Power Apps in Fukuoka
I am an absolute Power Apps beginner, and on a recent trip to Japan had the opportunity to join a workshop with a local user group.
I was so fortunate that our local MVP Community Coordinator Shiva Ford and Japan Community Program Manager Rie Moriguchi could connect me with a user group in Fukuoka. Rie put me in touch with Azure MVP Noriko Matsumoto who would be attending the session organised by Ryota Nakamura.
I quickly signed up for the session, and then began panicking about how awful my Japanese is.
The venue was a beautiful co-working space designed for engineers and aptly named the Engineer Cafe.
It turned out to be much more of a test of my beginner Japanese skills than my beginner Power App skills. Rather than attempt my first App in a foreign language I shadowed Noriko, watching her work through the instructions to make a PC ordering applications. Hopefully I made up for things with a supply of Australian lollies and Tim Tams.
Aside from the opportunity to watch the process of building an app, Noriko showed me a very cool app which she had already built. While I watched in real time the application:
- Took a photo on her phone
- Added it to a cloud drive
- Watch it get picked up in Photoshop
- Photoshop auto edits it to greyscale
- Then it gets Tweeted
Don’t know about you, but I thought that was すごい!
This tweet is the end result:
I was also able to spend some time speaking with Ryoto the event organiser. Ryoto works at S’entreseau, a company in Fukuoka in who specialise in solutions using Power Apps. A couple of the applications which they have produced include a facial recognition system and a room booking system. We also spoke about the active community in Fukuoka and a few other topics. Ryota was very patient with my Japanese language basics.
Soon the live session kicked off which was run online, coordinated with other presenters. This was my queue to leave, as there was no possible way beginner level Japanese and a translation app would get me through this one.
亮太さんと典子さん、どうもありがとうございました。
Thank you so much to Ryota and Noriko for being so generous and patient with their time.
I had so much fun visiting this user group. I am encouraged to dedicate more time to my Japanese studies, and also to understanding Power Apps.
Bonus: Check out the cool stickers! They will be getting prime positions on my laptop and suitcase.
