Exploring Microsoft Dynamics and Beyond with Brad Prendergast

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 the USA. He works as a Senior Microsoft Dynamics NAV slash D365, business Central Developer and Implementation Specialist. He was first awarded as MVP in 2024. He's an active member of the Business Central community and co-host of the popular Dynamics Corner podcast, frequently sharing his insight and expertise online at industry events and conferences. He's a seasoned professional with over 20 years of experience in the Microsoft Dynamics ecosystem. You can find links to his bio and socials in the show notes for this episode. Welcome to the show, Brad.

Brad Prendergast: 1:23
Thank you for having me Been looking forward to speaking with you.

Mark Smith: 1:26
Good to have you on and I'm excited to extract this 20 years of experience that you have. But before we do, let's talk about food, family and fun. What do they mean to you?

Brad Prendergast: 1:38
Food, family and fun. I love food Food for me. My favorite foods pizza and sushi, although I did recently pick up a smoker so I started smoking a lot of food. I've been smoking some ribs, chicken, pork, loin enough, so it's my love for food Fun. What else is there to do besides Business Central? I don't know, but outside of Business Central I do believe it's important to have some other activities to clear your mind. You can come back with some clarity. So I enjoy while I'm up north, enjoy hiking, and then I also enjoy doing a lot of photography, primarily landscape photography, so I'd get out and exploring. Yes, it's a way to get out and explore different areas, different cities, different towns, different areas. You know, predominantly landscape photography. It's a little bit more relaxing.

Mark Smith: 2:31
How do you do your smoking?

Brad Prendergast: 2:33
How do I do my smoking? A smoker? I picked up a Traeger grill. Is that what you're asking? Yes, yeah, I picked it up a few weeks ago and I'm hooked Nice.

Mark Smith: 2:44
So is it a cold smoking or a hot smoking technique?

Brad Prendergast: 2:47
It's hot, the pellets will heat it up. You pick your temperature, you do some slow smoking and it comes out amazing.

Mark Smith: 2:54
Yeah, so good, as in the first person. I suppose in the US that really introduced me to smoking was a guy called Shan MacArthur who's in the Microsoft product team, and he used to be an MVP back in the day, and boy, the meat that would come out of his smoker was just succulently amazing.

Brad Prendergast: 3:13
It's more than just meat, because I've smoked pizza. I've been cooking my own pizza for a while and you throw the. I can't even speak now, I'm getting so excited about it. But the pizza on the smoker it comes out. It's so flavorful and there's certain things even like something like mushrooms will absorb the smoke and sometimes I think that pizza, when you heat it up again, tastes better. I did a broccoli head the other day. You can do sweet potatoes, you can smoke just about anything. Yeah, yeah, you just have to go and just let it get out there. I've even done some steak.

Mark Smith: 3:45
Wow, I grew up on a farm and we had a smoker, but it was all homemade. It was like a big shed, it had a pipe that went underground, you had a big fire that you lit halfway down the hill and you know, we would smoke big chunks of meat at a time, whether it be, you know, you know, home, kill pork, or um, uh, we used to do all our own beef and and uh and so, yeah, we'd smoke these big cuts, uh, you know, in in the smoker over, uh, over a long period of time, but, of course, quite different than the way it's done today.

Brad Prendergast: 4:20
It is quite different, because I would prefer to do it that way, because it's almost like grilling, where you don't have a thermometer or a temperature control. You have to monitor it yourself. So it sounds like the setup that you had, maybe had a little more to it, because with these you set the temperature and you come back and check on it whatever interval you decide to check it on. So and it keeps the meat or whatever you're smoking at a set temperature. So it's pretty good. You can't live without food, so you might as well enjoy it, yeah.

Mark Smith: 4:51
Yeah, so photography. What's your hardware of choice?

Brad Prendergast: 4:57
Sony. I have a couple sonys alpha 600, alpha 73 and a wide variety of lenses depending upon what I'm shooting. So I tried some macro photography for a little while and get some plans. I I change it up, you know, just to have a little more variety in it and try different things. It to me the fun is just, you know, just taking the pictures and seeing what you can do with it and then also doing some post-process editing with the light room and just getting some of the pictures out. So it's, it's fun. And long exposure, I like with water, you know you get that uh, long exposure photography for the water too. So it's a lot of those little things that people don't know about individuals. You know, you see them in the light of, you know, working with business central or or the like, but just to find out that's one of the things I like to talk to a lot of people and just to see what else. What else is there?

Mark Smith: 5:48
Very cool, Very cool. I'm I'm Sony fan as well and I never went down the Canon route. My brother's heavily into Canon and everything. Never done the Nikon. It's always been Sony for me. I just always felt their software was better on device as well, Although I feel like camera tech could go so much further in the world of software. Why they haven't gone for a much more connected scenario? Yeah, they have the sync software and stuff like that, but I just feel they could go so much further around, fully integrated, for example, to your iPhone or something like that for monitoring.

Brad Prendergast: 6:32
I'm sure they will. I think it might be some slow going because some of the photography you know, even if you take a look at your iPhone, what you can do with it. You know. Just put that onto a Sony camera. You know I like the mirrorless cameras and I think to be able to do that and be able to knock out a quick edit I mean, you can do quite a bit now on camera. As far as reviewing as well and what you set for, you know your guides, your zebra and everything you might as well be able to do a quick edit. I call it sometimes. I didn't know you were into photography. What do you prefer to shoot?

Mark Smith: 7:06
Landscape, without a doubt, and I traveled for 18 months and that's where I kind of got heavily into it. So the less people, if not no people, in the photo, the better is my preference. Um, you know, capturing light, yeah, I've never been, you know, into that. What I, what I lack is some decent lenses, that particularly. You know telephoto I'd love to get a lot more into that, rather than shooting prime and stuff. I suppose you know to get up remotely. I'd love to get a lot more into that, rather than shooting prime and stuff. I suppose you know to get up remotely, get up close to, to subjects.

Mark Smith: 7:42
But I fell in love, particularly with photography in Iceland, um, capturing the Northern lights and, and just, you know, you've got to know your camera to be able to capture things like the Northern lights, you know well, and to get that exposure, get that exposure right. And I love night photography and I'm not talking about star photography, because I've never really done a lot of that, but still landscape that are well lit at night, you know, whether it be moonlit or I just love the kind of feel it can create. But then, you know, the golden hour, of course, is when you capture stuff that just blow people away.

Brad Prendergast: 8:18
Oh, yes, yes, yes, you can get some great shots and part of the fun is seeing what you can do, and it's not always. I mean, I understand the telephoto lens and you look at a lot of camera equipment, but it still requires someone to have the skill. If you want to, I pop it off auto. I know a lot of people like to shoot on auto, but I'm like you. I like to set my exposure aperture, I like to just set it all, just to try to see what I can do. And then also, sometimes you can get some good shots, even experimenting uh, you know you're not following what I call like the standard protocol for, uh, taking a picture so you can get some nice photographs just by changing things up a little bit, even with some blur or some. I like it, man.

Mark Smith: 9:07
I'm not on camera enough that I can intuitively get something that I want to get, because I know the settings to Flickr. I feel I'm always relearning things like aperture and shutter speed and things like that.

Brad Prendergast: 9:28
You have to keep up with it. What do you use to edit for post-processing?

Mark Smith: 9:33
Adobe.

Brad Prendergast: 9:34
Excellent, excellent.

Mark Smith: 9:36
Yeah, so I have. I'm not a graphic artist or anything like that, but I've always pretty much for over 10 years always had a full version of the Adobe suite. So I'm on subscription. I've had subscription since it really became available. So Lightroom you know what you get with Lightroom and stuff.

Brad Prendergast: 9:57
Lightroom classic, you can't beat it. I try. I even set it up on the iPad to do some. It's just not the same. I like it on the computer, you know, not with the web. And then even with Premiere Pro. I have that subscription as well too. I wish I had the opportunity to do more with both of those.

Mark Smith: 10:14
I know this is a bit off topic and stuff, but you know storage of media because you shoot some big files right, and what I'm surprised at, I haven't seen it yet where you know I've always had, you know, in my server cabinet I've got a you know three terabyte disks and my network SAN kind of NAS set up to do that. But I'm like when's somebody going to bring out a network SAN or a NAS that is only solid state, you know. No, as in, I'm just talking about the chips, like my computer now. It doesn't even have an SSD, right. They've just got those M2 chips or whatever they are and it's just all on board storage.

Mark Smith: 11:07
And I haven't come across a really good example where you can, let's say, have five terabyte but with that kind of redundancy array so that if one disk failed you're not going to lose the whole lot. Because I think if I got that back, if I could get something like that that I could throw on the network, I would do a lot more around listing the images for reuse over time. Right, if I have a new need where at the moment that's a lot of hard work, I'd have it all, most of everything I have in cloud storage and raw, but it's not. I don't have a good way to go. I need to get that image that I know I have somewhere, but I don't know where.

Brad Prendergast: 11:50
See, that is a challenge. I don't know too much about the storage. I know I store mine, I have a NAS as well, and then also I keep it on my desktop. I use a Mac. You know a MacBook Pro and a Mac. I back those up and then also I use the storage. Again, like you had mentioned, I'll move the raw files over and I struggle with the same thing Just to be able to go back and catalog and find those images. Yes, within Lightroom you can put in the tags, you can do all this stuff, but that's a lot of work. That's a lot of work.

Mark Smith: 12:17
It all should be AI. I'm surprised, as I talked about the device before, and the Japanese not updating the Sony to be more tech, as in from a modern tech perspective, and I feel the same thing with things like Lightroom, just like in SharePoint. Nowadays we've got auto-tagging of metadata. Why? Because people never get around to doing metadata right and metadata is something that AI should do for us, you know, at scale.

Brad Prendergast: 13:03
I can click a button and it will search online for that type of flower. Or now, with the update, it will categorize by faces, categorize by anything, so I can find anything on my phone. Hopefully Adobe comes around to something like that?

Mark Smith: 13:12
Yeah, they're bound to it. They definitely seem to be adopting a lot of AI, so yeah, oh, definitely for the editing. Yeah, yeah. So let's get on to the topic of being an MVP. How did that come about for you?

Brad Prendergast: 13:26
How did that come about for me? Well, the journey. I mean how it came about. I was pleasantly surprised to receive the nomination and to go through the entire process for it. But again, I've been working within the Business Central community since 1998. And over that time I worked for customers and partners and had the you know, understand what it takes to work through an implementation.

Brad Prendergast: 13:49
Then, several years ago geez, I don't know, life's a big blur I just started wanting to, you know, I don't want to say give back, but work more with the community. It's such a great community, it's a small community even internationally. So I've just started speaking at conferences, also writing how-to articles, blog articles and just going to user conferences and talking with users and working and promoting the application as well as helping others become successful with the application. So not only just talking about the application from a successful implementation point of view, but also working with many to help them start their journey as far as being able to work with the application. So I spend a lot of time doing all of that type of community involvement and that ended up landing me this year the MVP.

Mark Smith: 14:50
That is so cool.

Brad Prendergast: 14:51
And then also at the recent Summit North America conference, I was fortunate enough to share the stage with two others for the 2024 Community Summit All-Star Award as well too. So, yes, and I do it for the fun. I really enjoy giving back to the community, as they say. I mean, I've had an entire career with it, which is why I do it, and I really enjoy the human aspect of it as well, too the people that actually work through the implementation. It's a great application, great technology, but in order for anything to be successful, even in the days of AI, you still need you know the human factor as part of it.

Mark Smith: 15:30
Tell me about your process for speaking at events. You know a lot of people in the community want to get into speaking and if someone asked you, you know what is your process for putting together a presentation that would get expected, you know, accepted. So often there's things you know call for speakers and things like that how, what, what is your workflow for prepping for a one, getting accepted and then actually pulling together what you're going to spend that potentially hour on at a speaking and engagement?

Brad Prendergast: 16:12
well, I think you know the starting to for a call for speakers and the submission. I look at a couple of things. One my recommendation always be think of a topic that you're passionate about, because if you're passionate about something, you're going to have the comfort, the energy and the drive to want to prepare a session if it does get accepted. Typically, when you go for a call for speakers, they would like a brief summary, depending upon the conference, a title, a summary and maybe some learning objectives. So you'd have to come up with that. So think of something that you find interesting, or think of something that oftentimes I find interesting with the application. I find interesting with a particular process. I speak primarily more on the technical and development, but also sometimes on the application side and then even, fortunate enough, with my community development. I talk with many and I can find some themes of topics that others are interested in. But again, it all drives back to something that I'm passionate about.

Brad Prendergast: 17:07
I don't do it just because a lot of people say it. It's, oh, I'm passionate, and that way, what it takes for you to put in the presentation so that you can be comfortable with it and you can have the content, you can have the material. It's not a chore, it actually becomes fun because of that passion. So that's sort of how I come up with it. I'll come up with the topics and lately I'm into the co-presenting. I go through phases. I like co-presenting because I think it also gives an interesting dynamic to the audience, those that are viewing the presentations. They get a different dynamic of different personalities. So sometimes in those cases I try to talk with peers that also like to speak to see if maybe we can join and combine into a session. So there's a number of different ways to get started.

Mark Smith: 17:54
How does the logic of that, the logistics sorry of that work, and what I mean by when you're co-presenting, do you have is it already a mate right that you're doing it with and you have a logical report? Do you practice together pre? How does that kind of riff backwards and forwards in a live session work?

Brad Prendergast: 18:13
I hate to say this word, but a lot of things. It depends. I think it depends on the topic. I think it depends on the individual that you're presenting with. I think the preparation is pretty much the same, in a sense to go back to talk about the workflow and then we'll talk about, we'll jump into the two-person portion of it, because this portion of it to me, when I go through it, it's the same. You come up with your topic. I prefer to.

Brad Prendergast: 18:39
I use mind mapping to map out the presentations. It allows me to easily move topics around or ideas around and give me a visual representation of the points and then I can move it around. And if I'm working with, if I'm working with someone else, if we elect to do it that way, again it's it's when you're dealing with two people you need to come up with it. But the most that I've presented with are pretty receptive to that because they find it's a little bit easier than dealing with a direct PowerPoint or some notes. You can move things around easily and then from there it gives you a map or a process flow for you to go through and then you can fill in the content and map your slides when working with others.

Brad Prendergast: 19:19
Again, sometimes there are challenges with time differences. There's a difference with geographical locations. It depends on the relationship and it depends on the topic. Sometimes you can meet, sometimes you may need more, sometimes you may need to meet less. But then also prior to the conference, you can get a lot of time together and practice. But we typically like to review the slides. You can do a lot of it remotely in this day and age, as you're putting the content together and then just have regular meetings to review the slides and sort of pseudo walkthrough. After you get the map down of the content you'd identify who's speaking which slide and then you just walk through and kind of make sure that it fits and it clicks and then you know you're both up there presenting and you just kind of support each other. You know, because oftentimes when you make presentations there may be something that doesn't go as you had planned or worked well and just with two people. Sometimes you can pick that up and nobody even is the wiser.

Mark Smith: 20:20
Yeah, yeah, I've just done my first co-presenting in Vegas with a colleague never presented with him before and I found it awesome because you can individually have a much better deal of observing the room when you're not the one speaking right now and also, if you've got that good rapport right, you can riff over the top or, if you feel like something just needs a little bit more to land the comms with the folks in the room. It works so well and so, yeah, I agree, I do like that model of co-presenting.

Brad Prendergast: 21:06
You did hit. The key point is it also gives you the opportunity to observe, and that's with everywhere. It's not just speaking. I found, Whether you're doing an interview or whether you're doing any type of engagement, if you're speaking, you really can't listen and you can't really observe. So having that two-person dynamic because somebody may see something as you had mentioned, the co-presenter and they can turn it up a little bit, or they see that there's some questions in the room, they can circle back and get some clarity to it no, it's an experience and I like it, and I like the dynamic of being up presenting, presenting with someone else as well too.

Mark Smith: 21:45
Yeah, so good. Brad, it's been great speaking to you. I know we've got another podcast lined up. We'll go much deeper into some of these areas, but thank you so much for coming on the show.

Brad Prendergast: 21:55
Thank you for having me. It's my pleasure.

Mark Smith: 22:00
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.