Switched On: A Bowdark Podcast

James and I went down to sunny (sweaty) Orlando for Microsoft Power Platform Conference (MPPC) 2022. Apart from getting to see a great set of announcements, learn a ton, and meet up with past pod-friends we also got the chance to sit down and have a conversation with Charles Lamanna  — hot on the heels of his keynote address .  Join us for this Very Special Episode of Switched On, our chance to sh...

This is the last guest episode for our season question: “Why Can’t IT Keep Up With The Business?” Luke Komiskey is the founder of DataDrive , a managed analytics provider, with a cool approach to things. Seriously, go check out the website and scroll down to the On Your Own vs Growth Plan comparison. You’ll see what I think is true out there in the world — companies going it alone in [any!] tech s...

We ask ourselves a question that underpins a lot of what we do: is it realistic to expect enterprise software to move to a vanilla, SaaS-ish place that minimizes or even completely eliminates customization?

Podcast Episode! MAUI Hotness with James Montemagno James and I talked to James Montemagno to take a deep look at tech that will absolutely have an impact on our business app customers. Montemagno leads the developer community team, part of the developer tools division that builds all manner of the tools that many of us nerds use on the daily. I’m deeply appreciative to get this kind of tech insig...

Paul and James scratch their heads and ponder the ontology of ERP. James stays brilliant, Paul tortures a Ship of Theseus metaphor.

Podcast Episode! A Game Of Prioritization with Wade Krzmarzick James and I talked to Wade Krzmarzick , Director of IT at TSI, Incorporated. TSI builds scientific measurement equipment (among other things). He gave us insight into budget and time questions, strategic direction he thinks about, and what makes him most proud of his team. It was a great conversation. Highlights Director of IT at TSI,...

Paul and James extract their own theme from presenting and viewing sessions at SAPinsider 2022 in Las Vegas last week. Their chosen theme? Clean core.

Paul and James bang their heads against the idea of "digital transformation" and what it means - BS, reality, everything else.

James and I talked to Michael Pytel , co-founder and CTO of Fulfilld , a cloud SaaS warehouse management startup. As a fellow SAP nerd, we have shared background for commiseration. Michael has done some amazing things with the technology powering Fulfilld, and he and the rest of his team have given a lot of thought to matching that technology up to business needs for several warehouse worker perso...

James and Paul discuss some of the worst and best qualities of the techical writing they consume, and where technical writing fits in the universe today. We left with more questions than answers!

James and I talked to Matt Ericson, founder of Trekka Logistics . Matt holds court with great wisdom and energy for his industry and business. He talks about growth, complexity, transparency, and evolving systems to keep things smooth. This is absolutely one of those episodes where — if we didn’t try to keep things down to a sane length — we could have talked for hours. I had a blast, so please gi...

Paul and James tackle thoughts on RISE with SAP and the SI-created complementary services that IBM, Accenture, Infosys, and others have created. It all kinda wraps up under the banner of "digital transformation as a service" - but this isn't always clear.

James and I interviewed each other to tee up our third season. Our theory: IT can’t keep up with the business. Our question: why? Lots of things floating around. Ideas. Half-formed questions. Ponderings from earlier in our respective careers.  What will we discover? Who will we talk with along the way? FIND OUT MORE this season on Switched On! The guests are: us! We interviewed ourselves! We found...

James and Paul have a quick discussion about the low-code space with respect to some new stuff out there in the universe from Microsoft, as spurred on by https://venturebeat.com/2022/05/26/how-microsoft-plans-to-improve-the-low-code-landscape/

Podcast Episode! Sapphire Orlando Reactions From Bowdorks     Money Quotes Tim Champagne Is this just another fragmentation of apps out there? [re: iOS app announcements] Kyle Bitson If you look at what’s happening in the world…supply chain issues…they’re more relevant than they have been in a long time.  It’s striking a balance between the technical upgrade and unlocking the new features and show...

Podcast Episode! Season Finale! SOMEONE DIES   James and I get together to expertly wrap all the amazing guests, topics, and information we digested over the course of season two. Stay tuned! Someone dies! This season we had the extreme privilege to talk to these awesome folks. Go back and give these episodes a listen. Em D’Arcy regaled us with tales of governance Shane Young democratized our thou...

James and I talked to Holger Bruchelt , host of the awesome SAP on Azure podcast (also watch on YouTube ) and all around swell guy. Holger put us on the right path with thoughts about platforms and infrastructure, integration and Power Platform, and being a futuristic nerd with GitHub Copilot (a perennial favorite topic of ours). He’s just as fun to talk to when the recorders have stopped, so we h...

James and I talked to Matthias Steiner for the fourth episode in our second season. He took to the SAP Community blogs to defend low-code/no-code (and later reiterated at diginomica), and we took notice. We’d been fans previously because of his influence on the various cloud platform gyrations at SAP, and of course because he’s a willing Twitter prognosticator. We dove in on low/no-code and other...

Podcast Episode! S2E3: Shane Young James and I talked to Shane Young for the third episode in our second season: “Power Platform Democratization”. Shane is the founder of PowerApps911, helping clients with Power Platform training and custom app builds in the Microsoft universe. He’s a fun guy to talk to, and he’s one of the most informative people you’ll ever follow on Twitter or YouTube.  Highlig...

Podcast Episode! S2 E2: Em D’Arcy James and I talked to Em D’Arcy for the second episode in our second season: “Meeting Demand Through Governance”. This was a refreshing talk for me — I have issues to work through with the word “governance”, and Em is helping me walk the walk and do the work to get there. It’s great material along the course of our second season theme of “Simplifying the Multi-Ven...

Podcast Episode! New Season: “Simplifying the Multi-Vendor Mess” We have a thesis: the enterprise tech world continues to move to best-of-breed; and while new solutions abound, organizations continue to feel the pain of improving their overall business processes while simultaneously keeping their disparate systems in harmony. The “multi-vendor mess”. This episode is an introduction and the first o...

Podcast Episode! Microsoft Ignite with Lori Beck James and I spoke with our highly-esteemed colleague Lori Beck about the recent Microsoft Ignite virtual conference. Lori leads our Microsoft consulting practice, and has great depth of knowledge and insight into Microsoft Dynamics. We had a great time talking about Logic Apps, Power Apps, Teams, and OpenAI GPT-3 (find below the poem that the AI wro...

Podcast Episode! Builders and the Developer Spectrum with Riley Rainey James and I spoke with the super-interesting Riley Rainey . Before you get to any of the regular industry-specific goodness we talk about, check out his GitHub repositories focused around replicating the Apollo Guidance Computer. I was tempted not to talk about anything in the SAP or development world and just blast on about ne...

James and I spoke with the amazing Greg Robinette . Greg works at Newport News Shipbuilding as a systems architect. He’s got great perspective on watching ships being built and then marrying that knowledge to the SAP systems he’s architecting. We had a blast talking about organizational culture, decision-making, and value lifespans…all through the lens of the cloud. Highlights Got into tech at Uni...

James and I really dove deep into the recesses of Paul Aschmann ’s brain for this one. Paul is a mobility development expert at SAP, originally from South Africa and now living in North Carolina. In the past, Paul started Lithium Labs , which built Metric² . Became part of the SAP Startup Focus program (now @SAP_iO ), then joined the enterprise mobility team at SAP. His resume is RIDICULOUS. Highl...