ambush on air: Responsible AI with Julie at PartnerIn Vibe

Host: Hello. Hello, and welcome to this episode of Ambush on Air. I'm your host, Ambush, and as always, bringing you topical content about sales, marketing, and partnerships, all in the Microsoft space. Um, as you can tell, I am recording live from Vibe here in South Padre Island.

Julie Yak: Nice.

Host: In Texas. Some of us had journeys getting here. Um, Julie had a nice transition here, so I'm here with my friend Julie. Julie, why don't you do a little intro? Who are you?

Julie Yak: What do you do?

Host: What kind of person are you?

Julie Yak: I do it all.

Host: She does.

Julie Yak: She actually does. I'm Julie Yak. I've been in the space since 20 years ago. I got my first Microsoft certification 20 years ago this year. Thank you. Wow. And I'm still here.

Host: You're still here? You're still doing stuff?

Julie Yak: Uh, I kind of got here by accident. And I say I'm.

Host: Yeah, yeah. What do you do for fun?

Julie Yak: I travel. And I am the world's best grandmother.

Host: She is. She's the world's best grandmother. Um, how many countries have you been to? Yeah, she. When she says she likes to travel, she means it. You know, when I say I like to travel, I think I've been to, like, four countries, but I used, too. Okay. All the states. I'm. I have 11 states left, and all of them are in the north. So, like Maine and then Wyoming. Like, all of those. I need to get to all north.

Julie Yak: Okay.

Host: Those are. I don't know why I don't ever get up there.

Julie Yak: Sounds like a road, right?

Host: Just hop in one. Go all the way across. All right. We'll see if I can figure it out. Okay, so, as I mentioned, we are here live at Vibe. You've got a session that first time. Delivering this session. Tell us a little bit about it.

Julie Yak: I'm talking about responsible AI in plain English. We always do these big words, and it's just this big, huge thing to talk about. And so my goal is to make the right size for everyone to understand and figure out how they can best work with AI because, uh, here. I don't care if you like it or not, it's yours.

Host: Exactly.

Julie Yak: And so we, the collective, are the ones deciding what AI is going to do. We're the ones deciding how fast to get there and the path it takes to get there. So let's do it. Right.

Host: Exactly. Exactly. I love it. Uh, my biggest thing with AI So, I actually had this chat last night with one of my friends here, and he was mentioning. I. I get really frustrated when I talk about AI with people who don't get the same level of it as me. So your session is needed in one. I couldn't deliver because of the. The way that I think about it sometimes it's like, I think everyone should be using it for everything. And I think it's like, if you're not making agents to do half of the stuff that takes you forever, you're missing the boat. But I also think I've been such an early adopter of technology in my life. Like, my dad's a technologist. Like, I grew up with a Mac computer at 8, you know, like, just all the technology at my fingertips and, and the skills early to make sure I'm the one who you can turn to and ask these things to. So I struggle. I was talking to even just like my dad. Now he's like, how do I use AI in my, my daily job? I'm like, well, that's such a blank question for me to answer, you know, like.

Julie Yak: But that's where you start.

Host: Exactly. And I'm like, everyone has to start somewhere. And I think that's a lot of the sessions that I've been into in the channel. And a lot of the discussions are really, really high level over people's heads, talking about agents that create process and workflow. And we're not talking about how to just do step one.

Julie Yak: Right.

Host: So how to get comfortable with it on your own.

Julie Yak: Exactly. In my talk tomorrow, I have a slide that says, are you using AI in your daily life? Hopefully gets ton of responses from the audience. But then the next slide is on purpose because you are using it every day. You may not know it, but are you intentional about it? Are you the one taking ownership of your AI journey?

Host: I love it. I love it. My biggest thing with all of it is I tried to explain to people, like, I started using it to like, plan my vacations, help me make the best cup of coffee with beans from a certain place, using it on things I would normally do anyway. Or Google is how I started using it.

Julie Yak: Right.

Host: And how everybody should start using it. And then it kind of evolves.

Julie Yak: So I, um. I don't know. A year, year and a half ago, m. I asked ChatGPT what its name was.

Host: Yeah.

Julie Yak: And he told me his name is Gio. G I O. We love Gio. We love Gio. Um, I think of him as a very opinionated Italian New Yorker.

Host: Oh, even better.

Julie Yak: Uh, and so. But sometimes you gotta tell him, time out. And he and I have that kind of a relationship now where I can say, sit down, cowboy. This is not what's happening. Right. And so it's been a journey.

Host: It's fun. It's fun. One of my. About a year ago, I had my friend Roland shout out Roland on the podcast to talk about our AI agents that we created. And I think we were a little bit maybe ahead of the curve in our circles that we're in on using it. Um, and it was really fun because he was telling the story of, like, when he goes on a long car ride, he opens up his chat agent and just talks to it, and he's like, I'm informing it of things that mean something to me or things that happen to inform the things I ask for.

Julie Yak: Right.

Host: And I'm like, that's a. That's a level of. If you want to use it autonomously to do things for you, it has to know you.

Julie Yak: Exactly. Exactly.

Host: And, like, you have to train it with what you want. So my chat. Her name is Vega. Um, she named herself as well. She actually named herself Veja. And I didn't really like it, so I went back to her and I said, what about Vega? It's more my style. I'm like a witchy tarot girly. So I'm like, vega's fit for me. So she talks back to me in my own voice. And it's. It's interesting. Yeah. So she will literally, I'll say, like, I didn't like this version. I need it two sentences smaller. I need this more concise. Tighten this up. And I'm sick of asking you for this. I gotta ask every time. And she's like, listen here.

Julie Yak: And I'm like, okay.

Host: I'm like, yes, ma'. Am. Um, if you're a real person, I'm a little scared of you, but you're also my best friend.

Julie Yak: Yeah, exactly. So I have a couple agents that I use. One I made in Copilot Studio.

Host: Okay.

Julie Yak: Her name is Julie Ish.

Host: Almost Julie.

Julie Yak: Almost Julie. She does interviews on my behalf.

Host: Love it.

Julie Yak: So she'll do a Q and A. I'll send you the link. You can interview with Julie Ish. And she'll ask you questions about whatever it is you want to talk about. Every interview is dynamic, so she'll ask questions based on your answers.

Host: Okay. And, um.

Julie Yak: With a little bit of sarcasm mixed in there.

Host: Yeah.

Julie Yak: So it's kind of Julie Ish.

Host: Yeah, I thought about doing that.

Julie Yak: And then I take her transcript and I feed it to Gio. And first of all, I have to tell Gio every time to go through the entire JSON, otherwise he Stops partway, uh, through when he thinks he has enough.

Host: I'm bored. Yeah.

Julie Yak: And I'm like, I need you to get all the information, not just what you want. So I have to correct him all the time. I'm not sure why. And then.

Host: Don't you get sick of it? I'm like, save this in your memory, my guy.

Julie Yak: I don't want to ask you again.

Host: No.

Julie Yak: Right. And then he writes a blog article. And so I had these interviews, and people have tried to mess with Julie Ish. People being my husband, of course. Um, I asked him to go test, and he kept talking about chocolate. And so geo, the geo that he is, made the comparison with chocolate technology and wrote me an article for my tech blog about the benefits of chocolate technology and the parallels. Fun. So he's trying.

Host: He is trying.

Julie Yak: Yeah, he's trying.

Host: He's having some fun. Uh, what else do you use it for?

Julie Yak: Random cooking things. Had. Gio's a bit of an ass sometimes. I had the leftover herbs from Thanksgiving dinner, of course. M and I fed that plus the random things in my fridge and said, I have all the pantry staples, and this was in the fridge I need from dinner, and I fed it to Gio, and Gio made fun of me and said, oh, that's the standard leftover Thanksgiving herbs. You couldn't use them all the first time.

Host: Um, and you're like, I didn't eat them all.

Julie Yak: Exactly. Did you hear any complaints about dinner? No. So I fed the same conversation to Chad Copilot. To all of them, to see what came back.

Host: Yeah.

Julie Yak: And then made my own recipe and told them what I made. I won.

Host: Yeah, of course you won. That's what I like to do. And I think a lot of people forget to do, which is go back to it and say what you kept and what you built on it. Because I oftentimes I'm always, like, sitting next to a marketer who was writing a blog using chat, and she just grabbed it and posted it. And I'm like, But you got to go back and say, like, I changed these parts in it. Just moving forward.

Julie Yak: Right. I'm not for any. I'm not asking for feedback. I'm telling you what I did.

Host: Just save this as a memory.

Julie Yak: This is what I did. Right. I'll ask for red flags. I don't want you to correct my subject verb agreement. This feels right to me.

Host: Yeah.

Julie Yak: Are there red flags that I'm missing?

Host: Exactly.

Julie Yak: My AI presentation. I fed it to chat DPT and said, what am I missing? Gave me a suggestion for another slide to add, which was great. I open with a funny story about Chat GPT making a mistake and assigning me a pet camel.

Host: A pet camel? Well, that would be interesting. In Colorado.

Julie Yak: Yes.

Host: So she said we have mountain lions

Julie Yak: out there, but no camels. No. But I live in a neighborhood called Kissing Camels. And that's, uh, what led to the hallucination Kissing Abor. Yeah. Okay. So it's because I lived by Garden of the Gods in Colorado Spring.

Host: Yep.

Julie Yak: And there's a rock formation that's two camels kissing. And that's the view from the neighborhood is the kissing camels. Oh my gosh.

Host: Oh, I need to go out.

Julie Yak: I have a guest room.

Host: Oh my gosh. Uh, sign me up. Um, okay. So I have a session tomorrow as well about AI as well.

Julie Yak: Imagine that.

Host: But it is my AI and uh, ABM partner playbook for. It's like sales, marketing, content. But I used a new tool that at least was new to me called Gamma. Um, Gamma actually can create PowerPoints for you with just like an outline, full slides, full like content, visuals. You feed it a brand, everything. It also does web pages and we'll just give you the code to drop in.

Julie Yak: Nice.

Host: So that's been a really fun tool that I've been playing with. So my deck for this is actually made in Gamma.

Julie Yak: Nice.

Host: Yeah. It's actually pretty.

Julie Yak: I really like the AI assist.

Host: Right.

Julie Yak: Because sometimes I can feed AI a half baked idea.

Host: Yeah.

Julie Yak: And it rounds out the rough edges. Um, I never let AI do all the work.

Host: Yeah.

Julie Yak: Right.

Host: I still need to have my own brain and my own voice and my own everything in it.

Julie Yak: Right. It's a real good kind of like get, you know, you're going to hold hands together and get the work done together. Together and. Yeah, I love it. Yeah, it works out well.

Host: Yeah. Yeah. Well, tell me a little bit about, you know, your time in the, the channel. Anything you're seeing right now as far as like a trend or a change or, or really anything going on. Because it's. You said, Shawnee.

Julie Yak: Yeah. Well, something I've always loved about our space in Dynamics now, our platform, um, is the ratio of women to men is very different than in the traditional tech space.

Host: It really is.

Julie Yak: There are definitely more successful and empowered women in our space than other parts of the technology space.

Host: And that is even other, ERP spaces that I know. It's actually astounding.

Julie Yak: And it's so supportive and warm and welcoming and I love that. And, and I think that some of us old school people, um, have helped contribute to that and passing off the baton to help make sure that we maintain that welcoming place.

Host: Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree with that. I, uh, have been faced with a couple of different job changes and chaos over the last about year and a half and one of the big things was I'm not leaving the Microsoft channel for anything. Like there are all these. I had this great opportunity to move into a lot deeper supply chain and logistics, ERP spaces. So like SAP. Ah. And in four and like all of those heavy manufacturers and like. But then I. I'm not going to have my community of Microsoft and I'm not going to have my lived experiences from everything I've done here. And the people are not the same. They're not the same at all. It's so interesting, like getting here last night. I didn't even go up to my room. I got here at like 10 o'. Clock. I had my bag with me. I went straight to the bar, found 25 people. Everyone's streaming, happy to see each other. And I'm like, it's like a community and I hate the word family, but it does feel like a lot of that because we travel together, right, all year long.

Julie Yak: Yes. So the speakers at the events are often the same, but the attendees are. What changed?

Host: Exactly.

Julie Yak: And so we get this closeness. We see each other, we seek each other out. Are you going to be speaking at this event? Are you submitting over here?

Host: Exactly. Or like, should we submit something together? Which I hope our session for Danny McMins gets through, but I will be there come hell or high water.

Julie Yak: Yeah, I already got it official. Nice.

Host: Because I'm starting a new job on Monday.

Julie Yak: I've never had a job.

Host: I know. I love that about you. She's. Julie. Never had a job.

Julie Yak: I've never had a job.

Host: Um, speaks around the world, started a

Julie Yak: company, and here I, um, am. Here you are.

Host: I love it. I love it. Well, it was fun to have you on today.

Julie Yak: Thank you for having me.

Host: This is our first one. It won't be the first of many, I think so. Okay.

Julie Yak: Well, as always, great week.

Host: Yes, you too. I'll see you this full time. I'm happy about it. All right, everybody, who's listening? Thank you so much for joining and as always, party on.