>> Hello, everyone.
We are back for 2021,
and we have got the best episode ever.
I know that we always say that,
but we have the best guests.
Joining us in this episode is
Paul Burns and he's going to be showing you how you
can take control of a terrible situation using technology,
specifically the Power Platform. Stay tuned.
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>> Hello, and welcome back to Less Code, More Power.
I'm Dona Sarkar and my lovely co-host is.
>> Sarah Critchley.
>> We are here today in the brand new year with
a very special guest who we were so
inspired by when we heard his story on Twitter.
We'd love for everyone to meet Paul Burns.
Hi, Paul. Thank you for joining us today.
>> Hi, Dona. Hi, Sarah.
>> Paul, where are you located right now?
>> Approximately 12 miles from Glasgow in Scotland.
I live in a place called Bellshill.
>> I see. So there's
a major Power Platform Conference
in Scotland called Scottish Summit.
>> Yes.
>> I was so excited
to have the opportunity to actually attend this year,
but thanks pandemic, we don't get to do it in person.
But I'm so hopeful that next year we can show up
at Scottish Summit in person and maybe shoot these in real life.
That would be amazing.
>> Yes, I say that for most of the events.
>> Yes. That's cool.
There's a ton of sessions.
There's like 100 sessions.
It's going to be a fantastic event.
You told us a very interesting story about how you have been
helping stroke survivors with
your tech skills in the Power Platform.
Do you want to tell us a little about that?
>> Well, in June the 13th 2017,
I suffered two strokes.
It started at half-past 4 in the morning.
I was working in Aberdeen at the time,
and thankfully I realized what was going on so I
get rushed to the hospital and I
get a treatment called thrombolization,
where they basically pump your body [inaudible]
and hopefully save your life.
Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't,
but I am thankful I am here to live another day.
I was left paralyzed on the right-hand side,
I lost all use of my arms and legs.
I had to work really quite hard to get most of it back.
I've got over 95 percent of the moving back,
but the hand-writing part of it has always been a bit difficult.
So I started using Office 365 back
then and I really liked everything about Office 365.
It was good for my clients. I'm a consultant.
I do quality health safety environment consultancy.
So there were parts that I'd get help with my clients,
make things more efficient for them,
and then I started exploring
the Power Apps and I started watching videos in
YouTube and I was watching [inaudible] April and Rory Neary.
Rory put a wonderful gesture in October of last year to say,
"I'm running a course and we can do it for free."
Now I'm a Scotts man, I'll do that.
If it's not going to cost me any money, I'll do that.
I started on the Rory Neary's Zero to Hero apps course,
and it was great, it was really well
structured, it's a terrific course.
As I was going along, I started looking at things and saying, "Oh,
I wonder if I can do this and I can do that," and then I thought,
I can practice my handwriting on the tool.
>> That's awesome.
>> The thing about being a stroke survivor is,
you learn very quick.
To improve yourself, you need to repeat actions a lot.
So if I could get a writing app,
if we can practice out right now and then energy,
it's just developed from there.
My son, Craig, was watching me and then he says,
"I've never seen you so enthusiastic over
something over the years."
It's been great, and it
just seems to capture people's imaginations.
It's just absolutely fantastic.
Listen, I have never done anything with
Power Apps before last year.
For me, it was very simple.
There's not many commands at all,
and that was purposely because I don't
know how to write all these formulas and things.
I've said before to other people,
the people at Microsoft have developed us
and created of us have made it so easy for people like me.
To create something out of us, it's fantastic.
It really is. Sorry, I'm awfully long.
>> No, this is amazing.
>> No, this is an amazing story.
>> Thank you.
>> So good.
>> What's so inspirational is that you decided to take control of
the situation and you
got yourself out of your comfort zone and said,
"Now one half of my body is
paralyzed," and you diagnosed the problem,
which is you need to repeat writing to learn it,
and you're going to use something you know,
technology, to actually do that.
You are able to solve the problem not
just for you but for so many other stroke survivors.
>> Yeah, since 2017 my [inaudible] ,
my passion is I do Canadian martial arts Taekwondo,
and my son is actually
doing a Zoom class at the moment downstairs.
So one of the things we learn through the martial arts is,
you continually repeat movements,
you try to perfect and you'll never get perfection,
but you keep trying and keep trying and keep trying.
Actually, after the stroke,
as I was going through my rehab,
I felt there were certain ways in
Taekwondo that I could use to practice movement.
I couldn't what's called [inaudible].
With martial arts,
if you're doing a punch,
you thrust your wrist.
>> Yeah.
>> I've turned that round and
take it back and I'd do that every day.
Eventually, whenever it started going back in the hand it was
remembering those moves from prior to the stroke.
Then I would practice my legwork doing kicking and things.
I was going to the rehab at
the local hospital and they were really amazed
with the progress I made over the very short space of time.
So I then got involved in,
sorry I'm waffling on again.
>> This is a fascinating story.
>> I then get involved with a stroke support group
and I help out with other things.
It's been a hectic past year
with COVID and I haven't been able to help out quite as much.
Yeah, it's just I'd seen this,
and I developed the app.
Hopefully, other people will be able to use it.
If only one person uses it to practice
and even if kids just used it for practicing,
doing what else, it's a great thing.
>> You've taken such a terrible thing to
happen to you and like what Dona said,
you've taken control over it,
but also actually used technology to help yourself and others,
which is just amazing.
So yeah, that's so good and I'm so keen to see it.
Could you show us this application?
>> Yes, certainly. Give me a second or two I get this opened up.
This is just the front screen,
but I'll take you to the letter index and
the shape of home screen.
These are just navigation buttons really.
I'll take you to each of the letters.
I had to think of, you don't
want a lot of bright colors and things like that,
particularly with people with injuries to the brain.
You don't want flashing images either so I had to
keep it really simple, the letters.
You can see that they're flowing.
They are not rigid like a Times Roman type thing.
It's because with my hands
it's quite difficult to control the pen in curves.
That's why I particularly chose this type of
font to make it slightly more difficult for myself.
But it'll help me in the long term,
it'll help other people I suppose as well.
We want to go back here.
>> That's a really good consideration.
Because some people may
just pick fonts just because they look nice,
whereas this is actually an actual functional reason
why you've picked that.
>> Yeah.
>> Right.
>> Then we go into the shape screen.
I just picked various shapes.
Let's go here. There's some pen and screen. Then you can just.
>> Oh, that's interesting. Brilliant.
>> Oh, I like that.
>> Yeah, I'm just using my free hand and not a pen, sorry.
>> No, no, no. But we get the point.
Like you would then use the pen on your iPad to
then trace round the tracing.
>> Yeah. I thought I'd make
the shapes smaller as well so that it increases the difficulty.
>> Yeah.
>> From the point of view of the user,
it's not as easy to draw
those straight lines the smaller it gets, that type of thing.
Then like I said before,
that the actual app itself
is very simple in terms
of you're just navigating from one screen to the next.
Looks like there are four screens there with,
not four but thirty screens with
26 letters and then six or seven shape screens.
I had to keep it as simple as
possible because I'm not a developer.
I don't know how to do formulas and things.
I'm trying to learn them at the moment,
but it's difficult for an old brain to take all this in.
>> Paul, this is a lot, honestly. This is so good.
I'm pretty sure Dona and I are
holding back quite a lot because we have so many questions.
But this can make such a difference.
Given what you've shown us today,
could you tell like, what do you want people,
like our audience, to do?
What's the homework for today's episode?
>> I think most people
know somebody that's been affected by
an illness within the family.
So maybe looking at apps that may help them.
I've been thinking about an app for,
I can never pronounce this word,
but a lot of stroke survivors have problems speaking.
I've been thinking about an app
where you can record yourself talking into.
You can play it back and you can continue practicing.
But I don't know how to do that.
>> That's your V2 version.
>> Yeah, exactly. I love this Paul.
This is so powerful.
I like how there's that gradient of,
it starts off more easier with the big triangle,
then you need more motor skills to get to the smaller triangle.
I think that's really cool because it helps
people realize they're making progress.
>> Yes.
>> So they're able to make progress itself within the app,
so that is wonderful. I love it.
>> Brilliant.
>> All right. Thank you so much for being here with us.
Your app is wonderful.
We can't wait to air this episode,
and we're going to definitely add links to all
of the things that you recommend we look at.
Thank you for doing this work.
Thank you for taking control of
this horrible thing that happened to you,
and thank you for being such a role model to,
not just other stroke survivors,
but to our entire community.
>> I have to thank you because
I'm still in shock that you invited me along,
so blessings to you both. Thank you very much.
>> This is the easy thing.
>> It is our pleasure.
>> The Power Platform community I thought was fantastic.
I mean, I'm just an old guy who
just had a moment and was playing about with it.
But the people are just so helpful, a fantastic community.
>> Yeah. They really are.
Well, thank you so much for your time today, Paul.
>> Thank you.
>> Yeah, hopefully, for those of you watching,
this has been such an inspiring story
and you've got your homework.
So have a think about those people
that are close to you that maybe have been impacted by something.
How can you use the Power Platform to help them?
Because it's a lot about the mindset piece.
It's a lot about taking control, as Dona said,
of your situation, and actually doing
something that will help you and others.
So really then, stay
tuned for some more episodes and in the meantime, less code,
>> More Power.
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