on my personal tenant, on my personal azure tenant. I'm trying to to do some demos to see how these services are working. But hopefully in the next weeks, months, years, I don't know we can get a project in my company and we can work more with AI.

Mark Smith: 14:45
Yes, so on the BizApps side of things, are you more doing development like NET development or are you more building solutions directly in PowerApps?

George Grammatikos : 14:58
PIM, azure Storage, vnets for security, azure Front Door, and that's it. And on the business apps part, I'm working a lot with Power Automate. I really love doing flows yes, with Power Automate, I really love doing flows. Flows yes, and maybe not. Maybe I'm not a developer, but I have started writing code on Power Apps because I think low code, no code, is for everyone and even if someone has nothing to do with the computer science field and it's just, for example, an accountant that can use Excel functions, it can learn instantly to write in Power Apps code. I mean, yeah, that's great.

Mark Smith: 16:18
You mentioned VNet and are you very focused on that security element of what you do as well because of your Azure background?

George Grammatikos : 16:26
Yes, yes, I'm MVP. I think this is the sixth year being an MVP. I nominated in two categories Azure and business apps. I don't know why, but for some reason, I don't know why, but for some reason, I've been selected only for the business apps nomination. So, but I'm doing both. I'm doing both. I mean, I'm good. I'm good on Azure. I have more experience, obviously, but I really love to do a lot of work with business apps and I'm telling you that you can imagine that it's the best thing on the work field is to combine knowledge from different technologies. I mean because you can understand better a customer customer needs. You know how to secure, for example, let's say that someone wants to use Power Pages, so you can very easily know what the customer needs in order to secure these Power Pages.

Mark Smith: 17:49
Good, this is very interesting. Tell me, you know and this is my final question, because we're at time is, if you look at the next six months, what is going to be your focus as in for your personal career development. What are you going to be focusing on?

George Grammatikos : 18:08
I want to focus more on business applications because I think that this is the to learn more things and to get better. But I don't want to leave my other background, which is the technical and it has to do with Azure technologies, because I spent 10 years of my life on this technology, but I really love to do things and work in projects and business applications. So I love doing both and in the future future I wish I could work more with AI technology, because I think it's great to have AI on our lives, and sometimes I spend time playing with chat CBT. I'm doing some very appropriate and inappropriate questions and I'm just expecting for the response. It's yeah, it's a good game, nice to play.

Mark Smith: 19:50
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 time. Thank you.