Areti Iles

Here is a question: Do you work with Dynamics 365/Power Platform or anything else in the Microsoft stack? If yes, are you part of your local user group? If not, gasp! I strongly encourage you to join your nearest local one. Here’s the top 3 reasons why…

1. Keep your knowledge up to date: User groups are free to attendees and have great speakers that cover topics allowing you to stay up to date with updates or product areas you don’t get to work with often. Find out what you don’t know and learn about it all in one go.
2. Find a friend: It is good to talk to people that don’t work with you and that have the same/similar role in another company. There are so many people that can relate to your work pain and may have some helpful tips/advice.
3. It’s fun: there are real people in the flesh, there is free food and welcoming user group leaders you can talk to about anything and everyone is from the local area more or less. The meetings themselves don’t take too much of your time (couple of hours every quarter or so), they are informal so you can actually relax and you can chat to people that work in the same industry with similar products. It’s fun to get your geek on!

Recently there has been a hashtag that emerged in user group or MVP related posts: #CommunityRocks – although this is a bit twee for my liking, it is true – it is a community and it does rock. Be part of it – everyone has a lot to contribute and can help others in the same journey a few steps behind them. You can be a speaker at user group events or start one if there isn’t a local one near you. Regardless of what you do or want to do, here is the thing – everyone will try to help you, they will all really want to say yes. All you have to do is ask.

How do I get started?

• Find a local user group

• Find out more about the UK Dynamics 365 & Power Platform User Groups

Are you in a user group?

Funny you should ask! Yes – there wasn’t a local one near me so I did the right thing and set one up with the help of the team that looks after all UK user groups (see second link above), who have been awesome! I look after the D365/Power Platform user group in Reading with two other amazing people (Fraser Dear and Tim Leung), so if you are local and fancy joining check out our upcoming events here!