Raw Data By P3 Adaptive

Ashvini Sharma is one terrific human being and he knows a LOT about Robotic Process Automation (RPA).  As the Group Program Manager of Power Automate RPA at Microsoft, there is no better source of information about automation than from Ash! If you want real-world examples of what Power Automate can do, this is the episode you need to listen to. Power Automate Desktop Download and Blog Episode Timeline: 2:05 - How could anyone live without air conditioning?!, Maintaining the work/life balance is difficult 11:20 - Ash goes to the Excel Team and faces the challenges of his new role head-on, The Magic and Soul of Excel 21:05 - Ash's next pivot is RPA (Robotic Process Automation), the benefits of RPA, and some brilliant (and 1 possibly illegal) examples of RPA 34:05 - A Power Automate history lesson and some explanation on what it is and what it can do 47:30 - A little insight on how RPA was built and the cost of keeping company secrets 55:40 - A new segment called N Questions-Rob asks some burning questions, rapid-fire style..and some very interesting answers come out of it! 1:07:20 - Ash explains a "Hello World" scenario that will help many of you listening regarding automation of Export to Excel so that Power BI can pick up the refresh 1:13:20 - What's next for Power Automate?

We've not exactly been consistent with our episode releases as of late, and Rob sheds some light as to why.  Rollercoaster doesn't even begin to describe the ride we've been on lately... Thank you for listening and supporting Raw Data by P3 Adaptive!  We will be releasing new episodes with some really great guests starting July 2oth!

Shishir is as ahead of the technology curve as it gets, some of his ideas have revolutionized the way that tech giants like Microsoft, Google, and YouTube operate.  Now, he's innovating again as the founder and CEO of Coda-an amazing integrated system that centers around creating Docs that are as powerful and actionable as Apps. He's also one of the most down to Earth human beings we've ever had the pleasure of sitting down with! References in this episode: Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer SNL Skit Steven Sinofsky's book-Hardcore Software: Inside the Rise and Fall of the PC Revolution Coda Doc-No Code, Just a Coda Doc: How Squared Away Saves a Thousand Hours and $100K a Year Coda Doc-Rituals for Hypergrowth: An Inside Look at How Youtube Scaled   Episode Timeline: 2:20 - Shishir's data path intersects with Rob's and the stories abound, Shishir passes on working for Google before it was Google 15:25 - Shishir has a random idea about advertising that eventually forms into some common advertising practices, Google woos Shishir back, and he ends up running YouTube! 27:25 - The value of a Computer Science degree is....debatable, an interesting definition and example of AI, and Nouns VS Verbs in naming products and features 41:00 - How Coda was formed and the amazing innovation that Coda is-it makes a doc as powerful as an app, and the importance of integration Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello, friends. Today's guest is Shishir Mehrotra, and let me tell you, Shishir is a ringer of a guest. We met back at Microsoft in the 2000s where he was already entrusted with some pretty amazing responsibilities and was doing very, very well in those roles. About the same time that I left Microsoft to start P3, Shishir left Microsoft to go ... Oh, that's right ... Run YouTube. And he was at the helm of YouTube during what he calls the hyper-growth years where YouTube really exploded and became the thing that we know it is today. During this conversation, I discovered that it certainly sounds like he invented something about YouTube that we absolutely take for granted today and has been seen by billions, used probably billions of times per day. That wasn't enough for him, so he left YouTube after a number of years and started a new company called Coda. Rob Collie (00:00:55): And Coda is an incredibly ambitious product. You could say that in some sense, it's aimed at being a Microsoft Office replacement, but even that isn't quite right. It's in a little bit different niche than that. And, of course, we explored that in our conversation. We talk about his billion dollar mistake, quite possibly, literally, billion dollar mistake, not many people can make those. I was thrilled to discover that he and I have basically exactly the same philosophy about nouns and verbs in software. We talk about the antiquated notion that a computer science degree is somehow super important in product management roles, even at software companies. And just, in general, I couldn't get enough of it. He was super gracious to give us his time for this show, and I hope you enjoy it as much as we did. So, let's get into it. Announcer (00:01:42): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please. Announcer (00:01:48): This is the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast with your host Rob Collie and your cohost Thomas Larock. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:02:11): Welcome to the show. Shishir Mehrotra, how are you today? Shishir Mehrotra (00:02:15): Oh, I'm great. Rob Collie (00:02:16): Are you coming to us from Silicon Valley? Shishir Mehrotra (00:02:17): I am. Well, south of California. Been in my house and in this spot for about the last year. Rob Collie (00:02:23): When did we meet? Shishir Mehrotra (00:02:24): You were working on Excel and I think at the time I was working on WinFS, the early days of Microsoft. Rob Collie (00:02:31): Oh, WinFS. Just completely unexpected sidelight. It was like 1998 or maybe 1999, we're in a review with Jim [Allchin 00:02:42] and all of his lieutenants. And the whole point of this meeting is to assassinate the technology I was working on. This was an arranged hit on MSI ... Shishir Mehrotra (00:02:54): [crosstalk 00:02:54]. On MSI. Rob Collie (00:02:55): ... On the Windows Installer, right? Shishir Mehrotra (00:02:56): Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:02:57): And there are factions in this room that have had their knives, they've been sharpening them and they've arranged this moment so they can kill us. And, at one point, one of the complaints about us was our heavy use of the registry. Just poisoning the registry. Do you remember a guy named Rob [Short 00:03:15]? Shishir Mehrotra (00:03:15): Yeah, of course. Rob Collie (00:03:16): I really liked Rob Short. I thought he was awesome. He was a tough guy, but also really fair and funny and friendly at the same time. And he's been sitting in this meeting for hours because he has to, and he's just totally tuned out. Of course he would be, right? It's not about him. And then, this mention of the registry as an attack on us comes up and Jim Allchin immediately whirls around to Rob and goes, "Now you see, this is what I'm talking about. Our storage system is such a piece of shit." And he starts ripping it to Rob and Rob's having to wake up from his trance. It's like suddenly the guns can swing so fast in those meetings. Shishir Mehrotra (00:03:55): I mean, that was a use case that Bill and Jim and so on all tried to push on WinFS, but it was one we actively resisted. It's a hard one. Rob Collie (00:04:02): It is. The worst thing in the world is to have state stored in multiple places that have to go together with each other. Right? That just turns out to be one of the hardest problems. Shishir Mehrotra (00:04:11): It's such a critical element of the operating system. And you end up with all sorts of other issues of what can run on what and ... Rob Collie (00:04:17): And it's funny. The registry was basically my introduction to the entire Win32 platform. When I was running the installer, that's all I knew about. I knew about the type library registrations and the registry. I knew it in class IDs. And I could follow those things. I could follow that rabbit's trail from one place to another without ever really understanding what a class ID was. Right? It was just the registration of an object, right? Shishir Mehrotra (00:04:40): Right. Rob Collie (00:04:40): I didn't learn that until years later. So funny. But then we crossed paths again. Right? Shishir Mehrotra (00:04:45): SQL. Rob Collie (00:04:46): I remember how it happened. Ariel [Nets 00:04:49] came into my office and said, "Hey, there's someone important who's going to need some information from you." And I go, "Okay." And he said something like, "He's a real rising star here, so make sure you give him everything he needs." And I'm like, "Okay." Shishir Mehrotra (00:05:05): I don't think I know this half of the story. Okay. Rob Collie (00:05:09): And I think you were somehow involved with the potential acquisition that was going on at the time. Is that true? Shishir Mehrotra (00:05:14): You talking about in-memory BI? Rob Collie (00:05:16): Yeah. Shishir Mehrotra (00:05:16): Yeah. I was at the time ... Maybe for your listeners. So, my history, after WinFS folded and collapsed, and you can talk about that if you'd like, I ended up being unexpectedly merged into the SQL Server division. I ended up running what Microsoft called the program management team or SQL Server. And it was super interesting for me because I was never really a database guy. Everything I had worked on to that point was fairly end user-centered, infrastructure in the background. And I was surrounded by these people that really love databases. Actually, as a side note, I fell in love with databases because of Paul Flessner. Paul was on his way out. He was retiring that year and he had one last ... At the time we used to call them strategy days so that Bill and Steve and so on would post this annual review. Shishir Mehrotra (00:06:01): And Paul Flessner, he decided this was going to be his last hurrah strategy, "I'm going to tell these people exactly what I think." He's in the middle of preparing for this and WinFS is folding up and he says, "While you're figuring out what you're going to do next, why don't you come help me write the strategy days presentation?" And he was really drawn to the idea of someone that actually wasn't in his organization doing it because I could speak my mind about whatever and I had no bias walking into it. And probably from his perspective, I would write whatever the hell he wanted and make it sound good. This guy, he's a database legend. He drove the Sybase acquisition that turned into SQL Server. And so, he had a list of ideas for how to think about the database market that many of which were pretty ascetical. Shishir Mehrotra (00:06:44): And he spoke in very plain language when he's ... Actually, interestingly, he's retired. [inaudible 00:06:48] his woodworking. That's his thing. He builds chairs and tables are amazing. You can go buy them. As opposed to many techie database guys, he speaks in very plain language. Rob Collie (00:06:55): I love that. Shishir Mehrotra (00:06:56): And you just walk through like, "Here's how to think about the different workloads and here's what's happening in the industry and here's what's happening in data warehousing." Which wasn't really a term at the time and data warehousing was just emerging. And then, at the end of that process, we had a pretty successful strategy days and he said, "Why don't you run the PM team and help my new guy?" Ted Kummert came in to go and run SQL Server after Paul. And that's how I ended up in that spot. And as part of that, I ended up covering a lot of ... One of Paul's last statement was, "Data warehousing is not the same thing. Go do something different." And that's where people like Ariel and Amir and so on, that whole division, Tom ... And there was a bunch of people running that at that time ... Came into play. Shishir Mehrotra (00:07:34): And then they had this idea that ... There's a lot of different things to know about SQL Server. SQL Server is not actually well-built for data warehouse and so most databases are not. And at the time, the raining wisdom was you needed a completely different architecture for business intelligence, which I guess we called OLAP back then. I don't know if that term is still used. Rob Collie (00:07:54): Yeah. Oh, we still do. We just hide it. It's a dirty word. Shishir Mehrotra (00:07:57): Yeah. For the geeky folks out there, and the key difference being that instead of storing things row by row, you store things column by column and you also precalculate aggregate. So, you have some sense of what, I guess, nowadays called the cube. These things are likely to be great for, "We're going to precalculate the sum of orders for customers by region or whatever it might be." And then, Ariel and his brother Amir had this idea and they said, "Hey, we've got this strategic advantage at Microsoft, which is we own the front end and the backend of this architecture. On the backend, we need to be able to scale better and we need to move to column storage and do all this fancy stuff with cubes. But if you ask anybody where all of their analysis actually gets done, what do they say? Shishir Mehrotra (00:08:38): There's 1,000 reporting tools out there but everybody lives in Excel. And so, they said, "What if we were to find a creative way to pull these together? And I think at the time you were running this part of the Excel platform. And so, I was sent in to go figure out how to make this pitch. I mean, these guys really wanted to do an acquisition space and so on. And I was sent in to try to make the pitch. And, actually, the insight there was interesting. Amir came up with this chart, which I'm not really sure where it came from but he basically went and looked at the size of cubes of OLAP instances across a wide set of customers, including all of Microsoft. He pulled all of these different ones and he figured out that the biggest cube at Microsoft was this thing called MS Sales. Shishir Mehrotra (00:09:20): It was all the customer data from Microsoft if you remember well. And he said, "If you compress this down with column storage, I'm going to get the numbers wrong." But it fit inside tens of megabytes of storage, which was previously much, much larger if you did as row storage. And he said, "This is so small that it can fit in memory on a client, which was unheard of. Usually, the whole idea behind these systems was you have to query a server. The server is really big. At that time, a lot of systems go up and scaled out. There's often very big hardware back there as well. And he said, "Hey, I bet we could move to a model where the primary way that people do this analysis actually happens in that place where they actually want to do their work in Excel. So, I think that's where the other half of that conversation from my side was coming from. Rob Collie (00:10:06): Yeah. So, like you said, with Paul Flessner bringing you into right part of the strategy days stuff, Amir was, at that point in time, still using me in the same way. I had come over from the Excel world and so he was trotting me out every time he wanted someone to talk about Excel in a way that he couldn't be criticized. I was just almost the unfrozen caveman lawyer from Saturday Night Live, this Forrest Gump figure, "Listen, I don't know much, but I do know Excel and I know the people." You know? Shishir Mehrotra (00:10:32): Yeah. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:10:33): Usually, because on the SQL side of the house, you couldn't argue with me about Excel. If I go back to the Excel world, they'd all argue with me but on the sequel side, I was unquestioned. So, Ariel was right, he said, "This guy is a mover and shaker. He's going places." And then, an eye blink later, you're at YouTube. When did you end up at YouTube? Shishir Mehrotra (00:10:53): So, there's a personal story arc that goes along with this. I started a company out of school called [Sintrata 00:10:58]. It was an early version of what became AWS, Azure, so on, to utility computing. There's a whole generation company that started back in that '99, 2000 period. All of us were seven to 10 years too early. There was no virtualization, no containers and none of the underlying technology that actually made the cloud take off existed yet. As that was wrapping up is how I got to Microsoft but in that period, Sintrata was funded by this famous venture firm called Kleiner Perkins. Shishir Mehrotra (00:11:23): My primary investor was a [inaudible 00:11:24]. [inaudible 00:11:25] as Sintrata was wrapping up, he had suggested, "Why don't you go join another client or company?" And I said, "Which one?" And he said, "Well, you can look at all of them but the one that's really hot right now is these two Stanford guys are creating this new search engines called Google. Might want to check it out." And so this is back in 2002. And so, went over and spent some time with Larry and Sergey. And at the time, they hadn't hired a single outside product manager. And so, they wanted me to come in and start the product management team there. And, interestingly, I turned them down. My wife likes to call my billion dollar mistake. And instead I got drawn to Microsoft. Shishir Mehrotra (00:12:01): As I got drawn to Microsoft, it's related to this story because I had an old boss of mine, I was an intern at Microsoft when I was in college, and he was starting this new thing called Gideon that was in the Office team actually. And the project would turn Office into a front end for business applications. So, it's had a lot of relevance to what ended up happening in that space. Rob Collie (00:12:18): Who was running Gideon? Who was that? Shishir Mehrotra (00:12:20): Satya was our skip-level boss and this was much, much earlier in his career. And the guy actually running the project was a guy named John [Lacada 00:12:27]. I think he's gone now. I don't know where he is. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:12:29): I worked with John quite a bit over the years [crosstalk 00:12:32]. And this is how you know Danny Simmons. Right? Shishir Mehrotra (00:12:34): That's right. Danny was part of that team. Rob Collie (00:12:36): Oh my gosh! Yeah. Shishir Mehrotra (00:12:36): Yeah. Danny was on that team. I ended up working with Danny multiple times. Mike Hewitt was the one who was my intern manager who pulled me over to the project. Actually, as a fun version of fate or whatever, Mike now works at Coda. [crosstalk 00:12:48]- Rob Collie (00:12:48): Does he really? Shishir Mehrotra (00:12:49): Yeah, he's an engineer here. He's great. He lives in Idaho. Once we really started hiring distributed, I finally managed to pull him into Coda. So, I turned on Google in that period and they didn't let up. Basically, every year they would call and say, "Hey, we got something down here for you." Gideon actually didn't have a very positive outcome. I showed up to work on this thing and nine months later, Sinofsky killed it. Given the priorities Office had at the time, it made reasonable sense, but it was my first education of big company politics and that's how I ended up working at WinFS. Rob Collie (00:13:20): Sinofsky has delivered many such educations of big company politics. Shishir Mehrotra (00:13:24): Yes. Yes. For sure. For sure. Rob Collie (00:13:26): One of his primary contributions. Yes. Shishir Mehrotra (00:13:27): So, are you reading his history of Microsoft [inaudible 00:13:30]? Rob Collie (00:13:30): I haven't been but now I will be. Shishir Mehrotra (00:13:32): Oh, you should. It's good. Steve and I didn't always see eye to eye on everything, but his sense of history is really good. I don't know how the hell he remembered so much stuff, but he's basically publishing a new thing every few days, I think, maybe every week, and it's really good. Rob Collie (00:13:44): I both loved Stephen and was terrified of him at the same time. Shishir Mehrotra (00:13:48): It's common. Rob Collie (00:13:49): Yeah. Shishir Mehrotra (00:13:50): So, I'm working on SQL Server, but the reason all that matters is I was committed to Seattle. I had convinced my, at the time, fiance now wife, to move up to Seattle. She's a physician. So, she was doing her residency at Children's Seattle. And I convinced her to stay and do her fellowship and that all ran out. So, my clock ran out on Seattle. Said, "All right, now we're ready to move." And we had presumed we were going to move to the Bay area. So, it was just implied at the time, if you're going to be a techie, you got to move down to the Bay Area at some point. And I thought I was going to start another company. I was ready to do it again but Jonathan Rosenberg, the guy at Google who ended up running product there, he called me, he said, "Oh, if you're thinking about coming back, why don't you just come meet a few people?" Shishir Mehrotra (00:14:28): And I said, "No, I've been doing the big company thing for a while. I don't think I want to do that anymore." And he said, "No, no, no, no. Google is not that big a company." This is 2007, 2008. And he said, "Google is not that big of a company. Come just meet a few people and nothing else and have some good conversations." And so, I went down, met a bunch of people and this was Larry and Sergey but also Vic Gundotra was there then and Andy Rubin had just joined. And there was a bunch of ... That era of Google was being formed. And I end up, at the end of the day, in Jonathan's office and I tell him, "That was really entertaining, but it feels like a big company. I don't think this is for me." Jonathan's a pretty crass person. I won't use the same language he used but he said, "Oh, that's really effing stupid." Shishir Mehrotra (00:15:06): And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Well, look, and I'll just give you a really simple reason. All those people, they probably talk to you about Android and Chrome and all this other stuff but what they forget is that, at the heart, Google sells advertising and all the money in advertising goes to television. And nobody even watches those stupid ads." This may sound dumb, but maybe not to this group. I didn't know that. For me, I'd never bought or sold an ad in my life. And the idea that all of the money and advertising goes to television was news to me. And I got on a plane after work back to Seattle. I do a lot of my thinking on planes for weird reasons. You may be the same. I don't know. Shishir Mehrotra (00:15:40): But I get on the plane, I take out this little sheet of paper and this was a week after the Super Bowl, February of 2008, the Giants had just beaten the Pats in this epic Super Bowl. And I take out the sheet of paper, I write at the top, how come advertising doesn't feel like a Super Bowl every day? And the basic thing I was thinking about was we had our friends over for Super Bowl and while we're watching the game, the ad would come on, if somebody missed it, I would have to rewind for people to watch the ad again. It's like, "Oh, people actually like the ads in this one day of the year. What's different?" And so, I take out this sheet of paper, I end up writing this little position paper on what I think is wrong with advertising, without knowing really anything about advertising. Get home, it's pretty late. My wife's not up to tell me it was all stupid. Shishir Mehrotra (00:16:19): And then I wake up the next morning and I write to Jonathan. I say, "Hey, look, I really enjoyed the time. I don't think Google's for me, but I had some thoughts on something you said that stuck with me about why advertising sucks. And I'm sure you guys are already thinking about it, but I'm happy to send it to you if you'd like." And he's pretty early morning guy and so he read it and said, "Actually, nobody's thinking about this. Maybe you should come and I'll give you a small team and you can start running this." There were three ideas in the paper but the most simple one was how come ads don't have a skip button on them? And then, if you skip the ad, why don't you make it so that if you skip the ad, the advertiser doesn't pay? Shishir Mehrotra (00:16:50): You change all the incentives of advertising so that if the ads aren't good, then nobody gets paid if the ads are going to get better. And we're going to reset the balance and that's why it's going to feel like Super Bowl every day. He was like, "There's a lot of reward and be creative on the Super Bowl." So, J.R. convinced me. He's like, "Come down. Run this project." When I tell the story, it sounds eerily similar to how I ended up at Microsoft, like, "Oh, come run this small project." And it was this group of people, again, that misunderstood what ... This project was at the time called Mosaic. Shishir Mehrotra (00:17:19): It became a product called Google TV. Chromecast, Google TV, Google Home, all comes out of that same group now. So, I showed up to work on that and very quickly in that process realized that this had actually very poor corporate sponsorship as well. In this case, Larry and Sergey thought this product was really, really dumb. I should have known as I was going through the interview process. And so, I told J.R. and I was excited about the project and I said, "Hey, maybe I should talk to Larry and Sergey about that, a bunch of ideas and other stuff if I met them." He's like, "Oh yeah, they're traveling this week." I was like, "Really? Okay." And every time I asked, he was avoiding me talking to them about the project. But, anyway, so I show up to work on that and it's very long story out, but this paper leads to me working on this project. Shishir Mehrotra (00:17:57): And then, just, basically, we decided to merge the project into YouTube. And back in 2008, to a very side door, end up initially running the monetization team and eventually running the rest of the team for YouTube and then spending six years there and growing that business, which was ... At the time, when I joined YouTube, it was the weird stepchild of Google. It was generally thought of as the first bad acquisition that Google made. Until then we had this string of amazing acquisitions led to Maps and Android and all this stuff. YouTube was a weird one, right? It was the, we lost hundreds of millions of dollars a year. It was dogs on skateboards. We had a billion dollar lawsuit from Viacom. Rob Collie (00:18:35): Mark Cuban famously said it's never going to go anywhere. Shishir Mehrotra (00:18:38): I have very fun stories with Mark Cuban. It was two years after I left YouTube where he finally wrote me and said, "Actually, I think you might've been right." He was quite convinced we were wrong about it. But, anyway, so I ended up working on YouTube. I'd never bought or sold an ad in my life, knew nothing about video and an infrastructure guy in the previous career, and ended up working on YouTube for six years. Rob Collie (00:19:02): It's a really interesting thing, right? Sometimes not knowing a lot about an industry or a topic is actually fantastic because you don't bring all the baggage and all the preconceptions. Of course, you can't just go all in on that. If you never know anything about anything, you're just someone wandering around the world with a loud voice. And so, getting the right balance between knowing what you should know and not knowing the things that will throw you off, if we could get that mix right at all times in our lives, we'd be in great shape, but it's tricky, isn't it? Shishir Mehrotra (00:19:32): You've roughly described my career. Almost every job I took was in a space I knew nothing about. And it's a very positive interpretation of this person who has to learn every piece of this. But yeah, I think a beginner's eye allows you to look at a space a little bit differently and it certainly worked out at YouTube. And we were walking the trends of the video industry in every way, how we thought about content, how we thought about monetization, and what is good content? What is not good content? Our views on these things were diametrically opposite of every assumption that had been made by every experienced person in that industry. I think we turned out to be more right than wrong. Rob Collie (00:20:07): Oh my gosh! Yeah. Now, a few things jumped out at me from that story. First of all, if we think about it with the perfection of hindsight, the clarity of hindsight, basically, Google ran this really sick reverse auction for your services where they like, "If you come here now we'll pay you a billion dollars." And you're like, "Hmm, no." Right? And then- Shishir Mehrotra (00:20:30): It wasn't obvious that it was going to be a billion dollars. Rob Collie (00:20:30): I know. Then they call you back a year later and they say, "Okay. Fine. How about 100 million?" And you're like, "Hmm, no." And they finally got it down low enough for you to take the job. I've never met anybody who has a story where you can even joke about a billion dollar mistake. So, I'll never have the opportunity to recruit you, but if I did, now I know how. Shishir Mehrotra (00:20:56): [crosstalk 00:20:56] blowing your offer. That's right. That's right. Rob Collie (00:20:59): And it's got to include the words, just come run this small, little team. Shishir Mehrotra (00:21:03): Yeah. Yeah. I get drawn to projects. I don't get drawn to the rest of it. So far it's worked out okay. But yeah, I get drawn to ideas. I mean, this is really only the fourth company I've ever worked for yet every transition was drawn by some idea that I couldn't stop thinking about. Rob Collie (00:21:17): That idea or position statement, is that in some way, at the beginning, the origin story of the skip button for ads? Shishir Mehrotra (00:21:27): Oh yeah. I mean, the skip button for ads it's now called TrueView. Back to your point on beginner's mind. So, I show up, I've got this idea around the skip button and actually it makes more sense for YouTube than it does for this Google TV thing that we were working on. So, there's totally reasonable outcome. I show up and my first meeting with the sales team, I'm maybe six weeks in, the head of sales, Susie, she says, "Can you come give a talk to sales team and just tell a little bit about your vision for YouTube." And we had a nice ... And I said, "Look, I don't think this is a good idea. I don't know anything about this part of the industry. So, I'm going to make a fool of myself." And she's, "No, no, no. You have got all these great ideas and they're fresh and different and why don't you come talk to them?" Shishir Mehrotra (00:22:04): And I go talk about a bunch of different ideas, and I talk about this one about skip buttons on ads. And one of the salespeople, who I've since become very good friends with, she raises her hand and she says, "Wait, I don't understand. Do you want none of us to make any money?" They thought this was the dumbest idea on the planet. You put a skip button on ads, people are going to hit the skip button. It's like that's what obviously is going to happen. And, basically, the entire sales force rejected this idea. And it took me three years to ship that feature because every person in the sales force thought it was such a dumb idea. I would get told, "You can come talk at the sales conference, but you're not allowed to talk about your stupid skip button idea. You have to talk about everything else." Shishir Mehrotra (00:22:43): And what turned out was ... This is actually another fun story in great product managers. I don't know if you still think of yourself as a PM, but I consider you to be a really strong product manager as well. But this is a story about a guy, Lane Shackleton, who actually now runs product at Coda. So, Lane was a sales guy. He was actually our primary sales guy at YouTube. And he really wanted to be a PM. And at the time, we had this really stupid policy where you weren't allowed to be a product manager at Google unless you had a CS degree. It was just part of the early, early viewpoint the founders had. Rob Collie (00:23:17): So relevant. Shishir Mehrotra (00:23:21): Right. So, you commiserate with this a lot. So, Lane comes to me and says, "I want to be a PM. How do I do it?" And I said, "Hey, look, I mean, I love you and I think you could do a great job but I've got this policy. And I got to make a really strong case if I'm going to get over the policy." And he said, "How about I just do it on the side? Do it as a trial run." He gave me an idea. I said, "Okay, I'll make a deal with you. I'll let you try to be a PM, but you have to do it in your 20% time. And not in your 80-20% time, but you got to do a great job of your sales job and then you do this part. And the second criteria is you take whatever project I give you." Shishir Mehrotra (00:23:52): And he said, "All right, deal. What's the project?" I said, "Okay, I want you to work on this thing called skippable ads." And I said, "Look, the sales team thinks it's really dumb because the way that the division work, the engineering leader was like, "I'm not allocating stuff that the sales team thinks is dumb. And so, I can give you one engineer who is a new grad and that's it." But I have a playbook for you. I think you need to go and you just go talk to the AdWords team and get this thing out of the buying experience and then work on this with the analytics and figure just these couple pieces out. And we'll be able to ship this thing and we'll slowly build up the business. It'll be fine." Shishir Mehrotra (00:24:23): And so, he goes away and he comes back a couple of weeks later for his update. And I said, "Oh, how's it going? Did you talk to the AdWords team?" And he said, "No, actually, I decided that's not the problem here." And I said, "What do you mean? That was your job. Go talk to those different people." And he says, "Well, I've been thinking about it and I think the real problem here is the name is wrong." I was like, "The name? What are you talking about? We'll name this thing later. This is not that important." And he says, "No, no, I think the problem is that skippable ad is a value proposition to an end user but who buys advertising? The advertiser buys advertising. Skippable is actually a really poor value proposition to the advertiser. Why would I want my ad to be skipped? Right? And so, the reason you're hearing so much negative reaction if people don't understand why it's helpful to the advertiser." Shishir Mehrotra (00:25:06): And so then he came up with this idea and said, "Why don't we name it TrueView?" And I'm skipping a whole bunch of parts in the story, but we call it TrueView. That's what the ad for one is actually called. You have no idea what ads are called, right? Oh, there's ads on Google. Nobody knows [crosstalk 00:25:18] from AdWord. Rob Collie (00:25:18): Yeah. It's not a feature. Yeah. Shishir Mehrotra (00:25:19): But what's a sponsored story? And you don't know any of that stuff. You just know it's an ad. And he said, "So, let's focus on the advertising." Came up with this name TrueView. And the idea is very simple is you only pay per true views. You don't pay for the junk, you only pay for the real ones. Right? And all of a sudden this thing went from being, I'm not allowed to talk about it at sales conferences to the number one thing on the entire sales force [inaudible 00:25:42] all of Google. Beyond anything the average team was working on. Shishir Mehrotra (00:25:45): And it was such a simple idea. And, by the way, the way the math works is very simple, it's most people do skip the ad. It's about 80% skip rates on those ads. So, four out of five times you see an ad, you probably have a skip button, but it turns out that the 20% of the time you don't is such high signal and so effective an ad that you can often charge something like 20 times as much for that view. And so, what you end up with is you end up with you just take that math and say, [inaudible 00:26:09] four times better monetization with a skippable ad than without a skippable ad. Shishir Mehrotra (00:26:13): It was not obvious that advertisers would be willing to pay that much more if they know you actually watched the ad but when you start ... But this is a good example, again, a beginner's mind and, Lane, I mean, this is one of his ... So, I've managed to convince the calibration committees and so on and turned to a product manager and turned into a great product manager. He joined me early on at Coda and now runs the product and design team here. Great example of coming fresh to a new problem. Rob Collie (00:26:36): Yeah. Well, if only he'd had a computer science degree, that idea would have been so much smarter. You know? Shishir Mehrotra (00:26:43): Yeah. The crazy part, this is one of the most technical guys I know and he's like, "I don't understand. I write this stuff on the side. Why do I need a stupid degree for that?" Right? Rob Collie (00:26:53): I know. There was one time in my first three years at Microsoft where I used one piece of my computer science education, one time. I used O notation to prove that we shouldn't do it a certain way. And when I got my way after using O notation, it's like, "This is an O of N squared algorithm." I got to run around the hallways chanting, like, "Whoa, look, my education, it worked. It worked. It worked." And that was the only time I ever used any of that. So, no, that's a silly policy. Shishir Mehrotra (00:27:25): Yeah. It was funny, when I was going to college, my parents were both computer scientists and I was one of those kids who grew up with a ... I never knew what I wanted to be. One week I was going to be a lawyer, then I was going to be a doctor, then I was going to be a scary period for my mom where I really wanted to be a taxi driver. I went through all the different periods. And then, I'm filling out my college applications and it says like, "What do you want to major in?" And I said, "Oh, I think I'll write down CS." I was into computers at the time and so I write down CS. And my dad says, "If you major in CS, I'm not paying for college." What are you talking about? I thought you'd be really excited. Shishir Mehrotra (00:27:57): That's what you guys do. My dad now runs supercomputing for NASA. I thought this would be pretty exciting for you. And he says, "No, no, no. This is a practitioner's degree. I'm not paying for college unless you major in something where the books are at least 50 years old." And that was the policy. And so, I ended up majoring in math and computer science. And from his perspective, he paid for a math degree and I happened to get the CS degree for free. But his view was that ... Which is true ... Computer science changes so fundamentally every 10 years. Shishir Mehrotra (00:28:22): And my classes the professors often taught out of the book that they're about to publish. The book wasn't even published yet and they're like, "Oh, here's the new way to think about operating systems." And it was totally different than what it was five years ago. I think there's a lot of knowledge in CS degrees but I actually think ... O notation is an example. I used to teach that class at school. That's math. That's not CS. Rob Collie (00:28:42): I know. Yeah. Yeah. Shishir Mehrotra (00:28:44): It's a very good way to think about isotonic functions but the actual CS knowledge is all but relevant by the time you graduate. Rob Collie (00:28:51): One thing that you said to me about your time at YouTube that stuck with me years, years, years, years later is that here we are at the tip of the spear, the head of this giant organization and YouTube eventually became giant, and with all this amazing machine learning and just so much algorithmic, not even complexity, but also just we don't even know what it's doing anymore. It's so sophisticated that we can't even explain why it's making these decisions but they're doing well, and yet every day we get together, we're looking at simple pivot tables and there's these knobs on the sides of these giant algorithmic machines that some human being has to set to, like, "Should we set it to six or seven?" And it's just this judgment call. And I just love that. That was, in a weird way, so reassuring to me that even at the absolute top of the pyramid of the algorithmic world, there's still a need for this other stuff. Shishir Mehrotra (00:29:43): The most fun example of this, backing for a moment, my dad, back to the story of me going into CS. At one point I had asked him, what is artificial intelligence? And he said, "Well, artificial intelligence is this really hard to describe field." I asked, "Why is that?" And he said, "Well, because it's got this characteristic that the moment something works, it's no longer AI." And so, AI is what's left is all the stuff that doesn't work. And so, you can use all these examples of when you have all regressions, it's like, "That's just math. That's not AI. We understand how it works." My favorite example with the kids is when you drive up to the traffic light, how does it know when to turn red and green and so on? Shishir Mehrotra (00:30:19): Oh, there's a sensor there. It just senses the cars there and so then it decides to turn red or green. That's not AI. I know how that works. I can describe it. It's a sensor. And so, we went through, I think, decades of time where the moment something worked, it stopped getting called AI. And then, some point, 10, 15 years ago, I'd say 10, we flipped it. And now, all of a sudden, anything that does math is AI. And it's amazing to me that we would look at some of these systems and it was literally a simple regression and we say, "Oh, that's machine learning." And it became very invoked. I think about it that way. Shishir Mehrotra (00:30:53): I mean, there are some really complicated machine learning techniques and the way our neural network works, which is the heart of how most of these machine learning techniques work is very complicated, but at the heart of what it's doing, it's approximation function for a multi-variable phenomenon. So, the most fun example I can tell you about your observation there is this project called DALS. DALS was an acronym for Dynamic Ad Load System where at the time, on YouTube, the rate at which we showed ads was contractually set. We would go negotiate with the creator and say, "Oh, ESPN, we want your content on YouTube." And we would say, "Look, our policy is we show ads every seven minutes." And they say, "No, our content is so good. We want it every two minutes." Shishir Mehrotra (00:31:32): And then, the Disney folks would have their own number. And so, there is this long line of contractual stuff baked into our ad serving logic that's like, "Oh, it's been two minutes. You have to show an ad." Because they all just thought they knew better of how good their content was. And so, one of the engineers had this idea and said, "This is dumb." We know our intentions are well aligned. Almost all our deals were rev share deals. We made money when the creator made money. And we know whether or not this is a good time to show an ad or not, why don't we turn this into a machine learning system and guess whether or not we should show an ad? So, it's called Dynamic Ad Load System. DALS was its acronym. So, the team goes off and this engineer goes off and builds this thing. Shishir Mehrotra (00:32:08): Lexi was his name. So, Lexi builds this thing and he brings it to one of our staff reviews. Every Friday, we had this meeting of IT staff. That's where we went through all the major stats for the business and including any major experiments that are running. If he brings something in and he says, "All right, before we launch this thing, I'd like to know what our trade-off function." The trade-off function in this case is, how much watch time are you willing to trade off for revenue? These are two primary metrics. At every moment we're going to decide, should we show an ad or not? And we have to make a guess at, "We think if we don't show an ad you'll watch for this much longer, if we do show an ad, there's a chance you'll leave but we'll make this much money. So, what's the number? How much should we trade off?" Shishir Mehrotra (00:32:45): This is a very typical question I would get in this forum. It's impossible to answer, how much would you trade off? Watch time, revenue. And so, I came up with a number and I put a slope on this chart and we decided two for one. I can't remember whether it was two points of watch time for one point of revenue. But whichever way it was, I do a slope and we got a lot of reaction. They're like, "Okay. Great." And they ran away from the room. "Okay. We have a number. We can go do our thing." And so, they come back a few weeks later and say that we're ready to launch. And I said, "Okay, so did you hit the number?" And they said, "Well, actually, we have some interesting news for you. Turns out in our first tuning of the system, we actually have a tuning that is positive on both watch time and revenue. And somehow by redeploying the system, we make more money and people watch longer." Shishir Mehrotra (00:33:25): And I said, "Really? How does that happen?" And they said, "Well, we don't really know yet, but can we ship because clearly better than your ratio?" And I said, "Well, okay, you can ship but next week I want you to come back and tell me why." And so, next week they come back and I said, "Do you know why?" And they said, "Well, we don't know why, but we have another tuning and it's even better on both watch time and revenue. I was thinking we ship this one." Shishir Mehrotra (00:33:47): I was like, "Okay, but please come back next week." This went on for four weeks. Right? So every week they would come back and they'd say, "Okay, we got this thing. It's even better on both. And we still have no idea why." And, finally, they figured out why. And it turns out that basically what was happening was the system was learning to push ads later in people's sessions. If you watch YouTube for a while, early on, you'll see very little advertising. But if you sit there and watch for hours and hours and hours, the ad frequency will gradually increase with a viewpoint of, this person's not going anywhere. They're committed, which makes intuitive sense, but it wasn't an input that we handed the system. Shishir Mehrotra (00:34:18): And how did we figure that out? The pivot table. I notice that the ... What did we do? We went and charted everything we could out of the experiment group and in our experiment group and we just guessed at what is the way to figure out why is this happening? Because it's not a signal that we were intentionally giving the system, it's just the system got every other signal it could. And we looked at everything. I mean, is it geography? Is it tied to content? Is it age? Is it ... How is it possible that we're showing more ads and people are watching for longer? That story is a lesson in a number of different things. I mean, I think it was a great lesson in how when people think about machine learning systems, they miss this element of ... Any machine learning system is just a function. Shishir Mehrotra (00:34:54): All the ML system does is take a very large set of inputs, apply a function to it and generate an output. Generally, that output is a decision, show an ad, don't show an ad. Self-driving car turn right or turn left. It's some decisions of, is this image a person or an animal? And that system is trained and is trained on a bunch of data. And at some point, somebody, usually fairly low in an organization, makes the tuning decision and says, "I'm willing to accept this much being wrong for this much being right." Generally called precision recall. More layman's term for it is you figured out your false positive rate versus your false negative rate for whatever system you're trying to figure out. But somebody has to make a decision. Shishir Mehrotra (00:35:30): It's usually three tunings, very deep in the system. And then, after that point, the system is unexplainable. You have no idea how this thing works. And so, what do you do then? You go look at a bunch of empirical data of what's happening and try to figure out, "What did I just do? I've got this thing and what's actually happening here?" And you try to figure out, is it doing what you actually want it to do? And all of that is done in fancy pivot tables. Rob Collie (00:35:53): Yeah. It's so funny, the AI, and you've said before, your dad, as soon as it reaches a equilibrium, it's not AI anymore. Shishir Mehrotra (00:36:00): Right. Not anymore. Rob Collie (00:36:02): Now though, it seems like it's a funny thing that you built these systems that then figure things out and they seem to be working great but then they can't turn around and explain to you what they're doing. It's not built to explain. It's just built to do. Shishir Mehrotra (00:36:15): It makes some sense how the human brain works. Why did you do that? I don't know. I just did it. And when you're running a business, that's not an acceptable answer. I need to know why did it go that way instead of ... Why did it turn right? I need to know why. So, you end up with this interesting tuning and then you're constantly looking at charts of output, what is going on here? To try to figure out whether it's working the way you want it. Rob Collie (00:36:34): So, while we're on pivot tables for a moment, go back to your story about skippable ads. This is TrueView. Imagine how much better off we would be as a society if pivot tables had originally been named summary tables. Shishir Mehrotra (00:36:50): Oh man. Rob Collie (00:36:51): You know? That one was blown. Shishir Mehrotra (00:36:53): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:36:54): I actually tried to rename it stupidly. I mean, it was too late. It was way too late. And I fought that battle for way too long. It was a fool's errand to try to rename something that had been in the world for that long but what does it mean to pivot data? No one knows. Shishir Mehrotra (00:37:08): It's now the insider's club handshake. Rob Collie (00:37:12): I know. I know. I think we probably lost half of the people who would have used them just in the name. Shishir Mehrotra (00:37:17): It's interesting you say that because the way we do the equivalence in Coda, we don't use the term pivot at all. We call it grouping. We don't even call it a thing. Right? We don't give it a noun name. We give it a verb name. And it just turns out that grouping a table is a very understandable phenomenon. In Coda, our model of grouping doesn't require aggregates also turns out ... And the reason I don't love the word summary is I actually think most commonly what you want to do is you take a set of records and you say, "I've got a bunch of tasks. Let me sort them by in progress and done." And I still want to be able to see the tasks. And one of the things pivot table, I think screwed up, is that you can't see the tasks anymore. The moment you're in that world ... Rob Collie (00:37:55): Yeah. I agree. But given what was built, the pivot table implementation, right? Summary would have been the killer name, right? Shishir Mehrotra (00:38:02): Would have been a much better name. What would you have named VLOOKUP to? Rob Collie (00:38:05): Oh, I don't know. Pivots is still relevant to me, VLOOKUP not as much. No. But like Bill Gates always pressing for the unification of grouping in Excel with pivots. And we were always like, "Hmm, no." And it became a running joke after a while, he'd be like, "To the extent that you guys on Excel ever do anything that I ask you." That would be his preamble to some of the things he would say to us. Shishir Mehrotra (00:38:33): I mean, I would say, nowadays, people use pivot for lots of things, but for our first year for the customer journey, our grouping feature was definitely the top of the list. And, honestly, there's a bunch of people who, like you said, never really understood pivot tables and could never compare the two, like, "Oh, that makes total sense to me. I drew up a table. That makes total sense." Then two, to show aggregates. Rob Collie (00:38:50): The way you zeroed in on noun versus verb, that actually has come up multiple, multiple times on this show. It's one of my things. My new hires, when they'd come to work for me on the Excel team, I would sit them down and say, "Listen, you are not allowed to introduce nouns into this product. If you want a new noun, you've got to come to me. You got to fight me for it. You can verb all you want." That was hard one knowledge. I was a noun guy coming out of computer science school. Computer science people love them some nouns. Entities. Just say the word entity and you get all gooey inside, but no, it's a verb world. Shishir Mehrotra (00:39:26): I make that specific statement, you can ask my team, all the time. You're going to add a new noun, you got to come through me. I mean, on YouTube, it was interesting because YouTube has three primary nouns, video, channel and playlist. And we spent forever ... For a long time video was the only noun that mattered. And it was a big debate over which one matters more, channel or playlist. And I made the team pick. You got to pick one. We picked channel, which is probably obvious. Playlists are these long forgotten feature of YouTube and channels are now a big deal. But that wasn't always true. Channels actually used to be a very small deal on YouTube. If you go back to what I do in 2008, yeah, you would publish a video, it's like, "A channel, whatever." Totally bit my fingers on this channel, but it has nothing else on it. Shishir Mehrotra (00:40:05): And, nowadays, all people care about on YouTube is like, "This is my channel. How many subscribers I have." And the same way with Coda, we've put a lot of energy into as few nouns as possible. We'd use common language for nouns, only brand the ones that you really, really, really want to brand. Because there are very few branded nouns in Coda. There's lots of incentives in product development that lead to it. In a lot of companies, you get promoted on it. Like, "I invented this thing. It's now Power BI. And it's now this pivot thing." And you get a lot of feedback loop because nouns are distinguishable but it doesn't help your customers. Rob Collie (00:40:37): Even the technology under the hood is screaming at you, "Noun me. Noun me." It's like, I've got this really cool data structure here. It's dying to be surfaced in the ... No, no, don't do that. That's not what we do. We do not surface the technology. That's not what we're here for, but it's a powerful instinct. Really powerful. Okay. So, Coda, that's the next chapter. And that's the next place where we crossed paths. So, I actually realized that it was six years ago. I visited you in the Valley six years ago. And the reason I know it was six years ago is because one of the people who was there in the early days with you, the very beginning. Shishir Mehrotra (00:41:18): They're all still here, but yeah. Rob Collie (00:41:19): Okay. Good. So, got the feel that they will be long-timers. Yeah. It was a tight bunch. It was a tight crew. The two of you were joking to them, "Maybe we should go to Burning Man this year." And I was sitting there thinking to myself, I had been invited that year to a friend's bachelor party. He was going to Burning Man. And I didn't even speak up because I was so terrified of going. I wasn't even sure if I was going to go. Shishir Mehrotra (00:41:42): Did you go? Rob Collie (00:41:42): I did. And that was 2015. So, that's how I know. It was also, I think, the first year that the Warriors had blown up down the NBA scene. So, we were sitting and watching the Warriors annihilate people after we talked. So, six years ago, you were pretty deep into this thing that's now called Coda. It was codename something else at the time that I kept getting wrong. Was it Krypton? Shishir Mehrotra (00:42:03): Krypton. That's right. Rob Collie (00:42:05): But I kept calling it Vulcan. Shishir Mehrotra (00:42:08): The team had such a laugh out of that. Rob Collie (00:42:12): I kept forgetting it was Krypton and calling it Vulcan. So, why don't you explain both to me and to our listeners what the original vision was and how and if that's evolved over time. Shishir Mehrotra (00:42:25): By the way that meeting was, hey, super entertaining. Rob came in and described this as Vulcan as been repeated many times in the story. But it also was super informative because you came and gave a bunch of perspective. I think probably one of the most relevant to our last discussion, one of your most interesting observations that stuck with the team was you described this person and you said, "Hey, I can walk into a room and if I ask them just a couple of questions I can split the room into two groups of people very quickly." You used to call it the data gene. And your questions were, do you know what a VLOOKUP is or do you know what a VLOOKUP is? What a pivot table is? Bad for many of the reasons we just talked about, but for the perspective of understanding how humans are evolving and so on, it was actually quite insightful that these people you just can't keep them away. They will eventually figure these things out. Shishir Mehrotra (00:43:11): And if you have that data gene, you will some point in your life intersect with these things and figure out what they are. The Coda founding story, so I was at YouTube and an old friend of mine, [inaudible 00:43:21] Alex DeNeui, now my co-founder at Coda, he and I have known each other for 20 plus years. We went to college together. And he's part of the founding team at Sintrata as well. Interestingly, we've worked every other job together, which is a fun pattern. So, he had started this company that got acquired by Google and he had just quit. And he was starting a new company and he'd come to me and he said, "Hey, my company's not doing that well. I'm thinking about pivoting to do something different. Can you help me brainstorm a new set of ideas?" So, we started brainstorming mostly about what he should do. Shishir Mehrotra (00:43:49): I was still relatively happy at Google, but I had told him, "If you pick something interesting, I'd be happy to invest or advise or help out in some way." Said this long list of ideas and we started brainstorming and at one point, one of us writes this sentence on the whiteboard, what if anyone can build a doc as powerful as an app? And that sentence ended up becoming the rallying cry for what became Krypton and then Coda. It's a very simple statement but it comes out of two primary observations. One is, I think the world runs on docs not apps. That if you go ask any team how they operate, any business, company person, so on, if you ask them how they operate, they'll immediately rattle off all the different packet software they use. "Oh, we use this thing for CRM and this thing for inventory. And we use this thing for pass tracking and so on." Shishir Mehrotra (00:44:32): And then, if you just sit behind them and watch them work for a day, what do they do all day? They're in documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and some communication tool. That's what they live in. And this first observation was one that was very deeply embedded in us because that's how we ran YouTube. I mean, YouTube, amongst other things was born right in the start of the Google Docs generation. I got the YouTube 2008, Google Docs is just coming out and, as I mentioned, we were the forgotten stepchild of Google, so we were allowed to do whatever we wanted but we could get no help in doing it. And so, we decided, for example, we would run our task management goal-setting process. We didn't like how OKRs worked. Shishir Mehrotra (00:45:09): I actually just published a whole paper on this last week. You can take a look. But we didn't like how OKRs worked. We wanted to do a different way. And so, how do we do it? We do in a big spreadsheet? I ran compensation differently at YouTube. I had this philosophy I call level independent compensation and the Google HR team allowed us to do it, but said, "We're building zero software for it." So, we did it in a network of documents and spreadsheets. One of the most fun example is if you hit flag on a YouTube video, for years, a flag on a YouTube video would show up as a row in a spreadsheet [inaudible 00:45:37] the person's desk. That's how we ran all these systems. We used to get made fun of. People are like, "Oh, look at these people. They're duct taping together documents and spreadsheets to run what became a multi-billion dollar division." I used to say like, "I actually think this is our strategic strength." Shishir Mehrotra (00:45:49): I mean, the reason we can plan so nimbly, the reason I can hire whoever I want, the reason we can adjust our flagging and approval system so quickly is because we didn't purchase some big bulky software to do it, we design it ourselves and turned it into something that then actually met our, at the time, current value system. So, this is observation number one, it's the world runs on docs not app, which is, by the way, not obvious to people but I feel fairly strongly about it. The second observation is that those documents surfaces haven't fundamentally changed in almost 50 years. The running joke at the company is that if Austin Powers popped out of his freezing chamber, he wouldn't know what clothes to wear or what music to listen to, but he could work a document, a spreadsheet, and a presentation just as well as anybody else could. Because everything we're looking at is metaphors that were created by the same people who created WordStar, Harvard Graphics and VisiCalc. Shishir Mehrotra (00:46:39): And we still have almost the exact same metaphor, which just seems crazy to me. In that same period of time, every other piece of software stack is totally different. An operating system from the '70s versus Android and iOS is unrecognizable. Databases, which we thought were pretty fundamental are completely different than they used to be. Things like search engine, social networks, none of these things even existed and yet the way that slide decks are put together, the way you navigate the spreadsheet grid and the way you think about pages and document is exactly the same as it was in the 1970s. Shishir Mehrotra (00:47:10): So, you take the two observations, you stick them together and you say, "Hey, we [inaudible 00:47:13] runs on these docs, not applications." And those surfaces haven't changed in almost 50 years. Something's broken. What if we started from scratch and built an entirely new type of doc based on this observation that what we are actually doing with our docs is a lot closer to what we're doing with applications than not? That was the thesis we started with. I got personally obsessed with it. I couldn't stop thinking about it. And this went from, hey, let me invest, let me help, to I quit Google and went and started but at the time with Krypton and then eventually became Coda. Rob Collie (00:47:44): I'm sure he recruited you at some point by saying, "How about you just come run this small team over here?" Shishir Mehrotra (00:47:48): Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. That's right. Rob Collie (00:47:51): Those are the magic words. Shishir Mehrotra (00:47:52): We won't pay you at all. That's the ... Rob Collie (00:47:54): Something silly that occurred to me is that your Austin Powers metaphor might even be more accurate than you realize. We are now farther away, in terms of time, from the premiere of that '70s show, than that '70s show was from the time it represented. Shishir Mehrotra (00:48:09): I like that. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:48:11): It's crazy. We passed that point six months ago. So, when did Austin Powers the first one come out? Sometime in the '90s? Shishir Mehrotra (00:48:17): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:48:18): Right? And it represented a time probably 35 years before it? Probably 1964, maybe 1999. Right? Shishir Mehrotra (00:48:25): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:48:25): So, we're almost reaching the point where we're close to the Austin Powers movie as Austin Powers was to the time. So, clearly, if we rewind 35 years, we are what? We're in the '80s, right? Shishir Mehrotra (00:48:35): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:48:36): You're right our documents basically look like that. Shishir Mehrotra (00:48:39): Yeah. You and I can probably geek out on this. And I get asked a lot about why did that happen? Lots of industries saw a change. And the database industry is a great example, you wouldn't expect the database industry to change that much. Codd wrote his book in the 1970s that's still the book that every database engineer you can find will have the book up on the shelf for Codd's relational databases, and yet things like OLAP came out and cubes and it turned into a Power BI. I think what happened in the document industry ... Well, two things. Shishir Mehrotra (00:49:05): One, every company that wanted to innovate in that space was a platform company whose primary interest was evangelizing a platform. Microsoft didn't really want to displace Lotus and so on with a new thing, they just wanted people to use Windows. It was very important that it actually be backwards compatible with everything at Soft. The other thing that happened is we live through what I think of as a period where we're beholden to file format. And so, one of my favorite examples is Steve Jobs and Apple. I've met a bunch of people that worked on the early iWork suite. And the iWork suite, Jobs came in with a bunch of new ideas. He's like, "This is dumb. We shouldn't have a spreadsheet that's one big universal grid. We should have a bunch of separate grids that are actually a little closer to tables." Shishir Mehrotra (00:49:45): And so, that's how numbers worked, actually, it's not actually one universal grid, it's a bunch of separate ones. And the way he did it with pages was a little bit different. And then, Keynote, which is probably the most popular of the three is actually different from PowerPoint in those really critical ways and none of the three took off. And why didn't they take off? I mean, Jobs was pretty smart and [inaudible 00:50:02] were pretty good. I think it was really simple reason. If I build something in numbers and then I want to send it to you, I have to assume that you have a copy of numbers and that you run on a Mac and that's not a safe assumption. It hasn't really been a safe assumption for a long time. And then, Google Docs came out. Rob Collie (00:50:16): Which, by the way, is fundamentally what YouTube did for video. Right? Shishir Mehrotra (00:50:19): That's right. Rob Collie (00:50:19): I had all these delivery ... Shishir Mehrotra (00:50:21): Plugin. Rob Collie (00:50:21): ... And Coda and pl ... I couldn't send you a video, trust that you'd be able to watch it. Shishir Mehrotra (00:50:27): And assume you could play. That's right. That's right. I mean, in that case, it was hard to send the videos because- Rob Collie (00:50:32): Yeah. There was a file size problem and there was also a software compatibility problem behind it. Shishir Mehrotra (00:50:37): Yeah. I think but in the documents phase, it's very interesting. I think Google Docs is mostly credited for teaching us the value of real-time collaboration, which I think is amazing and in retrospect, obvious innovation. And I think we were both still working at Microsoft when it first came out and all of us were super skeptical like, "Why would anybody want to co-edit a spreadsheet? That seems weird. What if they make a mistake?" And it just turns out it actually works just fine. And people avoid each other well and versioning systems can handle things and you don't need to have a bunch of merge conflicts and all that stuff just works. But, actually, I think the thing that Google Docs did for the industry is they taught us that there's no such thing as a file format. And if I send you a link to a Google Doc, you don't need to worry about whether or not anybody has anything installed and it's all just you could open it and use it. Shishir Mehrotra (00:51:23): And I think that unshackled a whole industry that had been stuck in, you could call it the fax machine world where you just had to produce things that the other side had a receiver for. And so, I think that moment of opening ... I mean, in retrospect, we started crypto in 2014 and I think we felt it then but I don't think we quite understood how dramatic a change that was. I mean, I think right now our industry is going through probably the most fundamental rethink of productivity that we've seen in 40 or 50 years. And Coda, I think, obviously, doing super well and used by 25,000 teams all over the world and it's spreading very quickly, but there's now all these other players as well that are taking their own approaches at reinventing different parts of our activity. Shishir Mehrotra (00:52:02): And for an industry that's seen very little change over that period of time, it's amazing how fas ... It's the renaissance of productivity. It's all these new things. I think it is mostly credited to, there's no more file formats. And that totally changes how you think about all these tools. Rob Collie (00:52:16): A punctuated equilibrium theory of technology. Right? Shishir Mehrotra (00:52:19): Right. Rob Collie (00:52:20): Long periods of stagnation and then lots of diversity all at once. You know? Shishir Mehrotra (00:52:23): Yeah. Something quick cages. Yeah. That's right. Rob Collie (00:52:26): So, I almost needed a name for a new emotion when I visited you guys. We need a word for this where you guys were telling me about this grand plan reinventing, essentially, what it means to be a productivity suite and documents and all of that. On the one hand I'm sitting there going like, "Oh, come on. This is crazy what you guys are trying to do. This is never going to work. There's so much inertia in the market. How many things have tried to be the new Excel? Everything that's tried that is no longer here." And I was pretty clear about that with you guys. I wasn't hiding my feelings on that front, but at the same time though, and this is important, I was reading the room. Rob Collie (00:53:05): I was reading you and going, "Yeah, I don't want to bet against these people though." I was really at a weird spot. So, 25,000 teams. Such an incredibly ambitious and gutsy mission, but six years later, you're not doing anything different. You're only growing. You've got people all over the place now. I basically met it was essentially the whole team back then. Shishir Mehrotra (00:53:31): Yeah. You did. Rob Collie (00:53:31): I think I've seen the news wire releases of valuations and things, which are always nuts. How has the product evolved? Is it still on that original mission? Is it everything? Is it everything that Office does? Shishir Mehrotra (00:53:47): Yeah. So, it is still on that original mission. And I gave a talk to new hires. Now, we do it every month. We have a big enough set of people coming in every month. I always start with this big disclaimer. I say, "Sometimes you join a company and what they're doing six or seven years in is completely different than when they started." I generally walk people through our very first pitch deck, our very first [inaudible 00:54:06] and I say, "Look, we're doing almost exactly the same thing. You can attribute that to amazing impressions or amazing stubbornness, whichever way you want to think about it. But, yes, we're roughly doing the same thing as back then. Most customers would describe our product, they call it an all-in-one doc and say, "Oh, it blends the best parts of documents, spreadsheets, presentations, and applications into a new surface. Shishir Mehrotra (00:54:27): Our deep believers will use that line that Alex and I started with and say, "Oh, Coda allows anyone to make a doc as powerful as an app." One of the things that I think wasn't obvious then that I think has become much more obvious now is initially people will use that frame. If you want to know why my wife is starting a new business, she runs the whole thing in Coda. If you asked her why, she said, "Oh, because I don't want to pick documents, spreadsheet presentation, I guess." It's like one of the most terrifying moments a user hits is like, "I'm about to do this thing. And I've got a new doc dialogue, which one is it? Am I ever going to have to write more than a few paragraphs of texts? Oh, I guess, I got to be over here. Am I ever going to need a formula ever? Oh I guess I got to be over here. Am I ever going to need to present this to anybody? I guess I need to be over here." Shishir Mehrotra (00:55:09): And that just sucks. Right? It's a really hard way to think about it. That resonates very quickly with people. But I think when people really fall in love with Coda, they fall in love with all the choices we made on the core building blocks of the product. And I think one of the things that was hard to describe at the time, and I knew I had you come to talk to the team as one of the foremost spreadsheet experts I know inside and out, as a deep user, inventor, so on. And so, obviously, the frame of the discussion started with the spreadsheet. The interesting thing about Coda and our relation to spreadsheets is in some ways we're like a spreadsheet turned inside out, right? Shishir Mehrotra (00:55:42): It's like the core of Coda is not a grid. And so, a lot of the things you're used to in spreadsheets don't exist, but there is a deep re-calc engine sitting underneath Coda. And you can go in the Coda and anywhere you want, you can hit equals and type a formula and you get back a result and you can refer to things. We have a different thing we call tables, which back to our nouns you point at the world, is very importantly not a grid. It's columns have names, not letters. And there is a feature in Excel now called tables that is most people don't know about but you know very, very well. It's amazing how they squirreled it ... I don't know if that happened before you left or not. Rob Collie (00:56:15): Yeah. So, the original version it was called Lists and that was done in 2003. And then we upgraded it into the full tables feature in 2007. That happened on my team. A guy named Joe [Cheralove 00:56:28] reported to me, was in charge of it. I was just a clipboard holder for that release, in a way, right? I can't claim responsibility for the table feature. Joe and company did that. It's cool. Shishir Mehrotra (00:56:39): It's a great example. It's a cool feature and people deep in Excel, they discover this thing. And then, the people that really believe in Excel table to say, "Actually, I would prefer that you never use the grid. Please just do this because this is a better way to think about it." And so, there's a bunch of choices we've made that work along those lines that people just fall deeply in love with. Interestingly, the hardest audience for us is the deep spreadsheet lover, but that's actually ... If you are that person that is building models and the difference between INDEX-MATCH and VLOOKUP, then you're probably actually going to have the hardest time getting into Coda, which is interesting, but we completely opened up the market. And so, now, all of a sudden, the metaphors make tons of sense. And people come into Coda. Shishir Mehrotra (00:57:19): The vast majority of Coda docs are just docs. We have this notion we call pages which, interestingly, they're tabs, spreadsheet tabs turned on the side. We just took a metaphor and we pulled it out, made it more approachable. So, the vast majority of Coda docs have no formulas, no data, no anything. They're just better documents. And then, when people discover tables in Coda, they discover it with a fresh eye and they don't even think about spreadsheets and the people that do, think about it with a completely different metaphor and then, gradually, discover that, "Oh, I can do these things." And actually it feels a lot more like an application and I can add ... Some of our most popular features are buttons and controls and we have these things we call packs that allow you to integrate Coda with all these different services and these automations. And you can build anything in Coda. Shishir Mehrotra (00:57:56): We have many companies that run entirely on Coda. One really fun example, in the Coda gallery you'll find lots of example docs that people publish. There's one from a company called Squared Away. I think they're 150-person company and they wrote this doc about how they saved a $100,000 in software by rebuilding everything in Coda. And not only saved a bunch of money, but actually built a set of things that actually run the way they want to run. And they run their billing system in it, and how they do their virtual agent service, and they run their time-tracking system in it, their CRM, everything ends up in Coda. So, it's an interesting product that I like to call it a product with a very low floor and very high ceiling that you can come in. It's a blinking cursor, a blank screen. Shishir Mehrotra (00:58:35): If you know how to use Google Doc, you know how to use Coda and most people, that's what they do. We're just a fancy document that has pages and a few delightful things that allow your documents to look a little bit better. And then, gradually, you learn a new set of building blocks and work your way up into this ecosystem. One of the reasons I think your initial impressions of, will you be able to replace Excel? And I think we don't try. I never walk in and say like, "Please get rid of spreadsheets." We will often get rid of a spreadsheet. The Pinterest team is a good example. Pinterest runs almost entirely on Coda now and the thing we replaced there, we started with Ben and his team started using Coda to run their meetings. Just a better way to run meeting notes. Shishir Mehrotra (00:59:10): And we have this special type of button we call voting. And so, you can easily set up an agenda for a meeting and everybody votes on what they want to talk about or you can do these very simple, little, we call it pulse check where you can say, "How's everybody feeling about this decision?" And you can click a little button and hide everybody else's responses and just see your own. And then you can click it again and you can see everybody else's. And these are all such simple, little building blocks to go create. And then, they were about to transition from ... They do all their planning at Pinterest in these big spreadsheets like many companies do. And they were about to deploy this big package application for doing it. And the night before, they were doing the evaluation in the big package application, many people said, "I bet I can do that in Coda." Shishir Mehrotra (00:59:48): And she went and built that same system they were about to buy and spend millions of dollars on, she built it in Coda and said, "Oh, this is actually pretty good." And the goal-tracking system is a very natural ... Table metaphors make much more sense than a grid metaphor. And you probably spend a lot of time trying to teach people, "Don't use the grid, use tables. You'll end up in a much better spot if you do it this way." And then just rebuilt it. And not only did they save a bunch of money, but they got to build it in a way that now works with all the rest of their systems. So, now, if you're a product manager at Pinterest and you say, "I'm writing a [inaudible 01:00:17] and I want to go pull in the goals for the team." It's literally one click and you can pull in the goals of the team that are relevant to your project, and then you can update it. And it flows right back to the main system. Shishir Mehrotra (01:00:28): And so, what I find is, we start with the very simple metaphor. Use this to run meetings, write your project brief, write proposal for clients. Those are very common use cases. And then, gradually, people learn these new building blocks. And if I ever get caught in the compared to spreadsheets, probably the wrong spot to be, but you gradually figure out that actually my spreadsheet was not that good for that. And I was wrestling with, how do I produce a view for this thing that actually allows multiple people to see a different thing? Or how do I produce something that integrates with these four other systems? And actually spreadsheets are pretty bad at all that stuff. It reminds me to use a different analogy that a lot of people will describe this as a fourth file format. Shishir Mehrotra (01:01:04): There's doc sheets, slides, and you can technically put a table on a document, but it's a pretty limited table compared to a spreadsheet. And the fact that documents support tables doesn't actually compete with spreadsheets because you quickly realize the wrong thing to do. The same thing, people still use spreadsheets, all the clients. I don't think people stop using doc sheets and slides, but we end up taking a set of processes that are a little bit different and they end up moving over to Coda and it goes very quickly. And I do think this Austin Powers analogy of start from scratch, don't use terminology, people don't understand, oh, I understand pages in the document, I understand what a table is, usually, the first concept people have to understand in Coda that's new to them is a view. That you can create a table and you can create a view at the same table. Shishir Mehrotra (01:01:46): And we actually see the same thing and they're both editable. For database people, that's a very understandable thing but, for normal people, that's not a common thing. And it's total moment of magic where it's like, "Hey, we're going to build a list of tasks and I'm going to divide it up. And this is the one the developers are going to look at and this is the one that product managers are going to look at and they show four different columns and that's okay." It's total mind change or that's a different way to think about it. And we work our way through people's learning experience that way. And the metaphors we currently see have been there for 40 or 50 years. So, it'll take time for them to change. But I think it's fairly obvious to me that the world is ready for it. And I think we're seeing that change happen as we work through this. Rob Collie (01:02:27): My picture of what you're doing is really changing quite a bit. Not that what you're doing has changed, it's my picture. This discussion about processes and so, the company you mentioned that runs their billing and they typically think of as a CRM, all of that, all of that happening in Coda is fascinating. The things you're talking about with Excel, it's not necessarily that Coda is aiming at the spreadsheet workload, but spreadsheets are used, misused for a jillion different things. Even what you were talking about, YouTube, if someone flagged a video, it would be a line on a spreadsheet. Right? Shishir Mehrotra (01:03:06): Yeah. Right. Rob Collie (01:03:07): Okay. That's an example of where you, "Ah, spreadsheet." Shishir Mehrotra (01:03:09): [crosstalk 01:03:09] spreadsheet. Rob Collie (01:03:11): It's just the most convenient thing. The way that our company operates, the processes that run our company ... And our company has turned out to be very heavily dependent on excellent processes. The average consulting firm, the old business model is you land a client and you try to never leave. You park as many people there, you drag that one project out as long as you can. That's the business model. And so, utilization isn't a tough challenge when you're working in that industry. But our whole goal is to be really good for the customer. The best possible thing for the customer is to burn through that project in an amazing way, not too fast, as quickly as possible, as high quality as possible and then if we get to the end of it, maybe they hire us for another one. But that creates what we call the Tetris problem for utilization, right? It's just so hard. And so, we run on all these processes and we have all of these line of business systems, "best of breed", AKA, whatever shit you bought at that point in time and then you bought another one later. Rob Collie (01:04:10): And the glue between them has really opened my eyes to this second age of middleware, this integration point between all of these things. I've really been hot on this lately. And to hear you echoing this from a different angle, a lot of it is you are integrating with different systems but a lot of it is also happening. A lot of things we might typically think of as line of business software that we would buy and then, of course, infinitely configure forever like Salesforce. The idea that you could do that from scratch in Coda is really fascinating. Shishir Mehrotra (01:04:43): Yeah. I think it's also related to one of our most popular features is called packs. So, packs is how you integrate Coda with other systems. And we built a few dozen of these now. We're working right now on opening it up so anybody can build their own and you can connect to any system you want. But it's interesting so you can connect Coda to Salesforce or Jira or so on. And you can do some of that with spreadsheets. I mean, you can connect them together sometimes. And, certainly, for analytics, you can. I mean, you can go do the Power BI type stuff and you can go connect to some of these systems. What happens in spreadsheets is that the metaphor is actually very different, right? None of these things have a grid-based data model. It's actually not really what you want. Shishir Mehrotra (01:05:18): You want something that's a slightly different interface. The other thing is the whole model of a spreadsheet is designed around one way access. The idea is you got one sheet that's all your data and then everything else is [inaudible 01:05:31]. Formulas are not editable and so on. The value proposition of putting it into the spreadsheet this is mostly about reporting and analysis and it's not really about taking action. So, in Coda's case, you pull these things in and the data model makes sense and you can actually like, "Oh, that's a table of customers and that makes sense." You expect to be able to edit it and take action on it. We have this feature we call buttons where you can actually take action on these things. And so, we have a bunch of packs. Shishir Mehrotra (01:05:53): For example, one of our most popular packs is the Slack pack, Gmail pack, so on, are very popular because in Coda you set up this thing and it says, "All right, I'm going to pull in this stuff for billing data and then I'm going to pull around it like what we did with the project. And then, I'm going to create this button that just emails the client every week with, "Here's the update." You could spend forever trying to pull together four different systems of like, "Here's one view for the client, what's going on with your project?" And you can obviously share the doc with them if you want but in a lot of cases, no, I just want an email with what's the last update. A really popular pack in Coda is Twilio. So, you can actually send text messages from Coda. Shishir Mehrotra (01:06:28): So, you can go, "I've got a list of people coming to the event and I just want to be able to set a little drip text campaign that says, one week to go. Did you sign up your registration form? Did you fill out your COVID test? And then, oh, two days ago, here's what the weather's going to be. Now, event's starting. Reply to this if you want." And all that stuff that you'd have to be a developer to do, all of a sudden, literally, looks like a document and you can take it and you can build whatever you like in it. And so, we've seen people build just amazing stuff for this. One of my other favorite examples, there's compost farms outside St. Louis and this family runs it and they do it as a volunteer thing. And they somehow scrounged up enough volunteer money to pay a person to go collect compost from everybody's house to be able to put it and it's called the Soil Farm up St. Louis. Shishir Mehrotra (01:07:11): And it's cool. The community really loves it [inaudible 01:07:13]. And they used to run in a big Google sheet and it's like, "Okay, these are the houses that have their compost set outside." And this person would try to wiggle through it on their phone and you can't really see anything. And he's always wrong. And he's turned this into this Coda doc and it texts people and they text back. There's a good writeup on it, actually. If you search for Soil Farm in Coda, you'll find it. They built this whole workflow and, all of a sudden, this thing just works. So, from that perspective, I would think of what Excel does is a weird detour off of this set, right? It's like sometimes you use Excel to run applications but it's actually pretty inappropriate for most of those things. I think you know I'm one of the deepest lovers of Excel in the planet. Shishir Mehrotra (01:07:50): This is not meant as a jab at the creators of what I think is the lingua franca of how the entire world operates. This is amazing accomplishment, but these metaphors were literally done 50 years ago. And you can only bolt on so many additions to it before realizing time for a new metaphor. That's where tools like Coda come in. And I think we're not the only one. We see companies running on Airtable and Quip and Notion. And there's other ways that people are approaching this too. And it's very clear, at this point, that all of these are making pretty fast progress. We see more and more people get started with them. And these days it's rare to start a company and not pick one of these tools and say, "I'm going to run based off of one of these." Shishir Mehrotra (01:08:32): And I'm a big fan of crossing the chasm as a way of thinking about how products grow. And it's just very clear to me that in that analogy of crossing the chasm that Excel, Office [inaudible 01:08:41] is that late majority. It's like, I'm hanging on for dear life. I'm not letting it go. And you see these early adopters. And this whole industry I think in this next couple of years is jumping that chasm. And we're seeing people that feel a lot more normal, early majority folks pick up these tools and say, "Actually, that's quite better. So, I don't really need that old one." For Coda, I think one of our insights is the easiest starting point is a document. It's amazing how quickly kids learn what a document is and blinking cursor, blank screen, what do you do with it? Shishir Mehrotra (01:09:11): And I think if you get people at that moment and say, "Oh, this is a better blinking cursor." Call it the battle for the blinking cursor. This is a better blinking cursor then you won't think otherwise when you're ready for that next tool. I just thought of a really fun story. Before when I was starting Coda, what was called Krypton, I had this formative experience with my daughter who at the time was, she was probably seven or eight years old. And the way my office laid out, her desk is right over here. Actually, both of them have desks right behind mine. And she was watching daddy work and she said, "Hey, daddy, what's that?" And I was in a spreadsheet and I'm trying to explain to her what a spreadsheet is. And, first off, trying to explain to an eight-year-old what a spreadsheet is pretty hard, pretty hard to explain to a 30-year-old what a spreadsheet is. I'm trying to describe and it's like, "All right, forget it. I'm not going to describe, I'm just going to show you an example." Shishir Mehrotra (01:09:51): Trying to come up with a use case now. What's a use case for an eight-year-old and their six-year-old sister? And so, I said, "Okay, they've been playing this card game." And I said, "Well, why don't we keep score?" And so, I build this spreadsheet and I write Anika and Ria, that's their names, and I build a column for score and then Anika and Ria were columns. And then there's another column for who won. And that the formula is if this is greater than that then Anika won, otherwise, Ria won. And it's like, "Okay, that's cool." And then I said, "By the way, don't forget to copy and paste that formula all the way down the column." And she says, "Why? What does that do?" Shishir Mehrotra (01:10:18): And I was like, "I don't know how to explain." So, we've got this tool where you can't describe it to anybody. You can't come up with a use case for an eight-year-old that makes any sense. And the core mechanic of the tool, is it possible to understand and explain? Why is he copying a formula? I'm going to try to explain R1C1 notation to an eight-year-old? It's not the right way to explain what is happening here. And so, in my mind, these building blocks are good and they've taken us a long ways, but we can probably do better. And that's where we started with Coda. And I think so far that's working pretty well. Rob Collie (01:10:49): My goodness. As a side note, some point, just for fun, just for fun, I'd love to, without recording, just sit down with you and Kellan, our president and COO, and just walk you through how we run our business. I think we're probably a little too deep in to be thinking about switching the way that our whole DNA works maybe. Right? But I think it would be a really interesting cross-pollination because our internal software, our internal automation and systems is like life support. We're like this moon base. We've set up business in a corner of the market that is inhospitable to human life, but there we are. We're thriving. The colony's growing and it's because of this internal system that keeps us alive. I think if we'd started from the beginning, we probably could have used something like what you're talking about. Probably could have used Coda for all of this. We wouldn't need our super overwrought and expensive Salesforce implementation. In the end, it's like simpleton language. The sum total of the whole thing is complex, but you can use small words for all of it. Shishir Mehrotra (01:11:55): Yeah. I can take a look. Agencies and consulting firms as well are very common clients to Coda. I actually think software is not really built for that market or the software that it is, is pretty poor. Salesforce is not really designed for that market as an example. And one of the way I like to think about Coda is I picture the world as like you have Office and docs, sheets, slides, and so, on one end of the spectrum, and then the other end, you have all these packaged applications, which you call best of breed, right? And in the middle, you had this valley. Everybody goes through this point where your spreadsheet and docs run out and then you have to jump across the valley and like, "Oh crap, I really wanted some of what I had back there and now I'm stuck." And I think of what we're doing with Coda and this whole generation of productivity platforms is we're filling in that valley a bit, or at least extending the bridge across. Shishir Mehrotra (01:12:40): And it's not meant to say that many of our clients still use Salesforce and Jira and so on. Small companies often can do without them but as you get larger, there's a lot of reasons why people end up with those things. And then you want to connect to them and make sure that you can get a seamless integration together in some. But this idea of this gulf between these things is very high. And I think what happens with these, you buy these pieces of package software that are best of breed and one size fits all. I can say one size fits all over one size fits none. And you end up with this thing that does 1,000 things that you don't need and it's missing the three things that you do. Shishir Mehrotra (01:13:13): And then you're working a way around it. And maybe I can customize it and then I build a script that does some other thing. And you end up with this mess of not really what was ever intended to be done there. And then, you can't really take advantage of any other updates and so on because they don't really apply to you. And so, we find consulting firms are actually a pretty good target for us. So, yeah. I'd love to show you. Rob Collie (01:13:31): And vice versa. Shishir Mehrotra (01:13:32): Yeah. Rob Collie (01:13:33): Here's the edgy question, the important question that everyone here wants to know, can I pull data from Coda into Power BI? Shishir Mehrotra (01:13:39): The API works great. I actually haven't tested it myself, but I can't imagine why not. Rob Collie (01:13:45): We need a Power BI pack. Shishir Mehrotra (01:13:46): Yeah, totally doable. Tom Larock (01:13:48): Do you mean that the other way though? You mean to pull data from Power BI into Coda? Shishir Mehrotra (01:13:53): Both are probably interesting. Power BI into Coda, when we open to the pack ecosystem, we'll be able to do it. One of the hardest parts about pulling from systems like Power BI or Snowflake or so on is the schema changes. And so, when you pull from Jira the schema is mostly the same. They're custom fields, but it's mostly the same. And so, you engineer them all but differently. So, we're about to ship a set of updates that allow pulling from schema list or changing schema systems. But at that point, we'll be able to pull in not only what ... The key part of what happens when you pull into Coda is because we have native support for tables, you end up with relationships that actually match what your database does. So, you don't pull in one table, you pull in all of them and all the relationships are intact. Shishir Mehrotra (01:14:30): You can navigate them and the formula language understands them and so on. The other way around of, can I take data that's in Coda and pull it in the other systems? That's all possible too, in some senses. We have a good rest head on Coda it'd be relatively straightforward any tool that can pull out of a well-formed, rest-based data API. You could probably do it today without really any work from us. But there's probably some work we could do to make it better. Rob Collie (01:14:52): Here's the use case. And Tom's right to ask about it both directions. Tom Larock (01:14:56): Oh, hold on. You said I was right. Hold on. Write it down. Rob Collie (01:14:58): Yeah. Write it down. Write it down. Right. Yeah. We need to share to say you're right. That's going to carry more weight. Okay. So, if we had, let's say, instead built our whole company's digital nervous system around Coda rather than best of breed, blah, blah, blah, plus middleware, well, we would still need to be able to do some very, very sophisticated reporting and analysis on it that Power BI it is a hammer for that nail. It is really, really, really good, right? So, we'd still want to use Power BI for that, but then we would reach some conclusions. We would want to take some actions. Shishir Mehrotra (01:15:31): Yeah. You pipe it back in. Rob Collie (01:15:36): And so, there's two pieces of techno-integration that you could consider at Coda, make it a lot more relevant immediately to me, which is make it really straightforward for me to pull the data in. But then, also, the equivalent of a custom visual implemented in Power BI that allows me to take that action back in to Coda. Right? If my processes were running in Coda, I would do some analysis, reach a conclusion. I need to take some action. And then, I would want to trigger another Coda process. Well, Microsoft has made the Power BI surface pluggable. You can write a custom visual which, typically, you would use to render your own chart, but that same framework can be used for basically anything. Shishir Mehrotra (01:16:14): Yeah. [crosstalk 01:16:15]. Rob Collie (01:16:15): Now, we're really having fun. Shishir Mehrotra (01:16:16): We're working on a bunch of the stuff the Microsoft team has asked us to prioritize, no big surprise, integrations in their teams. And so, we're working on some of those first. That's such a [inaudible 01:16:26] that's there. Every time I talk to them that's what they want. It's like, how come you don't have better teams? And we were blocked by a couple technical gaps to get that done, but that'll come soon. And we have actually a really good integration with Slack. And so, I think we'll end up mimicking a lot of that in the team's world. But I think some of what you're talking about about building Power BI visualization and so on is totally a reasonable extension project. And maybe we could hire you guys to do it. Rob Collie (01:16:48): I mean, [Satya 01:16:51] asked you to do something. Rob asked you to do something. I mean ... Shishir Mehrotra (01:16:55): All right, Tom, you can break the tie. Rob Collie (01:16:56): Fine. Fine. 51-49, Satya. Fine. I can understand that prioritization. Shishir Mehrotra (01:17:07): Satya has been a fun supporter of this ecosystem, actually. We all know he's a good guy. I think he has a pretty good view on, I think, courage innovation in this space. Rob Collie (01:17:16): Well, I was going to ask you if ... Because I haven't heard you making Microsoft's radar. They were Google Docs obsessed on the Office team for a very, very, very long time. I wonder if they're starting to turn around and go, "Hmm, we'll have to save that for another day, won't we?" Shishir Mehrotra (01:17:32): Yeah. I mean, I think that the closest thing they're working on is this thing called Fluid Framework, which is probably the closest answer to Coda. But it's pretty early. And then, Satya was pretty upfront about that, had the team present it to me pretty early on. So, I've been well aware. Tom Larock (01:17:43): Shishir, I could listen to you talk all day. I haven't really said anything because I just wanted to hear more and more from you. Rob had sent me the link to the rituals for hypergrowth and I'm fascinated by all that. And I'd love to talk for another two hours just about that. I want to echo what you said though about the valley, the productivity tools and you talk to a person who feels that all the productivity tools on the market, essentially, make me less productive. If I have to spend more time using your tool than doing my actual job, then that makes it counterproductive. And I feel almost everything out there does it. Like you said, it has 100 things but not the three things you need. And it's a standard that your company will use now. I'm not going to name names. Rob Collie (01:18:30): Yeah. That's software. That's software for you, right? That's why we hate- Tom Larock (01:18:33): I'm not going to name names of the companies we use that are just shit but they are. And I just wanted to say, I may be oversimplifying it but I feel what you have because I've been looking at the gallery ... I might oversimplify it but I feel what you have created is the beginning of what I would call is a productivity notebook. That's what you have here is you have this ability to make people actually truly more efficient because they're trying to communicate ideas through disparate file systems, bring it all together and then they could pass it off to somebody else like a Jupyter Notebook where they can run things, look at things independently and you make it part of a process. And I'm really excited by all of that. So- Shishir Mehrotra (01:19:13): That's a common analogy. I like that one. Tom Larock (01:19:15): Okay. Can I get you to say that you're right? Shishir Mehrotra (01:19:18): Tom, you're absolutely right. That's a great analogy. Rob Collie (01:19:21): Write it down. Another ritual on the podcast. Hey, Shishir, I've really enjoyed this. Honestly, I feel like I get smarter when I talk to you or I want to get smarter anyway. Tom Larock (01:19:34): I feel [crosstalk 01:19:34]. Rob Collie (01:19:34): It's one or the other. Thank you. Thank you so much for spending this time with us. Tom Larock (01:19:37): Yes, thank you. Shishir Mehrotra (01:19:37): Yeah. Rob Collie (01:19:37): This was fascinating. Announcer (01:19:38): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast. Let the experts at P3 Adaptive help your business. Just go to P3adaptive.com. Have a data day.

Our guest this week, Vishal Lodha, is Strategic Account Director at Microsoft.  A title that comes with huge amounts of pressure and responsibility.  Vishal is the primary point of contact between Microsoft and some of their most important customers and has a vast knowledge of the entire Microsoft stack.  His story is much like so many other guests on our show-taking quite the circuitous and interesting path to where he is today! References in this episode: Planes, Trains, and Automobiles Taxi Scene Royal Tennenbaums Tennis Guy EPISODE TIMELINE: 3:00 - Some tricky acronyms, Vishal's role includes SO many responsibilities, and Vishal's Origin Story-he started in a data junkyard! 18:00 - Vishal's technical and higher education makes him a hot commodity, he exemplifies the human element of data and tech 40:40 - Vishal has been in the field for a long time and has seen some things, the history (and future) of the Cloud, 57:50 - The trends Vishal and Microsoft are talking about, the marriage of IT and Business, and Rob makes quite the observation 1:20:20 - A discussion about AI Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Welcome friends. Today's guest is Vishal Lodha, a very interesting fellow. Like many of our guests on this show, he's taken a very winding career path to get to where he is. But today he's a strategic account director at Microsoft. Yes, the acronym for his title is SAD, but that doesn't mean he's actually sad. He gets to be the primary point of contact at the C level between Microsoft and some of their absolute most important customers. And in that role, he is ultimately responsible for the entire Microsoft Stack, end-to-end. Every last piece of software that Microsoft builds and sells, Vishal represents with these sorts of customers. That's a crazy job, a ton of pressure, a ton of responsibility, but also exposure to some of the most interesting things going on in the industry today. Rob Collie (00:00:58): We talked about a lot of things, AI, the cloud, the human tech interface, which is always a very popular theme on this show. And something you might not know about this show is that we record it with webcams on so that we can see each other. We only publish the audio, but near the end of this recording, I notice something in the background behind Vishal. It is the only thing like it that I have ever seen in my entire life. And we'd absolutely delved into what was going on there. Yes, I'm deliberately teasing, but that's enough. Let's get into it. Announcer (00:01:33): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? Announcer (00:01:37): This is the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast with your host, Rob Collie. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to P3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:01:58): Welcome to the show, Vishal Lodha. How are you today? Vishal Lodha (00:02:02): I'm doing very well, Rob, thanks for asking. Hope everyone is doing well on your end as well. Rob Collie (00:02:07): Yeah, we are. I think we are. Krissy, how are you doing? Krissy Dyess (00:02:10): I'm doing fantastic. Rob Collie (00:02:11): Krissy co-hosts any of our Microsoft... Especially people from the Microsoft field. Krissy being our alliance director with respect to Microsoft. We just named that position, renamed it anyway, backstage. Krissy Dyess (00:02:25): That's right. Rob Collie (00:02:26): It's hot off the press, but Krissy runs our Microsoft relationship. And so when we have someone from the Microsoft field on the show, we're going to tag Krissy in as our co-host. And it just seems appropriate, doesn't it? Krissy Dyess (00:02:38): It does, and I'm happy to be back in the co-host role. Rob Collie (00:02:41): Oh yeah. And we're happy to have you. So Vishal, what's your official job title at Microsoft these days? Vishal Lodha (00:02:47): Yeah. Great question, Rob. We obviously wear multiple hats here, but I'm a strategic account director for Microsoft as part of our US healthcare and life sciences business. I sit in a group with five key strategic accounts that are really important to Microsoft and broader mankind, improving quality of care for our patients. And it's a great team to be part of and very honored to have this role where we have an opportunity to improve the overall healthcare ecosystem for people who need the most. Rob Collie (00:03:20): Has it ever occurred to you that the people who designed that acronym might not have sounded it out? Does this job make you sad, strategic account director? It seems like if you're going to be improving the health of humanity, we'd want a happier acronym. Don't you think? Vishal Lodha (00:03:33): Really don't go by acronyms. At the end of the day, whatever acronyms want you to do, do it. So who cares? Rob Collie (00:03:38): Yeah, I mean we refer to people as TSPs or ATS, right? But you're never going to call yourself an SAD. Vishal Lodha (00:03:45): Well, technically the acronym is AE, account executive. Rob Collie (00:03:49): Oh, that's better. Yeah, I like that. Vishal Lodha (00:03:51): There is nothing at Microsoft that happens without an acronym. I mean, if I had a master list acronym, when I started five years back, it would've been awesome, but I didn't. And I had to almost create my own OneNote, but if I were to even start collecting those acronyms by now, I would've published it into books with chapters. But again, that's a different conversation. Rob Collie (00:04:14): Yeah. Even our acronyms have acronyms. I like account executive. You can do a lot with AE. Technical account executive. You'd say pronounce it TAE, that would be pretty cool. Anyway, so we're going to roll with that, account executive. So what does that mean, practically speaking? Generically speaking, what is that role responsible for? Vishal Lodha (00:04:34): Yeah. So I have end-to-end business responsibilities for the customers. I'm assigned the making sure they are on the path of digital transformation. If you look at Microsoft mission, obviously we are here to empower each and every person in organization on this planet to achieve more. And how do you achieve that is by means of digital transformation, because we are obviously a tech company. Now that just doesn't happen by an AE or another role which is ATS since you love acronyms. I used to be in that role, by the way, before I took this role for four and a half years and that's account technology strategist. Vishal Lodha (00:05:10): And so to make it simple, that person is client CTO and I am considered client CEO. Well, of course we don't call that. It's just to make sure we separate our possibilities. I have overall accountability of what's happening on a large strategic account, which are usually Fortune companies for sure. And so, it's a lot of orchestration, I call it. These transformations just don't happen by combination of few roles, right? There is a lot of different skill set needed, there's a lot of technology, a lot of engineering initiatives, a lot of incubation, co-innovation, go-to market. Again, since you started with acronym, we can pile on more acronyms by bringing those up. But like GTM is such a common one these days. Like, "Okay, how can Microsoft help us go to market faster? How can we realize value? How can we differentiate in the marketplace? How can we create non-traditional sources of revenue," right? Vishal Lodha (00:06:05): I mean, you're looking at some of the healthcare companies, they're calling themselves now MedTech companies, they want to create some non-traditional revenue by just not by providing healthcare services, but maybe some applications and some services around data and analytics that could be important for patients or consumers, depending on what the field is. Vishal Lodha (00:06:25): So really long answer to your question, Rob, but I have a team of about 60 folks give or take, you're familiar with that. We call it a V team. None of them actually report to me, but we are responsible for driving forward digital transformation pillars of Microsoft. We call it modern workplace, intelligent cloud with intelligent cloud apps and infrastructure, data and AI, so that basically breaks into two. And then business applications. That includes a lot of goodness that's happening in our BizApps platform around not just Dynamics 365, but Power Platform, Power Apps, Power BI, remote assist capabilities. And I think that's just a lot to cover. Vishal Lodha (00:07:07): I'm also responsible for making sure our clients have the professional services they need through Microsoft consulting services, working with my Microsoft consulting services, partner, account delivery executive, those things. And then on top of it, you need an enterprise class support for customers to run their operations well. And so what used to be premier is now more focused on unified support. And so I have also those responsibility to make sure our customers have the right level of support at the right time. And I'm usually the person which will get active escalations if things don't go right. So call me as the lead orchestrator of the activities on a strategic account, if nothing else suits better. Rob Collie (00:07:49): So you said you were an ATS for like four and a half years? Vishal Lodha (00:07:52): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:07:53): Was that your role when we first met? How recently did you make that switch? Vishal Lodha (00:07:57): So I changed to an AE year role in September of 2020. So you're absolutely right. I was an ATS. I've been a technical professional for majority of my career. I was not born in the sales world. In fact, I used to be on the other side of the aisle buying services and partnering more with key strategic partners and some call them suppliers. I'm not a big for fan of that word. I call them partners. And so I've done a lot of deals as a former CIO and in other roles as well, delivering services for customers. So, I just made that switch September of 2020. So it's going to be a year. But I was mostly in the ATS role for four and a half years when I came to Microsoft. My role was mostly to my make sure customers get value out of products, platform and services they procure. So my goal was to drive consumption and ROI for a customer for the most part. Rob Collie (00:08:49): Yeah. Because you have a very technical background. Let's get into that. You said you weren't born in the sales or account management world. Where were you born? Vishal Lodha (00:09:00): The reality is I was born in a town called Jodhpur in India, but I don't think that was the question. Rob Collie (00:09:05): Yeah. We're looking for the comic book origin story here. Vishal Lodha (00:09:08): Yeah. I don't know if data center is the right place, but you can call it. I was born in a junkyard data center full of metal, I guess. Those days- Rob Collie (00:09:17): This sounds good. This is promising. This has good comic book. Potential. Vishal Lodha (00:09:22): Yeah. Racking and stacking a lot of hardware. I shouldn't say that, but the journey started actually when I came to grad school here. Most of my friends or colleagues or my classmates would end up taking a very traditional role in a grad program, which would be like a TA or RA. And somehow I ended up on a third acronym called GA, graduate assistant, where I was a part-time student system administrator for a department on campus called educational technology services that would actually provide technical services to college of education at Western Michigan University where I went for my grad school in Kalamazoo, Michigan. So I got connected to that geeky community for lack of better term, who have been in this space for a long time. And I did some of the help desk, desktop support, some server management. Vishal Lodha (00:10:18): We used to run Novell that time, if anybody remembers Novell Groupwise for email collaborations. Fun days, yeah. Again, a lot of fun that time. Rob Collie (00:10:27): So you have exposure to the flow chart. Is it plugged? Reboot. You've been through that a time or two? Vishal Lodha (00:10:36): Not only that. Make sure the floppy disc is ejected before you reboot. Those things. Otherwise, yeah. The boot disc will be different and you will never get to where you want to be. So yeah, I've done those, Rob. Krissy Dyess (00:10:49): Were you also in the secret room with the lock that only a couple people with super secret access could get into? Were you in one of those? Vishal Lodha (00:10:57): Not in my initial part of my career, but yes, after a few years I've done those too. And yes, I've gone through multiple of those locks, especially during a transition when we were transitioning a service contract from a big player to a more a midsize company. So yeah, Krissy, definitely I've gone through those locks. Krissy Dyess (00:11:15): Those were always the people though that I wanted to be best friends with because you could go into the secret room that nobody could get into and you could hide away and see how things work behind the scenes. Vishal Lodha (00:11:24): Yeah. The lot of racking and stacking work initially in the early part of my career and it was a lot of fun. But it's also interesting being in a technical support, you make actually friends a lot quicker because everybody needs help. Like I would go for a lunch break and before even I would get my meal and check out, it's like, "Hey, I'm having problem with this." I'm like, "Yeah, I do this four hours and then I take lunch break, and then I do four more." So like you can't get out of that infinite loop. Even though people meet outside of work, even on the sidelines of a game, "Hey, I got this computer and I installed a software and a lot of those..." So people just thought of me as a TV repair man of the old times, like guy with a toolbox. Vishal Lodha (00:12:10): Good news is I don't need to ask this guy to come my house. I can call him and he can probably tell me what to do to fix my computer. And I've had those episodes where people have lost their data and no backups. And so we don't want to go there. We'll get somewhere very quickly. Rob Collie (00:12:26): Yeah. We had a mutual acquaintance contact both of us recently about a ransomware situation where some company got... Someone was trying to extort them for half a million dollars to unencrypt all or to not disclose or... I don't know. It's a natural thing to ask you, but what's the answer? "I don't know, don't pay." Vishal Lodha (00:12:46): I mean, I'll tell you my answer. And again, this is my personal opinion. Doesn't reflect anything about who I work for, but my answer is, apply best practices and you should always have backups of data you have. If you don't, that's fine. You can pay, but I'll tell you two things. There's no guarantee that after paying you will get that back. And even if you get it, there's no guarantee that you'll get all of it back, right? So again, it's an individual risk appetite. There's no right or wrong here, FBI and other agencies will tell you a lot is paid in terms of ransomware. Do we have data and statistics on the recovery rate? I don't know. I don't think so, but we don't need to go there. Rob Collie (00:13:26): It reminds me of the beginning of Planes, Trains and Automobiles where Steve Martin, I think it's Kevin Bacon, they both get to a taxi at the same time and Steve Martin tells him, "I'll pay you $75 if let me have this cab." And Kevin bacon goes, "Oh yeah, anyone that will pay $75 for a cab would clearly pay $200 for a cab." So once you pay the ransomware person, their incentive is to say, "Oh, well it turns out it's a little bit more." I just don't know why they would... I mean, they don't have a reputation to uphold. It's like- Vishal Lodha (00:14:01): Yeah, it's not like you pay somebody ransomware and then you can go and write a five star review for them that, "Hey I got hacked and this company or this group who hacked is really professional." Rob Collie (00:14:12): Yeah. 10 out 10. Vishal Lodha (00:14:13): "And they have a great customer experience or customer delight, whether it is in the, what is it called? Dark web actually is the word I was looking for. So there might be some true professionals and people of high integrity in the dark web. But how do you define that? I don't know. Rob Collie (00:14:28): It's not really part of the business model. Wouldn't make the core tenants of that organization, would it? Our core values are, well, get money. Vishal Lodha (00:14:37): Exactly. And get money fast and run fast. Rob Collie (00:14:41): All right. So you got introduced to the world of it and systems in that GA role. Krissy Dyess (00:14:48): It's the acronyms. Rob Collie (00:14:49): I know it's the path of acronyms. It's like the yellow brick road. Krissy Dyess (00:14:52): We're going to have them all at the end of this session. Rob Collie (00:14:54): So let's start running tally of every time we say an acronym, we're going to need to ring a bell. So where from there? Vishal Lodha (00:15:01): Supporting operations in a higher education board, supporting faculty students, staff mission is great. It's awesome that you're able to get an advanced degree at the same time you're helping advance the higher education mission. So I think I had a great time and it's just so stereotype thinking where, "Okay, this guy has a technical background and he's now involved in a higher education industry, right?" Whether you want to do or not, you actually naturally become a good fit because now you've done that. I was trying to actually say, "Okay, once I graduate, I'll go and work in high tech sector." This is around '99 when I started. 2001, I did graduate with my masters in computer science. And that was also an interesting time. dot-com challenges. People who had offers [inaudible 00:15:53]. And I'm like, "Man, I really don't mind this part-time job. It lets me do what I want to do and continue to learn." Vishal Lodha (00:16:01): We are always on the cutting edge of technologies because higher ed actually does get to try things a lot faster. They have some of the corporate partnerships where they would be evaluators. They're not like traditional regulated industry. The regulated industry tried to be a little bit more cautious about it. They won't be wanting to like on the bleeding edge of technology. They like some maturity and things like that. Higher ed is like, "Well, we're all next process of experiment and learning." So anyways, didn't pan out what the plans were because of just the environment, and at that time an industry was in an interesting way. I call it ups and downs. So I ended up continuing in that role and basically pursued my MBA as well while I was there. Vishal Lodha (00:16:42): That just gave me some extra time to stabilize myself. And while I was about to graduate, I did get finally the, call it full-time or real world, real job offer from Purdue University in West Lafayette. And so here I am now a higher education guy landing from one institution of higher education to another one, only three hours south of where I was. But I guess little bit of less snow. I didn't have to deal with the lake effect, Michigan. Temperatures weren't that different, but I think if you look at the driveway accumulation, that would tell you the story for sure. Rob Collie (00:17:15): So Purdue, is that where you were immediately before Microsoft? Vishal Lodha (00:17:19): No, not really. There were a couple of hops in between. So I was transitioning from the tech world to higher education to higher education. I was at Purdue in college of engineering for a few years, college of agriculture, mostly working on- Rob Collie (00:17:33): Agriculture? Really? I did not know that. Vishal Lodha (00:17:36): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:17:37): So let's not skip past Purdue. Purdue is a fantastic engineering school. I knew a lot of people from Purdue out in Seattle. As far as I could tell, half the people at Boeing were from Purdue. So what all did you end up doing at Purdue? What was the story there? Vishal Lodha (00:17:52): Yeah, I was part of an organization called Engineering Computer Network, which is basically the IT arm of college of engineering. My focus was to support nuclear engineering department there, all of it, services, infrastructure, and endpoint computing to depart mental technology initiative solutions, you name it. That was great. And then transitioned to college or agriculture in a very similar role but as an IT manager. Actually, that was my first experience as a supervisor. I had one person reporting to me initially, and then we added another headcount. I know you don't like to go too far too fast from engineering to agriculture, but I was just keen on making sure I let you know where my next stop was. Rob Collie (00:18:35): I mean, from nuclear engineering to agriculture, it's a pretty natural. That's just the curve. That's how it works. And then were you worth the agricultural wing, supporting them up until your next job? Was that your final role at Purdue? What's the end game at Purdue? Vishal Lodha (00:18:54): No. Great question, but there's a couple of more stops here, Rob. Rob Collie (00:18:58): Okay. Let's do it. Vishal Lodha (00:19:00): Yeah. So did that for a while, and then I got, I would say, a little bit bored and little bit driven out of circumstances. I'm like, I need to get out of higher education industry because I want to see other perspectives. There's a lot more to this world than higher ed and I was right and I was wrong because guess what? There's a twist in this story. I come back to Purdue a little bit. So this is like a movie. Rob Collie (00:19:20): A little boomerang thing going on. Vishal Lodha (00:19:22): Exactly. And then I exit Purdue again. So it's like, "What does this guy want in life?" "We'll figure that out later." So I said, "Okay, I want to explore more." So I actually started looking into some other options and got involved with the consulting organization. Actually. I think that's where I found my true calling or my passion. I mean, I was always in a service industry indirectly. I was servicing clients or users from a technical support and services management. But now you're looking at a broader perspective like customers, like other organizations, right? So I came to work for a consulting company here in Indianapolis that led a lot of work on the business intelligence side and some infrastructure as well, working mostly with government clients, Department of Defense specifically and did that for a few years. Vishal Lodha (00:20:10): Actually I stood up a BI practice. At that time, Cognos was a hot commodity. I recruited students, graduates from schools through campus recruiting, started a BI practice and got the right talent, made them go through boot camp, made them part of a consulting practice and really got those resources deployed to the who needed those services. I mean, data and analytics was picking up. This is 2007 timeframe. Rob Collie (00:20:39): Okay. The 2007 release of Excel is the release in which Office really took BI seriously for the first time. And that's also the release where I was introduced to BI. In some weird twist of fate was introduced to it, in some sense, put in charge of it for Excel. And it was the really interesting days. I think I even took like a Cognos class at some local community college out in Seattle just to size up the competition. Vishal Lodha (00:21:08): Yeah. I mean, the focus at that time was who were the key leaders, if you look at that. By the way, I did the same too. I went to the Cognos academy in Schaumburg that used to be their facility training and got trained and certified. But at that time it was like business objects, Cognos, and there were some things were popping up. I think micro strategy was picking up at that point in time. And so if you knew any of these tools and had skill sets of data and analytics, you were in demand. I mean you were getting there very quickly. So people have made career transitions and have gotten on that wave of BI analytics through those tool sets. Rob Collie (00:21:47): So just like basically everyone that we've ever had on this show is a meandering path to a career. And like you said, you found your passion. We subtitled this show Data With The Human Element, something that you called out and I was also about to if you hadn't. So much of this, even the story so far, you've been in a service oriented capacity, it's interacting with other people, it's helping them solve their problems. So it's not really about the tech, is it? It's about using the tech to help others and helping others get the most out of their tech. So running a BI practice and something happens, right? Do you get bored of that? What happened? Vishal Lodha (00:22:26): Not really. I was enjoying it. I was delivering services for Fortune customers and government for many years. And one of my colleagues actually went to work for a different company. That company was growing up really fast here in town, rapidly. And something came up like, "Hey, you would be a great fit for this." I'm like, "Well, I'm happy what I'm doing." Like, "Well, let's talk." I'm like, "Okay, let's talk." So I go and talk. He's like, "Yeah, I think you should interview you." I said, "I think interviews are distraction. If you're enjoying what you're doing, why do you want to create this thing?" And he's like, "No, you should do it. Benchmark yourself in the market." "All right, let's do that." And we do and met with the hiring manager who was the VP. And I also met with the CEO, really humble guy. Vishal Lodha (00:23:07): And next few days just go and then suddenly I have an offer and I have an offer to lead all of delivery services for the organization. Originally got hired as director of service delivery and mostly getting out of the infrastructure world now, not completely, but mostly. And suddenly if I were to take this role I would have responsibility for commercial customer, state and local government and not much federal or DOD. And that thing goes by, and my organization grows and I got moved one level up, which was great. And then as part of that move, I also got oversight responsibilities of running an offshore delivery center in India, which existed when I had taken the prior role within the same company. But now I'm also overseeing folks in a different time zone with the... Some of the local responsibilities in that country, including business operations, banking, relationships, establishing relationships with facilities management and real estate for operations and things like that. Vishal Lodha (00:24:08): So it was a great experience to get that thing. And especially in India where I grew up and so it's like, I go there and I used to go every quarter just for making sure the operations are smooth. Team building was so important because those folks were working US shifts. And so, it was really where I learned a lot of things, at least in my last three roles before coming to Microsoft, really made me who I am today. And of course, some great experience at Purdue, especially empathy, right? Like, "Okay, how do you very empathetically talk to your customers? You listen to them, you try to understand their business problems." So just because I was mostly people-facing, customer-facing, I had a different temperament than some of my friends who were hardcore engineering, no offense meant, but definitely made me a lot better person, a lot humble is what I felt. Vishal Lodha (00:24:55): I used to be that guy with a very interesting temperament growing up. But as things progressed, made me a better individual. So again, Rob, I haven't come to your final or conclusion, but so those are the roles I did and then had a responsibility of an organization of 400 FTEs including manager of managers, which was great, really enjoyed it, but was extremely time consuming in the sense that I was working two shifts a lot, like 15-hour days were uncommon. Especially during my India at trips, I was actually covering India hours as well as US hours, which is great. But then you catch up on sleep and you can... In fact, I remember very well. I flew out from Mumbai on one of the nonstop flights to New York. I only woke up 45 minutes when we were away from New York and the flight crew thought I was probably not even alive. Vishal Lodha (00:25:44): And they said, "Sir, are you okay?" "I'm like, "Yeah, I'm fine. I haven't slept in like last four days." And here I go, "I'm catching up." So it was all good, great experience. Lot of trust conversations, lot of endurance-building during that time. And it was going really well. And then I was like, "I'm spending way too many hours on work. I need a work life-balance. And I think higher education was perfect. And I didn't have to worry of about email or a phone call after five o'clock. And something opens up Purdue University. I talk to my family and I suddenly end up becoming assistant head of computer science department at Purdue. Rob Collie (00:26:19): Very cool. Very, very cool. That 400 person company before we move on from that was that also a consulting services company? Vishal Lodha (00:26:25): Yeah. And that will be my next stop again. And this is going to be like, "What is going on?" Rob Collie (00:26:30): Well, no, I think it's time for you to go back to Purdue. Vishal Lodha (00:26:32): Okay. Rob Collie (00:26:32): I think Purdue is actually the center of this orbit. We'll find out though. That's what this experiment's about. Is it consulting or is it Purdue? We're not sure what the center of your universe is. Assistant director, is that assistant in charge of the entire computer science program? Vishal Lodha (00:26:49): It's assistant head. So there's a department head and then there's an assistant head. It's mostly, I would call it academic administration and chief of staff. Rob Collie (00:26:58): That's a big change. Vishal Lodha (00:26:59): Huge. Rob Collie (00:26:59): That's not the IT support. It's not consulting services. I mean, that's about as big of a change... From the outside I think a lot of people would go, "Yeah, he's just still in tech." They hear computer science, like, "No, that's got to be incredibly different job, some serious whiplash doing something like that." Krissy Dyess (00:27:17): I often think too, it's hard to transition when you're in tech and you're coding and you're figuring out technical problems that transition between talking and figuring out computer problems to figure out human problems across large organizations with a lot of moving parts. That's a really unique skill set. Vishal Lodha (00:27:37): Yeah. I mean, there was correlation, I would say that, of course this role involved overseeing IT support staff for computer science, but that was not the only one. Even communication staff or corporate relations as well. So per Purdue, that's a very interesting corporate relationship program and briefs time I was there got to interact with big tech companies, including some large corporate partners who had a great partnership with Purdue in general. And even we further strengthen those relationships. But basically a large department of about 1000 undergrad students, 300 grad students and be one of the people who help manage operations. And it was a really a cool role. I had not imagined that I would be making a switch fairly quickly because the person who I replaced was in that role for almost three plus decades. And he actually retired from that role. Vishal Lodha (00:28:34): And that was my whole thing, was like I was going to go there and really enjoy being with the student community, work with corporate partners, industry experts and enable students, or I call it future innovators. There was also a lot of startup activity had started at that time. Some students were bringing some interesting ideas and they were looking to form startups. It was really going well. And my wife was already working there. I mean, she had been there now 15 years so that had not changed any of the roles. She had done couple by just within her line of field at Purdue. So I was the one who was actually going around musical chairs. So it was like, "Okay, back to full circle, perfect stability, great work-life balance." Rob Collie (00:29:18): Did that role have anything... I just would think of it as being all up administration for the computer science department. So chain changes to the course offerings. Were you involved in those discussions? Vishal Lodha (00:29:31): Yeah. Launching new or at least helping plan new graduate programs. I think we were looking at Cyber Security 1 at that time when I was there. I think data science was in early stages. We were trying to collaborate with folks in the Krannert School of Management at Purdue. And so how do you start this interdisciplinary thing? I was also trying to tell like, "Hey, technical skills are good, but our students who graduate also need to have some good project management skills. And so how do we infuse those?' I mean, they're excellent coders and they really at product developers. But I think the more I've seen of the real world going back and forth, I feel like project management skills are so important. And you know, Rob and Kris, Microsoft has a very strong program management concept here, right? In fact, here at Microsoft, we don't call project managers, PMs, we, and PJMs because PM was taken by program managers, and here comes another acronym. Rob Collie (00:30:24): Oh yeah. Ring the bell. Krissy Dyess (00:30:24): Ring the bell. That's what I was going to say, "Ring the bell." Rob Collie (00:30:28): The acronym bell. Krissy Dyess (00:30:31): I think that's been my journey is just getting through all the acronyms, but I'm learning quite a bit. Rob Collie (00:30:36): The Microsoft field I think has a stronger acronym game than even the engineering teams. We didn't have that at many. We had COM and DDE, just not that many acronyms going around, really. In fact, I think at one point we had like a policy that we weren't allowed to name anything with an acronym or a code name. We had to give things even temporarily, just really descriptive names. So you end up with names that were like a paragraph long and some of the made it out into the public as actual product or actual feature names, which is really, really, really dull. So in the zero sum game, because I'm assuming you can't offer as a computer science department or really any academic department an ever-growing list of programs, an ever-growing list of courses. It's interesting to talk about the new things that were coming along. But do you remember any of the courses or programs that got canceled or mothballed to make room for the new stuff? What was falling off the back of that Stack? Vishal Lodha (00:31:35): Yeah, At least my tenure there, which was roughly about less than a year, actually close to a year or something like that, really not much. I will say that I saw hundreds of students. So when they come to campus, look at any undergrad, "What do you want to do?" "I want to do this, but I don't know." Or how many times you hear of people changing majors, right? And people who thought they were really wanting to do computer science end up in computer technology or computer information system. That means they'll actually go out of computer science program and go to computer technology or in management. But from a coursework, I didn't see a lot of turnover at that point. I think my predecessor who was obviously there for three decades would've seen those transition a lot more. As technology evolved, the coursework had to be brought up to speed because at the day you are an input to a workforce system, right? Vishal Lodha (00:32:28): And so you want to produce best graduates who are at par with the current technical trends and things like that. So I think the underlying foundation remained the same when it comes to coursework, object-oriented programming and data structures and numerical analysis. Having strong math and underlying logic and programming skills was the key. But really during at least my tenure, wasn't a lot of change. Now, one thing we did that was pretty cool was giving real time exams to students versus, "Okay, here's the paper, here's the pen, write the code or pseudo code and submit in and we'll get real." Instead, give them an environment to take an exam realtime on a disconnected computer where you can actually write the code and correct the syntax and all that thing. So I think that was when things started to change in terms of using technology for an upgrade of instructional technology, right? What do you do to make instructional mechanism better and more real time? Vishal Lodha (00:33:29): And they would obviously write their final exam code and they'll submit to a system and the systems were getting smart at even detecting plagiarism where people would actually use each other's code and make some cosmetic changes. But in the algorithms behind the scenes were smart enough to figure out. And so yeah, it was an interesting period of time and technology was evolving to help build the future workforce in the field of technology. Rob Collie (00:33:55): Yeah. That was my first reaction when you mentioned like writing the code on a disconnected computer, I'm like, "Oh, this is all about the prevention of cheating." Is that right? Vishal Lodha (00:34:05): Yeah. We had quite a bit of cases. There was no easy way to, obviously. But again, I think as time evolves and I think people realize when they do these things in a disconnected environment, well this is not for them or this program is not right. And they find their passion and from [inaudible 00:34:22]. At the end of the day, I see almost all of them to be super successful. It's just where the land. I mean, I had students who I've heard, like they would just crack the problem very quickly and be done and some would take longer, and some would just not able to do it. And yeah, it's just very relative at the end of the day. But I mean, those student, some didn't have programming skills, and they were really good at business. And going back to my... We used to see several hundred people transition from CS program into other majors and they would do just fine. Rob Collie (00:34:53): Yeah. I remember in the mid '90s when I was in college submitting those computer programming projects via the online submission process, always had like a deadline of midnight and it was just so stinking clumsy. You'd have to like try to submit three or four times before it would take. The command lines were really vague. It was just awful. Nothing like uploading... Uploading a video to YouTube today seems like the easiest thing in the world. Like this would be like by comparison, one billionth of as much data, because it's just a text file. We wouldn't be able to submit it. I remember like the clock tower would be bonging out midnight, bong, bong. And we're like, "Come on, press Enter, press Enter. Work this time, work this time." I would've preferred, I think the offline environment you're talking about. The real time, that sucked. I didn't enjoy that at all. Very stressful. Krissy Dyess (00:35:47): And don't mix up the punch cards. Rob Collie (00:35:49): That's right, yeah. There were no punch cards. Vishal Lodha (00:35:52): Yeah. But if you look at the hiring trends, even when I graduated and had gone to Silicon Valley for some interviews and they said, "Here's the problem, here's the marker. Can you write me the code here?" And I was like, "Okay, let's try." And again, if you don't do that in college, it's a reality you have to face in your interviews. I mean, some people actually get filtered through those mechanisms as part of the hiring process. And it's a good rehearsal for real world. Rob Collie (00:36:22): When I interviewed at Microsoft out of undergrad, the fact that I did not enjoy programming, even though I had a computer science degree, I really didn't enjoy programming. So I would never really do it unless I was forced to. That became pretty clear in my very, very first interview at Microsoft. I was interviewing on the Windows test team. To be a test engineer on Windows at that time, and certainly today as well, you basically had to be an A plus developer. You weren't just someone who was going there trying to break things manually. You had to write a lot of test code. In fact, that's all you really did. And I remember the first question I got asked was something like, "Implement a hash table to do this with length lists hanging off of the hash table for collisions." And I mean, I understood the theory of all of that. I understood what it was all about and everything. And like, I just could not do it. And I'm just like sweating to death and it was, it was awful. Rob Collie (00:37:13): Didn't get a job offer from the Windows team, landed on the Office team instead, which was fine. Programming's something that's got to be your love. It's got to be something that you just really, really enjoyed. Even though I still don't love it. I'm a much better programmer today than I was back then based off of like the necessity of even just like the VBA that I've had to write over the years. The language is different, but the concepts are very similar. I've implemented my own structure and custom data types and things like that and VBA because I had to. There was no other way to do what I needed to do. In college I just didn't have any personal interest like that. It was a big difference. You said that stint at Purdue was like a year? Vishal Lodha (00:37:53): Yeah. We had to make some decisions based on I would call it dual career situation. And so, so obviously I be... The timing was perfect in a way, but you know, not great because as I said, I envisioned retired out of Purdue. That's where I started my first job and both my kids were born in Lafayette. West Lafayette area was perfect to be called home. And well, things changed a little bit and we ended up moving to Carmel. And my former boss, he always text me and say, "Are you bored yet?" I'm like, "No, not yet." "Are you bored?" "Not yet." Not yet. And then the way it worked out, they were creating the first ever CIO role for the organization. The organization had grown very quickly from 2,500 FTEs to five grand in no time, employees. Vishal Lodha (00:38:40): And so they needed to modernize lot of the systems, backend systems. And so they said, "Hey, we're going to create this role of VP in CIO and I think you would be a good fit. You always wanted to live in Carmel." We're going to basically buy this office building and completely renovate it and scale our operations, and let's talk." As you know, Rob, I never say no to, "Let's talk," right? Something may come out of it. And we talked and it made sense. So my wife also got a role in the life sciences industry here in the area, worked for one of the Fortune companies as well. And so it was just perfect timing. I got some pushback from kids. "Why do we have to do this? Why is it necessary? We are happy." So it worked out and was the CIO there for almost two years. And then the Microsoft opportunity came like, "Let's talk." And, "Sure." And here I am. So no more backtracking, Rob, anymore. Rob Collie (00:39:36): That's it. We're going to just sweep the sand behind us. We've always been right here. So now you're an account executive for Microsoft, with certain strategic customers in the life sciences industry. That's as specific as we're going to get, right? That's the move? Vishal Lodha (00:39:52): Yeah. Or you can just call it a large strategic customer is fine too. Rob Collie (00:39:56): All right. But you already talked about being in life sciences, so it's out of the bag that you're in life sciences, Vishal. Vishal Lodha (00:40:02): That's fine. Well, that's my title anyways in my email signature. What are you going to do about it? Rob Collie (00:40:06): That's right. That's public record, man. Vishal Lodha (00:40:08): Exactly. Rob Collie (00:40:09): So you've had a ringside seat for actual practical on the ground applied technology for a very long time. Really for me, I was inside the bubble in Redmond during a lot of that same timeframe and a tremendous amount has changed. So you were on the ground for the whole cloud revolution. We weren't even talking about cloud. I mean, I remember we did a release of Office 2003, that was originally like code named Office.net. And it was supposed to be the first version of Office that heavily integrated with internet-based services. We didn't have the word cloud yet. And no one could come up with any really good ideas. There were no good ideas as to what that meant. SharePoint became a really big deal in that same timeframe. It had been introduced in the prior release, Office XP. Even though we didn't know it, SharePoint was establishing its foothold and it wasn't a cloud service yet. It was 100% a non-premises or product that you would install and administer at great cost and expense and pain. Rob Collie (00:41:23): All of us were like, "Well, that's not internet. It's SharePoint, that's not internet. We need other services." And so we had all kinds of ideas. We had something that was going to be essentially like Azure DataMarket was, a place where you could buy data subscriptions and import them into Excel to cross analyze with other things, and that didn't go anywhere. Azure DataMarket came along years later and it also didn't go anywhere. But yeah, 2003 was the first time we were really talking about what later became the cloud, but we had almost zero traction doing anything about it. And now here we are. I don't think any of us could have conceived of the idea of Office 365 at the time and how that hybridizes between, "I still have really nice rich client functionality. Like I've got a desktop version of Excel. I've got a web version of Excel too, which is crazy, right? I've got a web version of PowerPoint, I've got web versions of everything, but I still have that desktop experience." Rob Collie (00:42:21): It's amazing how a really clearly good idea takes a long time to actually find its real manifestation. There's no way in 2003 we could have seen what was coming with SharePoint online and all of that. We tried to force it. And what we ended up with was instead, actually just a really lackluster release of the desktop apps because we put so many resources into these blue sky internet services, ideas, none of which really amounted to a whole lot. And believe it or not, we had deliberately taken every single core app of Office down to a skeleton crew. Each of those teams was like slashed to 20% of its original staffing. It was crazy. Just a crazy time. Krissy Dyess (00:43:08): I remember those days. And I remember wondering, "Is this cloud ever going to take off?" Because you heard it, you knew it was coming. And like I think particularly interesting to me would be the healthcare space. My personal feeling was that they were never going to adopt the cloud because of privacy and data sensitivity. We're seeing that today though, right? Vishal Lodha (00:43:29): Yeah. So again, cloud was still a very relative term. People were seeing cloud in action. When I say that common man. SaaS services were about to explode. I mean look at what was powering those days, Hotmail or Yahoo or Gmail, right? I mean they were a SaaS service. I mean you were running your mailbox on the web and customers started asking, "Wait a seconds. So if Hotmail and Yahoo and Gmail can run these email services as a SaaS, like must be cloud powered." And it's like, "Hey, how do I get rid of my Exchange servers?" Because that's pain. When email goes down, all fingers point to me like, "Oh, something is down." Everybody recognizes it, right? And so if you look at that and Rob, you might remember those days when they announced first hosted Exchange platforms early in the days, Microsoft called it, I think BPOS and other actually hosted Exchange providers that I used as an IT infrastructure owner in my previous jobs. Vishal Lodha (00:44:32): Like, "I don't want to run Exchange servers. I don't want to manage Blackberry integrations." Like FTP. We didn't run FTP servers even at that... Well some did, but we were like, "Okay, let's get a hosting company in plan. Let them manage that infrastructure." So I think email going to cloud really opened eyes for a lot of people. "Wait a second, if our main tool in which we live all day, every day can go to cloud," and I know it was an evolutionary process, but I think that really made people think, "Wait a second. This is serious stuff that can happen." Rob Collie (00:45:03): Wow. You when said BPOS I just had all kinds of flashbacks. Now there's a name I haven't heard in a long time. You used the OB one thing. Vishal Lodha (00:45:11): Well, we committed for acronyms. I had to unleash the library. Rob Collie (00:45:15): I know, and you also threw FTP in there. I saw what you did. BPOS, what did that stand for? You have any... Remember. Was it business productivity online services? Vishal Lodha (00:45:23): Business productivity online services. Rob Collie (00:45:24): Wow. So that was the 365 precursor, the Exchange Online. I've forgotten all about that. What a terrible name, BPOS. I want to go buy me some BPOS. That's what I want. Can't get enough of that. Vishal Lodha (00:45:38): Yeah, we started calling it Hostile Exchange because that's a sound a little bit more logical. Rob Collie (00:45:43): That's right. I mean there's the official name and then there's the thing that people understand. Vishal Lodha (00:45:45): Exactly. Rob Collie (00:45:47): That whole cloud transition's been really interesting. It's really interesting how email seemed to be such a relatively low friction transition. A lot of organizations were pretty eager to no longer manage their own exchange server. They were perfectly happy to have Microsoft manage their exchange server in the cloud. And then after that, though there seemed to be this three or four-year-wall where anything else that was cloud really met a lot of headwind and a lot of resistance. That's my experience of it. Do you remember it the same way? Vishal Lodha (00:46:24): Yeah, definitely. And again, part of it is the workloads weren't mature enough. And so they're like, "Yeah, it's there, but it's not like..." I remember talking to a customer and he said, "Well, I've been evaluating this thing for the last seven years and I'm not going to pull the trigger once I know it's mature and I see the value. And I'm like, "Fair. You're absolutely right." Getting to the right point which is a good combination of value and innovation is something everybody looks forward to. I think that innovation took some time to catch up, but once the value was obvious, everyone jumped onto it. And those who were left really missed out on productivity initiatives in their internal organizations. Rob Collie (00:47:07): Well, here was the weird irony that we ran into a lot in the mid 2010s was over and over again, being told, "Oh no, no, no, no. BI is way too sensitive for us to trust it in the cloud. No way." And then you ask those same organizations, "So where's your email?" Oh yeah, it's in the cloud. "What's more sensitive than the email accounts of your leadership team? If I was going to sabotage you I'd much rather have access to your CEO's innermost thoughts than to your dashboards." And it was just a really weird time that when it was BI picked by IT organizations as the last stand, like the Alamo against the cloud, because the cloud was a threat or at least a perceived threat to IT back then. Rob Collie (00:48:00): Because if you spend your day keeping servers running and someone comes along and says, "We're going to keep your servers running for you." It's natural to question whether you're still going to have a job, or even if you do have a job, how important are you going to be going forward? And it just seemed to me like BI just got picked as the last thing to make this the last stand for no particularly good reason. The email thing just was such a no brainer for them that it just slipped past them. And then they saw the dominoes falling and they said, "Okay, no, we're going to grab this last domino here and make this the one that doesn't fall." Krissy Dyess (00:48:34): No, no, no. It was the rooms with the locks, that was the reason, right? Because it was super secure behind the door with the locks. And so they didn't want to give up the location of the data to the cloud which was in the Microsoft resource centers that were protected by barbed wire and actually secure measures. It was the room. Rob Collie (00:48:54): It was the room where people like Vishal are born. Krissy Dyess (00:48:57): That's right, where Vishal was born. Vishal Lodha (00:48:58): I really don't want to go to that room ever again. I mean there's a lot of headaches that come with that room. Krissy Dyess (00:49:04): It was really cold. It was really cold. They had to keep it really cool down because of all the... Vishal Lodha (00:49:09): It's like all kinds of stuff, heating and cooling and plumbing and flooding and fire and like, "Really, do I want to take care of that?" "No, I don't. I want a seamless operation, and if a mechanism can let me run my operation 24/7 with data replication and fail over mechanisms, who cares? Let's do something that's more productive." But to your point, Rob, if you look at that space. Other tools were also maturing on cloud, just business operations, like HR software suite started to come and they started to be cloud based. Accounting systems were cloud based. I mean, I'm sure you remember QuickBooks Online whenever it came first. What was that? Look at that. Vishal Lodha (00:49:49): And so now accountants know about cloud, HR professionals know about cloud. Benefits management tools started to go on cloud. And so suddenly every business operation has an urge to transform because now they have these tools that can be really accessed, and they don't have to wait for innovation because innovation is continuous in cloud. You get features every week, depending on how you do it. I consider my car, I drive an electrical vehicle, and sometimes I get updates once a month and the UI changes and then a new feature lights up. Prior cars I had, I only got what I paid for. There was no incremental value. Rob Collie (00:50:32): You just come out in your garage one day and it's got like an extra trunk. Vishal Lodha (00:50:37): Wow, that would be good and bad. Rob Collie (00:50:40): Like, "Whoa, whoa, where did this trailer come from?" "I downloaded last night." Vishal Lodha (00:50:45): So it's like, how do you continue to give that additional benefits, features and continue to improve the experience? It's all driven by cloud. Krissy Dyess (00:50:53): I'm just thinking in my mind, you get in and go to start it. And they've just moved the ignition button, the main button that everybody moves, and- Rob Collie (00:51:00): And they've renamed it too. [crosstalk 00:51:01]. Krissy Dyess (00:51:01): And they've renamed it. Vishal Lodha (00:51:05): Yeah. I think they would name it fire suppressant. Krissy Dyess (00:51:07): FS. Rob Collie (00:51:09): I woke up this morning and my car, they changed the toolbar to a ribbon. There's no steering wheel anymore. You wouldn't really want that update. But even Microsoft doesn't do that stuff very often anymore. I was part of a generation that did that like all over the place. That was one of the things that we did. Let's move things around. Okay. So the fight over whether or not to go to the cloud, that fight's over. I mean, there's still a few hold out pockets like the Japanese soldiers who eventually surrendered in 1974. They didn't know that the war was actually over in the island caves. There's going to be some of that going on. But even when you see things like the department of defense is using cloud services you know that's no longer a question. Rob Collie (00:51:55): In your experience did IT's fear of the cloud, was that prophecy, did that come true? Did a lot of people in corporate IT lose their jobs as a result of the transition to the cloud? Vishal Lodha (00:52:11): I don't think so. I mean, those who were very interested in upskilling and trying to learn something new were able to transition. It was not a technical transition in my opinion, it was a mindset transition. What do you want to hang onto? What W you like to hug and you don't need to, you can still do things. And its was more about things work differently in cloud. But cloud also enables a lot of additional opportunities that were not that before. So if I were to look at my team and the traditional on-prem infrastructure they would handle. In fact, I like after transitioning to cloud, I would get more head count because I would be able to enable transformation, new features, new functionality a lot faster because I don't have to worry about prepping the platform. The platform continuously in no eight, and based on the feature sets that get lit up, I'm ready to take advantage and put them in my business workflows. Vishal Lodha (00:53:17): Well, I need somebody to take advantage of what has been turned on. And so it's these people who are maybe racking or stacking or cabling, depending on the role or administering those servers. Like suddenly now they're like, "Well, I'm a cloud engineer or a cloud administrator. I can do this, this, this to enable my business to take advantage of. While they take advantage of this, I'll go and enable other functionalities on the platform so someone else in the pipeline can take advantage of what's coming next." So it's like a continuous cycle and continuous feedback loop. Rob Collie (00:53:48): I love that. I've been saying for so many years that when I first heard the term business intelligence, it sounded cool. It sounded edgy. It sounded progressive. We were really going to do something really fascinating and valuable. And the reality of the 2000s version of BI and before was anything but those things. It was really, really, really slow and non-nimble and not smart, and lowest common denominator, and very unsatisfying, and really fundamentally wasteful. And it's only in the last decade, I will call the Power BI decade, that original excitement about what's possible. That's just the exciting possibilities in this space. It's like, we've just recently lived up to the excitement that that original term suggested. Rob Collie (00:54:45): Just listening to you now it occurred to me that the same thing has finally happened with IT, because the first time I heard the term information technology, it's hard to transport yourself back in time to when that was a brand new term. But when you first heard that term, it had that same imagination capturing capability to it. It was a good name. It was chosen well. It's just that the reality of the world was not remotely ready to deliver on that level of promise. And then over time you start to... Information technology, you don't say it with that same glimmer in your eye. You start to sound more and more boring, and then eventually it just becomes IT. And it starts to feel like a million scenes from the movie Office Space. Bureaucracy on top of bureaucracy and TPS report. Here's another fake acronym, but hey, we're going to ding the bell anyway. Rob Collie (00:55:38): But the transition to the cloud has allowed us to at least begin the transition to information technology being an offensive tool. Something that's able to create an asset as opposed to just like table stakes of doing business and therefore a very defensive mindset where you only get noticed when things go wrong. To be part of a strategic initiative for a business that actually improves and transforms the way that business operates in a positive way is not something you associate with it in the way that we've come to think of it. Rob Collie (00:56:15): But maybe, maybe just maybe. Another way to say it is that if we'd always had cloud infrastructure, IT probably would've almost immediately been realizing that original potential. And we would've never had to go through this era of starting to think of IT as really stodgy bureaucracy. We could have dodged all that, if only we'd had cloud from the beginning. Vishal Lodha (00:56:36): Yeah. It's about how do you create that instant value and then how do you help realize that value? It's always there. It's, how do you show that? And once somebody gets the hang of it, it's just continuous innovation, continuous value change innovation. It just becomes part of your culture and ecosystem. Rob Collie (00:56:55): So in a average day for you or week, interacting with Microsoft's strategic customers, what are the themes that come up? What are the things that you find yourself talking about most frequently these days? And I'm sure that some of them are just relatively the basics of being in business type of stuff, but the stuff that you could think of them as being like technology trends or cultural trends or minds set trends. What are the things that become like the common beats for you these days? Vishal Lodha (00:57:28): Yeah. It's a loaded question Rob, for sure. Rob Collie (00:57:28): That's the way I like them. Vishal Lodha (00:57:35): That's a great question. I've also seen the trends change every two, three years, right? But to start with, we're hearing similar trends, that's a good thing. Number one is there are certain things that are not our core competency and we really want to get out of it. We want to focus on what is our core competency. So if you look at a life sciences or just in general healthcare customers, whether they are payer providers, MedTech, pharma, what are their core competency? Most of them want to continue to run their business very effectively, be very productive, but not worry about things. That's something they're not going to continue to build core competency on. So some of the examples I talk about all the time is, what are some things they don't want to deal with? Most of the infrastructure like outsourcing, especially getting out of the data center business. Vishal Lodha (00:58:27): They have run for decades, but they've realized very quickly that public cloud providers can do it a lot more differently, a lot more efficiently, a lot more secure. Customers don't have to worry about the challenges of ups and downs, seasonality, elasticity. They have lot more decisions to make when it comes to flexibility, which was not the case. If Rob, you were to buy equipment for your business for next three years, and then you realize you only need half of it. You have a sunk cost. So that's no longer the case. So they're like, "We'll focus on what our core themes are. And then what we'll do is we'll continue to evaluate what are the trends in our core business? What are the technology consideration and recommendation? What our competitors are doing. What are the best practices? What are the improvement opportunities? How can we simplify our workflows? How can we empower our business to accelerate faster?" Vishal Lodha (00:59:22): So I think the trend is moving more and more. And I think we are at one point, IT and business are actually converging and there's decent overlap. In fact, some customers I know, there's core IT teams, but there's also embedded IT teams within business. They're more aligned to their business transformative initiatives, right? So things like that. So there's definitely some things large customers don't want to do just because it just doesn't make sense for them anymore. The flat model is not flexible. They've realized that they're more secure in cloud because there's plethora of tools and platforms and technologies in cloud that actually has them keep secure. They really don't want to develop little bit of everything just because it's not good use of the investments. Vishal Lodha (01:00:08): I mean, they just say, "We'll leave the security to our cloud. We'll monitor and we'll have folks from our side, but we're not going to deliver innovations and security tool sets compared to what key players in the market do. So I think that whole trend is changing. We have seen a lot of change obviously, the transitioning, customers are evolving. Some of them are evolving very fast. That gives big tech players an opportunity to innovate faster because now we say there's a customer waiting to consume that innovation and take that innovation and apply it in whatever form fashion to their business to empower [inaudible 01:00:48]. So we make a lot of tech, but we make a lot of tech so that our customers can use that tech to build their tech. Vishal Lodha (01:00:55): So what Satya says is if you want to work for a cool company, don't come to Microsoft. If you want work for a company that makes their customers cool come to Microsoft. So I heard this few years back and it really stuck to me. We create tech that empowers other business to deliver their tech. I mean, obviously underlying platform is ours, but they can use that to build their thing in whatever form or fashion and deliver the impact. Rob Collie (01:01:23): I ran into an old colleague of mine, who I worked with at Microsoft many years ago. I ran into him one time and he was laughing because he now works for Adobe. And he was laughing saying... Because he's a really cool guy. He's way cooler than me. Like he runs in some really cool social circles, unlike me. You're stuck with me. And he's laughing about... Well, we're stuck with each other, Vishal, and Krissy, although Krissy's probably cooler than us. So he said, "It's really funny, when I worked at Microsoft, I was vilified in my social circle for working for the man. And now I work for Adobe and everyone just accepts that. It's so cool. I'm a cool guy. I work for Adobe." Rob Collie (01:02:06): "But it's funny when I worked at Microsoft, everything I was doing there and everything that everyone around me was doing was working to build technology to make human beings more productive, and I was vilified as working for the man. Now I work for Adobe," he says. "And all I do, is I build technology to allow marketers to manipulate people in the world, right? And now I'm a cool guy. Now I'm edgy." He's like, "This is really, really, really backwards." He's like, "I'll take it. I'll take the prestige. I guess people like it, but it's backwards." I agree. Microsoft's platforms, and that's what they are like they're tools. It's a business model. It's not charity, but it is aligned with a lot of actual progress. It's aligned with higher productivity. Well, that's about as good as it gets. In capitalism that's about as good as it gets, increase productivity. Vishal Lodha (01:02:58): And with focus on industry, right? So if you look at the transition, we were very focused on the cloud. Definitely came to the market later than some of our competitors, right? No, not about it. But- Rob Collie (01:03:08): If you ignore the game changing release that was Office 2003, we really changed the world there. Vishal Lodha (01:03:18): Absolutely. Again, we came to the party late. It actually gave us advantage in a way. We saw where the gaps were, where the opportunities were. And if you go back in time, we really started getting everybody's attention, it was mostly PaaS services. Some of the SaaS services, but PaaS platform was like really standing out. That actually gave our customers to modernize Legacy apps into modern or cloud native apps. And that was great. And while that was going on, we were really catching up on IaaS space. And came a time, a few years back, we were at parity, whether it is SaaS, IaaS, PaaS. In fact SaaS is still great. Office 365, hundreds of millions of users, right? Depending on the day active users, things like that. And what's interesting is Rob. Now the transition is not within cloud, it's cloud for industry. Vishal Lodha (01:04:08): So Microsoft has announced several industry cloud in the last 18 months, Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare. And we are obviously doing some great work and manufacturing, retail, and just whole industry verticalization. And there are going to be solutions that Microsoft won't have a very specific applicability and we won't necessarily get into it. But that's where we rely on a massive ecosystem of partners. And I actually lost track from last inspire. Like, are we at 15,000 plus partners or 20,000? Whatever number is, but it's like those partners are well-versed in Microsoft platforms and technologies. And they also understand the business needs, whether it is in the healthcare space or very specific plant level, operational technology problem. They'll use our tech to build a solution to meet those gaps. And so when you bring that together with industry cloud and other thing, it actually really becomes a very strong proposition for our customers. Rob Collie (01:05:10): So what is it that makes these industry cloud solutions? What is it distinguishing about one of these new cloud services or cloud platforms that's aimed at an industry? Does it have like a customized bundle or does it actually contain services that just don't exist outside of it? Vishal Lodha (01:05:28): The services are all there, but customers are like, "Hey, Microsoft, make it easy for us." We don't want to be the general contractor stitching it together. So let's take an example and I'm by no means a expert in the provider space, but imagine the life cycle of a patient provider interaction. So let's look at telehealth. For a second for a doctor to schedule that you'll be using a separate tool. Then from there, you would obviously do some documentation in different tool and just the whole workflow. Now what happens is something like Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare, you can actually bring all these SaaS and PaaS components together. So what does that mean? We can actually create a Teams like call within a custom framework. Doesn't necessarily appear to be a Teams call, but it's actually powered by the same technology, something called Azure Communication Service, right? Vishal Lodha (01:06:19): And you can do all that. You can move that data into the next staging area, wherever that needs to be. You can use cognitive services in Azure for speech recognition or those things. At some point maybe you can use sentiment analysis to figure out how was the patient doctor interaction. And so these services are all available at standalone services and there's a lot of them. It's like, "How do you put them together in a way that is more well-structured, well-packaged, easy to consume and makes our customer who in fact help other customers or patients just a lot easier?" Vishal Lodha (01:06:59): I think the focus on industry cloud is going to be more and more just because customer expect us to meet them where they need to go. And they really don't want to have the burden of putting this together. They'll still do, obviously. It's an 80, 20 game. If it's done 80%, and 20%, they need to tweak, that's easier, but we just give them the ingredients and say, "Okay, it's up to you whatever you want to make out of it." It's a little bit of a challenge because then it actually slows down their digital transformation journey. Rob Collie (01:07:29): Well, that's fascinating. That is a very clear and I think wise, but still a very clear departure from Microsoft's traditional strategies. You're actually at this point building these industry clouds, they actually contain not just services, but you could describe it as applications that were purpose built for that industry. As you say, could have been built by the customer or by a partner based off of the foundational services in the Microsoft cloud. Vishal Lodha (01:07:56): Yeah. And if you look at our... And you might have heard about this and so some other... Three clouds, right? Microsoft call it productivity cloud, and application infrastructure cloud and business applications. What we're doing is the capability exists. We have the ability to make it happen but as a silo tool. You know there's a tool in Office 365 called Bookings. What can you do with Bookings? Well, you can publish a calendar and you can make it easy for your customers to schedule a meeting with you because they can see your free, busy and all that stuff. Great. "Well, how do we bring that into patient scheduling system?" Well, we already have the underlying technology, so let use some of that to create patient scheduling. Then obviously on a BI side, we have a lot of tools in data analytics, like, "Okay, how do we use that to create patient insights?" Vishal Lodha (01:08:45): We have a very decent platform in the form of Teams that can help us interact with patients and tell you, "Okay, how do we convert that into virtual health sessions, things like that? How do we collaborate between provider teams, between medical professionals, nurses, to technicians, care coordination, care team collaboration?" All those tools and capabilities existed. What we did was we said, "We need to apply those to specific industry to make it easy for them to run their operations. Again, data interoperability, clinical analytics. So all those are... And you don't have to worry about security and compliance of each of those silo tools because now you're getting platform levels. So you're covered from security compliance and privacy perspective at a platform level, versus individually certified scheduling system, inside system telemedicine or virtual health system, right? Vishal Lodha (01:09:38): I mean, the power of platform is so much better than silo tools. I've told this to my customers, "Hey, listen, customer, we might not have a gold medal in every category. We are not number one in every category. But if you look at who is the common denominator, we might have multi pull medals in the same category. So if you have to choose two or three strategic partners, you will always see us there." Because then it's like, "Well, they're not there yet. They're not 100 but they're 95, 98. Okay, great. If I have a bunch of 95, that's... Or if I have less strategic partners to deal with, that's better for me from relationship manager because I am okay with 95 to 98 versus have multiple partners with a 99 or a hundred score." How do you reduce that overhead? Rob Collie (01:10:26): This has come up on this show multiple times and usually under the topic of career skills for an individual, if you're 90th percentile that a bunch of things that are required together, you're actually 99th percentile at the overall thing. Right. We talk about life is a decathlon. You don't want a 99% shot putter or a 99% javelin thrower. You want to win the decathlon. So yeah, I think that's the same thing raising its head again. Yeah, Microsoft is mid 90s, upper 90s at basically a lot of different things. And so yeah, that's a decathlon, Microsoft. That should be the next ad campaign, Microsoft life is a decathlon. Vishal Lodha (01:11:08): I've been having multiple customer conversation and it's like, you can look at the Gartner Magic Quadrant, and if there is a recurring name on that quadrant, that's Microsoft. Again, we might not be always at the top, but we will be a common denominator always. So it just makes it a little bit easier. Rob Collie (01:11:26): There were two things you were saying earlier that I wanted to circle back to that were light bulb moments for me, again, because they tie into themes that we've been seeing over and over again. One of them for me, it goes all the way back to my days designing software at Microsoft is this difference between nouns and verbs. So you were talking about IT. Now we were talking about IT now in this more offensive role, like working with the business on what we can do, what can accomplish. And I think that one of the problems that previous it business relations was that IT, a lot of like the status, the stature of IT was defined in terms of what they were responsible for. It's the noun like, "I own this, I own that. I'm responsible for this. I'm responsible for that." Rob Collie (01:12:13): And if you, you come into that environment and say to them, "Hey, you're not going to be responsible for these things, this, this, this, and this anymore." It's natural that, that would trigger an immune response. But it sounds like, and I think this is a really, really positive change for the world that IT is moving from defining its worth from nouns, static things that they're responsible for to a more of a verb like self-measuring stick. Like what are the things that we do? What are the things that we help the business do? What are the things that we accomplish? And it's just over and over and over again, I'm struck by how much better things and more productive and more accurate your view of the world invaluable becomes if you start to dismiss the nouns as not that important, and focus instead on the verb. Like, what's the actions? What are the actions we're taking? And to hear that happening at the IT cultural level is very, very, very encouraging. Vishal Lodha (01:13:09): Yeah. I remember very well IT used to be business support function. That has changed to business enablement function. So IT is now more of an enabler. A lot of business initiatives, especially transformative have definitely a digital component to it that's driven by IT solutions, right? So as I said earlier, if there's an overlap. It's really sometimes hard to figure out, depending on the role the person is in, "Where do you spend more time in your work week? Is it more on the IT side or business side?" Some of those boundaries are blurring fast, even in the data and analytics space. I mean, Rob, you work with so many business decision makers, a lot of technical talent actually is now embedded in business organization. Rob Collie (01:13:56): That's the other thing that I was going to circle back to is you mentioned the hub and spoke IT model where there's a central IT team, but then there's also IT teams embedded within each business unit. And even if we're working with an organization that doesn't have that formally established yet, if all we're talking to them about is their analytic strategy and their governance and adoption strategies for Power BI in particular, we're always encouraging a hub and spoke model be developed. You'd need authors, people who are creating data models and reports embedded in each business unit. And they're already there. Those people that you need to empower and light up are already there. You just need to get them the right access to tools and training and maybe some kickstart projects. Rob Collie (01:14:46): And then those people become your ambassadors back to the hub. Ambassadors, when you're blurring the lines between business and IT, at that interface, there are people. And if you want to blur those lines effectively, you're going to need ambassadors of one flavor or another, right? And so if you have a hub and spoke IT model, what that means is that you've got people who are very IT savvy in the spokes, the radial, and those people can speak the IT language, but because they're closely aligned with the business, they also can speak that business language. And so as a result, the needs of that business unit can become much more clearly communicated and understood to the IT galactic center or point. This is everywhere now, whether formally or informally, if you're not hub and spoking and developing ambassadors, you're not going to perform well in the modern competitive marketplace. Vishal Lodha (01:15:46): Yeah, definitely. You know, we talk about a lot of disruption. Well, it's okay to disrupt ourselves to do something that is more aligned to the transformation needs. And we might go through the cycle periodically and it's totally fine. Change is not easy, but organizations who have had a very open mindset have really done well. I mean, you look at some of the biggest market gaps out there, right? I mean, a lot of them is about how they embrace technology and how they manage change. And so I think it's going to be an ongoing thing. And that also means a pressure of keeping up to everything and upskilling and trends becomes more important. Especially competitive knowledge like, "Okay, what are others doing in that space? And are we leaders or laggers, right?" Rob Collie (01:16:34): Here's a question I've been dying to ask you for about 45 minutes. Is that a squash court behind you in your basement? Vishal Lodha (01:16:39): It is a racket ball court, but you're absolutely right. I'm surprised it took you that long to observe it. Or maybe you observed it, but you didn't want to ask, and you only wanted to ask for the last 45 minutes. But this is $10 chance because of COVID. Obviously we were looking for activities. There's only so much you can do with your standard activity. Okay, we watch TV and we go out, that's fine, but what else? We're not going to the gym. So we said, "Huh, how do we do this?" I close my eyes. And I look at... I used to play squash. So Rob, you're absolutely right. More racketball recently just because I can't keep up with the squash ball anymore. Racketball is a little bit easier on me. I'm like, "Wait a second, we can do that if you can find the right ball." Vishal Lodha (01:17:23): And so I look around, I'm like, bingo. How do we do that is you basically buy $5 masking tape and get help from some of the helper. In my case, my elder daughter. And we basically got that covered in like 15, 20 minutes. And by the way, it's not just on the wall. It's like, I don't know how much you can see, but this proper division on the floor it's carpet, but the ball bounces pretty well. And I had a friend come over and he was sweating in 15 minutes, trust me. Rob Collie (01:17:50): You get really competitive in a carpeted basement racketball court. Vishal Lodha (01:17:56): Absolutely. Rob Collie (01:17:57): When I asked the question, I fully expected, I was just being snarky. Like, "Is that a squash court?" "Oh no, it is." It actually is a racketball court. Krissy Dyess (01:18:05): Or one of the backgrounds, because some backgrounds, I thought maybe that could the case. Rob Collie (01:18:09): Oh yeah. That's one that you just get off the basement with racketball court. Vishal Lodha (01:18:14): There are some meetings where my background is blurry and there are some it's not, depending on what it is. And in fact, one of my senior leaders asked that question and he's like, "This is pretty cool." Rob, what I was proud about was like, "Well, first of all, we have something to do different, but, "Hey, it only cost me five bucks." Nothing can beat that whole excitement about getting accomplished with five bucks. It's actually less than a hamburger, right? Rob Collie (01:18:37): I think you should establish some sort of live YouTube channel around this basement, racketball championships. Vishal Lodha (01:18:45): Entries open now, all age groups. Rob Collie (01:18:53): I mean, it would be one of the most awesome, riveting and ridiculous at the same time. I think it's going to be awesome. We need to make this a thing. Vishal Lodha (01:19:02): Yeah. I mean the only downside is, and I've checked it, we might have to get the dry wall done again, but it's been a year now and really nothing has happened to the drywall. So either we are not intense players or our drywall is really good quality, I don't know, but I don't see any downside right now. Everything looks good. Rob Collie (01:19:20): I have a Halloween costume that is basically the tennis player from The Royal Tenenbaums which looks a lot like Bjorn Borg from the '70s where it was modeled off of. I tell you what, I'm going to put that on with the tight white shorts hiked way up and just show up with my headbands and my wrist bans and my sunglasses. I'm going to ring your doorbell and say, "Let's play." Vishal Lodha (01:19:43): Last play. You might actually see a racket on one of the chairs behind me. Rob Collie (01:19:46): I do. Yeah. Vishal Lodha (01:19:47): It's hanging on like... Rob Collie (01:19:49): I think you have to, when we're going to turn this into a YouTube channel, there's going to need to be costumes. You just have to make it over the top. Vishal Lodha (01:19:57): Let's see what my costumes look like. Oh, sorry. I have a shorts. Okay, that's all. Rob Collie (01:20:01): Same. Krissy, were you sitting on any questions that you wish I'd stopped yapping so you could sneak in and ask? Krissy Dyess (01:20:09): The AI side of things, especially in healthcare, I can imagine that that would have to be trending up. Vishal Lodha (01:20:17): Yeah, big time. I'm happy to give some generic examples if need be. Krissy Dyess (01:20:21): Yeah. That'd be fantastic. Rob Collie (01:20:22): Give us some generic examples. Krissy Dyess (01:20:24): Yeah, because I'm curious. Vishal Lodha (01:20:25): So how many, many times this has happened to you? At least it has happened to me, every single time I walk into doctor's office, you get a paper with a clipboard and a pen. "Can you fill that up?" "Well, I thought you knew about me coming in. I thought I filled that information last time." Why aren't we using AI to automate some of this? "Oh, Vishal is here. Last time he filled this form based on cognitive services and AI combination. Looks like the form should look like this. So let's print it for him." I call it predictive analytics, like predictive form builder, Rob. And like, "Let's print it for him, and if there are any changes, he'll make the changes, rest everything is... Like it's a very simple example, but AI, all it is, is nothing but a trainable model. You just improve that model over time. Vishal Lodha (01:21:16): Even in manufacturing, I'm seeing part. How do you figure out the defects on the parts? People will be on the floor looking at the parts, "Oh, this doesn't look right." But when you start applying cognitive services like vision and use the vision services to recognize those defects, then you're basically using AI to separate good parts from bad parts. So again, this probably would be more applicable on the MedTech side. Again on the healthcare side, I think AI should be able to dictate the workflow of interaction between a patient and provider based on the questions that were answered last time, based on the changes in the form. I think if we ask these questions, then we are covered. Vishal Lodha (01:21:56): I think there's a lot of redundant work that can be eliminated by AI because AI can capture and make stuff that's more relevant for that interaction. I'm just thinking of any more specific examples. I come across a lot of them. Krissy Dyess (01:22:11): Well, for me that's a big relief because I've been putting off that appointment because I don't want to fill out the paperwork again. Vishal Lodha (01:22:16): Yeah. I just don't understand why they have to make me print- Krissy Dyess (01:22:20): I've always wondered. Vishal Lodha (01:22:20): And again, like environmentally, why are we printing so much paper? And some commissions are doing it. Before you come, you submit a web-based form to them. As for your text appointment, you'll get a link and you submit, and I'm like, "Use AI to send me that pre-populated form based on what I submitted last time. And I'll submit my changes on the phone or my device. And then we have it. And the next time we come, we're looking at iteration." So the models are smart enough to detect those changes. I don't even know if it's all AI, but you know, some combination of logic and change data management can do that. But yeah, I think the AI should be able to guide you to say, "Okay, now's the time for Vishal to fill the form? His appointment is three days out. Let's use the scheduling system to alert him and get this thing out so that by the time he's in the office, everything is taken care of." I really think there's a lot of workflows in healthcare system that needs to be streamlined. You're still very traditional. Rob Collie (01:23:19): I just changed dentists and when I called the dental office, they asked me how I'd heard of them. And I told them who referred me. So then I got the text link before the appointment with the online forms that you described. And of course, one of the questions is, "How did you hear of us?" And I told them who referred me. And then I went into the office from my appointment and face-to-face they asked me, "How did you hear us?" Krissy Dyess (01:23:47): They just wanted to be really sure. Rob Collie (01:23:50): And I told them who referred me. This happened yesterday. That's yesterday. Vishal Lodha (01:23:55): And at that point you were ready to be referred to a different dentist, pretty much. Rob Collie (01:24:01): That's a minor thing. So many times, technology gets held sometimes. This is weird. I can talk out of both sides of my mouth, right? Any given day, I can say that that humans are more important and the humans are everything. And other days I can say like, "Well, humans are fallible and technology might be better." I had an interaction with a doctor recently where I told this doctor that I had this problem and it started about the time that I cut back on my alcohol consumption. He was so in his own little zone about dealing with the problems that he deals with and trying to make that problem go away that at some point when he couldn't figure out what was wrong, he just turned to me and said, "Well, maybe you should just go back to your old routine." I'm looking at him going, "Are you saying as a medical professional that I should increase my alcohol consumption?" Rob Collie (01:24:48): And then he took a pass and said, "Well, you should take that up with your personal care physician." And I like, "I am never going to be in your office ever again." An AI would've been smarter than to say that, right? Krissy Dyess (01:24:59): That's where we need the bots. We need the bots to step up. Rob Collie (01:25:01): We need a bot there to not say the dumb thing. Krissy Dyess (01:25:04): That's right. Vishal Lodha (01:25:05): Yeah. And even sentiment analysis. AI can help you understand patient's mood and where they're going. Do they need extra caring and feeding? Those kind of things. I mean, you have a long way to go. Rob Collie (01:25:15): Yeah. He needed some sort of warning tone in his ears, like, "Uh-oh, you said something not so bright." Krissy Dyess (01:25:31): I actually could use one of those too. Rob Collie (01:25:33): Yeah. Well, I guess we all could, but... Vishal Lodha (01:25:37): Talked about AI, Kriss. Another example is, I sometimes schedule meeting using Cortana. I just tell Cortana, "Hey, find a free time on my calendar and give three options to the customer," and they pick, and sends the invite on my behalf, right? That's clear AI in action. I'm sure healthcare can take advantage of it and cut down on some of the human overhead and apply that where we need more in the clinical side, but we'll see. Rob Collie (01:26:01): Vishal, you're a very important person, people know you. We appreciate you spending so much time with us. It was a great conversation. Vishal Lodha (01:26:08): No, I really enjoyed this format, really. It felt like we were at the happy hour, Rob. Basically we had a bigger group this time, but it was open conversation and really we could speak our minds. And I think this is my first podcast. I've done some of these round tables and fireside chats in my previous role, but not a podcast. So really excited to see what the outcome is. I'm a little bit embarrassed to share this once it's done with my family members, just because they're going to say, "Well, I don't think that was cool." And you know, he's like, "Oh, probably your rating is not going to be that high," is the remark I'm going to get. So not that I'm competing with Arun-. Rob Collie (01:26:42): Tough crowd. Vishal Lodha (01:26:43): Not that I'm competing with the Arun, but I did it for my own fun, and- Rob Collie (01:26:47): You're tops in the category of podcast guests who've conducted the interview from racketball court. Vishal Lodha (01:26:53): That is something good. Rob Collie (01:26:54): Yeah. Vishal Lodha (01:26:56): Well, Rob, you're more than welcome to join here for a game or two, whenever you are up for it. Rob Collie (01:27:01): I'm vaccinated. Vishal Lodha (01:27:03): So am. Rob Collie (01:27:03): I can't wait to get injured in a game of carpeted basement- Krissy Dyess (01:27:09): And don't forget the costume. That's the most important part. Rob Collie (01:27:11): Oh yeah. Krissy Dyess (01:27:14): You need the costume. Rob Collie (01:27:14): I need the... It'll just... Oh, my gosh, yeah. Vishal Lodha (01:27:15): Yeah. And what we'll do is we'll turn on this webcam, just like it is and we'll play the game and we can actually broadcast to Krissy and Luke. I don't even- Krissy Dyess (01:27:23): I think the ratings are going to go way up if we do that. I'm going to do some... I'll be running and I'll end up crashing over that chair. Vishal Lodha (01:27:34): Or you will go extra in an attempt to reach you might just go overboard and you might land on that ping pong table also, Rob. Rob Collie (01:27:40): That's right. The last time I played racketball, I separated my shoulder running into the wall. Guaranteed to happen again for sure. Vishal Lodha (01:27:50): Awesome. Thank you, guys. Krissy Dyess (01:27:51): All right. Thank you. Announcer (01:27:53): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast. Let the experts at P3 Adaptive help your business. Just go to P3adaptive.com. Have a day-to-day!

Chris Webb is an OG in the Microsoft data universe, having long-time knowledge of the Microsoft Data Platform...even pre-dating Rob's own experience with the tools! He's a Principal Program Manager on Microsoft's elite Power BI Customer Advisory Team (The CAT Team)!  He and Rob have known each other for a long time. Their relationship was, at times, adversarial.  Now, though, they are allies that spread the gospel of Power BI and the Microsoft Power Platform!   References in this episode: Hitler Hits A Breaking Point With Tableau   American Chopper Meme   Episode Timeline:   4:05 - Chris's gateway drug into Microsoft BI was MDX, Training challenges and saving souls, and the predecessor to Analysis Services 17:00 - Chris's OLAP experience, DAX vs MDX, Chris and Rob reflect on a decade old nerd fight 34:40 - Dave Grohl and Ratatouille, why we need certain functions and OLAP, and the power of PR, 50:00 - Tableau to Power BI migration, self-service BI,  PBI's feedback system, and Excel adopters Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Welcome, friends. Today's guest is Chris Webb. There really aren't many people who can claim as many years of experience with the evolving Microsoft data platform as Chris can. I myself have been around this particular campfire for almost 20 years and Chris predates me by quite a bit. He was one of the OG Microsoft BI professionals and celebrities, so he has seen a lot. He's practically a historian of all of this stuff while at the same time being very much highly active in this space today. Rob Collie (00:00:36): Chris and I first met each other professionally sort of like in the formative years of 2010, that era, when Power Pivot and the tabular Analysis Services model was first coming to market. And from the get-go in the early days, we were an opposition to each other. We had some pretty fierce email arguments like big tough guys. But that was all a long time ago and things have changed so much, and really in hindsight, we were both right. We were both keying in on opposite sides of something really important and we're in a very, very friendly place with one another these days. Rob Collie (00:01:12): And it's really nice to get together and talk with an old adversary who now very much is completely an ally. It was long overdue and he's just an amazing conversationalist. We had a really good time. I hope you enjoy it as well, so let's get into it. Announcer (00:01:29): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? Announcer (00:01:34): This is the Raw Data By P3 Adaptive Podcast with your host Rob Collie and your cohost Thomas LaRrock. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Raw Data By P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:01:58): Welcome to the show, Chris Webb. Chris Webb (00:01:59): Hi, there. Rob Collie (00:02:00): How are you today? Chris Webb (00:02:01): It's five o'clock on a Friday afternoon in the UK, so this is the last thing that I'll be doing before the weekend. But I can't think of a better way to finish the week. Rob Collie (00:02:10): Well, I couldn't think of a better way to finish the week than like being in a British pub about this time. There's just something about the way y'all do beer. I think you figured it out. I prefer the English pub experience. I just feel like the combination of taste and drinkability and temperature and all of that, I think you've really got it nailed down over there. Chris Webb (00:02:28): So you're not going to get at me for warm beer or anything? Are you? Rob Collie (00:02:31): No, I actually- Chris Webb (00:02:32): This is usually what people say about British beer. Rob Collie (00:02:35): No, I have really no complaints at all about the British pub experience. As far as I'm concerned, for me, I find it optimal. I wish I could get exactly that sort of experience over here. Instead of you've got to drink the Triple APA, it's whatever. Anyway. Chris Webb (00:02:49): It's going to be a bit like that over here as well, to be honest, so- Rob Collie (00:02:51): Is it really? Chris Webb (00:02:52): All the old pubs are closing down and there's craft breweries popping up, but times change, times change. The kids, they want the Triple APAs. Rob Collie (00:03:00): They want the Triple APAs. Well, not everything is progress. Chris Webb (00:03:05): Yes. Well, nevermind. Even if we don't have the beer, we can have the kind of rambling half drunk conversation that doesn't really go anywhere and doesn't really mean anything. Rob Collie (00:03:13): That's right. Maybe that's what I'm really confusing it all for. Maybe that's the thing I like. Rob Collie (00:03:18): You're a number of things you're on the CAT team at Microsoft- Chris Webb (00:03:21): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Collie (00:03:22): ... and you're also Cross Join. Chris Webb (00:03:25): Well, I was, but I still am as far as my blog goes. I didn't sell my domain or anything. I've still got that. Rob Collie (00:03:31): You've had a long time ringside seat for the evolution and development of the Microsoft BI platform. People think of me as being a long time insider, but I think your involvement in this whole story predates mine. When did you first discover the Microsoft BI stack? Chris Webb (00:03:52): Would it be been '98, 1998? Rob Collie (00:03:57): Way before me, maybe like four years, but that's a long time back then. Chris Webb (00:04:01): I was an early adopter, I think. Definitely. Rob Collie (00:04:04): What was the gateway drug there? How did you stumble into it? Chris Webb (00:04:07): I was working at a company they put me on a project to evaluate this brand new OLAP Server coming from Microsoft, and that was it. I was the first and only person in the world to fall in love with MDX. People are rude about it nowadays, people are openly rude about it. Even Microsoft people are openly rude about it. But it was and is a beautiful language and a beautiful product and I loved it from the very beginning. Even though it's been a while since I've written an MDX, I think it's one of those things that I'll carry to my grave. Chris Webb (00:04:41): It's my dad's 80th birthday today, and when I am 80, if you were to open up an antique copy of Windows 7 and pop open SQL Management Studio, even after like 35 more years, I would be able to write an MDX query, I'm sure. Rob Collie (00:04:56): That's funny, that's obviously exactly the opposite of my experience. Every six months, I would forget that I hated MDX and I'd ask someone at Microsoft to teach it to me. And I'd be like, "Look, all I want to do is write an if. Just want to write an if." And we'd be the 15, 30 minutes in to hierarchies and all that and I go, "Oh, right. I forgot. Yeah, this sucks. I don't want to do this." Chris Webb (00:05:17): Well, that was always the problem. When I was doing training, I did a lot of training back in the day when I was self-employed. And I remember I did this training course once in Germany and there was somebody on the course, it was an MDX training course. And there was somebody on the course and I recognized them, you recognize people from different places. And I said to this guy, "You've been on this course before." And he said, "Yes, this is the third time I've been on your MDX training course." Chris Webb (00:05:39): And he said, "Well, the first time I did it, I thought it was a really great course, but then I got back to the office and I didn't use it. And then about a year later I had some training budgets, so I thought I'd come on to your course again. So I came on the course and it was great, but I didn't use it. And now I'm in a new company and they've got some training budget and I forgotten MDX, so I thought I'd come on your course again." So I think that's a vote of confidence in my training, even if. Rob Collie (00:06:04): Well, MDX training, which you're just talking about, it was one of the original subscription models. I have got a really good monthly recurring revenue of returning students. There's like a six month wavelength, they come back. Chris Webb (00:06:17): That's the ideal thing. Why look for new customers when you can sell the same thing to your existing customers over and over again? Rob Collie (00:06:23): In fairness, I had the same experience one time with a whole team that I trained on Power Pivot back before Power BI existed. And it changed the way I thought about training and it changed the way that I messaged it going forward. This group of Excel analysts who are completely overworked and behind, their manager brought me in to train them, and I did. And then like a year later, they call me back and I went back and trained the exact same people on the exact same thing. Rob Collie (00:06:50): It was worth a post-mortem, like I sort of interviewed like, "What happened?" And they got the training, and the next day after the training, they went back to their jobs, which had been on pause during the training, a couple of days of training. And so stuff had just piled up, they told themselves, "We'll dig out first. We'll go and do, we use the old tools, the regular Excel VLOOKUP stuff. We'll do that, we'll dig out and then we'll do the new stuff." Well, no, no, you're not. The freshest day is that first day. Rob Collie (00:07:18): If you don't pick to start using it that day, it's not like the following day is going to be easier. It's going to be incrementally harder. And so I started telling people that to a certain extent, people listen, some of them don't, but I would tell them sort of like... Once I had them in three quarters of the way through the first day, I would tell them, "Now, listen, you didn't know this when you signed up, but you are not allowed to use VLOOKUP or regular pivot tables ever again. Rob Collie (00:07:45): And I'm sorry if didn't understand that you were signing that right away when you took this class, but at least for one real business thing, tomorrow, the first day after training, whatever, you have to be applying it from the get-go. If you don't, you're going to be a repeat customer." Chris Webb (00:08:04): You're ruining your pipeline there. But yeah, it's interesting, the whole self-service BI thing is meant to be transformational. It's meant to be change your life, change the way you work, but it's like all these things, it's like a lot of people might hear the message, but they won't necessarily change their ways. I think the only people who use tools like Power BI, the best are the ones who find it themselves rather than the ones who were taught it. Rob Collie (00:08:28): Oh, yeah. We have this concept in training at our company. We have a distinction between volunteers and hostages. If you volunteered essentially to be in the training class, that's a different thing than your manager saying, "We're going to do training for the next three days and you have to be there." Chris Webb (00:08:46): You could always tell the people who will have to be there in a training course. Rob Collie (00:08:49): That's right. Chris Webb (00:08:50): They might be initially friendly for the first hour and then just go off and read their emails. You can try your best to entertain them and get their attention and show them something cool. What I think of something cool is not necessarily what somebody is forced to go on a training course is something cool, but they will just... It's incredibly difficult to engage somebody who's like that. Rob Collie (00:09:10): Well, that's another change that I made, and then ultimately we made as a company in terms of how we train, is that if we know that there's a proportion of hostages in the class and there always are. Even if it's like a public training that someone voluntarily signed up for, you know someone got dragged along. There's a volunteer and a hostage. From the beginning we say, "Look, we get it, training sucks. Sitting in a classroom sucks. We don't want to be sitting in your chair either. But here's the thing you actually should pay attention to this one. This one is going to change your life." Rob Collie (00:09:43): We really throw down the gauntlet. We sell out to get their attention and say, "Look, if this is the one training you pay attention to in your life, it will be the right one." Even that crew that I talked about, that I trained twice, a really funny story, like you talk about, you can tell when you're training. You can tell the person who's just not there, not paying any attention. This one woman in that first class had just been reassigned to the analyst team. She'd had a different job, they just sort of like parked her on the analyst and they didn't know what to do with her. Rob Collie (00:10:13): And she did the equivalent of checking her social media, you could just tell. You could almost see her pressing the Facebook Like button or whatever. She was in the back of the room, she had no interest at all in being there. But a year later when I went back, that same person, she had then been exposed to a year in the trenches of being the VLOOKUP and Pivot Analyst and now she was totally motivated. She was in the front row, she was asking the best questions. Rob Collie (00:10:43): Six months later, she left that company and took a full-time BI position at another company. Everything was different for her, and it was just like it's motivation. She hadn't glimpsed how awful it could be. Chris Webb (00:10:55): I think you saved another soul there. Rob Collie (00:10:58): Yeah, I did. Chris Webb (00:10:59): Congratulations. Rob Collie (00:11:00): I did. I suppose there's like a count of souls saved and souls corrupted, I don't know. I hope to be above the x-axis- Chris Webb (00:11:07): Oh yeah. Rob Collie (00:11:08): ... in the final analysis. Chris Webb (00:11:10): And especially one more soul saved for the Microsoft party rather than potentially, if you hadn't been there, they might've gone to Tableau or something, perish the thought Rob Collie (00:11:19): I know. Have you seen the Bootleg Hitler video about Tableau? Chris Webb (00:11:25): Oh, I think I have, but I've forgotten it. Go on, tell me again. Rob Collie (00:11:28): You've seen the Hitler memes, right? Where he's looking at the maps- Chris Webb (00:11:30): Yeah, yeah, yeah. Rob Collie (00:11:31): ... right? Chris Webb (00:11:31): Yes, from downfall. Rob Collie (00:11:32): Yeah, from downfall. Exactly. They're pointing at the map and talking about retail sales are up here, here and here. And then he goes, "That's nothing. Tell me about seasonally corrected profit margin." They're like, "Ah." Anyway, I made that, but didn't attach it to brand because Hitler, but yeah, I agree. It could have gone different way. I actually think though that it was one of those situations where she ended up taking like a business objects job. So she was out of the frying pan of Excel. Chris Webb (00:12:07): Well, she'll come back to Power BI, it'll just give her an even greater appreciation. Rob Collie (00:12:11): That's right. She's got to go experience all of the hard ways. Thomas LaRock (00:12:14): I wanted to ask something, because Chris, your experience predates mine. You said 1998. How'd you say it, there- Chris Webb (00:12:22): OLAP Services. So it would have been in the beta period for SQL Server 7. So it would have been '98, '99. I think it was late '98. Thomas LaRock (00:12:29): Okay. I was expecting, you were going to say Analysis Services. Chris Webb (00:12:33): No, no. It wasn't called Analysis Services until... I think Rob will particularly appreciate this. I think the first thing that I got annoyed about publicly about something to do with Microsoft BI was somebody renaming OLAP Services, which was a good descriptive name to Analysis Services. And they did it, they did it because they added data mining functionality. And I thought, "Nobody's going to use this. Why don't we stick to the..." It was typical of me, completely typical of me. Chris Webb (00:13:00): I didn't have a platform to be rude about it back then, so I got away with it. It was the first instance of my cheese being moved, so I didn't like that. Thomas LaRock (00:13:08): So OLAP was with SQL 7, and then it got renamed to Analysis Services when they folded in data mining. Okay. I came in really after SQL 2000 roughly. So Analysis Services have... it's always just been there. When I heard MDX, I'm like, "Is that way you really mean, Analysis Services?" Chris Webb (00:13:27): Yeah. People do tend to use... In fact, I saw one of my colleagues very politely smack down somebody recently saying... When they used MDX to describe Analysis Services multidimensional and it does kind of irritate me. I'm very good on using the right terms. But yes MDX is the language, Analysis Services multidimensional is the server products. Thomas LaRock (00:13:49): Yeah, for me, that was just something that we installed very alongside with SQL Server. Back in the day when you just installed everything, because it was just easier. No need to go back. Rob Collie (00:13:58): Installation ironically is my first place where I crossed paths with Analysis Services. In '98 when you were using, learning MDX and falling in love- Chris Webb (00:14:09): For the first time. Rob Collie (00:14:11): ... a lifelong romance, I was the program manager on the first version of Windows Installer, the MSI technology. And I don't remember why, but there was something that we had to install, I think in office, it was this Plato thing. I remember it being a real pain in the ass. There was something about it that was controversial in terms of its install, and so I actually had to get involved and figure out how to get all of their self registration ripped out or something like that. It was probably something along. Rob Collie (00:14:41): It was always self-registration, that was the evil of the era. Do you have any idea, Chris why Office 2000 would have needed to install anything related to Plato? Chris Webb (00:14:49): Oh, Plato is the code name, Aristotle was the client that didn't get bored and it would have been because even back then, Excel 2000 could connect to OLAP Services. It was PivotTable still being able to connect to Analysis Services. In fact, earlier this week, I've got a new user group presentation, I take around the user groups showing, connecting PivotTables to Power BI, nothing changes. Skills I learned 20 years ago still being recycled. Now, we can do PivotTables in the browser in Excel online back to Power BI, but it's the same old stuff. Chris Webb (00:15:23): It's PivotTables connected back to some kind of OLAP technology, and people still get wowed by it. Which is great. Rob Collie (00:15:30): Keeping that MDX alive, right? Chris Webb (00:15:31): Oh yeah. Still MDX in the background. Rob Collie (00:15:35): The majority of MDX usage today is overwhelmingly Excel, querying, whatever- Chris Webb (00:15:40): Yes. Rob Collie (00:15:40): Even a Tableau model, right? Chris Webb (00:15:42): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Collie (00:15:43): But I didn't know that in 2000, Excel already had lit up with that first connectivity. I just knew that I had to install something. Chris Webb (00:15:50): Yeah, Excel 2000 was the first version, I think that... I have a feeling that maybe even Excel 97 could have done it, but no, maybe it was Excel 2000, but it's a long time ago. Rob Collie (00:16:01): It had to be. I'm struggling even to imagine that 2000 did, but of course, I was installing it, there had to be some Excel. Even as late as 1999, at the end of every Office release for a long time, those big long two and a half, three year monolithic releases, there would be sort of like this almost like open job fair at the end where like people could like shuffle internally from team to team. And I remember talking to a manager one time, the words came out of my mouth. This is going to make you laugh, I think. Rob Collie (00:16:31): I said, "So for instance, I would never go to work on something like Excel, for instance." I was very derisive about it, I would never go to work on something like Excel. And he was like, "What is wrong with you, youngster? You idiot. You need to go work on something like Excel." And I'm like, "I know better than you." And a couple of years later after a failed product and a reorg, I've found myself in Excel and I was like, "Oh, this is great." Chris Webb (00:16:56): I do feel like Excel has got its mojo back. They're back doing cool stuff nowadays. Apart from the cool stuff they always did with people like you, but they've got like lambda functions and things like that. There's interesting, exciting things happening in Excel. Rob Collie (00:17:11): Yeah. It's an edgy, sort of cutting edge tool again. Chris Webb (00:17:15): Yeah. That nice dark green color scheme again, after the fairly washed out years. It's got some back. Rob Collie (00:17:20): Yeah. The past early years, we try not to think too much about the washed out pallet. So that's crazy that Excel was already doing that, but I have this Plato thing seared into my brain for some reason. I had no idea that it was like a mirror. Didn't get to meet him there. So what were you doing at that company before they said to you, "You need to go kick the tires on this OLAP Services product"? Chris Webb (00:17:44): No much because it was like my first IT job and I'd spent maybe six months or something learning to be a VB6 programmer- Rob Collie (00:17:53): Oh, oh. Chris Webb (00:17:53): ... and doing a bit of testing and things like that. And it was literally... As a company, it was good because they've got a long history of using every single OLAP tool ever. Had used MicroStrategy, they'd built their own kind of OLAP type engine, so they knew what they wanted. They knew what they wanted this stuff to do. And they had a whole bunch of really quite complex requirements and calculations that needed to be done, not the basic stuff, good complex things. Chris Webb (00:18:21): And it was the end of a long period of them evaluating a ton of other products they'd rejected. And then Nigel Pendse, if you remember Nigel Pendse. That's also a name that will separate the old people from the kids. But I think Nigel Pendse retired about 15 years ago from being the OLAP guru. He recommended using this new Microsoft technology that was in beta and it was the end of this long project. And I guess it was just like, oh, we'll give it to the graduate trainee to go away and evaluate this stuff, but actually I really enjoyed it. Chris Webb (00:18:54): The things I enjoyed about learning MDX are the things I still enjoy about DAX and M. It's like taking some kind of calculation logic and expressing it as a formula that works and always works. And no matter how you put your rows and columns together, it gives you the right answer, and I enjoyed that. That's when I really got into it. And I suppose there was also a factor of feeling like you're breaking new ground or learning something, because this is a technology that nobody else knew anything about. Chris Webb (00:19:24): And then I realized that there were newsgroups out there where people would ask questions, and I realized that actually I knew the answer to some of these questions. So I got really into answering questions on newsgroups. I suppose, that gives you a bit of feeling that you know something and you're getting somewhere and you're helping people. And I suppose that's how you fall in love with things like this. You feel like it's not just interesting, but it's something that's good professionally, good career-wise you're meeting people, you're helping people. Chris Webb (00:19:55): As soon as you get active on newsgroups, this is how I first met Amir and Moshe and all of these people because they were out there answering questions as well. And yeah, I felt like I was being part of something bigger, part of the community, and that really spurred me on. Rob Collie (00:20:08): There's something you said in there that actually made me go, "Ooh, maybe I just missed my window." Here's a confession. This isn't something that is a strength of mine. I'm going to just be clear about that. As I was thinking about it, that part of the reason why I didn't want to learn MDX was because, first, it did seem overly hard for something simple. That is an objective or more objective anyway, sort of objection that I had to it. But I think the other problem was is that on top of that, there were already a lot of people who knew it. Rob Collie (00:20:39): So I was judging myself against them from the get go, and as a result, like it was easier for me to sort of deny it and distance myself from it, than go through the hard work of sort of climbing that hill. Whereas with DAX, I had exactly the opposite. There was no prior expertise really in the world. It was, like you said, like this frontier, you were the first like Lewis and Clark to discover Yosemite or whatever. I think that weakness of mine didn't get activated in the DAX world. It also, I think DAX has a smoother on-ramp curve. Rob Collie (00:21:20): I talk about MDX as having a learning cliff that you first have to scale under machine gunfire and everything before you can get your Hello World. Whereas you can Hello World pretty easily in DAX, but maybe if MDX were brand new, maybe I would have been a bit more into it. I'll never know obviously, but. Chris Webb (00:21:42): I know what you mean. I will quite freely admit that it is a bit of an ego trip when you learn something and you kind of first there with a blog posts and answering the questions. And I don't know if that makes me a bad person, but I enjoyed that. And I was lucky in that I was there at the right time that somebody... There were other good people around. I distinctly remember they were a whole bunch of other people around on the forums who then disappeared. Chris Webb (00:22:08): I guess they went on other projects, they didn't get to use this stuff. There was a guy called George Spofford, he was the original guru with Analysis Services and MDX. He was such a lovely guy. He sort of lost a couple of years ago. He was there, he wrote the book on MDX and brought me in to write a chapter on the second edition, which was really good. But yeah, he was older than me, probably younger than I am now. But he was also incredibly clever, he came up with all kinds of amazing stuff that I had no idea about. Chris Webb (00:22:42): Just as a little sidetrack on this, he told me this story once even before OLAP Services. He'd worked on a BI startup and they were burning through money, but they had gone through most of the process for getting a patent on the idea of a measure. You know how software patents are crazy- Rob Collie (00:23:00): Yes. Chris Webb (00:23:01): ... you get a patent on the most obvious, stupid thing. His company had almost got this patent on the idea of a measure of taking a column of data and specifying how it aggregates up. He said, they had just got to the end of their startup and it would have been another $10,000 to finish getting this patent or they could spend that $10,000 on trying to get their company going. And he said, they spent the money on the company and let the patent process laps. And he said, if they'd got that patent, they would have been stupidly rich for the rest of their lives because they could have just collected royalties from every single BI company; from Microsoft, for everybody forever and ever. Chris Webb (00:23:42): Can you think about how fabulously wealthy you would be if you've got such a fundamental thing like that? He was way ahead with MDX and he was always the person that I was looking up to and catching up to. And then he went and took a job with Hyperion. I never quite understood why, but... And he disappeared from the scene and it was like, "Wow, it's just me. It's me." Stacia or Varga as is now and things around, but it was like, "Wow, the field is clear." Not that I really knew how to exploit it. Chris Webb (00:24:11): Again, I think talking about Stacia, I think she had a much better idea of how to exploit and monetize her position than I ever did because I was just a green, 20 something kid. It's just being in the right place at the right time. And I can look back and I can see other opportunities that maybe I should have taken that I didn't. DAX is a great example. I was there right at the beginning with you, but I didn't really invest enough time with it. Chris Webb (00:24:35): And if you look at what Marco Russo and Alberto Ferrari have done, they were there at the same time, but they took that and they ran with it. They were clever enough to know how to monetize it. And yeah, look at the great situation they're in now. Rob Collie (00:24:48): I made a great and terrible error with Marco and Alberto one time. They were over here at a conference. Tom, this is your fault. Thomas LaRock (00:24:56): Okay. Rob Collie (00:24:56): It was one of your conferences. Thomas LaRock (00:24:57): All right. Rob Collie (00:24:57): It was one of those past bacon conferences that you organized. If it weren't for that, I wouldn't have gone to dinner with Marco and Alberto. At the time I was still running relatively unopposed as a blogger in the DAX, Power Pivot space, and I let slip. Just not really let slip, I just was friendly, collegial conversation. I let slip my sort of average daily page views was on the blog at the time. I don't remember what it was, and I could see Marco's head just snap back and look at me and goes, "What?" Rob Collie (00:25:37): And over the next six months, suddenly the thing that we know of as the SQL BI web empire, it kicked into gear. It was like... So funny. Chris Webb (00:25:50): It's an awesome empire. Complete respect for the great job they do with the content, with the way it's presented, with the general look and feel as well. It's the thing of beauty and they deserve all the success they get, I think. Rob Collie (00:26:04): It reminds me of my friend that used to kick my ass at video games, sometimes like real-time strategy games. You go and watch him play in his office when he's killing you over the network, after he's already annihilated you, Age of Empires or whatever, and he's finishing off everybody else, you just walk over and watch what he's doing. He was just always kick back on... His feet up on the desk, he's got one hand on the mouse, he's not even bothering with the keyboard. And it's just like effortless. Rob Collie (00:26:27): They seem to hustle without ever feeling... You never interact with them and have this feeling like they're frazzled. Chris Webb (00:26:34): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:26:35): It's really amazing what their output is able to look like without ever being like the disheveled mess that you would expect them to be while doing it. Rob Collie (00:26:46): You and I then have something in common, which is that we were for a time sort of like the running unopposed in the community, far and away most prolific for a particular Microsoft BI technology. And then for various reasons, relinquished that role sort of at an inflection point in the story. I was the DAX upstart that was crazy running with it, while you're going, "Oh, come on, MDX is awesome. Why are we doing this?" But then I also stayed for a while anyway, as a blogger in the Excel world, even as Power BI desktop was coming along. Rob Collie (00:27:24): It doesn't really matter in the end because what really happened with me is that we turned into a company and being a blogger wasn't anywhere close to the most important thing for me to be doing. I mean, still isn't, but we were talking about this. Like the ego trip of being the sort of like one and only for a while. And then you in a way, you almost like get your way and the world wakes up to the value of the thing that you've been so keen on. And now, "Oh, now I'm not alone anymore." Chris Webb (00:27:50): Now, my biggest claim to fame is that I work on the same team as Guy in a Cube. Rob Collie (00:27:54): Right. Chris Webb (00:27:55): The interesting thing is my blog stats have never been higher, but in relative terms, I'm just a knee-jerked like The Beach Boys. I was big back in the day and I still do good business on my greatest hits. I still put out some nice new material as well, but I'm not relevant since. The kids have moved on to video and YouTube is going to be a thing of the past. It's all streaming as well now. It's like, as long as I still got my audience. Rob Collie (00:28:20): Pretty soon, we are going to be like 3D, hologram, livestreaming, projecting. Chris Webb (00:28:25): Exactly. Rob Collie (00:28:26): Probably not going to be my thing. Chris Webb (00:28:29): It's nice to feel like I still got an audience. And like I said, I think my stats are still higher than anything. It's probably because I'm blogging about something that people actually use widely rather than Analysis Services, where I think there were only about a couple of thousand people in the world, whoever used it. So it was quite feasible for me to have probably met a large percentage of them at conferences and things. Now, we're getting towards Excel type numbers, not quite Excel numbers, but the real... Chris Webb (00:28:55): Obviously I can't talk about it when I see the usage numbers for Power BI and how crazy they are and how crazily quickly they go up. You just realize that it's like... It's a different scale now. Rob Collie (00:29:06): Tom. Thomas LaRock (00:29:07): Yes, sir. Rob Collie (00:29:07): Let me just tell you that back in 2010, Chris and I were at mortal enemies. Thomas LaRock (00:29:12): Completely understandable. Rob Collie (00:29:14): So we found ourselves on opposite sides of something that ended up being really silly, I think in hindsight. Let's just cut to the end of it first. It all ends in basically, I'm okay, you're okay. We were both right kind of situation. But when you don't have the full picture yet- Thomas LaRock (00:29:30): Was this by any chance, a nerd fight at an MVP Summit? Rob Collie (00:29:33): It was a nerd fight that played out- Chris Webb (00:29:35): The PASS Summit. Thomas LaRock (00:29:36): Oh, it's PASS? Okay. Rob Collie (00:29:37): It played out over and over and over again, in particular on the SSAS insider's email distribution lists. Thomas LaRock (00:29:44): Right. Got it. Rob Collie (00:29:45): The private conversations. Honestly, Chris, I don't even really remember any single specifics about this. And it wasn't just you that I was arrayed against, but let me see if I can describe it as objectively as possible in hindsight. And then you can tell me if I did describe it objectively. I had struggled with MDX and failed. I had commissioned projects at Microsoft and hired third party professional services firms to implement multidimensional Analysis Services and SSIS projects for me on football, on American football of all things. Rob Collie (00:30:17): So I'd had the experience of being a client of it. I had built the tools in Excel that were that kind of client of it. I'd sort of been on every side of the coin there. And then I started using Power Pivot in 2010 to repeat that project and going, "Oh my God. This isn't even an equivalent thing. This is better. It's better when I do it myself." It's not cheaper, faster, it's those things. It is those things, but it's also, I get better results. Rob Collie (00:30:46): So then not jump to the conclusion that everything we know about the BI industry is going to change. Every last thing. Chris Webb (00:30:53): I will freely admit that I was wrong and I didn't really get self-service BI. I was a typical IT department bigot, I guess. I was all for self-service when it was people building their own reports on stuff, on a cube that I already built. But I don't think I really understood enough about what business analysts were doing and how they worked to appreciate the appeal of self-service BI. And I also think, I didn't understand the commercial potential of it either. Chris Webb (00:31:25): Let's face it from a Microsoft point of view. We're not building beautiful technology for the sake of it. We're building technology to make money. And I think the success of Power BI in the self-service space shows what the potential of the self-service market was. I think I didn't really appreciate it, and I will be the first person to say, I was completely wrong. Rob Collie (00:31:47): Oh, that's- Chris Webb (00:31:48): There were a lot of instances like that throughout my career where I can say, I was wrong or I missed that boat, or I didn't understand. But yeah, fundamentally that was it. Rob Collie (00:31:56): Boy, you were a lot harder on yourself than how I was going to be. I think that I missed that there was still going to be a place for enterprise BI. It's like, let's get really nerdy, if you tried to back in the day, earlier centuries of physics, you try to model light as a wave and purely do that as like, "Oh, that is almost perfect," but there's some problems. There's some holes, there's some places where it doesn't do what we expect it to do. And then other crew is trying to model it as a particle. Rob Collie (00:32:28): It's not a wave, it's a particle, you idiots and they have the same sorts of problems, the opposite problems. And it's only when they do the crazy thing of going, "You know what? This thing actually does both, it behaves as wave and particle. And at different times it does different things." Until they expanded their minds, they were never going to be accurately predict anything. Rob Collie (00:32:52): I feel like it's one of those things, it's each one of us was seizing on a truth. And this is actually true of almost any polarized issue when you really think about it. You see this in politics, you see it everywhere. It all starts with truth, and which truth tends to resonate with you most. You cling to that. And then you end up talking past each other, because everyone's missing your point. That's how I look back on that era. Chris Webb (00:33:17): I think we're still trying to resolve that tension between self-service and enterprise BI. Because I agree they are both necessary, and I think maybe I felt like the pendulum had swung too far towards self-service BI. I think it was probably on your conversation with Donald Farmer a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully, it wasn't on some other podcasts, but I'm pretty sure it's only you're talking to Donald Farber- Rob Collie (00:33:40): Absolutely this one. Chris Webb (00:33:41): ... when you, talking about those days and how paused development on all corporate BI and everything went into Power Pivot. And I suppose I can see now that we wouldn't be, we, the Microsoft royal we, we wouldn't be in the great commercial situation we're in now without all the investments that took place back then. But it felt really painful at the time. And especially, I think if you've invested and built yourself up. Chris Webb (00:34:06): And you've had those years of the ego trip and then suddenly it's like, "Oh, hold on. That great technology that I made my name on that my whole business was based on is now not being invested in and there's something else. And there is this guy, Rob Collie coming along, trying to do his thing." Rob Collie (00:34:23): And that guy, Rob, he's so smarmy on those emails. Chris Webb (00:34:27): Let's go back to the beach boys, it's like, word punk comes along or something. The Sex Pistols and my Beach Boys. Yeah, that's going to hurt. Rob Collie (00:34:34): I only need two cords, Chris. Chris Webb (00:34:36): Exactly. Exactly. Where are the complex harmonies of MDX? Rob Collie (00:34:40): Have you heard Dave Grohl talk about music? Chris Webb (00:34:42): No. Go on. Rob Collie (00:34:44): For your Beach Boys metaphor, I really think you should just look up a couple of quick interviews with Dave Grohl about music. He says things like he hates music reality shows like American Idol or whatever. He hates it because some of these people get up there and play their hearts out, make themselves vulnerable. And then this panel of judges tells them that they suck. That's part of the entertainment, some of them have to suck. Rob Collie (00:35:07): He says, "That's terrible because here's how music really works. You get together with a bunch of your friends in a garage and you suck and you're just awful. And then you turn into a nirvana." Every musician I ever talked to says, "Kurt was a terrible guitarist." On MTV Unplugged, he's famously making excuses before he even plays a song that he's going to screw it up. And then afterwards saying, "Oh, I didn't screw up." He was so insecure about it. Rob Collie (00:35:30): And to this day, Dave Grohl will tell you, he can't even read music. He's the guitarist and songwriter. He's transitioned from a drummer to lead guitarist and songwriter and he can't even read music. He's not trained in music at all. And so I think the punk metaphor is a really good one. And we talked about this with Lori Rodriguez about the idea in Ratatouille, the movie, that a cook can come from anywhere. They don't have to come from a pedigreed background you'd expect. Rob Collie (00:36:00): It turns out though that even though Dave Grohl can't read music, he's ended up in a different way, in a different language in his own head learning to do all the things that a high-end musical professional would need to do. He still has the skill, it just comes from a different background. We've had this blending of these two communities, and I think this is gorgeous. I think it is absolutely amazing that today Marco, Alberto, yourself are writing in the same language that the Excel analysts also learning to do. Rob Collie (00:36:33): And some of them actually turn out to be like up in that stratosphere. They get so good at it, they get way better at it than I am. I find that that lack of an explicit boundary between those two communities is just amazing. I love it. Chris Webb (00:36:50): That's got to a strength. There are just no barriers. If you're good, you'll get there. Rob Collie (00:36:55): Even if you suck, you're really good. Sucking at DAX is in ways that like I used to do this to myself. I'd look back on what I did six months ago and go, "Oh, I was so cute back then." I didn't know what I was doing, and yet that thing that I built was changing the world in really impactful ways. Chris Webb (00:37:12): But I think that's like one of the strengths of the whole... I don't know whether it's Microsoft as a whole. I definitely felt it in the SQL Server community. It's just a whole bunch of people who didn't go to some top college for IT. After I went to university, I did evening degree in IT, so at least I've got an IT qualification. But yeah, the number of ex musicians, the number of people from the armed forces, the number of accountants, and then did something else. Chris Webb (00:37:38): The number of people who've just fallen into it, it's like you said, you don't have the formal training, but you've got the experience. And sometimes that experience and the knowledge you've gained along the way actually makes you better than perhaps somebody who's just been writing code since the age of six, and has never, ever done anything else and never, ever wanted to do anything else. Thomas LaRock (00:37:59): If I may. Earlier, Chris, you had said a couple of things when you were talking about how you were wrong. I just do want you to understand, you weren't the only one wrong. And you did just touch upon the SQL Server community, now we'll just call the data platform community. But there were a lot of the people that did not understands the shift of what was happening. There's another part you mentioned where you said you didn't see. When you arrived and we were having your discussions, you didn't see the commercial aspect of it. Thomas LaRock (00:38:29): And I would tell you that it's because it wasn't evident really to anyone. I don't think anyone really saw... For me, it was business objects, crystal reports. This is what we use in our environment and that was the self-service BI dream. But they were all the same. They were cumbersome, they're difficult to work with. So you were right, enterprise BI was still going to be a thing, but what you didn't see and that Rob somehow stumbled upon was this, I don't know, 100 million people out there that if they were empowered to build themselves a Power Pivot. Thomas LaRock (00:39:06): And I would look at you, Chris and say, "How many times have I ever had to pivot a table using T-SQL?" I'm going to say, once for an exam like 15 years ago. And that's just awful, who would do that? When I met Rob and I learned Power Pivot and I said, "Oh my God, why are these people using T-SQL for this stuff? They should just be using Excel to do a lot of the data manipulation." And these days, I would tell you, even Python and why you're even in T-SQL, I don't know. Thomas LaRock (00:39:33): But once they got empowered with something like Power Pivot, they were already familiar with Excel. And you had this merging, you had that duality that Rob just talked about. All of a sudden, all these power users said, "Wait a second, bookie what I can do now." And that was the commercial aspect that apparently somebody knew existed, otherwise this stuff will never be build. But that's what took off. Thomas LaRock (00:39:57): And a lot of us, and even some of us had just simply believed, but there were a lot of people that were still just like, "Yeah, it's not a thing. It's just not a thing, it's not what I'm interested. I need more nerd knobs inside this database engine because of all this..." And it's just not a real thing. The fact that I had to have discussions with people about whether or not the PASS Summit should have a whole track to business intelligence. Do we really need that here? Are you kidding me? Chris Webb (00:40:26): I remember those years well. The feeling of being like a second-class citizen or the hate in the room when there was just too much BI in the keynote. Thomas LaRock (00:40:34): Yes. Oh. Rob Collie (00:40:36): Like, oh, the thing that the business can really strategically change it is not just keeping the lights on like basic infrastructure. The stuff that the C-suite would actually get excited about, if you could deliver something. Now, we don't want to add that. You said that I was able to see this coming and most people didn't. I actually think you had to have had exactly and specifically my career experience to have seen what I saw. It wasn't me, it was my path. Rob Collie (00:41:03): It comes down to, I'm so lucky that the consultant from Hitachi Consulting who knew his shit, he was good. I was so lucky that he was not from the United States and did not know anything about American Football. Because if he did, the project would have happened completely differently. But because he didn't know football, it resembled a regular BI project, where I was the stakeholder that knew everything about the business domain and had to somehow educate him on it. And we had to slowly iterate in this terrible, terrible process. Rob Collie (00:41:35): So I had to have been from the Excel group, I had to have had exposure to Analysis Services from a technical standpoint, from inside the company. And then I needed to be a customer of it and get lucky in that way in order for all of these wires to connect. I don't think there's really anything terribly special about me, it was just that I had had that path, that allowed me to see something. And so, of course, I was going to be talking past everyone. Thomas LaRock (00:41:59): And my question to both of you, let's start with Chris. I have a belief that if you need to manipulate data in some way, DAX is far more powerful for you than T-SQL would be, right? Is this fair? Chris Webb (00:42:15): Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:42:16): Okay. Chris Webb (00:42:16): Although, I'm a big Power Query fan, so I'd say, don't forget about Power Query, as well. Thomas LaRock (00:42:20): That's fine. Power Query too. I'm just going to say, when it comes to the manipulation of data, T-SQL, Transact-SQL to me is a way to get data more inserted into a database that is to really work with the data. And that's fine, but my question, and now would be more to Chris because he's at Microsoft now, and less to you Rob because you're just Rob now. But- Rob Collie (00:42:42): Aargh, I have opinions. Chris Webb (00:42:43): You're still special. Rob Collie (00:42:45): Pick me, pick me. Thomas LaRock (00:42:49): Because I see it from time to time. I see the team in Redmond, they gave us like windowing functions recently. I see little things that get added slowly over time like a coffee drip, just some little bit here and there. But why don't we have a whole suite of functions to calculate end of week, end the day, end the month, all that stuff? How many Tuesdays are in a month? That's like a one-line thing in Excel. Thomas LaRock (00:43:14): And you can just simply say, "Done. Now, I got the number, move on." None of that exists inside of T-SQL. Is there a technical reason? Is there a business reason? Why can't we get a lot of that functionality into the database platform as is right now? Chris Webb (00:43:30): Well, I suppose this is the kind of perennial product design, prioritization thing that I've only really come to appreciate in the last two years since I've been, not involved with it, but at least I had a ringside seat in how it works out. And I think that's been the hard thing for me to learn. It's not all about creating a great product, it's creating a product that will sell. And they're not always the same thing, sometimes there are marketing concerns. Chris Webb (00:43:56): Those marketing features that annoy the kind of true techie fanboys like you and me, they serve a purpose, they sell the products. And if you don't sell a product, we don't have jobs. And there isn't an infinite resource for developing this stuff, and if you have those cool marketing features, then that's one less useful feature for the true believers. And yeah, we definitely see that with Power BI. There are things that I think get developed that are genuinely useful. Chris Webb (00:44:24): There are things that, at least in my mind would be super useful to have, but maybe not useful for everybody in every kind of point of view. But I still passionately believe they should be there in the product. And there are the things that are there that, well, maybe people don't always use, but get used for demos or check the box for Gartner or whoever. And that's not to say that they're useless, they are really useful. They're useful to make the product viable, to make people think wow in a demo. Chris Webb (00:44:52): To impress the reviewers to and the analysts to make people buy the product so they can discover the stuff like DAX, which nobody's going to get really excited about. You do a C-level presentation about DAX, you'd lose the audience in the first 30 seconds and people would say, "I'm not interested in this product," even if that is where the real power of the product goes. So it's a shame, but there are always these trade offs really. Rob Collie (00:45:15): Can I talk now? Thomas LaRock (00:45:16): Yes, we still value your opinion. Chris Webb (00:45:17): We don't want you to explode with these opinions that are bubbling up inside you. Rob Collie (00:45:22): Part of what you're asking, Tom, comes back to a debate and a misunderstanding that predates all of this technology, which is why do we need OLAP? And this is something that we talk about, every couple of years, Tom, you and I write something about this, which is T-SQL is transactional. Like Chris is saying, like prioritization of, not just of product, but even just like of base direction of a technology. A single technology can't be good at everything, you got to optimize. Rob Collie (00:45:49): And really SQL is fundamentally record-keeping. We used to write things down on paper, and then SQL came along and that became the way that we wrote things down. The storage and retrieval, read and write of records of various sorts is what SQL was made for. And what I call like the first use of data, the first use of data is transactional. It's record-keeping, it's making individual activities happen. Sometimes even across systems like records here, then trigger the creation of another record over there. And then next thing you know, I'm being billed by Amazon and my package arrives. That's the first use of data. Rob Collie (00:46:30): Second use of data when you're analyzing it, it turns out SQL is terrible at that, but the whole world needs to keep records. So there's jillion people lying around who knows SQL, something like OLAP comes along and initially it smells like it's the same thing. But then you get into it and you realize it, it's a completely different beast. Doesn't speak to the SQL crowd, most of them. And so we ended up in a situation like when I joined this story in progress in the early 2000s at Microsoft, reporting services was the dominant apex predator of Microsoft BI platform. Rob Collie (00:47:06): And it's just putting like an HTML transform over the top of a SQL query is all it is. It has no brain, it doesn't do anything. And like Analysis Services was the smarter sibling of that product that no one paid any attention to. It was so funny. Now, we're still to an extent live a little bit in that world today, Tableau starting to add that data model, they're starting to, the worm has turned. But they're a really, really good viewer of SQL views. Chris Webb (00:47:39): I had semantic layer, so definitely coming back into fashion. I saw this article on Medium a couple of months ago talking about Headless BI and I was thinking all the way through what you're describing. There was some amazing news platform that somebody had developed, and what they were describing was OLAP. And OLAP database, where you could put different client tools on top of some engine they developed. So it's not a new concept. Rob Collie (00:48:04): Hey, Chris, do you know how the PR industry works? Chris Webb (00:48:08): Yes, I know, I know, I know. Thomas LaRock (00:48:10): It's new to them, though. Rob Collie (00:48:11): For those who don't, I've the last few years glimpsed how that all operates. And it turns out that all the media outlets, they don't know what to talk about. They need stories to draw clicks to get advertising revenue and the PR industry is more than happy to feed them stories. And so for instance, the Harvard Business Review article from a few years ago that was titled something really provocative like Finance Departments Abandoning Excel. That was a PR hit job, absolutely executed, paid for on behalf of Anaplan. That's what it was. Rob Collie (00:48:43): It was an Anaplan ad, Anaplan's PR firm did an amazing job, an amazing job, creating all this controversy. One of my neighbors works for them and he's doing very well. That thing worked. And so this thing, Headless BI, whether it was a PR firm or whether it was just a really clever marketing department, they're trying to define a new industry term and trend that just so happens to be about their company. Chris Webb (00:49:11): Yeah, I felt- Rob Collie (00:49:12): It's not new. Chris Webb (00:49:13): I just get triggered by all these things, regardless. It's like every time I see somebody talking about the new Excel or the new thing, I can't help, but get triggered even though I know it's rubbish. Rob Collie (00:49:24): You know who else gets tired of being told about the new Excel? It's all the people who are good at Excel. Chris Webb (00:49:28): Yes. Rob Collie (00:49:29): They'd been to that rodeo now. They've been sold that bill of goods so many times and it's never been that. And it's just the thing that they use to export back to Excel. After a while, that marketing message has been used too many times, but I think it's still effective. It's the thing to shoot at, it's the thing everyone uses. You've got to talk about it. Chris Webb (00:49:47): So long as it still gets a reaction and it still does, then they'll carry on using it. Rob Collie (00:49:52): So something we've run into recently, all this demand, which is a really good thing for Tableau to Power BI migrations. And if you're a Tableau shop and you drank that Kool-Aid, that bitter Kool-Aid and it became pervasive, you got a good infestation going at a corporate level. And now you're just saying, "Hello, whoa, whoa, we should really reconsider this and we should switch to Power BI." As a customer at that point, you have a relatively tremendous investment in a flat SQL, middle-tier. Rob Collie (00:50:27): And Power BI, one of the tenants of Power BI is don't Franken-Table. You want to keep those Fact Tables separate. It gives you a degree of flexibility that you wouldn't even imagine. You won't even know what it feels like until you've seen it. You can't even describe it to someone how much better it is. And so what we've run into as a consulting firm somewhat recently, is customers who have been told that yeah, yeah, yeah Power BI works great with the Franken-Table. Rob Collie (00:50:57): And then our professional advice is, "Well, yeah." And so then now the customer's confused because they're getting the right technical advice from us, which is don't Franken-Table. But then, as you mentioned earlier, you've got to sell something. They do have jillions of Franken-Tables. Do you need to rebuild your entire middle-tier in order to switch to Power BI? Have you run into this? Chris Webb (00:51:20): I have. Rob Collie (00:51:21): And are we allowed to talk about it? Chris Webb (00:51:23): We are allowed to talk. I will talk in a roundabout way, but let me begin the conversation by saying that one of my jobs on the CAT team is to work closely with large customers. And the large customers that I work particularly closely with has a center of excellence run by the really great guy, and he is somebody who has thought very deeply on the subject of Tableau migration. And this large customer was a big, big Tableau customer say, five years ago? And they are now coming to the end of their migration from Tableau to Power BI, which they have done pretty successfully. Chris Webb (00:52:05): So the things that he's learned along the way are things that we at Microsoft like to try and reuse, and promote to other customers because we get asked this question all the time, I mean, all, all the time. There is a section of the Power BI docs called the guidance docs, which is owned by the Power BI CAT team, and there is a section on migration there. A lot of that material is material that comes from him. But I'll paraphrase what he's learned. Chris Webb (00:52:32): Basically, if you think about Tableau migration, there are an awful lot of companies who come to Microsoft, come to partners and say, "Hey, we want a bit of this Power BI action. We want to be able to migrate everything we've got from Tableau to Power BI." Number one reason is they think it's going to save them a ton of cash, which it probably will given the relative licensing costs. And at the moment, everybody wants to save some money. So they think, "Well, how do you do it?" Chris Webb (00:52:57): The obvious first thing to do is go to a consultancy company who is motivated to come and do this work, to take the obvious analogy of, to a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, to a consultancy company, every project looks like a consultancy job. And they will come in and say, "Let's have a look at all of your Tableau reports and I will do a mini assessment. And then I will take a look and see how long it takes to migrate a single report. And then we'll find the number of Tableau workbooks," or whatever they call it. Chris Webb (00:53:28): "And then we'll multiply that time for a single report, multiply it by the number of Tableau workbooks you've got. And then we'll give you a bill." Six months later because it'll only take six months, it'll all be right and you'll have exactly what you had before with Power BI at a fraction of the cost that you were paying in Tableau. And usually what we find is that somebody has come in and slap Power BI on top of that Franken-Table, as he called it, because of course, you can get most of the way there. Chris Webb (00:53:53): But then the numbers don't properly add up because somebody's munched together different granularities, and then maybe the performance isn't great. And the DAX is all suddenly really complex and horrible because the data isn't modeled properly. And it's like, "Oh, well this Power BI doesn't really perform very well." And even if we get to that point, if you think about the sheer number of reports of any BI product that somebody's got, and even if you think that it would be... Well, a large company might have easily five, 6,000 Tableau workbooks or something that need migrating. Chris Webb (00:54:28): And even if you were saying that it took $1,000 of somebody's time, and can you imagine even doing it that cheaply to migrate a single Tableau workbook? 5,000 Tableau reports times $1,000, how much that costs. And think about the number of resources that would be required to that that no consultancy company could ever do. So there's a fixed amount of parallelism. The costs become crazy, the amount of time taken becomes crazy. The technical problems that you run into because nobody wants to remodel the data or you run into these issues. Chris Webb (00:55:01): And of course, a consultancy company coming and doing this job will promise, "Yes, we can do it in a fixed amount of time. And yes, you won't need to do any retraining because we can recreate everything that you had in Tableau in Power BI. And oh, no, we can't do that, oh, it's like a disaster, it's completely unusable." It falls flat. That's what we see the trap a lot of people are falling into. There is a different way because I've seen it, I've seen a customer successfully migrate that much. Chris Webb (00:55:28): And so the approach they took was different. No consultants here involved, I'm afraid. Maybe there's an opportunity for you to come in and- Rob Collie (00:55:35): Hey, that's great. Chris Webb (00:55:35): ... and- Rob Collie (00:55:37): I do want to continue with the story, but I just wanted to jump in for a moment and say, "This is really like the DNA that turned into our company, is that I knew that industry." I know the business models you're talking about. I've heard vice presidents at consulting firms talk openly about like, "All we need to do is get this client pregnant." They use that word. "We get them hooked. It doesn't matter what we say up front, once they're in that it can't get out." Rob Collie (00:56:04): It's just so repulsive, the whole thing. In a way, the way that you just described where that industry operates, we set out to say, "Look, it can be different than that. The tools have changed now that it can be different from that." We don't know what that firm really looks like, but we're going to go find out, we're going to go build it. I saw a tweet go by recently, I think it's because of Tom following someone that I now follow someone, and then someone replied to them and said, "Remember, an umbrella salesman will never talk to you about building a roof." Rob Collie (00:56:36): So a customer or an organization that's able to pull this off without help, great. That's someone that we don't necessarily need to be in there helping. There's plenty of people who do need help and that's where we focus our time. And it's been a rough road discovering, defining. Chris Webb (00:56:52): Yeah. There are other consultancy opportunities involved here. The approach they've taken and has worked well. Obviously, it's not something that can happen in six months, it's a several-year process. But what they did is they, first of all said, "No new development on Tableau." So everything you had to happen on Power BI. They were always going to be exceptions, but that was the general rule. And then they started turning off the Tableau workbooks reports, whatever. Chris Webb (00:57:16): I call them reports because I don't know the great term that nobody was using. Because let's face it, all BI's got a shelf life and people build stuff that's useful for awhile and then it just... People don't use it anymore. Rob Collie (00:57:28): Especially, Franken-Table-powered reports. They tend to be built for a particular question to be answered. They answer that question, then the need expires, and then that report is like the SSRS reports. They just proliferate forever, but there's a very, very, very, very, very long tail of, "No, we don't look at it anymore." Chris Webb (00:57:46): Yeah. You look at the ones that nobody's used for 18 months, delete those. Wait for the occasional angry emails come in, they can put that back. Then look at the ones that haven't been used for a year, delete those. Look at the ones that haven't been used for six months, delete those. And then at the same time, people are beginning to use Power BI for doing things. Train people up, get people excited, get people enthusiastic, and then say, "Well, listen, we're now going to turn off the ones that nobody's used for three months, you need to go away and migrate them." Chris Webb (00:58:16): And it's basically been a grassroots campaign to get the business educated so that they're able to support themselves and move what they need over to Power BI. And rebuild things in a way that makes sense, that works with Power BI rather than just trying to rebuild things. Because I think that with any kind of migration from one tool to another, there is always a tendency and always a temptation for the business to take the easy, lazy way out and say, "Just give me what I had before." Chris Webb (00:58:45): But if the business is doing that themselves, it gives them... They're motivated to make the right choice, which is, "Let's look again at what we want and see if we can reimplement it in a different way that actually makes sense with a tool that you're using." And that's the beauty of self-service BI, if you're doing it yourself, then you can at least express yourself and do what you need, rather than have to go through that whole tedious process of explaining to somebody what you want and getting that. Chris Webb (00:59:11): And so as a result, after three years of that, they are about to turn off the last of their Tableau and move everybody over to Power BI. Chris Webb (00:59:19): If you'll, excuse me going off on a little bit of a tangent, there are two things that I've wanted to say that have been bursting inside me. First of all, to go back to the whole idea of self-service BI, an analogy I always used to use when I was doing training was self-service BI was with typing. 40, 50 years ago, if you're an important business analyst type person in the company, or anybody. If you wanted something typed, you would go to the typing pool and have somebody type it. Chris Webb (00:59:48): And there would be somebody there who was really good at typing, much better than you or I, could type incredibly quickly. Especially given the technology, they'd type incredibly quickly, they could spell brilliantly. They could put together a beautiful-looking professional document and then it would come back to you and you just sign your name on it, and then it would be done. And nowadays that doesn't exist, where have the typing professional's gone? Chris Webb (01:00:12): We're typing ourselves badly, putting together badly formatted documents in Word, just these half semi-literate emails that people send to each other with emojis and stuff. So why are we doing that? What happened to the beautiful professionals of typing? Well, it turns out it's just easier for us to type the stuff ourselves and get it out the way than actually have to go to the typing pool, dictate it to somebody. Wait for it to come back, check it as what we meant to say. Chris Webb (01:00:37): Correct the errors and send it back for typing again and so on. And that's the thing with self-service BI. It might not be done as elegantly, but at least the interface between your brain and what you want, there's not another person there. You can just express yourself directly, and that's so much more powerful. And that's what you see there with getting the business to take ownership. Chris Webb (01:00:57): And maybe the other thing that I wanted to get off my chest, and again, not to criticize Donald Farmer, but when I was listening to that podcast you did with him, something he said a little bit. He said that nobody was using Power BI because they loved it, they used it because it was the tool that was there. The implication being that maybe other BI tools like Tableau people use because they love, and Power BI is coming in because it's cheap and it's there on everybody's desktop. Chris Webb (01:01:24): And I would take issue with that, especially with Tableau migrations. Tableau is so great at the Kool-Aid of we're so amazing, we're so beautiful that you can't help, but think, "Is Tableau a better tool than Power BI? Do the users really want to use Power BI over Tableau?" And then you see a migration like this and somebody says to you, "Well, actually we prefer using Power BI," and it's like, "I'm a Power BI fanboy and sometimes I get a little bit surprised by that." Chris Webb (01:01:51): It's a wonderful, happy moment to feel that somebody is actually genuinely prefers it. Then you realize that people do prefer it because it's got different strengths. You're not dealing with some Franken-Table. You've got that modeling, you've got the power of DAX to do all of those complex things that people struggled to do in other tools. You've got Power Query thrown in so you can do your own ETL instead of having to pay extra for it. Rob Collie (01:02:13): I had a similar reaction when Donald said that, but because my immune system is so advanced in this area, I just turned it into a thought that I was comfortable with and assumed that that's what he meant. Chris Webb (01:02:24): Sorry, Donald, if you were listening, which I'm sure you are, then I don't mean it as a criticism. Take it from me, people genuinely do love Power BI. Rob Collie (01:02:31): So I took that sand crystal irritant and I turned it into a pearl. And again, I don't know if this was actually what he meant, this is what I turned it into. In my interactions with the Microsoft product team, it is abundantly clear to me that they're getting an tremendous amount... And this is correct, this is how they should be. I'm not criticizing them for this. They are getting a tremendous amount of their prioritization of what they need to do from their conversations with top level management at the customers like CIOs, IT directors, whatever. Rob Collie (01:03:07): And not nearly as much as what I would think they should be doing in terms of appealing from the bottom up. I do think that there's a little bit... It's not an either or, it's an and, and I think part of the and has been lost a little bit lately, which is that Power BI is a better tool. It has a tremendous impact on the lives of the people that we introduce to it. Rob Collie (01:03:37): When I see all of the Excel integration features happening these days, are ones that CIOs would have asked for and not authors. So much of my interaction with Microsoft these days, presupposes that the data models are already there. No one talks about how they come to be. Again, like you said before, you have to sell things. If you don't sell things, there's nothing. So, such a loud voice for all of the complaints. Rob Collie (01:04:09): I had kind of a ringside seat when many-to-many relationships became available in the product. And it was like a knee-jerk reaction to one big customer saying, "I don't understand why we can't do this, you guys are stupid. If we can't do this, we're not going to buy your product." And so next thing you know, many-to-many relationships were in the product. They were like very easy to discover, very easy to use, and everyone running around, stabbing themselves in the eye with that fork. Rob Collie (01:04:38): And I feel like the voice of the enthusiast and actually even more so, the voice of the enthusiast that hasn't found it yet, I wish that were a little louder. Chris Webb (01:04:49): Probably because I'm directly involved in collecting feedback and bringing it back. There's still an awful lot of customer feedback that's taken into account and CAT team is directly involved in collecting feedback. The thing that I have realized is that again, there are many authentic voices of the user. And let's take data visualization as a visualization and Tableau type features as a thing. Chris Webb (01:05:17): It's very easy for somebody who is very passionate about visualization to say, "Oh, Power BI isn't great at visualization compared to some other tool and Power BI should be spending a lot more time doing that." And that is one voice of the user. But then at the same time, when I talk to some users, they say, "Yeah, it's fine, all I want is a bar chart. I don't want them to think more complicated than that." Chris Webb (01:05:43): And as soon as you get into the really kind of Rolls Royce type data visualization features, inevitably you will make things more complicated by making things more powerful. And yeah, that's what we hear. Sometimes people don't like Tableau because they only want to do something really simple. And Tableau makes those things maybe too complicated and Power BI is fairly dumb. Click on a button, there's a bar chart. Chris Webb (01:06:08): Drag the fields into it, and it just works and it gives you a bar chart is actually better for some of those use cases. There's less of a mental tax, there's less education involved to get there. I've realized that there are multiple valid viewpoints, even from the point of view of the customer. It's difficult to listen to all of those different sources of feedback and get things, and then balance that with the need of being able to sell, being able to integrate with other products that Microsoft have a coherent story across the power platform, all of those different things. Rob Collie (01:06:43): I think where we both definitely agree is that it would be a shame if Power BI somehow came to be perceived just like the IT-driven edict, the tool of choice, right? Chris Webb (01:06:57): Yeah. The cheap option that somebody's bought because they've done a corporate-wide deal. Rob Collie (01:07:01): Right. Which of course is the reality of how a lot of these deals happen. This is the weird thing about how the way the world works. It's easier to sell Power BI at a corporate level on price than it is to sell it on its merits, which is that it's a fabulously superior tool. We want it both ways. We love the fact that the price point makes it easier to sell. You can't go to war negating your own advantages, you have to lean into this. And at the same time, you don't want to lose that other thing. Rob Collie (01:07:30): And honestly, really, for me, all this comes down to is the customer, the user at a current customer or at a customer that hasn't decided to buy in yet. The person who hasn't discovered it. That's the only thing that I care about that I think could use, and actually would pay immense dividends for Microsoft, even in their superior market position these days, is to invest a bit more into the people that we keep running into over and over and over again, who are angry that they haven't been told about this. They're out there and they still outnumber the people who have been told by a large multiple. Chris Webb (01:08:08): It's difficult to know how to reach those people because they've got day jobs. They're accountants, they're actuaries. They use Excel in the way that I use my car. I'm not a car fan, I use a car to get from A to B. I've got like a five, six-year-old car that's a bit beaten up and I don't really care about it. And various members of my family keep dropping hints that it's a bit embarrassing and it's time I bought myself the spiffy new car that I can afford. Chris Webb (01:08:33): It's just something that I use from day-to-day, and a lot of people see Excel like that and it's difficult to know how we could market them. Maybe we just need to have more big adverts on TV, or at the airport, or whatever- Rob Collie (01:08:47): Yes. Chris Webb (01:08:48): ... to reach those people. Rob Collie (01:08:49): Anything. Anything that acknowledges that the Excel crowd and a particular segment of the Excel crowd, they're like about a five to 6% slice. That's where your authors are. That's where all of your future authors are. I think, and rightly so, like when and CIOs are your customers and you're getting a lot of feedback from them, they aren't necessarily attuned to that either. When you're talk about adoption, like driving usage even at a customer who's already bought Power BI, when you're talking about driving usage up, and adoption, and all those sorts of things, or what's the monthly active users? Is that- Chris Webb (01:09:23): MAU. Rob Collie (01:09:23): MAU. Chris Webb (01:09:24): It's MAU. Rob Collie (01:09:24): Okay. Chris Webb (01:09:24): That's what we talk about. Rob Collie (01:09:25): These are the same problems, when I'm talking about surfaces on your radar. I almost feel like it's like the movie 300. You need King Leonidas to just pick a handful of software engineers that are now safe from all other resource allocation. They're earmarked for onboarding Excel people. It wouldn't take that much, but someone somewhere has to pony that up, figure out how to either integrate the Power BI engine into Excel. Rob Collie (01:09:55): The equivalent of Power Pivot is on by default as the gateway drug. PivotTables are the place to introduce people to this. And you know what? Within 24 hours of introduction to it in a PivotTable concept, they're embracing Power BI visuals. It doesn't take long. They are totally cool. You've got to step it. I don't know. Again, I'm positive that's not what Donald meant, but that's what I turned it into. Chris Webb (01:10:20): Wow. Okay. That's definitely where the big numbers lie, if you can just tap into the billions of Excel users. That's the kind of state today I've seen Amir say this in public. He wants to get to Excel scale with Power BI. I hope that I live to see that happen in my lifetime because I think it probably is. It's a task that would take that long. We've made such a good start, it's feasible, I could believe it. Maybe I'll see it before I die. Rob Collie (01:10:48): I think that if it had been taken seriously at that level in like 2010, we'd already be there. You got a couple of things off your chest. I'm glad that we got to those, those were good. Is there anything that you were hoping we talk about that we haven't? Chris Webb (01:11:02): All right. One more thing I'll get off my chest. Maybe I'll dig it up, but somebody put a meme on Twitter. I'm not even sure where it's from. It's one of those famous memes, I think maybe makes more sense in the U.S., but I think it's those bounty hunters shouting at each other, that meme. Rob Collie (01:11:17): Oh, yes. I think it's the motorcycle guys. Chris Webb (01:11:19): Yeah, the motorcycle guys, yeah. Obviously, we didn't get the show here in the UK, we just get the meme, so a lot of the cultural context is lost. But it was those guys arguing about, "Can you fix my dashboard?" And the Power BI guy says, "It's a report." I remember being at the MVP Summit when Power BI was launched and somebody going in front of the crowd of MVPs with me and they were saying, "Oh, and we've got this thing called the dashboards, which will go alongside your report." Chris Webb (01:11:47): And I knew right then that this was the biggest mistake that they were going to make. And I put my hand up and I said, "No, don't call it a dashboard. Call it a pinboard, call it something else. Just don't call it a dashboard because we're going to be cursed forever with people calling dashboards reports and it's just going to lead to so much confusion," and it has, it has. Rob Collie (01:12:08): Yes. Microsoft can not be trusted with nouns. Seriously. It's like, you've got to get the nouns away from the people in charge of naming things. In fact, it's so bad that at one point, even back on the Excel team, I was telling... From experience, from having been a noun abuser for a while, telling my new hires on my team that they had to come to noun court with me if they wanted to put any new nouns into the product. Rob Collie (01:12:35): They could do verbs, they could put verbs into the product without the high court. But they wanted a noun, they were going to have to bring it because I was not going to allow that. Again, having been someone who had done nouns and done them wrong, it took me a while for me to get over that. I think it's a computer science thing. I think honestly, people who are drawn to technology are really enamored of things like the word entity. Rob Collie (01:13:01): If I say the word entity and you start getting a little bit excited, you start getting a little gooey inside- Chris Webb (01:13:07): You can see it my eyes down here. Rob Collie (01:13:08): ... we need to keep you away from naming. Chris Webb (01:13:10): Yes, absolutely. Rob Collie (01:13:13): And I was an entity guy. I was a computer science, A prime, B prime, C prime, kind of graph theory is everything. Like, "Nope, mm-mm (negative). No, it's humans." Learn the hard way. Chris Webb (01:13:25): In any of the honesty, if they were building a product that was going to be used by millions and millions of users. If you're launching a new brand of soda or something, you'd have focus groups to look at the labeling, look at a whole bunch of different options for the names. Make sure it was exactly the right shade of purple that didn't put people off. Whereas in software, we just put this stuff out there without any thoughts. Chris Webb (01:13:47): Because of course, it's just the name, who cares about it? And if you are building for the mass, mass market, you've got to be super careful about these things. Rob Collie (01:13:56): Yeah. The same person like me, who'd one minute be adjudicating the rounding error problem of binary and decimal and some really obscure corner of the product is at the same time supposed to name a button? or name an entity? Again, [crosstalk 01:14:13] you and I have both used the word entity. You used entity to just describe the organization, I just used entity, we're terrible. Chris Webb (01:14:20): I can still remember the controversy about Power Pivot, whether add a space in it. And to be honest, I can't even remember now whether it's got a space in between Power and Pivot. Rob Collie (01:14:29): It does now because Power View, which we don't care about anymore. There was a PowerView that was one word that was owned by some sort of binoculars company. So Power View with a space was A-OK, and so for symmetry, we had to put a space between Power Pivot. And then PowerView, no one wants to talk about that dirty secret anymore, and so now we're stuck with the space in Power Pivot for no reason. Chris Webb (01:14:53): Oh, yeah. Rob Collie (01:14:54): Well, Chris, this has been a blast. In a lot of ways, this show is just a professional vehicle, an excuse to catch up with people, and have fun conversations like this. I've really enjoyed this one quite a bit. I'm really happy that you were available. Chris Webb (01:15:08): It's a pleasure. Let's do it again sometime. Rob Collie (01:15:10): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive Podcast. Let the experts at P3 Adaptive help your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Have a data day!

Evan Rhodes is one of the three Directors of Client Services here at P3 Adaptive.  It is no wonder why he is one of our leaders here.  There is very little that can stand in his way when it comes to excellence, he makes everyone around him better, and he wants to win by doing things the right (not only the correct, but the ethical) way. And, to top it all off, he looks a LOT like Keanu Reeves.  And he's just as cool as Keanu! References in this episode: Spider-Man Pointing Meme The Balanced Scorecard Rob's Value Above Replacement Blog My Buddy/Kid Sister Commercial Myrton Hanks Celebration Dance Episode Timeline: 1:50 - Evan is our very own Keanu Reeves doppelganger, his role at P3 Adaptive, and his Origin Story 10:20 - The Balanced Scorecard, understanding the value of analysts, the iterative process and learning from failures 36:50 - A different breed of consultant and consultancy, Evan's personal PBI applications-Disney wait times and Fantasy Football Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Today we're completing the P3 director trifecta. We've had Ryan and Chrissy, our other two directors on the show before, and today we welcome Evan Rhodes. Evan's rise to the director position at P3 has been like a shot of caffeine for our business. And that's Evan, the human caffeine shot. And that's a low little bit of a paradox given that Evan speaks in a very measured, relaxed and matter-of-fact tone basically about everything. Rob Collie (00:00:30): Of course, we cover the usual. We talked about his origin story and his path to P3. And even though on multiple previous episodes, we've talked quite a bit about the new breed of consultant that's required for today's world, I think that today's conversation with Evan might give you a bit more of the texture of that than we've gotten into in previous episodes. Rob Collie (00:00:52): We also talk a lot about a book from the late '90s, The Balanced Scorecard, and how that idea is incredibly powerful and is really now coming into its own. Thanks to Power BI. Then near the end, the wheels really came off in a good way, talked about modeling wait times at Disney, talked about fantasy football, and along the way we acknowledged that Evan is the only P3 employee to ever be mistaken for Keanu Reeves. I hope you enjoy it. We sure did, so let's get into it. Announcer (00:01:26): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Announcer (00:01:30): This is the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast, with your host, Rob Collie. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to P3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:01:51): Welcome to the show. Evan Rhodes, our very own Keanu Reeves lookalike. How are you, man? Evan Rhodes (00:01:59): Doing great. Great to be here. Rob Collie (00:02:01): With COVID, your opportunities to you mistaken for Keanu have fallen off dramatically. You haven't been out jet setting. Evan Rhodes (00:02:08): That's true. That's true. I don't get it as often as I used to when I was out traveling the country in the world, so I'm sure it'll happen again soon. Rob Collie (00:02:16): Think about it. COVID is just so cruel. It's taken so many things from us. Being mistaken for Keanu, I know it's a crucial part of your life. Damn you COVID. Evan Rhodes (00:02:26): Absolutely. And I'm sure Keanu is upset he hasn't been mistaken for me. Rob Collie (00:02:30): I'm sure he gets that all the time. Gosh, I can't imagine the number of Evan Rhodes autographs he's had to sign- Evan Rhodes (00:02:36): I'm sure- Rob Collie (00:02:37): ... in his- Evan Rhodes (00:02:37): ... people have come up, "Didn't you teach me Power BI a couple years ago." Rob Collie (00:02:42): And he's just learned to eventually just, he just started saying yes. Evan Rhodes (00:02:45): Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:02:45): It's it easier if he just plays along with it. Evan Rhodes (00:02:47): I like to believe that he picked up the book and learned some [DAC 00:02:50] so that he could answer questions. Rob Collie (00:02:52): He's a good spot. Imagine if we could just get a picture, we'd send him the book and just have him there like, be sitting on an airplane. Someone take a picture of him holding the book, like he's deep in thought studying it. Evan Rhodes (00:03:01): That would be great. Rob Collie (00:03:02): That would be a major coup. Well, maybe someday you'll round the corner in an airport and he'll be coming around the other corner and he'll stop and you'll look at each other and it'll be like that meme where the two Spidermen are pointing at each other. Evan Rhodes (00:03:17): I think I'd even know what we'd say. It'd have to be Ted meet evil Ted. Rob Collie (00:03:21): Something like that. Yeah, that's right. That's right. I'd forgotten about Bill and Ted too. That was pretty funny. All right, so we've had two of our three directors on the show. We are now completing the tripod. You're one of our three directors. In your own words, what is your role here at P3? Evan Rhodes (00:03:42): My role covers a few parts of the company. As a director of client services, lead a team of the consultants and help them, support them in their projects and all their efforts. And also work with our business development team to keep bringing on our new clients. Rob Collie (00:03:58): Chrissy, her alter ego is the Microsoft relationship. Evan Rhodes (00:04:01): Right. Rob Collie (00:04:02): And your alter ego is business development. Evan Rhodes (00:04:06): Correct. As well as other special projects I get assigned. Rob Collie (00:04:10): Yes. Evan Rhodes (00:04:10): We set a bit of the all-around athlete, the decathlete, if you will. Rob Collie (00:04:14): That's right. Which has been a theme here on this show. We talk a lot about, life is a decathlon. Career is a decathlon. And yeah, so we have a number of decathletes. And really, you think about it actually, everyone at our company has that going on. The hybrid of someone who is good at business thinking, good at problem solving, good at communication, has a relatively high EQ. All of that plus the technical capacity to execute at a high level in a tool set like the Power platform, that is an amazing new force. And you've got to be in the 90th plus percentile in a lot of different things in order to be that kind of effective consultant for us. Rob Collie (00:05:03): Again, we've said this a million times on this show but in case this is your first one, if you're 90th plus percentile at a bunch of different things that are all relevant at the same time, that means your 99th percentile at the overall sport. And that's what the decathlete metaphor has come to mean on this show. Evan Rhodes (00:05:20): Absolutely. I think that's what makes us special, makes what we deliver to clients special, that we have these unicorn special individuals that cover all of those skills and cover them, like you said, highly. I probably wouldn't win a medal for any of those individually, but the fact that I place high on all of them, as you said, my overall points score is high. Rob Collie (00:05:45): You'd be bronze medalist in the biathlon, in crew and luge. It just turns out that skating, rowing and shooting at the same time is what we need to do. Evan Rhodes (00:06:00): Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:06:02): All right, so you started here as a principal consultant. How long ago now? Evan Rhodes (00:06:06): Three and a half years. Rob Collie (00:06:08): That's a long time in this fancy modern world we've got going on here, right? Evan Rhodes (00:06:12): It was hard to believe that it's gone by so fast, but three and a half years ago already. Rob Collie (00:06:18): And again, with the velocity at which our business moves in which we execute projects, that's a really compressed fast forward. Like Kellan says, that anyone's first six months working here, you get more exposure and experience in that six months than you would typically get like in five years. So for three and a half years is a awfully long time. It's about, you might be thinking about retirement at this point. Evan Rhodes (00:06:43): Yeah. I think I have a few more years left on the tires. Rob Collie (00:06:47): Yeah, another Bill and Ted movie contract. What's your path. I know bits and pieces of this. What was your career path prior to P3? And I should have introduced you is Keanu Reeve's MBA. I should have thrown that in there for instance. So give us the bouncing path. Most people we've had on the show, most people we know actually, don't have this hyperlinear path through their career. Are you going to break that trend? Are you going to be like, "No, I called my shot, blaze the path straight across the landscape?" Evan Rhodes (00:07:23): Absolutely not. There's no called shot. This was a meandering path that found its way, and very lucky that it did and happy that it did. I've had lots of great experiences professionally that really prepared me to be that decathletes I think that I am. I think that's why we are decathletes, is because we didn't call our shot or take that linear path. They don't teach you how to be a decathletes in college. In fact, it's the exact opposite. They really want to teach you how to do one thing. And I think in modern day business, you can't. You have to be multi-skilled. Rob Collie (00:07:58): I don't think college even taught me how to breathe natural atmosphere. It's like, "No, no, it's all oxygen tanks." There's no pollen. Evan Rhodes (00:08:09): And I was a communications major in college, so was basically a major of, I don't know what I want to do. I think I want to go to law school, so we'll get this communications degree. Which is definitely a very far cry from data analytics, business intelligence. I took gender communication classes. I recall that as one of my classes that I took. Rob Collie (00:08:35): Does that make you a more effective husband? Evan Rhodes (00:08:38): I'd like to think so. I think you'd to ask my wife, but I'd like to think so. Rob Collie (00:08:42): Why do we have you on this show? Get away from the microphone. Evan Rhodes (00:08:46): Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:08:47): We want to get to the truth. Evan Rhodes (00:08:50): True. So my path started in sales and business development, and business operations management. I was working for an industrial distributor selling tape and glue, sandpaper and managing a branch. They moved me down to Birmingham. They said, "You're going to move." I was young, maybe a year or two out of college, put in charge of a staff of people. Told to manage people, manage inventory, manage the finances of the branch. Evan Rhodes (00:09:21): I look back at it now and I can't believe that I was given that kind of responsibility at that age. But it was an absolute amazing experience. I learned a ton about myself and managing people, how to do it effectively. I learned from failing at it a bunch, as much as I did for my successes, and then decided it was time. I wanted to do something else and I needed some more in-class learning to expand what I didn't get in undergrad so decided to go back and get my MBA. Evan Rhodes (00:09:57): While I was doing that, I had the opportunity to intern. It was a great decision I made to intern at a local consulting firm. While I was doing that, the head consultant, the partner, I basically shadowed him for a year and a half to two years. Rob Collie (00:10:15): Wow. Evan Rhodes (00:10:16): And saw him advise and consult businesses and pick up knowledge and he would always give me books to read. And one of the books he gave me was a book, The Balanced Scorecard. He was a big believer in that concept and I still am. I love The balanced Scorecard. I would start working with him on developing these scorecards and it was all manual. Everything was manual, we were drawing them out, writing them out. Rob Collie (00:10:42): This is great. I don't really read business books. I'm aware of them. I'm aware of some of the ideas that are in them. But The balanced Scorecard is one that I've paid some specific attention to. That doesn't mean that I read it. It's not getting carried away. But there are chapters and pages at least in the original of that book that are like, "No, no, if you need to get out a pencil and paper and just draw a scorecard and write the numbers in." You're not prototyping with pencil and paper. They're like, "It's totally okay if you need to just write it." I'm like, "Oh my God." Rob Collie (00:11:20): This is an idea, The Balanced Scorecard, that was, I think in many ways before its time. The willpower and the technology wasn't there to actually execute that idea terribly efficiently. I'm cutting you off, but its out of excitement. Let's get into The balanced Scorecard. Evan Rhodes (00:11:37): Yeah, you are absolute right. This wasn't that long ago. This wasn't, "One of these days electricity is going to be the real deal." This was 10 years ago. Seven years ago that we were still drawing them or manually just coloring cells in to make it look like a column chart. That you just didn't have access and ready access to the data. But the concepts behind it of how to manage a business by drilling down to those few metrics that really matter and how you roll those up. You can get all the way down to departments and individual levels, it was brilliant and I loved it and I immediately took to it. But we were making them. I remember drawing them on a piece of paper and thinking, this can't be the most effective way to do this because it's going to change. Rob Collie (00:12:28): Who's been messing with my colored pencils? I can't find my violet colored pencil. How am I supposed to consult without my pastels. Really, it's interesting how separate these universes were, this Balanced Scorecard universe. The book originally came out like in the late '90s, I think, and from the BI world. The terminology in The balanced Scorecard is cascading. We call that drilling, drill down. The ability to filter. To look at individual regions of the company or individual product lines or whatever. They call that cascading. Rob Collie (00:13:10): You know then, the universe next door, where the technology being randomly wonderingly developed to eventually do these sorts of things well for you. We were calling it drilling. These two worlds just didn't even overlap. You got one world talking about drawing it with pencils. So cool. Evan Rhodes (00:13:27): Just shows you how big that disconnect was back then between data and IT, if you will in business. The concept of, this is a great way to manage the business. We should figure out a way to get the data to help drive it. When it started right as an article, I think even in Harvard Business Review. And it took a long time before that and the concepts of being a data-driven organization married together. Evan Rhodes (00:13:54): And for me, that was one of those things I started to see, was this is great. And I loved working for this consultant, but he was a pen and paper guy. He would write his notes. He would write, everything was pen and paper. Just yellow legal pads, crazy. It was all almost no computer. Rob Collie (00:14:17): Let's call him analog. Evan Rhodes (00:14:18): Analog. Rob Collie (00:14:19): Make him sound cooler. Evan Rhodes (00:14:20): A brilliant business mind, but again, I think some of it's just whether it's analog, generational. But that concept of marrying data was just foreign. Businesses didn't do it. And I think the other is, as you said, it was before it's time. There wasn't really a tool to help you do it effectively. Rob Collie (00:14:39): Yeah. The punchline here is that until you had Power BI, and literally I think specifically, Power BI, you really can't do this. You can't do it effectively. The metrics that matter the most to a business are inherently going to be cross silo metrics. They're not going to come from one operational system, one line of business system. Isn't going to spit out all the data that you need in order to truly manage your business. You've got to span across these silos and then you combine that together with the need to cascade, the need to drill. Rob Collie (00:15:20): And then crucially combine it with the need to iterate, get really specific on what these metrics are. You need to be able to move fast. You can't be waiting for some SQL engineer to occur in order to refine this metric. A couple of the most dramatically successful and impactful projects that this company executed back when it was still just me and my wife in the early 2010s were scorecards, and they were cross-silo, drillable, cascalable scorecards. Rob Collie (00:15:54): And I remember that the versions that went live, that actually went into production, the file names, the original file names for them, because these were still Excel Power Pivot, we didn't even have the Power BI yet. These things had version numbers like 25. V25 was V1. There's so much iteration and it happened so quickly. We went from V1 to V25 in the space of like a month and a half. A lot of sanity checking and focus grouping and all kinds of stuff. Those three things, cross-silo, drillable and, I don't know what the word is, iterable? Is that a word, iterable [crosstalk 00:16:35]. Evan Rhodes (00:16:35): I think it is now. Rob Collie (00:16:36): We're going to look it up. I'm going to try it out in scrabble later. There's only one tool that checks those check boxes. Evan Rhodes (00:16:41): Absolutely. And you think about the time it took you to make those, do those 25 iterations, how much longer it would be if you had to draw them. Rob Collie (00:16:49): I'm going to say at least 50% longer. Evan Rhodes (00:16:52): Yeah, if you had to get out your colored pencils or whatever tool we were using. Rob Collie (00:16:58): Person you're interning with is like, "Listen, I thought we've been over this a million times. We cross hatch at 45 degrees when we shade our column charts." Evan Rhodes (00:17:11): Get out the triangle and the ruler and start crosshatching. Rob Collie (00:17:16): That's right. Evan Rhodes (00:17:17): So we fast forward, I graduate and I ended up at a continuing medical education assessment company, which just, it's like the coolest name. It sounds very smart. It was a very interesting business. What they do is to figure out how to best educate physicians. They receive money from pharmaceutical companies and hospitals to say, "We have this medication or this procedure. We want to understand, do physicians actually know how to prescribe the medication, how to treat patients." Evan Rhodes (00:17:51): The company would work with physicians and specialists to develop surveys and do assessments on it. And I was part project manager, part analyst. I would manage these projects and also I was doing statistical analysis, so using an SPSS and some other tools, again, to figure out how to best educate physicians. That's when I first discovered Power Pivot. Evan Rhodes (00:18:18): I remember, we were still using SPSS for stuff but occasionally, we'd dig into some Excel, and playing around with pivot tables. And I still remember it to the day. For me it was distinct count. I refused to believe there wasn't a way to figure it out and I kept digging and reading and searching, and then I came across Power Pivot and it opened that window and started to learn, I can do all of this other stuff as well. I can do some of this statistical analysis and Power Pivot off our data sets. Rob Collie (00:18:51): Yeah, the distinct count function. It should be given its own PNL at Microsoft. It's responsible for so many conversions. Evan Rhodes (00:18:59): Absolutely. Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:19:01): I need a unique count of something in a pivot table. Now I go Googling. Evan Rhodes (00:19:07): Yeah. And then I found it and it was one of those, this absolutely amazing. This is brilliant. This is game changing. Why aren't they shouting this from the rooftops? Why is this hidden? Rob Collie (00:19:18): They've corrected that, haven't they? Oh wait. No, actually they haven't. It's still hidden in Excel. Evan Rhodes (00:19:25): That's still hidden. Rob Collie (00:19:26): Yeah. Power BI is getting plenty of play. Evan Rhodes (00:19:29): Right. That was amazing. I learned a ton. It's really, probably one of those places I really flexed the analyst muscle a bit. Rob Collie (00:19:36): There's so many words and terms that when people first came up with them, were exciting for about five minutes. A few different terms like business intelligence. That was a hot term at one point. And again, five minutes later, it had devolved into bureaucratic IT gridlock and it became boring. On a recent podcast with the show, we were also talking about IT, information technology. If you can allow yourself to hear that phrase again for the first time, it hinted at a very aggressive and agile and responsive world of just really smart operation. Rob Collie (00:20:17): But now we talk about IT as if it's like some Soviet, wait in line to get your license to go there and wait in another line for a loaf of bread, maybe. And it's like we're starting to reclaim some of these terms and recapture or capture for the first time, some of the excitement and possibility that those terms hinted at right. Like analyst, allow yourself to hear that word again for the first time. Really, we're going to analyze our business. We're going to do things. Rob Collie (00:20:49): The way you said, "I got to flex that analyst thing." It's like you got to put the analyst and analyst, and not what we've come to think of analysts is just a person that just crunches the Excel report and it's like no one listens to them. And the reality of a lot of analysts jobs is that dull thing, and it shouldn't be. Evan Rhodes (00:21:05): And it's a shame. A lot of times in organizations, they make the analyst as, well, they're smart. We don't really know what to do with them. We don't really know where to put them but we don't want to get rid of them because we like them. Rob Collie (00:21:18): Well, we know we need them. Evan Rhodes (00:21:19): Right. But we don't know for what. Rob Collie (00:21:21): Shit would collapse if they left. We know that. It's a really weird dichotomy. Evan Rhodes (00:21:27): And we're not mature enough to listen to them when they tell us what we should do based on the data. Rob Collie (00:21:34): Yes. That is the saddest part. Evan Rhodes (00:21:36): Isn't it. It's a waste of talent. But then you find organizations that do it well. And I don't think it's a coincidence that organizations that do that really well are successful. That understand that we're going to hire smart people and we're going to put them in a position to figure stuff out. Understand what's happening and help advise us on what to do. Where organizations get scared or maybe senior leadership gets scared is they think, "Well, we should always do everything the analyst tells us." And they don't see it as a tool. Evan Rhodes (00:22:11): It's one tool in the tool bag. Being a data-driven decision organization doesn't mean that you just do whatever, the data said turn left, so turn left. It means, well the data said turn left, let's look at some other stuff and make a decision. It's part of the decision making process. Rob Collie (00:22:27): It's a two-way street. If the traditional analyst's job, if it got more interaction, more engagement from the people who actually have their hands on the controls, it would give an opportunity for the analyst to become a lot more calibrated, a lot more savvy and seasoned. Because you're right, sometimes the data and the recommendation that comes from just crunching the numbers isn't properly calibrated for business savvy or whatever. And how do you get those reps if no one ever takes you seriously? Evan Rhodes (00:23:02): Right, you don't or you find someone that does. I've been extremely lucky that I had some phenomenal managers and leaders that I worked for, that put me in that position after I left the medical education company, it's funny there's, I guess maybe now that I'm 40, you look back and there's certain days or moments that are just seared into my memory that I'll never forget. And I'll never forget walking to a job interview at the place I was before I came to P3. I walked in, I was meeting with the CEO. Evan Rhodes (00:23:39): Before I got to his office, there was a giant whiteboard and they had KPIs written on the whiteboard and they were partially smudged and you could tell that they hadn't been written on in a while. And this is an amazing guy who went to West Point and was an army ranger. But also got an MBA from Duke. And he was very data-driven and he was just, he was an amazing guy. Actually, his name was Rob as well, so my last two bosses and CEOs were named Rob, so I guess it's a pattern. Rob Collie (00:24:07): Well, the similarities in there, I've never repelled out of a helicopter. Evan Rhodes (00:24:13): But I remember meeting with him and one of the things he said was, "We want you to come here and help tell us what we should do and how the business is running and how we can improve." And it was one of those amazing opportunities, is someone who wanted to do the continuous improvement, business process improvement, data-driven focus yet also business-focused, to be put in that position. And also what the CEO says. Evan Rhodes (00:24:40): And this is coming, it's a mandate from the top that we're going to put you in front of business people. You're going to sit in on meetings of the executive leadership in C-suite and you're going to be right there with all the top decision makers to hear and figure out what metrics we should use based on the strategy that we are employing and we're going to deploy, what metrics should we use? And that's going to be your job. I got to sit in and list and have that visibility that no one at my level was getting and very few analysts would get, which is lucky. Rob Collie (00:25:14): Super lucky. What a cool thing. Evan Rhodes (00:25:16): So cool. Rob Collie (00:25:17): Because again, we know that the world doesn't always make sense. It doesn't always do that. It doesn't always operate the way that we want it to. Tell me when you first walked by that whiteboard and you went in to meet with this guy for the first time, did you go, "Hey, have you considered using colored markers? We can use colors on your whiteboard. I can crosshatch." Evan Rhodes (00:25:36): I remember looking at it and saying to myself, within nine months, that'll be gone and there'll be a TV there, displaying reports. And it wasn't long after I'd started that I remember seeing a green button. I was exploring some stuff in the Microsoft world on my computer there and there was a green button that said Power BI preview. Before it was yellow. I remember, for at some point it was green and clicking that button and just, again, it was one of those, wow, this is going to be the thing. Rob Collie (00:26:13): Before they chose The DeWalt color scheme? Evan Rhodes (00:26:16): Yes. Rob Collie (00:26:16): Power BI? Evan Rhodes (00:26:17): Yeah, it was before that. Which as a Cleveland Browns fan, I always somewhat didn't care for the Pittsburghs dealers color spectrum they used. And I remember then creating, and I'd been creating stuff in Excel for a while and amazing reports. And one time I made an Excel report for my boss and she said, "Evan, this doesn't even look like Excel." And this was- Rob Collie (00:26:39): High praise. Evan Rhodes (00:26:40): Yeah. This was flexing some of the things from a previous guest, Wayne Winston, whether it was buttons and adding the things you could do in Excel if you really knew how to get into the depths, the bowels of Excel to make it look like software. Then it was Power BI. I had used and played with the Power Viewer, which was a really good college. That was one of those perfect fails, because it validated the concept, but proved that it had to be better. Anyone who's used Power BI and Power Viewer, you saw elements of Power Viewer in Power BI. It was just better. It really was the perfect release. Rob Collie (00:27:21): That piece of software was one that in the end, everybody universally disowned. The Excel team backed away from it very, very quickly. The Power BI team wanted nothing to do with it. I agree with you, it was testing some concepts. Evan Rhodes (00:27:37): And I think those that... You knew it wasn't great, but it was one of those failures where you learned so much from the failure that the next thing you did was incredibly successful. That the failure was completely worth it. That's where the Power BI stuff started. Rob Collie (00:27:55): That's even true really, of the engine behind it all. The previous multidimensional analysis services product was anything but a failure. It was very success. They'd still learned a number of things along the way with that product. They learned a lot. They learned a lot of things that were important and good, that were necessary. Rob Collie (00:28:14): They also learned proportionally, what parts of that ecosystem were regrettable. And they had an opportunity to retrace their steps with the tabular engine that underpins Power Pivot, underpins Power BI. And oh my gosh, what an amazing editorial process. We all benefit just tremendously from that decade plus of learning that they experienced on the first rev. Evan Rhodes (00:28:44): I think that's the way it always ought to be. I have never made something the first time and went, perfect. Mic drop. I'm done. I don't need to go back and perfect or iterate or look at it. There's nothing I can do to improve it. I did it the first time and it was amazing. Whether that's the first time I made a brisket, or I smoked a brisket, the time I cooked something. Whatever it was, it wasn't perfect, and you learn from that. Evan Rhodes (00:29:11): I like to joke sometimes when we're teaching a class, the first Power BI report you make is the best, most amazing report you have ever made in your life. Three weeks later, you'll go back and look at it and go, "Wow, this is bad. I can do so much better." That was the experience. And I look at some of those first reports I made and at the time they were game changing, new ways to present information. Rob Collie (00:29:35): I was on that same curve for a long time. I've witnessed exactly what you said and I've said exactly the same things to classes back in the day. Your first efforts are going to be amazing. They're going to change the game completely. And you're going to realize that they sucked. And this is fine. And then you're going to up your game and you're going to go, "Now this, this is hot." A few months later, you're like, "Nope, I was so cute back then. That was the amateur hour." And it just keeps going. At no point in time does the old stuff actually become non impactful? It was always good. It's just that your powers keep growing and growing and growing. It's such a cool feeling. Evan Rhodes (00:30:15): Yeah, very cool feeling. I don't remember if it was nine months, whatever it was, but we did have TVs displaying Power BI reports. It was very early on in the tool, we had something wired to a dummy laptop through the wall with an HDMI. It was before enterprise gateways, so the laptop always had to be on, so that it would refresh, the models would refresh. But it was running and it had the aquarium visual. Rob Collie (00:30:46): You got to have the aquarium visual. What serious business can you be conducting without appropriately sized fish swimming around representing business entities? Evan Rhodes (00:30:56): Absolutely. And it played so nicely and I remember playing with all sorts of things, having it the pages, I could have multiple reports up on tabs and I think Google Chrome and it would rotate the tabs. So it would look like different reports and the scroll bar with an RSS feed that had sports scores or entertainment news, so I made it almost look like just a central hub of information. It was pretty proud of that. Rob Collie (00:31:23): Well, it's not a surprise that so many of our canonical demos that have been built at P3 have your fingerprints on them. Another thing we could have mentioned in the intro, is you're also the demo builder. Evan Rhodes (00:31:35): I am the demo builder. I guess that's the communications degree. Is always, even in those classes back in college and business school was how to present and communicate information creatively and intuitively, but not just for me, the slide of bullet points down the left hand side and a randomly placed picture somewhere always to me was like nails on a chalkboard. Rob Collie (00:32:05): We've noticed this. Your PowerPoint game is legendary. Evan Rhodes (00:32:10): It is. I've officially retired, I think from that. It's one of those where I've decided, the award is... It's like the Lombardi Trophy. It's just named after me at this point, the slide development at P3, so it's time to let some one else win the award. Rob Collie (00:32:25): Oh yeah. In other words, you're starting to come to terms with how much time it takes. Evan Rhodes (00:32:32): I think so. I think the PowerPoint with the scrolling Star Wars text, that was the finale. Rob Collie (00:32:38): That was the Magnum Opus. Evan Rhodes (00:32:39): That was the Magnum Opus. Yes, that was- Rob Collie (00:32:41): Leaving on the high note. Evan Rhodes (00:32:42): Yes. Rob Collie (00:32:44): You're talking to someone who would routinely spend 30, 40 hours of work to prep a one-hour presentation for a conference that was bullet point free and all kinds of niftily animated clip art and all that kind of stuff and sometimes even hand drawn, et cetera. But for internal team meetings though, you know what you see for me these days, actually for a number of years now is black and white default template bullet points, that's it. Evan Rhodes (00:33:10): When I first started, I think you had, your game was still strong. As I started presenting in the team meetings, had to up my game to keep up. I've definitely spent nights before the meetings trying to select the right stick figure to demonstrate the concept. Rob Collie (00:33:28): And you've had the extra difficulty of not having access, direct easy access to the artist that draws the custom ones for me in other words. If we ever resume in-person in conferences, I think you'll see me come out of my semi-retirement, get back on that game. I just don't find remote conferences as a presenter. I just don't find them as energizing. I have a much harder time engaging with it than the in-person. Evan Rhodes (00:33:53): I agree. If we keep on this without question, nonlinear path right to P3, at the first Microsoft Business Insight Summit, before I had registered and a little bit before, I got an email from a guy who was also in Birmingham and his name was Austin. And he said, "Hey, we're both from Birmingham. We're both going to the conference. We should meet up." And that's when I met Austin Senseman. Rob Collie (00:34:20): What a freak show. I mean in a good way. He's that guy. He starts conversations. Evan Rhodes (00:34:28): Yes. Rob Collie (00:34:28): He just walk up to you and say, "Hey." Evan Rhodes (00:34:30): Absolutely. And he has a gift. He has an absolute gift at it. We instantly became friends and always stayed in contact, and for a while he had said, "You should come to P3." I think at that time we were about to have our second daughter. My wife was pregnant. It was not the best time to be on the road. But about two years later, I remember sitting down with Austin and talking to him. I'd built a business intelligence, if you will, architecture, infrastructure, I'd built a team of people. You can say, I probably had teched myself out of the job. Everything was running. Evan Rhodes (00:35:14): And we'd hit a point where there wasn't a lot of new stuff. It was a lot of maintenance. And I remember talking to Austin and said, "Well, what do you want to do?" I said, "Well, I want to do that again at a lot of places. I don't want to maintain this. I don't want to just walk around and make sure the machines are running." Talked to my wife about it and she said, "Well, then you should just go do that. Just keep doing that at different places." And Austin said, "Well, that's what we do. So come up." Rob Collie (00:35:43): What an awesome thing. I've told so many people so many times that the origin story, the reason why most of our consultants end up coming to us, is one of invalidation at their previous job, the previous workplaces, the thing we were talking about. The analyst or whatever your job title is, that is not sufficiently utilized. That is not engaged appropriately. Their contributions aren't respected or valued at the proper weight. Rob Collie (00:36:10): And that's very, very, very unsatisfying. It becomes really completely intolerable once you become good at Power BI. Because now the gap between what you could be doing and what you are doing is just so wide. It's the matrix thing again. It's that itch you can't scratch. But this is the other version. You weren't being invalidated in your prior job. Sounds like you got all the kinds of support that you would typically want and that you would ever hope to ask for, but you did it. Evan Rhodes (00:36:38): Right. Rob Collie (00:36:39): Woohoo, you achieved the desired transformation, culturally, everything. So now what? Now there's another itch created by a positive environment. I think that's awesome. I'm now going to change that narrative that I've given so many times. There are two types of [inaudible 00:36:58] stories to be able to bring that same success, that same transformation repeatedly to organization after organization. That is just such a powerful thing. Rob Collie (00:37:12): It's what's been powering me for a decade plus. Not just the transformation for the organization, but also the transformation for the person slinging the tools. The, quote unquote, analysts role. The changes that it makes in their life is just intoxicating. Evan Rhodes (00:37:25): It is. It's an incredible experience and it was, it's funny you mentioned it. I always did feel, and we hear the story a lot, and a lot of people do. Whether it's people we work with, whether they're analysts that feel invalidated. And I always felt like I half get it. But there was always, you're right, the part that was not. I had everything I could want. It just was okay. You're in a good place. Everything you need is you've got, you don't really need me anymore. Evan Rhodes (00:37:59): It was almost like they, they didn't need me. It was exciting. It meant then that I had done my job, and I trained other people to continue to do it, which was also a big piece for me, was I've always believed that when thinking about managing people, the best managers make other people better. If you don't make other people better, then you're just a very good single performer. But if you make other people better, the exponential value that that provides the organization is huge. Evan Rhodes (00:38:32): So teaching others how to do Power BI, grabbing a marketing intern and saying he has potential and teaching him everything about the tool to the point where he took ownership of it and people across the company were using it for all sorts of things that weren't even initially what we were doing at the corporate level, showed me that it's a multifaceted but really, let me not just from a BI, Power BI technical capacity but from a leadership level as well. Rob Collie (00:39:04): So you basically worked yourself out of a job and some people would be like, "Yachty, now I don't have to do anything. Let's see how long I can coast here." But I really think the kind of people that would ever succeed at that in the first place are almost exactly the same people who wouldn't be satisfied just to mail it in after that. You want to go do it again. You need to feel that value. You need to feel challenged too. Rob Collie (00:39:28): This also underlines why our business model, one of the reasons why our business model works. If you can cue to project successfully in a short period of time, you're working your way out of a job. It's like how the traditional consulting industry would view that. Why would you do that? Why would you burn through something in a month that you could have milked it for 18 months? It's okay to work yourself out of a job. There are many others, it turns out. Rob Collie (00:39:58): Even within a particular organization, we do a one project for you and we do it really well, really quickly. It wasn't like what you did at your prior employer was one project. You had many projects in order to feel like you were done. So we're always auditioning for the next one. The fact that people higher to do the next one is just really testament to like, that was a really good deal. That was a really good trade. We pushed the P3 button and things went really well. Let's push that button. Let's try it again. Evan Rhodes (00:40:27): Yeah. We probably all bid in that story where we tell someone we're a consultant and eventually comes up, get someone on the hook, you find a way to make them dependent on you for ever. And it's just you. Rob Collie (00:40:40): Yuck. Evan Rhodes (00:40:40): Yeah, yuck. You. That's not us at all and I have to be able to sleep at night. We consider it a win when we've developed and collaborated with someone, an organization, and helped train them to the point where they are fully capable of taking ownership for their reporting and their decision making processes. It's a win for us. That's a great day. That's validation that we did a phenomenal job. They are ready now. Evan Rhodes (00:41:10): And you're right, it's probably that's the culmination of several projects, but however many projects that is, when they're ready, that's great. And we know because there's another organization out there that we can't wait to go help have that same experience. That's why I use that term, the shaper, all the time right in our company meetings, we love to be their shaper to help them to get to the top of the mountain. Rob Collie (00:41:35): And I used to be really hung up along these lines. I predicted that this would look, with our clients, that it would look a little bit differently than what it's turned out. I used to think that the way that an engagement with a client would ultimately mature and, quote unquote, end, would be with them understanding the decks as well as I did or as well as we do. And sometimes that is the case. That does happen from time to time. Rob Collie (00:42:05): Or at least they understand it sufficiently that they would never need us to help them again. I think even the more satisfying end game is when at least for the moment, they don't really have any needs. They're like, "We actually have exactly what we need for the first time ever to run our business efficiently." And their attention then naturally goes elsewhere. These things we're telling them, the report scorecards, whatever, are telling them all the things that they need to know. Rob Collie (00:42:32): And so now guess what, how do they go and actually do those things? They turn it into the action that of course is what the whole thing was about, and sometimes that leads them to different places or something like COVID happens and the status quo is completely wiped away. So they've got new needs. But I've actually really enjoyed, I think that second end game. Technology's just a means to an end. I was really obsessed with the idea that everyone was going to learn DACs to the extent that I had. Rob Collie (00:43:03): No, it's not realistic necessarily. We've found that there's certain brain wiring that's compatible with excellence on it that's not running around in everybody. But also even more importantly is not actually all that necessary. It's not the star. The technology isn't the star. It's the hose and the water. The water's what makes the grass grow. The hose doesn't do it. Evan Rhodes (00:43:26): Right. And I think that's where we're trying to hit. Is the never ending cycle of looking at reports is isn't really the end game. It's getting the report to answer the business questions to drive their action so they can just take action. They shouldn't always be tweaking and building and never actually using because then we never hit the thing that they really need. So again, that was three and a half years ago and it's been an absolute blast. Rob Collie (00:43:59): Well, it's been a blast for us as well. We don't really have any standard questions on this show really, but one that's halfway a standard is using Power BI for things like in one's personal life. You mentioned that you have a couple of applications for Power BI in your personal life. Can you tell us what those are? Evan Rhodes (00:44:19): Sure. A lot of people, maybe at P3 wouldn't have guessed or know about me, is I really love Disney World. I remember going there as a kid, but I guess with two young girls, the magic that they have, the joy that they get out of it, so being able to do that, I love it. It also for anyone's ever been, you can't just show up. There's also this piece of me that just loves the planning and organization part of it. You can almost approach it like a project. I built a Power BI model many years ago to figure out whether or not we should get the Disney meal plan when we went. Evan Rhodes (00:45:02): This was a bit of, well, they had some new features in Power BI, you can connect to the web. So we're going to connect all these menus at Disney World and we're going to build a model to pick what I think everyone's going to get at the restaurants that we're going to go to. Rob Collie (00:45:15): Wow. Evan Rhodes (00:45:16): And then we're going to balance the cost of that against the cost of a dining plan and balance out the offset of what should we do and which should we go with? Just incredibly nerdy on really multiple levels. Rob Collie (00:45:32): For those of you listening, this is what overkill sounds like. Evan Rhodes (00:45:34): It is what overkill sounds like. I like to balance it as well, it was work research. It was research to test if I could connect to the web and how it would work. Rob Collie (00:45:44): I love stuff like that. When you know deliberately that's overkill but you know you're going to be learning something along the way, that's the right kind. Evan Rhodes (00:45:50): Yeah. Of course there was a schedule made. I used a calendar, Custom Visual, and we had pictures loaded. But what I'm probably most proud of is that it worked. I did the analysis, it told me, don't do the Dining Plan. We didn't, we came out ahead, so it worked. We're going back in 31 days from the date of recording. And I actually now connected to live wait times at all the rides that we're going to go on, and it gives me a daily poll of ride times, so there's several. Rob Collie (00:46:25): Oh my God. Evan Rhodes (00:46:25): So I have average wait times, so I've been tracking the different wait times of the rides to help determine what we should do and built a Power BI model that tracks it, so just again, complete overkill. Rob Collie (00:46:39): Let's really get into this. Okay. So then you need that combined with, you need to basically extract a graph, not a chart, a graph out of Disney, where all of the nodes in the graph are the individual rides or attractions. And then the arcs, the lines between the nodes are the walk times between those. You can put a number on those arcs because it's a weighted graph. So the only graduate level course that I've ever taken was on graph theory, algorithmic graph theory, perfect graphs, whatever. Rob Collie (00:47:11): It was really pure brain candy. That's all it was. It had no real effective practical application in life whatsoever, but I wanted it to. I badly wanted it to. I kept walking around the world afterwards for the next like five years waiting to use graph theory. I've now completely forgotten really everything about it. I wouldn't be able to do anything in that space whatsoever if something came along. Rob Collie (00:47:35): But this is the traveling salesperson problem from computer science, which is notoriously difficult problem. But you've got extra wrinkles in it. You don't just have walking distances, which would be the traditional traveling salesperson problem. You've also got wait times at different times of day. There's seasonality within the day for the wait times. Evan Rhodes (00:47:59): Yeah. So some rides you have to hit early. Because the wait time increases where some will go down. So the first ride you go to, the decision you make there is going to impact every other decision that you would make. Rob Collie (00:48:14): Oh yes. You can't use a greedy algorithm here. Evan Rhodes (00:48:17): No. Rob Collie (00:48:18): If you end up at the back of the park at the beginning of the day to catch that one ride that spikes in wait time and never comes back down for the rest of the day, well, that impacts all of your future choices. Evan Rhodes (00:48:29): It does. And there's another hidden variable that you can't discount. Rob Collie (00:48:33): Go on. Evan Rhodes (00:48:34): And that's the fact that my youngest daughter who's five loves the little mermaid. And even though that's a generally easy ride to go on, you can't discount the fact that even if we get on it quick and do it early, she's going to want to do it multiple times. Rob Collie (00:48:49): So you can't even really walk past it. Evan Rhodes (00:48:50): Oh no, there's no walking past it, but there's a chance that we'll do it multiple times, which means that big thunder mountain backs up and gets along but she wanted to do aerial two times. Rob Collie (00:49:03): When and if humanity cracks the quantum computing challenge, and the traveling salesperson problem goes from essentially NP complete unsolvable to solvable, the Disney problem will remain. Now, that's what we call the hard problem now, is the Disney problem. Evan Rhodes (00:49:22): And would that mean everyone follows the same orderly path around the park and you just get a people mover and everyone to moves around from thing to thing and there's no more wait time, but that would ruin the magic, so to speak. Rob Collie (00:49:38): Does Disney still have the reserve ahead thing, where you can reserve a time on a ride? Does that still exist or do they getting rid of that? Evan Rhodes (00:49:47): It's on pause. They do, they don't now during the reopening. They paused it, but I'm sure it'll come back. Rob Collie (00:49:54): I wonder why they paused it. Evan Rhodes (00:49:55): I don't know. Rob Collie (00:49:56): Is it because they don't have sufficient data. They need to get some training data to retrain the system? Evan Rhodes (00:50:01): I don't know. Rob Collie (00:50:01): At Cedar Point, we've learned that you just get the bracelet. I don't know if they've also switched to a reserve ahead system, but if there's a fast pass concept at park, you're so pot committed to the whole concept of being at this park. The amount of time and the expense and everything, just to be there, the fixed cost. Oh my gosh, no, you can experience three times the roller coasters if you pay this ridiculous fee. It's totally worth it. Rob Collie (00:50:30): But then everyone should do it. It's like a TSA pre-check. I was laughing when I first got my TSA pre-check. I'm like, "Sooner or later everyone's going to have this and then they're going to have TSA pre-precheck." And guess what, there's that clear thing. Evan Rhodes (00:50:45): Right. Skip to the head of the pre-check line. Rob Collie (00:50:48): That's right. Pretty soon there's going to be... The clear line is going to be long. Evan Rhodes (00:50:55): Right, and the transparent clear, whatever they're going to call it. Rob Collie (00:50:59): When you own a fixed resource, like the checkpoint at an airport, you basically can just hold people as indefinitely at any ever increasing premium rate. Oh no, the airfare is cheap, but the fee to get through security. Evan Rhodes (00:51:16): Yeah, that's the expensive part and they don't even try to hide it anymore. They sell it while you're waiting in line, "Hey, you don't want to be waiting another half an hour here. Buy this and we'll get you right to the front right now." Rob Collie (00:51:26): Yeah, you could pay your way to the front of the line, right? Evan Rhodes (00:51:28): Right. It's almost predatory. Rob Collie (00:51:32): Keep in mind, this is a government owned and operated operation. Not clear. But the checkpoint is. And this private company, I think, is like the catfish sitting at the dam that just eats the junk coming out of the dam [inaudible 00:51:49]. Never has to go anywhere, never has to hunt for food, nothing. It just sits there and eats and becomes like 400 pound monster. That's what I feel [inaudible 00:51:57] standing there in line saying, "You can skip to the front of the line." Evan Rhodes (00:52:01): Some of the airlines own part of it. Rob Collie (00:52:04): For like a split second, that seemed reassuring to me, but not really. Evan Rhodes (00:52:08): I think Delta part ownership and clear. They're just hitting you on all parts. Rob Collie (00:52:13): Time is money. It makes sense. Even the highways in Seattle have a fast pass concept to them now. Did you know this? Evan Rhodes (00:52:21): Really? Rob Collie (00:52:22): Yeah. The price of crossing the bridge, the 520 Bridge in Seattle, is a very variable rate. Evan Rhodes (00:52:30): Really? Rob Collie (00:52:31): It varies during the day. It's just based on current demand. It just elastically fluctuates in terms of how much it costs across the bridge. Evan Rhodes (00:52:39): Wow. Rob Collie (00:52:40): There's no toll boost or anything. It's all electronic, and if you cross without a transponder, they get a picture of your license plate. It's one of those things. We can talk about the TSA line, whatever. This is a state government and federally funded highway. Now, the money is going into public coffers at that point. It's so weird. There's no right answer to this. Rob Collie (00:53:04): Should wealth convey a time advantage on public infrastructure, but at the same time, but so you could say, no, no, no, that's not fair. That's not right. It's almost like the equivalent of wealth purchasing better legal treatment, which we all know also exists. But at the same time, something like this, maybe supply and demand should dictate it. Evan Rhodes (00:53:27): It's an interesting concept. Rob Collie (00:53:28): I can really see both sides of that. Think about Seattle is a relatively liberalized place implementing such a concept. It's eye opening. I think it's pretty interesting. Evan Rhodes (00:53:38): It is. I remember driving in Houston for work a couple years ago and something I'd never seen before, which was a toll exit. So they had two exits to get off the highway. One exit was a standard normal exit. The other was a paid exit, and it was a little shorter. And in Houston where traffic is just awful, I guess it has value. But I remember thinking to myself, "There's no way I would ever pay money to exit the highway if I could exit the highway for free." Evan Rhodes (00:54:11): And I remember commenting to some people while I was out there and they said, "Oh no, it could save you half an hour. During rush hour, getting off the normal exit, it could be half an hour or so, so the paid exit's worth it." And to me, it almost felt like entrapment. You want to get home for dinner, you got to pay to exit the road. Otherwise, you don't. Rob Collie (00:54:34): If being able to charge for it makes the second exit possible and overall, everything goes better as a result, then I think we can all get on board with this idea. However, if the second exit, all it's doing is dumping premium cars onto the same backed up surface street and therefore making the original line even longer, oh no. Which is exactly by the way, what happens with the fast pass concepts at theme parks? It's a dirty feeling. Cut in line in front of everyone. It's not like they've added a second roller coaster. It's not like that. There's only one roller coaster and you're taking their seats. Evan Rhodes (00:55:18): Yeah, and it is. It's that I'm sure everyone who's been on both sides of it, where it's, "Oh, I just walked right on. It was amazing." Then you get the others side of the feeling when you're in the regular line and you've been waiting forever in the hot sun, you've waited two hours for a minute and a half thrill, and you get to the front and this whole group comes in that fast line. And there's a train and now that train is full. And now you got to wait a whole and you're just seething that. Rob Collie (00:55:48): Yeah. And you've even, because you know your position in line, you've even figured out which car you're going to end up getting into in the next train. And then the fast passers come in and they take those seats. Evan Rhodes (00:56:01): Oh yeah. And you're just so mad and you're like, "I was going to go in the blue train. I was going to be in this seat." And you really, the worst part is if you even work it back, you did the math out and you aligned yourself in which car you were going to be in. Rob Collie (00:56:17): That's right. And this totally scrambles it because- Evan Rhodes (00:56:18): Scrambles it. Rob Collie (00:56:20): ... five people came in the odd number. One person sat in the bench. Evan Rhodes (00:56:26): And invariably, not only do you not get the one you want, but you end up having to sit on the ride after the guy or person who just did a water ride. So now the seat is- Rob Collie (00:56:37): That's right. Evan Rhodes (00:56:37): ... wet and you were totally trying to avoid that in the first place. And now you're going upside down but you're wet because you sat in a wet seat and you waited two and a half hours to sit in a wet seat and be mad. Rob Collie (00:56:48): That's right. I've lived that, for sure. To the extent that when I do get the fast pass, I'm coaching everybody, okay, do not make eye contact. Evan Rhodes (00:57:03): Just look down, get on the ride, don't say anything. Rob Collie (00:57:07): It's so brutal. Evan Rhodes (00:57:08): Yeah. No, cheers are clapping. Just eyes forward. Rob Collie (00:57:13): One time we were at Cedar Point and because now we used to live in Cleveland. One time we were at Cedar Point and someone had thrown up on the train, and so we watched them hose it down. And you know what they did then? They just launched the train with no one on it to dry it off. Evan Rhodes (00:57:31): Air dry. Rob Collie (00:57:32): We're just going to set it out there. And it comes back clean. Plus by the time it comes back around, the people who get on it, they were around the corner and they don't get to know that was the puke train. Evan Rhodes (00:57:47): Whenever it's like, oh no, please, you can go ahead of us. Rob Collie (00:57:50): It's like money laundering. The train goes away and it comes back pure. Evan Rhodes (00:57:56): Yeah. No Lysol wipes, no spray, no electrostatic spray. Just a little water and some air. Rob Collie (00:58:03): That's right. That's right. We've come to the conclusion though, that always get the fast pass. Evan Rhodes (00:58:08): Yes. Rob Collie (00:58:08): Don't make eye contact. If it happens to be the day that I'm at the park, please don't get the fast pass. I want the fast pass to work. What's the second personal usage? Evan Rhodes (00:58:21): The other personal usage has been for the ever important, always needed and unfortunately has not paid off as fantasy football draft analysis. I've been doing fantasy football for years. I used to way back when go with my dad. There was a group of people and they would do it. This was in the '90s. This was when we were drafting like Scott Mitchell. And it was all on paper and every week the person in charge would mail out the results. And I think that person used to not have to pay because they would do all the points and tabulations. Rob Collie (00:58:57): Oh gosh. Evan Rhodes (00:58:57): They're probably going through box scores and sending out spreadsheets. So I've done it forever. At P3, we take it seriously. It's fun, but obviously as analysts, people who work with data, there's an added bonus. And unfortunately, every year I seem to lose to you in the semi-finals. I've started to develop a model to try to help with that drafting strategy. And unfortunately, what I've also come to is that's only half of it. It's still the mid-season plus the luck. Rob Collie (00:59:34): As a multi time champion of this also competitive league, let me bestow some wisdom. Evan Rhodes (00:59:42): Please. Rob Collie (00:59:43): This is the secret. You have to embrace the uncertainty of it all. Analysis most of the time is an attempt at certainty. And there was a time when there were certain strategies that you could apply in this game that weren't necessarily obvious, but the numbers bore them out. And those days are over. Most of that knowledge is commoditized now. Everyone has the same knowledge. I too started in the '90s, before the existence of really the industry, the fantasy football industry, and also the game, the NFL game has changed too. It's a much more dynamic game. We should link article, Luke, about value above replacement from our blog, that ultimately convinced us to go to a two quarterback, super flex format. Evan Rhodes (01:00:31): Which I protested greatly. Rob Collie (01:00:34): It's better though, isn't it? You enjoyed it. Evan Rhodes (01:00:35): No. Rob Collie (01:00:36): It's good. It's good. You want all the positions to be interesting. I'm only 500. I've only won half of the years that we've run this format. I won 100% of the years we ran the other format. We really cut my winning percentage here, Evan. You should be excited about this. Evan Rhodes (01:00:55): Yeah, that's true. Rob Collie (01:00:57): Anyway, so everything that I do, the secret, if there is one, is to understand that you just simply can't know what is going to happen in an NFL season. You just can't know. It's unknowable and it's going to be changing. There is no status quo. The status quo is worth nothing. It's going to change moment to moment, and everything I do ultimately comes back to that. Rob Collie (01:01:20): It's not that I have an opinion about a particular player. This player's going to be this, I've got a secret. I've got an inside line. If we took a stock metaphor, I don't know how to pick stocks. I don't analyze companies and do anything like that. This is more like the algorithmic type of trading. It's more that kind of thing. Which is different than how I played the game back in the past. But you know what? You also mentioned that other thing, luck. I mean, Jesus, I have got very lucky. Evan Rhodes (01:01:49): Luck definitely has something to do with it. For me it was, I remember reading an article several years ago that talked about the change in fantasy football and that you really have to change your approach to a weekly game. And one of the things I do look at is I'll go back and to analyze the league and how many points you need to score to win. It's fluctuated and ours is a high scoring league, but let's say you got to score 185 points on average to win. If you don't score that, chances are you're not going to win. Evan Rhodes (01:02:23): And as I start to look at a team and break on their projections and then spread that over a season, I get an idea of how many points on average would I project that I'll score in a week, and based on who I take and what else is available, will I score, if I'm building a team out and start to see that this team is not going to score 185, I more likely need to be lucky than good. And if you're projecting out and you're looking at 190, 195, on a week to week basis, you at least have a chance to win. And yes, I've never won and I keep losing in the semis but I guess I am always in the top third. Rob Collie (01:03:04): You're a worthy rung on the ladder that I climb every year. Something's got to get me to the top. Evan Rhodes (01:03:10): I am not an opponent you want to face week to week, but my teams are always consistent. I don't have those fluctuations of massive 250 point games a lot. I'm always 190 points, so I lose some and I win some. But I never seem to. So I'm actually beginning to evaluate and using a model, do I need to rethink that? How do I get there? But now you're telling me, I might as well just embrace it and throw a dart at a dart board. Rob Collie (01:03:43): It turns out that getting lucky is what needs to happen in order to come out on top out of 10 people who are playing the same game against you. Getting lucky, I have no control over that. What's weird though, is that if you realize, oh I have to get lucky, you change your strategy. My strategy is now built around getting lucky. That's as much I'm going to tell you. Evan Rhodes (01:04:06): That's interesting. Now I have to figure out how that would work. Rob Collie (01:04:09): We're going to drag Luke in this year too. He doesn't know this is coming, but we're going to have a good league this year. You can feel it, right? Evan Rhodes (01:04:16): I can. Rob Collie (01:04:17): There's a lot of good candidates to fill. This year isn't going to be one of those years where we've got like two people in the league that we controlled into it. Evan Rhodes (01:04:23): Bi weeks. Rob Collie (01:04:24): Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's right. And we have the 18-game season this year. Evan Rhodes (01:04:28): And did you hear, there was a whole thing about how they put a bi week at what, week 14, week 15 and it messes up fantasy football. Rob Collie (01:04:37): But it really doesn't. It put a bi-week into 14, week 14. But this year we'll go 15, 16, 17 for the playoffs. So who cares? Evan Rhodes (01:04:47): I'm looking forward to it. Maybe we'll increase the size, but no more up, I stopped managing my team. None of those. So the challenge gets better every year. Rob Collie (01:04:59): Luke, are you aware of the tradition that the winner must make a celebratory karaoke video? Luke (01:05:05): I've heard the legends of some of these videos and by the way, I was in this past year's league. That's how terrible my team was. Evan Rhodes (01:05:14): I was going to say, Luke was in it. Rob Collie (01:05:16): Oh, that's terrible. Luke, you're fired. Evan Rhodes (01:05:22): I know what my video is. I have been planning my victory video for three years now. I'll give you the tease. Do you remember the commercial back in the '80s for the toy, My Buddy. Rob Collie (01:05:40): Oh yes. I totally do. I even know the song. Evan Rhodes (01:05:45): I think we all do. Everyone [crosstalk 01:05:47] who's listened to this, you're going through in your mind and you're going, My Buddy and kids sister, is I'm going to do a video holding the trophy and recreating the My Buddy commercial, doing all those things with the trophy like it's my buddy. Rob Collie (01:06:05): That sounds awesome. Evan Rhodes (01:06:06): But I have to win first. Rob Collie (01:06:07): Well, as my team is about to high step into the end zone to defeat you this year in the playoffs, on the one yard line, maybe I'll take a knee, just so I can hear the [crosstalk 01:06:18]- Evan Rhodes (01:06:18): Just so you see it. We'll see. Rob Collie (01:06:22): Maybe I won't. Evan Rhodes (01:06:24): I don't think you will. I don't want you to. Rob Collie (01:06:27): Don't worry. It won't happen. Even if I went into the game thinking, okay yeah, I'm going to throw it, no. Evan Rhodes (01:06:34): As a fantasy football player, you're not a take the knee. You're a flippin and Cartwheel into the end zone- Rob Collie (01:06:40): That's right. Evan Rhodes (01:06:40): ... type of player. Rob Collie (01:06:41): If I could, I would do the Merton Hanks head Bob after... The best football celebration dance ever is Merton Hanks' chicken dance, fight me. He's an executive now somewhere. I forget, you wouldn't expect it based on all that chicken dance. Did he have any brain cells left after? That's the traumatic, what he used to do. All right, hey Evan, thank you so much. Evan Rhodes (01:07:13): Thank you. This was fun. Announcer (01:07:15): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast. Let at the experts at P3 Adaptive, help your business. Just go to P3adaptive.com. Have a data day!

Derek Rickard has a super cool title, he's the Chief Data Officer at Emergency Reporting-their software simplifies Fire & EMS reporting and records management, making a positive difference for first responders everywhere.  He's one of the very first people to discover the gamechanger that is PowerPivot back in the day, and it reshaped his entire career.  He, like so many other data people, has a want to help others and his story will very likely resonate with a lot of you!    References in this episode:   Rob's 3 Part Opus on the Relationship Between Power BI and Paginated Reports Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 The Story of the Dread Pirate Roberts   Dr. Wayne Winston on Raw Data   P3 Adaptive President and COO Kellen Danielson on Raw Data   Episode Timeline: 2:55 - Derek's Origin story is founded in Excel and is quite similar to Rob's, and maybe some of you! 17:40 - A little insight on how Emergency Reporting works with Power BI Embedded, and a debate about in house analytics engine building 44:10 - Power BI's self-service capabilities and Emergency Reporting, ER a slam-dunk for a case study for MS, Chief Data Officer is quite the title and job description Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello, friends. Today's guest is Derek Rickard, chief data officer at Emergency Reporting. In the ever-expanding universe of CXO titles, chief data officer is got to be one of the sexiest. And this does mark the first time that we've had someone on the show with that title, but I'm positive it will not be the last. One of the things that I find tremendously validating about Derek's journey to CDO is that his arc is very similar to the arc of many people listening to this. He comes from a pretty standard, original starting point, which is business, data analyst type work, but he was also one of the first few people, literally, to discover Power Pivot back in 2010. Rob Collie (00:00:44): And at the very same time that I was kicking the tires and learning my way around DAX and data modeling and the VertiPaq engine, he was doing the exact same thing. And also like me, in the very early going, he was finding immense success with it solving real business problems. Our parallel paths crossed when I was chief technology officer at a company called Pivotstream, where among other things, we launched the world's first cloud-hosted Power Pivot web service. So if you happen to think that the Power BI service of today is the world's first cloud service for publishing and sharing DAX-based reports, think again. We were first in 2010. Rob Collie (00:01:25): First, of course, is not best, and I'm very glad to be out of that business, but it was fun for a little while. And Derek and the company he represented at the time, well, Derek was one of the first customers of that service. He's done a number of different things since then, including going solo as a freelance consultant. He's survived the evaporation of the company that he worked for at one point in time. And now, as I mentioned, he's chief data officer of a very interesting company. Rob Collie (00:01:48): And we dive a lot into Power BI Embedded in this conversation, because throughout all of that, Derek has never once left the Power BI related ecosystem. His new company's adoption of Power BI Embedded, I think, is an incredibly wise decision. It's also an amazing case study. And we get into a very interesting conversation about the build versus buy decision that any line of business software company has to make when it comes to analytics these days. It was a really manic conversation, but I think it was also chock full of a lot of interesting information and insights. I hope you feel the same way. So let's get into it. Announcer (00:02:27): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Announcer (00:02:31): This is the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive Podcast, with your host, Rob Collie, and your cohost Thomas LaRock. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to P3Adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:02:55): Welcome to the show, Derek Rickard. How are you, sir? Derek Rickard (00:02:59): I'm good. Do you want to do it with the right pronunciation or is it okay to do Rickard? Rob Collie (00:03:03): Oh no, let's do it. Let's do it. What's the right pronunciation? Derek Rickard (00:03:06): It's Rickard. But honestly, I've been hearing the wrong pronunciation my whole life. Rob Collie (00:03:09): Well, it sounds like Jean-Luc Ricard. Derek Rickard (00:03:12): I know it's very French sounding, but it's really more English. Rob Collie (00:03:15): It's Rickard? Derek Rickard (00:03:15): Yeah, Rickard. Thomas LaRock (00:03:16): Rob, just do it without screwing it up this time. Derek Rickard (00:03:18): It's always the thing, because it comes up so often with the last name. It's not overly complex, but it is something that's really difficult to understand how it's pronounced. I don't understand why. Rob Collie (00:03:29): Well, you've kind of hit the jackpot there because it's one of those last names that sounds awesome either way. Tom here has really hit the jackpot. Derek Rickard (00:03:37): Yeah, he did. Rob Collie (00:03:38): LaRock. Derek Rickard (00:03:39): That is a jackpot there. Rob Collie (00:03:40): Yeah. The only thing better would be LeCool or something? Thomas LaRock (00:03:45): LaRock is actually the shortened version of the name. Derek Rickard (00:03:47): What's the long version. Is it even cooler? Thomas LaRock (00:03:49): It is. Derek Rickard (00:03:50): Okay. All right. I'm listening. Thomas LaRock (00:03:53): The slightly longer one would have been [inaudible 00:03:55], but it's even longer than that. It's Couille [inaudible 00:03:58] and another word in there. Anyway, Couille, if you don't know, has evolved over the centuries to be a slang word in some languages for basically balls. Rob Collie (00:04:08): Oh, nice. Thomas LaRock (00:04:09): So Balls of Brown Stone was my original name, which is just now LaRock. Rob Collie (00:04:15): Balls of Brown Stone. Thomas LaRock (00:04:17): Balls of Brown Stone. Derek Rickard (00:04:18): But I don't know if that makes it... Well, it is cooler. Rob Collie (00:04:20): Do you know who, Thomas? Derek Rickard (00:04:22): Yeah- Thomas LaRock (00:04:22): Have we talked? Derek Rickard (00:04:22): ... but we haven't met before. You've got a blog where you actually post things, which is cool, as does P3. I don't have a blog where I post things. I did post something recently, but no. So I do, I have read your work, Tom. Thomas LaRock (00:04:34): You're the one. All right. Derek Rickard (00:04:36): Yep. I'm the one. I didn't know until our emails were going around that your email is @SolarWinds. So I'm like, "I maybe have never heard of that before. A little bit ago, I don't know what happened." Thomas LaRock (00:04:46): Yeah. See, that's what actually I've been saying that in various ways. I'll say, "Hey, I work for SolarWinds. You may have heard of us recently." Derek Rickard (00:04:55): "We're pretty popular." Rob Collie (00:04:56): "I work for a newsworthy organization." Thomas LaRock (00:04:59): I keep saying how you can't buy this kind of publicity, Rob Collie (00:05:03): "I work for the highest profile organization in the monitoring space." Derek Rickard (00:05:08): There it is. Thomas LaRock (00:05:09): Yes. Rob Collie (00:05:11): Prove me wrong. Derek Rickard (00:05:12): Highly profiled. Rob Collie (00:05:14): Derek. If I had reached out to you and said, "Hey, let's get on the phone and just talk about whatever we want for an hour or two." The only proper response would be, "I don't have time for that." Derek Rickard (00:05:25): But I would want to. That's fine. Rob Collie (00:05:26): You'd want to, but we wouldn't allow ourselves that. Derek Rickard (00:05:28): We've done it. Rob Collie (00:05:28): But then you see, how this works is, I said, "No, let's record a podcast." Derek Rickard (00:05:31): Oh, I see. Yeah, that makes sense. Rob Collie (00:05:33): And now it's legit. It's like money laundering, this is now clean. Derek Rickard (00:05:37): Do you have a lot of listeners? Rob Collie (00:05:39): Oh my God. Just so many, like Legion. You're the last one to know about the show. I don't know how to tell you this, but like everyone else was in on this. Derek Rickard (00:05:48): Everyone else already knew. Yeah, it was news to me that you had a podcast. But that's not me, I've been so busy with my own stuff that I haven't been paying attention to anything. There's a pandemic happening right now, and that's something that I came into a little late. No, I'm just kidding, I didn't. I did notice that one. Rob Collie (00:06:04): Yeah. It was like, "Oh my God, I stuck my head up and like, what's this COVID thing?" Thomas LaRock (00:06:08): COVID, I thought he was talking about the 5G pandemic. Rob Collie (00:06:10): Oh, that too, of course. Derek Rickard (00:06:12): Multidemic. Rob Collie (00:06:13): Derek is someone that I've seen in-person maybe twice in my life, maybe three times. We have not interacted a lot. It's not like we've spent long periods of time with one another. However, Derek, you are one to leave an impression. Derek Rickard (00:06:26): I don't know how, but yes. Okay. Rob Collie (00:06:28): Your name comes up and I just start smiling. Derek Rickard (00:06:30): All right. Well, that's nice. That's a good feeling. Rob Collie (00:06:33): We'd hang out, conference here, conference there. And every time we'd hang out, we'd just just be laughing nonstop and really enjoying the- Derek Rickard (00:06:40): Yeah, we're both funny. Rob Collie (00:06:41): I think I'm funny, but- Derek Rickard (00:06:43): No, we're both funny. Rob Collie (00:06:44): We're both funny. I appreciate that. But in your presence, I'm like, "Okay, I need to hang with this guy." Apparently I was under the erroneous impression that you neither drink nor swear. Derek Rickard (00:06:52): That's just not a true statement. I don't know. Rob Collie (00:06:53): No, it was a true statement that I was under the impression. Derek Rickard (00:06:56): Oh yeah. That's true. Yeah, it's your feelings, bro. Rob Collie (00:06:58): Yeah. I can't be wrong, don't invalidate me. Derek Rickard (00:07:01): I'll validate you. I'll validate you. You're right to feel that. Rob Collie (00:07:04): So how did we meet? Why have we met? You were one of the OG Power Pivot professionals. Derek Rickard (00:07:10): Yeah, that makes sense. So the origin story of how I got into Power Pivot was, I was working for a small manufacturing company and I was an analyst there and I did lots of fun stuff with Access and Excel and Crystal Reports and email. So I used whatever tools are available to come up with something, and I really enjoyed doing that, but I wasn't entirely happy with how it was doing that there. It wasn't fulfilling. So I went to work for the university here in Bellingham. And that was really fun, but holy cow, the workload shifted way down. I went from cool being like agile, not in the agile way, but agile and like adapting to things and coming up with cool solutions, to, "Wow, there's nothing to do. There's nothing to do here." Derek Rickard (00:07:55): So during that time, I just decided, "Okay, I'll just learn some new tools. Let's see what else is going on in Excel." I was already pretty good at Excel, but that's where I came across Power Pivot. And I saw the site that Microsoft had up for a little bit. This was 2010. I got it loaded and I started playing with the data at the Capitol budget office at Western. And that was really cool because a lot of the reports that they had at that point generated from Access databases, I was like, "They're all right here, interactive. You can just, boom, done. Oh, want to refresh? Click the button." Derek Rickard (00:08:23): That was also the first time anyone in that department had actually connected to the data source rather than just having an export that they then did their thing. Anyway, that's how I cut my teeth on like, "Oh, this is what Power Pivot is, this is how I can use it." And I had a lot of time during the last half of 2010 to play with it. And at the same time, the company I was working for, which is called the Homax group, which Rob, you may be familiar with the name. You may have heard of us. Derek Rickard (00:08:46): They were still struggling with the duct tape and bailing wire infrastructure that I had set up for commission reporting, inventory, whatever else was going on. So they reached out to me and they said, "Can you help us? We've got a guy here who's your replacement, but we really need some training with him. Can you help us on the side?" I'm like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." So I did that, and then I was also like, "Hey, you know what? You know you want to be really cool here? Is Power Pivot. That would be awesome here." And I showed them, "Hey, this would be great here at the Homax group because you guys have so many systems that we can all mash together. It can hold lots and lots of data," because we were constantly running into, at that point, they hadn't gone to 2010, so this is a whole thing to get Excel 2010 in there too. Derek Rickard (00:09:24): But they were running into the 64,000 row cap or whatever that was all the time. So I was like, "You guys need this here. You need to upgrade your Excel and then I'll show you what it can do." And I did, and they were super excited. And they actually offered me a great position to come back and have some autonomy to do my thing and also bring in the tools that I'd like to use. So that's what I did. And we created some great reporting. And then the very next thing was to share it. So we were like, "Okay, we've got to find a way to get this on a platform that we can share." Derek Rickard (00:09:53): So we found through the blog that I had been reading about how to use Power Pivot, how to use whatever tricks you had at that time, Rob, it was like, "Oh, we have this company called Pstream. Rob Collie (00:10:03): That's right. Derek Rickard (00:10:06): That's what it's called for short. Rob Collie (00:10:07): Yeah. We'll call it Pstream. That's good. Derek Rickard (00:10:09): It's Pstream. They were like the first cloud hosting Excel workbook, like site. Is that accurate? Rob Collie (00:10:15): That's right. And I don't know how it never occurred to me that that name was Pstream. Derek Rickard (00:10:19): Oh, that's an accounting term, my man, because they couldn't fit Pivot Stream and the whole thing as the account ID. They had to limit the characters, so it was Pstream. Rob Collie (00:10:27): Oh my God, we were Pstream. Derek Rickard (00:10:29): Yeah, that's you guys, Pstream. So Pstream was the platform to host these Excel reports that we created. And man, it was awesome because people loved it. But we were running into problems. Thomas LaRock (00:10:38): Problems with your Pstream? Derek Rickard (00:10:39): They were Pstream problems. We had a LaRock blocking the Pstream. No, Tom was not there. Rob Collie (00:10:43): Oh my God. This is really ironic. Considering that our tagline was You're in Good Hands with Pstream. You're in Good Hands Derek Rickard (00:10:52): Yes, you're in good hands. I got you. See, we're funny, guys. Rob Collie (00:10:56): So funny. Oh my God. Derek Rickard (00:10:58): Anyway, we had problems with... It wasn't problems with Pstream, it was actually a problems with... I was like, "There's got to be a way to do these things." Many-to-many, actually, was the issue. It was a many-to-many relationship. And I said, "Hey, with Pstream, we might be able to talk to this guy who writes this blog. He used to work at Microsoft, so that's legit." And he's like, "Okay, let's arrange to have some time." And I think maybe the workbook was sent your way, Rob. I don't know. But eventually, you reached out and we had a conversation. I think your perspective is better on that, but I'll let you take it from that point. Rob Collie (00:11:30): Honestly, I feel like my actual relationship with you begins- Derek Rickard (00:11:35): He doesn't remember any of that, by the way. Rob Collie (00:11:37): That's right. But it begins when we get face to face in a hallway outside of a session at some conference later. Now, I did remember you guys by name and all of that. That's when, to me, I put the faces and the personalities on the other end of that email or that conversation. That's when I'm like, "This is awesome. These guys... " You and Jason, right? Derek Rickard (00:11:56): Yep, Jason. Jason Presley, who ended up working for Pstream. Rob Collie (00:11:58): Who ended up working for Pstream. That's correct. What's really funny to me about that story is, you start at the beginning saying that you had left Homax and had gone to Western Washington, and I'm thinking to myself, "That's not right. That is not what happened." Derek Rickard (00:12:12): He is lying. Rob Collie (00:12:12): when I met you, you were at Homax. Derek Rickard (00:12:14): Yeah, that's true. Rob Collie (00:12:15): Then when the story turned to you going back to Homax, I'm like, "Okay, now I get it." Derek Rickard (00:12:18): And that's it boring detail of the story, but it's really important because there's so much learning curve to do that. And I just wanted to validate others, if anyone struggles with that learning curve, to say, I had a lot of time when the features weren't as much either, when the features were more limited. So we were like, "Okay, we're getting used to this DAX language and how to structure multiple tables." Rob Collie (00:12:37): That's my story as well. In early 2010, I didn't have a lot to do- Derek Rickard (00:12:42): But you're at Microsoft, right? Or no? Rob Collie (00:12:43): I was at Microsoft still, but I had already moved to the Midwest and I was transitioning. I knew I wasn't going to be able to continue to be a program manager on the engineering team, because back then, remote work, wasn't really a thing, especially for that position. So as the transitional thing, I was blogging about Power Pivot. To blog about Power Pivot, you actually had to learn how to use it. So really, like the classic line and the spy movies, "We're not that different you and I." Like in 2010, I also didn't have a whole lot to do other than screw around and kick the tires and put Power Pivot through its paces- Derek Rickard (00:13:19): Yeah, that was fun. Rob Collie (00:13:19): ... and make mistakes that no one would typically know that I made. Every now and then, I would write about the mistake and not know it was a mistake and people would have to try to reproduce it on their end and go, "Hey, this isn't working." So yeah, that freedom back in that year, just the free time to explore this new domain, I agree, it was crucial to you, it was also crucial to me. Derek Rickard (00:13:42): That was a good times, 2010. 2010, also the year the iPad dropped, super important. Rob Collie (00:13:48): Is it? Derek Rickard (00:13:48): Yeah, that is super important because you went from two years later, people are like, "How come I'm looking at an Excel spreadsheet that doesn't render well on this Pstream. Look at my iPad, look at it. Shouldn't it be better than this?" Rob Collie (00:13:59): Yeah. Excel services rendered through SharePoint, turns out to not be so great on those original- Derek Rickard (00:14:06): iPads. Rob Collie (00:14:08): Thankfully, things have moved forward since then. All right. So then at some point, you go solo, don't you? Derek Rickard (00:14:15): Yeah. So basically, Homax's gig was to like buy brands because they're a consumer packaged goods company, so they would buy brands. Probably the most popular brand is Goo Gone, which has that orange stuff. So they bought Goo Gone. Black Flag was another one that had, which kills the lots of bugs. Homax was a brand which has spray texture and that kind of stuff. Anyway, they would buy these brands, they would acquire the brands and bring them into their umbrella. They're owned by a private equity firm. And so eventually, they got to a point where they needed to sell and a lot of the data efforts that I was putting into the company to help them operationally would also be used for chunking off the company to sell bits off to other folks. So Magic and Gugan were sold off. Derek Rickard (00:14:54): And eventually, we sold the rest of the company, there was nothing left to sell. So the last thing I helped them do is their transaction with PPG, which is a company in Pittsburgh. And after that, I was done. Actually, there was a, "Hey, we don't need your whole team anymore." It was me and Jason and a couple other folks. And he's like, "We don't need your whole team anymore, we'll just need you for the next like year." And I was like, "How about I just leave and you keep Jason around for a bit? Because I've been doing the side hustle for awhile and I'd love to just go into that more." Derek Rickard (00:15:23): So that's where we landed and it was cool because we had that agreement. They hung out as a client of mine for a little bit afterwards while they were transitioning to their mothership. That's why I went solo. The thing is, I feel very lucky because a lot of people have to take a dive, they have to like jump in and risk. I had none of that because I'd already started work with sister companies at that private equity firm, so there were already a client of mine. Another person that used to work at Homax who went off to work for this communications company. She hit me up shortly before Homax sold and she said, "Hey, can you help us out with some stuff?" So they became a client of mine. Derek Rickard (00:15:57): And that just lifted me off to not really take much of a risk at all. All it was was a relief to those clients that I had more time for them. So that was cool. Rob Collie (00:16:05): Yeah. That is a more gentle transition into the- Derek Rickard (00:16:08): Very gentle. Rob Collie (00:16:09): ... freelancer role than is typical. Derek Rickard (00:16:11): Yeah, it was nice. Rob Collie (00:16:12): So Homax became Nomax. Derek Rickard (00:16:16): Nomax. The brand still around, but it's owned by PPG. Rob Collie (00:16:19): Yeah. It's just the endless game of consolidation and shuffling. So you went solo. Derek Rickard (00:16:26): Went solo, Source to Share. Rob Collie (00:16:27): Source to Share. Derek Rickard (00:16:28): July of '14, I think Rob Collie (00:16:30): July of '14. So is that still what you're doing today? Derek Rickard (00:16:33): Source to Share still operates, I don't do that anymore. As of January 4th, I took the chief data officer position at Emergency Reporting. It doesn't matter if you've heard of Emergency Reporting yet. It's basically a records management software for the fire industry. So they do lots of fun stuff there. Rob Collie (00:16:54): The fire industry. Go on. Derek Rickard (00:16:55): Yeah, yeah. Not like we're starting fires, but for firefighters, for fire departments. They have an EMS software as well. Basically, you have people going out and saving lives and property, and then they come back and they're like, "Oh, I got to write up all this crap. I got to write it all because it's all these things that the government wants to know and all these things that I have to file." And no one would want to do that manually, which there are still plenty of places that do that. So they have record management software. So there are different flavors of that for different industries. And for the fire industry, they have Emergency Reporting and several other competitors, which I could name them if I knew them. Rob Collie (00:17:32): So Emergency Reporting isn't about that report that you grab an analyst at four o'clock on a Friday and say, "Oh my God, we need to have this by Monday." Derek Rickard (00:17:42): That'd be a good name for a consultancy group that works well under fire, but that's not what it is. Rob Collie (00:17:48): Yeah. Like, "If you've waited too long, call us." It's actually reporting about emergencies. Derek Rickard (00:17:54): Yeah. It's emergency reporting. Yeah. Yes, that's correct. Nailed it. Rob Collie (00:17:58): When you described it as the fire industry, I did wonder. Derek Rickard (00:18:02): Sorry, fire prevention. Rob Collie (00:18:03): Most industries that you name, their job is to create those things. Derek Rickard (00:18:08): Yeah, right, create the fires. Rob Collie (00:18:09): Which reminds me of the fire department in Roxanne. Steve Martin, remember that? Derek Rickard (00:18:15): Oh yeah. Steve Martin. Rob Collie (00:18:16): The fire department's a bunch of pyros. It's like, "Guys, we can't have people when there's a fire saying whatever you do, don't call the fire department." Derek Rickard (00:18:26): Cannot do it. Rob Collie (00:18:28): So chief data officer. Holy cow, that is a hell of a job title. Derek Rickard (00:18:34): I like it. Yeah, it's good. I didn't pick it. Rob Collie (00:18:36): It picked you. That's what it picked, it picked you. Derek Rickard (00:18:39): I guess it picked me. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:18:40): Okay. So you are now a certified made man of data, chief data officer. Whatever happens from here on out, your resumes is going to lead with that. Derek Rickard (00:18:50): Oh yeah. That will be the first thing after my name, Derek Rickard. Rob Collie (00:18:54): Jean-Luc Ricard. Derek Rickard (00:18:55): Yeah. I think that a title is a title, but what I'm really happy about is an organization that wants to actually invest in a data strategy that's not a data organization. They're records management, they're not like, "We're a syndicated data company, so we do data. We're focused on data." Of course they would have that focus, but this is a records management software and they're like, "We need to be better with our data so we want to have a strategy there and we need to invest in that." So that's what they did. Rob Collie (00:19:22): Yeah. There's some really interesting points there. So first of all, when Donald Farmer, we had him on the show, he said an interesting series of things, which is like, first of all, if you're a software company, you need to sooner or later come to the realization that you're also a data company. And if you're a data company, you need to come to the realization that you're also an analytics company. And then he said, if you're an analytics company, you need to quickly come to the realization that you need to be an advanced analytics company. Derek Rickard (00:19:45): He's got all the answers. Rob Collie (00:19:46): Dude, yeah, doesn't he? Derek Rickard (00:19:46): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:19:48): Another way to say it is, if a company like that, records management for any industry, if a company like that isn't a data company, where do we think data comes from? To me, if I'm going to analyze something, someone better be recording it for me. Someone needs to be generating the data. Any line of business software, that's where data comes from. Derek Rickard (00:20:15): Yeah, for real. And I think maybe from their perspective, the responsibilities just fell onto storage and retrieval. We're going to store it, it'll be organized and you'll be able to retrieve it. And there's a lot more to it than just that. In terms of value of the data, there's way more than just storage and retrieval. Rob Collie (00:20:35): But that's how it starts. Derek Rickard (00:20:36): Oh yeah, for sure. You have maturity. Rob Collie (00:20:38): Storage and retrieval is the only thing, and I don't know if you've read my magnum opus series of articles on exactly this topic, but storage and retrieval is where it all begins. You have to have storage and retrieval. Derek Rickard (00:20:51): Those are basics. Rob Collie (00:20:53): And when it's time for the first cut of analytics or reporting, when everyone's out there, the storage and retrieval professionals have to be there, this is why the industry started with the storage and retrieval people and that mindset, and it's why the analytics industry has had a hangover for a long time. That sequel, isn't actually a good analysis tool at all. I know Tom's horrified, but come on, it's just not, it wasn't built for that. It wasn't built for that. And so when you said storage and retrieval, my eyes just lit up. That's why the earth cooled. So tell me more about that, to the extent that you're allowed to, what is the data strategy? Derek Rickard (00:21:34): Well, I think talk in theory about it, and honestly, this is why I don't write a lot of blog posts or anything like that, is materializing the random things that are happening in my head, don't always work correctly, especially if I'm writing, talking is a little bit better. Rob Collie (00:21:48): It's not a whole lot better, honestly, when you're talking, but we'll take it. Derek Rickard (00:21:52): But in general, we have data in retrieval, that's covered. And actually a lot of the retrieval for them is through paginated reporting, which is great because so many things need that, that we have to get this form to the government and we have to report it to the government entity, and it has to be the same all the time. It can't be wildly different and paginated reporting was a really good option when they first started. And it actually still is a good option for things that require paginated reports. That's great for retrieving an incident at a time or maybe some summary, but not really great for understanding the aggregates of your data. Derek Rickard (00:22:26): So this is again in terms of data maturity. We have storage and retrieval and business intelligence maturity would be like descriptive analytics first, your descriptive data first. So just like, what our aggregates look like? What is there their trend been over time for incidents? What's our seasonality with fires? And how is it growing? Is it staying the same? How is it when we compare it to our staff, our personnel? Do we have less personnel working for fire now than we did before? Are we meeting our standards to make sure that we can stay accredited? These types of questions. Derek Rickard (00:23:00): All those things right now, I think a lot of them are done offline, at least they weren't done offline. So they would pull out these RS reports or paginated reports and they would compile the data themselves and they'd say, "Oh, this is how we can get our accreditation." And meanwhile, I'm saying, "Well, we could have it. We can embed analytics products in here that will at least at the very least be able to describe your aggregates. We can do that." That was what we piloted in 2020. So as I said, I had only started there in January 4th, that was when I took that position, but I was with ER in a consultant capacity for mid '17 or later in 2017, I've been working with them. Derek Rickard (00:23:37): Super small stuff at first and then eventually larger things. But we saw this like, "Hey, we can do more with this data for our customers so we should try to embed analytics." And it's something that they tried to do before as well, but it just didn't work out. It was too complex, there were too many problems with it and we took a different approach. We went really lean, we said, "Okay, we're just going to try to embed some analytic reporting." And we got our first module up, I think in February or March of last year, our incidence module, and then we just expanded from there. Derek Rickard (00:24:05): And these modules are sizable, they're not tiny, but we have five modules now, all analytical reporting, again, the basic. So the approach we take is we put it out there and we ask folks what they think about it, there's like maybe six, 7,000, I don't remember how many customers, how many fire departments are using us. So getting feedback from them and aggregating the feedback is a whole another thing, but understanding like, "Okay, these things are good, these things are bad, we would really like different reports." So that strategy is one side of the customer facing business intelligence or analytical reporting to embed in our software. So that's one of the strategies. Oh, that was super long, people are asleep now, for sure. Rob Collie (00:24:41): No. This is the good stuff. So I can't help it. Derek Rickard (00:24:45): You should interrupt, there's too way too much of me talking. Rob Collie (00:24:48): I'm trying to be polite. I'm not just waiting for my turn to talk. Okay, maybe I am. Derek Rickard (00:24:53): But like some people, you can't really see where I'm looking, but I'm looking right at Tom. Rob Collie (00:24:59): Yeah. He chooses his moment and right when you least expect it... So what is the technology for this embedding? Derek Rickard (00:25:10): Well, that's the thing is we were going lean. So we were going lean with, we don't want it to take forever, we would love to just embed it and not have to worry about it. So we did Power BI Embedded, and that's known. When customers go to the analytics screen, the embedded stuff, you'll see the Power BI logo pop up before the screen renders. So that's what we're using for that. Backend wise, it's a little bit different, we separated out the engine. So Power BI is the visualization layer essentially. Rob Collie (00:25:36): That's what I was wondering, is which kind of lean? There's lean from the, we don't want to develop an enormous amount of software in-house for analytics. And then there's lean in terms of it doesn't really offer the customer very much. And definitely it sounds like it's the former, by embedding Power BI, which I did not know that's what you were doing. Honestly, I didn't know, I was hoping. Derek Rickard (00:26:03): I don't know how you wouldn't. Rob Collie (00:26:04): I was hoping that's what you chose, but I was expecting you to say, "We coded up our own charts and visuals." And then I was going to go, "Boo, bad decision." And Nope, you guys, you were smart, you did it, I think, the right way. No line of business software company should ever be in the business of building their own analytics engine. Derek Rickard (00:26:25): That was the thing is that the engine, the technology behind Power Pivot and Power BI, the Analysis Services engine is so powerful and that's the only part that doesn't have the power name to it, it's just Analysis Services. It should be Power Analysis Services. Rob Collie (00:26:41): They're working on it. They're going to have to negotiate with the organization formerly known as Pass for that acronym, to get the Power Analysis Services. Derek Rickard (00:26:52): Yes. It is amazing. And that is to me, seemed to be the obvious answer to what needed to happen. And like you said, "home growing this thing would take a lot of effort, and we're still on the fence on like, what is the customer reaction to these things? We know that customers would like to have analytical reporting, but we don't know once they see it, once it's in front of their face, what is the reaction to that? Do they want more? Do they're like, "Oh, cool, check that box. Now, we're moving on to whatever we're doing"? So that was the lean approach too, the models we created were lean. They didn't have tons and tons of data points because we don't need them, meaning, when I say data points I mean columns and tables. Derek Rickard (00:27:30): We started with a small set, and then as soon as we got feedback, we would expand, add onto that, like, "Okay, that sounds right, we should add that for this model, maybe we add a tab to the report," whatever we're doing, but that was our general approach. And that made it fast to stand up. And we had our web devs working on the embedded piece, but creating the reports, that's not that bad, that's a quick turnaround. In fact, I think the amount of time we were working on the reports and vetting them and making sure that they're going to make sense in front of folks was maybe a month, maybe. So that was nice. Thomas LaRock (00:27:59): I want Rob to repeat what he just said though, no companies should be doing their own analytics? Rob Collie (00:28:04): No. Thomas LaRock (00:28:04): I'm sorry. Rob Collie (00:28:05): No line of business software company should be building their own analytics engine. Derek Rickard (00:28:12): It seems like a feudal effort. Rob Collie (00:28:13): It's already been done by others in a way better manner. Thomas LaRock (00:28:15): You're using some words, I feel I need to have you dive down. As somebody who works for a software company that may or may not be doing some analytics. So I want to know more. I think you mean more like our accountants shouldn't be doing their own or something. Rob Collie (00:28:34): That's also true. Well, hold on. Now I actually mean that it take some, just some random company that might be in the news like Solar Winds. Thomas LaRock (00:28:45): Never had of them. Rob Collie (00:28:46): A lot of data is being generated, collected, tagged all those sorts of things in that system by one of the things that it does, it's actually in some grand over simplification, is really all that it does. Of course, the customers are going to want analytics and reporting over that data. Of course they are. So what has happened over and over and over again in history is that at that moment in time, a company like Solar Winds will then say, "Great. We will go essentially build our own in-house BI software that does or attempts to do many of the same things as like the Microsoft Power platform." Rob Collie (00:29:25): "And then build that into our software, and we're going to build a reporting services, paginated reporting competitor, but we're never going to sell it as a general purpose tool. We're only going to build it for our own purposes and we're going to build a Power BI competitor." And of course those things are not nearly as well-funded at that company as they would be at a company that's like all in on analytics as their core mission. And you don't necessarily have the right staff for it either. And so you end up with what becomes a very unsatisfying- Derek Rickard (00:29:59): And unstable. Rob Collie (00:30:00): Unstable. It's your under-delivering relative to customer need and at the same time, overspending, according to your original estimates of how much it was going to cost internally for you to develop. It's just the wrong move, especially today when things like Power BI Embedded are available to you. Derek Rickard (00:30:16): Yeah. You just get them plugged in. Rob Collie (00:30:18): Oh, here's where it gets good. Thomas LaRock (00:30:20): I would say that I live in an edge case then, and I think you are correct for, we'll say 85% of the companies out there, but from where I sit, I could probably give you a handful of examples where this is why it happens. It's not because the company would say to themselves, "We'll just do with ourselves." Sometimes your hands might be forced by say your customer base. So there's a delicate balance that has to happen. But I would agree with you when I think of my former life, some of the companies I've worked for previously, where we would have tried to do our own and built our own stuff. Thomas LaRock (00:30:57): And our customers are really internal customers and we would have done it ourselves or we would go try to buy a tool that would promise to be the only data warehouse you would ever need. They'll give you all the reports you want and all that stuff. Would you be surprised to learn that that failed? Rob Collie (00:31:13): No, not at all. Thomas LaRock (00:31:13): Right, exactly. So I can absolutely believe for that, but I'm going to tell you that there are some valid reasons where you end up, it's almost like you hit a tipping point. You get to this point where you're like, "Ah, you know this Rob." I'll look right and you can say, "I would love to have Power BI somehow hooked into a bunch of products, but we can't." And there are legitimate reasons why that's just never going to happen. And we are going to have to do stuff on our own. Derek Rickard (00:31:39): That's sucks. Rob Collie (00:31:40): Give me the number one reason. Thomas LaRock (00:31:42): Let's say you're a company and you have clients in both the public and private sector. So if you're Microsoft say, you probably have an entire team dedicated to doing whatever is necessary for your public sector. For example, Azure has data centers dedicated to government Fed. Microsoft's maybe not a great example because they're in the business of catering to these clients. Not everybody has that scenario, not everybody's on the Fed list, so to speak. But now let's say you're Microsoft and you've got a product and you think the product is great, and let's say this product doesn't have any valuable reporting at all, but you've got clients in both public and private. Thomas LaRock (00:32:32): And then you say, "You know what, hey, reporting, not problem. We built this file, we built this dashboard, just download Power BI, run everything, you're great." You're going to have clients. And the Fed sector would be like, "No, no separate download. We install, it's all in one, and it's there. It's in one tool. That's it. That's what we buy, that's what we're allowed to install. There's nothing extra. If you can't put it and embed it in the tool, then forget it." Now, I know you're going to tell me Power BI Embedded and all that stuff. Rob Collie (00:33:00): Derek, take it from here. Thomas LaRock (00:33:02): I'm using maybe a bad example of Microsoft, but it's not that a company thinks they're going to be able to do it better, it's that they end up because you hit a tipping point. Let's say you started out as one product in somebody's garage in Omaha or Tulsa, somewhere in the Midwest, and let's say you're now a conglomerate of 77 different products. Rob Collie (00:33:24): You need Power BI even more in that scenario. Thomas LaRock (00:33:27): Right. So you say, but you know the reality of trying to shove anything in there to make it all work across the board and you have to eat the elephant one bite at a time, so to speak. Rob Collie (00:33:41): We've had a guest on this show who comes from a Power BI background and is built and is building SaaS software product who ultimately chose not to use Power BI Embedded for their reporting. And I actually respected the decision in this case, it was Austin with ConServe. And the reason why it made sense for them is the trade-off curve in a particular direction, which is they actually don't need that much flexibility in terms of what they're eventually going to have to deliver in terms of analytics. It's really pretty obvious in the first 15 to 20 minutes of talking to them what their reports need to be showing their customers. There's not that much. Rob Collie (00:34:23): The universe of it is just not that broad compared to what it could be in a chaotic Wild West business sense. And so for them, it made sense to code at 100% themselves because they allowed them to control the user experience to a greater degree than what they could have with Power BI Embedded, and also probably for a lower ongoing cost to serve. But when the universe of analytics that's going to be required is unbounded, especially in a world where Power BI Embedded does exist, before Power BI Embedded, I think the world looks very different, but if you were building something from scratch today, your line of business is software or SaaS product, whatever, I think you'd have to look long and hard at the prospect of build on your own versus buy in the form of embedded, which as far as the customer is concerned, Derek, you can tell me if you agree, as far as the customer's concerned, other than the Power BI logo flickering at them briefly for a moment, it might as well be all one product, right? Derek Rickard (00:35:27): Yeah. There's no difference. We could even cover the Power BI logo. Rob Collie (00:35:31): What would you cover it with? Like a layer of paint? Derek Rickard (00:35:33): I don't know, any our logo, any of our logo. This is like a silly on it, it's just an ER logo. But yeah, you could even cover that. You can have it completely white labeled. You wouldn't fool me, but- Rob Collie (00:35:44): Yeah. You can tell me. If you know what you're looking for, you can tell the Power BI chart and what the controls look like and all of that. Derek Rickard (00:35:51): I do want to say, Tom, that I'm not against going outside of Power BI as a visualization layer, and that's actually why I separated the engine out because we may want a different visualization layer later. We may not want to do Power BI Embedded. Rob Collie (00:36:03): When you say engine, you mean the Analysis Services Engine? Derek Rickard (00:36:06): That's the one. Thomas LaRock (00:36:08): And I should say, "I've come to realize that you guys are talking about, like Rob just said, you're talking about doing some real analysis, whereas a lot of the things in my world is really, it's the metric collection and correlation of those metrics in the time series. We all need to embed Power BI for that, but we are getting to the point where we wanted to do things like anomaly detection, so everybody's getting to that point. I would think that type of analysis is still going to be something you're going to want built into the product and not necessarily done for you. And here's why, is because you know your data better than Microsoft. Thomas LaRock (00:36:48): And if Microsoft is giving me a widget to help with anomaly detection, I'm getting the Filet-O-Fish version of anomaly detection and it could work. Derek Rickard (00:37:00): Delicious. Thomas LaRock (00:37:00): Yeah, it's delicious. I love them, I could eat a dozen- Rob Collie (00:37:05): But it is junk food. Thomas LaRock (00:37:06): But it's junk food, but it's going to do what I need it to do at that moment, but I'm going to be able to tell the model what is truly anomalous or not, and I may not get that from an off the shelf product. Derek Rickard (00:37:21): Yeah. And if we're talking about plugging in AIML stuff, I see that as a totally different thing from what I'm talking about with just the Power BI visualization layer, because the visualization layer is just that, it's only for visualizing and all that other stuff you just talked about can be baked into the background in different tools, honestly. So they have Azure Synapse Analytics is out now on the Microsoft side and that's one that you can plug into AIML and that type of stuff. And they use those kinds of black box algorithms and that type of thing, and that's where I totally agree. Have you ever right clicked and do the see insights from a Visual and Power BI? Rob Collie (00:37:56): Yes. Derek Rickard (00:37:57): So many things are not useful, but there are a couple of things that are, but most of the time, it's not useful. Rob Collie (00:38:02): You get things like the correlation between what leads to a successful product, like a product that sold the- Derek Rickard (00:38:08): More quantity. Rob Collie (00:38:08): That's right. That's right. The most dollars always tends to correlate really strongly with quantity. That's deep. Derek Rickard (00:38:15): Yes. That is some deep learning. Rob Collie (00:38:18): That's the deep, deep, stuff there Derek Rickard (00:38:20): Yeah. And that's the stuff you have to sit down, and that's why I agree with you, Tom, that's not really always useful. Rob Collie (00:38:27): It's so funny. But Tom, even thought you were saying, I actually think we're really hitting on the same thing, which is the amount of variation. So if Microsoft builds a piece of software that is like non configurable, it's more of a novelty. It's like a little bit of a novelty slapped onto the side of the product, it's like demo ware and it says, "Hey, this can be one-size-fits-all." And it turns out to not know anything about your domain and it's not going to be very good for it. That stands in sharp contrast to the majority of their platform, which is the complete opposite. DAX is like Power BI, the Analysis Services Engine is like, "Oh yeah, we're ready for you." Rob Collie (00:39:05): In fact, one of the criticisms that you'll often hear of it in the marketplace is how little it will do for you without being configured. And I'm always like, "No, no. That's a strength of this, don't you dare flinch. This is the real deal. Data's doing it right, it's never easy. Don't you dare try to make it like out of the box, wa-lah magic, does what you want." So in the case of like SolarWinds, if there isn't going to be much variation across what each customer needs, that tends toward build in-house. It was just exactly what happened with Austin at ConServe, there isn't a lot of variation required. Whereas Derek's walking into a situation where he's got thousands of customers working in completely... Rob Collie (00:39:51): They're all fighting fires, but some literally, but probably with wildly different reporting requirements, wildly different budget requirements, every single municipality is run differently, he needs to be prepared to meet the world where it is, which is going to be potentially a tremendous pallet of variation. And in that situation, you really can't build internally and ever succeed at it. Derek Rickard (00:40:18): No, you'll never win that battle. You're always going to be a constant struggle. Rob Collie (00:40:23): I'm okay, you're okay where are we always land. No controversy here. Derek Rickard (00:40:28): Back to the controversy where we're saying there's some cases where you can have that. Like I said, that is why Power BI is the visualization layer for us. And maybe there's a time in the future where we want to swap that out, but- Rob Collie (00:40:40): I love that you left that door open. I don't think enough people consider this as maybe your visualization tools. Now, again, if there's a wide variety of variation to be expected, you don't want to be the person that's re-inventing the bar chart and all the settings that have to go on it. That is a lot of work for not a lot of love. If your bar chart sucks- Derek Rickard (00:41:01): Can you just make it a pie chart please? I like all 20 categories in one pie. Thomas LaRock (00:41:06): That's all anybody wants, is to pie chart. At the end of the day, that's all they... Oh my God. Derek Rickard (00:41:10): They're like, "Thank goodness you made it a pie chart." I'm like, "Oh," and I die a little inside. Rob Collie (00:41:14): You'll be wanting a thermometer gauges next. Yes? Derek Rickard (00:41:17): Oh yeah. "Something that takes up a lot of real estate and barely says anything, do you have anything like that?" "Yes. Yes we do." Rob Collie (00:41:24): I just want my report to be one giant colored button. It's only three buttons, three different colors that can it display, red, green or yellow. Derek Rickard (00:41:31): Yeah, it's a red rover situation. Rob Collie (00:41:34): I feel like we needed a sub-genre of Gary Larson, Far Side cartoons that was like the Neanderthals building reports. Derek Rickard (00:41:43): You do it. You do it. Get to drawing. Rob Collie (00:41:46): Management says make simpler. So how's that going? You said that you joined in January, and by like February or March, you had your first couple of modules out or whatever. Derek Rickard (00:41:57): No, no, no, no. Sorry. Let's back that up a little bit. I joined in January. I took the CDO position in January of this year. Rob Collie (00:42:02): Of this year? Derek Rickard (00:42:03): Yeah. That's been four months since it's been like the double-down on, "Hey, we're going to do this. We're going to branch out and do this even more. We're going to put the pedal to the metal and actually create a data org in our organization." So that's only been four months. But last year was the pilot program like, "Let's embed an analytics tool and see what people think about it." And it was awesome and people loved it. From there, we got more requests for larger organizations, The Army being one of them. And they were like, "We'd love to have this at the installation level, but we would love to see this at the top." Derek Rickard (00:42:33): So we went to DC preCOVID. So this was still last year that we talked to them about this Embedded analytics stuff and we showed them what we had already, they're like, "Can we make this roll up to the top level?" And of course, as you know, Rob, all the data's in that model. Now, it is separated. Tom, you know it's separated for gov versus whatever, but all the data's in that model so rolling it up is a matter of just releasing the low level security and having a different entry point for that model. Derek Rickard (00:43:02): And then of course, changing the report to be more applicable to someone who's looking at it from really a full entity view. But that was a perfect example of them wanting more. They're like, "We want group level analytics." And that makes the most sense, of course they would want that. So counties would want that and fire marshals also, they'll want that same thing too. So that's pretty cool that we opened up that. Rob Collie (00:43:21): So it didn't take long to stand it up, it doesn't sound like. Derek Rickard (00:43:25): Yeah, it wasn't long to stand up, and the pilot went well. Let's say that. People really enjoyed it. Rob Collie (00:43:30): Okay. All right. So it was a successful product launch? Derek Rickard (00:43:33): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:43:34): How much curiosity are you seeing? There's two different problems you can have when you release the flood gates like this. One of them is, you're just getting hit from every possible angle with all kinds of requests and you're just like, "Oh, what Pandora's box if we opened?" And the other one is crickets, everyone just saying, "Yep, we love it. It's great. Thanks." But no one has any constructive criticism or you're not getting enough of that and it makes you wonder if they're really using it Derek Rickard (00:44:03): Well, the wondering doesn't have to happen because we can monitor it, so we can see how it's being used and the folks that are using it. But I will say, it comes in waves, the feedback. We do get feedback, and it's great. And most of the time, people are really happy and they're just asking if something else can be included. In the terms of maturity, this is still very much in the toddler years, the descriptive analytics type thing. So the questions being asked are like, "Hey, can we see these things at this level by station?" Which of station would have been done right away. Derek Rickard (00:44:32): So we were getting feedbacks, but they come in waves because they have waves of reporting requirements. So every quarter, they have to submit reports to other folks, every year, they have to do some accreditation reporting. So that's when we were seeing that feedback. And I wish it was a little bit ahead of that because we could try to put something together so we can service accreditation reporting needs for like a ton of fire departments at once. But that's something that we're working on. We're trying to work that out and the company is trying to work that out. It's like, "How can we get ahead of that so that we can really help folks out before they need it?" Rob Collie (00:45:01): How much, if any, of Power BIs self service capabilities have you exposed to your customers at this point? Do any of them ever see a field list where they could drag, drop and create different visual, or you basically for the moment or maybe forever, all reports are going to be built in-house? Derek Rickard (00:45:21): Great question. So the idea with releasing this pilot too... And this is called BI Basic, that's what this whole entity is called, BI Basic. So we have BI Groups, which is where I was saying larger entities want to roll up their analytics or roll up their numbers to their level, and that's the BI Groups. But anyway, BI Basic is what we have, and there's this concept of BI Pro. The concept of BI Pro is to actually author your own from a creative model, and that authoring environment would be embedded in the application. Now, we don't know if people want that. Part of this whole process is to get it out in front of folks, see what they want. Derek Rickard (00:45:59): And really, when you're a SaaS company and you're working with your clients, especially the variety of clients we have, we have volunteer fire departments who are like, "We just want you to make the reports for us and we do our thing and then leave. There may not be people, the resources there to dedicate to creating their own report or understanding how to create it or whatever." And then you get these gigantic entities that want to, "It's cool that you have your Power BI stuff, but I want to put it into my data warehouse. I want that data to land right in my SQL database so I can do stuff with it too." So we have this huge variety of customers or possible customers that we don't know where to go without some feedback. So this is partly product management. Rob Collie (00:46:39): It really takes me back. When I was first working on BI for the first time in my career, working on the Excel team, early 2000s, and we were working with the analysis services team. We were still all collectively under the impression that the output, the customer-facing, user-facing output of an analysis services model was a field list.A field list and a blank canvas, that's what the world wanted. They wanted to see that cube, they wanted to see what was in it and everything. And, oh my gosh, did it take years to get that myth beaten out of me. Derek Rickard (00:47:17): Busted. "Hey, here's a pivot table. Here's a pivot table. This is empty. You can do whatever you want with it." Rob Collie (00:47:22): Is that great? Derek Rickard (00:47:23): Blank stares. Rob Collie (00:47:24): No, no, not great. In fact, I've come full circle, which is that, we were talking about Power BI and Power Pivot in the beginning as the self-service tool. Again, still, a little bit with that hangover. Actually, with a lot of it, of like, "Yeah, the business really wants that field list." So it turns out that the same... This is good news. This is a happy accident in a way. The same technological improvements and usability improvements that were required to enable this self-service revolution that we saw, we were trying to start in 2010, the same improvements that even made it there actually ended up being really, really, really useful for the small percentage of people, much smaller percentage than what we thought. Rob Collie (00:48:07): For them to very quickly pivot... I didn't mean to do that. Derek Rickard (00:48:11): Good one. Rob Collie (00:48:13): Maybe I did, but it's terrible. Very quickly respond to the needs of their users by creating new reports. And so I can totally understand where you're at right now. You should not assume that everyone's dying for that flexibility. It's nice that you can provide it if you want to, but in the meantime, the fact that you have the flexibility, you don't have to commission some new dev sprint to modify or improve what's in your embedded analytics. because you're a God of your own data. Once your way around DAX and data modeling, and you do, it's amazing what you can do in a short period of time. Derek Rickard (00:48:54): Yeah, it's fantastic. Rob Collie (00:48:55): I'm curious to see where you ultimately land in this. Derek Rickard (00:48:57): I'm excited to say that just what you're describing and what I described. I'm forgetting that prior to this, in my consultancy, oftentimes, the discussion I would have with anybody asking about Power BI or technology or whatever, how to incorporate it in their company is this idea of levels of authorship, because there are different styles of authors. They're the kind that create the models, and this isn't anything new, but materializing it was good. So there are the kinds of make the models, and they can make reports as well, but those are certain type of person. Derek Rickard (00:49:26): And then the people that can create reports from the model, that can be a different layer of authorship. And then the people that make dashboards from the reports, that can be a different layer of authorship. And not to mention the people that prep the data for the model, that's a different layer. There's all these different layers. And what's been happening since 2010, and actually before that too, but what's been happening is that we're opening the doors for those authors and allowing them to be a part of that too, and service their next layer of customers. Rob Collie (00:49:53): I feel like y'all would be an amazing case study for Microsoft on Power BI Embedded. Have you explored? Derek Rickard (00:50:01): The CEO of Emergency Reporting, his name is David Nokes, and I know that he talks with Microsoft about these types of things. So I don't know what exactly, but I know that he talks to them about, "Hey, ER is this." Because we're a Microsoft shop all around. So it's cool to have that partnership with them and for there to be case study or whatever. I agree though, I think it would be a very cool thing to say like, "Oh, this is one of our clients." Rob Collie (00:50:25): It checks all the boxes. Derek Rickard (00:50:27): Yeah. Public safety. Rob Collie (00:50:28): Public safety, government. It's just a feel good story. Derek Rickard (00:50:31): Sure is. Rob Collie (00:50:32): It'd just be like a slice of apple pie just sitting there in the foreground of the picture on the front of the case study and no one would ever think twice. Derek Rickard (00:50:39): No one. Rob Collie (00:50:40): No one. It just belonged there. Derek Rickard (00:50:41): It does sound good though. I am so hungry, but we'll get lunch after. We'll get lunch after. Rob Collie (00:50:46): So chief data officer. Derek Rickard (00:50:47): Sure. Have you heard that position? I'm sure you have. Rob Collie (00:50:49): I have, yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:50:50): I have, but you could tell me more about... To me, it's like a DBA. It means a different thing depending on the company you're at. So yeah, tell us more about what your duties are as chief data officer. Derek Rickard (00:51:02): Sure. Yeah. And first, I want to say, I agree with you. It does differ for sure. And when offered the position, I furiously Googled to figure out what is going on. I already kind of knew, but I had in my mind at some point I'm like, "Oh, it'd be cool to be a chief analytics officer. That'd be neat." And then it's like, "Hey, we want to offer you this position, chief data officer." I'm like, "Ooh, okay. What does that mean? How is that different? How does that play into an organization?" And once we talked about it, I'm like, "Okay, this does fit in nicely." So essentially, you've got this river, untamed water everywhere. Lots of people would like to use the water, but they can't tame it. It's dirty. They don't know what to do with it. Derek Rickard (00:51:44): So you get engineers that come in and then they build some infrastructure around it and they dam it. And then they work on like a delivery systems and that kind of stuff, get it out to crops so crops can use it. But they still have to manage how much water is going to those places, they still have to manage the quality. They still have to do all those things. The CDO position is more like the quality and delivery and volume of water that gets out to folks. And the IT department is like the infrastructure, they're the ones that built the dams. So that is the only way that I've been able to understand it. Rob Collie (00:52:19): I love the metaphor. It comes in and builds a dam. "No more water for you." Derek Rickard (00:52:25): No more water. Just no more water for people downstream. Rob Collie (00:52:27): That's right. Yes. Upstream is great. Back here, behind here, we've got all kinds of water. It's like the joke the write-only database, now, we are hoarding. Thomas LaRock (00:52:37): If there's no water, that's going to lead to shadow water, shadow IT. Rob Collie (00:52:41): That's right. Derek Rickard (00:52:41): Exactly. Now, of course the water is the data. Everybody knows this, right? Rob Collie (00:52:46): That's right. That's right. Derek Rickard (00:52:48): I didn't have to really point out that the water is the data- Rob Collie (00:52:50): The water is the data. Derek Rickard (00:52:51): ... that's untamed and disgusting. Thomas LaRock (00:52:53): Oh, I thought the water was water. Derek Rickard (00:52:54): It's also water, Tom. Rob Collie (00:52:55): Or like the pipelines, the oil pipelines and gas pipelines, like in Iraq or whatever, like people tapping into it on a guerilla basis. And every now and then, that goes really horribly wrong. Derek Rickard (00:53:06): Yeah, that's what happens with data too. You tap into that big stream and it can mess you up. Thomas LaRock (00:53:11): I like your analogy as well. We just need to polish it so you can deliver it a little cleaner. Derek Rickard (00:53:15): Yeah. I just made it up. Thomas LaRock (00:53:17): I wanted to ask more, you're responsible for the cleanliness of the water? Derek Rickard (00:53:22): Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:53:23): Okay. But are you also responsible for the streamlining of the water? It's all water. It's the same water that comes from four different sources, we don't need all four sources. Right? Derek Rickard (00:53:34): We can consolidate water. We can cleanse water. We can deliver water out to other folks that need it, that could use it. And that doesn't happen without infrastructure. You can't do that without some infrastructure in place. So I work tightly with the CTO. Thomas LaRock (00:53:47): How about in terms of the consolidation? How about data lineage? Does that also fall under you? Derek Rickard (00:53:55): Data lineage and quality and metadata, that would all fall under me. Thomas LaRock (00:53:58): So what tools are you using to identify all of the incoming sources of data? Derek Rickard (00:54:06): A really good question, and I just started in January. So as far as tools, we're still taking inventory of our stuff. I'll say in terms of data maturity, the company has given their customers way more of their efforts than internal. So part of what I'm tasked with is not only the customer-facing stuff, which is great. And I really enjoy doing that, but also the internal data stuff. The internal data works well in their silos. We've got the sales silo, marketing's good, customer care's good, finance is good. Derek Rickard (00:54:37): But when the processes, the business processes that span those departments, it gets a little ragged, it's a little dirty. So being able to identify the processes, put measurements on them, having data flow through that so we can actually monitor what's going on in the business, super important. And that's something that's an obstacle for a lot of companies, but it's also an obstacle for Emergency Reporting. And they're doing fine, but I'm just saying that's something that I'm tasked with, is to clean up those waters as well. So enterprise data is one of the three pillars of my group. Did that answer your question, Tom? No, it didn't because I don't have an answer, because I don't know what tool. Thomas LaRock (00:55:13): Yeah, no it did, when you said, "Look, I just started." And your first thing is you're not at that stage yet, so you just haven't gotten there yet because you're still in the stage of basically taking inventory. And I get that, and that's a fine answer. I was really focused on how you said good question because I don't get that often from our guests. So I'm marking it down. Derek Rickard (00:55:35): Yeah. This is a good question session. Thomas LaRock (00:55:37): Yeah. So when I had my performance review with Rob later- Derek Rickard (00:55:42): Reference that, "Remember that time I had a good question?" Rob Collie (00:55:44): Tom, yesterday we drove down with our son to meet with Wayne Winston and his wife. So we listened to the Wayne Winston Podcast again. And I got to hear him say three times in a row, how smart you were or something like that, and you're like, "Oh, write that down, write that down. I'm writing it down again." Thomas LaRock (00:56:02): Yeah, that never happens. I don't know how. It must be the math background or something. Wayne is just a nice guy. He's just so polite. Rob Collie (00:56:09): He's super nice. Willing to meet with our son who is a potential IU business student in the fall. And we're in the Kelley School of Business and people are walking by saying hi to him and everything. It's like, "Yup, he's the real deal." So I want to get in the Wayback Machine a little bit. We started your story at Excel and Access, pre Power Pivot. Derek Rickard (00:56:31): Oh, yeah. Don't forget Crystal Reports. Rob Collie (00:56:32): And Crystal Reports. Ooh, yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:56:36): It's like we're twins or something, because BusinessObjects, Crystal Reports, Access. Derek Rickard (00:56:42): A lot of Sage, which wasn't Sage back then. MAS. Companies are using a lot of MAS 200 and so on. Rob Collie (00:56:50): So let's rewind to your choice, dealer's choice, one or two points in your past. Either, the very beginning like what you were studying in school or whatever, or your first collision with Excel, with data. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that probably there's a point in your life where you'd have no idea that you were going to someday hold the title chief data officer. Derek Rickard (00:57:16): Yeah, probably. That's accurate. So if we go way back to the Wayback Machine. I graduated with my degree in math. That's where I was. I started my master's program because I was going to be a teacher, not a secondary ed teacher, which there's special types of people that are great educators who do that, I wanted to do the college or university route, because I really didn't want to have that pressure on me about caring whether or not people come to class. I was like, "I just want to teach people who want to learn stuff. That sounds freaking awesome. And that's what I want to do." Derek Rickard (00:57:48): And I went down that path then I discovered real quick that... Very shortly into my master's program, I'm like, "I don't think I want to do this. The pay off is not that good." There's not good pay for teachers, guys. I don't know if that already, but there isn't. And the other part of this was financial because I was an out-of-state student. So out-of-state tuition is more expensive. I somehow thought that I could get in-state tuition for my master's program because I had lived here for four years, but that did not work. So it was also on top of me being like, "Oh man, not only will this not quite work out in terms of pay, it won't be awesome for pay, but it also is going to cost me a lot more." And I was like, "Ugh." So I just stopped. Derek Rickard (00:58:28): I was like, "I'll just pause it and I might come back to it." I spent a little bit of time for the next year, I was an interim coordinator for the Tutorial Center at Western. So I had worked at the Tutorial Center there my entire school career. So I tutored math and science and got to a point where I was a "lead tutor." That's in quotes, lead tutor, and would go to the classrooms and announced that we were at the Tutorial Center and we're here and you can come visit us and we'll, whatever. And it was really fun, and that's what got me my teaching book because I really didn't know before that. So I ran the Tutorial Center for about a year while they were looking for someone who had a master's degree. Derek Rickard (00:59:04): But anyway, during that time, that's when I first started getting into Excel because we've got to do budgets. So I started budgeting in Excel, I was like, "Okay. Yeah, it's Excel, it's a grid." I knew it was there and I never used it. But once that job was over is when I got my job at Homax. So that job, that decision to go work be an office person at a manufacturing company was just like, "Hey, I need to have a job." So I took that one, and I at first worked as a sales support person, so I would help out the sales person, put together planograms or whatever they would need to do, I would help them out. Derek Rickard (00:59:39): And sometimes that would include numbers, and that's when I was really getting more associated with Excel. Rob Collie (00:59:44): It's not funny. So you're basically working for the math department at one point in time, which of course essentially never, never condescends to use a tool like Excel, right? Thomas LaRock (00:59:56): Hold on. Derek Rickard (00:59:57): They do. They do. Rob Collie (00:59:59): Not in class. Thomas LaRock (01:00:01): What need does a math major have for Excel? Derek Rickard (01:00:06): We use MATLAB. Rob Collie (01:00:06): Polenti. That's a dish by the way, Polenti. Derek Rickard (01:00:08): Polenti. Rob Collie (01:00:09): It's like a corn mash thing, but it's- Derek Rickard (01:00:13): Oh, that's corny. Rob Collie (01:00:14): Oh. Anyway, this is Wayne's story too. He's been teaching business analytics and not analytics, they didn't call it that, but he's teaching all this business stuff, and then in 1992, someone like nudges him to try doing some of this in Excel instead. And he's like, "Oh my God, this is just as effective if not more so, and I can make it more accessible to the students, then all of the crazy stuff I've been trying to teach them the abstract stuff." And he just goes all in on Excel as essentially as his math tool. Derek Rickard (01:00:46): Well, that's awesome. That's cool. Rob Collie (01:00:47): There probably wasn't a class in that master's program that you abandoned or course of study that involves spreadsheets. Derek Rickard (01:00:55): No, there wasn't. Sorry, I hear car horn in the background. Rob Collie (01:00:57): That's okay. That car horn is saying, "That's right, preach." Derek Rickard (01:01:00): There was no Excel in the master's program. That's true. Rob Collie (01:01:04): But then you're doing this administrative tasks for them, and suddenly now we've got to use a spreadsheet, it's the only thing that works. Derek Rickard (01:01:12): And by the way, every other department is using the same thing. So everybody's using Excel. Rob Collie (01:01:16): You didn't reach for MATLAB, you didn't reach for Mathematica, you didn't reach for linear matrices. I find something deliciously ironic that I like it. Derek Rickard (01:01:28): It's true too. And I think I knew from an early age from my parents that there are jobs where your degree is tightly correlated with your profession, like a lawyer, they're going to have a Juris doctorate. Doctors, they're going to have their things, whatever they have, PhDs. So there's those. And then there are times when it's like, "Man, it doesn't really matter what your degrees." Those ties because you have a bachelor's degree. And that was what I did, I was like, "Okay, I'll go work at Homax because I have a bachelor's degree." And it turns out that that actually put me on my path of where I ended up. Derek Rickard (01:02:01): And ultimately where I ended up was just teaching people again. I still love it. I took that job at Homax because I just needed a job, student loans were coming up and I needed to start paying them, that kind of thing. It just turns out that the path I went down with business intelligence, eventually business intelligence consulting, is just another form of teaching complex concepts, try to make them simple, deliver them to people. That pattern has always been there from the get-go, university on, which is really cool. And then now that I'm doing my thing, the CDO gig, I get to do that more too with just more people. It's a fun thing. Rob Collie (01:02:34): So do you miss the freelance work? You mentioned that Source to Share still operates. Derek Rickard (01:02:38): Yeah, it does. And I don't know if you've ever met Bo, but Bozeman's working with me since 2015. So he basically took on all the clients and still operates. I still get to have chats about cool stuff with our clients, stuff that they're doing. Rob Collie (01:02:53): It's just like the Dread Pirate Roberts or the Dread Pirate Roberts for awhile. And then you take them on and then you kill all the crew and take on a new crew and then you're calling him Roberts? Derek Rickard (01:03:02): Yes. That's what's happening. So he is Roberts and I am the old Robert. I'm realizing why you like this is because your name's all over the place. We're scrapping this. Rob Collie (01:03:14): I'm not Robert. Derek Rickard (01:03:15): Oh, Robert, Robert, Rob. Rob Collie (01:03:17): I do not go by Robert, although you enter your name into a particular app, if you choose to use your full name, so now every time I go into Starbucks to pick up my coffee, I'm Robert. Derek Rickard (01:03:32): Oh, there it is. Thomas LaRock (01:03:32): You should change. You should change your Starbucks' name. That's easy. Rob Collie (01:03:33): I don't want to risk that. The next thing I lose all my history. Derek Rickard (01:03:35): What about your favorite drinks? Thomas LaRock (01:03:36): No, no, no. Look, my Starbucks name is Sickle Rockstar. It isn't that difficult. I didn't lose any history. It's simple. You can do it in the app. Rob Collie (01:03:44): I will be the Dread Pirate Roberts. Thomas LaRock (01:03:46): Exactly. You need to have a unique Starbucks name. I can't just walk in there, "Coffee for Tom." There's like six people walking up. No, no. Derek Rickard (01:03:55): I'm Tom, is it black coffee? Yeah. Rob Collie (01:03:56): It is like six people waiting for black coffees. Thomas LaRock (01:03:58): Exactly. Derek Rickard (01:04:01): Oh, I will say that every once in a while I'll get invited to be a guest lecturer for the MBA program at Western to talk about BI, it's really fun to talk about BI strategy. So I do that about once a quarter. Rob Collie (01:04:15): Is that like a one day thing or one hour or? Derek Rickard (01:04:19): I just cram all of it in two hours, which is not long enough, but it's fine. So they just had me come in because they already are learning those things. So it's about having someone from the industry talk to those things, ask questions of me or whatever. And it's super fun, I do like that. And I do go over like SlideDeck, PowerPoint of some things, but for the most part, it's free conversation. Rob Collie (01:04:40): It's quite rewarding. So you just go in there and say, "Yeah, here's what they'll tell you, and that's all. Here's the reality." You just do that over and over again? Derek Rickard (01:04:48): When I'm invited to do a guest lecture, it's actually someone who I've worked with at Homax of all places, and he's also a teacher, he's also an instructor for the MBA programs. So that's cool because he also knows real world application. And I think that that's why he invites me because I see a lot of that. And there's a decent number of folks who are also working in the industry, half the time, it's for the executive MBA program. So these people are working full-time and then doing the MBA program on the weekends. So yeah, lots of questions come up and it's really fun to be challenged. I do like being challenged. Rob Collie (01:05:19): Do you ever do any like open mic stand up? Derek Rickard (01:05:22): No. No, I don't do any of that. Rob Collie (01:05:24): Well, we have a couple of people on our team that do, I'm not one of them. Derek Rickard (01:05:27): I would flop so hard at open mics. Rob Collie (01:05:30): And they say the same thing. You've got to be willing to do that. Derek Rickard (01:05:33): Yeah. I could not do that. I got a mic though. That's fun. Rob Collie (01:05:36): You just need someone to set you up. That's the problem. It's like the scripted wouldn't be your thing. Derek Rickard (01:05:40): No, I can't do that at all. You guys know, you're like, "Hey, can you repeat something?" And I'm like, "No, I can't do that. I'm so bad at it." The storage and retrieval in here, not working, not working at all. Rob Collie (01:05:55): Speaking storage and retrieval, I'm definitely going to have to send you the link to the three-part Opus. On the previous episode, we're talking about how information is surprise. If no surprise, no information. You're probably going to find no information. Derek Rickard (01:06:07): Okay. Well, that's fine. Rob Collie (01:06:08): I don't think you're going to be surprised by anything in this three-part series. However, even if you don't, you'll be nodding going, "Yeah, okay. Preach. Yeah, that's the stuff there." Derek Rickard (01:06:18): Yeah. That's cool. That's cool. Rob Collie (01:06:19): I'd actually be legitimately interested to hear what you think about it. Derek Rickard (01:06:22): Sure. I wanted to ask you something, Rob. Can I ask you something? Rob Collie (01:06:26): Please. Thomas LaRock (01:06:26): Oh, let's turn the table? Derek Rickard (01:06:28): Tell me about P3. The thing is that whenever you and I do talk, which isn't that often, it's usually about something that's going on with P3. So tell me what's been happening for the last two years because that's, I think, the last time I talked to you and I unfortunately, I'm not on your website all the time, keeping up on updates. Rob Collie (01:06:45): Well, we're not really blogging that much anymore either, you wouldn't necessarily notice a whole lot. We've finally changed our name, we finally dropped Power Pivot Pro completely. Derek Rickard (01:06:55): P3 Adaptive. Rob Collie (01:06:56): P3 Adaptive. Derek Rickard (01:06:57): Yeah. When did that happen? Rob Collie (01:06:58): Gosh, just a couple of weeks ago. Derek Rickard (01:06:59): Oh, okay. Very recent. Rob Collie (01:07:00): Yeah. Very, very recent. Derek Rickard (01:07:02): I saw in the dot-coms of your emails and I'm like, "Oh, what is that?" But I'm like, "It makes sense." Rob Collie (01:07:07): Yeah. It was just one of those changes you had to make sooner or later and it's never a fun time to make it, we've been waiting on it forever. I would say that a lot has happened since you and I really last caught up. Really, the mission hasn't changed. The mission has always been, "Let's follow this train of thought wherever it leads us." And the train of thought has been, "Let's go build scalable consulting operation that is dedicated to getting the most out of the new tools and the new methods." Most importantly, the new pace that the tools enable. Rob Collie (01:07:43): The new pace isn't actually good for the traditional consulting business model. It's terrible for the traditional consulting business model. It's great for the customers. Derek Rickard (01:07:54): Yeah. Because that's cheaper and faster. Rob Collie (01:07:56): But the industry has relied on the projects being whales. And so it was like this stubborn belief that it could be done. And that goes hand in hand with an underestimation of how difficult it actually was. And so I was laughing with Wayne Winston and his wife who's also a professor, Vivian Winston at the Business School, and she said she worked with a lot of startups and I said, "Oh yeah, I see all those startups stories they tell you about there's someone with a really good idea, but they eventually hit a wall with it in terms of making it reality and how for years I would read those stories and go, 'Oh, those stories are about someone else, they're not about me.'" Derek Rickard (01:08:41): You fool. It was all about you. Rob Collie (01:08:44): And it turns out three years ago I found out that it was about me and that there was something missing, which is like a really disciplined approach to process, and software and human and all kinds of innovation. It's gone from being one of those things that used to strike me as boring and like, "Yeah, that's the person who's holding the clipboard." And I'm still not good at it. I'm still not the one that you would assign to be good at it. But the thing is, I have developed a tremendous respect and actually even an interest and a fascination with it. Rob Collie (01:09:13): It's like in 2007 Excel, one of the things that was up for grabs to work on was you could be the program manager who was going to redesign the printing experience in Excel. And I was like, "Boring. I want nothing to do with that." I didn't end up working on it and someone else did. And by the time they were done with it, I was like, "Oh, actually that was a very fascinating problem. That was a lot of really interesting, valuable stuff to be done there." And it's just like that same thing for me, the ability to scale and have a strong business model while at the same time delivering what can be delivered for clients at maximum speed, I really do believe that we have cracked that riddle now. Derek Rickard (01:09:59): Nice. Good job. Rob Collie (01:10:02): And it's a difficult thing. It's like a moat behind us. Derek Rickard (01:10:05): And Source of Share was a similar thing, hardly a competitor, but similar in the structure of like, we're not interested in even software license, agreements, partnerships, any of that stuff, we just want to help you out and we will do it for a low budget. Obviously, we're paying ourselves, I'm just saying, there's no reason to spend six, seven figures on BI, there's definitely no reason to do that. Rob Collie (01:10:29): And have it suck as well. How about spend less, get it done faster and better. Does that sound good? Does that sound like a good idea? Are you all right with that? We can make it take longer if you want, but we don't. Derek Rickard (01:10:42): If you want, you can blow through a bunch of budget, but probably you don't need to. Rob Collie (01:10:46): And our effective hourly rate isn't the cheapest on the planet, but it the project cost is so low because of the pace. Derek Rickard (01:10:53): That's actually something that was very often asked like, "Why do you charge so much?" And actually, I don't think I charge so much, but people ask that still. Back when I would be talking to someone who just got my name offline somewhere, they're like, "Oh, you're going to have to come do contract work for us." I'm like, "No, I'm not going to do contract work, I'm a consultant. So that does mean something different." I know it's maybe tiny, but I'm like, "It's different because you guys will do the work, I'll just teach your team or whatever. And yeah, it's expensive, but we work faster, it won't be as much in the end." That's cool. That's good that you cracked that nut. You got some help there? Rob Collie (01:11:26): Oh yeah. So you can go back and listen to one of the other episodes of the show, Kellan Danielson. Derek Rickard (01:11:33): Mr. Kellan. Rob Collie (01:11:34): Yeah. He has been the architect, not the only person doing it, certainly more than any other single person, Kellan is responsible for that second phase of cracking this riddle. Derek Rickard (01:11:46): That's awesome. That's great. And he's your president, right? Rob Collie (01:11:48): Yeah. Derek Rickard (01:11:49): That's great. It's good to know when to handoff that portion of the business. Source to Share has always been a boutique style BI shop. We're not scaling or anything like that, but if that were the case, I know I wouldn't be the person to do that part. To do the business development part, to do the sales part, any of that stuff. It's not me, and in Source to Share, I probably will forever be disconnected from that. It'll just be a word of mouth thing. If for some reason someone wants to link in for sales and do whatever, that's fine, but it's been doing okay. But I really jazzed about P3 Adaptive, cracking that code and actually giving these traditional BI shops a run for their money because they're ripping people off. Rob Collie (01:12:32): I agree. And we plan to be very large. Derek Rickard (01:12:35): Cool, cool. Rob Collie (01:12:36): The world needs it and it's that old fashioned notion of like, "Hey, let's make our money in the world by making the world better." Derek Rickard (01:12:43): Yeah. That's great. I know, crazy. Rob Collie (01:12:47): Or really, we should just be like monetizing people's data. That's what we should be doing, we should just be tracking their every move. Derek Rickard (01:12:54): Sell to someone, sell it. Rob Collie (01:12:55): That's the move these days. No one's going to become a billionaire doing what we do. Thomas LaRock (01:13:00): Nobody gets rich by helping others, come on. Rob Collie (01:13:03): No, it's not going to happen. Thomas LaRock (01:13:05): Think of it. Think of it. The Rothschild, the Gettys. Rob Collie (01:13:08): People all become philanthropists at some point in their lives. That's the reputation laundering phase of their lives. Thomas LaRock (01:13:15): Later in life, like Rockefeller later. Let me just rule everybody first. Rob Collie (01:13:21): Yeah. And I'm keeping one eye on Gates. I'm watching you, Bill. Thomas LaRock (01:13:29): So you guys had asked the question earlier that didn't get answered. It was, where does data come from? You guys were talking about where data- Rob Collie (01:13:36): Where does data just in general come from? Thomas LaRock (01:13:38): I'm going to tell you, it's when two text files love each other very much and they decide that maybe it's time to become a spreadsheet. And then from there, there's a lot of the different ways that they could end up being Excel or Access, or just buried on the SharePoint page, and it just evolves from there. That's where data comes from. Rob Collie (01:13:59): That's how it all starts. Thomas LaRock (01:14:00): That's how it all starts. Derek Rickard (01:14:01): Rob, I had this weird connection with Kellan. Do you know where Kellen learned Power Pivot? Rob Collie (01:14:06): Columbia. Derek Rickard (01:14:07): Yes. Not college, Columbia. Do you know who he learned that from? Rob Collie (01:14:11): No. Derek Rickard (01:14:11): Well, actually, I don't know if he can take full credit, but I'm assuming that he at least showed him Power Pivot, which is this guy named Mark Bennett. Mark is a good friend of mine. He was actually the person who was hired to be my replacement at Homax, which is weird. So he was hired to be my replacement at Homax, I showed him Power Pivot. He worked for Columbia, showed Kellan Power Pivot. And now he's the president of your company. That's fun. Rob Collie (01:14:35): Damn. That's the circle of life right there. Derek Rickard (01:14:37): Well, you taught me Power Pivot. Rob Collie (01:14:38): I know. Derek Rickard (01:14:39): This all come back. Rob Collie (01:14:39): It's like, "How does this happen?" And now, Kellan is better at all this stuff than I am. Derek Rickard (01:14:43): Hell yeah. That's the best. Rob Collie (01:14:45): We made three right turns and never crossed our original path. How did we do that? That's great. It's like extra-spacial geometry here. Derek Rickard (01:14:53): Yeah. That's a wonderful. Thomas LaRock (01:14:54): Non-Newtonian. Rob Collie (01:14:55): Derek, this was long overdue. I'm so glad we did this. It's been a pleasure reconnecting with you. Derek Rickard (01:15:00): Yeah. Thanks for having me. Announcer (01:15:02): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive Podcast. Let the experts at P3 Adaptive help your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Have a data day!

Ken Puls is the epitome of an Excel and Power BI guru by being an incredible guide, a teacher, and "Remover of Darkness" of the secrets of these tools. Born from a fusion of Accounting and IT, Ken's mastery of Excel includes VBA programming and Power Pivot modeling, data cleansing and reshaping, and financial modeling.  We highly encourage you to check out Ken's website, Excelguru.ca, if you desire to be enlightened in the ways of Excel and Power BI.   References on this episode: Download Rob's Reference Card   Episode Timeline: 7:20 - Mr. Excel is in the house, Ken's Origin story is born from an IT and Accounting fusion, and Rob reveals some little known Excel facts 33:50 - Who will protect us from the Alien Invasion?  And some scenarios that may start a fight! 1:10:45 - Microsoft 365 VS The Perpetual Version, Are Array Formulas still widely used?, and Lambda Functions 1:25:35 - Ken shares something that ties Rob to a cool add-in called Monkey Tools Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Welcome friends. Today's guest is the famous Ken Puls. I've known Ken for over a decade through the Microsoft MVP program, but you might know him as the author of the Power Query book, M is for (Data) Monkey. Or as the driving force behind the website, excelguru.ca. It's Canada A. Or perhaps most recently as the creator of the Monkey Tools add-on for Power Pivot and Power Query. Rob Collie (00:00:28): A conversation that I had with Ken about 10 years ago was really the critical turning point in me deciding to write my first book. If you want to know what those conversations were, I won't spoil them, you'll just have to listen to the episode. Rob Collie (00:00:42): So, Ken has been a part of the landscape and certainly a part of my life and career for a very long time. If this happens to be your first time hearing of Ken, for some reason, here's the best way to describe him. Imagine the land of Power BI and the land of Excel where those two landscapes meet. There's this hazy, like demilitarized zone between the two, and Ken stalks those hills like an apex predator. Of course, whenever I describe him in terms like those, he's always really quick to remind me, "Hey, I'm actually pretty nice." And he is. He's the nicest apex predator you'll ever meet. Rob Collie (00:01:15): As a program note, Tom couldn't make it to this recording session, so we just subbed in Bill Jelen. What do you think about that? I took advantage of the rare opportunity of having Ken and Bill in the same place to try to resolve a very important question, which is, if the fate of the Earth hung in the balance, who would we nominate as our Excel champion to represent us? I also confronted Ken with the unwinnable Kobayashi Maru scenario of you can only pick one, Power Query or DAX. Forced him into an answer. Did he get it right? Did he get it wrong? You'll decide. So, let's get into it. Announcer (00:01:50): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please. Announcer (00:01:57): This is the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast with your host, Rob Collie. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:02:18): Welcome to the show, Ken Puls. The long awaited Ken Puls, how are you today? Ken Puls (00:02:23): I'm doing well, Rob. How are you? Rob Collie (00:02:25): Fantastic. Fantastic. Well, I said this a few times with a few different guests, but it had been so obvious if we'd kick this podcast off and like just gone stampeding to Ken in the first few weeks. We had to kind of play it cool a little bit. Kind of like circle our way around like, "Oh, right. Yeah, Ken." As opposed to the obvious choice like from the very beginning. So, I appreciate you being patient with us. I'm sure you've been sitting there going, "When is the phone going to ring? When is it going to ring, damn it?" Ken Puls (00:02:54): You flatter me, Rob, honestly. I don't know what to say to that. Thanks for having me. I'm not offended. It's all good. It's all good. Rob Collie (00:03:03): You're an MVP, Microsoft MVP. Are you still an Excel MVP? Or if you come to the dark side and gone data platform, Power BI MVP? Ken Puls (00:03:12): I've been from Excel to the dark side and back again. Although they don't call us Excel anymore. Now they call us Office. I know, It's shocking. So, I was an Excel MVP, I guess, for 10 straight years, and then flipped out to Data Platform after that and spent some time there. And now, I'm back in the Office apps and services, I think, is the technology platform officially that looks after Excel and all the other Office apps. I still play in both spaces, though, obviously. And I've always actually kind of found it confusing that Excel and Power BI aren't in the same category, but it is what it is. Rob Collie (00:03:46): I know, man. Different P&Ls, different vice president P&Ls. That's why your MVP program is so fractured. Ken Puls (00:03:53): Yeah. No, I figured that out. But yeah, it is odd. The softwares play well together. You kind of think there would be a close relationship there. Rob Collie (00:04:02): Hey, look, the software playing well together is also a relatively new thing. So, we'll take that. If we had to choose between the MVP programs making sense and the software making sense, I trust the software. I mean, it doesn't mean that the software always makes sense. It's not round to 100%. Ken Puls (00:04:20): Yeah, I think we've worked with software long enough, we know that there's a heck of a lot of places where it doesn't make sense. Rob Collie (00:04:25): There was an MVP summit recently, right? Ken Puls (00:04:27): It was. Rob Collie (00:04:27): It was conducted virtually this year. Ken Puls (00:04:28): It was indeed. Yeah. All over Teams. Lots of video, lots of chat. Rob Collie (00:04:31): I wonder if that's harder or easier on the Microsoft program managers and engineers who are presenting to you. I'm familiar with the murderers' row, that is a room full of Excel MVPS. Ken Puls (00:04:46): You think so highly of us, man. The murderers' row. Wow. Rob Collie (00:04:51): Yeah. And you know who's usually sitting in the front murderers' row? Ken Puls (00:04:55): I can't, actually. No, I sit in the back. Rob Collie (00:04:59): Oh, you sit in the back. Ken Puls (00:04:59): I sit in the back. It's easier to heckle from the back. Rob Collie (00:05:02): Yeah. Well, you got that voice, man. Your voice, when you picked out your voice at the store, you found it on the not effing around dial. It is a powerful voice. Ken Puls (00:05:12): It had to do a lot of things. I mean, yelling at Microsoft PMs is only one of the jobs that it's had. I mean, I was a soccer coach for a few years and trying to get 12, 11 year old girls and break through all of their communication that's going on in the field. You got to have voice, man. It's important. Rob Collie (00:05:26): I think we determined that I was not on the Excel product team. I had left the Excel product team by the time you became an Excel MVP. I think we determined that through detailed forensic analysis, but I don't remember it that way. I remember it as if you were there the whole time, because apparently ... Ken Puls (00:05:42): You must have been in the next room over, right? Rob Collie (00:05:45): That's right. I do remember being there as an MVP later, and witnessing your criticisms of the product team's plans delivered in that ... I don't know. Can you say piercing and deep at the same time? It just kind of cuts through the room and it's like three times as devastating. And I'm just sitting there in the back of that room going, "Oh, yeah. Get them." Rob Collie (00:06:09): I think I kind of put myself in their shoes too. And so, I got traumatized a little bit by remote control my proxy. And that's how it sort of like retroactively worked into my head that you are always there. Ken Puls (00:06:20): For reference, Rob, my hope is not when I go and I'm giving feedback there that I'm traumatizing people. That's not the goal. It is actually trying to help make things better. I mean, I understand they all got really hard jobs and have to make difficult decisions. I totally get that. But at the same time, I mean, there's obviously some passion that goes into this stuff as well from my side and whatnot too. Rob Collie (00:06:40): I don't want to paint you as a villain. You are just fundamentally one of the nicest people I know. That is absolutely true. Ken Puls (00:06:44): Okay. Well, that's a lie. Rob Collie (00:06:46): Oh, come on. Okay, maybe it's a little bit of a fudge, but it's not. I mean, you're actually a really, really nice guy, like that is true. You just have a very crisp directness about not suffering foolishness that I think in that room in particular, that's like your moment in a way. It's fun to watch. I wish I could sit in as a fly on the wall. Rob Collie (00:07:06): But also, honestly Ken, I would expect that you probably find yourself less frequently in that position at those MVP summits these days. Maybe you do. I don't know. We were still turning a corner at Microsoft at the time that I'm talking about when I first got to know you from a lot of ideas for the product, starting out with the sentence, "Wouldn't it be cool if ..." Rob Collie (00:07:29): That sentence being uttered by someone who really didn't have a whole lot of experience in the business world using the tools. So, a lot of times, what sounded cool in the fires of Mount Redmond, wasn't really all that cool out in the real world. And oftentimes, those MVP summits was the first time that those ideas would be checked by that reality. And it's a valuable service provided. Ken Puls (00:07:51): Yeah. I mean, I think we saw a couple of things that did happen. I mean, I've been an MVP now for 15 years. I mean, we've seen an evolution in the program from the side that came from the MVPs and Microsoft together. I mean, we've grown a lot, I think, on both sides of the table. Ken Puls (00:08:04): My first MVP Summit, in retrospect, I've grown a lot since then, and I certainly wouldn't approach things the same way that I did back then. I mean, you get newly minted as an MVP, and you go walking in the door and you're thinking, "I mean, look, I use this program every day. These guys don't know what they're doing." And you try and get that, I guess, almost chipped out there and across. Ken Puls (00:08:20): At the time, the first summit that I was involved in was the first time that we were given a ribbon. It was 2007. So, we had a whole new user interface that we couldn't customize. And it was a painful time to be an Excel user, and certainly to be sort of biting on the developer side of things and whatnot. Ken Puls (00:08:39): I felt that at the time, it didn't seem from where I was. And this may or may not be true that a lot of the PMs actually had real world experience in working with the product. They were designing the product, but they weren't necessarily coming from the trenches. Ken Puls (00:08:53): When you fast forward to now, a lot of the PMs have spent time very much working in the business. I mean, that's sort of where they've been cutting their teeth before they actually get on the product team. The decisions that are made are not incubated outside of talking to people. We know that. We get asked all the time about what our ideas are, and we still hear, "Wouldn't it be cool if ..." Ken Puls (00:09:11): But it happens quite early in the process, and we get a lot of feedback. And the team is really open with us on a lot of designs. Honestly, I would never go back to what we had 15 years ago. I mean, this world is amazing now. The rapid pace of change that's happening, the evolution in the product. I mean, there's a lot of people that are on that team that I've known for a long time now that I just ... Ken Puls (00:09:33): I mean, obviously, they're fantastic people that really, really want to make this stuff work really well and are suffering under the same challenges that we all face. Resources versus time and all the rest of it. It's a cool place to be able to be and play around with, for sure. I think I kind of drifted a little bit of side on where that started. Rob Collie (00:09:51): That's exactly how we roll here on the Raw Data podcast. We get off to the side. That's what we do. Ken Puls (00:09:58): I love the way you break that on your monster truck voice there, Rob. That's just gorgeous. Rob Collie (00:10:02): That's how we roll. Bill, do you remember the first time you met Ken? Bill Jelen (00:10:08): Yeah. No, that was early back in the ... The summit is probably when we were in Seattle instead of Bellevue. Ken Puls (00:10:15): It's the last time Bill got to talk in a session. Bill Jelen (00:10:18): Yeah. Back then, there was this older fellow named Charlie who could bellow from the back of the room. And then all of a sudden Ken shows up, and now we have two of them. God forbid, if Ken and Charlie would ever not agree, it would be a very loud experience. Rob Collie (00:10:37): Yeah. And everyone caught in the middle. Bill Jelen (00:10:39): Yeah, right. Ken Puls (00:10:41): I think that only happened once, didn't it? Bill Jelen (00:10:43): I don't know. Yeah. I probably blocked it out. PTSD and all. Rob Collie (00:10:45): Yeah. They implemented safeguards after that. Yeah, it's what control rods are for. Ken Puls (00:10:54): Exactly. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:10:57): You hear that, ladies and gentlemen? So, Tom LaRock couldn't make it today, but we're such a powerful organization here, this podcast, that when we go to the bench, we pull Bill Jelen off the bench. Bill Jelen (00:11:08): Thomas LaRock Jr. Rob Collie (00:11:09): It's like LeBron James going to the bench and Michael Jordan coming in. I mean, what are you going to do? That's the quality. That's the standard that we try to hold ourselves to here. Rob Collie (00:11:17): You mentioned, Ken, about the people on the team having a sort of a higher, at least a higher percentage of real world experience today versus back in the day. I was just talking to Carlos Otero, the other day on the Excel team. It's awesome, right? He was working on a finance team at Microsoft. He was in the finance function. It wasn't part of the product team at all. Rob Collie (00:11:40): This is, by the way, one of the places we would visit a lot. The Excel team would learn a disproportionate amount of our real world sort of exposure like customer visits were internal customer visits. It's really kind of a neat full circle that someone from that background. If you're building race cars, you need some race car drivers on the team. Ken Puls (00:12:04): Oh, absolutely. Carlos was working in finance. I mean, another guy that I think is important to call out is someone like a gentleman date. I mean, he was out working in the auditing sphere. I mean, he's writing his own add-ins to build a better formula bar for Excel and whatnot. Ken Puls (00:12:18): So, it's not just like Microsoft actually pulled people with experience from their internal teams and not a disservice to Microsoft, they're a huge company. And there's obviously a lot of practical work that goes inside that's not around software development. But being able to pull from industry as well I think is super important, because we all know that ... I mean, there's 700 different ways to do everything in Excel. Ken Puls (00:12:40): And getting that variety of exposure and different data points, I think, is super, super important for this. And more and more as time goes on, we see people that are being brought in and have that variety of experience. And they're taking on areas that they're passionate about. I think sometimes they change in something different for the sake of getting different, being fresh ideas, which is also important. Ken Puls (00:13:00): But the most important thing is that they're taking the real world experience, they're comparing it to what you have, and they listen. And that's the big part that I really value from this stuff is that they actually listen to us. Sometimes, I don't know how the heck they actually managed to do that, because the voices that we deliver it with are not always the friendliest and they're often very loud. And yet, they'll still take what we say and say, "Okay, let's explore that a little more. Cool." May not take your route, but at least they're paying attention and trying to get a different perspective, which is fantastic. Rob Collie (00:13:30): Part of me wants to say something like, "Amateurs. Dave, listen. That will be their undoing." Ken Puls (00:13:38): Well, there you say. I mean, I felt like back in the 2007, 2010 era, it was like, "Hey, guys, we have a beta for you. We can't change anything. It's already done." And that was the change. Whereas now, you get the, "Here, we've got something new for you. Oh, we don't like that." And guess what, it changes before it absolutely comes stock and whatever else. And I mean, that's just the new way that things have changed, which is awesome. Rob Collie (00:13:59): Yeah, an aircraft carrier doesn't turn on a dime, but we were starting to turn the wheel back then. Ken Puls (00:14:05): It's tough, though, right? I mean, it's a big ship. When you look at how complex the software is, and how many things it has to do for how many people balancing that with, "Let's ask people what they expect to happen, but we also have to innovate and come up with things that they never thought of." And that's the other side of it that where the heck did Power Pivot come from? It sure, didn't come from somebody coming in and saying, "I need this." I mean, that was something that was more, at least to me, was presented as, "Look at this really cool thing that we've done. What kind of impact do you think this will have on your life?" It's like, "Oh my god, where's this been all my life?" Power Query, same thing. Rob Collie (00:14:36): Yeah, we weren't asking for Power Query, were we? Ken Puls (00:14:39): My favorite stories I like to tell with Microsoft. I remember sitting down with Eric Patterson at one point and showing him a solution that I built in the real world. He asked me, he says, "Why don't use pivot tables to go and report all this stuff?" And I said, "Well, because I got to get my users to enter data in a format that's familiar to them, and that isn't conducive to a pivot table layout. So, I can't report it. I'm doing 180,000 unique formulas that are ridiculous amounts of lines long in order to get this thing to report." And I said, "If you guys could just give me some kind of a tool that would get this into an unpivoted format, that would be amazing. Ken Puls (00:15:12): And Eric looked at whoever he was with and he goes, "Geez, somebody should build a tool for Ken like that. That would be amazing." And what I didn't know is that I think it was before the next summit, they said, "Here, we want to show you this thing called Power Query." I'm like, "Oh, you jerks. You knew this was in process and you didn't tell me. That's just cruel." Rob Collie (00:15:29): That's payback. Ken Puls (00:15:31): Could be. Rob Collie (00:15:32): Those ugly things you said about the ribbon. Ken Puls (00:15:36): But again, that was where the things returning, right? I mean, today, I think that, that conversation would have been like, "Hey, listen, under NDA, we're building this thing. You can't talk about it, but this is an idea we'd like to explore some things and get your feedback." Where back then, it was more of a concern. We're not sure what we're allowed to tell you yet. That's where things have changed so drastically inside the MVP program with the trust levels that they've given us, which is game changing. Really close to that. Rob Collie (00:16:00): I want to circle back to something you said earlier, which is you kind of bounced back and forth. You went from Office MVP to Data Platform MVP, and back. There and back again, like Bilbo Baggins. What sort of triggered both of those moves? Ken Puls (00:16:13): What triggered the moves? The word category I was put into. In all honesty, what triggered the move is this. When I was playing with Excel originally, I was doing a lot of work with VBA, and blogging, and forum posts and whatnot. Ken Puls (00:16:26): When Power Pivot came out, I obviously was trying to get started with that and working through it. And certainly, I mean, no small credit to you on this, Rob. I mean, he helped me get over some of the pretty big hurdles along the way in that. And then Power Query also sort of came in. I think anybody who knows who I am knows that I pretty much dove into Power Query. It was more like a cannonball than a dive. I just went straight into it. Rob Collie (00:16:48): I didn't notice. I didn't notice any of that. Ken Puls (00:16:50): Yeah. No. Nobody noticed that. For me, I was playing around in the Power Excel stack very, very early. When Power BI came out, we tried it in v1, but that didn't work so well. But v2, when we finally got into a Power BI that sort of grown up to be what it was today, the original tool was basically just, "Hey, give me a visual layer on top of Power Query and Power Pivot." Ken Puls (00:17:13): I mean, I started playing around with blogging with these things go, and this is really cool. I mean, we've got these technologies and Power Query and Power Pivot. You can learn one, it works for another tool. So, you're learning for two products at the same time. This is really, really cool. So, I sort of started blogging about that, and everything that I was doing fit into both camps. Ken Puls (00:17:30): I'm not entirely sure why I was moved from Excel to Power BI. I think that to begin with, they were wrapping up and bringing in new MVPs into the Power BI product, and I was one of those who said, "Look, I mean, this guy is on board, we're going to crash to here." Ken Puls (00:17:46): But even in the time that I was a Power BI MVP, per se, I always kept one and a half feet in the Excel camp. I mean, Excel is where I grew up. It's the product that I absolutely love. I use Power BI not infrequently, but I use Excel. It's a very strange day if I don't have Excel open. I mean whether it's on my phone on the weekend or whatever else. I only open Excel on days that I didn't [lie 00:18:12]. Ken Puls (00:18:14): That's why I ended up moving back into the Excel category after a while, because, honestly, I'm still more excited about the things that are happening inside the Excel world than in the Power BI world. Even though the Power BI world is cool and exciting on its own. Rob Collie (00:18:26): I'm going to let you know a little behind the scenes secret in the dark, smoky corridors of Microsoft. There is a derivatives trading market on MVPs. And the rights to Ken Puls were sold by the Office team to the Power BI team for $1.5 million. And then the Power BI team said, "Oh, we're going to give them back." Ken Puls (00:18:47): I can accept that and everything else, but isn't the player supposed to get a portion of the transfer fee? Bill Jelen (00:18:52): Yeah, I would say you should get a cut of that, for sure. Ken Puls (00:18:54): Absolutely. If that's the case, listen, trade me every freaking month. That's all good. Just send me my cut. Rob Collie (00:19:02): Yeah, I don't think you understand the rules. That might work over in Europe. But here in the States ... Ken Puls (00:19:13): This is why I felt real football. The one with the round ball, you play with your feet, because that's the kind of rules that they follow there. Rob Collie (00:19:20): Oh, yeah. Well, even they, they've been infected by some very American style thinking lately. Ken Puls (00:19:25): Oh, haven't they though? Rob Collie (00:19:25): The Super League. I've never seen a sports league exist with that sort of a half life. It's just like, "Oh, the 12 biggest teams are leaving. Oh, wait, nevermind. No, we're not. We apologize." Ken Puls (00:19:41): I've been following that over the last couple days. It actually fascinates me though. I'm very curious to see what the fallout is longer term on this because it's not like this was a secret and it's not like the different soccer leagues and FIFA came out and said or hadn't said already. "We don't want this to happen." So, they go ahead and they do this anyway. And it's the fans that lost their mind, and suddenly that's what made all the clubs pull out. And I'm looking at it going, "Wow, this is interesting." Ken Puls (00:20:06): And I saw an interesting article yesterday from the perspective of someone in England who said, "This is absolutely the important thing needs to happen, because we need to take our game back." The history and the legacy of this game was actually built by the fans. The special part of it is that your pub team can end up rising all the way up to the Premier League, and it is now time for us to take control of our game back on other levels. I'm like, "Oh, wow. I wonder what they've touched off here." Rob Collie (00:20:32): Either way, in sort of one group of well-moneyed elites fighting with another group of well-moneyed elites, right? Either way, right now, as far as I understand it, the dream of the little pub team working its way up is a myth, because you've got all these billionaire owners just absolutely sinking gigantic sums of money into players. It's like getting the money out of the equation is difficult. Ken Puls (00:20:55): No, absolutely. I mean, I wouldn't expect that you're going to see a pub team that's going to work themselves off to the Premier League in five years or anything like that. There's players on the national team that were playing in a beer league not that many years ago, for England anyway. Ken Puls (00:21:10): So, it's not unheard of that people will rise in there. I mean, honestly, one of the things that I love about football is the ... Clarifying. I call it football, soccer for North Americans. But one of the things that I love about it is the promotion and relegation system. Ken Puls (00:21:24): And if you actually look around in English towns, you'll see that there's towns that have these big stadiums that really don't have a huge Premier League team anymore, because they've been able to actually rise and get the funds that they need in order to be able to build the infrastructure and the legacy that gets left behind when the team may go down a league or two or whatnot. Ken Puls (00:21:41): It's really interesting. I wish we had that in North America, although you'll never convince a North American sports team owner to give up their right to stay in the league they're in, I don't think. Too much money at stake, right? Rob Collie (00:21:51): Yeah. I paid a billion dollars for my franchise. Ken Puls (00:21:55): Yeah, I don't want to risk it. Rob Collie (00:21:56): I plan to keep it. Yeah. Ken Puls (00:21:57): I get that too, but how cool is it if you see your home team suddenly get promoted up an entire tier? That's just awesome. Rob Collie (00:22:05): And just as exciting as the team that's going the other way, making the spot for you is the titan that has fallen on a rough patch. Everyone likes that too, don't they? Ken Puls (00:22:16): I mean, it depends on whether or not you're supporter of that team, I guess. Rob Collie (00:22:20): I suppose. Yeah. The other sort of standard element that we haven't really covered yet, we got to get to this, is the origin story. Where does Ken Puls come from? You probably didn't emerge from the womb, writing Excel add-ins. What's your professional career arc? Where does it all begin? Ken Puls (00:22:40): Classically, I'm trained as an account. Although, I have friends now that joke that I don't do accounting anymore, so maybe I shouldn't be, but I very much a Chartered Professional Accountant in Canada. I've been recognized as a fellow by my accounting organization. So, theoretically, I know something about accounting. Ken Puls (00:22:55): The interesting part with my Excel and Power BI journey is that the whole sort of reason that I learned to use these tools to the degree I did is because there were tools that I needed to do my job. And if you asked me what I do today, I'd tell you that I'm an Excel Pro. And that's not something that a lot of people would tell you. They'd tell you, "I'm an accountant." It's a very, very different way of looking at things. Ken Puls (00:23:14): I've always had a passion for technology ever since I was growing up. I mean, my first programming that I ever did was on the Commodore 64. I got a book and wrote every line of code to make a Star Wars game. I don't know that I learned a darn thing in the process of copying pages and pages of code. But then we did some coding and basic in high school and Pascal and things like that. Ken Puls (00:23:37): But where things kind of became, I guess, important for me is when I started doing my accounting training, and we had to do certain work and whatever else. I mean, every time I had the opportunity, I would just reach to a spreadsheet because it was just logical for me to be able to fill it out. I was doing my school assignments on spreadsheets. I worked in public practice for while. I went into industry. Ken Puls (00:23:58): I ended up eventually taking the job as the accounting supervisor and system administrator at the Fairwinds Community Resort on Vancouver Island. So, we were a golf course. We had a three food and beverage facilities, beer and wine store, hotel, property development, marina, we had all kinds of things going on. The job I took was to look after the IT and work on the accounting department, looking over the accounting team. Rob Collie (00:24:18): Slowdown. See that right there, what they did? Not Ken. You didn't sneak anything in, but they sneaked it in. Accounting and IT. Ken Puls (00:24:26): There is no sneaking there. Rob Collie (00:24:28): All in one. Quick sentence. Ken Puls (00:24:32): But it wasn't unusual, right? The previous job I had, I actually worked at, believe it or not, an orchid greenhouse as the accountant and IT support role there too. I mean, this was really common, particularly in Canada anyway. I don't know about the US, but it was really common in there that accounting and IT got put into the same kind of bucket. Ken Puls (00:24:49): I mean, I joke with this when somebody says like, "Well, how the heck did you get into your IT experience?" I said, "Well, I was the person that didn't step back fast enough." I wasn't. I was the guy who stepped forward because I love computers. Rob Collie (00:25:00): I'm Spartacus. Yeah. Ken Puls (00:25:04): For me, when somebody comes back and goes, "Do you know anything about Windows NT 4?" "No, but I'll learn. What the hell. Why not?" When I went to Fairwinds, I'm looking after a very fragmented network and I'm looking after the accounting department, and we ended up doing a lot of work with Excel to do our work to tie different things together, because in those days, nothing was integrated. Ken Puls (00:25:26): I mean, we had a network at the hotel, we had a network at the golf course, a network at administration. None of it was tied together, it was all tied together with people in spreadsheets, that's what it was. Every system was tied together that way. And then we got this offer from our head office where they said, "Look, we know that you're doing a lot of work on this. We're going to get somebody to build you a macro, so that all you have to do is click a button." Ken Puls (00:25:44): And it actually came up because I told them that when they upgraded us to Office 97, our keyboard shortcut is broken. They said, "Okay, send us the file." Or our macro broke. They said, "Send us the file." So, I emailed them the file, and they phoned me up, they said, "How did you trigger this macro?" I said, "Well, you press alt control shift, down arrow, control C, X number, whatever else." And they're like, "Dude, that's not a macro." I'm like, "What are you talking about?" Like, "You've memorized the Lotus transition keyboard shortcuts for 75 commands to do your macro." I'm like, "Yeah." They're like, "We'll build you a macro." I'm like, "Okay." Ken Puls (00:26:18): So, they built me a macro in VBA, which was awesome, because then you could click a button, and it just did everything. I was like, "Sweet." And then the person that wrote it left the organization, so who got to maintain it? Me. So, I'm like, "Okay, cool." So, I started playing around with this stuff, and tinkering a little bit with VBA and whatnot. And I was like, "This is interesting. I'm enjoying this." So, I started playing around and recording some macros, found a forum, got an answer that you can actually start writing your own code. You don't have to record everything. Ken Puls (00:26:45): And then one day, our head office came to us and said, "Look, we decided you need a staff cut. You got to cut 33% of your staff out by Monday morning." This was Friday. "And we're going to give you more work to do, tighten your reporting deadlines, and you get no budget to hire anybody. So, figure it out." Rob Collie (00:26:59): A few things in there that I want to dig into. First of all, circling back to the IT and accounting thing. You said it happens a lot in Canada. It happens a lot everywhere in my experience. Maybe not at the enterprise level, but it certainly happens in the SMB space. Rob Collie (00:27:15): I think the reasons why it happens, why these two get bundled so frequently. The reasons why it happens are not good reasons. The reality there is that very often, it's just like two things that the rest of the business is just like, "Oh my god, I don't want to think about that. It's arcane. We know that it's a cost of doing business, and we want nothing to do with it. We don't really value it, but we can't go without it. Just make it all go away in this one corner." There's a lot of that attitude. Ken Puls (00:27:47): It hurts me that you lump in the accounting with the, "We don't really value it. We don't understand it, but we got to have it." Rob Collie (00:27:54): Yeah. Well, am I speaking the truth? Ken Puls (00:27:59): I'm not going to accept or deny that. Rob Collie (00:27:59): I see. Okay. I'm not saying that's the right thing. I'm just saying that, that's a very common sort of brutish ... I mean brute-ish, not brood. Brutish attitude towards these things. It's not a smart way to view the world, but it's still a very common way to view the world, unfortunately. Rob Collie (00:28:16): At the same time, though, lumping these two things together ends up working out in a lot of cases because first of all, those are the waters in which can pose coalesces, right? That's the primordial goo where someone like can actually spontaneously self-organizes, or better off for it. And I've known so many people now over the years. Nothing remotely. Like exactly the same story, but very similar stories. And some amazing things have happened as a result. These end up being sort of an accidental, great pairing. Second thing I wanted to say, though, or actually ask for Ken Puls. Which came first, VBA macros or VLOOKUP? Ken Puls (00:28:57): VLOOKUP. Rob Collie (00:29:01): Okay. Ken Puls (00:29:01): Absolutely. Actually, honestly, HLOOKUP, which is just weird. Who the hell starts with HLOOKUP over VLOOKUP? That's bizarre. Rob Collie (00:29:08): I don't know. It must be something Canadian. Ken Puls (00:29:10): Yeah. Maybe it is. Bill, you seem like you wanted to say something to that. Bill Jelen (00:29:16): Yeah, I know. That's the first. I haven't heard someone who started with HLOOKUP. Ken Puls (00:29:20): All I can say is our data was screwed up, but ain't that the way? So, I started with lookup functions. I'll say before I started programming, I knew a working knowledge with Excel. But honestly, I didn't know enough to be programming. There's no way that somebody should have let me into the Visual Basic Editor at that point in time, certainly not start writing code. Ken Puls (00:29:38): And yet, when head office came back and said, "Look, we're going to cut all your staff and we need you to keep on doing things." Basically, what happened is I went into my boss. I said, "Look, Jim." I said, "I think I have a route that we might be able to leverage to get through this. I've been experimenting with these macros, and I think that this might be the way that we can actually do it. If you'll just give me time to sit down and really focus on learning this language, I think that I'll be able to automate this stuff so that we can automate a lot of the work we were doing, and hopefully don't feel a huge amount of the brunt of this over the longer term." Ken Puls (00:30:05): And my boss, Jim, was mentor of mine, fantastic guy. Actually, he works for me today, which is really cool. He said, "Look, Ken, I trust you. I'm not sure what other way we're going to go with this. Let's give it a go. Let's see what happens." And he gave me license to go and actually explore that. Ken Puls (00:30:20): I would say for the next year, I basically lived inside the Visual Basic Editor. I was learning to code, I was recording, I was understanding, I was taking a lot of things out of forums, asking a lot of questions in forums to try and get my practices better, and understanding what I was doing with this stuff. And within a year, we had actually automated every single position that we had, had to let go. And that was a huge, huge thing. Ken Puls (00:30:44): I mean, for me, that's really what kicked off my passion for Excel was the fact that I no longer worked with my computer, my computer worked for me. And that was a very, very different experience that we had. And if it weren't for that ... Honestly, that move by head office cutting our staff changed the entire trajectory of my life, 100%. Rob Collie (00:31:05): Isn't that weird? Ken Puls (00:31:06): Yeah, I know, which means that obviously, head office coming in and telling us to cut our stuff was the right thing to do, even though it sure didn't feel like it at the time. Rob Collie (00:31:17): For me, I don't know if I've ever told you to review this. Macros came before VLOOKUP. In fact, for a while, for a number of years before I ever worked on the Excel team, I kind of viewed the Excel grid is just like a place to store values and manipulate them with macros. Rob Collie (00:31:35): My first fantasy football spreadsheet that sort of changed my life was 100% VBA. There weren't any formulas anywhere in the damn thing. I was even doing the basic arithmetic of like what the score should be. I believe, in VBA, I wasn't even using, which is just unconscionable to me today. Like looking back, I'll be like, "What was I doing?" I do the vast majority of that with formulas today instead. Rob Collie (00:31:57): Here's the really funny story that, again, I'm pretty sure I haven't told you this, is that actually my second job at Microsoft was as a test engineer on the Windows Installer. Darwin is the codename. MSI, I was a test engineer on that. And the test lead on that project had decided, before I was ever hired, that all of the automated testing, all of the automated tests that we wrote on that team were going to be written in VBA against the Darwin Windows Installer object model. And we were just going to use the Excel environment as the place where we wrote all of our test code. Rob Collie (00:32:34): We would just load Excel, flip over into the Visual Basic Editor, add the references to something had nothing to do with Excel whatsoever. And our spreadsheets, which had nothing in them other than macros, were the test suite. And can you imagine how confusing this was for me fresh out of college? I had no idea that Excel had this in it. It was just so discombobulating. "Why are we using Excel? Is there some important relationship between Excel and this Windows Installer?" It was just some crazy decision. Ken Puls (00:33:05): Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't Microsoft own Visual Studio or something? Rob Collie (00:33:09): Yeah, I think the test lead was just really comfortable with VBA in Excel. Ken Puls (00:33:14): But isn't that the funny part? When you go and you look at solutions today that we run into around the world, and it's like, "Why are you using Excel for this?" Because it's the tool I know best, and it's the Swiss Army knife that will do anything. I see stuff like that all the time. I mean, lord knows, I built a few solutions that probably shouldn't have been in Excel, and yet, why not? It's easy. Rob Collie (00:33:33): Well, this brings me to one of the sort of the handful of things that I actually plan to do here, which is I have a couple of fights that I want to pick and see what happens. Here's the first one, Bill, and you're involved, so pay attention. Ken Puls (00:33:44): Got it. Rob Collie (00:33:45): So, for a number of years, I've told people that if the aliens came down from space and said, "Earthlings, nominate your champion, your Excel champion to come forth and do battle with our Excel champion with the fate of humanity in the balance." And it's going to be like a decathlon style Excel event. It comes down to the two of you. Ken Puls (00:34:07): No. No, no, no, no. Rob Collie (00:34:08): And hold on. And I choose Ken. Ken is our champion. As far as I'm concerned, he's the one I want getting in that flying saucer to save the human race in an Excel decathlon against the alien invaders. Ken Puls (00:34:23): God, we are so screwed. Rob Collie (00:34:24): That's what I want you to say. I want my champion to say that. I want my champion to say, "I'm not worthy." Because the one that says, "Oh, yeah, I'm worthy." That one is going to get asked kicked. We know how it goes. Bill is in a completely different category. We need like a logarithmic scale here, like the Richter scale. Maybe I'm an eight and Bill is a 9.8 and Ken is a 10. Rob Collie (00:34:46): Bill, if it was going to be like a novelty competition, like make Excel, do something completely unexpected that you just did not ever think Excel could do. If I learned those are the rules, then we're putting Bill up there. But Ken, it just blows me away. You're just a heavy duty add-on author, like embrace the managed code, the C#, you're the full stack. Bill, I was hoping to get some friction here, but you're like already saying, "No, don't pick me. Don't pick me." Bill Jelen (00:35:12): I wouldn't pick either. I wouldn't pick anyone. I wouldn't pick any of us. Rob Collie (00:35:14): Who would you pick? Bill Jelen (00:35:15): Some random person that I don't know who actually uses Excel 80 to 120 hours a week. I'll just start walking up and down Wall Street. Rob Collie (00:35:22): This is a good contingency to be prepared for. You don't want to be scrambling, because I'm not going to give you a week to find your champion. They're going to need to know right now. So, we need to know this name. In the meantime, I'm pencil and cannon. Bill Jelen (00:35:35): All right. Ken Puls (00:35:36): Well, that's terrifying. I'm flattered, Rob. But honestly, I mean, I know that there's so much stuff that I don't know. The good thing for me is that I know who to call when I run into those kinds of things, so I would not claim to be the world's champion on that stuff, though. That's way too much freaking pressure. Rob Collie (00:35:50): But it's a decathlon, Ken. Ken Puls (00:35:52): Oh, okay. Rob Collie (00:35:53): If you're 90th percentile at everything, that means your 99th percentile overall. Ken Puls (00:35:58): I don't consider myself 90th percentile in all these things either. Rob Collie (00:36:01): Well, okay. So, humility. Ken Puls (00:36:04): Too much to know. Rob Collie (00:36:05): All right, we're going to edit that out. We're going to edit that out, and we're going to have Ken say, "Yes, that is correct. I am the champion. [crosstalk 00:36:12]." Ken Puls (00:36:11): I don't think we're going to have that footage. Rob Collie (00:36:15): Ladies and gentlemen, don't listen to Ken. He's our guy. All right. I'm not very good at picking fights apparently. So here, let me up the ante a little bit and say, all right, here we go. Ken, you can only have one style of pivot table forever. Compact access or tabular? Ken Puls (00:36:32): Tabular. Bill Jelen (00:36:32): Tabular. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:36:33): Jesus. Ken Puls (00:36:34): Look, Rob, the decision that you made to put in compact was just the wrong one, man. Bill Jelen (00:36:39): It was. And Howie agrees with us on that. Rob Collie (00:36:41): Howie agrees? Bill Jelen (00:36:42): Yes. Ken Puls (00:36:42): Yep. Rob Collie (00:36:44): I don't know. There seems to be a little bit of a common thread between Bill, Ken and Howie, right? You're all just too smart. You need the mouth breather impression of tables. That's the standard. The person that you put it in front of runs in fear, doesn't understand what it means or like goes, "Oh, this is so pretty, so beautiful." We didn't do it for you. You could say we did it for us, but ... Ken Puls (00:37:11): It gave me pretty useless. Yeah, I get it. Bill Jelen (00:37:13): You forced it upon Ken. You didn't give him any way to change the defaults. Ken Puls (00:37:19): That's not true. I could write some code. Bill Jelen (00:37:20): You will use this and you will love it. Or click eight clicks every time you create a pivot table. Ken Puls (00:37:25): On the other hand, there was an insurgence that Bill led that actually got us the ability to change those defaults, so we appreciate that. Bill Jelen (00:37:30): Six years. Six [crosstalk 00:37:32] undo year. Rob Collie (00:37:35): Does the ability to change the default exist in Mac Excel? Ken Puls (00:37:38): Good question. Don't know. Don't use Mac Excel. Rob Collie (00:37:41): Self-respecting. Excel MVPs typically don't wield the Mac. I understand. I was on a call yesterday on a meeting yesterday with someone who's also been a guest on the show, Brad Miller. He's one of our first guests. And he was working with a pivot table on screen. I was laughing about the filter drop-down on the row axis of the pivot table. And I'm like, "Yeah, and you see, you got this drop-down." And then like, "Oh, no, you don't have the drop-down to choose to field. What's going on there?" I'm like, "Oh, you're in tabular mode." Rob Collie (00:38:08): And he goes, "Yeah, I'm always in tabular mode, my pivot tables." And he goes, "You can't even set it as a different default." And I'm thinking to myself, "I'm pretty sure that they added that setting recently. But oh, you're on a Mac." So, I just held my tongue. So, on this particular topic, it sounds like the aliens would have us. Cannon Bill were like, "I don't know if you can even change it on a Mac." Ken Puls (00:38:30): Yeah. If the Mac is part of the decathlon, we're done, dude. Rob Collie (00:38:33): The question is like, "Are these like Silicon Valley aliens?" Because then it's a Mac. Then we're screwed, aren't we? Ken Puls (00:38:41): It depends on whether or not it's running Parallels and running real Excel on the background. Rob Collie (00:38:45): There's always that hope, isn't there? Ken Puls (00:38:46): There is. Rob Collie (00:38:46): Shall we continue the pick a fight conversation? Ken Puls (00:38:50): Yeah, go for it. Bill Jelen (00:38:51): Yes. Rob Collie (00:38:52): All right. You can only have M or DAX. Ken Puls (00:38:55): Wow. That's a tricky, isn't it? Why do I have to pick? Because they're both different, and they both do different things. Rob Collie (00:39:02): I know. Ken Puls (00:39:04): I love me some M. I'll reshape my data if I have to, to get into the part where all I got to do is use a sum or an average. If I got to pick, it's going to have to be M. Rob Collie (00:39:12): Wrong. Ken Puls (00:39:12): Well, I knew you were going to say that, but that's okay. Rob Collie (00:39:19): Yeah. No, I respect that you wrestled with it. Ken Puls (00:39:23): They do different things. I mean, there's calculations that I could never do in M. Or at least if I did, would be extremely difficult, and DAX would eat them for breakfast, right? I mean, if I got to go and hit refresh and wait three minutes to get my answer out of everything, instead of just clicking a slicer and seeing it, no, that would not be acceptable. So, no, they have different pieces. I believe that conversation to be fair, Rob, is about as useful as INDEX, MATCH versus VLOOKUP. Rob Collie (00:39:47): At least INDEX, MATCh and VLOOKUP kind of do the same thing. I completely agree with you that this is a completely contrived scenario. These things absolutely do different things, but I just wanted to know if you had to go without one or the other. It's still an interesting conversation. We can talk, yes? Ken Puls (00:40:03): Oh, yeah, absolutely. I have a philosophy when I'm working with my data that basically, if you reshape your data with Power Query that the DAX becomes a heck of a lot easier, and that's why I would actually pick M over DAX in that scenario is because I can spend a lot of time reshaping things to get it to where I just got to sum it. I don't even have a DAX to do a sum. Rob Collie (00:40:19): You know that my stance on this is that with DAX, you get more leverage, more organizational leverage than you do with M. Now, the two of them together ... Ken Puls (00:40:29): It's the holy grail. Rob Collie (00:40:30): That's what you should do. Ken Puls (00:40:32): Yes, absolutely. Rob Collie (00:40:32): You also know, we tend to be very careful in terms of the order in which we introduce things to people, because we introduce M and Power Query to people as their first sort of piece of the power stack. We have a really hard time reeling them back in to get their attention for data modeling and DAX. It's like, "Oh my god, I'm going to go wallpaper my house with M." Ken Puls (00:40:52): Well, it's kind of interesting on this one, right? If you're asking me what language should you teach people to actually be able to write from scratch, I would say DAX, not M. The reason why I say M first is because M is the underlying thing that's going on when you're clicking buttons in Power Query. I'd prefer that people honestly if ... I think Power Query has done a phenomenal job of this is that the better they build the user interface, no one should ever have to learn ever. Rob Collie (00:41:17): I agree. I was talking about this briefly with Sid and Miguel when they were on that I don't think their user interface is done. There are a lot more buttons that were owed. We have a sort of background conversation going with them about, "Here's some buttons that we think you should add." Because writing the M for this is hard. Remove duplicates, control which dupes you keep, every time I need to do that, I'm like, "I'm back on your blog, Ken." Ken Puls (00:41:42): Wait, does my blog have an answer for that? Rob Collie (00:41:45): Yeah. Ken Puls (00:41:45): Oh, okay. Dude, I forgotten some of the stuff I've written. Rob Collie (00:41:48): Of course. People used to tell me all the time about something I had written. I'm like, "Oh, that sounds kind of like me, but maybe yeah." Ken Puls (00:41:55): I had one lady asked me in a conference one day how I would do something. I said, "Oh, geez. I haven't really thought about that. I think I would do this." And then I got back to my room that night and I had a comment on the blog post that I wrote almost exactly a year before, which was almost verbatim what she asked me. And I'm like, "That was only a year ago there I wrote that?" And I had totally forgotten about it. I mean you're doing something right when you search for something and you find an article in Google and you look and go, "Wow, that's really ... Wait, I wrote that?" Yeah. Rob Collie (00:42:21): It happens. Bill Jelen (00:42:24): That happens all the time. Like we knew it two years ago when we wrote it. Ken Puls (00:42:27): I mean, I write it and put it on my blog so that I can Google it later and find out what the heck I wrote, but it's always amusing when you find something you look at and go, "I forgot I wrote that. And how the heck did I ever come up with that solution?" Rob Collie (00:42:40): Yeah. Sometimes I think there's almost like nothing smarter than a previous version of me, in a way. I got to look back and go, "Oh, of course, at the same time, there's also nothing dumber than a previous version of me." You look back and go, "Oh, I can't believe I did that." Rob Collie (00:42:52): When you stumble on a technical solution, or novel solution, or a creative solution to a problem, a difficult problem that you were working on, when you were really in the zone. At one point, you're like really locked in. And you kind of just randomly stumble across it later when you're not deep in that focus. It is really impressive what the brain can do when it really locks in relative to on a day to day basis. Ken Puls (00:43:15): I agree with you 100% on that. And then the other side is when you get into the part where ... I mean, I work and I battle against a problem for six months on and off and on and whatever else. And then finally, one day, you trip on something and you get it done. And then you look at after and go, "Why the heck was I so stupid? Why did this take six months to figure this out?" It was right there the whole time, and yet, you can't see it if you're looking. Everything is easy when you know how, but until you do, you're kind of stuck. Rob Collie (00:43:41): That's true. I had to name a completely new product today. I've now had to go through the naming game so many times and fail at it. And this time, I finally felt like I could do it. Confidently, I knew which things to avoid, which things to ... What I'm trying to do with naming a product. What are you doing there? What are you even trying to achieve? What can you hope to achieve? Rob Collie (00:44:05): And like end to end, I'd come up with a name that I liked. Quickly focus grouped it, registered the URL. This all happened in the space of about, I don't know, 90 minutes today. I turned around and said to my wife, I'm like, "Oh my gosh, this would have been six months before." And I still wouldn't have liked the outcome of that six months, nearly as much as I like the outcome of this 90 minutes. There's something to growth, isn't there? Like repetition and learning over time. Ken Puls (00:44:32): Write a blog post, man, so you remember for next time. Rob Collie (00:44:35): No, I'm going to keep it up in my head. Ken Puls (00:44:36): Because that's a reliable source. Rob Collie (00:44:38): Oh, so reliable. I just tweeted earlier today that Alt+Tab has become sort of an extension of my compromised short-term memory. I find myself in the browser going, "Wait a second, why am I in the browser? What was I doing?" And I go, "Oh, I know. I'll just hit Alt+Tab. It's just magic." I don't even know what app is going to come up when I do Alt+Tab. It's like, "Oh, look, there's where I was. That's what I was doing. That's why I was in the browser. Okay." It's like popping the undo on your brain. Ken Puls (00:45:13): I might have to steal that because I get lost in my browser many times. Rob Collie (00:45:16): That's like, "Why was I here?" If only that worked when you're upstairs to your house, and you go down to the first floor, you go down the stairs, you're like, "Why am I down here?" I wish I could Alt+Tab at that moment and then I would know. Rob Collie (00:45:32): I even tried to Alt+Tab between paragraphs, like when I'm writing an email. Whatever that last thought was, that's what Alt+Tab represents to me mentally. And it's really disappointing when Alt+Tab doesn't just magically take me to the last thing if it happened to be in the same window that I was ... Anyway, that's me and my complicated relationship with Alt+Tab. Rob Collie (00:45:51): Something that ties the three of us together is the book, the original DAX formulas for Power Pivot that evolved into Power Pivot and Power BI. Bill is the publisher, the author, and Ken was the inspiration. You originally told me I should write a book, because you had said that you weren't quite getting what DAX was about yet. Ken Puls (00:46:12): I was struggling with it. It wasn't that I didn't realize that there was potential in there, I was struggling with the syntax and being able to translate from the goal to action. I could not wrap my head around the way that the language is put together, which seems odd to me today. Rob Collie (00:46:29): In hindsight, yeah. And it seemed odd to me at the time when you told me that, because you were not the first person to tell me I should write a book. You were just the first person I listened to. Ken Puls (00:46:40): I appreciate that. Rob Collie (00:46:42): Others had said, "You should write a book." And I'm like, "Nah, whatever." When you and I had that conversation, I remember it vividly. Not like word for word, but I remember the sentiment of it where you were saying to me like, "Rob this Power Pivot thing, DAX, whatever, is going to be a really big deal for us. It's going to really open some amazing doors for us, but I just can't crack through this invisible wall on it." And that's what I went, "Oh." Rob Collie (00:47:09): seriously, hearing you specifically say that really opened my eyes, because I already knew you to be someone that this didn't happen to. This is not how I knew you. I knew you as the guy that had a degree of almost mastery. I know that you aren't going to like that word, but almost mastery of so many different things. And for you to be struggling with that, I'm like ... I actually understood it. I was like, "Oh, so there is something I can do for the world." Ken Puls (00:47:36): I appreciate you have such a huge amount of respect for the skills that I've built up and everything else. I mean, what you don't see is you don't see the journey that I go through in order to learn those skills. One of the reasons that I know everything that I know today is because I was too cheap to pay for someone else's software, so I decided I was going to figure out how to build it on my own, and I was going to go through the struggle in order to make that happen. Ken Puls (00:47:54): I mean, I have not had training in any computer programming that I've ever done outside of my stuff in college. Well, I took one Excel class in my entire life and I knew more than the instructor. By that point, I was bored out of my mind. Ken Puls (00:48:07): What you don't see is that the way that I learn is by taking zero documentation and throwing myself at the problem to figure out where I'm going to go. And I remember, if this sort of explains to the level of what I do, because I know we've had some conversations, and if you don't get to it, I will on one particular part around calculate. I already know you're going to go there, but I remember when I was first starting to get started with VB.NET, and I showed up at the Extreme VB Forum. Ken Puls (00:48:32): And one of my buddies, Mike, he says to me afterwards, he says, "This was amazing." He says, "You walk in." We're like, "Who the heck is this guy? We've never seen him in the forum." And he says, "I'm a complete beginner, and yet, I want to do this." And he said, "And the thing that you asked for was a 12 on a scale of one to 10 in difficulty." And he goes, "And that's what you want to start with as a beginner?" And I'm like, "Yeah, dude, I had goals. I wanted to get somewhere." He's like, "Yeah, but you need to go through the steps one to seven before you try to jump at that last part." I'm like, "Nobody got time for that shit. I got to get stuff done." Ken Puls (00:49:05): And that was I think part of the struggle that I had with DAX is that the stuff that I needed to do was complicated stuff, at least to a beginner. And yet, I kind of needed to learn stuff about what an iterator function does. Well, what an iterator function is, to start with. What is filter context? What are these things mean? I had no background for that. I mean, I'm sitting there trying to write calculates and some X statements and whatever else, not even really understanding that at the time, you don't actually sum A5 to D10 anymore, you sum everything and then you take away the stuff you don't want. It was a total mind shift for what I was doing, and it wasn't obvious. And this is still true today. There was no good tools for stepping through the thing to actually see what was going wrong. Rob Collie (00:49:50): That's true. No, evaluate formula. Ken Puls (00:49:54): Exactly. I've never been good with array formulas because while I get the concept I find it very ... I'm not a good chess player. I find it very difficult to visualize things without actually seeing it in front of me. So, being able to break things down step by step is what I needed to do, and that just wasn't there in DAX. It's getting closer now today with dynamic arrays, at least being able to spill to the grid. But boy, oh, boy, it was a tough thing. And you think I'm super smart. I'm no smarter than the average bear, but I don't think I'm dumb. But man, oh man, this was just kicking me, and it was driving me nuts. Rob Collie (00:50:26): Well, I've always given you like the subconscious credit for being an array formula master. That shows you how extensive your reputation. It carries some momentum. Ken Puls (00:50:37): Like I said, man, that's why you're placing your hopes of humanity on me as a tenant. Yeah, I know. Rob Collie (00:50:41): Yeah, I think you're fired. Ken Puls (00:50:43): That's what I'm telling you. Rob Collie (00:50:43): Yeah, I think you're fired. Array formulas are definitely going to come up with the aliens. You mentioned stepping through array formulas is always a really dissatisfying experience, isn't it? You start the first step. The second step is like, "Okay, maybe this is going to work." And then you step one more time, and it's like, "Ta-dah, here's your answer." Ken Puls (00:51:05): No. More like, "And it didn't work." It's like, "Okay. Well, why didn't it work?" Yeah. Rob Collie (00:51:09): Stepping through an array formula kind of reminds me of the South Park meme. Step one, steal underpants. Step two, dot-dot-dot. Step three, profit. That's kind of how debugging an array formula works. Good luck. Part of what you said is also how I learned. Our recent guest, Ryan Bergstrom is a read the manual type. And I was like, "What? What?" Ken Puls (00:51:33): What's a manual? Rob Collie (00:51:35): I don't understand. I learned DAX by exactly the way that you did. It turns out, there really wasn't a manual at the time. I had an excuse for not reading it, but if there had been one, I probably would have let it sit on my desk like ballast. But I had two advantages over you in my life at the time when I was doing that. Rob Collie (00:51:52): Number one is that I didn't have necessarily a business case for it yet. I was just screwing around with football stats. I could sort of naturally progress my curve of complexity rather than try to do the most incredibly advanced thing first, which often happens in business. Your first need doesn't care about the tech learning curve. It doesn't. Ken Puls (00:52:13): If it was easy, they wouldn't ask you. Rob Collie (00:52:15): So, I had that nice learning curve experience. I could build up over time. Plus, that's the only thing I was doing. That's the only thing I was doing was screwing around with Power Pivot and blogging about it. I can absolutely sympathize with that. So then I wrote the book. Ken Puls (00:52:29): I would say you had one more advantage in that case is that you actually worked with the engineers on that team. So, if you got into a place where you were really stuck, you had a phone a friend that you could use. Whether you did or not is different. Rob Collie (00:52:41): No, I did not have that advantage. I did not call them. I guess it was kind of a pride thing that I didn't want to ask them, but I was learning remote. I wasn't really part of the team anymore. And the DAX engine really had not come out yet when I left Redmond. I was already living in Cleveland when the DAX language was first available in builds. Rob Collie (00:53:01): I had, had such an in-person style. If I wanted to ask a question to someone, I would usually go to their office physically. I felt like an outcast. They didn't do anything to make me feel like an outcast. I just felt like that. And so, I kind of, in a way, sequestered myself. I did learn as an outsider, even though I still had the Microsoft address, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, maybe others would have played that advantage better. Ken Puls (00:53:25): This starts to explain your comment years ago on your blog about how all data pros live on islands. Now I get it. You just, man, oh man, just find your own island. Rob Collie (00:53:33): I just wanted to live the authentic experience of being on an island. I had my volleyball, I painted it, called it Wilson. I wrote the book. And the way I tell the story is I grabbed the first copy off the assembly line, because I was there as it was being printed. I was following it. Thanks to Bill's connections, I was following it along the assembly line. I grabbed that first hot, still warm cookie from the oven copy of the book, and I run it outside the building and I hand it off to a courier who's just been waiting with the engine idling to take it to the FedEx place and get it to you overnight in Canada, and you read it, you said. You read it cover to cover immediately and said, "I still don't get it." Ken Puls (00:54:21): Yeah, that happened. Rob Collie (00:54:22): It did. It did happen. Yep. Ken Puls (00:54:24): Except for the cover to cover part. Rob Collie (00:54:26): Yeah. I'm starting to get that impression. Ken Puls (00:54:31): Yeah. I've read some of it. As you identified a few years later, I have a specific reading style when it comes to reading technical books as well. Rob Collie (00:54:40): That's right. Are you comfortable with me telling people what I think your reading style is? Ken Puls (00:54:43): Go for it. I'll correct you if you're wrong, but I don't think I have to. Rob Collie (00:54:43): Okay. Here's the only thing that's a fact. The fact is that I have told thousands of people the following story. That's a fact. So, thousands of people believe this, is that Ken Puls, which I didn't at the time really. First of all, Ken doesn't read books. Ken Puls (00:55:03): That's actually not true. Ken does read books, he just tends to read them in a slightly specific fashion. Rob Collie (00:55:11): All right. Okay. So, let me talk about what that fashion is. Ken is so smart, ladies and gentlemen, that when he reads a technical book, at the top of the page, he already knows what the bottom of the page is going to say. He just scans to the end of that page to get that payoff, that confirmation, that dopamine shot of like, "Oh, look at that. I was right again." And then he flips to the next page. And it just so happens that every now and then, the middle of the page doesn't say what he thinks is going to say, and he kind of goes right past it. Ken Puls (00:55:41): All right. So, I'm going to change that narrative just a little bit. I'm a skimmer when it comes to reading. I wouldn't say that I open up and read the first sentence and know what the bottom is going to say, but I will say is that if there's five paragraphs on the page, I usually read about five sentences of that page, because I hit the topic sentences of these things and [crosstalk 00:55:57] whatnot. Rob Collie (00:55:56): He hits the beats. Ken Puls (00:55:58): Absolutely, the thing that I'm doing is that I will typically skim the paragraphs until I find the section that is actually important, and I will try and read that section through in a little bit more detail. Sometimes I read it five, six, seven times because I just don't get it. Because, guess what, I probably should have read the pages that lead up to it, but that happens. I mean, it's just the way that I sort of go through things. It's actually one of the reasons why, for me personally, I actually cannot learn by video, because I can't skim. It doesn't work that way. Rob Collie (00:56:25): Yeah, I get that. Ken Puls (00:56:26): So, what I ran into with the book is ... I mean, this is where we're going with this one is at one point in time, I was working through a calculate measure. The first version of the book that Rob put out had a really, really cool little flowchart in it that explained how calculate worked and modified filter context. Ken Puls (00:56:42): So, I decided to be very helpful in my MVP style feedback granting personality that I am, and I decided to write Rob an email to tell him how his flowchart didn't work. But one of the things about sending in bug reports and whatever else to Microsoft, you're got to build a good one. What you really have to do is you have to be very, very specific. You got to be going through and you got to make sure that you hit all the technical points, you look through the process, you take it from start to finish. Ken Puls (00:57:08): This is probably the first time with DAX that are really sat down and really analyze this to the depths of the degree that I did, and said, "Look, Rob, the way that you said this, this is what should happen. If your filter context is this and this and this, which is what I have, this would happen. And then when you take this step here, what it would do is it should rip ... Oh, damn. Nevermind, Rob, the chart is absolutely fantastic. But I figured, hey, I'm already through this three quarters of a page email. I'll send it to you anyway. Good job, keep up the good work." And I hit send. Ken Puls (00:57:37): Dude, I've taught so many people after that flowchart today. I mean, it's a fantastic thing. But the reality for me is that I never really sat down and actually looked at it in the degree that I had. And once I did, I mean, this is what I'll actually teach people today is it absolutely works. Feel free to send me an email to prove how it doesn't providing that you go through this amount of work along the way. But the big keys are you have to know exactly what fields you're working with, and that was part of the issue that I ran into is that I was actually looking at a field for one table, and I was thinking that it was working off of a related one, which it wasn't. So, I was picking up the wrong things. Rob Collie (00:58:09): I didn't remember it that way. Your version of it, which I believe to be the truth. I'm not saying it's your version. It's the truth. That's better than I remembered. The way you describe that, when I really got down to it in its primitive level, really detailed. There it is. That's really the nature of DAX is that you have to get to that level. You have to get to that really primitive level with it. And almost like turn off some of the smarter parts of your brain. It's almost like a smart suppression game that you have to become one with DAX. Ken Puls (00:58:42): It is. Part of the issue that we can get into with DAX too is that we can try and get too smart with things like renaming fields or whatever else that maybe now you're looking at things and you're going, "Okay. Well, I know that this is related field from this other table over here." So, I'll just assume that, that's part of this. It's like, "What did you actually write?" Ken Puls (00:59:00): Because what we always know with coding and with computers is that your computer will always do exactly what you told it to. whether or not you want it to? Well, that's a totally different question. But in DAX, it really, really came down to that. Well, what did you actually tell it to do? Because it's doing that. It's just that might not have been what you expected or wanted to see. Rob Collie (00:59:19): So, Bill, in the dust of this event, we were trying to figure out some sort of extra that you could get if you bought the book from Bill's website versus Amazon. What is it going to be? And Bill just goes, "How about that chart that Ken was going on about, the flowchart?" I was like, "Oh, my gosh, that's exactly what we should do. We should do that." It's so weird to me that even though I sort of had this light bulb moment through that process with you, I didn't connect it with, "Oh, that should be the separate laminated handout card that we make." It was so obvious that it should have been, right? Ken Puls (00:59:55): Absolutely. I mean, that is DAX, right? Rob Collie (00:59:58): Yeah. Bill is just sitting there on the sidelines just sort of casually going, "I don't know. I'm just a simple caveman publisher, but maybe we should do the flowchart." Bill Jelen (01:00:08): It was a four-page flowchart, right? Because all the tip cards we've done, laminated tip cards were just front and back. I was like, "Oh, man. This got four pages here." Rob Collie (01:00:16): Never ask me to do anything with brevity. It's since then expanded to eight pages, it's four front and back. But that one page has remained relatively unchanged throughout the 10 plus years we've been talking about all of this. We did add a second piece to it, which was a set of exercises of recognizing what your filter context is, like showing you a bunch of different pivot tables, and circling a cell and saying, "Hey, what's this one's coordinates? What's this one's coordinates?" And the answers are on there. That one kind of goes hand in hand with the original, but that was like ... Really, in terms of that flowchart, that's really the only innovation we've ever come up with over the years that was helpful. That was really necessary to add to that. Ken Puls (01:00:56): I think that was a massive, massive thing. And I use a variant of that when I'm teaching my courses today that goes through and talks about how to ... Basically, it's how to understand it. I mean, once you understand that, you can actually work out what is going on in the calculation of any measure along the way. Ken Puls (01:01:11): I mean, I suppose if you get into iterators, you got some extra pieces that add to that complexity or whatnot. But truly, I mean, for most beginners, once they can actually wrap their head around a calculate and how that is actually playing around with things, that unlocks the mysteriousness that is DAX. Absolutely critical. Rob Collie (01:01:28): Some of my most satisfying moments as an instructor is when someone asked me an off script question. I just write a measure really fast and it doesn't do what I expect. And I'm sitting there, and I'm actually like deer in the headlights in front of a number of people going like, "Oh, why isn't this working?" Oftentimes, someone in the class will figure it out before me by doing exactly what I told them to do. But even I, over time, it's like I get back to taking those shortcuts. Ken Puls (01:01:58): I laugh. I was building up some material for something and was going through and trying to build something up and whatnot. I came into this thing, and I'm like ... I was working with all to remove filter context in something, but I removed the filter context from a specific field, and it didn't change the result. And I'm going, "What the hell is going on with this thing?" Ken Puls (01:02:18): After struggling with it for a bit, I ended up going back and I'm like, "Okay, I got to go back to this thing." I went back to the drawing board, I'm like, "Damn it." I went and removed the filter context from the year field, but I had a timeline that was filtering the date field. They're two different fields, right? The fact that the timeline had a different filter context that passed through, but I couldn't see it, because it wasn't part of the thing. And yet, it takes that going back, once again, I knew exactly what it was supposed to be doing. Except that it was doing exactly what I told it to. Ken Puls (01:02:45): Until you actually break it down to that, as you say, right back to the nuts and bolts there to figure out what's going on and really carefully identify all the pieces, you cannot debug the thing. I mean, it's like an accounting. Every now and then, when we're trying to figure something out, we go back to the old classic T account that they taught you in bookkeeping back in 101 just to follow the flow. Sometimes you have to do it. You always feel like you're going back to elementary when you do it, but sometimes that's here, it just works. Rob Collie (01:03:09): So today or tomorrow, let's say, you realize you've got to go build a DAX power data model for something. And yeah, you're going to be using Power Query to shape the data to feed to us. You're going to be using the two tried and true world beater engines here. You'll be using the M engine, you'll be using the DAX engine, whatever you want to call them, they go by a million different names. Ken Puls (01:03:31): Okay. So, it's another day that ends in why. Okay, got it. Go on. Rob Collie (01:03:34): That's right. It's one of those days. Are you going to reach for Excel? Or are you going to reach for Power BI Desktop? Ken Puls (01:03:38): I reach for Excel, every time. Rob Collie (01:03:40): Still the Power Pivot guy over the ... Ken Puls (01:03:43): Yeah, absolutely. And I have some reasons for why I do that. It actually comes down to that I believe that Excel and Power BI both has some very strong overlaps in what they do. And yet, I still feel that each tool has some advantages over the other in certain cases. I love Excel in that I get all of the advantages of the tabular structure via Power Pivot and whatnot. Ken Puls (01:04:03): Granted I don't have all of the newer formulas, and that hasn't really impacted my life in a massive way for the analysis that I've had to do. If I did need something that wasn't in the tin with Power Pivot that was in Power BI, I would move to Power BI. But the reality is that working inside Excel with Power Query and Power Pivot, I get pretty much everything I need from the DAX engine, I can make it work. And I also get the ability of all of the unstructured analysis tools that Excel has. Ken Puls (01:04:28): I can dump stuff into the grid, I can flip things to OLAP formulas, I can drill deep into the data that I want, I can summarize it, report it, I can add new things, I can reshape it, I can do whatever I need to do in Excel. That's a lot easier to do than Power BI. Power BI is much more rigid because the data model is always in a tabular format. Always, always, always. Where Excel doesn't have to be. Ken Puls (01:04:47): Having said that, once I've gone through and I've done my analysis, I find it easier to prove out that the data is good using Excel because of the flexibility that the tool sets. And once I've got that the data is good, what I would suggest to most people is that you can go and use the publish to Power BI. So, when you're actually going to build up your reports that you're going to be sharing with people, you should be sharing through Power BI, because it actually has a security layer that can prevent it from leaking out across the organization in different areas. Ken Puls (01:05:13): The visual story in Power BI is so much sexier than what we have in Excel. I mean, there's just no question in that regard at all. There are definitely things that exist in Power BI that we can't do in Excel, things like row-level security, that would cause me to go to Power BI Desktop right off the bat, because I can't do it in Excel. But if I can do it in Excel, I'll start there first. And then I'll publish. I mean, I have models that I use every day, where the source is an Excel workbook. It's published to Power BI, we feed our different reports and analyze an Excel through that. But the actual underlying data model structure is and probably always will be an Excel workbook. Rob Collie (01:05:51): Interesting. So, I don't think that I've ever published a Power Pivot Excel workbook. Ken Puls (01:05:56): Dude, you're missing out. Rob Collie (01:05:57): To the Power BI service. Ken Puls (01:05:58): Why not? Rob Collie (01:06:00): I think I just figured I just didn't trust them to do a good job of it. Ken Puls (01:06:04): What's interesting is when you build your model with Power Query and Power Pivot, and when you go and you hit file, export. Essentially, what it does is it takes those. I mean, the way that I like to visualize it is basically it's the same thing as you go on over to Power BI and saying import into Power BI Desktop. It takes those components, and it basically just publishes them to the server. Ken Puls (01:06:21): You can schedule the refresh, I do that. It works as long as everything is going. The part that would frustrate you, if you're more into the DAX side is that you don't have some of the new DAX capabilities that exist in version 1200 that are in Power BI. Rob Collie (01:06:37): Yeah, I don't really care. Whenever I'm talking to Microsoft engineers and the product team or whatever, they're always more bothered by the Power Pivot subset of DAX, like it not being current, then I think matters. I'm always like, "Are you kidding? I don't care." Don't really aren't that many things that I care about. I eventually have just folded. I don't start an Excel anymore. I now only start in Power BI. Ken Puls (01:07:00): Yeah. I'm too freaking stubborn. Rob Collie (01:07:02): I can't believe that I'm the one saying that. I think it's not so much I didn't trust them to do a good job of it. It's more like I just didn't want any sort of extra uncertainty in my system. I don't want to be jumping at shadows like the ghosts in the machine going like, "Is that because I did it in Excel?" Rob Collie (01:07:19): And I end up going down this long route of trying to figure out whether that's the case or not, when it wasn't. I just didn't want that extra degree of variable in my story. Look, it's a Power BI service, it's probably expecting me to start with the pivot's file, so I'm just going to conform. Ken Puls (01:07:35): I don't always do a good job of conforming to things. Call it a strength or weakness, I don't know. But maybe it's just that my love for Excel runs so deep that I don't want to give it up to Power BI in that place. As I say, I firmly believe that there are areas where you have to start in Power BI. If the features don't exist in Excel, you really don't have a choice. Ken Puls (01:07:50): But at the end of the day, if you don't care about the new DAX functionality from my experience, and I'm not going to say that there aren't some niggles along the way somewhere that are going to cause some problems. But in my experience, that publish to Power BI works pretty darn seamlessly. So far as if all you care about is manual refresh, simple, publish Power BI, done. It's just the same as refreshing in Power BI Desktop and republishing over the old one. Ken Puls (01:08:14): If you care about scheduling and refresh, well, then you got to worry about as your data source cloud hosted, or do you have a data gateway in place. But you can schedule the refresh there, because it basically just turns it into the Power BI dataset anyway. And then you're building your reports online instead of in desktop. I don't think there's too much stuff that's in Power BI Desktop for reporting stuff that's not in Power BI online, at least certainly not that I'm looking for. Rob Collie (01:08:39): Yeah, I think. They've done a pretty good job of parity there. Ken Puls (01:08:41): They really have. Rob Collie (01:08:43): Do you have variables in the latest versions of Excel in DAX? Ken Puls (01:08:45): As in VAR? Rob Collie (01:08:47): VAR, VAR function, whatever. Ken Puls (01:08:48): Yes, you can. Rob Collie (01:08:49): Of all the new stuff, that's the newish. [crosstalk 01:08:51]. Ken Puls (01:08:52): That was the big one for me. That makes working with calendar patterns the heck of a lot easier. For me, I'm not building houses out of DAX. I mean, there's no question there. So, for me, I haven't missed the functionality of the new components there. I mean, there's new things with calculated tables, and there's other new wonderful things that are out there in the DAX language in the newer versions, but they haven't impacted my life. I haven't tried to chase them because I haven't really needed to. I mean, I joke with my kid. I mean, I'm an accountant. My math skills are sum. And then I subtract one thing from another too to get a variance. My math is pretty easy in my world. Rob Collie (01:09:29): Help me out here guys. How do I get cannon Bill arguing? How can I throw raw meat in the shark pool? Ken Puls (01:09:36): I don't know. I'd say Bill and I agree on most things, I think. Bill Jelen (01:09:39): Yeah, we've been around too long. Microsoft has warned us down. The spiky edges that we had when we showed up, they've been dulled off. Rob Collie (01:09:49): Good. Ken Puls (01:09:53): The assimilation is complete. Rob Collie (01:09:55): Yes, it is all going according to plan. Seriously, you're interchangeable in your opinions. Bill Jelen (01:10:02): More of a go to. Yeah, I don't have to go to that Ken has. Rob Collie (01:10:05): So Bill, I feel like we've wasted 100 minutes on your time. Bill Jelen (01:10:10): No. This is fine. Because when I was on your show, Thomas LaRock said three sentences. And so I'm trying to live up to that. I think it's perfect. I'm just playing Thomas LaRock today. Rob Collie (01:10:19): I'm trying to get Tom up to like 15 sentences. I don't want him to talk too much, because I got a lot to say. And then there's the guest. The poor guest needs to talk to, right? But the early Tom LaRock, we've been pulling him up a bit. We've been getting him up into higher percentages. Bill Jelen (01:10:33): So, Ken, what's your opinion on Microsoft 365 versus the perpetual version? Ken Puls (01:10:37): I can bite into that one. I'm 100% on the M 365 component. Back to the the managing of IT, I mean, I used to give up probably about two days of my work life for managing 50 licenses for our company in order to try and figure out which of the 950 license combinations we needed for people in order to be properly licensed for Office and Windows client access licenses. I don't know if you remember this, Rob, but Windows DVD writer licenses so that we could get the proper Excel Power Pivot SKU and other things like that. I mean, it was a waste of time. Ken Puls (01:11:08): Once we moved to the M 365 or Office 365 at that point in time, the job became a lot easier, because it was just basically like, "Look, let's put a named user on there." Nice and simple. It was taken care of. So, that was the first part. We were no longer playing the game of, "Is there going to be a new version within three years? We pay Software Assurance, should we not? Oh, I'm sorry, you can't upgrade your Office Suite this year, because it's going to be a big capital expense versus with Office 365." Boom, we're now into a regular sort of cash flow, it just goes into operating expenses, made life a lot easier. Ken Puls (01:11:41): So, for us in the corporate world, there's a couple of components. Number one is to cut down my time on licensing. The second part was it actually meant that I could keep my software current because there wasn't these massive lumps coming through cash flow that we had to justify as capital costs every three years. Instead, it was just an operating cost, it was always there. Ken Puls (01:11:59): The part that really made that work, though, was when it first came out, and we first got the Office 365 license, it was always a numbers game about the cost. That was all it was, because we still weren't getting regular monthly updates. Once they moved into the whole regular monthly update scenario, at that point that just blew the whole doors off the thing. And now, to me, it's not even about cost anymore. It's about what's going on with the functions and the features and whatever else. Ken Puls (01:12:23): We see something new come through virtually every month, even if it's just bug fixes and small things that maybe aren't super visible. But the fact that we're seeing things like dynamic arrays coming through. We're seeing new formulas that are coming in. We're seeing updates to Power Pivot and ... Sorry, not Power Pivot. I shouldn't say that one, but Power Query. We need to update the Power Pivot, that would be nice. But updates the Power Query, new connectors and different things there. And the occasional button being moved around, which drives me crazy. But hey, whatever. Ken Puls (01:12:50): At the end of the day, the product is getting better on a regular basis, and people are sort of clamoring for these components, and asking for them in the real world. As an IT guy, what I love is when I install Office, it just updates, I never have to have IT go and visit the desktop. The cost per month for the most important software tool you use on a regular basis is pretty small. It's easier, it's more up to date. There's just so many things about it. Ken Puls (01:13:18): Going back to perpetual man, I would never ever, ever go there. It drives me crazy. I mean, I joke with people and they say, "Which of the old versions did you buy? Oh, well, I bought this one here when 2019 came out. I just bought 2019." I'm like, "Oh, way to go on your purchase of obsolete software." They're like, "But it's brand new." I'm like, "No, it's not. It's six months old before it even came out of the box." Bill Jelen (01:13:39): There should be a warning label when they buy that. You are buying obsolete software that will never ... I don't understand why they still sell it. That's the thing that confuses me. Ken Puls (01:13:48): IT, that's why. Rob Collie (01:13:49): I think there's an argument can be made that the single most important and impactful piece of technology to come out of Microsoft in the last decade is the Office Click-to-Run infrastructure that makes all that possible. In the old days, when it was all MSI driven install, the last thing you would have ever wanted in your entire life would have been Microsoft upgrading your version of Office overnight without your input, because it's going to screw your life up. It's going to downgrade or upgrade some DLL somewhere that is going to cause you nightmares, and Click-to-Run bypasses all of that. Rob Collie (01:14:32): Think about it, like what you just said, I completely get that, but it's not a cost thing anymore. It's the fact that we get new stuff all the time like new valuable stuff that actually helps us. That new functionality, that would have been the thing that wrecked you in the old days. You don't want a perpetual model that's a subscription that's delivering a new MSI install over and over and over again. Oh my gosh. The economic value created for the entire world by Click-to-Run is just jaw dropping. Ken Puls (01:15:01): I would agree. And honestly, Rob, that's not something I ever would have thought of. Because, I mean, it's just part of the component that sort of happens underneath the scenes. It's not sexy, it's not appealing or whatever. In managing, whatever, like 30, 50 desktops or whatever else, and you sit there and you go, "Oh, damn, we got to do an upgrade of Office. Okay, so we got to go on. We got to come up with tools to deploy this thing out across all these desktops, or we have to physically go and visit each desktop with the media and install it." And then hope it works, it doesn't blow up a DLL or whatever as you're saying. Ken Puls (01:15:37): And granted, obviously, influence to somewhat pandemic wise, I've got a small team right now of about five people. We installed the Office client on their software once. They're all working remotely, because of the COVID situation. Office is just updating on their machine every time there's a new update that comes out. Ken Puls (01:15:56): It's magical. I don't have to visit their desktops. I know that they're on the most recent and latest and greatest features. I mean, we run on the beta channel, and all of my team do as well, because we're insane and we like to be seeing the new stuff and talk about and all the rest of it. But it's a phenomenal delivery mechanism. And the new stuff that comes through it is just absolutely incredible. Ken Puls (01:16:18): It always just makes me die a little inside when I do the survey in a class and ask people like, "So, what version did you buy and whatnot?" And you get the, "Yeah, I bought Office 2019." I'm like, "Oh, I'm so sorry. You should have got Office 365." But I hear the other side of this too where you get IT departments that are very concerned about the fact that Microsoft is updating their software. Ken Puls (01:16:38): It's like, "Well, you don't have any issue with your antivirus, guys, updating their engines, so why here?" I think it goes to a lot of worlds where there's a very heavy reliance on compatibility testing, and worried that we're going to blow things up. But to my mind, there's avenues for mitigating that too. Ken Puls (01:16:59): I mean we have a different channel in Office that holds back the releases for about a year. We've got a current channel that gives the current monthly release. We've got an insider channel. And I think there's actually one between those two as well. Ken Puls (01:17:11): So, my sort of thing is, look, find your people who are your biggest power users in your organization, the people that really put Excel to the test, put them on the beta channel. Just make sure that they know that there are features in office to report bugs back and get the bugs that are hitting your organization reported back to Microsoft right away, but they've got to be your power users who are fault tolerant. Ken Puls (01:17:31): And then you say, "Okay, let's take our next level of people." Maybe it's who uses Excel as a global base all the time inside your company, your accounting department, your analysts, or whatnot, and put them one version delayed behind that, so that they're getting new stuff, it's a second round of testing. And then you put the majority of the users on just whatever the regular monthly channel is. And the people who are in an area that needs to be on the most patched, the most stable for whatever reason, put them on the deferred, just be aware that those guys on deferred, they're not going to get the dynamic arrays until they filter through the rest of the stuff. Ken Puls (01:18:04): I think there's avenues there, but I know some companies that have embraced that architecture, I know other ones that they just want perpetual, that's it. And I know still others who say, "Yeah, but I want to own my software." You don't own it anyway. It's just interesting. Rob Collie (01:18:22): I actually have two questions for you guys. The two of you are both still and always were but definitely today are closer to the Excel community at large than I am. Do you still see array functions as like a really hot, well trafficked topic? Rob Collie (01:18:39): My time on the Excel team, basically Wall Street ran on array formulas. Do you have any sense of that changing at all? Because really, what I'm wondering is I've always thought ... Not always, but for a long time, I've thought that DAX would be a godsend for the array formulas crowd, even in terms of just performance, much less capability. Do you have any sense whether the world has moved on from array formulas? Or is it still sort of the thing it used to be? Ken Puls (01:19:06): I don't think that it's moved on from them. I think they're a tool. And I think with the dynamic arrays coming out that it actually starts to breathe new life into the array world. I can't say that I would have ever thought that, that world was specifically dying, though. I don't do a lot of work with Wall Street, so I can't really speak to what the engineers of those functions are working with out there. Ken Puls (01:19:26): But in the community, when you start looking at array formulas and whatnot, if they the Ctrl+Shift+Enter style of array, it certainly takes a very high skill set to be able to actually put those together, and there's there's a lower number of people that would be comfortable in architecting, providing, and explaining those solutions. Ken Puls (01:19:45): I think with the dynamic arrays coming out, though, that changes everything. Now, they're a lot easier to create. They're a lot easier to visualize in the grid. We're seeing formulas that are being built for arrays and whatnot. And now, with the lambda functions that are coming out, I actually see that they're probably going to end up getting more widely spread use, just because they're more accessible and a little bit more visible. That's just my thought. I think it's just a tool again like Power Query, like Power Pivot. But the nice thing with arrays is that they are leveraging the calc engine. They're super fast right in the grid. Bill Jelen (01:20:14): Yeah. I think dynamic arrays are taking over, but there are still people who are using the old Ctrl+Shift+Enter arrays. We have books for both. We have books on dynamic arrays, and my current book on Ctrl+Shift+Enter. They're both still selling. The dynamic arrays is outpacing the old one, but people are still buying the old one. So, I still think there's hardcore people out there who are using the old fashioned array formulas. I think as the new dynamic arrays become more powerful, and they're adding more stuff regularly, I think they'll just take over. Rob Collie (01:20:43): Isn't there a flavor of array formula, though, that starts to bog down on the same sort of performance problems that VLOOKUP has? It's the filter part of the ... If you think of the DAX engine, its filter and then arithmetic, it's the filter part that Excel has always been slow at. Arithmetic Excel is just as fast as DAX, but the filtering part is where Excel tends to sometimes kind of face plant in terms of speed. Rob Collie (01:21:12): I guess I just have never really done that much serious array formula modeling. Model off folded, they're gone. And I got passed off to some other email list like Modeller's Miscellany or whatever. I don't know. I don't know what happened. That would be like sort of the arena in which we could see if anyone started to use DAX iterator functions instead of arrays in that competition, if it still existed. That would be sort of the place where we would start to see it peak above the waterline, I guess. Bill Jelen (01:21:43): Yeah, I think that would take a special contestant that the people who are getting that level one model off are generalists. They have a lot of specific skills. And I don't think you would find that person bubbling up to the top 16 of model off if it still existed. But I bet there's people out there who are really, really into it. It would be interesting to have a YouTube video and make a statement one way or the other, and then people will make sure to let me know how wrong I am. Rob Collie (01:22:06): This is, to me, like a really ripe field of the Excel community in terms of where there could be a massive breakthrough is introducing ... It's just a hunch. I haven't refined it clearly, obviously, but it's just a hunch that the array formula crowd, if they ever got ahold of DAX and iteration, they'd just be like, "Oh my god." Bill Jelen (01:22:27): See, that's a book. That's a book. Rob Collie (01:22:28): Hair blown back. Bill Jelen (01:22:29): DAX formula is for the array formula crowd. Rob Collie (01:22:31): There you go. Ken, you should write a book. Write that book, man. The world needs it. Ken Puls (01:22:35): As Bill will tell you, I've already got a book I got to get finished. Rob Collie (01:22:39): I promise to skim through it when you're done. Ken Puls (01:22:42): I'll bet you do. I'll bet you do. Yeah. Rob Collie (01:22:47): The other thing I was going to bring up was you actually mentioned it Ken. You know that scene on The Graduate where the father's friend at the pool party takes him aside and has given him some career advice, like the most important career advice you'll ever get? And he just looks at him and goes, "Plastics. One word, plastics." Dustin Hoffman said, "That's your advice?" Plastics. I feel like I want to just look at the Excel MVP community right now and go, "Lambda functions. That's where it's at. Ken Puls (01:23:17): Lambda is a very interesting case. I think that it's going to be interesting to see when people start actually pairing up dynamic arrays and lambdas together and whatnot, and building stuff that is really perf intensive, or whatever else in the grid and does a lot of things. I mean, this is one of the things that's frustrating with Power Query, of course, is that everything's locked behind a refresh. And the thing with pivot table is, of course, they're locked behind a refresh, and that's what a lot of the dynamic arrays and potentially lambda functions could end up changing. Ken Puls (01:23:43): I will say, though, that for myself, until somebody writes a really, really good book on lambdas, I don't anticipate that I'm going to end up playing in that sphere, mainly because it's got the exact same issues that I had with trying to debug my way through a DAX formula. So far, my experience with lambdas has been I've been able to start and get to where I can create myself an error. I'm trying to actually understand how to get past that is really difficult. Ken Puls (01:24:07): For me, I've just kind of looked at and went, "Yeah, you know what, I think this is a battle that I'm going to let someone else fight and I'll work through and work on those. I'm going to stay in my Power Query realm at the moment." I do believe they're going to be incredibly powerful. Don't get me wrong, but there's some work that I think Microsoft still needs to do to give us a good debugging engine in that area. Bill Jelen (01:24:24): Yeah, I agree with that. But I'm seeing a lot of people jumping on the lambda bandwagon, including MVPs and YouTube viewers. I'll do something on YouTube, and someone will say, "Oh, you could have done that with one formula. I'll put a lambda in there." The people embracing that new technology is just pretty incredible. Although, we're hitting some sort of a limit as far as the call stack that really needs to be increased before. I think you can get to real world use, but it's very promising. Rob Collie (01:24:51): By the way, a guy that you both know, and I think have fond feelings for, Sam Rad. For a while, one of his characters that he played in World of Warcraft with us, his name was [Kal Stack 01:25:02], with a K. Ken Puls (01:25:05): That's funny. Rob Collie (01:25:06): He had another one called do events. Bill Jelen (01:25:09): That's awesome. Ken Puls (01:25:10): Yep. I remember that one actually. Yes. Rob Collie (01:25:16): That's great. We're running to the end. Is there anything that either of you just been like sitting on like bottling up? Ken Puls (01:25:22): I got a question for you that I'm curious to know. Rob Collie (01:25:25): Okay. Ken Puls (01:25:25): Years ago, Rob, when he left Microsoft, you emailed me and said, "Listen, dude, I want to PM an add-in, and I want you to write this add-in for me and whatever else." We did some work on that. And then eventually, you emailed me and said, "Look, I'm going to turn this over to you. I'm done. I'm moving on a different direction and whatever else." It took me a while, but I was curious, have you actually seen it? Rob Collie (01:25:43): No, I haven't. Ken Puls (01:25:44): You haven't. You need to do a little search and download Monkey Tools. I'll send you an email with a key for it and whatnot. Rob Collie (01:25:50): Monkey Tools. Ken Puls (01:25:51): Monkey Tools is an add-in that ties Power Query and Power Pivot together and does all kinds of cool stuff that you should totally be checking out. Rob Collie (01:26:00): Oh my god. Ken Puls (01:26:02): Since you're not aware. I mean, we do stuff like injecting calendar table pattern with Power Query. Because I remember the first version that we did once upon a time, I was actually building calendars in the grid, and you're like, "How are you going to update those?" We insert the Power Query to build the calendar table for you dynamically now, things like that. We do Power Pivot auditing, all kinds of stuff. Rob Collie (01:26:21): Oh, yeah. You hear that Microsoft? If you don't put the button then, Monkey Tools will. Ken Puls (01:26:27): I've already told them that on a couple of occasions, actually. Rob Collie (01:26:30): I know this feeling. You talk to Microsoft and say, "Please, please take my idea that I'm planning to make money off of. Take it, put it in the product, I would prefer that." And they're like, "So, you just go build an add-in." Ken Puls (01:26:42): We just recently added a functionality and it's a go and take your Power Query that you have and actually build a slowly changing dimension table for you. Like crazy stuff to help people with their modeling, audit reports to try and figure out how things are tied together, a DAX explorer, a Power Query explorer. We even have a little thing that you can click on your pivot table and say, "Show me the filter context," with what we call our pivot sleuth. And it will show you all the fields that are impacting that particular pivot table as well. Ken Puls (01:27:06): There's all kinds of stuff in there, which was born out of the inspiration of the stuff that we worked on years ago. Dude, I'm hurt and shocked that you haven't seen it yet. Like what the hell? Rob Collie (01:27:15): Oh, well, I don't consume anything. I'm pretty busy. Running this podcast empire, it's not all fun and games. Ken Puls (01:27:28): Anyway, I'll send you a link, you should check it out. Because as I say, you were a big part of inspiring this thing, and we've had it up for sale now for just over a year, and we keep on adding new stuff to it. It's under active development. I think you'll find it ... Rob Collie (01:27:42): Oh my god. Yeah. Ken Puls (01:27:42): Make your Excel life easier. Rob Collie (01:27:43): Yeah, that's awesome. If it's generating some of the harder M scripts for me. The M scripts generated by that, for example, are those like copy pastable? I could even use them in Power BI? Ken Puls (01:27:53): You could absolutely use them in Power BI. I wish I could actually inject them directly into Power BI, but unfortunately, there's no back end hook to be able to actually write M to a Power BI model. Rob Collie (01:28:02): Damn, dude. First of all, kudos. You know the old saying, right? 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration. Ideas are worth nothing, it turns out. You've gone and built something. Actually, that sounds a lot more ambitious than even the original idea, even in compost. Ken Puls (01:28:17): It's turned into a heck of a lot more, absolutely. I've actually ended up hiring a guy to actually work on it. And now, I'm playing the role of program manager that you were going to play, but I'm also doing a lot of the coding and button scenes and whatnot. Rob Collie (01:28:28): I'll try it on anyway. Ken Puls (01:28:29): Absolutely. Try it on anyway. Beautiful. I'll send you a link. Rob Collie (01:28:37): That's amazing. Bill Jelen (01:28:37): Sounds great. Yeah. Ken Puls (01:28:38): Yeah, it's fun stuff. Rob Collie (01:28:39): Thank you so much, both of you. This is great. Ken Puls (01:28:41): Yes. Good. See you guys again. Bill Jelen (01:28:41): Thomas LaRock signing off. Rob Collie (01:28:42): All right. Bye-bye. Bye, guys. Ken Puls (01:28:45): Cheers, guys. Announcer (01:28:46): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive Podcast. Let the experts at P3 Adaptive help your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Have a data day!

It's clear when you listen to Ryan Bergstrom tell his story as to why he is a leader here at P3 Adaptive.  His problem-solving ability is incredible, and he loves to teach and help others.  That vibe sounds quite familiar, the data community has a such great reputation for altruism!  Ryan's drive, tenacity, and resilience have led him on a path to success, and he's just getting warmed up!  It's a great story that we hope will inspire the future data rock stars out there. References in this episode: The Saturday Night Live Wolverine Skit The Pokemon Optimizer Blog Post Episode Timeline: 2:45- Bergs's journey begins with a degree in Finance (pronunciation matters!), living in his parent's basement, and selling gym memberships...Ryan quickly realized that was NOT for him 23:45 - Rob's dream about Bergs, the value of the new tools, and Ryan is way better than he thought at this stuff 52:45 - An interesting data problem Rob's been working on Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Welcome friends. Today's guest is Ryan Bergstrom. Ryan's one of our directors here at P3. So yes, that's two weeks in a row of directors from P3. Ryan's story reminds me of an old song that I really liked, that was all about roses growing up through cracks in the sidewalk. Of course, our twist on it is, you can't keep the data gene down. Ryan's career arc began with what you might call generationally poor timing. I won't spoil the details, but you've heard the phrase pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. Well, Ryan definitely did that, but you see Ryan's bootstraps, they had the word data written on them. Rob Collie (00:00:40): Necessity, resilience, both massive themes in Ryan's life, but also he's a helper. Even at the beginning of his story, you'll hear that he was already helping his colleagues, his teammates, when no one told him he had to. And spiritually, that continues today with us at P3. I'll even tell you in this episode about a dream that I had that involved Ryan. It really, really, for me anyway, captures how I feel about the guy. He's a super valuable teammate, contributor, and leader for us at P3, and also just a great person. And I'm really happy that I know him. Okay, you know what's next. Let's get into it. Announcer (00:01:20): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? Announcer (00:01:24): This is the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast with your host, Rob Collie and your cohost, Thomas LaRock. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:01:47): Welcome to the show. Ryan Bergstrom, how are you today? Ryan Bergstrom (00:01:51): I'm doing well. Pleasure to be here, Rob. Rob Collie (00:01:54): It sounds so sincere, right there. Ryan Bergstrom (00:01:56): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:01:57): Authenticity is our hallmark on this show. And you're already leading off just so perfectly. Ryan Bergstrom (00:02:03): Well, I strive to please. Rob Collie (00:02:05): Tell us a little about yourself. What's your role here at P3 Adaptive? Ryan Bergstrom (00:02:08): I am our senior director of client services. Gosh, I feel like my four-year anniversary is coming up here in maybe a week. Rob Collie (00:02:17): There's a whole sort of like entering class of people coming up on there four-year. Ryan Bergstrom (00:02:22): Yeah, yeah. If this was like the X-Men, I would be like the Cyclops, Storm, Wolverine, maybe Gambit, Beast, certainly Archangel, but not Jubilee or any of those new folk. Rob Collie (00:02:37): I see, I see. Do you have a particular affinity for any of those, that first wave? Ryan Bergstrom (00:02:41): Well, I mean- Rob Collie (00:02:42): I mean, naturally you want to be Wolverine, don't you? Ryan Bergstrom (00:02:44): Yeah, yeah. I mean- Rob Collie (00:02:45): And everybody wants to be Wolverine. Ryan Bergstrom (00:02:47): I'm from Minnesota. He's Canadian. They're like cousins to us. Rob Collie (00:02:51): Not everyone can be Wolverine. So I don't if that makes him for like draft or something. Ryan Bergstrom (00:02:55): He's generally first pick, isn't he? But I mean, no one would've picked Cyclops. No one wants to be the, "Come on guys, follow the rules." Rob Collie (00:03:02): Have you ever seen the old Saturday Night Live with John Belushi where John Belushi is speaking in some sort of like deeply Eastern European accent? The English coach is telling him to say this, to say sentences over and over again. Like, "I'm sorry, but we are all out of badgers. Would you be willing to accept this Wolverine." Ryan Bergstrom (00:03:24): No, I haven't seen that. Rob Collie (00:03:24): John Belushi, of course, the way you pronounce it, Wolverine, and every sentence that the guy has him say ends in Wolverine. Ryan Bergstrom (00:03:33): No, I haven't seen that. Rob Collie (00:03:34): That kind of punctures the Wolverine myth for me. Is that every time I see Wolverine, I think Wolverine. All right, so senior director of client services, what does that mean? Ryan Bergstrom (00:03:45): When I joined the company, I was principal consultant and I got to see a ton of awesome use cases across a variety of our clients, taught the Gillian trainings and just got to do it all with Power BI, with Power Pivot, Power Query, and see the incredible range of use cases that the tool set can be used for. And as we grew, I became the director of client services or one of them, helping other consultants build solutions for our clients, solve problems, whether it's act like a dispatcher and figure out who's going to staff what. And there's a ton of internal projects that we have because we're a growing company. And so we have our own infrastructure that we're continually improving and our curriculums that we're continually adding new content to. And I'm one of the people that drive that forward. Rob Collie (00:04:38): Yeah, we just had one of our other directors, Krissy on the show and we really didn't talk much about the role of director here. It's our management job for the consulting team. It's different though because we're a remote company. Did you have management experience before coming here? Ryan Bergstrom (00:04:53): No, I didn't. Prior to coming to P3, I worked for two different companies. I started working with Life Time Fitness. That's where my career kind of began. I was selling gym memberships, actually, I was a member engagement advisor for my first job, became a Salesforce admin, Salesforce developer, and then national sales and marketing analyst. Then I worked for a medical device company as a consumer insights analyst, Coloplast, doing just tons of analysts and development work. And from there, that's when I came to P3. So no management experience. Rob Collie (00:05:30): So you don't have that contrast of like, "Oh, here's what it was like managing people in person versus managing them remotely." Which many people in the world have encountered now for the first time over the last year. Management's always been remote for you. It's like, "What's the big deal." Ryan Bergstrom (00:05:46): Yeah, that's kind of how it's been. And you know what's interesting, it's occurred to me now, when Life Time Fitness is where I spent the majority of my pre P3 career. When I was working in the national sales and marketing office, I reported to our vice president of sales, and all of his lieutenants, so to speak, the regional managers were national. So, even though I was going to the office and I wasn't remote, I was certainly interfacing with predominantly, I guess, you could say remote people because it was a national corporation. From observing him as a leader and a manager, he was certainly managing remotely. I've never really put that together, but I suppose a lot of lessons that I passively learned were from him. Rob Collie (00:06:38): Sponging it up. Yeah. Ryan Bergstrom (00:06:40): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:06:40): One of the best things that you can be in a career, I think, is sort of like a curating sponge, picking up things that you saw other people doing that worked well or things that didn't work well and being able to replay that. So much of my development has been that, like role-playing the successful habits that I've seen from others that I've worked with. So I'm glad that you were able to bring that one in. Ryan Bergstrom (00:07:02): Yeah, there's a Richard Bach quote from either, I don't know if it's from Jonathan Livingston Seagull or if it was from this book he wrote called Illusions. The story of a reluctant Messiah, but the quotes always stuck with me and I'm going to totally butcher it right now. So the quote hasn't obviously stuck with me that much because I'm not going to nail it, but it was essentially, "We are all teachers. We are all students. All great teachers are perpetual students." Is the more or less than none of it. You cannot lead. You cannot manage. You cannot do anything unless you're always open to new information, just coming in from other people and adjusting what you are. Thomas LaRock (00:07:40): Since we're on the topic. I was going to mention something I learned back in my previous life. I know I've mentioned that before that I used to coach basketball. You pick up little things from everybody. So there's always this thing. You can never pretend to be somebody else because you always be second best. So when you start out coaching, you can't say, "I'm going to be like coach K or do all these things." You can never be that coach. So what you do is you say, "I really liked that play that coach just ran. I'm going to take that." I like the way temple plays defense, zone defense. Thomas LaRock (00:08:13): I'm going to use that. And you take all of those parts of all this stuff that you've learned in, say your ether, all around you and you take what you think is the one that would reflect a part of you. And then that is what you become. So as a coach, I had little aspects of all these different things. And somebody would say, "Where'd you learn that?" "I learned that from John Thompson at Georgetown." I thought that was just peculiar for coaching, but no, that's just life in general. Just like Ryan was saying, you take that one little thing from somebody else and you say, "I liked that part and I'm going to use that for myself." Rob Collie (00:08:49): Yeah, if we want to get really nerdy and we do. The right metaphor [crosstalk 00:08:53], my favorite metaphor anyway is the Borg from Star Trek: Next Generation. They go and absorb civilizations and they don't turn into that civilization. They just sort of like take the capabilities from that civilization that they like, that'd be a good strengthening fit for their overall collective. And they acquire those and feature those. They're like, in some sense the best of the best of all the things that they've eaten. To be Borg like is a piece of a nerd career advice. Ryan Bergstrom (00:09:24): Be Borg like. Now, I've watched a little bit of Star Trek. I love it when I do watch it. Are they a villain in the show? Rob Collie (00:09:31): Definitely a villain. And you know the other thing that this metaphor isn't so great is that they're also kind of robotic and unfeeling. So, you want to be bored in terms of your skills and wisdom acquisition, but everything else you don't want to be bored like. Ryan Bergstrom (00:09:48): I really like analogies and metaphors that are kind of like the antihero of metaphors or analogies, like be bored like, because that's the good stuff. Assimilate the good stuff. But let's forget that they're the villains. One that always seems to happen in society at large is, "Oh, this is the new cell phone on steroids." And it's like, usually we frowned upon steroids. But when we're using it in an analogy, we sure seem to like it, like oh, this is the, I don't know the Hummer H3, the Hummer 2 on steroids." It's always like, "Okay, so steroids are good when we're using it as a metaphor, but it's bad when you do them or [crosstalk 00:10:26] no one recently all the time in business, we talk about Power Pivot and Power BI and Power Query like, "Oh, we want, our client said once they learn Power Query, it's like the gateway drug." And I'm like, "Okay, so drugs are good in this analogy, but in other analogies or in real life, like generally drugs, no, not a good thing." Rob Collie (00:10:46): Yeah, we just take the good part of the analogy and discard the rest of it. This car is the regular car on steroids. Wait, wait, wait. You mean, it's going to have like a receding hairline and its rear tires are going to shrink over time and it's going to have a temper Ryan Bergstrom (00:10:58): It's backed me in this hail damage on the car, what are we talking about here? Rob Collie (00:11:05): No, no, just the good parts of steroids. That's great. Did you really say that you haven't watched much Star Trek? Did you [crosstalk 00:11:13]- Ryan Bergstrom (00:11:13): I've probably watched 20 to 30 episodes. I've seen it most in movies. Rob Collie (00:11:16): Okay. All right. Ryan Bergstrom (00:11:17): But there's eight seasons of it or more eight. That's probably a super turn. There's like 50 million because there's 10,000 spin-offs Rob Collie (00:11:25): Yeah, I just didn't want to let you get away with like, I was like the ringleader of the board game club here at P3 like- Ryan Bergstrom (00:11:30): This is true. Rob Collie (00:11:30): ... throwing down that like, "Oh, well I've heard of this Star Trek thing. I've just... Ryan Bergstrom (00:11:35): No, no, I love it. I have no dislike of Star Trek. Look, I've played this game called Artemis. It's essentially a bridge simulator. And it's me and my geeky friends sitting around with tablets and computers land party style. And it's essentially a Star Trek role playing game, but it's so bare bones and minimalist that many of my friends like to go destroy that enemy or that enemy. And that doesn't quite cut it for me. So, I'm sitting there like, "Captain, the cruise seems morale is down because the cafeteria is no longer serving steak on Wednesdays, moleculas steak, permission for the galley to upgrade their equipment." And there's nothing in the game that has anything to do with this. And my friends just like to go, "Uh, permission granted, blah, blah, blah." But captain it doesn't end there. There's also an issue with the condiments. If we do move forward, we're going to need and the, okay Ryan. Yes. Rob Collie (00:12:41): Yeah, I think I want to role-play with you. Yeah, the last few attempts at any sort of online gaming like that have really haven't gone over well. It felt like work. I want to circle back to a couple of things. So I heard a quote the other day that I don't know who originally wrote this. I really liked it, which is that information is surprise. If no surprise, no information. In order to be surprised, you have to have some humility, don't you? Ryan Bergstrom (00:13:14): Oh yeah. Rob Collie (00:13:14): If you know it all, you can never be surprised. Information is surprised. That was one that like, "Hey Borg like in the good way." Like I've said, "Hmm, I'm picking that one up. That ones being an added to the collective." Ryan Bergstrom (00:13:28): That's the kind of quote that you hear in the slam poetry observer in you comes out and you say, "Hmm." You kind of snap your fingers."Hmm, that's good." Rob Collie (00:13:40): Oh yeah. That's how I do it. Going back to your origin story. One of the ongoing themes of the show and really of our lives and of our company, there's a few points that all tie into the same theme, but one of them is this concept of the citizen developer. Another one is this tweener sort of the IT business hybrid. And really then sort of the thing that's kind of humorously ties them together is that the best results, the best versions of this are never intentional. Did you have any idea back in school that you were going to be a frontline celebrated data professional? Ryan Bergstrom (00:14:17): Oh, absolutely not. When I was in school, you're being generous by asking me if I had any idea if I was going to be a data professional. When I was in school, I didn't have any ideas. I was just nothing but surprise at all the information coming my way. I studied finance, which I was taught by my finance professor that if you have a degree in finance, you say finance. And if you don't, you say finance. That was one of the things I learned in college. Rob Collie (00:14:45): That was worth four years. Ryan Bergstrom (00:14:46): That was worth four years. Barbecue, that was something I learned in college. I wish I could have done a super senior lab with that one. I studied accounting. Liberal arts education is interesting because you just get your tendrils into so many things. And even the things I didn't think I learned just come back to me. I'm like, "Oh, I remember studying this, or I remember sitting there." It kind of surprises you. But to your question, I think I was going to be a frontline data professional. Oh no, definitely not. I don't even think now you can get a data science degree or a business intelligence degree. I don't really think they were doing that. Back when I was in school in the early knots, pots, or whatever you call the early 2000s. Rob Collie (00:15:24): Can we call them the dreadnoughts? Ryan Bergstrom (00:15:26): The dreadnoughts, yes. Rob Collie (00:15:28): Just moving on. We can cut that out, right? Ryan Bergstrom (00:15:30): Yeah, that was a throwaway joke. Rob Collie (00:15:32): That was- Ryan Bergstrom (00:15:32): Look, you got to set the bar low with something so that the other ones really surprise you with the new humor information. Rob Collie (00:15:39): ... One of the classic Mitch Hedberg sets on Letterman, he makes a joke and no one laughs and he turns and says, "Hey, can we cut that out? Can we edit that?" And suddenly then you're laughing at the bad joke. You had a built-in safe. So finance- Ryan Bergstrom (00:15:55): Finance. Rob Collie (00:15:56): ... finance. So you studied finance. Ryan Bergstrom (00:15:57): You studied it too? Rob Collie (00:15:58): No, no. I've studied people who studied finance. I borged that from you. So, finance didn't prepare you for selling gym memberships. It's an interesting turn, right? Ryan Bergstrom (00:16:10): Interesting turn, yeah. So, when I graduated in the summer, June of 2008, it turned out that wasn't a good time to graduate and enter the workforce. Who did that? Rob Collie (00:16:21): What was going on back then? I don't even remember? Ryan Bergstrom (00:16:24): I don't know. I was too busy trying to get a great deal on a mortgage. No, not really. Thomas LaRock (00:16:29): You chose to enter college for years before that. I mean, you didn't have to. Rob Collie (00:16:33): You brought shit on yourself. Thomas LaRock (00:16:34): Right. Ryan Bergstrom (00:16:35): Yeah, no, no. I take full responsibility for that. Rob Collie (00:16:37): I remember at that time in the world as the financial sector was crumbling thinking, oh my God, can you imagine coming out of college right now? I didn't know I was talking about you. We actually hadn't met yet. Ryan Bergstrom (00:16:49): Can you imagine coming out of college right now with a degree in finance? Rob Collie (00:16:52): Especially in finance. Ryan Bergstrom (00:16:54): Well, so it didn't prepare me for selling gym memberships. I suppose that was like one of the other things I did when I was in school is I fell in love with health and fitness. So, being from Minnesota that's Life Time Fitness, corporate headquarters in Minnesota, best part of my day when I was living in my parents' basement at the time was going to Life Time Fitness, I'll go work for these guys. So I started selling gym memberships and I don't know I did that for maybe a year and a half. Ryan Bergstrom (00:17:19): And fortunately for me, they used Salesforce and I just am good at technology and software. I always say this when I'm teaching trainings or talking about my story, I was fortunate to grow up on eight bit Nintendo and 16 bit super Nintendo. Back when if you read the manual, you learn to the tips and tricks. So, it ingrained in me since I was a competitive five-year-old video gamer with my friends and cousins was, if I read the manual, I will be able to beat you, because that's where the secrets are. And reading the manual obviously, a powerful thing because the internet made it one of the first acronyms. RTFM, read the something manual. Rob Collie (00:18:03): Fun manual. Ryan Bergstrom (00:18:04): The fun manual. Read the fund manual, yes. So I read the manual on Salesforce back then and when I was selling gym memberships and just got really good at making reports and dashboards in Salesforce to help people prospect for sales. And that parlayed my way into the corporate headquarters. No idea when I was doing it, that all of a sudden I was about to become like a data person at the time. Rob Collie (00:18:26): But it's an interesting collision there. That always really interesting to me. I don't think I've ever really asked you very specifically this, your job is to convince people to sign agreements and become members at Life Time Fitness at that that moment in time. Was anyone telling you, "Hey, Ryan, we need you to go into Salesforce and start running reports." How did you make that transition? Ryan Bergstrom (00:18:55): I needed to make money. I was a 100% commission. And so I needed to figure out the people that were most likely to join. So, I was just doing all kinds of customer analysis on my own and then helping my coworkers do it. There was just a problem and I couldn't kind of anyone else but myself to solve it. Because I think that that's just generally what you got to do. Don't wait for other people to solve your problems. Be proactive in solving yourself if it's possible. And it was fun, working with data is fun. Rob Collie (00:19:24): But you didn't know that until then, right? There's this moment where you... It's like the moment in the the parking lot in the movie, a star is born. The story takes that turn. She starts singing and you realize it, one day you're going, "Oh, there's all this information in Salesforce, but I wonder if I can do anything with that?" It doesn't sound like most of your colleagues were doing that. Ryan Bergstrom (00:19:47): No, I don't think so. I just happened to be that type of person that was a good with computers and good with software and open to learn it. There's a certain amount of people that just left clicking is enough. They just want to use information or information technology, computers, et cetera, as little as possible to accomplish their task. But they don't think, "Well, how could I use these tools to make the task different or more effective, easier, smarter, better, et cetera." And it's like the Bill Gates quote really, "If you have something really complicated, have your laziest employee do it because they'll figure out the best way to get it done." Maybe that was me. I didn't want to make a million cold calls. I wanted to make 15 to 30 good ones. Rob Collie (00:20:35): Interesting. Most of the places where people encounter like BI for the first time, it's usually a situation where there's more than just personal leverage involved, meaning the thing that they're looking at with the data and they start falling into Excel or whatever, the report that they're generating at the analysis that they're performing is information about the activities of many, many people and probably can impact the decisions made on behalf of a number of people as well. You started in a place where you really only had personal leverage, the reason to run some BI like your BI moment, isn't a place that you wouldn't typically, that I wouldn't typically expect to be one of the, sort of the formative environments. Rob Collie (00:21:21): I would not expect that frontline sales rep for a national gym chain in their particular location would need a whole lot of BI. I know that they'd need it. I know that data is always useful. The magnitude of leverage involved is quite a bit lower in that situation. And yet you still leaped that gap. I think that's actually kind of extraordinary, even relative to most of the stories we hear, like the first collision with data. You really had to be, I think, pretty aggressive, even more than usual to make that jump. Ryan Bergstrom (00:21:56): Look, I was living in my parents' basement and I was hungry to get out. I needed to win for myself. And this is the beginning of my career. I studied finance and now I'm selling gym memberships. It wasn't what I wanted to do forever. And I didn't want to work in finance despite getting a degree in it. I was lost really. Rob Collie (00:22:15): Did you hear that by the way, as he's dismissing it and pronounces it finance? Ryan Bergstrom (00:22:19): I was hoping no one would catch that. Rob Collie (00:22:20): He's looking over his shoulder going buy- Ryan Bergstrom (00:22:22): I don't want to be dq'd now. Rob Collie (00:22:24): ... buy, buy finance. Ryan Bergstrom (00:22:25): Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:22:25): Wow. Rob Collie (00:22:26): Yeah, I never wanted anything to do with you. Ryan Bergstrom (00:22:28): I just needed to do something. And I loved the intellectual challenge that creating these BI reports made and being able to help my fellow member engagement advisors at Life Time Fitness, I would make them reports in dashboard. And then we had a team and we were trying to win as a team. So I was starting to produce BI for that one location to help drive us forward. And I don't know, I guess, it was just the domino effect. When the position opened up at the corporate office that I ultimately ended up getting, it was Carrie Jacob's, my old manager that originally forwarded to me. She was like, "This is like what you do for us. You should do that for the whole company." And I was like, "Oh my gosh, that would be amazing." And it worked. Rob Collie (00:23:14): How neat, what a great story. Ryan Bergstrom (00:23:16): Oh yeah. My story is all about being helped by everyone else along the way. And the power of relationships is one of the absolute number one thing I learned, it's like, we are all people trying to figure this whole thing out. And you can try to step on other people or you can try to lift other people up. And if you do the ladder, it's more fun and more rewarding. And frankly, one of the most rewarding things about being at P3 Adaptive because we get to go into all these companies and just help them elevate their game. And the excitement that comes with it is just addictive. Rob Collie (00:23:56): There was another one of those examples of a metaphor that we're taking the good parts of and not the bad parts. Ryan Bergstrom (00:24:01): Yeah, yeah. Rob Collie (00:24:02): You're just you're doing a brisk business and a Borged metaphors. Let me tell you all while Ryan's here listening. Let me tell you all about a dream I had one time, you know like in the 80s or 90s adventure movies, at the beginning of the movie that sort of trying to as quickly as possible introduce all of the characters, and they've got this one, there's this one person who's sort of the star of the movie. And it's usually someone like Ed Harris. And Ed's making his way through the space station or whatever, checking on everybody. He's like, "We're going down through the submarine from the bow to the stern." Rob Collie (00:24:41): He's checking in with all the people who end up being the characters in the movie, but he's checking on them. And they're all happy to see him and he's there to help and he's providing support and everything. And that's sort of the intro sequence to the movie. I had that dream and the Ed Harris figures working his way through the submarine. But the whole time it's Ryan, it's Bergstrom here. It's his face. I's him. That's how my subconscious perceives Ryan at our company. Ryan's talking about relationships and everything and how much people supported him and everything. And I just want Ryan to tell that story in public with God as my witness, so that everyone knows that you live that or you pay it forward to. Ryan Bergstrom (00:25:20): Rob's told me this before. So, I appreciate the story. It hits me right in the fields. Rob Collie (00:25:25): You're Ed Harris in the abyss, you know? Ryan Bergstrom (00:25:28): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:25:29): The glue, the one that holds it all together. Ryan Bergstrom (00:25:32): I try. We're just the team. Life can be a team sport if you let it. And it's more fun that way for me, for the people that are playing on solo mode instead of co-op. That's cool too. I'd love to be an MPC in your game, whether I'm giving you a quest or whether I just have that fun one line, that's cool too, but let's all win together. Rob Collie (00:25:55): I thought for a moment there, we were just going to get one of those terrible sports platitudes, like, "Well, it's team sport, run the blaze, the coach draws up and focus one thing at a time. Make sure we execute." Nope, didn't get the sports platitude. That was something completely unexpected there. There was information. There was surprise. Ryan Bergstrom (00:26:15): Surprise. Thomas LaRock (00:26:15): You were surprised. Rob Collie (00:26:15): Yeah, That was definitely a surprise. All right, so you discovered the power of data in an unlikely place due to... It's almost like pressure and heat- Ryan Bergstrom (00:26:25): Yes [crosstalk 00:26:26]. Rob Collie (00:26:26): ... it's an intense necessity. Yeah, what a rough time, by the way, the COVID graduating crowd, right? Ryan Bergstrom (00:26:34): Oh no. Rob Collie (00:26:35): Is the first one to experience something quite like what you graduated into. So maybe right now, not maybe, certainly right now, there are people being forged in the fires of adversity and data, like young, recent graduates who are going to be rockstars in the near future. I look forward to meeting some of them. Ryan Bergstrom (00:26:55): Oh, they're out there. I mean, I talked to a few people who are in school right now and I have a chess coach, Rob. I'm a chess player. I have a chess coach. [crosstalk 00:27:04] I've rediscovered my love of chess from fifth grade. And my chess coach is a freshman in college right now, studying data science. Super cool dude. And I find myself down him. I'm like, "Hey look, you are totally in control to make yourself as good as you want. You don't need permission from anyone else." We've never been in a time in human history where it has been easier to learn anything. And no one's gatekeeping you. You're in control of that. And these people that are graduating right now in COVID, man, my heart just aches for them. From a technology and information standpoint, they have it all at their fingertips and the hungry ones will rise to the top. Rob Collie (00:27:52): I agree with you that no one's actually gatekeeping, but that doesn't mean that people aren't trying. That was kind of a big theme of our conversation with Krissy is that the people who tend to learn technical skills via the abstract path, a lot of them tend to, whether intentionally or not become gatekeeper types for the vast majority of the rest of us who learn via the practical human impact route, which is a different route than the abstract route. So there are headwinds, it's not as gatekeeping is telling yourself that you can't do it because I'm not that type. I'm not one of those people. You can sort of see the shining example person and say, "Well, I'm not them." And so you self gatekeep. I agree with you. I mean, this isn't a disagreement. Ryan Bergstrom (00:28:36): Is the woman that invented Spanx named Sara Blakely? I think so. Rob Collie (00:28:39): Jamie look that up. Ryan Bergstrom (00:28:43): I was reading a book called Living with a SEAL that her husband wrote, the CEO of some company that had David Goggins lived with him, but his wife was Sarah Blakely. And one of the stories that he tells is that when she was growing up, her dad every night at dinner would say, "What did you fail at today?" And they would all celebrate the failures. And I loved it. Everyone's heard that failure is the stepping stone to success. It's like, fail, fail, fail, succeed. If at first you don't succeed, try, try again, all that. And that was the conversation that they had at the dinner table. Ryan Bergstrom (00:29:16): I was like, "Oh my God, I love that. I hope with my kids, I can do something productive like that." Because look at what she ended up doing. She's started a billion dollar company. Failure after failure, but worked her way up. With respect to learning new tech skills, it's hard because you don't succeed constantly. But every one of those stumbling stones, that's learning. That's what it feels like. People can do it. They just have to be willing to not be good at something for awhile. Thomas LaRock (00:29:46): So confirmed it is Sarah Blakely. And she's worth a billion dollars. Rob Collie (00:29:50): That's a lot of Spanx. Thomas LaRock (00:29:51): I was going to say, that's how much leggings are worth. Ryan Bergstrom (00:29:53): That's how much solving a problem that affects a ton of people is worth. Rob Collie (00:29:57): So, let's continue the progression. Here you are, you've moved upstream to corporate- Ryan Bergstrom (00:30:02): Corporate, yeah. Rob Collie (00:30:02): And now you're in an analyst role. You're officially a data person now. At some point along there you discover DAX. When and how does that happen? I mean, imagine if the Salesforce acquisition of Tableau had happened before, maybe you would have been forced fed Tableau and we wouldn't be here. Ryan Bergstrom (00:30:21): Quite possibly. So, five years at Life Time Fitnesses, the national sales and marketing analyst. I was still doing it all in Excel. I was living VLOOKUPs, SUMIF, kind of land. I remember I would do these elaborate summits to be lived up to all that stuff. This was before I discovered pivot tables. And then one day I was like, "Oh wow, I've been creating pivot tables, the long division way, interesting." At that point in lifetime, we'd switched from Salesforce to dynamics. Ryan Bergstrom (00:30:53): So I had two CRM systems I was familiar with and I got recruited to go work for Coloplast. It's a medical device company. They had a different CRM system, Oracle and the whole nice thing about me was I had this like CRM experience. But of course, I didn't think it mattered that much. I was like, "Look, it's just like how these different tables talk to each other." And I inherited these reports and dashboards when I was at that company that took forever to put together and it was bang your head against the desk and you never had time to improve them. Ryan Bergstrom (00:31:25): And so I was spending like a week, like seven business days to put together something. And I was like, "Surely this is a button. Can I just refresh this?" Like, "Surely there's got to be a better way. There's got to be a better way." And that at Coloplast is where I heard someone say Power Pivot and Power Query. And I was like, "Well, that's something in Excel I don't know how to do." It sounds promising. I mean, with a word like power, surely it'll solve all my problems. And that's when I bought actually your book grab because I was like, "All right, well, let's read the book." I know one thing is true. If you read the manual, it's where all the secrets are. So I bought some manuals. Rob Collie (00:32:03): This is by the way so atypical. I mean, if it's running completely counter to the male stereotype of not reading the directions, not asking for directions, I'll write a book, but I'm very loathe to read one. Ryan Bergstrom (00:32:15): People make fun, my friends make fun of me because if I got a new, I don't know, TV, and they're like, "Oh, let's turn this new 77 inch TV on and see how it looks." I'm like, "Hold on though, I got to read the manual." I look [crosstalk 00:32:27] forward to it. I love it. I'm going to find out about a button that some feature that's like unlocks it into virtual reality or something. I don't know. But that's where all the secrets are. Rob Collie (00:32:37): They're like, "But Ryan, the Super Bowl started five minutes ago." Your like, "Yeah, it's okay, we'll miss the first quarter, but imagine how much better quarters two, three, and four are going to be after I've read the manual." Ryan Bergstrom (00:32:46): Look, the jerseys are not going to be tuned to the correct color of royal if I don't learn how to adjust the color saturation. Yeah, now that's the brand of geek that I am. Rob Collie (00:32:58): My brother is like this. When he get a new Nintendo game back in the day, I'd be like, "All right, let's plug it in." And he says, "Oh no, no." He'll go sit in his chair with that manual. And he needed to read it cover to cover before he would ever even plug it in. I admired that and was surprised by it at the same time like, "Come on, lets..." Ryan Bergstrom (00:33:16): Well, that's the only way you learn how to do the secret modes. Rob Collie (00:33:18): You bought a manual? Ryan Bergstrom (00:33:19): I bought a manual. I bought your book. I started reading it, slowly. And I was a few chapters in and I knew this much about power pivot. And I was like, "Okay, let's take this problem that I have in Excel where I'm doing like a summit of 300,000 contacts to 800,000 phone calls." I'm doing the summit if I'm a 20 digit alpha numeric field. And when I would hit enter on that for a weekly report, I would see the percentage sign in the corner of Excel start to calculate 1%, 2%. And I got my stopwatch out at I timed it and it was going to take 15 minutes. I had to do this every week, 15 minutes to do this. And I would go walk the stairs and it locks your computer up. So I'd walk the stairs, I'd go get coffee. I'd do whatever. And I was like, "Oh I'm sick of it." So when I knew virtually nothing about PowerPoint because I was just beginning your book, I'm like, "Let's try this." Let's try this new thing. I did what I thought I had to do. Ryan Bergstrom (00:34:19): And I did it and it was done in an instant. And that was like I had been saved. I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is the truth." I am learning everything I can about this because I just took 15 minutes and turned it into an instant. And that's when I was bad at it. How deep does this rabbit hole go? I was jumping in. I was on my honeymoon in The Bahamas, on the beach, reading a Power Pivot and Power Query book because I didn't have time not to get better at it because I saw how much better life was about to be. I would just read the books. I read them all. I bought every book on the subject matter. I would read a third of each one and get bored and go to the next one. This is what I do when I learn I've discovered. I get so many different sources that I could learn from. Ryan Bergstrom (00:35:16): And I end up going a third of the way through each one that I end up reinforcing the beginning concepts over and over and over and over again, before I end up making it all the way through. And I've realized that that just helps me learn better. The thing that was most frustrating was that I was telling everyone that I worked with, you got to learn this stuff. This is amazing. And they kept coming to me and saying, "Oh, that's so cool that you like reading about this stuff." I don't learn best from books. I don't learn best from this. And it just made me so mad. I was like, "Neither do I. I learned best with a private tutor, doesn't everyone?" But I learn I don't have to min-max and optimize my learning the way Tim Ferriss would have you believe. It's okay to just learn at a non-optimal pace and improve, so. Rob Collie (00:36:08): I'm going to zoom in on something that's a demonstration of integrity. The story about kicking off Excel and watching it grind for what you would realize would be like 15 minutes or whatever, maybe even longer in some cases. There's a different personality type that looks at that and goes, "Oh, hot damn." I have an excuse to screw around for the next 15 minutes. When I worked construction, I was sort of like the junior guy on the crew. Whenever the crew didn't want to do a whole lot of work for the rest of the day, they would just come up with a bunch of errands to send me on, "Oh, go get some nails, go walk a mile and a half through the sand to get nails and come back and then we'll do something." And I get back. I'm like, "All right, time to do that thing." Like, "No man, very close to the end of the day now." That bothered you that this thing was going to take that long. I'm with you, it would bother me too completely, right? Ryan Bergstrom (00:36:58): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Collie (00:36:58): I don't take it for granted because there are a lot of people that are like, "Yeah, that's just how long it takes. And I go on and I get my coffee or I play phone games, whatever it is. So that hole there's got to be a better way. This guy has got to be better than this, like that's very common, I think, amongst our people. Ryan Bergstrom (00:37:13): Oh yeah, I think it's the most common thing amongst our people. Rob Collie (00:37:17): There's got to be a better way that we should make that even into an ad campaign. Write that down somewhere. Ryan Bergstrom (00:37:21): Yeah, probably. Rob Collie (00:37:23): Yeah, please. But at the same time, that's not true of all humanity. I think it's the data gene folks that think this way. And then the other 95% of the world don't think that way. This is something that the people don't really think about. At least in the early days we're talking to them about Excel is that Excel is very, very inefficient at searching for and finding things. Well, of course, at the same time, we've got the CPU's on our computers these days, their frequency is measured in gigahertz, billions of calculations per second. And they've got more than one core. So the average machine that we're running these days might be capable of 10 billion calculations a second without any trouble. Rob Collie (00:38:04): How the hell can anything be slow at 10 billion calculations per second. You were mentioning numbers in the hundreds of thousands and everything. Well, it turns out that if you're at a very, very, very inefficient search algorithm, because the storage structure of a spreadsheet wasn't optimized for it, finding matches is devastating. This is my challenge to the world. If you have a spreadsheet that you are tempted to put into manual recalc mode, where you ever see the percentage calculation progress meter in your spreadsheet. If ever see that, I can tell you without a doubt that you're doing something like VLOOKUP or SUMIF or array formulas that do those sorts of things, because you're absolutely using matching. Rob Collie (00:38:47): It's the matching that makes Excel slow. And the DAX engine is lightning fast at matching. It's not even fair. So this thing that went from 15 minutes to sub-second in calculation. It was like, "Well, now the CPU is doing what it's supposed to do." It's one of those really unexpected reasons to upgrade from Excel to Power BI is you'll never have to wait on a recalc ever again. And it's just one tiny benefit out of a dozen monsters. I guess it's not tiny. Ryan Bergstrom (00:39:17): Well no, it's not, but it's the truth in terms of tip of the iceberg of the incredible benefit that you get out of it. It's just an entire new way of thinking about your data and getting the answers. You get this feedback loop of, "Okay, I've solved that, I've solved that problem." So, now not only have I regained that time, that effort, but I'm asking a better, smarter question. So, I'm getting to the next layer over and over and over again. Rob Collie (00:39:46): The company you're at before P3 was called Coloplast? Ryan Bergstrom (00:39:49): Yeah. They sell ostomy bags and catheters. So a really, really great company, helping people with really devastating healthcare needs. Rob Collie (00:39:59): The name. It sounds like a fat cell that contains a soft drink. Ryan Bergstrom (00:40:04): Yeah, yeah, it does. Rob Collie (00:40:05): It's like... So how many years in there when you started slinging DAX and M? Ryan Bergstrom (00:40:12): Probably six months to a year. Rob Collie (00:40:14): Six months is really just enough time to kind of acclimate yourself to the role. Ryan Bergstrom (00:40:18): Yeah, I just was constantly taking too long to get things done for myself. And very quickly I heard about these new things and realized this is the better way. And I didn't have time not to learn at that point. It would cost me more time not to learn it than it would take to learn it. Rob Collie (00:40:38): Do you even remember the person who first mentioned it to you? Ryan Bergstrom (00:40:43): I do. Rob Collie (00:40:44): Good. Ryan Bergstrom (00:40:45): It was my boss. He said, "Oh, this Polish guy that we worked with, because we were global. We worked with people from all over the place. His tinkering with Power Query and Power Pivot. You should check, maybe that's the answer." He didn't know anything about it. Thomas LaRock (00:40:58): But he had heard of it? Ryan Bergstrom (00:40:59): He'd heard of it and then he paid for me to get videos from back when we were PowerPivotPro. Rob Collie (00:41:05): The 2013 videos that I shot in Excel 2010. Ryan Bergstrom (00:41:09): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Collie (00:41:12): Because I was too upset about them renaming measures to be calculated fields in 2013. There was no way I was going to record for posterity sake. A bunch of videos calling it, calculated fields over and over again. Ryan Bergstrom (00:41:23): Once I started learning it, it was a snowball that couldn't gain speed fast enough. It was just like, "Oh, let's redo this report, let's redo this dashboard. Let's take this entire business process and change the way we do it because we're going to eliminate all of these headaches or we're going to gain this new insight." And I couldn't do it fast enough to satisfy myself. And I don't mean like I wasn't good enough. So I couldn't do it fast enough. I mean like, "Give me more, let us do this more because everything needs to be done this way." It will solve so many of the headaches. Rob Collie (00:42:02): So why'd you leave? Ryan Bergstrom (00:42:02): I left to come to P3. Rob Collie (00:42:05): I know that chronologically, but what was the enticement? Ryan Bergstrom (00:42:08): So, it was at that point and this happened to many of the people that work with P3, when they want to talk about their stories. They're getting good enough at their last job before coming to P3. And they're starting to work in all kinds of different departments, because whispers are going out about this person who can do this thing. That was happening to me. And that was really my happy place at work. I still had a ton of traditional Excel stuff, but I was like, "Oh, Power Query, Power Pivot, Power BI. I love doing this." And I remember I was talking to my boss at the time. I was like, "Hey, can you send me to this foundations at Power BI training with this company PowerPivotPro puts on? Can you send me to this?" Ryan Bergstrom (00:42:53): The company will give me five grand to get an MBA, but will you give me a thousand or 1500 or how much it costs to go do this foundation's Power BI course because like this will give me ROI for the company? The MBA, that's going to take years to get ROI. This is going to be immediate ROI. You're going to make your money back in a week after I get back from this course. "Ah, probably not, but I'll see what I can do." Well, meanwhile, there was a blog post by you saying were hiring. Ryan Bergstrom (00:43:20): And I had applied and I was working through our diabolical DAX test. So I'm trying to get approved to come to a P3 training. And at the same time, I'm also applying to P3 and I ended up passing that test. I had an interview with Kellan and Austin on a Friday afternoon. And before I did that interview, I had a conversation with my boss. I was like, "Hey, my favorite part of my job, the part that just fills my happiness cup is doing all this work in Power pivot, Power Query, and Power BI. You got to get more of that in front of me, send me around the company, have me do it. That's what I needed to do. Also, I got to get that training approved. I got to go do that training." Ryan Bergstrom (00:44:03): He's like, "All right, I'll see what I can do." So, then I go home and I have the interview with Austin and Kellan and offer the job on the phone call. The happiest day of my professional career. I was this pumping. It was very much like sci, like mute my microphone. I'm like fist bumping because, it turns out I was great. "We want to hire you." I didn't know I was that good at DAX at the time. Rob Collie (00:44:24): How would you know, there's nothing to measure yourself against an environment like that? Ryan Bergstrom (00:44:28): So I'm trying to get into this foundations training little did I realize like I was way past that. Rob Collie (00:44:32): Yeah, you were lying to your manager about all that ROI you were going to get. You were already past all of that. Ryan Bergstrom (00:44:38): Yeah, so I was wrong in hindsight, but I thought that that's what was... So then I come back to work on Monday after I've been offered the job, I get the offer letter over the weekend from you. I go into my manager's office and I was like, "Hey that class that I wanted to get approval for." He's like, "Oh, you know what I'm not going to be able to get approval for it. Not going to be able to do it. Sorry." I was like, "It's totally cool. I'm going to be teaching it." And I didn't say it in a mean way with, and my manager was like, "Oh really, what?" I was like, "Yeah, they hired me."I'm going to be doing it. Ryan Bergstrom (00:45:16): And he was just like, "Oh, that's so amazing. I'm so happy for you." And he was just an absolute, he was a great guy, great manager, brilliant person. And that was the moment. It was like, "No, no, no, I'm actually going to be teaching it. I apparently I don't need to go to it because not only do I know the foundations, I'm very advanced it turns out." And that was the beginning of me with P3. Rob Collie (00:45:37): So there's actually a really surprising parallel that are between your story and Krissy's. You both tried to get approval to take our training and were denied and ended up here instead. So let that be a lesson to you managers out there. Someone wants to take our training. If you want to keep them, you say yes. Ryan Bergstrom (00:45:58): Pretty much, yeah. I always think back to that conversation, that weekend, it was a turning point because I was reading the books on the beach in The Bahamas. I was staying up late and instead of playing video games, instead of doing whatever, I was reading the manual on how to properly do data modeling and how to write DAX, I was reading release notes of Power BI, because I just saw the value. I just knew that this was not the next step. This was the elevator. Rob Collie (00:46:37): If you're listening to this and you're wondering like, "Why are there so many people that so many, that started four years ago?" That's because that's when we started hiring full-time. We didn't have full-time jobs at P3. We had a lot of 1099 contractors or whatever. But when we really turned into the W-2 two full-time version about four years ago. So there's a reason that you and Krissy both sort of appeared at the same time. Ryan Bergstrom (00:47:04): I remember when I came on board, I got to meet Krissy. I got to meet all the other consultants working for P3. I remember having the conversations like, "Oh hey, I'm Ryan, this is what I'm going to do, board games and barbecue and I'm kind of weird. I stay up late at night and I constantly am trying to read and figure out the better way to do things. It's a curse that I have." And everyone is just like, "Oh yeah, me too. I also do that." I can't stop thinking about the better way to solve these problems. And that has just been one of the threads that every single one of the consultants that work for P3 has woven into them, as well, is we're just wired that way. There are other people that know DAX, we're the best at it, but there are other people that are incredible at it too. But what I think we're the best at is not just Power BI or DAX or Power Query, it's understanding a problem and finding the solution the fastest. That's what I think we're the best at. Rob Collie (00:48:09): I think we're the best consulting firm. If pure DAX is an Olympic sport, I'm not sure anyone from our company would be the gold medalist in the world. It just that we'd be close. We might be on the podium, but yeah, it's the impact. It's the human impact. The shortest path to impact. And that comes through the tweeners, the people who move through the human and business plane as easily as they move through the tech plane. You are, even though you didn't expect it, didn't set out to be it weren't studying to be it. Rob Collie (00:48:40): You have, just like Krissy, just like everyone in our company, you have a deep technical capability that we tend to associate with like I went to engineering school or something. You have that in your brain, those structures are in your brain. We just don't expect it. I think it's so beautiful. And at the same time, a little bit sad that there's so much latent, untapped quality engineering talent that's sort of languishing in tweeners. That have yet to find their valuable niche. Of course, it's part of our business model, you know? Ryan Bergstrom (00:49:15): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:49:16): Something's truly, truly beautiful about this. As a senior director here, how recently has it been that you've been puzzling over a data model or a DAX or an M problem? Ryan Bergstrom (00:49:29): Yesterday. Rob Collie (00:49:30): Well, that long ago, huh? Ryan Bergstrom (00:49:31): I was on a sales call and she was stumped and she had sent me the Power BI user form post that she made. And I took a peek at it while I was on the call with her. And I was like, "Wow, this is a really well documented problem." I was like, "You got like DAX studio queries in here. You got profile queries in here." I was like, "You're advanced, you know that right?" And she's like, "Well, I don't know about that." I'm like, "No, no, no, trust me, you are. You are an advanced user. You are very good." And I was like, "Well, I think that this is your answer. Your team needs training." She showed me her data model. I was like, "You really don't need our help with project consulting." Which I'm thrilled that I get to say that to people like, think about that. A customer called us and rather than me being like, "Oh, you need us to consult on your project." Ryan Bergstrom (00:50:18): I was like, "Oh no, you, you got this." Like, "You're solid, but this is what you're missing." And I gave her an idea to work with and we're following back up with training. But all of the consultants on my team will periodically come to me with data problems. I like to joke that maybe I have an aura of problem solving, to put it into a video game sense because they'll be explaining the problem and I'll be so excited to throw my input and I'll have ideas and I'm waiting to talk, because I've listened enough. So, now I'm done listening. Now, I'm just waiting to talk because I want them to be able to explain the whole thing to me. And before I can offer any sort of suggestion, they're like, "Oh I think I solved it." Yeah, and I'm like, "No, I was going suggest that idea too." But no, before they get to me, they saw with themselves- Rob Collie (00:51:08): That's- Ryan Bergstrom (00:51:08): ... over and over again. Rob Collie (00:51:09): Yeah, that happens all the time like by the time you're done formulating a question in a way that another human being like you've refined it to the point where you can transmit the question in the process you uncover its fundamentals, the fundamentals of the problem. And that allows you to unlock it. That happens so many times. I've been on the receiving end and the transmitting end of that dynamic, just so many times of my career. All right, yeah that's it. And the person who's being asked the question sits there and goes, "Well, I'm glad I could help." Ryan Bergstrom (00:51:40): Yeah, that's pretty much the tone I use when I say that too. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:51:44): That is the only tone that you're allowed to use actually, right? Ryan Bergstrom (00:51:46): Yeah, yeah. My way [crosstalk 00:51:48] is done. Rob Collie (00:51:49): I'm glad that we still have ways and opportunities for you to engage with those sorts of things because you know what happens, is you get into management and you get removed from all the things that brought you in the first place. Do you get a sustained diet of stuff like that or is that like I happen to ask you on a day that you just had a nice snack the day before? Ryan Bergstrom (00:52:07): Yeah, a little bit of that, but it's relatively sustained. It's not as much as when I was a principal consultant, but a couple times a month, at least people are coming to me and showing me the things and I'm helping them out, getting them suggestions. The difference now is that the things that I get to work on are always way more complex than when I was a principal consultant, because people only come to me with the hard stuff. Rob Collie (00:52:32): Yeah. Ryan Bergstrom (00:52:33): And that's not because I'm better than them. It's just that that's when they are stumped and they need to bounce an idea of someone. Rob Collie (00:52:42): I rarely get to do modeling in DAX anymore, less frequently than you. But with this podcast, the dashboards that we've been developing, I've been developing primarily with some Kellan help on the data fetching side. I've been working on this measure for a while, that it turns out that the DAX complexity of it is only part of it. The biggest problem with it is the real world. The real world nature of the problem. It's like I'm trying to calculate for a given episode how much lift it offers sort of in a durable sense. People come in to listen to this episode, do they stick around and become subscribers? But the thing is no one's telling us a subscriber count. It'd be really nice to know like, "Oh look, we went plus 20 or plus 20% or something like that in terms of subscribers after this episode." And we go, "Okay, that's a good episode for introducing our podcast to people." We should do things like that more often, but no one tells us how many people are subscribing. Ryan Bergstrom (00:53:41): Really? Rob Collie (00:53:42): No, we don't have a subscriber metric. We just have the number of downloads of an episode. Ryan Bergstrom (00:53:46): How do they know what the most popular podcast in the world? Because of downloads. Rob Collie (00:53:50): Apple knows if you're subscribed or not, but apple doesn't tell us the subscriber account. They hoard that information, and the same thing with Spotify and all of that. So all we know is how many times a client comes to our RSSV to download the audio file. And we know where it came from. We know that it came from Spotify, whatever. We haven't gotten too deep into it. It might be that there are some stats somewhere in Apple that we can get to, for instance. We have to like divine subscribers, and it turns out it's just a really noisy, noisy, complicated problem. The number of listens to episodes is going up over time. So there's just sort of a natural upward progression. So you can't just say, "Oh, it went up. It was sort of already kind of naturally going up. Rob Collie (00:54:37): So you got to say, "Did it go up faster than it had been?" It's what you've kind of got to look at. So now you're looking at sort of the local area of the curve, right before and right after the episode. And it just turns out that if there's a real ringer of an episode, right before or right after that episode, it distorts the hell out of everything. It's just like, I've really, really, really enjoyed that problem because it is so slippery. It is so difficult and it is so valuable if we can crack it. I think the answer is we just fundamentally need more granular source data, which of course is often the case, but it's been a nice week, long puzzle to screw around with. Ryan Bergstrom (00:55:14): Yeah, what do you like measuring acceleration? Rob Collie (00:55:17): Essentially, but it turns out that if every episode's pressing the gas pedal a little bit and taking it off, press, press, press. How do you follow Aroon? Ryan Bergstrom (00:55:25): Yeah, that's what I was just thinking. Rob Collie (00:55:26): As a guest, right? If you come after the corporate VP of Power BI, you're going to be judged as bad for listens. Ryan Bergstrom (00:55:35): Well, thanks for having a few episodes in before you go me on there. Rob Collie (00:55:39): Oh, you're following Krissy. You're still screwed. Ryan Bergstrom (00:55:40): Oh no, yeah. I take that back. Curses to you. Rob Collie (00:55:48): We really screwed you over here, man. I can't wait to show you the dashboard that shows how much you suck. And here's what we call the inverted Bergs from peak. Ryan Bergstrom (00:55:59): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:56:01): The [crosstalk 00:56:02] Bergs from trench. Ryan Bergstrom (00:56:03): I'm going to get approached by saboteurs to put me on other podcasts now. Rob Collie (00:56:08): It took some very sophisticated DAX to identify this, all right. All right, so you've been here for some very, very, very rapidly changing formative years. Ryan Bergstrom (00:56:18): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Collie (00:56:19): In our business. It's sort of just as almost like the mythical extraterrestrial anthropologist looking in from the outside. What are some of your observations about the nature of what we're doing and what we've been figuring out and how we're different? Ryan Bergstrom (00:56:35): I've seen us continue to evolve really with the power platform stack because it's grown quite a bit, really in the last four years. You got Power Automate now you got Power apps. You got things that aren't quite power platform stack like Azure data factory that are coming out at new ways to do et. Al. And when I came on, we were very focused on just Power BI and Pivot and Power Query as our core competencies. They still are because there's still the greatest need for what I would call the simple things. They're not necessarily the simple things as I've learned. I was advanced. I wasn't just a foundations person, but in corporate America, the use cases we see all the time, they're not always cutting edge craziness. It's just helping people do the basics faster. But as we've evolved now, multiple times will implement these very complex enterprise solutions that our titles are principal consultants. But in the workplace you would have people with principal solution architect or senior solution architect doing these things that we're doing. Rob Collie (00:57:48): Plus a team of people with a title that ends in the word developer. Ryan Bergstrom (00:57:51): Oh yeah. Be developer, senior developer, pretty developer, all these things. And we're coming in and we have the end user's perspective. A joke that you make all the time is databases are often set to write only. No one actually looks at the data once they go in. Rob Collie (00:58:09): That's right. It's stored though. It's there. Trust me. Ryan Bergstrom (00:58:12): We go in and we're focused pretty much exclusively on how are you going to use this solution we implement to make your company better, to save you time, to make you more money, to save you money, to reduce headaches for your end users? So, we truly do have an end-to-end user experience in mind versus we're going to solve this data problem. We're not solving a data problem. We're solving human problems using data. And the majority of the work is focused on Power BI. But when we do these huge data solutions, oftentimes that end Power BI users who we have in mind. So, we're able to do the crazy backend solution architecture in a way that makes the most sense for Power BI to thrive. Rob Collie (00:59:00): I like it. Thomas LaRock (00:59:01): It's not going to fit in the t-shirt Rob Collie (00:59:05): All right, so as a board gamer and a disciple of DAX, did you cross paths with some of the fun stuff over the years? Did you ever look at the Pokemon optimizer blog post, you got anything like that? Have you ever used any Power BI for personal or gaming purposes or anything along those lines? Ryan Bergstrom (00:59:22): I used it to track a weight loss dashboard that my friend and I did last year. Every day I was sharing screenshots of my little health and wellness personal dashboard to show trend lines of where we were going to end up at the end of our little 75 day challenge. I did see the Pokemon blog. I looked at the Pokemon data model. I was quite happy with it. I've always wanted to build some sort of daily sports betting data model, but I don't sports bet. So it's really to like an idea that I think sounds fun. Rob Collie (00:59:54): Our only two time guest on the show, Michael Salfino is now associated with an outfit called BetPrep. You should look it up. Ryan Bergstrom (01:00:04): Okay, I'm going to definitely look that up. Rob Collie (01:00:05): Look up BetPrep and we can bring Mike back around. Maybe not even for the show, maybe we'll talk to him behind the scenes and get some DAX in there for them or something, who knows. I don't know what they're doing over there, but he was telling a story on it's the football off season, but they did one podcast talking about the draft and he was talking about, and some of the sports they're not as thoroughly analyzed as football is at this point. During the championship game of the final four, Baylor versus Gonzaga, they allow live betting now. You can place bets at various points during the game. Ryan Bergstrom (01:00:41): Oh really? Rob Collie (01:00:42): And Mike was telling the story about how his buddy, who he works with on BetPrep was just killing it because Gonzaga was the favorite. They were the one that was supposed to win. Early in the game they're down like, I didn't watch the game, but apparently that I down nine or 12 to nothing in the first several minutes. And at the time out, the algorithm that's setting the odds for the live bet is still too heavily believing in the favorite. That algorithm was going, "Okay, Gonzaga's going to still come back and win this." But everyone who was watching the game was like, "Oh, I don't know." And so he just kept every time out, he would bet on Baylor and just cleaned up. There's still some frontiers out there that are even in the gambling world where there's still some sort of unguarded doors, apparently. I don't know. I would've had no idea that any of that kind of stuff was even been going on, but. Ryan Bergstrom (01:01:35): No, you always just assume that the sports betting world has hired all the big brain betting thinkers to produce those algorithms. But it's just not true. Rob Collie (01:01:47): Well, I mean, they have, but anything that's new might be vulnerable. I bet that next year's algorithms are going to be a lot better. Ryan Bergstrom (01:01:55): Yeah. Rob Collie (01:01:56): That was probably a one time exploit in a way. Ryan Bergstrom (01:01:59): I doubt it. Rob Collie (01:02:00): Yeah. Oh man, just the idea of live betting during a game. I mean, it just seems like such a cliff to step off of. If I walked into that, I might not ever come out. I'm going to stay away from the idea of betting in real time. I don't bet at all, but for some reason I think the real time betting would really hook me and I want nothing to do with it. Ryan Bergstrom (01:02:24): Certainly keeps you interested in the game the whole time. Rob Collie (01:02:27): Well, if you have a decent fantasy football, you know- Ryan Bergstrom (01:02:30): Can you imagine how much money would've been lost or one during the Patriots-Falcon Super Bowl when they were down three, four touchdowns at halftime? Rob Collie (01:02:40): Yeah, yeah. This was something that also we talked about with Mike on the show was like, "If the win probability models keep saying that there was like a 99.8% chance that you going to lose and you still won or vice versa, is the model actually accurate?" Are the Falcons really that bad, because they've now lost multiple games where they had a 99 plus percent chance of winning in a short span of time? They just keep doing it. It's not just the Super Bowl. If they've managed to pull it off repeatedly, does that mean that the Falcons are just really, really that incompetent? Thomas LaRock (01:03:12): Yes. Ryan Bergstrom (01:03:12): Makes you wonder if that's a data point now in calculating the 99%? Rob Collie (01:03:17): Yeah. Ryan Bergstrom (01:03:17): Is Falcons equals true? Rob Collie (01:03:19): I had the idea that them having pulled that off indicates that it's going to be harder to have a 99% win probability in the future. The model's going to get smarter. Ryan Bergstrom (01:03:27): Oh, that too probably. Rob Collie (01:03:31): And go, "Well, I've seen crazier shit than this", says the model. "So we're only going to give you 97 or something." Thomas LaRock (01:03:36): Hey man, I've enjoyed this, hope you have as well. Ryan Bergstrom (01:03:39): Yeah, this has been really fun. Announcer (01:03:41): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast. Let the experts at P3 Adaptive help your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Have a day-to-day.

Krissy Dyess is a prime example of inspiration and adaptability.  She made a decision to better her knowledge of the updated and evolving BI tools through self-teaching, and with help from the amazing data community.  She went from being stuck in a cubicle, to being a team leader at one of the best BI consulting firms in the world.  And she creates excellent Cat Memes! References in this episode Telling Ain't Training by Harold D. Stolovitch David Churchward's SQL UNPIVOT Makes My Data Skinny blog post Dave Grohl Explains Everlong FREE MAIAD April Workshop FREE MAIAD May Workshop Episode Timeline: 0:00 - Krissy's history is her story, Krissy is the nicest stalker ever, and the art of self-teaching 23:40 - Abstract learning vs hands-on learning, the role of the community in teaching, Krissy is a Power BI Evangelist 45:00 - Krissy's thirst for knowledge leads her to Seattle and a moment of clarity, her transition into being a consultant and trainer at a young upstart P3 Adaptive Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Welcome, friends. Today's guest is Krissy Dyess, one of our directors here at P3 Adaptive. And I want to say that today's episode is brought to you by the words, inspiration and human. At P3, we are in the inspiration business. Now of course, we're also in the implementation business. We're not just inspiration. Otherwise, we'd be McKinsey. Necessarily, we're in the reality business. We have to bring things to life. But in today's data landscape, the art of the possible is so much wider, so much more valuable than what it ever was before that we'd be doing a disservice to our clients if we weren't also in the inspiration business. Rob Collie (00:00:39): Krissy is basically the living embodiment of inspiration. Whether you're an organization plotting your course through an ever-changing landscape or an individual planning your career as a power platform professional, I think that inspiration theme will shine through as you listen to Krissy. And that second word, human that's also Krissy. You'll notice in this conversation that she keeps circling back to training. Rob Collie (00:01:06): And we still do training here at P3, but the majority of our business is now project implementation. But even when we're building things with our clients, we can't help it. We're always transferring knowledge. We're always teaching. We're always training and it's that human connection, the need to help, the desire to help that shines through over and over again in this conversation with Krissy. She's just an incredible person. I'm so glad that she took that leap and joined us four years ago. She's grown tremendously in her time with us and we as an organization, as a team have grown tremendously right along with her. I hope you smile as much listening to this as we did while we were recording the conversation. So let's get into it. Announcer (00:01:54): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Announcer (00:01:58): This is the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast, with your host, Rob Collie, and your co-host, Thomas LaRock. Find out what the experts at P3 Adaptive can do for your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com. Raw Data by P3 adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:02:21): Welcome to the show, Krissy Dyess. Krissy Dyess (00:02:24): Hi. How are you doing? Rob Collie (00:02:26): Oh, we're doing fantastic. This is one of those things that it's a real pleasure. I'm already like all curve ruffled. You just asked me how I'm doing and I'm like, "Shit, I'm not prepared to answer questions." I'm already failing. Krissy Dyess (00:02:40): It's one of those days. Rob Collie (00:02:41): We interact a lot because we work together. Krissy Dyess (00:02:44): We do. Rob Collie (00:02:45): I figured what we could do is we just do sort of like a story of your life type of thing today. But also we could just almost like conduct like a one on one meeting and just record it for the world. What do you think? Krissy Dyess (00:02:55): Okay. Rob Collie (00:02:55): Sound good? Krissy Dyess (00:02:55): Sure. Rob Collie (00:02:55): So you've been with P3 for how long now? Krissy Dyess (00:03:00): Ooh. It's interesting that you asked me that. I just realized yesterday I was outside in the yard, just taken in the nice spring weather and the angle of the sun felt familiar and I couldn't place it. Then all of a sudden I was thinking and I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is actually four years ago that I came to P3." And the angle of the sun, I remember it. I remember it so fondly, because I don't know if I ever told you this before, but I actually did not read the book before applying to P3. Rob Collie (00:03:37): I'm going to give you my false gasp before there. Krissy Dyess (00:03:42): Did I tell you this? Rob Collie (00:03:43): I don't really care. It doesn't bother me. You've kept this secret. Krissy Dyess (00:03:46): Oh my gosh. Rob Collie (00:03:48): You've kept this secret all these years because you were afraid of... No. Krissy Dyess (00:03:52): No, no, no. It wasn't that I was keeping it a secret, but everything just kind of came together so rapidly. I was in my cubicle back in the day. I had been following the blog post for a long time, 2013. I think you could go back in the data and find my actual subscriber date. Yeah. So I've been following the blog for a really long time, and one of the blog posts came across looking for full-time consultants. And I thought, "This is it." All my energy shifted and I went to the website and filled out all the information. There was a lot of information and I was like, "Whoa, whoa. I don't know about this." Krissy Dyess (00:04:29): So I filled out all the information and put my resume together. Gosh, it had been many, many years. I'd been with the previous organization for 16 and a half years. I hadn't really updated my resume. I had to get that together and sent that along. And then I entered into the interview of doom process if you will. It was quite interesting. I expected it. I expected to be quizzed and grilled a bit. As I met for the first time with Kellan, it was my first ever video interview, if you will. That was new. Rob Collie (00:05:04): Yeah. We were video interviewing before it was cool at P3. Krissy Dyess (00:05:07): You were. And to be honest, I was in my cube for 16 and a half years. Really wasn't interviewing or moving anywhere. But this was really a new thing for me. How am I going to come across in an interview using video? I guess I said all the right things. And then I was notified that I would be moving on to an interview with Rob and I was like, "Oh my gosh, because I don't really have celebrities like growing up. I never really had crushed celebrities. Not that I had a crush, but this was like this person that I had been following and even some in my previous job would say stalking. They used to joke about me like stalking because I knew everything. Rob Collie (00:05:48): You stalked me, but you didn't read my book. I just want to point that out. Krissy Dyess (00:05:51): I know. I know. Right? I'm not a great stalker. Rob Collie (00:05:55): Well, that takes a lot effort. Who wants to read the book? Thomas LaRock (00:05:58): Yeah, but did she pay for the book? That's the important thing. If she paid for the book, you don't care if she reads it? Krissy Dyess (00:06:03): Well, honestly, I didn't know about the book. I didn't know. Clearly I was stalking. I was reading the blog. I even had read the one blog post where you were looking for people to help with the Keller version and at that point in time, I was like, "I don't get it." Right? In any case, I didn't really realize the power of the book. It wasn't communicated in the ecosystem that I had fallen into. Krissy Dyess (00:06:27): So I just felt like if I'm going to be interviewing with Rob Collie, the owner of the company, I should probably read the book. I actually thought I would probably get questions about the book. So I'm like, I better read the book. So the interview process, it moved pretty quickly once I made it through the screening, once I made it through the first interview. I didn't have a whole lot of time. It was like, "You're meeting with Rob." Krissy Dyess (00:06:57): I literally was losing my mind. I was like, "Oh, I need to create an environment that conveys that I can conduct business in a remote environment." You can see me now. I'm still in the same spot. I think I had screens. I probably put plants up, tried to look super professional. I ran up to borders and I bought the book and I came in my backyard as I like to multitask, the weather was nice. It was April. Weather was nice. The sun was out and here I was laying in the sun reading through this book. Krissy Dyess (00:07:27): As I kept reading, I was like, "Oh, yeah, this is cool." I had no formal training. I was self-taught. I learned a lot. I went to a lot of user groups and talked to other people. And back then, Power BI, it wasn't even Power BI, it was Power Pivot and Excel. I just sat there and I'm reading this book and so many light bulbs went off when I compared to the self-taught method versus what I actually was reading. And I was like, "Man, this would've helped me out immensely had I only had read the book when I started my journey." But I didn't know. Krissy Dyess (00:08:04): So in any case, I read the book, we had the interview. It went great. I got the job and I joined the team in April. It was just so interesting yesterday that I remembered that feeling and just that sense and that memory just by going outside and the angle of the sun. Rob Collie (00:08:23): It's so neat the things that can trigger memories, isn't it? Krissy Dyess (00:08:26): They say smell. A lot of times they say smell. But oftentimes, for me, it actually is time of year. Even though I'm in Phoenix now where our seasons are pretty much just hot, I always feel like this is association to the surroundings, the weather. Just how you feel. For me, that's what went through my mind yesterday and I was like, "Oh, I don't know if I ever told Rob." But I did read the book and it was great. And then after I read the book and I got the job, I was like, "Oh man, I haven't been doing this stuff right at all." Rob Collie (00:09:00): Well, you still got through the interview, which is no mean feat. And you talk about the lack of formal training, right? So what? No one really has any formal training. And it's not something that matters. I'm not really a fan of this band, the Foo Fighters. I'm a real Dave Grohl fan. I like that guy. Krissy Dyess (00:09:20): I do too. Rob Collie (00:09:20): It's just a video of him explaining the origins of one of his songs, Everlong. It's just him with a guitar and he's telling the story. It's just so powerful and so touching, the whole thing. He's just so authentic and so awesome. Listen, he said, "I don't have any formal training. I can't even read music." Krissy Dyess (00:09:39): Wow. Rob Collie (00:09:39): And he's like, "So I can't explain to you in musical terms, what these notes are. In order to remember them, I had to go record them really quickly so that I wouldn't forget." He doesn't have notation and he is explaining to you like, "And by the way, I look at a guitar and I just see these strings down here are like the kick drum and these up here are kind of like the symbols and stuff." He's just completely transparent about it. Rob Collie (00:10:02): In a way, he shouldn't be here is what he's saying. But he knows he should, at the same time, there's so many interviews with him where he shares things like this and I'm not a musician. Krissy Dyess (00:10:13): It sounds like you could be. Actually, that's not true. I've heard some of your work. Rob Collie (00:10:17): You've heard some of my auto tunes singing. Krissy Dyess (00:10:21): I don't know. Some fantasy football thing. I don't know. Rob Collie (00:10:23): That's right. Including videos. Yes. Krissy Dyess (00:10:26): I was on the team, but I didn't do too well. Rob Collie (00:10:30): That's okay. That's okay. So four years ago, you made the leap, right? So what were you doing before P3? What was the nature of your job? You said you've been there for over 16 years. That had to be quite a leap. Krissy Dyess (00:10:45): It was. It's really interesting. That job that I was at for 16 and a half years, took me from my 20s, to my 30s and then into my 40s. I guess people can find out my age. I'm not trying to hide my age, but I'm in my mid forties now. The interesting part is as you journey through life, you are in a different place in your 20s and your 30s and in your 40s. Krissy Dyess (00:11:07): I started there in my mid 20s and actually, it was my first job as I relocated to Phoenix. What's really interesting was when I came to Phoenix, it was back in 2000. It makes it really easy. I've been here for 21 years now. When I first came here, I actually was exploring this idea of posting my resume online. That was new. That was really new. I had graduated college. Krissy Dyess (00:11:35): I had my first job and I had to choose, "Ooh, what color of resume paper," because there's the standard gray. There's also the yellow. Do you want to be a little more bold? No, no, no. People weren't ready for it back then. Right? Just the color of your resume paper, people were not ready for, right? So in any case, I came out here for the weather and I'm looking at interviewing, sending my resume out. So I did. Krissy Dyess (00:12:00): I sent some on some resume paper. I also faxed some of my resumes. I got the newspaper and I'm really dating myself here. Right? So I got the newspaper and I sent some faxes. I also went to the local library and I got a Yahoo account. Honestly, I got interviews from every single source. So it was like an AB kind of like test scenario, right? Like back in the day, just around getting a job. Krissy Dyess (00:12:25): The company that I ended up going with found me. They had recruiters. They found me, brought me in and I went into this building and I walked in. I was in my early 20s and there was all these people, and there was all these cubicles. I was like, "Wow, look at all the coders. This is amazing." Later, I found out it actually was a sales organization and the people were making calls and doing sales. They weren't coders and doing programming. Rob Collie (00:12:52): But it looks like programming. Right? When people come to visit us at Microsoft, it was like, there was never anything interesting to show them. If you had family in town like, "What are you going to show?" There's no assembly line, nothing. It was just like, we just go walk down long hallway of doors where some of the rooms had nerds in them, some rooms didn't. There wasn't a whole lot going on. Krissy Dyess (00:13:17): I mean, for me in my early to mid 20s, just coming out of college, having just one real job, I think really at that point in time, my impression, my perception was that, "Wow, these are all coders." I found out later, "No, that was at the case." And the thing that brought them in was FoxPro. Visual FoxPro was on my resume. It was a keyword that got picked up. I actually came into an analytics, strategic analytics department. Krissy Dyess (00:13:47): At the time, the organization had been founded. It was a startup business way before my day. The owners had started it out of their basement in fact. We were doing outbound sales for IBM, HP, Toshiba. That was the core business. We were doing analytics in that group around customer retention. Krissy Dyess (00:14:11): At that time, we were acquisition, penetration like all the buzzwords, right? That's essentially what the role was. We were churning through data that at the time was in Oracle and there was processes in with that department that would extract the data and we would use FoxPro. It was part of it. We would go in and we would extract the data. We built our own databases of data. And then we would build out these reports, speaking to those different key metrics, if you will, at the time. Krissy Dyess (00:14:43): We would create these reports every month. Every month we'd have these reports on how the business is doing and then we would layer in recommendations and strategies around how to improve key said metrics. It was really interesting because there was no SQL server then. This was random data, black and white screens. We had this analytical department that was doing this whole FoxPro. Krissy Dyess (00:15:08): I mean, we were like a little mini IT for, or what we were doing, like bringing in the data, creating the structure, building the reports. If you could imagine, it was extremely time consuming, extremely time consuming. After you kind of get in and you get your wings and you do that over and over again for many months, you're like, "Man, how can we do this better?" Krissy Dyess (00:15:29): Then also at the same time, we had another department in the organization that was building things in access. Their databases in access. And guess what, their numbers in access were different than our numbers in analytics. Right? Like surprise, surprise. Rob Collie (00:15:44): Of course, yeah. Krissy Dyess (00:15:46): But they were on the reporting side and they were exploring intranets and putting the information out there for the sales side of the business. So they were pulling in data, putting it into the access, churning it out through the intranets. Cold fusion was popular back in the day. Again, I'm dating myself here. Rob Collie (00:16:05): You keep saying that, but we all know that I'm older than you, barely. Krissy Dyess (00:16:09): A tiny bit. Rob Collie (00:16:10): That's right. You're a youngin. Krissy Dyess (00:16:12): This is true. This is true. Age is how you feel. Right? Most of the time I feel pretty much like I'm still in my mid-20s. Rob Collie (00:16:20): Yeah, me too. Just that my body doesn't work the way it used to. Krissy Dyess (00:16:22): You know what though, it comes across. These body builders that start when they're 65. Women too. Maybe it's coming up on my feed and everything. It's possible, Rob is all I'm saying. Rob Collie (00:16:34): There's a Mr. Olympia title in my future. Krissy Dyess (00:16:38): It is possible. It is possible. Rob Collie (00:16:40): Through the power of hard work and drugs. Maybe a lot of drugs and then diet. Oh, no. Krissy Dyess (00:16:50): Yes. There's definitely a diet. You definitely got to have an extreme died there. In any case, the state of the union at the time that I entered into this organization, I think was probably... We were advanced, I think. Rob Collie (00:17:02): Yeah. I mean, 2000, right? This company was doing analytics, doing BI- Krissy Dyess (00:17:05): We were. Rob Collie (00:17:07): ... in the year 2000, which by the way, is before I'd even heard the term. In the year 2000. I Was probably four years out of being introduced to this whole domain, really. I mean, I was using Excel at Microsoft at that time, but I didn't cross paths with BI and corporate analytics until probably 2004, 2005. Krissy Dyess (00:17:26): That's interesting. Yeah. I mean, there definitely was Excel. Excel was a part of the equation. There was outputs generated from FoxPro into Excel and then we would take that output. We would create charts. We'd create visuals. We'd prepare them into this analytics that we'd present. Ooh, even then, back then we would print it out. We would actually print these documents out. I'm talking hundreds of pages of analytical reports that I don't know. We would put them in the mail and then we would send them to the clients. Krissy Dyess (00:17:58): I don't know. They would read through them and then we'd have these meetings and we'd decide on such and such things, and the whole process would happen every single month. For us, like back then, this was new stuff. It was exciting. It wasn't too much longer after that. Maybe about two or three years that SQL as database storage solution entered the equation and the birth, if you will, of an IT team in the organization to streamline the data. Krissy Dyess (00:18:27): One version of the truth, if you will, in a SQL warehouse. And we went down that path. At the time, we did have very similar types of data coming in. We had sales data. We had call data. And it was very easy for the IT org... I say easy, like I wasn't doing it, but it was very easy for the IT team to create data warehouses with the customer table, the invoice table, all these things and replicate and populate with the data that we could use for sales reporting. We could use for analytics. That was that next evolution. Krissy Dyess (00:19:04): It was really the first time I went down... Well, not exactly the first time, but it was one of the first times that I went down this self-learning path. And coming into the SQL environment, database team, IT putting data out there, figuring out how do we do what we were doing in Visual FoxPro and Excel. But now over in the SQL environment. And it was slow. It was slow. Krissy Dyess (00:19:27): We went through basic queries like self-taught. There was no preparing the team, but there was a deadline of, "You all need to move things over and make everything work and get the same numbers and using that environment." That was one of the things that stuck in my head. Like you said, talking about self-taught versus just figuring it out. Honestly, what I've learned is that you can learn and be more productive faster with a little bit of guidance, a little bit of core training and guidance. Rob Collie (00:20:04): The right kind of training. Your experience reading the book that you talked about, It's actually the same as me. I would often remark to myself, I would've loved to have had this book that I'm writing when I was learning to write it. Krissy Dyess (00:20:14): It's true. But who does that? Who reads a technology book? Because here's the other thing. My experience was, and even with SQL, I got a SQL book and I read it and I was like, " It doesn't make sense." Until I got my hands in there and started doing things and seeing things and then piecing it together, then it makes sense. In my mind too, who reads a book on technology and gets it? There are people that are due, because everybody has a different way of learning. But I clearly cannot read a technical book and make everything click. Krissy Dyess (00:20:48): I need to get my hands in there. I need to touch it. I need to feel it. I need to, again, see that holistic picture. Not that I'm going to create store procedures and create views, but not just the drip method like learning, "Oh, this would be the better way to do these things." And actually prior even to coming to that organization, I learned Visual FoxPro hands on, self-taught, no Google. Rob Collie (00:21:14): Oh, no Google. Krissy Dyess (00:21:17): No Google. Yeah. You saw I pause there. Rob Collie (00:21:18): Yeah. Krissy Dyess (00:21:21): Just pause. Minds are blowing right now all over the place, right? Rob Collie (00:21:25): Oh my God. Krissy Dyess (00:21:26): Oh my God. What do you mean no Google? What is that? That was hard. Thomas LaRock (00:21:35): Did you just use [inaudible 00:21:37] instead? Krissy Dyess (00:21:37): Oh, I could have. Actually, I had a coworker that was from Nepal and he thought it was super funny to just let me get a little bit frustrated before he would kind of help me out. And that's usually what happened. But again, that was that self-learning experience. Not ideal. SQL, self-learning, not ideal. Honestly, when Power Pivot was introduced to me, it happened back in the year 2013 as our organization updated to Excel 2010, which was very advanced and very modern, and I was very thankful that I was in an organization that always looked for the newer technologies and gave us the opportunity to use the tools. Krissy Dyess (00:22:19): That is when I found out about this Power Pivot, and I started the Googling. At the time, the Googling there wasn't a lot of information out there. When I came across the Power Pivot Pro blog site as it was back in 2013, I started reading it. I started doing things. I didn't really put any of the connections together. Really in the early six months even to a year, I didn't really put the connection together. But I sat quietly in the cubicle and I was stalking like I'm a bad stalker. Krissy Dyess (00:22:55): Here's what I was watching. What I was watching was the blog posts. They went from once a month, twice a month. They started to grow. There was more of them. It was interesting to me. I still didn't really know the bigger picture, but I was pulling on little nuggets that was just enough for me in my current role, still using the SQL environment that kicked off back in my early 20s and then still using that SQL environment, competing with the analysts who are using a lot of heavy Excel. I'm competing back and forth. Krissy Dyess (00:23:28): I was always like, "SQL is better. Let me make your life better." But I ran into those same pitfalls of now I was in this process of writing queries and tweaking queries, and giving it to them and seeing what they were doing, and that whole back and forth thing that it was. Krissy Dyess (00:23:45): I slowly started watching the blogs and listening and paying attention more and realizing that there was other people out there in the universe that was experiencing something similar so much so that they created a blog. There was others. There were other are people in this space, but honestly, I honed in very quickly. I keep going back and forth because then it was Power Pivot Pro. Now, we're P3 Adaptive. But that was the place. That was the one place. Krissy Dyess (00:24:16): In the early days, when that light bulb went off, I reached out. I sent an email directly to Rob and I was like, "Hey, do you train?" I didn't know. I don't know if you remember that. It was a long, long time ago. I know you get a lot of emails, but I remember it because you emailed me back. I was very surprised that somebody out there in the worldwide web universe actually responded to me, right? Rob Collie (00:24:39): On the other side of the Google. Krissy Dyess (00:24:40): Yeah, right? To me, like this was like a whole new territory. People out there. And do I even want to be out there in the social and expose information, because there's all that stuff that comes with it too. But you responded and you quickly passed me over to Jocelyn. And Jocelyn sent me all the details and I exchanged some of the information with her. Ultimately, our organization didn't buy into any training as far as I know. I don't believe they still even to this day. I have tried. Rob Collie (00:25:10): Well, we showed them, didn't we? Krissy Dyess (00:25:12): Well, I try. I reach out because I still have analysts. I have analysts now. Honest to God, I kid you not, it wasn't even a couple months that I left and I came to Power Pivot Pro that the organization is like, "Hey, what is this Power BI?" I literally like gasped. I was like, "Because it was in Excel, what I was doing. I was using Excel. I was using the SharePoint Power Pivot gallery for Excel for a while, while it was compliant. Then of course there was some changes. Then I was using the one drive for distribution. It was a really awkward time. But you make it work. As soon as they saw this in this new container, they were like, "What is this Power BI?" Rob Collie (00:25:57): There's a theme I want to Zoom in on here, and it's a common theme for us, I think. Maybe we've never talked about it in this particular way. So there's two different kinds of learning, at least. Let's talk about two in particular. Especially in the tech space, there's a type of learning that is sort of conducted in the abstract. And it's only a certain kind of person that's interested in or can do it this way. And spoil alert, it's not me. Rob Collie (00:26:21): That's also not you, from what I know of you and from what you've been saying. In a way, it's almost like tech for tech's sake, this kind of learning, but you get really into the abstract concepts. So for example, if you approach decks and the first thing that you gravitate to are these concepts like filter context and row context. If those really speak to you, then you're this abstract kind. Rob Collie (00:26:46): Then there's the more hands on practical, what's sort of the benefit in my day to day life kind of learning. It's not really one of them is better than the other. They're just different. When you talk about the technical books, most technical books are written for that first kind of learner that abstract kind of learner. But there are so many of us out in the world that are more the hands on practical kind of learners. Rob Collie (00:27:09): The books just generally speaking aren't written for us, and there's more of us. But who writes the technical books? Typically, the people who are good at the tech, right? So they learn that way and that's the way that they think everybody wants to learn. So the hands on practical learners like first of all we have to stumble into a benefit. We can't go too long learning something new without there being any benefit. Krissy Dyess (00:27:29): That's true. Rob Collie (00:27:30): Because then we'll give up. Right? If something doesn't have some sort of even modest payoff for us, like in the first couple of weeks of screwing around with it, we're going to lose interest. And you're talking about sort of like missing the bigger picture. Of course, that's what the hands on practical learners are going to do. Right? We're going to assemble all these little islands of benefit. We learn this trick. We learn that trick. Rob Collie (00:27:54): We're not putting together necessarily in the early days like the whole framework of how this thing works and the whole framework of how it's going to be different from other tools. It's just that we know that that one benefit we got. We weren't going to get that from another tool. That was magic. And slowly these islands, you start to build the bridges between them. One day like, "Ah, now I have this archipelago." And I'm starting to see the framework. I had to travel that exact road to get to the point where I could some number of years later write a book. Krissy Dyess (00:28:24): Sure. Rob Collie (00:28:26): And almost had to derive the concepts of filter and row context back out into English, and then later on I go, "Oh, that's what you call that." Krissy Dyess (00:28:35): Right. Rob Collie (00:28:37): It goes back to the Dave Grohl example as well. There's no questioning that he's a fantastically successful and creative musician. How did he learn play guitar when switching from the drums? He just started thinking of it like a drum set and screwing around with it. He's come up with some very iconic sounding guitar riffs. Krissy Dyess (00:28:55): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:28:55): They're unquestionably interesting. I think there's sort of like an inherent self-judgment that a lot of those practical hands on learning types tend to inflict on themselves because they know they're not the other kind. We know we're not that other kind. We know that we're not that abstract learner. Krissy Dyess (00:29:13): That's true. Rob Collie (00:29:14): And we read the books, we see the books that are written for those people. We're like, "Oh, it's very invalidating." Krissy Dyess (00:29:19): Yes. Rob Collie (00:29:20): Right? Krissy Dyess (00:29:20): Yes. Rob Collie (00:29:21): To experience technical content that for some reason doesn't speak to you. You're like, "What's wrong with me?" Krissy Dyess (00:29:25): It's true. I never even actually thought about it. I kind of have the idea of everybody learns differently. That's a message that we share in all of our trainings. I definitely appreciate, and I recognize, but I never really thought about it or heard it interpreted the way that you're speaking about it now. I do feel that sense of like, "I want to learn that way." The people that can learn that way I feel like, "Gosh," because there's so much information out there. If you could just go in and grab it and digest it, that's amazing. You could do so much. But because I do have more of that hands on applied, I need to do it wrong three times, then it's going to stick forever. Rob Collie (00:30:04): Yeah. Krissy Dyess (00:30:04): Right? Rob Collie (00:30:04): Yeah. Krissy Dyess (00:30:05): I think that also helps me to be a really good trainer is that I've done it wrong three times, and I know how you're going to do it wrong three times. I can honestly understand that perspective and the other kind, they're just amazing. They're just amazing people, and I'm not that kind. But what it doesn't mean that you can't be amazing, no matter what kind you are. Rob Collie (00:30:30): That's right. If you're one of the technical abstract types, one of the common weaknesses for them, it's not universal, but a common weakness for the technical abstract types is that they're not grounded enough in sort of the human reality in which the problems are trying to be solved. They still kind of want the tech to be the star. If you're going to be successful in modern BI, modern analytics, I really do think you need to be one of these tweeners. You need to be very firmly rooted in the human element. You can at least say that for the practical hands on route, that you're going to be grounded in the human reality. Krissy Dyess (00:31:06): That's true. That's definitely true. Honestly too, when I was back in the early days for me being that hands on learner and for not a lot of content out there, the blogs that were out there was that little bit of inspiration that kept me going to keep learning and overcome those challenges because I truly believe that I was exposed to this other universe out there. I didn't know who the people were, but I was stalking everybody and learning as much as possible. Krissy Dyess (00:31:35): And honestly, that little bit was enough to help me to keep going, even though I didn't understand the technical terms, the filter and all the different like language that later I found out was right there in the book. Even though I was having these challenges, not really understanding it, I knew what I was doing was better. I knew that I wanted to understand it more. And really the internet at the time in the blog post was where I got a lot of information to help that drive if you will. Krissy Dyess (00:32:08): It can be extremely daunting to learn a new technology, not see those immediate wins and experience that frustration just to do something super simple. It does. It takes you those couple times to drive what is the right way? And that's really where I feel like the book is very great, but our two-day training, if I could have had that in the early days, I would've done far more. Just no doubt, no doubt. Krissy Dyess (00:32:36): And again, that just goes back to this idea of even right now in the ecosystem, it is very different. There's almost too much information out there for people that are uncovering these tools. They go out and they do the website searches and even you start those self-guided. I run into it all the time. You start down these self-learning paths and great, but there is something about that human connection from the people that have learned these from the early days, digesting, bringing everything down to you in a rapid delivery that I think really resonates with our students. Thomas LaRock (00:33:14): So you two have danced around a concept without actually saying, so I'm going to say it for you. I'm sure you're aware that there's a whole science and field dedicated to education. Right? Rob Collie (00:33:26): Well, get out. Krissy Dyess (00:33:28): Wow. Mind blown. Thomas LaRock (00:33:30): People are in their doctorate in this stuff, right? And there's actually a love research on adult education and how you learn as an adult as opposed to a child. But there's a fabulous book out there called Telling Ain't Training. And the idea is you can't stand in front of a room, deliver a lecture from slides or whatever or have somebody just read a book and think that they are now trained in whatever aspect it is. Thomas LaRock (00:33:59): I've been skewered for saying this publicly, but if you're not putting your hands on something, you're not doing training. Pure and simple. You're delivering a lecture. That's fine. You're delivering a lecture, but you're not training somebody. If I tell somebody, this is how you read an execution plan, I've given the lecture. But until they have to start doing that themself and put their hands on the product, then that's when the real training begins. Thomas LaRock (00:34:26): You two have talked about this without actually saying those three words, and I always like to emphasize that. When people say, "Hey, come to my training event." I'm like, "Oh, they'll be hands on labs?" "Well, no. It's just me standing in front of a room. You're not training me. You're giving me information that I can then take and do my own self training. But what I want is if I'm going to a P3 Adaptive training seminar, I'm opening that laptop. I'm going to have Power BI in front of me and I'm going to be putting my hands on all the nerd knobs that I need to know in order to be effective when I go back to my employer." Rob Collie (00:35:04): Indeed. Indeed, you will. I think if we could adjust the title of that book, it wouldn't be as pithy. But we could give it a subtitle, Telling Ain't Training, and then parentheses for most people. Thomas LaRock (00:35:17): You know what? I'm going to go see if there's a subtitle. Hold on. Rob Collie (00:35:21): Here's the thing. I think if that were true for 100% of the world, we wouldn't have that kind of training at all. The problem is that there is this small single digit percentage of the population that actually does like to learn that way. They'd love to learn in the abstract. That's what they live for. Now, it's not most of us. Thomas LaRock (00:35:42): I didn't say you couldn't learn that way. We're talking about training. Rob Collie (00:35:45): We're not disagreeing. What I'm saying is, is that whether or not that class is judged as a success, if it's a very telling oriented, here are the concepts. Just laying them down like you would like in a math class in college, right, there is going to be some like one out of 20, five percentage group that's going to walk out of that training and would honestly have been greatly improved by it. Rob Collie (00:36:08): It's just the other 95% that are just feeling inadequate and they didn't really get anything out of it, but they're blaming themselves for it, because there is this other or 5% that you can see. They tend to be very visible. I completely agree. It's just that we have to acknowledge that there is a small slice of humanity for which that stuff does work, and which is what keeps this whole kind of racket going, is this 5% preaching back to themselves. Thomas LaRock (00:36:35): Yeah. This is where the doctorates kick in, and they have their philosophical discussions about the learning part. Rob Collie (00:36:42): That's right. That's right. And then those doctorates, what do they do? They all go back and teach third grade. No, they don't. They stay in the ivory tower. We stay away from those front lines, whatever you do. Thomas LaRock (00:36:53): But I mean, one example I always have used in the past, I should say is like in the army. They train you to use a weapon and they do that with a lot of PowerPoint and things. But you don't go into battle until you've actually fired that weapon. You don't sit there abstractly think, "Oh, I know how this gun is supposed to work. This isn't like a movie." You're actually going to put the weapon in some of these hands so they can feel it and understand what they were given as a lecture or whatever format, right? Krissy Dyess (00:37:26): Yeah, that's definitely true. And I think that is one of the thing that differentiates our training. We give you that experience, right? It is hands on. Not a lot of slides is the expectation that we always give at the beginning. Right? So you're immediately hands in. You're immediately working through like a real life solution. Now, you're in a training environment so that we can tee up all the things we want to teach you, and then we layer in a workshop following the training that allows you to apply what you just learned on training data to your real data. Krissy Dyess (00:37:58): That's always the next play, right? Just because you've attended a training, you've had some hands on. Making that translation of how does it work with what I'm dealing with, that's another part of the learning process with Power BI. And I think even too, if you're learning style is one way or the other, what really people need to take away is you're getting the ingredients, if you will. Krissy Dyess (00:38:22): We're giving you all the foundational ingredients, but when you go back to create or build your solution, you're going to need to create your own recipe from those ingredients. That can be a difficult concept for people wanting to learn new technology because they want to step by step. So again, by setting that expectation that these are the core things that you really need to walk away with, it sets them up for success through those workshops, the hands on aspects of it. Rob Collie (00:38:54): I like that approach. Krissy Dyess (00:38:55): Yeah, me too. That's why I love training. I get so excited. When I came on board, I got to do training, got to do consulting. It's amazing. It's been an amazing opportunity. Every single training engagement, every single student has taught me something along the way to become a better trainer. Recently, I've been doing... Once a month usually, we do these modern Excel analysts in a day workshops. They're free. We have one this month in April. We also have one in May. It's really interesting because we just kicked off this new training in December. It started in December of 2020. Krissy Dyess (00:39:30): And the feedback that I've been getting is really reinforcing the hands on learning pieces of that workshop. So people want more time. When we put the agenda together, we laid out the content, the information layered in with the hands on learning. Really have gotten a lot of feedback of, "Hey, instead of 30 minutes, can we have more 40, 50 minutes to work through this?" Krissy Dyess (00:39:59): So that's been a key takeaway that I'm bringing into each additional workshop is giving more time. Giving them more time because there's a true benefit from that experience and being able to ask questions and kind of get the... What is the overall? What is the end game? What is the overall? Let me get my hands in there. Let me try some of the button clicks. So it's been great. Thomas LaRock (00:40:21): Krissy, what's your title at P3? The official title? Krissy Dyess (00:40:24): Ooh. My official title is director of client services. Thomas LaRock (00:40:28): Okay. So after everything you've been talking about here, I've been listening and fascinated for a while, I've realized is, Rob, just make her your principal advocate, because she's a wonderful evangelist for everything you do there at P3 Adaptive. Krissy Dyess (00:40:43): I don't remember the email exchange that Krissy talked about back in the day when she still worked for the other company of inquiring about training. But I do remember the time that I met her in person, which is about four years ago. Krissy Dyess (00:40:56): Yes, it's true. You were in Phoenix. Are you talking about in person, in person? Rob Collie (00:40:59): Yeah. In person. Real in person. Krissy Dyess (00:41:02): Yeah. And then here's the, "Oh, Krissy, can you find a place for us to meet?" "Oh yeah, I got it. Let's do a Starbucks." I don't go to Starbucks. I don't drink coffee. This is a big deal. I haven't made a decision and we have this opportunity to meet by coincidence of the universe. Rob calls me and he is like, "So I'm at this Starbucks. It's in a grocery store." Rob Collie (00:41:26): I'd forgotten that one. Krissy Dyess (00:41:27): Do you remember that? Oh, gosh. Rob Collie (00:41:28): I've totally forgotten that part. Krissy Dyess (00:41:29): There were red flags all over the place Rob Collie (00:41:31): You're just like, "Oh my gosh. I hadn't read the book." That would've been okay. But doesn't know her way around coffee? I don't know. Krissy Dyess (00:41:38): And then to make it even more awkward, I don't even know if you remember, but we get to the right Starbucks. So there's another one right across the street. Right? Rob shows up in this fancy car. It even matched the green. And I was like, "Oh my god. Meeting with Rob at the wrong Starbucks, at the right Starbucks. Here I come in my broken down Rav. It's got dents and everything." And he pulls in, in this fancy car. It was a rental. Rob Collie (00:42:03): It was a rental. Yeah. Krissy Dyess (00:42:04): I didn't know. Thomas LaRock (00:42:05): Yeah, of course it was. Krissy Dyess (00:42:08): So we go into the Starbucks and he says like, "What do you want?" And I'm like, "Absolutely nothing." And then I was like, "Oh, well, this is weird. I should probably at least get a water. I don't know. Or tea. I have no idea." I don't go to Starbucks. I joke across the team. I'm not a fancy girl. I really am not a fancy girl. I'm like so not fancy that being at Starbucks was like weird for me. I'm like, oh, but I guess this is what techy people do. Rob Collie (00:42:33): Nothing fancier than a Starbucks, right? Teenagers in there in their pajamas and their slippers. Krissy Dyess (00:42:39): You're talking about somebody that had been in the cubicle environment for 16 and a half years. My team, they were excited for me. They could tell how excited I was. Nobody knew like, "Is Krissy going to be able to make it in the outside world?" Rob Collie (00:42:56): Outside the wire? Do you know what's out there? Thomas LaRock (00:43:00): There's Starbucks out there. Rob Collie (00:43:04): There's Starbucks out there. Krissy Dyess (00:43:04): There's Starbucks. Thomas LaRock (00:43:04): What's she going to do? Rob Collie (00:43:06): She doesn't even know venti from grande. Krissy Dyess (00:43:10): I don't. Thomas LaRock (00:43:11): It's like two different languages. Rob Collie (00:43:13): She's going to go in. She's going to order a small. You just know it. It's going to be a disaster. Krissy Dyess (00:43:19): This is true. This is true. But you know what? There was so many things like in the early days that I'll tell you, if I hadn't had the passion and had the opportunity that I cherished, I really did. It's the weirdest thing. I've never been a kid that's like, I am laser focused that one day I want to be X. I have never had that experience in my life. I've been raised on the, go to school, get good grades, go to college. That was the generation. Get a degree, find a job, and have a happy life. Krissy Dyess (00:43:50): I was never like laser focused on the company or the job, and just kind of fell into things along the way that I think really prepared me as best as possible for when this opportunity came. And it was exciting for me. It's still exciting for me. And that energy really is what got me through all the early day challenges because it wasn't easy. It still isn't easy what we do. The technology is moving so quickly. There's a lot to learn. No matter what kind of learner you are, you're still going to hit challenges and you need to be a problem solver, you need to be able to figure it out. You don't need to know everything. Krissy Dyess (00:44:30): I did learn that over time here. I remember when I first joined, it was very clear that there was a lot that I didn't know. But what became more clear as I delivered trainings is it was probably about the 80/20 rule. I mean, I knew probably 80% of what people were asking, but then there was always these little nuggets, that people would ask you along the way. I know you experienced this too, Rob, because that's a lot of probably the blogs. Rob Collie (00:44:56): Yeah. That's what the blog was being asked questions. I'd never encountered before. Krissy Dyess (00:45:00): Right. And because we're curious and we want to problem solve and we want to help people. I know I'm really grounded into wanting to help people. So it gives you those cha that in that cubicle environment, I really wasn't exposed to, and wasn't able to really thrive in the way that I've seen myself here in the last four years. It's just been such an incredible journey that I had no idea how incredibly life changing, all these choices that I made and all the opportunities that follow would provide for me. It's been amazing. I mean, don't get me wrong. There's the days where I'm like, "Ugh, team meeting. Get the slides together." Rob Collie (00:45:40): Those slides were on point yesterday. Krissy Dyess (00:45:42): Really, really? Rob Collie (00:45:43): Yeah. Krissy Dyess (00:45:43): Okay. I got a lot of feedback. Rob Collie (00:45:45): The PowerPoint arms race between you and Evan is taking us to new highs. Krissy Dyess (00:45:50): Ooh, it's a tough battle. Rob Collie (00:45:52): I'm starting to see it as a collaboration too. Krissy Dyess (00:45:54): It is. Rob Collie (00:45:54): That's where we become our best, right? Krissy Dyess (00:45:56): Oh, yeah. It is. I mean, just in the leadership role, that's been different too. Right? So I came in learning the training and consulting and then moved into the leadership role. There's been a lot of learning along the way. I anticipate I'm going to continue to learn more. It's really exciting. So advocates, spokes, whatever. I don't know, Tom, if you had a name for it. Thomas LaRock (00:46:18): Yeah. An advocate, an evangelist. Krissy Dyess (00:46:20): Evangelist. Thomas LaRock (00:46:21): You'd be a natural if there was ever a role like that at P3 Adaptive because you certainly communicate not just what you do, but you communicate the emotion that goes with it of how just a general positivity, the impact this has had. And Rob has talked about this as well. This is life changing for a lot of people. You were stuck in a cube for 16 years. Krissy Dyess (00:46:42): I wasn't stuck. I chose to be there. Thomas LaRock (00:46:46): But you were in a cube for 16 years and you wanted to get out. You wanted to get, as Rob said on the other side of the wire. And the thing that was there for you was Rob and Power BI, but data analysis in general. I just think that there's a lot more people like us out there that just need to hear that story being shared and knowing what's possible. Allington, he was working for Coke and he's like, "Wait? I could do Excel for a job?" Krissy Dyess (00:47:17): That's interesting that you hit on this. I had no idea before being on the pod, if like there was any kind of script or anything like that. Clearly there's not. But it's interesting because I had a script because I like to be prepared. It is interesting that you brought that up just organically because honestly, sitting in the cubicle world, the life changing moment, like a key life changing moment for me was that blog that went out with Matt's picture. Here's a man working at Coca-Cola, very important, lots of years experience changing his career. That was the signal that I picked up on, and at that point I started this idea in my mind that this was going to become a company, and that one day I wanted to be a part of it. Krissy Dyess (00:48:09): That's where this dream, if you will, of something that I wanted to do really came into my energy and my life. And I would. I would go into work and I would just do the things. I'd do them a little bit better, keep learning everything. I would come home and I would sit down on my couch, on my cell phone, because now I'm getting more advanced technologically. I would read things and keep learning. And it really started that blog post. In fact, when I joined P3, I joined in April, I think it was June, we all got together up at Seattle for the... Rob Collie (00:48:44): Oh, right. Yeah, the summit. Krissy Dyess (00:48:45): The summit. I got to meet everybody on the team that was here face to face. And we all got together in the evening. Ken Puls was there and Matt Allington was there and there was all these other people that, again, like I thought, "Who are these people? How would I ever have any contact?" And for me, even that moment was just amazing because just that story... I didn't know Matt. I didn't really know anything. That was enough for me to shift my energy, to keep going. There's been many people along the way, just in very small, they don't even know that have contributed, and I do look at every time I go to a training or anytime I do have an interaction with anyone that, "You know what, I don't know what I might say or what I might do, but if I could spark or trigger something in somebody else that would just be ultimately amazing and very rewarding. Rob Collie (00:49:43): Something I want to press the bold button on here is the thing that Tom was saying. We've been talking about this from the perspective of a lot of our conversations, like what makes good training? And by the way, Tom, at that Starbucks meeting, when we eventually got it together, and got our orders or whatever it was, at the end of it, I looked at Krissy and I said, "You are going to change lives." Krissy Dyess (00:50:06): You did. You signed my book and I went, "Oh my God, somebody said I'm going to change lives. This person is crazy." Rob Collie (00:50:14): Then I went and I got in my fancy rental car and I drove off into the desert. Krissy Dyess (00:50:17): It's true. Here's the thing it's so ironic is because I've been following the blog and stalking Rob. Not really. There's so many elements in those posts that were life that I related to in the movie themes. It's like something out of a movie. It literally that day felt like something out of a movie and that was the ultimate decision where I was like, "Okay, yep." In fact, my mom back then, she was like... I was telling her and I was so excited and she's like, "Who is this company? Do they have a physical office? I don't know that this is something you should do." I thank my mom for looking out for me, but of course then I went against her. I said, "I don't know. They don't have a building." Rob Collie (00:51:02): What we're going to do is we're going to go get like six bricks and some mortar and just squish them all together into a cube and say, "Yeah, we're a brick and mortar business." Krissy Dyess (00:51:11): Well, my mom's okay now. And everybody is okay. It's been amazing. I couldn't have written this story. It just organically came together. Rob Collie (00:51:19): Where we were living at that time, there was this old, like antique abandoned, 7-Eleven down the street that had some really old 7-Eleven logo from the 30s or something. It had been available and we were always thinking like, "Oh, maybe we should try to snag that and turn it into the data store or something like that." There's never really been a need for a physical office it turns out. But instead, Elon Musk's brother turned it into a restaurant. Krissy Dyess (00:51:47): Oh, wow. Rob Collie (00:51:49): Which is already closed. COVID took care of it. It wasn't particularly good either. Krissy Dyess (00:51:52): Okay. Rob Collie (00:51:55): Those bastards, they stole our data store from us, the location. Anyway, back to what I really wanted to say, which was that the number one thing that I would want people listening to this to take away is that for most of us, this is what legitimacy sounds like. Krissy Dyess (00:52:13): Or some people say crazy. Rob Collie (00:52:15): Yeah. Well, okay, if that's true, then you've also come to the right place. Krissy Dyess (00:52:21): I think what it is like I get so excited and there's so many twists and turns. That is one of the things that I've been working on in the leadership role is you got to be clear and concise. So that's why I kind of joke there at the beginning. I definitely have so much excitement and passion over the work that we're doing, the organization that we've created. It's really easy. There's just been so many life experiences that I've been able to have the opportunity. I even remember too, going to my first training on an airplane by myself, sitting there and I would do this. Krissy Dyess (00:52:55): I still do this to this day, and that's why my book is all beat up. Literally, when I would go to a training, I would go through the book to refresh that perspective of what it is for a new learner. Rob Collie (00:53:06): To be new. Yeah. Krissy Dyess (00:53:07): To be new. And every single time I deliver a training event that's our curriculum, I do have that experience, and you have time on an airplane, right? I'm not a fancy girl, so I pull out the book. Rob Collie (00:53:21): Airplanes. Krissy Dyess (00:53:22): Airplanes. Rob Collie (00:53:24): I heard they might be making a comeback one of these days. Thomas LaRock (00:53:26): Magical. Krissy Dyess (00:53:28): I didn't sign up to travel. It said remote consultant. So my biggest worry was not having a human contact. I was used to going into the office. Anything that you come across in life, you can look at it, however you want it be. And if you're going to look at it in a negative light, that's what you're going to see, and that's what you're going to experience. I truly do believe that the energy, no matter what you're dealing with, what you're doing, whether it's data or anything, the energy that you put out and the light that you see it is going to drive that experience for you. Krissy Dyess (00:54:05): I find myself drawing upon that principle a lot, because life isn't easy and data and technology isn't easy, but if you make it fun and you can, it's more enjoyable and usually leads to a positive outcome. Rob Collie (00:54:20): Solving problems, and making improvements is fun. That's where a lot of the fun comes from. Krissy Dyess (00:54:26): But not when it's not working and you need it done now. That isn't fun. Rob Collie (00:54:31): That does get frustrating. Right? And the technical literature isn't helpful. Krissy Dyess (00:54:37): That's right. That's right. Rob Collie (00:54:37): The all function is being described as a table function and you're like what... Krissy Dyess (00:54:43): What? What does that mean to me? Rob Collie (00:54:45): WTF does table function... It's the remove filters function. Okay. Move on. Krissy Dyess (00:54:48): Yes. Rob Collie (00:54:49): I just want to make sure that we really hit this right on the head, which is, it's so easy to doubt yourself coming up through anything that's even semi-technical and certainly Power BI is technical. It's so easy to doubt yourself because of the existence of that 5% that both learn and teach in the abstract. And it's so obvious to you that you're not that. This is true for me too. Right? Despite my computer science degree and having worked at Microsoft, I was kind of miscast. I was not one of the abstract ones really. I thought I was, but I learned the hard way that I wasn't. Rob Collie (00:55:23): So for people who are listening and who have been walking sort of a similar path, so I want those people to know that every bit is legitimate of a path. It's not even just that that path is okay or acceptable. It's actually great. It's no better or worse than the technical path. The technical path, isn't a guarantee of success. And in fact, again, like the mindset that draws you to that technical path very often distracts you from what's truly valuable. Distracts you and insulates you from the human world where you can actually have an impact. Rob Collie (00:55:54): So you've got something to overcome coming out of that world. Tom asked you what your title is. You're one of our directors. You're a leader at our company. And deservedly so. Imagine, and if along the way that other voice in your head had been just a little bit louder, the one that was saying. "Nah, I'm just kind of faking it." Right? If that voice had been too loud, life takes a different turn. I'm really grateful that that voice wasn't that loud. Krissy Dyess (00:56:25): Yeah, I'm grateful as well. Rob Collie (00:56:26): Everyone's got that voice. Everyone in the 95% that learns via the hands on practical way has that voice to varying strengths. Right now there's people out there that are going to be listening to this, that whether consciously or unconsciously, they're wrestling with exactly this, to put the cherry on this sundae like I sincerely believe that we are the best power BI consulting firm in the world. I believe that. Krissy Dyess (00:56:50): Oh, yeah. I agree as well. Rob Collie (00:56:52): You're one of our leaders and this is your story. So people out there are listening and this story sounds familiar to them. Here's the terrible news is that your glass ceiling, which your limits are as a professional, are you can be one of the leaders at the best firm in the world. That's going to be your high watermark. I'm sorry. Krissy Dyess (00:57:12): Yeah, for sure. I think a lot of us have those voices in our head. Not to say that there weren't challenges. Right? So you still have to want to overcome those challenges. Rob Collie (00:57:22): If that's your background, that's where you're coming from. I want you to know that you can be legitimately a leader in this space like Krissy, like you are. You're a leader at- Krissy Dyess (00:57:32): That's right. Rob Collie (00:57:32): If not the best firm in the world, certainly one of the handful. And you're crucial to us. Again, imagine if you had derailed yourself. You doubted yourself, which is natural to do. I'm really grateful that you didn't. Krissy Dyess (00:57:46): Well, thank you. And I'm grateful that I didn't either, because it has been an amazing opportunity. One of the things that I do appreciate in this leadership role, in this company that we're creating is not only are we a new type of consulting firm. Even our leadership it's so night and day, just so night and day. We are encouraged to bring ideas, be our true authentic self. Having that ability to be able to connect and share in a safe environment, I think has allowed us to put ideas out there, try them. Krissy Dyess (00:58:24): If they're working well, fantastic. If we need to modify them, we can change them. And we quickly do that. We just operate very differently than what I've experienced in traditional environments and with traditional leadership roles. I do think that truly makes us a different organization. I get so excited too, as we start to grow. So now we're growing the team. what is our future? What are we going to look like? And just let's stay away from the things we all know that are not great. Krissy Dyess (00:58:55): As a leader, we get to contribute and drive that and make sure that we're all synced up and on the same page, rowing at the same direction. And that's where we're at right now. We're all rowing the same direction. You can really tell. Rob Collie (00:59:07): Yeah. I mean, even with the PowerPoints. Krissy Dyess (00:59:09): Who knew you could put a cat meme. Rob Collie (00:59:11): And nail it. Krissy Dyess (00:59:11): And nail it. Rob Collie (00:59:12): Who says you can't lead off a team meeting with a cat meme? We're not the company that's going to say no to that. Krissy Dyess (00:59:18): You maybe should, but nobody has yet. So I'll embrace it. I'll embrace it as long as I can. Rob Collie (00:59:23): Well, as you said, it's an AB kind of thing, right? We run a few cat memes to start out and it doesn't seem to be working, well, we're not going to cat meme it anymore. Krissy Dyess (00:59:31): Well, you notice when there was like the little technical glitch and there wasn't the cat meme, the demand already increased. People were looking for it. Rob Collie (00:59:39): You just got to keep people hungry every now and then. You're expecting cat meme, but no cat meme for you today. Krissy Dyess (00:59:46): That actually just kind of creeped in. Honestly, it's just kind of in my way, I think in the cubicle world, when you're having a bad day. If you're having a bad day, you could always go out and find a fun cat meme to pass around with your coworkers. And yeah, I kind of trickled over when I started doing blog posts. And apparently it's still sticking around like I said. It makes it fun. Rob Collie (01:00:06): We enjoy ourselves on the team meetings. That's for sure. When Kellan was a guest on here, he said that something that I very much agreed with which is that in your first six months working here, the pace and variety of problems that you get exposed to is just so much more concentrated. It's like pressing this fast forward button on life. So much exposure to so many different industries. So many different types of problems and different kinds of questions and everything that you grow just a tremendous amount, even just in that first six months. Rob Collie (01:00:38): It's also challenging. Right? It's fun. If it were easy, it wouldn't always be as much fun. How much do you remember about that mythical first six months? Krissy Dyess (01:00:48): Yeah. How much do I remember? I've been to my therapist and I try to suppress a lot of those feelings. They're slowly reemerging. It went very quickly from super excited to here's my first project. It was tough. At that time, I actually was more comfortable, had been more comfortable in the Excel, Power Pivot side of things. Of course, my very first project was in a Power BI desktop environment. Back then, you didn't have the ability to go into the grid and filter. Rob Collie (01:01:22): Yeah. It was a big, big limitation. This is the big problem. Krissy Dyess (01:01:26): That was huge when they finally worked that out, because I honestly found myself taking Power BI solutions moving them back into Excel where I felt comfortable to work through them, which it wasn't the greatest way to do it, but that environment was just so night and day and limiting with having to drag and drop. You're talking to somebody who's like a SQL background and likes to just type in and not have to navigate the UI. Krissy Dyess (01:01:54): I appreciate the UI. It's super helpful. The power query side of things, you can do so much easier. Things like unpivoting data versus SQL. Ever do that in SQL? It's not fun. Rob Collie (01:02:05): No, I haven't. Krissy Dyess (01:02:06): Oh, really? Rob Collie (01:02:07): I'm aware of it. We had a blog post on it that was written by David Churchward. SQL UNPIVOT Makes My Data Skinny was the title of it. But I wasn't even aware of it that unpivot existed in SQL until he brought that up. Krissy Dyess (01:02:19): Yeah. It does, but it's terrible and nobody wants to do that when you have Power Query and you can just click two buttons. So again, you have to look at the pros of different things. I would even say first couple weeks, one of the first things I did was come to one of the trainings. So I had a project. It was really challenging. I overcame it, but I did need to get a little bit of help from Kellan and the team. In fact, when I reached out to get a little bit of help, at first, I tried to do my due diligence because I'm like, "I got to solve it. It's my first project. I can't like fail on the first project and reached out to Kellan." Krissy Dyess (01:02:53): He was like, "Yeah, I don't know. This is one of the hardest decks things I've ever seen in my life." And I was like, "What?" I was thinking, "Well, I guess that's the job. People are coming to you with the most challenging problems. Yes, we do run into them. But as I later found out that a lot of the work was 80% of what I did know and there were these nuggets that I was learning along the way, but the early days for me were very, very challenging. Krissy Dyess (01:03:19): I did come to one of the training events. It was up in Chicago. In fact, I didn't even have all the details, and I thought that was part of seeing if I could figure it out. So I'm down at the front desk, "Hey, is there some Power BI training here?" And they're like, "Yeah. It's over here." So I came and I actually got to sit through one of the trainings. Krissy Dyess (01:03:40): I think even after the training Kellan said to me, "Do you think you could do this?" I thought, "Well, yeah." But I didn't even know that's what I was signing up for. I didn't know." I don't think the organization knew exactly either. Right? Rob Collie (01:03:54): Those were still some very early formative years for the organization. Krissy Dyess (01:04:02): Oh, and then one of my other favorites was this thing we had that was office hours and I got to pilot that. Oh yeah, Rob Collie (01:04:09): Yeah. So you get to be part of that failure. Right? Which had nothing to do with you. It was just a tough idea. Krissy Dyess (01:04:16): It was a tough idea. Actually, it happened recently. I was sifting through some of our Salesforce data and I came across that product offering and I went, "Ooh." Then I saw my name stamped across it. I didn't know. Nobody told me. It was like a terrible experiment to do it to somebody like me. Rob Collie (01:04:33): It wasn't nice. We feel bad about it. I feel bad about it. Krissy Dyess (01:04:37): To be honest, it helped me to grow because every day I'd look at my calendar and what I need to work on. And I'd see my office hours on the schedule, and I'd get the tummy ache. I'm like, "Deep breaths. I'm going to get through it." Because what it was, it was to help support people after training. They definitely had questions and needed help. We had some of the early adopters. They had some pretty deep questions in the service that we would provide. It was a round Robin. You showed up. You had no idea their data, their industry. You hadn't worked on any projects with them. And they would literally just come to you with all these questions. Krissy Dyess (01:05:18): Even, I think in the early days, there was questions around mobile. Integration with mobile and best practices around mobile. What I started to do was just get a heads up. I created a funnel that for these services, I would get a little bit of a heads up of what is your team wanting to talk to? Because a lot of it, I had to research. I mean, it was just so new. They didn't know. I hadn't been exposed. But again, it gave me that opportunity to look at what they were asking. Krissy Dyess (01:05:46): In a lot of these, they ended up moving into more projects for us because they weren't a simple five-minute answer. Oh, here's the whatever button. It was some pretty deep stuff, especially in the financial space. Some sophisticated things that they were trying to do. Yes, we could do them, but could I answer it without getting my hands in there and doing some things, which is what I found I would do after hours for free. Then Kellan told me that we were a business. So that model didn't work really well. Rob Collie (01:06:13): Yeah. It was an experimental product. It sort of goes back to that thing that you were saying, which is as a team, as a business, we're willing to try things out. Krissy Dyess (01:06:20): Yes. But nobody told me until after the fun was had. They're like, "Oh, yeah. That was impossible. Nobody could have did that." Rob Collie (01:06:28): It's introduced to you as, "This is the thing that we're going to do now." Right? Krissy Dyess (01:06:32): I thought this is my job. I have no idea. Rob Collie (01:06:34): But actually we thought it was going to work. And it turns out that just a very product. It doesn't actually address the needs that the client actually has. Krissy Dyess (01:06:44): It's true. Rob Collie (01:06:44): It sounds like it does, but it doesn't. And that mismatch in addition to the random, constantly being hit from the flank was something you didn't expect. It's probably one of the most difficult things we ever could have assigned to you. Krissy Dyess (01:06:58): It was. It was, but at the same time I knew it, and I would. I would kind of be like, "Oh, dear God. How am I going to make it through?" But I did. And even in a challenging situation, I did make it through. I did bring back answers. I didn't have a lot of them immediately, but I added so much into my toolbox because I felt like all these things that they wanted to know, I would answer what I could. And then I would research and find the answers to the things that I couldn't. Krissy Dyess (01:07:31): It was an interesting time. A lot of excitement out there. A lot of people really excited about the tools, wanting to learn things. Most of those answers I would know easier, but at the same time, there was a lot of just really more complex things. And that's also what I learned in some of the early days is people come to you with their simple problem, right? It's only going to take... It's easy. It should be easy, especially for an expert. And there's always more to it. Krissy Dyess (01:07:59): Even now. Even in the landscape now, if you go into any model and you just want to make a simple change like you introduce a new field and it needs to flow in and it affects some other business roles. There's a lot of dependencies around things that are built and you might think to yourself, "Oh, this is just a simple modification." But where you start to see it trickle through, it does take a little bit of time. And the benefit is that, yes, it does take a little bit of time, but once you've brought it in into that living, breathing, growing solution, it's there forever. And you don't have to worry about at it again. Krissy Dyess (01:08:35): So there's always a little bit of a time investment in things. It can be a little bit tricky to make something that should seem simple, like integrate in, but at the same time you do it one time and then you're good to go. So it's super amazing. Rob Collie (01:08:48): That's sort of like being good to your future self. It's kind of like what Power BI is, is put in a little bit of time now, and recoup all kinds of time later. It's not just about time savings. Of course, it's how you feel as a human. And it's also that if you save enough time, you make more time. You actually start doing things that you never did before. It's not that you're doing the old things faster, you're doing better, smarter things that would've never even occurred to you to attempt when you're more labor constrained on things. Krissy Dyess (01:09:18): That's exactly right. It's interesting. I've done a lot of trainings and you go in, and you start delivering the trainings. One of the things that I usually... It'll make its way in is this idea that I actually do not consider myself technologically savvy. I'm never one of those people that goes out and gets the newest widget or whatever. I just I'm not. I'm not a fancy girl. Krissy Dyess (01:09:45): People will look at me when I say this, right? "What do you mean, you're not technically savvy? You're up here, you're teaching, you're providing instruction on a very sophisticated technical solution." I feel like that's one of the key takeaways in addition to the training. One of the key takeaways that I want them to understand is if you don't think of yourself as being able to do this, you must certainly can. Yes, I do have the technical background with SQL and things like that. And been working around data for a long time. But at the same time, I'm not super technically savvy. I just am not. Rob Collie (01:10:24): That resonates with me. Even when you were using SQL in your former job, I can't imagine you ever introducing yourself to anyone and describing yourself as like a SQL developer. Krissy Dyess (01:10:38): This is true. In fact, when I would try to explain what I would do, a whole bunch of words would come out and they wouldn't make sense and people are like, "Okay. I don't really have any understanding what you're doing." I'm actually technology adverse is really the term that I use. I feel like maybe you relate to that a little bit, Rob. Every time we have a new system and our company and our organization, you're like, "Oh no. Well, what is this? What buttons do I need to click on?" It'd be fine. Krissy Dyess (01:11:01): They are really great nowadays with tutorials. But everybody's got to move very fast. I don't have time. So the small little nugget tutorials work really great. It takes me a minute to go in and get my bearings. And it's best done with like, "Focus me to the areas that I care about. Give me exposure to where other things are that I might need, so I'm aware." That's how I describe myself as this technology adverse. I can get in. I can figure it out. Krissy Dyess (01:11:33): But when you send me something new and in fact, even Power BI, this whole monthly release cycle, when that started, talk about having to get comfortable, being uncomfortable. I would go to a training one week. I've locked it down. I got my flow. Then the next week they would just do something that... I would joke a class. I would say, "Actually, this is the first time I'm actually seeing this tool." Because sometimes I felt like that because you get in, you get used to your routine. You're moving and going through the motions. And now you're like, "That button is not there anymore. They're calling it something different." Then you had the people with the different versions and things like that. Rob Collie (01:12:13): I'm having this vision right now of the engineering team at Microsoft who has moved the button that you've been relying on. Right? They've got like some like closed circuit TV feed of your training. The moment you go looking for the button and you can't find it, they're all just sitting there going, "Got you." Krissy Dyess (01:12:30): But here's the thing .I recognize that was the direction that technology was going. I've been in it. I can do it. It makes sense to me. I've been grounded in technology. I also have a feel for end users and interaction with technology. Even though I don't call myself tech savvy, I had make a decision. Am I going to just be an old dinosaur in a cube or do I want to embrace what is going on? That was a tough decision to make. I share that story with a lot of people that are on this journey or thinking about even entering the landscape in 2021, right? Krissy Dyess (01:13:14): There's just a lot out there. It can be very daunting. But you can make a choice. And one of the things that I like to just convey is I definitely thought of myself as somebody technology averse. I definitely made a choice to just go with the flow. And it's okay. I learned to just adapt and get used to it and just roll with the changes. That's one of the great things about being a bit older. You have a lot of life experiences. Krissy Dyess (01:13:38): It led me down this path of embracing it. I can also set that expectation and communicate that message to other people as they're thinking about... Even right now with COVID, a lot of people are trying to educate themselves on different areas. I just talked to somebody that I connected with over the summer. It was a women's leadership group and just sent a, "Hello. How are you doing?" She said she was education and she actually made a transition into data and analytics. Rob Collie (01:14:08): Awesome. Krissy Dyess (01:14:09): Yeah. So I'm living proof, if nothing else. I have a lot of valuable information. I feel like I have walked that journey. And guess what, if you're just even a little bit better than me, you've got no problem. That's all I got. Thomas LaRock (01:14:24): That's all you got? Rob Collie (01:14:25): That was amazing. Thomas LaRock (01:14:29): That's all I have. Rob Collie (01:14:31): That's all I got to say about that. Krissy Dyess (01:14:32): That's about it. Rob Collie (01:14:34): I mean, holy hell, I've never heard you say those things so explicitly before. Krissy Dyess (01:14:40): Yeah. You should come to one of my trainings. Thomas LaRock (01:14:42): Evangelist. Krissy Dyess (01:14:43): I know, I understand people that have sat in a similar seat and I know what's possible for these people. They ultimately have to do it, right? They ultimately have to do the work and have to navigate their path, but it's for sure possible. Rob Collie (01:15:03): There was a part of what you were saying that really struck me as being very similar to an explicit decision that Tom made in his career. This is like one of your core themes, Tom, is that you were at one point... You talked about in our very first podcast, the inaugural podcast of Raw Data, that you were a storage professional, and you made the explicit decision to transition, at least partly into analytics because you saw where the wind was blowing. Thomas LaRock (01:15:31): Yeah. You said storage, and you made me think I was a... Rob Collie (01:15:34): That's right. Thomas LaRock (01:15:35): ... like a server admin for a second. I'm like, "Wait." Or a janitor. Rob Collie (01:15:40): That's what... Krissy Dyess (01:15:41): I definitely was thinking janitor there. Rob Collie (01:15:42): That's what happened in our first podcast as well. I used the word storage and you recoiled a little bit. And then he went, "Ah, I guess you're right. I guess that does... Yeah." Thomas LaRock (01:15:51): And you are right, because that's how you think of... Rob Collie (01:15:55): Someone's got to write the data down somewhere. So if I'm going to analyze it later, someone better be storing that shit. Thomas LaRock (01:16:03): So earlier you had mentioned how Rob, it was four years before you even heard the term BI. Rob Collie (01:16:10): Yeah. From when Krissy was doing it. She was doing this four years before I even could spell it. Krissy Dyess (01:16:15): I was doing it. I was already doing it. Thomas LaRock (01:16:17): So in that timeline, I exist and I'm at events that are, let's say, SQL server focused. We'll call it SQL server forward. But there would be a track that was called BI and data warehousing. Those two had to go together because you couldn't just have a track that said business intelligence, because what the hell would that be doing at a SQL server event? So you had to have the data warehousing and the name just to legitimize it in front of that group. And to me, that was a track that I was just like, "Yeah, whatever's happening over there. I'm just going to go look at some query plans." That was my world. Thomas LaRock (01:16:55): And now like Krissy, I have a degree in mathematics. I forget when it happened, but when I first made the connection as to what they were calling data sciences, the stuff I had been doing rather easily for a long time, and I have a master's in mathematics and all of this stuff, I'm looking at going, "Oh, hell, I used to really enjoy this stuff. I can do this again. Everything old is new again." I can start getting involved in data science projects. And I don't know, start to enjoy some of the things I'm doing. Thomas LaRock (01:17:32): For example, I Kaggle. I love Kaggle and the stuff that you can find on their website. They had competitions. Rob, you'd like this. They had the data science competitions. The men's and women's bracket and you had to build a predictive model for any possible match up for all the teams that were seated in this year's tournament and predict who would win. [inaudible 01:17:55] score is how they score everything. I had fun building the model, submitting the prediction and seeing how awful I am at this. But it was fun. Rob Collie (01:18:05): The real world is a real pain in the. Thomas LaRock (01:18:07): See how much more fun that was than picking up the phone. And somebody complaining that some disc somewhere was full and I just go delete some data. What the hell am I doing anyway? You're like, "What? Who is this?" Rob Collie (01:18:19): Have you ever get tired of the head geek business, or is it chief geek? I forget. Is it head geek or chief geek? Thomas LaRock (01:18:25): It is head geek. Rob Collie (01:18:26): Head geek. Okay. Thomas LaRock (01:18:27): And I'm not tired of it yet because it's still the doesn't feel like work. Rob Collie (01:18:31): Okay. Well, that's good. But if you ever get tired of it, I want you to derive some inspiration from Krissy's story here. Maybe you can come put that math degree to good use. Or you could just go back to your Kaggle exercises. Thomas LaRock (01:18:43): Some of those competitions have some money behind them. Rob Collie (01:18:46): They totally miss the Kaggle exercises. Thomas LaRock (01:18:47): Now, I did miss it. I did miss it. I'm just letting it go. I'm letting it go right by, Rob. Rob Collie (01:18:55): Because Rob is a 12 year old. Thomas LaRock (01:18:58): I saw it. I heard it. I watched it go by like a parade. I smiled, I waved, and I let it go. Rob Collie (01:19:05): Clearly you've been trained in meditation. So that is the thing you're supposed to do with your thoughts. Oh, look at that happy little thought going by. Just let it go. Look at that. Thomas LaRock (01:19:12): It's like a fish. I see the worm on the hook and I'm like, "Yeah, but that's a trick. I ain't going there." Rob Collie (01:19:18): Don't do it for that. Yeah. Krissy Dyess (01:19:20): Actually, I had another thought too, just like thinking about how things were and where the future was going. And another reason that drove me to this whole remote consultant type of a role, I always had this theory, I think it was probably back around 2010, that what we would see in the future... I have kids. So let me just bring everybody back in. I have kids. I have two boys. I got a 13 and I have an 11-year-old. Krissy Dyess (01:19:48): I think about their future, and I think about my journey. I think about those pivotal things that led me on a path and the people along the way. As I'm thinking about my kids and thinking about the future, I started thinking to myself like the future is going to be very different. Even in terms of education, my friends say, "You're crazy." Krissy Dyess (01:20:09): I'm like, "No, I don't really think kids are going to need college in the future." I kept throwing that out there. And that was another reason why I wanted to take this journey and take this step, because back then in 2017, I was doing remote in the organization a couple days in the office, a couple days from home. But this idea of connecting with other people that are really driving change in leadership and doing work differently. Krissy Dyess (01:20:36): I started to envision this network of remote workers and remote people that would Excel and create communities. And they exist. They exist out there. I started thinking about, I want to get into this just to prove my kids that anything is possible. As they're working on their life path, just to be that role model, if you will, to represent something that was different and unknown, and to just plant the seed with them, that it doesn't necessarily mean you need to go to college. Krissy Dyess (01:21:08): Because look at me, yes, I went to college and I had my job. I learned this power pivot tool myself, not in any kind of training program. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to do it and to have the data to work with and things like that. Definitely for the future, I don't know that they're going to need to do college. If you can get out there in this Kaggle, these other different types of competitions, there is opportunity abound that you can go out. There are people that are willing to mentor you to help you. Krissy Dyess (01:21:44): It's interesting because I offer like I'm a very open, helpful kind of person. I put it out there with a lot of the training and workshops. I do. I get people that connect with me on LinkedIn and maybe ask me some questions, but I would expect more people to take me up on it that I actually do. Krissy Dyess (01:22:05): I think it's one of the things too that I found as I came into this community, how willing people were to help each other. It was different than the competitive. There's still competition, but it's a very different landscape and ecosystem. Even this last year, like here, I thought I was like light years ahead, this visionary of wanting to get this experience, right? Krissy Dyess (01:22:28): Now, we've all been catapulted forward into it. I still feel like other organizations aren't thriving in this culture. It takes a while. It takes a while to navigate it, get comfortable, really be able to excel. You've taken away those opportunities to just ask quick questions of each other. Yeah. You can kind of do it on Slack. But it's different. Krissy Dyess (01:22:48): I still feel like even more so the future for people coming out of college or even considering changing their career because of everything that happened. There's a lot of opportunity out there to get free data samples, to find somebody to help mentor you, to give you some guidance. And that might be all you need to land that first opportunity that takes you to the next. Krissy Dyess (01:23:12): Again, you might not know how you're going to get from A to Z, but if you do a tiny bit over the course of 365 days, you're somewhere versus doing nothing. And then you never know what could be. And it's still early. It's so early with these tools, and they're branching out all over the place. The cloud, solutioning. Just even how do you take processes and transform them into those action loops? It's still early and pioneering the best ways affecting large organizations. Rob Collie (01:23:47): I'm really glad we took that little side loop. Krissy Dyess (01:23:49): I got many side loops. It's just like, which one do you want? Rob Collie (01:23:55): Where organisms comprised mainly of side loops. Yes. Krissy Dyess (01:23:58): I have so many side loops. I have to laser focus in, I meet with the directors. And we have a lot of fun. Every appreciates everybody for their strengths and their weaknesses. So it's super fun. I'll often joke after a long monologue, there's some good nuggets. Go in there and find them and pull them out. Rob Collie (01:24:15): Yeah. We'll grab them. That sort of like viewing the future as kind of like a malleable entity is a really, really valuable mindset. If you wake up every day expecting that today will be like yesterday, and it will, it'll resemble yesterday, won't it? Krissy Dyess (01:24:32): That's true. Rob Collie (01:24:34): But over the course of, you talked about like a little bit of change in yourself over the course of a year piles up, a little bit of change in the world over the course of a year, also piles up. Krissy Dyess (01:24:40): That's right. Rob Collie (01:24:41): And you can end up in a dramatically different place one year later, as we've seen. I think I really benefited from being close to my grandparents growing up because they lived through times of tremendous change. They weren't programmed by their early formative experiences to expect stability. Everything was always changing underfoot. They were born before the Great Depression who were old enough to experience the bottom falling out. Old enough to see like the world go to war with itself in a way that even the ancients would've looked at and had their breath taken away. Rob Collie (01:25:16): The whole world reorganized in the space of five years. It's crazy when you think about it, how short World War II was? They spent so much time with me growing up, and a lot of that I think rubbed off on me. One of the books that didn't sell very well, I dedicated it to them at the beginning. I think it was something like, thanks for teaching that four-year-old boy to color outside the lines. The generations that followed them did get to expect stability. Krissy Dyess (01:25:40): That's true. Rob Collie (01:25:41): I think we're coming back around to one of those white waters where things are going to change rapidly in a short period of time. Krissy Dyess (01:25:48): I agree. I don't even know what changes to expect on the horizon. I try to take all the data in and process it. It's really hard to predict. I do feel like the future is very uncertain, but what I have feel like I've also learned from previous generations very close to my grandparents as well is somehow they all got through it and they're doing okay. That's what comforted me through everything that happened last year is just their resolve through what they had been through and that everything is okay. But you do need to evolve and adapt because some people are not evolving and adapting and that's sad. So we won't go there. Rob Collie (01:26:29): Krissy, I've really enjoyed this. I've known you for four years. And yet I feel like... I don't feel like, I know that I got to know you even better just during the course of this conversation. So many things I didn't actually know about you that we talked about for the first time ever. Krissy Dyess (01:26:41): Well, that's great. Yeah, we worked to together, but we're both very busy. I definitely could come back. I could come back. Rob Collie (01:26:48): You're not out of words, are you? Krissy Dyess (01:26:49): I am not out of words. Anybody that knows me, there are more words. Are there words that everybody wants to hear? Again, there's good nuggets in there. Rob Collie (01:26:58): Krissy Dyess on podcast. It's a sustainable industry. Krissy Dyess (01:27:02): Actually, you know what, it could be. Rob Collie (01:27:04): Thanks again. I really enjoyed it. Thank you, Tom. Thomas LaRock (01:27:06): Krissy, wonderful to meet you. Krissy Dyess (01:27:07): Thank you. Have a great day. Announcer (01:27:09): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Adaptive podcast. Let the experts at P3 Adaptive help your business. Just go to p3adaptive.com Have a data day!