Raw Data By P3 Adaptive

Gordon Rowe III's nickname among his peers is The Gandalf of Data, and for good reason-he's truly a wizard when it comes to the unconventional tools that he uses. What he does with the 2010 version of PowerPivot will blow your mind! He works in the nursery and horticulture space with North Creek Nurseries. Gordon knows his woody plants...and his DAX! References in this episode: The Excel Addict Longwood Gardens   Highline Gardens in New York   Rob's Scatter Chart Blog Post   Episode Timeline: 4:50 - Gordon's plant-based journey, the wonder of discovery through PowerPivot and DAX, and how Gordon was (and still is) excelling despite using older tools 29:30 - Why NOT Power BI for Gordon? More problems for Gordon to solve, and the cannabis industry 48:25 - North Creek Nursery history, the state of P3 Adaptive, the nursery industry during COVID, and data artistry Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello friends. Today's guest is Gordon D. Rowe, III. GDR III, as we call him sometimes. I've known Gordon for at least eight years. We met over the internet during the earliest days of my blogging. And there's something truly remarkable and beautiful about this human being. I'm going to say something that sounds dramatic, and I do not say it lightly. I don't think anyone personifies the Power BI spirit more than Gordon. Rob Collie (00:00:30): On one hand, he has this distinctly every man quality to him. He's in the trenches. He's humble. He deeply connected to the human beings around him. And at the same time, there's this can do spirit to him. This ambition, this powerful idea that we can do better. No one ever gave Gordon a badge that said leader on it. He was on the front lines and he just rose to the occasion. It's been super gratifying for me to watch Gordon over the years, how much he's changed his own life, but also how much he's changed and improved the lives of people around him. Rob Collie (00:01:11): I really just don't think that stories get better than this. And there's a punchline. This person who personifies the Power BI spirit as well, or better than anyone doesn't even use Power BI. Gordon has been stuck for almost the entirety of that journey with the 2010 version of Power Pivot and he's been killing it. This poor guy doesn't even get to use Power Query. He is finally just now getting access to the more modern tools and it's like, "Okay, stand back." I think everything I've said in this intro will shine through when you listen to the conversation. The chat takes some very interesting turns. Rob Collie (00:01:52): This guy works in the industrial wholesale horticultural nursery industry. He uses [DACs 00:01:59] to grow plants. Of course I had to ask him about the impact of the exploding cannabis industry in the United States. He doesn't grow cannabis, but spoiler alert, cannabis is so strong. It even impacts people who aren't growing it. I was part of this conversation, but even I am excited to listen to it. So let's push play. Announcer (00:02:22): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Announcer (00:02:26): 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 (00:02:50): Welcome to the show. GDR III, Gordon Rowe, how are you today? Gordon Rowe III (00:02:55): I'm great. How are you doing Rob? Rob Collie (00:02:56): Fantastic. You and I talked about doing a podcast a long time ago, and here we are. We're finally doing one. Gordon Rowe III (00:03:03): Yeah, we did. Rob Collie (00:03:04): For those listening, Gordon here is one of the OG crew. He's been around the Power Pivot and Power BI thing as far as I can tell, since damn near the beginning. He's one of those early crazies. I was just telling someone today about how the people that flocked to this stuff like in the early 2010s, ironically, I knew that it was a big deal because I had walked my particular path in my career. It was easy for me to understand how I could see something like this as being a really big deal. Rob Collie (00:03:32): But as I look back years later, I wonder about y'all, the others who hadn't walked that path. How did you guys know? You guys are just crazy. The OG, that first wave, just nut cases. What's up with you? Gordon Rowe III (00:03:44): How did I find Power Pivot? I was the subscriber way back. The first time I got introduced to Excel, I was working for the [inaudible 00:03:53] pile company, which is the largest. They had the most number of wood plant patents in the world at the time. Rob Collie (00:04:01): Woody plant patents. Gordon Rowe III (00:04:03): Woody plants, yeah. Roses. They're a big rose company, and I got my first copy of Excel because I had to publish our availability for the salesman in it, and I didn't know anything and I signed up for this newsletter, The Excel Addict, Francis Hayes. Rob Collie (00:04:19): Okay. Gordon Rowe III (00:04:19): I had some problems along the way, just figuring some stuff out and he called me back. I emailed him and he called me back. This would've been like 1998, '99. And then in one of his newsletters, he talked about [Chandu 00:04:37], I believe, and you had like three little sub classes in the Chandu course. It was many years down the road, but I was like, "This would be good. I've taught myself all these little bits and pieces. I should take a course and learn the rest of the stuff." Rob Collie (00:04:56): Learn all the things. Gordon Rowe III (00:04:57): Learn all the things. Yeah, exactly. And I had to lobby heavily to spend whatever it was, like probably 600 bucks or something was ridiculous. Because we're dirt poor farmers, making low to no margins every other year. Rob Collie (00:05:11): You're telling me that there isn't just an absolutely gangbusters intellectual property business around these woody plant patents? Gordon Rowe III (00:05:18): Oh they have gangbuster. But this was like I had moved on and was at another nursery, and nursery industry is largely like a lot of farmers are, it's feast or famine. They have like bumper crops and bumper years, and then they lose money the next year. So it's like a break even over time kind of detail. And I successfully lobbied to take that course. And in there I discovered Power Pivot, and after that first introductory class, I remember going to Tim, our COO and saying, "This shit is going to blow the effing doors off of data for us. I can't imagine. I can't even comprehend what I'm going to do with this." Rob Collie (00:06:01): And what did he say? Gordon Rowe III (00:06:02): And he's like, "Get to it." And I got cut loose because I needed to layer music and smoke freely and do all, yell and talk to myself and curse and there was no way I could do that in the office setting and I went home. And I was buried at home for, I don't know, like two months, two and a half months. I was just like, I'd go to work and be like, "Look at what I got." And there'd be a grid with sales data. And I'm like, "It's not right yet. I got to filter this, this and this out." Gordon Rowe III (00:06:33): And what really, really catapulted me is that I struggled with calculate and some date stuff, and I was probably like four weeks into it, and I really wanted that time intelligence. That's huge for us. I reached out to you. Your email address was like footnote in the Chandu thing. And I sent you a model and you replied. I still have that email. I cherish it. Because you said this was actually tricky. Your date was coming in from SQL as a text field, so I had to change it to a date value in here. And it should work for you now, and you were like, "That's nursery data. Pretty cool. The first time I've seen that." Rob Collie (00:07:20): And I think the last, actually. I don't think I've, other than you. Gordon Rowe III (00:07:25): Yeah, I asked you for plants and ended up sending your dad some stuff. Rob Collie (00:07:30): Yeah, my dad, you're just like, "Hey, do you like growing stuff?" And I'm like, "Hell no, but my dad does." And so you sent some seedlings, right? Gordon Rowe III (00:07:36): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:07:37): To my dad. And he planted them. My dad's got a heck of a yard up in Boston. Gordon Rowe III (00:07:42): That's where it began for me. Rob Collie (00:07:45): That was back in the time when people would send me stuff like that and I actually had time to respond, oh a new puzzle. Let me get after that. And oftentimes it would turn into a new blog post or something like that. I'd anonymize the data in a way to conceal what the actual business problem was. But just to extract the pattern and stuff. It was actually difficult for me at some point to stop answering those brain teasers people would send me. That was one of the things I enjoyed the most and I just ran out of time eventually. So it's cool that we crossed paths when we did. Gordon Rowe III (00:08:14): Yeah. It only makes sense that that'd be the natural progression for you. And I just converted, it took us forever, so I've been working on Excel 2010 since then until the last two months, three months. Rob Collie (00:08:28): You've been stuck in the 2010 version of Power Pivot. Gordon Rowe III (00:08:31): I've been stuck in the 2010 version of Power Pivot since 2013. My first models are dated this 2013 and- Rob Collie (00:08:39): Wow. Gordon Rowe III (00:08:39): ... I've been stuck there. Rob Collie (00:08:41): So you don't even get the good Power Query? Gordon Rowe III (00:08:43): No, no. I just got them all converted. I have one left that I'm... because we migrated the servers, everything, so I just have one model left to repoint, clean up and then it's so bad. The shit I did back then was the stupidest, rookiest, worst shit ever. I was trying to get rid of a today table that I created, so that I could have today's tape. And I wrote some form in this one dashboard. I have no idea. I'm like, "How am I going to get around this?" Couldn't figure it out. Rob Collie (00:09:18): Well, you know that rookie shit you're talking about? Gordon Rowe III (00:09:20): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:09:21): Was a world beater. That's the weird thing. Is that you can keep getting better and better at this stuff over time at Power BI, or in your case, Power Pivot 2010. You can keep getting better at that for a long time. It turns out eight years and you look back every six months at what you did six months before and go, "I was so cute back then. Look at how clumsy I was." Rob Collie (00:09:42): But that thing that you did that you're making fun of was amazing and is amazing. It still is amazing. It's a gift that we can keep getting better like that when what we're looking on and laughing about was actually really good. Gordon Rowe III (00:09:56): Yeah. It's great to see. I had these measures of trees, trees of measures in there that it's... I don't even know what I was trying to do anymore. I'm so far removed from it and trying to figure out, this is what I need to go edit now in this thing. I can't wait to rip this apart and rebuild it. Because I've had a lot of that stuff from home. Rob Collie (00:10:20): What have you upgraded to? The joke is like, you upgraded to Excel 2011. There is no such thing. This will be the most incremental possible upgrade. Gordon Rowe III (00:10:29): I got us to drop a bunch of cash, replace 15 machines. We had a Windows 98 machine somewhere still functioning. And so we got Office 365 Business Pro, whatever. Rob Collie (00:10:46): There's probably about three more words in the names of that license unit. Gordon Rowe III (00:10:49): Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:10:50): E3. Gordon Rowe III (00:10:50): We're not E3. We're just below the E3. Rob Collie (00:10:55): E2.9. Gordon Rowe III (00:10:57): Yeah. Whatever that is. Thomas LaRock (00:11:00): I want to ask, so why are you stuck? If you're on 365, you shouldn't be stuck. Gordon Rowe III (00:11:06): Because I've just been in the middle of a two-month implementation, like migrating email, migrating onto SharePoint, figuring that all out, dealing with people that have a tough time changing from, everything looked this way and now it looks this way. And don't like, I can't do my work. Had a lot of that stuff and it's been phased. Gordon Rowe III (00:11:30): So I'm not stuck. I'm converting the old to keep everyone going. Our nursery, we produce about eight and a half million plants every year, we have 100 employees, we grow, quote unquote, catalog. I think we have about 440 items, perennials, grasses, ferns, that we take cuttings of. We propagate seed, tissue culture, divisional items, and we grow a speculative availability that we forecast out two years now. And so it's like we're going to have a plant at this point in time and I don't just get to luxuriously sit and just data model all day. Rob Collie (00:12:09): Damn. What a sob story? Gordon Rowe III (00:12:12): Yeah. Jason came up and visited. Rob Collie (00:12:16): That's right. Gordon Rowe III (00:12:17): That guy works for NASA and he was like, "This is the most intense, intricate thing I've ever witnessed in my life. I can't believe you guys do this." Rob Collie (00:12:27): I just can't imagine the challenge of having to call your shot two years in a advance. Gordon Rowe III (00:12:32): Yeah, and follow through. And we have a whole crazy amount of systems to pull that off. And we rely really, really heavily on Power Pivot. When I told people like, "Your model's good, your model's good, you're going to have to wait, you're going to have to wait." People were like, "What? Okay, I have to print report and work on paper for two weeks?" "Yeah, you do. And then you're not going to have perfect snapshots here." Rob Collie (00:12:57): All right, so now you're on the modern, most current versions of Excel. Are you using Power BI or are you still Power Pivot but just in the new version of Excel? Gordon Rowe III (00:13:06): I'm just in Power Pivot, converting in the new version of Excel. Maybe about six months ago, I plunked down for the Italians class so I could get up to speed and I'm trying to get to where I can sit down for an hour a day and learn all the new stuff like VAR or VAR, or however you're verbally calling it. I imagine it's VAR. Rob Collie (00:13:27): Yeah, I think I'm pronouncing it VAR in my head. You know it's one of those like, is the dress blue or not, internet things. It's VAR to some people. Gordon Rowe III (00:13:35): forsythia, forsythia. Rob Collie (00:13:37): Yeah, for sure. What's the data type in SQL? Or is there one in SQL that's varchar or whatever? How do we pronounce that? Thomas LaRock (00:13:44): Well, I say varchar but some people do say car. Rob Collie (00:13:47): How about varchar? Anybody do that? Thomas LaRock (00:13:48): I've never heard anybody say varchar and if they did, I might slap them in the mouth. Rob Collie (00:13:53): Yeah, it doesn't sound good. Does it? It doesn't sound cool. Gordon Rowe III (00:13:56): I might adopt it, varchar. Rob Collie (00:13:57): Varchar, it sounds too much like Care Bear. Gordon Rowe III (00:14:00): It's too cutie. Rob Collie (00:14:01): But then when you take the care or the car off the end, var suddenly becomes var. It's weird. Gordon Rowe III (00:14:06): Yeah, that is weird. Rob Collie (00:14:07): The English language is if nerds needed to make it weirder, but we do. So Gordon, I think no one has more of a claim to the following statement than you. There might be people in your class of this. You might have some peers. But no one exceeds you, in that this stuff, DACs, whatever the Power BI engines that happen to also be hiding in Excel, these things have changed your life. Gordon Rowe III (00:14:34): Hugely. And not only my life but the life of every employee and their families and the web is probably, I'm guessing four or 500 people. Then our customers as well, it just goes on and on and on for me. We have a tremendous, amazing team, but without that tool and the customized tools we've built to manage that process, we wouldn't have pulled off what we've pulled off, which is six years ago when we modernized and built a new 1.3 acre greenhouse under one roof, we did a skew reduction and took that catalog list from 600 plus items down to 450, and made sweeping changes of one-day cutting, sales managers freaking out. Gordon Rowe III (00:15:26): You just cut $280,000 of worth of revenue for next year and what's going to happen? And we're like, "We're going to grow more of what we're all sold out on that has a higher margin and make crazy money." And we've the last five years, every employee there's gotten two weeks of bonus, which is crazy. We've borrowed later on our operating line every year, paid it off earlier, took huge amounts of product of cash and sunk it back into capital improvements. And the growth has been, we were probably hovering about like 6.5 in revenue then. And we hit 8.2 this year or just came a couple thousand dollars shy of that. Gordon Rowe III (00:16:16): We're finally starting to hire people, because we realized like, we need to staff now. Because we've just been more and more and more, and it's just been amazing watching people's lives, change. Rob Collie (00:16:30): So cool. The sales manager going like, "Oh my gosh, you're cutting $280,000 worth of revenue. The defensive mindset is real." That's a bold change. You folks made a bold change. You're not messing around. You were not incremental in this. It takes confidence and confidence comes from being informed. Of course, right? Arrogance and confidence aren't the same thing. It's easy to, sometimes it's easy anyway, to quantify the downside. It's easier anyway. You're like, "Yeah, we're going to win." The offensive mindset. Don't look at what's going away. Look at what's going to fill that void. Gordon Rowe III (00:17:12): Right. We slashed a total of like 1.2 million that year, based on the previous year sales history. And we fell $100,000 short of that revenue wise, but the profit margin was like [inaudible 00:17:25]. It was just insane. Rob Collie (00:17:28): A lot of companies have a different problem. The revenues are constantly of going up, but their margin shrinking all the while, margin erosion. You talked about the revenue growth you've seen, but the margin growth that you've seen in that same timeframe is actually percentage wise, quite a bit higher than your top line growth, right? Gordon Rowe III (00:17:47): Yeah, it definitely was throughout that. And we just started to see it shrink this past year and we're going and repeating those same steps. I just got a huge sheet of stuff I have to analyze. Huge high class problems. Like, holy shit, how am I going to pay taxes was a problem now. All of a sudden, like I got taxes to pay this year and I got to start putting them down for next year and like, whoa, what are we going to do? Gordon Rowe III (00:18:11): And that stuff, no arrogance at all, but we were having a conversation in mid May, and I was like, "We're going to have a $747,000 bottom line this year. And Power Pivot is what allowed me to do that. And if I put back the CapEx and stuff that we did from November until the close of the year to shrink that, to get down into a lower bracket, that was our number. If I put back the bonuses and all that stuff, I was right there within a couple grand. It was just amazing. Rob Collie (00:18:41): And you called that shot in May. It's like Babe Ruth pointing to the upper deck. You know? Gordon Rowe III (00:18:48): Yeah. This is what you need to focus on. And then November was like, holy, I got to do this. Rob Collie (00:18:52): That's another really cool example. Every now and then, this isn't happening so much anymore, but every now and then, people would talk about BI as a rear view mirror. Well, if you're standing in May, calling your shot for where you're going to land at the end of December and reality ends up pretty close to that, that's also a crystal ball. If you know what you're doing, the past is what we also call facts. Things that have happened, actual evidence, right? Gordon Rowe III (00:19:16): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:19:17): If you know what you're doing, you take all the right factors into consideration, you can extrapolate pretty effectively. Gordon Rowe III (00:19:21): You can. And we do. This is like that first model I built. The nursery industry generally does production planning in the winter when things are a little calmer for everybody, and it's like this war room, everybody hates it. They get in a conference room and there's six people, and each person has a laptop and there's a computer and printed reports and just all this stuff. And everybody's just calculating numbers and calculating numbers and calculating numbers. Gordon Rowe III (00:19:52): And I just, the first thing I set out to build was all of that into one screen, that you got to scroll left and right a little bit to look at all the models, but I just wanted it in one spot so everybody could look at that one version of the truth and see the year over year history, look at the customer segment, look at how that year, current year was performing, have customers with sorted it in descending by grand total so that you'd get that outlier, that one customer that bought up 150 flats because we forgot we overproduced and specialed it. Gordon Rowe III (00:20:26): I'm trying to just filter out all those exceptions. I remembered The Sarah Problem was the title. There's so many blog articles I could go back to and think about that were hugely altering to me. And whether I successfully implemented that pattern then or not, my thinking changed and the way I needed to look at things changed and how I needed to develop tools for people really changed. Rob Collie (00:20:54): Mine too. Gordon Rowe III (00:20:55): It's been amazing. Rob Collie (00:20:56): I was on the same journey at the same time. And by the way, where we're talking about pronunciation, you mispronounced the name of that article. The name of that article is Sarah Problem. Thomas LaRock (00:21:09): Yeah, I was going to ask, what is The Sarah Problem? Who is Sarah? Rob Collie (00:21:13): Actually, Sarah Problem was the roller derby name of I think one of my wife's teammates when she played roller derby out in Seattle. My wife was Natalie Fatality. But there was Sarah Problem and Miss Fortune. Some of the names were just awesome. There's actually, I think it's international. There's an international registry of roller derby names that enforces uniqueness. You can't steal someone else's name. You have to go and register. It's an association. Gordon Rowe III (00:21:42): Like thorough red horse names. Rob Collie (00:21:43): Exactly. Thomas LaRock (00:21:44): Wow. Rob Collie (00:21:45): It's just like that. Sarah Problem was a DACs technique that would bubble up exceptions from a lower level of detail that you wouldn't necessarily be looking at. Bubble them all the way up to the top level of the report, telling you that you might want to drill down. And I didn't know that technique. The reality of it had to land on me, the need for it. And then the technique to do it came as a necessity. Heady days. Every day I could sit down and feel like I was going to discover something and then share it. It was a great time. Gordon Rowe III (00:22:13): There was a huge like in kiss the door component. Rob Collie (00:22:15): Yeah, there you go. Gordon Rowe III (00:22:17): There really was just like, oh my gosh, what did I just discover? I know people in the nursery just got so sick and tired of hearing me. They were like, "Please just stay at home." Because I was like, "Power Pivot." I'd sit in a meeting and I'd just be like, "Power Pivot, Power Pivot, Power Pivot, Power Pivot. Well, how are we going to Power Pivot?" Thomas LaRock (00:22:37): And in my world, that word was PowerShell. How are we going to do this? It's just PowerShell was always, that would be their solution for everything. That was their hammer and everything was a nail, right? PowerShell. Rob Collie (00:22:48): Yeah. Close friend of mine got into one of our most epic, not an argument, a fight. We didn't physically hurt each other or anything, but to call it an argument would be gentle. Over him wanting to use PowerShell for everything and me saying like, "Stop." And we got vicious. Thomas LaRock (00:23:05): I'm amazed though, Gordon, that you're doing all of that just in Excel. All that analysis is happening just inside Excel or Power BI or what? Gordon Rowe III (00:23:13): Just old school Power Pivot up until tomorrow or the next day. Rob Collie (00:23:17): I mean staying in new school Power Pivot. Thomas LaRock (00:23:19): Right. But still just, it's amazing to me the amount of analysis and the business decisions being made. And it's honestly, it's just a spreadsheet. There's no database involved, there's no analytical engine going on except what's in your head. And it underscores to me how much, I guess things are over-engineered at times. You know what, we're going to do all this now. Let's go build a cube, let's get some reports done, this, that and the other. How many SAP projects have imploded after two or three years of trying to deploy something when in the end it turns out, you could have just done it in the spreadsheet. And you would've been much more effective. Just the amount of over-engineering and waste that probably goes on out there when it's just a simple solution. Gordon Rowe III (00:24:10): I think the landing page being native Excel that people are comfortable and them having to stop running a flat prebuilt report out of the back end, out of the ERP. That they always had to go run another report afterwards. They had to sift through three reports to get to the data, get the subset, go over here, get the next subset. Okay, there's my answer. And being able to shape that for them, just find out... Gordon Rowe III (00:24:41): I spent a lot of time walking in my observation oval, we try and practice some lean and I'm a big fan of the observation oval and looking at people work and it's watching them grab their calculator and saying, what are you doing now? Well, I have to take the production of the next three weeks and turn it into 98.6 cubic bales of soil so I can do the soil ordering. Okay, well let me make a measure that's going to convert the number of flats we're producing that week to your bales of soil and let me put it in switch so you can see it in your production plan and like, boom. Thomas LaRock (00:25:22): Yeah, that's awesome. Gordon Rowe III (00:25:24): It's just that we have a production forecast that manually took time studies to come up with full-time equivalence for our 12-person production line, so that converts to FTEs, and then I have conditional formatting that if it's over five and a half days, it's red, and then I'm using switch with a disconnected table so they can plug in the number of people so they can figure out if they can get that under five days, if they set up a little sideline for four people. And it's just like that kind of stuff that people are buried in the mundane. So I want to get them out there, making sure the quality's good, get them off that, the less time you're in your seat and the more you're out in the nursery, the better. Rob Collie (00:26:11): This is the deepest, I know that we're not getting deep at all, really, but this is the deepest we've gotten into DACs ever. Gordon Rowe III (00:26:17): Is it? Rob Collie (00:26:18): In this podcast. And it totally makes sense. It's just working. We talk about this show as being data with a human element so we don't get in there and talk about optimizing, whatever. It's not a technical show. It's about the people. But us talking about these formulas and the way that you're using them is still just about the people. Gordon Rowe III (00:26:36): It is. It is. In there I have it so we can switch between the dollar value of that production based on the start date or the finish date, because we have a huge range of variables and finish times based on crop sizes, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, so you can just watch this money like, how much are we putting down this week? When it finishes, what's that going to be? What's finishing next week? It's like just all that stuff is like, and I love it. It's just fun. Rob Collie (00:27:04): A couple things, first of all, for those who are listening who are Power BI practitioners and have never used Power Pivot, something that Tom was saying that I want to make sure that is clarified for that segment of the audience. The brains underneath the hood of Power BI. Well, there is an all lap in memory database in there. It's essentially cube building without thinking about it that way, which is really how it should be done. Rob Collie (00:27:28): And Power Pivot has that thing. It has that beast in it. We were recording the podcast with Donald Farmer, where he was talking about how the original, the MVPs in the analysis services space when they saw Power Pivot were at first scared like, "Oh my gosh, you're going to put us outta business." But once they saw the capabilities of it and the sophistication of it, they realized, "Oh no, no, no. There's a lot of learning that has to happen here." It's not just a spreadsheet. Gordon has been building collinear and memory, all that databases but without having to think about it that way. That's not what it's about. It's about the people. Rob Collie (00:28:05): The second thing I wanted to highlight is, Microsoft, I hope you're listening. Gordon has been, also in the Donald podcast, he's talking about how this concept called the tool of choice. Tools that people walk forward, step forward and voluntarily embrace. Things that they're drawn to, that they like, as opposed to the things that they're handed. Rob Collie (00:28:27): In a lot of ways, Excel is both. It is like mandated in a way. But the people who get really good at it develop a real strong affinity for it. It becomes part of their identity in a weird way. And the same thing is true, this wave of folks, the Power Pivot generation, if you will. But just certainly true of you Gordon, just remembering that this happens and remembering, think about all of the success that you've had, all of the tremendous change that you've worked. Not just for yourself but for all these other people that you're mentioning. You were doing that with decade old version. Rob Collie (00:29:03): You weren't super, super bothered or crippled by the fact that there hadn't been any investment in that for a while. You were jealous perhaps maybe of all the new toys you weren't getting to play with, but you were still getting after it. And I just think that sometimes from behind the scenes, when you're working on software, you can lose sight of the successes like that. Again, it's like a decade ago. We haven't even thought about that stuff, but here you are. Gordon Rowe III (00:29:28): But I've been at the time capsule, cryogenically frozen. Rob Collie (00:29:32): Why not Power BI? You're making all of these. I'm leading the witness here. I think I know your answer, but are you going to be trying out Power BI in the next six months in a production capacity? Are you licensed for it? Gordon Rowe III (00:29:44): Totally. And when Jason visited, which I think was like two years ago now probably, he was like, "You have to do this." And I got IT company to install it on my desktop. When we migrated, I deleted three as a charm, which was this Power BI file that I saved at my desktop, which is my third attempt going in there. That's when I was like, "I need to get some schooling and not spend as much time beating my head against the wall as I did before, because I need to use my time wisely." Rob Collie (00:30:18): I'm imagining you putting together. I have no idea if this is going to be useful, but the point is it would look amazing. Using one of the custom visuals or whatnot, and producing an overhead map of your greenhouses. Color coding, conditional formatting based on profitability or demand or something. Gordon Rowe III (00:30:35): It's funny you say that. As we produce crops, we've produced 100 flats and it is a grid from above and I've been pushing for the last four years for us to sign up with this AI company. You knew that's like cameras on rails to hammer out our loss and all sorts of stuff. And the owner of that company and I talk about the crazy game of Tetris we have to play with our space. Because our most valuable space is our empty space and cleaning, there's all sorts of stuff that has to go behind and it's Tetris across five, six acres across multiple buildings. Gordon Rowe III (00:31:15): We have a 1.3 acre building and a two acre building and then we have all these other little buildings all over the place. And it's like, where can this fit over there and what can we move? And I want the AI to show people what to go do on that. Rob Collie (00:31:29): That's awesome. We talk about the Tetris problem in our business. We've got all these odd-shaped pieces of project work and mapping it to consultant availability. It's something we talk about it extensively on the podcast with Kellan. But the equivalent is the old BI industry worked one greenhouse at a time. We just dedicate the whole greenhouse to one thing. That's how big the project was. Rob Collie (00:31:52): But when you're moving fast and you're able to execute projects at a much faster tempo, now you get a Tetris problem. How do you get all of these projects into your team in a way that's efficient so you don't end up, again, with a lot of that empty space? I read a long time ago that for a restaurant, the optimal model in terms of capacity loading for a restaurant, imagine non-COVID era for this, is to always have exactly one table open. Rob Collie (00:32:19): And that took me a little while to wrap my head about it, why would you ever want one table open? Oh I see, because you're turning people away. And if you had gotten people out of the restaurant a little bit faster, you would be able to take that next person to walk up on the seat them immediately. Is there any parallel? You said that the empty space is your most valuable space. Is there anything akin to that, like you always want one empty spot? Or if you could have your way, you'd never have any empty spots? Gordon Rowe III (00:32:48): The perfect scenario would be the same thing where you'd have one bay open. Because you'd have no waiting waste, you'd eliminate all that stuff. Just like first thing this morning, there was a big email chain about the amount of materials that's finishing at farm A has to move to farm B before it leaves. And that two-acre greenhouse at 60% capacity right now, so there should be plenty of space, but it's all these little tiny holes throughout this whole thing. Gordon Rowe III (00:33:20): So we have to physically move stuff where it needs to go. And nobody put into the equation that what's leaving over the next five weeks. It's like, here's what's coming to you in the next five weeks. Well, we can accommodate that but we also have this leaving, and then I was like, "Okay, let me go look at this. These are all at 50% so we could just do a east west move here to open up a clean aisle." This is what's leaving, so these two houses are the houses you should attack first. Rob Collie (00:33:51): I'm going to have to make it so that Kellan, our president and COO, does not listen to this podcast. Because what's going to happen is he's going to hear this segment of it and he's just like disappear into a beautiful mind type of hole with a scrap board and a chalkboard and he's going to be coming back saying things like, it's the nursery problem. It's always been the nursery problem. But it sounds like such up his alley. Seriously, if he ever came to visit you, he would never leave. Gordon Rowe III (00:34:23): Anytime. Anytime you want to get rid of him for a while, he can come up and- Rob Collie (00:34:26): I need to clone him. I want to see what his reaction would be to seeing your operation, but then I want to be able to reel him in because we need him. We have our own problems. Gordon Rowe III (00:34:36): Everybody has problems. Thomas LaRock (00:34:38): Sarah Problem. Rob Collie (00:34:38): Sarah Problem. Yes. And the answer is yes. Sarah Problem? Yes. Always, there's always a problem. Multiple actually. Think about it from an outsider's perspective. You just grow plants. How simple could it be? It's the simplest thing ever. Gordon Rowe III (00:34:54): We don't get that. We get, it must be so nice there working with all the flowers. Rob Collie (00:34:59): Oh, I see. It's that version of it. Gordon Rowe III (00:35:01): It's so relaxing. Rob Collie (00:35:03): Yeah. It turns out you've got to do battle with some very, very, very unforgiving forces. We call them physics and biology. Those things bring, like you're talking about like, oh yeah, we've got to move them from this place to that place and why. Why do we need to do that? Because of physical constraints or because we need to maintain a different temperature over here or irrigate differently over here. And by the way, different plants might require different things at different parts of their life cycle and oh my God. Gordon Rowe III (00:35:33): All of those things and the weather. And the weather, even though we're in controlled environment, and the weather. Because cloudy days, sunny days. Getting a plant out of a greenhouse that's been 72 degrees and putting it on a truck when it's 22 degrees outside, we don't even... It's like the machine has to stop then. We can't even do that because we have to make a tunnel to get the stuff. We got heaters and it's like, okay, cross our fingers. Gordon Rowe III (00:36:04): And then we got to disappoint people and say, sorry, week 22, 21, you're not getting your Flox Gina because they're in a second dormancy right now and we don't know when they're going to come out because we've never seen this before. So we'll cancel your order and we'll call you back. Sorry. Rob Collie (00:36:22): Bring out the plants. Gordon Rowe III (00:36:24): Plants sleeping. Yeah. Plants asleep. Rob Collie (00:36:29): So you're in Pennsylvania. Is that right? Gordon Rowe III (00:36:32): Yes. Southeastern Pennsylvania. Just a little bit above the Maryland Delaware, Pennsylvania Arc there. Rob Collie (00:36:40): Has the cannabis revolution come to Pennsylvania yet? Gordon Rowe III (00:36:43): Yeah, we have cannabis. It really totally messed up our industry with resources. It's shared resources, so it's like it delayed our greenhouse construction. Because we couldn't get greenhouse components and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Rob Collie (00:36:59): Because of again, the gold rush, right? Gordon Rowe III (00:37:00): Yeah, the gold rush. Rob Collie (00:37:03): Talk about like keys to doors. Gordon Rowe III (00:37:04): Even though that plant was a huge part of my life for a long time, I wanted nothing to do with going into the industry. Well, it's going to cost you a lot of money to get me out of where I'm living right now. I'm at home and if you want me to go there, here's what I need. Just say no. I'm going to give you no answers. Rob Collie (00:37:27): So there were head hunters. Gordon Rowe III (00:37:29): I had some head hunters, yeah. I have some really good friends who are really successful in the business and they're like, "I need you. I need you. I need you. Come help me." And I'm like, "Here's what I want." Rob Collie (00:37:39): And they should pay it, right? Gordon Rowe III (00:37:41): They should. They should. Rob Collie (00:37:43): They should. They just don't know any better yet. Gordon Rowe III (00:37:44): And I just said that, and I don't want anything to do with that. That's the strangest world because it's taken a plant and put it into commodity status, and it's no different than wheat or soybeans, except it's in a really high tech environment. Illicitness of it has allowed it to have some fake value associated with it so it can... it's a huge bubble in my opinion. And I just at my age and everything, I don't want to shift gears to have to shift back and just wasn't worth it for me. Rob Collie (00:38:18): Was you that I was talking about that the AI associated with this, all it does is optimize for color? Is it you or someone else I was talking to, these AI systems that these growers have, they give control of all of the environmental factors to that system and have it just try to match certain known good in the plants. Gordon Rowe III (00:38:41): Yeah. That's one of those things that they're doing with that system that we've given them a down payment. We have a good faith agreement that we're going to install it. It was going to go into that big greenhouse we had. But those guys are doing really crazy stuff with that and they're even predicting yields based on data and reading bud points on the plant within. It's amazing how close they are to what they're going to get. Rob Collie (00:39:07): We've joked a few times on this podcast and it's not really a joke. You really only find out what humanity can do, like where there's a will, there's a way. Until we start competing with each other or in professional sports or even worse, like when we're going to war with one another, that's where technology really leaps forward. We might need to add one more category to that. We really find out what we can do when there's weed to be grown, apparently. Thomas LaRock (00:39:36): It's a license to print money. It just seems like right now, I drive past dispensaries we have and the line has been, before coronavirus, the line was, the place was just packed. Just nonstop flow of business. And it just seems like- Rob Collie (00:39:54): It's crazy, right? Thomas LaRock (00:39:55): ... it's just pure profit to me. There's no risk in that industry. If you secure a license, you are going to make money. Rob Collie (00:40:05): That's like the taxi medallions in New York City until they weren't. What did they think she used to sell for? They were like, sounds like a million dollars each. Thomas LaRock (00:40:13): Something crazy. Rob Collie (00:40:14): The right to operate a single taxi was selling for six figures. There were even companies, that their whole business model was to assemble portfolios of these. It was trading as a financial security and then Uber came along. Those things, market for that stuff just crashed, so I tend to agree with you that there's something bubble about it. You'd think that if it was a bubble, that it would've crashed by now. Gordon Rowe III (00:40:42): That's a good point, but I just don't see, there's a ton of money to be made, but if you got a hold of a bunch of their PNLs, you'd be like, wow, they're not making the margins they were making when they were drug dealers at all. They have all sorts of compliance they have to do and all sorts of stuff that they're doing that they may or may not have been doing. It's just an annual and it's a commodity, and if you could grow that stuff where it's dry in Mexico, let's say, and labor was super cheap and you could mechanically harvest everything and you need lights and you didn't need CO2 generation and you didn't need all these things, you could grow enough in a state, the size of Delaware probably to supply the United States for the year. Rob Collie (00:41:27): The United States looks at Delaware, looks at you, looks at Delaware and says, "I think we can do better." Gordon Rowe III (00:41:38): It's just close. It's small. I picked on it. Rob Collie (00:41:40): Challenge accepted. Gordon Rowe III (00:41:41): Yeah. Probably who knows what it is, but- Rob Collie (00:41:44): I wonder if it's like the craft beer of business. Even now it seems like every day there's a new craft brewer reopening. With craft brewing, it's more a labor of love. Were you suggesting earlier that some of the actual illicit distributors and stuff might have gone legit? Gordon Rowe III (00:41:58): I know they have. Rob Collie (00:41:59): That just seems like a weird transition, doesn't it? It's like you need a whole different organization to be legitimate versus underground. Gordon Rowe III (00:42:06): But they loved what they did and that's what they wanted to do. And they just saw, I get to do this at a bigger scale and I'm not going to go to jail. So I'm like, "Wow, I'm going to make that switch." I bet you, half of that in industry has been involved in it before illicitly in some way, shape or form. And not from being a consumer. Rob Collie (00:42:26): Yeah. Just to give you a data point on that, I, our company, we have nothing to do with cannabis. I don't even think we have any cannabis industry clients. Not that we've gone out of our way to not have them, but my wife was thinking about doing a, some sort of wellness store at one point as a business she wanted to start. And one of the products that she wanted to carry was just CBD. Which almost has nothing to do with the cannabis industry, really. It's like a derivative. Not mind altering, none of the above. Local banks here in Indiana, a lot of them have explicit policies, that if you have anything to do with CBD, they won't make you a loan. Gordon Rowe III (00:43:03): Totally. Rob Collie (00:43:04): Even CBD. It's clearly not because of the compound in question. It's got to be because of some sort of cultural association, or maybe it's the knowledge that there's actually a number of shady characters in that business. Gordon Rowe III (00:43:21): I know that I wanted to grow hemp liners. I have some local friends, farmers, they're putting in nine acres of hemp, 15 acres of hemp. Let's get into some hemp production to take one house and quick turn, make some money, help some local guys out. Rob Collie (00:43:39): What's a hemp liner? Gordon Rowe III (00:43:41): Just a rooted hemp cutting that you'd plant in the ground and then finish outside in your field. Rob Collie (00:43:47): Okay. Gordon Rowe III (00:43:47): It's what we do. We're the start of the nursery supply chain, so we sell a little inch and a half tall, inch by inch plug. A little, there's 72, 50 or 32 in a tray and I wanted to grow those for some friends basically. And one of the big hurdles was that the bank was like, "No way. No how. No loans. You can't. Not allowed. Not happening." Rob Collie (00:44:11): Even independent of the laws. It's interesting. That got my attention and you're like something's going on there? I don't know what, but something's definitely going on there. Gordon Rowe III (00:44:18): Those guys jump through crazy hoops for banking because federally, they still can't do... There's no regulations for them for banking. So they have hemp credit union kind of things taken. And those guys are taking cash to a hemp credit union so they can get their money, because most banks won't take them as customers. If you look into it, it's nutty. Rob Collie (00:44:45): Sound like Breaking Bad, you've got a storage shed full of a gigantic cube of cash. Gordon Rowe III (00:44:51): It is, it is. That's what's going on. Rob Collie (00:44:54): That's scary. Well, I didn't mean to turn this into a- Gordon Rowe III (00:44:57): Little weed aside. Rob Collie (00:44:58): ... a little weed aside. I just felt like, this is something that is happening in your industry. I had no idea for instance, that you're now competing against that crazy woosh bubbly industry for basic supplies and construction and all that kind of, that hadn't even occurred to me. Didn't account for that in your Power Pivot model, did you? Gordon Rowe III (00:45:19): No. No you didn't there, Collie. Rob Collie (00:45:23): You could have had a slicer like, "Weed legalization." The weed legalization scenario. Thomas LaRock (00:45:29): Yeah, wow. You really missed that one. Rob Collie (00:45:32): Put that in your disconnected slicer and smoke it. Gordon Rowe III (00:45:34): Did you have that one written down already? Was that on the fly? Rob Collie (00:45:45): No. Gordon Rowe III (00:45:45): That's great. Rob Collie (00:45:45): This is my gift, making disconnected slicer jokes. Gordon Rowe III (00:45:48): That's great. Rob Collie (00:45:48): It's a very, very, very specific brand of humor. Gordon Rowe III (00:45:52): This should be on a sticker for the 14 people that are going to really laugh at that one. Thomas LaRock (00:45:59): Four of them are here. Rob Collie (00:46:03): That's correct. We'd make those stickers for ourselves, which would violate one of the rules. Don't use your own product. We got other things to talk about, I'm sure. Do you have retail customers or your customers are all like the next step in the nursery supply chain? Gordon Rowe III (00:46:26): Our customers are wholesale nurseries, upscale retail garden centers that do their own padding. And then we have a landscape plug that's a five-inch deep or three-inch deep plug that you can plant with a bulb drill directly into the ground instead of digging up space for a one gallon. So we have like 30% of the business, 30, 40% of the business goes into the plug market, which are landscapers. Rob Collie (00:46:58): Give me an example of something that I would plant via this method. Thomas LaRock (00:47:01): Grass. Gordon Rowe III (00:47:02): Grasses. Like ornamental grasses. Let me think. The Highline used a lot of our deep plugs in New York, that project. Thomas LaRock (00:47:12): Nice. Gordon Rowe III (00:47:12): We have, there's a really nice place called Longwood Gardens here in our backyard, which is pretty world renowned place. They redid their meadow and bought a couple hundred thousand plugs from us. The 9/11 Memorial out near Pittsburgh has a number of our plugs that went into that. So it's when they're doing a naturalistic native planning. It's got that deep root system so it can go direct into the ground. You don't need a lot of irrigation because it's a smaller thing and they finish the following year. You can't really tell the difference and you have a lot less labor going into planting. Rob Collie (00:47:48): Are there any trees that can be planted like this or is it just grasses and strawberries? Gordon Rowe III (00:47:51): Ir's actually, the plug came from, it's a forestry tray actually that we adopted to do native grasses and [inaudible 00:48:02] in. But we don't grow trees. Rob Collie (00:48:04): Not via plugs. Gordon Rowe III (00:48:05): No, but when they plant where they've cut in Oregon, let's say, they use that plug tray, basically. Rob Collie (00:48:11): This is something that I'm under direct instructions to ask you about, which is native plants. At our house, we are now on a native plant policy. We're only going to plant landscaping that would conceivably naturally have grown here. Anyway, supports the local insects and things like that in ways that a lot of times plants from different regions wouldn't. Has this started to become at all a trend that you're having to anticipate around the country, or are we the only freak shows that are doing this? Gordon Rowe III (00:48:45): North Creek was started 33, 4, 5 years ago with the crack smoking idea of growing native perennials. That's what we set out to do- Thomas LaRock (00:48:55): Wow. Gordon Rowe III (00:48:55): ... at that point in time. Which was like, you want to grow ditch weeds? You're growing what? The horticulture world was all about pretty uniform, cookie cutter. And the founder, he and Steve, Dale and Steve, Dale's no longer with the company because it outgrew his vision. But that's what Dale wanted to do, was grow natives for the landscape. And it was really, really unheard of and like lunacy. Rob Collie (00:49:25): I had no idea. Listeners out there, this was not pre-scripted. I had no idea that this just the origin of North Creek. Gordon Rowe III (00:49:32): Yeah, this is the origin of North Creek. And if you go back and look at our catalogs, we... I said we, I wasn't even there yet, but there were those cookie cutter items that they grew because they had to have this business. But he had all these crazy oddball plants that nobody had heard of, so North Creek's been very crazy being visionaries and trend setting. Not even trend setting, doing the work ahead of time to break into these things. Gordon Rowe III (00:49:59): Like data too. We were one of the big data... I got data and then there's a group of nurseries, there's maybe like 200 of us and we share all these metrics with each other now on a blind thing. And I gave presentations to those guys on what we were doing and watching heads explode and presentations. Rob Collie (00:50:17): I remember you telling me that. You sent me a text one time saying, "I'm at this conference. I'm up here. I'm making presentation. I'm just watching heads explode left and right. Just boom, boom, boom." Thomas LaRock (00:50:29): That's awesome. Rob Collie (00:50:29): Just like a culture, that's like a society now forming around data in the nursery industry with you as one of the elder figures. Gordon Rowe III (00:50:41): I've been called the Gandalf of data and I've been preaching. I've been preaching since 2013 and I just had somebody not too long ago call me up like, "Hey Gordon, we're moving to your ERP. I remember those data models you had. Can you help me out with that stuff, Power Pivot?" Writing it down, seeing what I'm doing and I'm like, "It's Power BI now, but you'll figure it out. Just go help yourself out. Call somebody else." Rob Collie (00:51:02): Well, we know what your gift is going to be now, Luke, the Gandalf of data. Thomas LaRock (00:51:09): Who makes those gifts. Gordon Rowe III (00:51:10): I had a much longer beard then. Rob Collie (00:51:11): Who makes those gift? Thomas LaRock (00:51:12): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:51:13): Kylie makes those gifts. Our designer animator, extraordinaire. Thomas LaRock (00:51:17): She does the stick figures for you as well? Rob Collie (00:51:19): She can. Thomas LaRock (00:51:19): Okay. Rob Collie (00:51:20): She was not the originator of the stick figures. Originator of the stick figures is an artist in Australia, and who's done a lot of even custom work for us in that regard. I'm not writing that many blog posts anymore, so I haven't... Trust me, we still a very brisk business in stick figures behind the scenes, our team meetings. And there's others that have taken up the torch. Evan on our team has got a strong stick figure game and he brings it. Rob Collie (00:51:44): But yeah, like you were saying, Gordon, you're talking about this journey that you've been on, reaching the point where like, "We can hire people now to do things." We've reached the same level in couple of years. We now have a full-time designer on staff. Full-time web dev, a full-time copywriter. We're able to do things now, and it's crazy cool. It's just this feeling of awesome capability compared to the old days where you had to wear every single hat, including the Gandalf hat, by the way. Gordon Rowe III (00:52:10): How many people are you up to right now? Rob Collie (00:52:12): I think we could probably get somewhere in the mid 30s together in a room if we needed to. Depending on how wide of a net you wanted to throw. Gordon Rowe III (00:52:19): And if you went back to 2010, 2011, 2012, whenever your first blog post was when you were going to sit down this road, did you have any idea? What was your target then? Have you hit it? Is this beyond your wildest dreams? Where are you at buddy? Rob Collie (00:52:38): I've got a nuanced layers of onion type of answer to this question. On the one hand, we're exactly where I wanted us to be. The kind of company that I thought needed to be created to respond to disruption of these tools. The industry's doing everything it can to not make it a disruption. And in some ways, even Microsoft is trying to not make it a disruption. As long as the money flows. Rob Collie (00:53:02): But it is make no mistake about it. This stuff is a disruptor. You can't put this particular genie back in model. And so, the kind of consulting firm that needed to be built for this stuff, well, we're living that today. In broad strokes, yes, this is where I expected it to be. However, I thought that the world would uptake this stuff much faster than it has. It's the old joke we've made a few times on here. Like the difference between foresight and depth perception, you can be great at one and not so great at the other. Rob Collie (00:53:30): I'm grateful though, that it has taken the world a lot longer because it's taken us a while too. I think you have to underestimate the difficulty in something to ever get into it. If you knew all the obstacles ahead of you, you wouldn't start. But we did, because we didn't know the obstacles. And so, it's a different place. It'd be really an oversimplifying and humanistic narrative for me to say, yeah, we're exactly where I thought we would be. No, there were so many problems and epiphanies and things that had to be navigated that were just completely invisible. Rob Collie (00:54:02): In a way, it's more satisfying where we are because it was harder, way harder than I would've anticipated. And it required a team of talented people even just to make that vision a reality. I couldn't have done that by myself. It sounds like a cliche, but we didn't have enough labor power to do it. We also didn't have the right kinds of brains. All we had was my wife and I in the beginning. Rob Collie (00:54:25): So yes, in some sense we're right where I thought we would be. No, it's been a longer and more difficult road than I ever anticipated. But longer and more difficult just makes it more validating, more satisfying in a way. So the no parts of that answer aren't negative. They're actually part of the positive parts of that answer. More podcast guests should bring their own questions. That should be something we encourage. Why does it have to always be us? Thomas LaRock (00:54:50): Yeah. Gordon Rowe III (00:54:51): Because I'm going to turn the tables. Rob Collie (00:54:52): I'm bringing my own heat. That's great. I appreciate that. We didn't finish the native plants thing. I feel contractually obligated to make sure that I understand. So North Creek started out with a native plants kind of mission. Gordon Rowe III (00:55:10): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:55:10): Have you retained that mission? Gordon Rowe III (00:55:12): Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:55:13): That story could have taken a turn like yeah, that was what we started. It was our roots but we... Oh, see roots, see that joke? Gordon Rowe III (00:55:19): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:55:19): But we figured out that was a terrible business and so we got out of it. But no, that's not the case. You've lived up to it. Gordon Rowe III (00:55:23): No, they retained it. They had to grow some non native. They even had some annuals back then, coleus is a popular thing. They put coleus in because they could sell it. Because I brought up looking at old catalogs over the winter. We should do one of the next five-year anniversary increments. We should grow a couple crops of coleus just to bring it back because we did in the beginning. Gordon Rowe III (00:55:45): But it's definitely the core of what North Creek is, who we are, what we do. If you came out, you'd see that in the landscape. It's the main farms on 14 acres and we probably have more landscape in Meadows and wet lands and rain gardens and stuff like that around and we do greenhouses. Rob Collie (00:56:08): So with that native plant mission, do you supply just certain regions of the country? Is it basically like, these are the things that are native to Pennsylvania? Or do you have regional native set of targets for different regions? Gordon Rowe III (00:56:23): It's a focus on Mid-Atlantic native, but it expands outside of that. And our customer base is, our core is definitely in the Mid-Atlantic, but we ship the whole way to the west coast, all 48 states outside of the country, a little bit here and there, Canada, and we certainly can't grow some native from the upland plateaus of Utah, but we'll consider it on a custom basis. Rob Collie (00:56:53): Interesting. You mentioned Canada and for some reason that got me thinking about the border and then that led to COVID. The home improvement business boomed, as far as I can tell. If we just went by the metric of number of neighbors that I see with piles of lumber in their driveway, and also, I'm told the price of lumber, we did our basement, finished our basement during COVID. It was apparently the hip thing to do in this neighborhood. Rob Collie (00:57:18): I could imagine something similar happening in the plants industry. People are just at home and they've got time. But your two-year planning cycle, I don't know how you would, even if that happened, could you even take advantage of it? Gordon Rowe III (00:57:32): Right now if you went and looked at our availability in the current column, it's got a heck of a lot of zeros in it, which is why you'd also see a heck of a lot of crops that we have projected out for 2022 now. We've always had some of those items, because of process, we've shown two years of crops. Current, the next one that finishes at the end of the summer and then probably the next one as soon as we sell out. Gordon Rowe III (00:57:59): But this year it's been crazy. We had at the initial shutdown, I think we had like three, $400,000 worth of business that got canceled and/or pushed out indefinitely. And then all hell broke loose. And it was just record after record after record. Normally we'd peak the end of May, June, and then things would slow down in July little bit and start to creep up in August, September, October and then another slump. And it was just like, it just kept going and going and going and going. The shipping crews never got a break. They were exhausted going into the fall this year. It was really, really amazing. We crushed some records. Gordon Rowe III (00:58:43): And we used to have big nurseries that in the fall would book their spring orders and they might book the following year to make sure they were first in the door and had the material. And now we got Mom and Pops calling up and saying, "Do you have this?" "No, we're sold out." And they're like, "I want it next year." And we have more money on the books next year than we've ever, ever had. It's a amazing. Rob Collie (00:59:05): I have all kinds of respect for what you do. I always have, but even more so now, you've got a very frantic up tempo day to day. And yet you're dealing with something that you can't make plants really grow any faster than you already are. The world can turn on a dime in terms of its demand, as we've seen. Biology doesn't. So are there new Power Pivot models that have come into existence because of COVID? Where has this impacted you on the data side? Gordon Rowe III (00:59:33): In my future short term, got to get it done projects, one of the things we have like an availability that we publish every morning that has basically, it's got the plant and stuff, but it's gotten available now column, and then the next quantity and date, and then a second set of quantity and date. And we export that out of our system and into Excel and somebody probably should be running a macro but they might not. We publish that thing. It's a snapshot. I think it's a total waste because it's invalid as soon as we publish it, because somebody's bought a flat and it's no longer true. Gordon Rowe III (01:00:10): But I'm going to do that with Power Pivot and power update so it's just there and customer service can just print to PDF. That's one thing I've been implementing, is that I always wanted to do. I've had it in folder forever, is dynamic print ranges. It's so simple, but I just started doing it for people so they don't have to highlight their print area. That's the kind of stuff that changes lives for people. Rob Collie (01:00:36): So you're doing dynamic print ranges with name ranges that adjust? Gordon Rowe III (01:00:39): Yeah, that adjust. Rob Collie (01:00:41): Or calculations of where the data ends like the print range? Gordon Rowe III (01:00:44): Yeah. You just hit print and it's perfect. And you don't have to hit Control Arrow, Left, Down. Rob Collie (01:00:51): Some artisanal spreadsheeting. Gordon Rowe III (01:00:53): I do that kind of stuff. It's one of the things you said, the art and the science one time. Something I made. Rob Collie (01:01:00): The art or the possible so wide. Because of their 2010 being stuck there for so long, are you using Power Query at all? Gordon Rowe III (01:01:08): I'm not. Rob Collie (01:01:08): Power Query is so hard to use in 2010. Gordon Rowe III (01:01:12): I have to get into it. Rob Collie (01:01:13): We also just recorded a podcast with people from the Power Query team. And it's like a tripped down memory lane from me going like, "Right, there was a time when we didn't have Power Query and it was really hard. Really hard." You've been living in that, Gordon, above everything else, Power Query is where you're going to see tremendous ROI. It's like you've been given this huge gift now that the rest of us have had for a long time, but it's all almost like Microsoft just released this amazing, magical thing just for you and you're going to get to play with it and it's going to make your head explode. Gordon Rowe III (01:01:49): I can't wait. I'm up for some head exploding. Rob Collie (01:01:51): And you also mentioned the thing that's out of date immediately. Power BI has real time data. I'm just going to put that there. I'm just going to let it sit there for a moment. Gordon Rowe III (01:02:00): I'm still using Power Update to refresh data models every day. Rob Collie (01:02:03): Power Update is still, I think a one badass piece of software. I don't necessarily think that it goes away. Its utility vanishes when you start using the service to run your refreshes. Especially for the kinds of things that you've built, like a lot of heavily intensive stuff. Like you said, if you've got macros, it'll run them as part of your refresh. That's not going to happen in the Power BI service for instance. Rob Collie (01:02:24): But the macros is what got me started thinking about Power Query. These dumps that you've got. There's also, we need to have Ash on the show to talk about the robotic process automation stuff that they're working on in Power Automate that will literally record your keyboard and mouse click strokes and things like that. And so, you got that export that you got to run from that one system. You can, quote unquote, record a script that will go and click those export buttons for you, drop the file in a particular place and then ideally hand off to a Power Query type of script. Rob Collie (01:02:58): I've never got my hands on any of that to see if I can actually string it together in that way but I'm sure that's the intent. This is going to be when Gandalf leaves as Gandalf the Grey and resurfaces and the next movie is Gandalf the White. That's going to be you with Power Query. Gordon Rowe III (01:03:15): I've been looking forward to it for a while. It's been finding the time and I'm at a space now where I'm going to be able to do that. Rob Collie (01:03:21): It's waiting for you, man. It's waiting for you. Gordon Rowe III (01:03:23): I don't remember the specific, but I remember when I was watching the train leave the station. The blogs changed and I didn't have the tools. And I would read them anyway. And then I got to a point where it was like, I can't do anything with this. I have no framework, visual framework even to make any sense of this now. Rob Collie (01:03:45): Yeah, like the article, for example... There's many of these, but the article that I wrote about, making the football passing chart, the scatter plot and all of the Power Query that's involved in that. Even just adding the index column to that table so that every row has a ranked number on it so that I can do the jittering of the dots like your DOA. If you don't have Power Query in a technique like that. Rob Collie (01:04:12): And by the way, now that you have Power Query and you're thinking about Power BI, I think you should go revisit exactly that article because you could do some version of the greenhouse map, just with that same scatter plot technique. Now, there's other custom visuals out there that will allow you to assign your own ranges. You can put your own graphics and it understands where the shapes are. I think you're going to find some of those visual techniques that are in Power BI are just going to do things for you that you couldn't imagine before. Gordon Rowe III (01:04:38): As soon as I got into the SharePoint and I got into our first site when I was doing the migration and stuff, and I was reading about it and I was like, "I can embed a little Power BI report here. Right here on that page and every department would have their key metrics right there, knowing if they have to go here and drill into the next thing." And my mind's been and churning on it. Rob Collie (01:05:02): I hope you get some 25%. I know that's a large chunk, but I think I'm really hoping that you get some 25% of your time at some point that you can carve out for a while, where you can apply some of this new stuff. It's going to go so well with the data models that you've been building. I bet you're going to find things that we've been talking a little bit on this show about the action loop. It's not just about informing people. It's about helping them take the action that's indicated by the report. Gordon Rowe III (01:05:36): Yeah. Verb reporting. Rob Collie (01:05:39): Even just hyperlinking them to the right place in some other system. There's so much fun putting together hyperlink columns, just with the concatenate operator in Power BI, and embedding those so that you can click through. You see the problem, you click on it, you click the link that's next to that particular place on the report and off you go. Now you're in that other system and you've already like navigated to the right ID or whatever it is where you would want to take the action. So much there. Rob Collie (01:06:09): And then there's power apps. We need to send Kevin Overstreet to visit you. That'd be the other person whose head explodes, would be Kevin Overstreet who's also been on this show. Six months, even three months of working with Kevin and he has a day job. He works for Eli Lilly. It's not like he's going to be packing up and coming to see you for three months. But you would revolutionize again, your whole industry with the things that have been added to the Power platform that are like spokes around the data modeling core. Exciting times. Now you just need to go hire some people so you get some of that time back. Gordon Rowe III (01:06:43): Super cool. I'm just letting go and letting people sink or swim a lot. Rob Collie (01:06:48): How's that ratio? Gordon Rowe III (01:06:49): And just going back. Rob Collie (01:06:50): Sink versus swim, how much are you seeing when you let go? Gordon Rowe III (01:06:52): People swim a lot. They swim a lot. One of the things, we hired the new IT company to handle all this stuff. Because I middle maned everything with the old people and the new people were like, "We don't want you as the middle man anymore. You got to go do stuff." So when we migrated the email over to 365, I went consulting for the day. I was like, "I'm not even going to be here so people can't even reach out to me." Gordon Rowe III (01:07:15): And I was driving down the road. It was an hour away and I was looking at my email and I'm like, you'll have to email [Dorset 01:07:22] with that send. I'm sorry, I can't help you with that. It was like really, really liberating. Rob Collie (01:07:28): I was reading one time about this World War II German general, who knew about the plot to kill Hitler. And hadn't turned them in, but also didn't want to support them, because he didn't want to be exposed if it didn't work, which of course it didn't. He knew when it was going to happen, when they were going to try to do it, so he made a point of just being out on this really long walk, like an all-day walk, so that he couldn't be reached, couldn't be asked for his opinion or whatever. Might not be the best of examples, but there is something to unavailability at crucial junctures, can sometimes be a very powerful tool. Gordon Rowe III (01:08:07): How else are you going to learn? You got to get rid of the crutches. Rob Collie (01:08:09): Also there's another example of this. We had a vice president at Microsoft and he had to give some sort of demo at three o'clock the next afternoon. And he'd been strategizing with this engineer, this guy named Kevin during the day before. And they sketched out what they were going to do in the demo and all that. They both go home. And the next day, the vice president is walking around the hallways in the morning going, "Where's Kevin? Where's Kevin? Where's Kevin?" And Kevin's nowhere to be found. Nowhere to be found. It's like Kevin didn't show up until an hour before the VP was supposed to be on stage and it was a real panic that morning. No one could get ahold of Kevin. Rob Collie (01:08:47): And the demo went off fine, everything went great, and then afterwards Kevin told me like, "Yeah, I deliberately vanished that morning because I knew that if I was available, he'd be grabbing me and making me trying to change everything, and it would just be all this incredible stress and everything and it would just be all just a huge waste of time. And so I just deliberately ghosted." And we had no idea that that's what he'd done, but as soon as he told us, we're like, "Oh my God, that's genius." Thomas LaRock (01:09:16): It is genius. Gordon Rowe III (01:09:17): Total genius. Rob Collie (01:09:18): All right, gentlemen. Well, thank you so much. Gordon Rowe III (01:09:21): It was great. Announcer (01:09:22): 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!

Who better to talk about the past, present, and future of BI than Microsoft Corporate Vice President of the Business Intelligence Platform Arun Ulag. We're all excited for the upcoming Microsoft Business Applications Launch Event on April 6th!   References in this Episode: Monty Python Camelot Scene   Dirty Daxing Tweet   Something About Mary 7 Minute Abs Scene   The Giant Backlog of Power BI Ideas   Episode Timeline: 1:20 - Arun's data journey, and the death of Power BI V1 17:20 - The story behind the new Power BI icon, why Gartner's magic quadrant favors Power BI 35:20 - Arun's shares what keeps him up at night, the future of Power BI, and PBI Adoption 52:30 - Power BI improves lives, especially Excel and V-Lookup people's lives and the evolution of P3 Adaptive 1:07:20 - Wolfram Data Types, the Azure Data Market, and some cool futuristic Power BI features announced at the Power BI Business Applications Summit Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Welcome, friends. Today's guest is Arun Ulag, and if you don't know, his role at Microsoft is, he runs this thing called the Intelligence Platform, comprising, oh, I don't know, some things you might have heard of like Power BI, analysis services, reporting services, the Power Platform, so if you're in the data and Power BI and Power Platform podcasting industry, he's what is called a good get. Like always, in this industry, we talk a lot about the personal things, like his personal history and his career arc, but given his position, it's totally natural that we spent a lot of time talking about the product, talking about the Microsoft data platform, where it's headed, where it's coming from, the challenge, the excitement, the background evolution of Microsoft. Through it all, I think you'll see that Microsoft definitely has the right person in this role. Rob Collie (00:00:50): We really appreciate him doing this. We had a lot of fun, so let's get into it. Speaker 2 (00:00:53): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Speaker 3 (00:01:00): 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 (00:01:23): Welcome to the show. Arun Ulag, how are you today? Arun Ulag (00:01:26): Excellent, excellent. Thanks for having me, Rob. So excited to be here. Rob Collie (00:01:29): Oh my goodness. The pleasure is definitely ours. What's your current job title? What do you do at Microsoft? Arun Ulag (00:01:36): Sure. My official job title is corporate vice president, Intelligence Platform. What I do is I run all the business intelligence products for Microsoft, so Power BI is where I spend most of my time, but we also run a lot of our pro dev BI products, so Azure analysis services, SQL Server analysis services, SQL Server reporting services, so all the BI products here at Microsoft, basically. I run both engineering and product management. Rob Collie (00:01:59): I love that name, the Intelligence Platform. Arun Ulag (00:02:03): It makes us sound smart. Rob Collie (00:02:04): It's like, at any meeting you're just sitting there with this sign in front of you that says, "The Intelligence Platform," and everyone else is sitting feeling not as smart by comparison. Arun Ulag (00:02:15): I should try that some time. It sounds like a good idea. Rob Collie (00:02:18): It's like those things where, like, one person at the negotiating table gets a chair that's eight inches taller than everybody else. Tom Larock (00:02:27): Nice. Rob Collie (00:02:27): That's awesome. What's your path to getting there? Were you and I both at Microsoft? Did we overlap? I think we did, but we just didn't know each other. Arun Ulag (00:02:35): Yeah, we absolutely did. Like many of us, I started out as a programmer, but the thing I really wanted to do was go start my own company, so I was foolish enough to do that at 22, and I got lucky. I was in the Silicon Valley, started a telecom network management software company, found a customer, believe it or not, in the first couple of weeks, so that really helped us grow. We grew quickly. It was profitable for six years, grew to 50, 60 people. I was an engineer selling to engineers. That's the kind of company I built, and then I got stuck. I kind of found that I couldn't grow it anymore, because I didn't know how to build a whole company, so I said, "All right. Let's take a reset," so I sold the company. I went to business school, got my MBA, and then I came to Microsoft, mostly because I wanted to practice sales and marketing, see how it's done, and then relax for a couple of years at a big company and then go back to the Valley and do another startup. Arun Ulag (00:03:22): That was my big idea, so I joined Microsoft in 2003 and then, lo and behold, 17 years later I'm still here, so I've done marketing, I've done sales, and now I run product. Rob Collie (00:03:32): That story, like, I founded a company by engineers, for engineers, and then realized that business was a little bit more challenging than just that. That doesn't sound familiar to me at all. Arun Ulag (00:03:42): You know a thing or two about that, Rob, so you and I share that. Rob Collie (00:03:46): Yeah. Our business really took off, not coincidentally, when I realized that I was at the limits of my powers, and I was overdue. I realize that. I didn't take that lesson terribly gracefully, and I can look back on it now and go, "Okay, you know," but when I finally relinquished unanimous grip on the steering wheel, that's when we really hit our inflection point. Obviously, it's not addition by subtraction. It's the fact that that gave room for Kellan to do his thing. He is really good at these other things, so that resonated with me. Rob Collie (00:04:23): Okay, got your MBA, which is a pretty tried and true career re-vectoring move, and when you landed at Microsoft newly minted as an MBA, what did you do when you first landed there? Arun Ulag (00:04:37): We didn't have a lot of choice. As a fresh MBA, they kind of said, "Do you want to work in enterprise software or consumer software?" I said, "Enterprise software," and that's all I got to say. I started out in the security business. I did that for a couple years, and those were the really, really dark years for Microsoft and security, 2003. We were trying to figure out how we build a security product portfolio, so that was my first job. I was the antivirus product manager, trying to figure out what to do about antivirus software. Rob Collie (00:05:03): Oh, wow. Arun Ulag (00:05:05): That's kind of how I started. I spent a couple years in security, so we did a few acquisitions, started to build out a security portfolio. That was my first job. Rob Collie (00:05:12): Like, the Windows malware removal stuff? Was that something that you had something to do with? Arun Ulag (00:05:17): No, that was a different team but we led the antivirus software acquisition. We led an antimalware software acquisition, and [inaudible 00:05:25] called a giant software company, and it was all two people in New York. It sounded really big, and then I led the acquisition of a company called Whales Communications. They built SSL VPN devices, so we built a security portfolio one piece at a time, so I did that for a couple years. Rob Collie (00:05:43): Through friends of friends, I know some of the people who started CrowdStrike who had originally been Microsofties. I was just wondering if you had crossed paths with any of them. Arun Ulag (00:05:53): That doesn't sound familiar. Rob Collie (00:05:54): Yeah. We're not here to talk about antivirus, though. Let's not pretend. So, security for a little while. How'd you start crossing over into the Intelligence Platform? Arun Ulag (00:06:07): It was accidental. The guy who ran security, Ted Kummert, I had a ton of respect for him. He moved over to run SQL server on the engineering side, and I had a ton of respect for Ted so I decided to move to SQL, as well. That was my step in to data for Microsoft, so I ran SQL Server enterprise marketing for a few years, got to know the whole SQL Server community, the field, the salespeople, the partners, and that was awesome. SQL was on fire, was growing like crazy. We were taking a ton of share. It was an exciting time to be in SQL Server, so I did that for a few years, and then there was an opportunity to move to sales, and I really did want to think about, what does it take to land gravity, like, carry a quarter, and also experience a different part of the world. Arun Ulag (00:06:47): There was an opportunity to run the cloud and AI business for the Asia-Pacific region, so I moved to Singapore with my family and it was a really, really fun and exciting move, so I was based out of Singapore for about four years. I ran the APAC cloud and AI business for Microsoft and the field organization. Ton of fun, so many good friends over there. Such an interesting part of the world. Spent a bunch of time in Australia and Korea and Singapore, in Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, so India wasn't part of Asia-Pac for us. China wasn't part of Asia-Pac. Japan wasn't part of Asia-Pac, but outside of these three big markets, the rest of Southeast Asia was part of my territory. Arun Ulag (00:07:26): It was a lot of fun, just absolutely loved it, and it was the days when Kevin Turner ran the field organization. I would describe that as a schooling. For those that know Kevin, he's a pretty tough operator, and I learned how to do more with less. I learned what being held accountable meant, and it was awesome. I loved it. It was an incredible set of career experiences. Rob Collie (00:07:48): You got to love those formative experiences. They might not be necessarily a ton of fun while they're happening, but they're things that you look back on later and go, "Wow, I really value that." Arun Ulag (00:08:01): Absolutely. Absolutely. Kevin was pretty phenomenal. He was tough, but he was fair and I learned a lot from him. Rob Collie (00:08:08): Sounds like the drill sergeant in Full Metal Jacket. "I am hard but I am fair." Arun Ulag (00:08:16): Yes. It sounds very familiar. Rob Collie (00:08:18): Oh, yeah. We could explore that metaphor for a long time, but we won't. Did you cross paths with Tom when you were in that SQL era? Do you know SQL Rock Star? Arun Ulag (00:08:32): It sounds familiar. I don't know if we actually crossed paths, Tom. Tom Larock (00:08:36): I don't think so. It's okay. Rob Collie (00:08:37): I mean, come on. He was president of PASS. Arun Ulag (00:08:41): We did have a lot of interactions with PASS, and Tom, we probably bumped into each other, because there's a lady on my team who is representing SQL in the PASS community, I think, for [inaudible 00:08:51], so, yeah, we probably crossed paths in some way but I don't know if I made any big impression on you so you don't remember. Tom Larock (00:09:00): I remember Ted, and I interacted with Ted, I want to say, for a couple of years right before he retired. I remember Ted retiring. I think I was there his last day. I happened to be on campus or something. I haven't heard Ted's name in years, so when you said Ted, I'm like, "Oh, I remember Ted," but I'm not sure you and I, because when I looked at your LinkedIn I saw the years that you were doing certain things. I was really just coming on the board executive and interfacing with the Microsoft execs, so I think as I was getting there, you were heading to Singapore. Arun Ulag (00:09:34): That's probably right. Rob Collie (00:09:35): Because, otherwise, you clearly would know each other. Tom Larock (00:09:37): Yeah, we would have interacted more than once, I think, I'm hoping in a positive way, but who knows. Arun Ulag (00:09:44): I'm sure. I'm absolutely sure. Rob Collie (00:09:46): Ted was in charge of that division when I was there working on Power [inaudible 00:09:50]. Arun Ulag (00:09:50): Oh, is that right? Rob Collie (00:09:51): Yeah, so this is also a name well known to me in addition. All right, so, let's turn the corner. You come home from Singapore. Is that when the Power BI leg of your journey begins? Arun Ulag (00:10:04): Yeah. It's a funny story because I was super excited about Power BI version one when it was being demoed and when it launched. You guys all know Amir Netz. He's a phenomenal storyteller, phenomenal demoer, so he demoed Power BI version one at our sales summit. It was called MGX, and he got a standing ovation from, like, 15,000 salespeople. He riled the whole crowd up. People were on their feet cheering, like, you wouldn't believe this was a BI demo. It was like a rock star event, and I was so excited. I was like, "Man, this thing's going to take the world on fire. I'm going to sell a bunch of this stuff. It's a tiny part of my portfolio but it's going to be so impactful. It's going to be huge," and then Power BI version 1.0 was really hard to sell. Arun Ulag (00:10:48): It had so many dependencies. You needed SharePoint. It was priced very high. You needed Excel as the authoring tool, so it was very complicated to set up. It was hard for customers to adopt, and so when we tried to go big with it, I found that I really couldn't. It was a much smaller business than we expected, and I got really frustrated. At that point, James Phillips had just taken over the Power BI team. It was five, six years ago, and I was introduced to him by a mutual friend, Mark Souza, who now leads the Customer Success organization for Microsoft, awesome guy. He and I go back to our SQL days together, and Mark said, "Hey, you guys should just meet. Use this as a power pivot and Excel to run the APAC CNAI business. You've taken over Power BI. Maybe you guys should chat," so I wrote to James, saying, "Hey, James. I have some feedback for you. I've tried to sell this thing that you've taken over and I'm not having a lot of success. Do you want to chat with me?" Arun Ulag (00:11:39): The thing about James is he's incredibly focused on, externally, customers, partners, field. I was shocked because I got a response back in, like, two minutes, literally. I'm not kidding. Two minutes, I got an email back with, "Hey, Arun. Would love to meet. Let's set up some time together." I was like, "Wow, this guy's incredibly responsive." From my perspective, I was just giving him field feedback, so I said, I was going to be in Redmond for some reason or the other. I spoke to a bunch of my salespeople, I spoke to a bunch of our partners, and then I wrote a paper. I said, "Hey, James, these are the issues I see. Here's what we're getting wrong. Here's what I see going on in the market, and here's what I would do if I were you." Arun Ulag (00:12:15): I sent him this paper a couple of days before we meet up. I think he had just been promoted a CVP at that point. I was like, "How many CVPs read a 12 page paper from a field guy who's not part of the organization who has some ideas?" He had read the whole paper, he had mocked it up with comments, and I meet with him, we have this incredible hour where we just brainstorming ideas, we're riffing off each other on a whiteboard, and I was incredibly impressed. The fact that he took the time, he cared deeply, he was so passionate. This was a new Microsoft. I was really blown away, and at the end of the meeting, he was like, "Arun, I like some of your ideas. Why don't you come work for me? We'll figure something out." Arun Ulag (00:12:53): He didn't have a job open. I had just persuaded my wife, like four years ago, to move to Singapore. She works for Microsoft, too, so she had taken a new position, like, a year ago in the APAC region, and here was James saying, "Well, come work for me." He didn't have a job open, I wasn't looking to come back, I was just going to take next big job in APAC, and here was this guy saying come work for him. I was like, "Man ..." I was incredibly energized, and I had not worked in product for, like, 12 years, so it was a pretty risky thing to do, go from marketing to field and then go into product with a guy who was not really well known, with a product that wasn't really killing it, with a job that was completely undefined and I had to bring my whole family back, but I decided to go for it. Arun Ulag (00:13:31): I talked to my wife. She was like, "Well, if you're so passionate about this and you love data and you love Power BI and you have some ideas and you think this guy has some great ideas, too, then let's give it a shot," so that's what I did. That's kind of what brought me to Power BI. I literally started in the Power BI team a few weeks before Power BI became generally available in 2015. Rob Collie (00:13:49): Awesome. We've yet to have anyone on the show whose path was direct, you know? Arun Ulag (00:13:56): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:13:56): The circuitous route, all the little bounces and little left or right decisions, like Bugs Bunny at Albuquerque. Like, where do you turn? It's amazing where that zig zaggy path can take us. I think it's safe to say that that risky move, stepping off the plank into the abyss, that's worked out well. Arun Ulag (00:14:20): It's worked out all right. Rob Collie (00:14:20): You can probably call it a success move. Arun Ulag (00:14:24): I love it. I can't complain. I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity to come to Power BI. It's awesome. I love it. Tom Larock (00:14:30): Rob, that's now the second time we've had James Phillips mentioned. At this point, he's got to come on the show. Rob Collie (00:14:39): He comes up a lot. Tom Larock (00:14:41): Yeah, he does. He comes up a lot. Rob Collie (00:14:41): You know who else comes up, is Amir. Tom Larock (00:14:43): It's the first time we've heard Souza's name, surprisingly. I'm actually surprised we haven't heard that name before, and I've known Mark through PASS for a long time. Rob Collie (00:14:52): Obi-Wan Souza, now there's a name [crosstalk 00:14:55]. Tom Larock (00:14:55): The godfather. We call him the godfather. Arun Ulag (00:14:57): He's a really cool guy. Tom Larock (00:14:59): The stories I have ... Anyway, here's the thing. Amir gets in front of 15,000 salespeople and he does a demo and everybody loves it. Now, Rob, might I remind you, I believe it was you who told me, "Anything you see Amir demo won't be available for at least 18 months." Rob Collie (00:15:20): That's the old Amir. The new Amir has been properly shackled. Tom Larock (00:15:28): When Arun says, "I couldn't sell it," I'm like, "Of course you couldn't sell it. Didn't you know? If it's going to be 18 months before [crosstalk 00:15:34] be available." Rob Collie (00:15:35): It's even now part of Amir's mantra onstage, like, "I am not allowed to show you anything that isn't going to be in the product in the next three months," or something like that. Tom Larock (00:15:44): He would do these demos at PASS Summit that would just be phenomenal, and then Rob would be like, "Take it easy. Calm down, Tom. Everything you just saw, he won't get for a while. It'll come eventually." Rob Collie (00:15:56): He's a really funny guy. You know the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "Camelot. Camelot," and then they go, "It's only a model." Arun Ulag (00:16:12): All I can say that, hey, Amir, these days, what he does demo, we do ship. Rob Collie (00:16:18): That's right. That's right. Arun Ulag (00:16:21): One of the things we're careful about is we don't demo stuff that's too far out, and if we do we call it out. "It's too far out. Beware. This is just early, early previews," but, no, we are very, very disciplined these days about being thoughtful about what we show and make sure we ship it. Rob Collie (00:16:37): Yeah, I agree. Arun Ulag (00:16:39): I wouldn't use the word shackle. Shackle is the wrong word. I would say he's empowered, because, look, it's great to dream up ideas. He's even more excited when we ship it, and even more excited when customers use it. Rob Collie (00:16:51): Yeah, so, what you're really saying is that you can't shackle him. There is no chain strong enough. Arun Ulag (00:16:56): You don't want to shackle Amir. You want to unleash Amir. He's such a asset for the Power BI team. He's such a force of nature. I'm so glad he's on our side. I'm so glad he's thinking about making Power BI take over the world as opposed to somebody else take over the world. Rob Collie (00:17:14): That's right. That's right. We've been joking on Twitter about dirty DAXing lately. Nobody puts Amir in the corner. Arun Ulag (00:17:20): That's so funny. Rob Collie (00:17:21): Let's talk about Power BI, and I thought that one of the funniest places we could start is, let's talk about this new Power BI icon, shall we? Arun Ulag (00:17:29): Really? That's where you want to start, Rob? Rob Collie (00:17:33): I just feel like it's a nice, light, fluffy, but also still kind of interesting, isn't it? Yeah, have you seen this, Tom? The first time I got a glimpse of this under super secret double handshake NDA threat of death, for a moment I thought, "Oh my gosh, I am being trolled. They're testing many. They're giving me a fake icon to see if I'll leak it, and if I leak it they'll know who did." I'm like, "I'm not falling for that." It's just a three bar column chart. That's all it is, and it's not even really something that you can render without gradient. It seems to break many, many rules of icon and logo design, and I know that there are some people in the community, some relatively prominent voices that are incredibly dismissive of it. Rob Collie (00:18:26): They're like, "Oh, you mean that logo that's not a logo?" But the more I thought about it, I thought, "This might be the biggest flex ever, this icon." It's like, "We're going to take something that's so iconic about data, just a column chart, and say, "Yeah, that's us." It's a very, very, very, kind of aggressive move. Now, as a thought experiment for you, Arun, this is what I want to ask you. Let's say someone had a really bad day. They ate some bad food or something and in a delirium they, instead of hiring whoever they did branding-wise for this icon, you just accidentally hired me instead. Arun Ulag (00:19:09): Oh, God. Rob Collie (00:19:10): I came to you after deliberation and whatever large sum you were paying, and I brought you that icon, that logo, and said, "Let's do this," you would have kicked me out of the room, right? Arun Ulag (00:19:25): For all that money, you come up with a bar chart. Rob Collie (00:19:29): That's right. That's right. It's only when it comes from an incredibly reputable place, that you can trust something so bold. If I'd come in with it, you'd been like, "Okay. You did five minutes of work and you didn't do anything." Tom Larock (00:19:43): Is it the four bar one or the three bar? Rob Collie (00:19:49): It's three. Tom Larock (00:19:50): The four bar, which kind of looks like the old All Valley Tournament fist, right? It's just this three one, I see, just this little stacked bar chart, that's the new icon? Arun Ulag (00:20:01): Yeah, that's the new icon. Tom Larock (00:20:05): Okay. Rob Collie (00:20:06): Tom, you're actually pointing out something interesting which is that, by choosing this, Microsoft has left themselves open on the flank. I'm going to come out with a product that's got the four bars. Arun Ulag (00:20:17): Oh, God. We never thought of that one. Rob Collie (00:20:20): It's like the seven minute abs in There's Something About Mary. Tom Larock (00:20:26): This version of Power BI is 25% less than what we had before? Rob Collie (00:20:33): Oh, come on. The bars are fatter, man. Tom Larock (00:20:40): Yes, that's true. Arun Ulag (00:20:40): You get more for less. Rob Collie (00:20:41): Is there anything at all you can tell us about that process? Arun Ulag (00:20:43): I would say, I love it. I had nothing to do with it. We have a phenomenal design team. It's led by a gentleman called Jonah Sterling. He's awesome, and Jonah's team drew up the whole process. How they do their magic, it's up to them, but I really do like it because Power BI is really about getting BI in the hands of everyone, I mean, everyone with data, and the idea that it's a bar chart is really simple. People get bar charts. They've seen them everywhere, so I love it. It's easy. It's simple. It appeals to everyone. We really want anybody thinking about data, anybody thinking about analytics to think about Power BI, and I think it accomplishes that goal. Rob Collie (00:21:19): That's the flex part of it. I like it. Tom Larock (00:21:20): The one thing I used to tell people about bar charts, because the product that I was working, that's what we had. Basically, our interface and dashboards were bar charts to show SQL server wait time, and you drill through from there, and I'd be in front of customers all the time, and I'd always say, "Yeah, it's a bar chart, because even the manager can understand the bar chart," and then the room would go silent, and they'd stop, and I'd be like, "Hey, Steve, you understand what the bar chart says," and he'd be like, "Yes, I do." I go, "See? Even the manager can understand what the bar chart is conveying. It's the simplest way to display information to that end user." Rob Collie (00:21:58): This is an expert from Tom LaRock's book, How to Get Promoted. Tom Larock (00:22:05): You got to speak the truth. Arun Ulag (00:22:06): A must read. Rob Collie (00:22:08): Yep. Speaking the truth always gets you ahead. Tom Larock (00:22:09): I never once had a manager say, "No, I don't understand what this is communicating to me." Rob Collie (00:22:16): Then, they make a note, like, never promote this guy. Arun Ulag (00:22:20): Don't invite him to meetings for god sakes. Tom Larock (00:22:24): Both of those things seem to be my ... Yeah, that's exactly how I live. I'm not in any meetings and I'm not promoted. Yeah, all right. Rob Collie (00:22:35): When you've reached the point where you've got so much air, so much white space between your dot and the other dots in the revered Gartner Magic Quadrant, you kind of earn a little bit of a right. It gives you a little bit Of air cover for such a bold icon choice as the bar chart, so, heady days, right? I don't remember there ever being someone with this big of a linear inches lead. Arun Ulag (00:23:00): It's awesome, and I think when it came out, one of the things that really made me laugh was a tweet by one of our community members that said, "Power BI's the only one following social distancing." Rob Collie (00:23:13): Oh, wow. Arun Ulag (00:23:15): I was like, "Wow." That really made me laugh. Rob Collie (00:23:20): I got to go find that tweet. That's great. Yeah, definitely got to track that down. I do, like probably 99% of the world, I just glance at the Quadrant. It's like a scoreboard, and then I move on. I never bother to read the report that goes with it or anything like that. I'm a soundbite consumer when it comes to this sort of stuff, but you, of course, talk to Gartner. You also probably read their report. Why such a lead? What do you attribute it to? Arun Ulag (00:23:47): I'd say a couple of things. First of all, I would say Gartner does have an incredibly rigorous methodology. Having been through this process a few times, they do ask us a lot of detailed questions and you can't just answer it. You have to show them demos. You have to submit them. You have to point to public documentation so they can verify it. You need to submit customer reference, but then there's a whole bunch of signal that they get directly from customers. They talk to thousands of customers a year who come to them for inquiry, so they hear directly from customers what they're interested in, what their questions are, and where they decide to go. Arun Ulag (00:24:16): Gartner introduced something called peer insights which is a public forum. Anybody can go in and submit reviews and talk about products, and so they get that signal directly, and then we get, literally, 45 minutes to tell our story. That's what we get, and we use every last second of it, believe it or not. That's the methodology, and if you look at what I would attribute our position to, I would say it's about two things. They look at the ability to execute which is one axis, and there, literally, the world is moving to Power BI. Every day I hear of customers standardizing on Power BI, rolling it to everyone, expanding access to people who never had access to a BI platform before, because it wasn't easy or it wasn't economically feasible to go give BI to everybody, and in the process, migrating from legacy and expensive BI platforms like [inaudible 00:25:05] and BusinessObjects, MicroStrategy, Tableau, Qlik. Arun Ulag (00:25:08): Every day I hear of customers migrating it, and guess what [inaudible 00:25:12], so the ability to execute, I think, is just obvious in terms of just the momentum, and you guys know it. You're in the space. You talk to customers every day. The second aspect of it is completeness of vision. When we started out six years ago, we started talking about how do we help our customers drive a data culture, and we were the only ones using those words at that point, and if you go back six years, not many folks were talking about a data culture. BI was still more of an elite thing that wasn't for everybody, and now a lot of the other vendors have started adopting our language. Arun Ulag (00:25:42): Everybody's talking about driving a data culture these days, and that's interesting and that's exciting because I think the industry has shifted its perspective. The thing I think that differentiates Power BI in terms of its completeness of vision is that we translate that into clear things that our customers can identify with, and it's really about three things, Rob, and you've heard this before from me. It's about how we empower every individual, and that's office-like experiences that are instantly familiar, infused with a ton of AI capabilities that automatically find patterns in your data. Arun Ulag (00:26:13): On the AI front, we can build on a lot of the capabilities that Microsoft has in the Azure AI team or MRS, so it isn't really a fair fight. We get to steal IP and then create business outcome focused experiences, and we are seeing massive success there. We have over 80,000 customers using the AI capabilities in Power BI, by far, I would say, the largest footprint in the industry. The second one is really about empowering every team, and BI's all about teamwork. It is a team sport. The insights that we share are much more valuable than the insights we keep for ourselves, obviously, but that's where Power BI has really done a really good job working with our colleagues in Microsoft Teams, in Excel, which is the world's most popular tool for working with data, by far, by far, and then the rest of the Power Platform, so you can take your insights and translate them into action with Power Apps or into automated business processes with Power Automate. Arun Ulag (00:27:05): Our vision around empowering every team is really, really exciting, and there's a brand new capability that's coming out. It's going to be demoed for the first time at the Business Applications Summit. I could tell you about it but then I'll have to ... Rob Collie (00:27:17): We'd have to edit it out. Arun Ulag (00:27:19): We'd have toe dit it out, but watch out for MBAS. It's going to be awesome. There's a brand new [inaudible 00:27:25] empowering every team, and then, when you think about empowering every organization which is our third pillar, I would say two things. Security is massive for us, and we've made a whole bunch of investments there and it's so far ahead of what's there in the industry, so customers really trust Microsoft and Power BI to get it right, and the second aspect of it, Rob, this is one that I think is going to be massively important. It's already very, very important for us today, it's about empowering the business analysts, the tens of millions of Excel developers who are advanced Excel users, but to help them build entire data solutions. Bring data in at scale, do sophisticated data preparation directly on Azure Data Link to be able to use cognitive services, use automated machine learning, build massive OLAP models, build pixel perfect [inaudible 00:28:10] reports, create Power BI reports, put them together in applications. Arun Ulag (00:28:14): All of these capabilities were always in the hands of the professionals. Now you can build a full stack BI solution without writing any code or using Excel-like formulae. That has never before been possible, and now with premium per user coming out, it's going to be available for purchase literally next week. It's all available at 20 bucks per user, so that's a crazy price point. I think this vision of really being able to empower every individual, every time and every organization and put all of this power in the hands of the business analyst is really exciting. It's exciting for us, it's exciting for our customers and it's exciting for partners, so, long answer, but that's why I think we have so much momentum. Rob Collie (00:28:53): Microsoft, as an end to end enterprise provider is a very, very difficult competitor for anyone else to match up against. It's funny, some of the same things from yesteryear, they were well-intentioned but they didn't work out right. They're still being used but now they're working much better, so the integration with SharePoint in those early versions was exactly the right spiritual thing. There were some really important details in that story that didn't go so well, but fast forward to today, Power BI runs, from an administration standpoint, in an office.com tenant. Okay. That's amazing. That is a really, really big deal. You're not adopting some separate administration framework. Rob Collie (00:29:42): You're not doing something different with your Active Directory, it's just right there in the foundation, in the skeleton of your company already. You mentioned security. Of course that ties in with all of that even within the Power Platform itself, like you hinted at. I was talking before we recorded about just jaw dropping success that we've had just this week with getting a Power BI model going to track our podcast stats. It is a very, very, very unfriendly non-Microsoft service that's ultimately the place where all of our stats are tracked, the Federation system, the syndicator, they offer, like everybody else, export to Excel, and is there one big button you can press to export all of your stuff to CSV? No. There are many, many, many buttons. Rob Collie (00:30:31): In fact, there's one more button every week because we add another episode, and the fact that we have now written an automation script that goes once a night, identifies how many episodes there are to download, first of all, as a variable, and drives basically mouse and keyboard automation to drive CSV download from a system that has no API, puts that, guess where, into a SharePoint document library where Power BI can pick it up on a scheduled refresh a couple hours later. Like, unbelievable. Arun Ulag (00:31:06): It's crazy. It's crazy. If I may ask, how long did it take you to do this? Rob Collie (00:31:11): Okay, I didn't do it. Kellan did it. Arun Ulag (00:31:12): How long did it take Kellan to do it? Rob Collie (00:31:14): Not very long. I think it took him just a couple of hours. The only thing that took him a little while was figuring out how to get it to run unattended. I don't know what the breakthrough there was but he had that breakthrough. That's just the other day, but, really, think about it, maybe like, I don't know, four hours total, and most of that time would not be repeated if we needed to do a second version of that. Like, now, with the knowledge that we've gained, it would probably only take him 30 minutes to do the same thing over again, and, yeah, you could imagine a software consultancy charging five, six figures, at least, for something far less capable than what we've got running. Rob Collie (00:31:54): How long did it take me to build the Power BI? So far, 45 minutes. It is amazing what can be done. Arun Ulag (00:32:02): It is absolutely crazy. That is kind of where business is going these days, the ability to build these entire systems in hours, minutes even, or maybe a couple of days, as opposed to weeks and months and years, and to put all of this power in the hands of business in a way that still IT gets to govern and have visibility, too, so they're not really getting upset, that's the Power Platform. When COVID hit, I think the world really woke up to the Power Platform because they needed to move the business forward with speed, with agility, and the Power Platform was right there, and you can argue that others have similar deals. That's great. However, Microsoft has all of them that are designed to work together from the ground up and they're already deeply integrated, and I think the world is just starting to wake up to this because you do need to evolve your processes as your business conditions change and you need to be able to do it instantly, and for you to be able to do it instantly, you need something that is already designed to work together and can effect those changes, so, yeah, I'm really excited to hear your story, because that's so similar to what all of our customers are going through, so, absolutely. Rob Collie (00:33:05): Even for a company our size, it's pretty easy for us to very quickly acquire a similar footprint in terms of number of line of business systems as you would encounter at least at one division of an enterprise. It's not remotely proportional to the size of the company. It's proportional to the size of the number of needs, and there's different functions, and we have as many functions as an enterprise does, so we've got the same number of line of business systems, and the fact that we've been able to use our own tools, your tools, the Power Platform, and also, honestly, it's a hodgepodge of assortment of many different vendors, but the Microsoft stuff at the core of it has allowed us to exist in a region of the market that is otherwise very, very inhospitable. Rob Collie (00:33:55): I keep saying this because I love it, but we operate on a business model that is really, really great for the customer, very, very difficult for the consulting firm, and the Power Platform ... I'm not just saying this to suck up or whatever, it has made us possible. I've been calling this lately, like the second age of middleware, like the second era of middleware, because you do, you have all these systems and yet you need so much custom functionality that spans all of that. You think about Power BI, it itself is a form of incredibly flexible middleware. It's eating data from whatever systems you've got. They're certainly not all Microsoft systems, and BI is usually read-only. We're going to get to talking about that, so in terms of what keeps you up at night, my guess would be, the only competitors that really have a shot at doing damage are ones with a similar or at least some fraction of Microsoft's end to end footprint. We've watched Salesforce with their acquisition of Tableau. Did they complete the acquisition of Slack? Arun Ulag (00:35:06): I don't believe it has completed yet but I'm not really keeping tabs on it so I might be mistaken. Rob Collie (00:35:10): Okay, yeah. It's pretty clear that the battle lines are being drawn, but as you pointed out, they're having to go and buy completely separate companies to fill these gaps, whereas Microsoft's been growing them internally. I don't want to lead the witness. With such a successful market position as of today, what does worry you? Do you have things to worry about? Arun Ulag (00:35:32): Absolutely. I would say, two things. First of all, security really does keep me up at night, because customers are really bringing their most critical business data to Microsoft, to Power BI, and we take it very, very seriously. This is a world in which, it's the world of the cloud. It's the world of remote work, so we're making massive investments in security. Just a month or two ago, we had a big security moment where we talked about an end to end security story and investments, but that's really important for us, is how do we secure our customers' data and how do we help our customers secure their data. That's important today. It was important a year ago. It'll only grow in importance, and this is when I feel like, as an industry, we have to really take it very seriously for customers to really trust that we can take their data and give it the respect it deserves. Arun Ulag (00:36:16): The second aspect of it, I would say, is really complacency. We are just getting started in Power BI, so I don't want us to think that we have somehow, in some way, achieved success. I really do worry that we get complacent and that's a very, very dangerous thing to do, so for us, every customer matters. Every partner matters. Every community member partner matters. Every escalation where we fail to meet our customers' expectations is painful. We have a section that does that by our customer advisory team that Mark Reguera leads, and our friend Cass was a part of. Arun Ulag (00:36:49): They do something called a customer story section, and you would think, to looking at the name, it's about customer stories, it's about wonderful things. It really isn't. It's about three hours of us basically looking at all the painful cases where Power BI failed to live to our customers' expectations. I attend it rigorously every month, as do 40 other people in my team, and nobody makes them attend, but they're curious. They want to learn, because every time we fail to meet our customers' expectations, we care. It's painful. Every competitive loss is painful. I want to know. I want to know why we lost. Like, we didn't we measure up? We care deeply about it, and we're constantly learning and adapting, from the community, from within Microsoft, from the industry, we have to re-earn the trust and our customers' business every single day. Arun Ulag (00:37:35): What we did last week or last month or last quarter, really, the customers don't care about, so for me, this one is really, really important to me to make sure that we are on our toes, that we are hungry, and we do recognize that we want everybody on planet earth to use Power BI at some point in their career, and we're just getting started. Rob Collie (00:37:53): In my 13, 14 years at Microsoft, it seemed like we always needed a bogeyman. We always needed someone, even if we were sort of exaggerating the threat. I'm not saying that that's still what it's like. That was what it was, right? For a while there it was network computers. The NC was coming for the PC, and what was it, Scott McNealy at Sun, he was the villain in all of this, and then it was Netscape. Here comes Netscape. I was gone from Microsoft, gone from Office by the time Google Docs became a real threat. It's like, Office never had a bogeyman when I was there. They got one. They got a good, good bogeyman for a while. Is that culture still kind of the same? Do you still need that like we used to? Arun Ulag (00:38:40): I think the culture has materially changed, especially after [inaudible 00:38:43] took over. The thing that we really, really care about and I wake up every day thinking about is usage, and the second thing I think about is satisfaction. If we can get usage right and if you can get satisfaction right, everything else will take care of itself, so we don't really think about, at least in my team, and most of Microsoft these days, we don't think about the bogeyman. We really think about, hey, can we get our customers to use our product? Can we get them to love it? Can we get them to be evangelists for it? Can communities form? Can people bring other people into the fold? Arun Ulag (00:39:13): That gets us excited because it's a positive emotion. It's about being useful. It's about being valued. It's about people loving the thing that you're making. Like, just the story that you shared, with Power BI and Power Automate, like, being able to do things they couldn't do before, people building businesses they couldn't build before, and that is such a positive thing, so I think Microsoft has fundamentally changed and we've always been, at least in the Power BI team, we've always been about, hey, let's get every user. Let's make them happy. Let's get the next user. Let's make them happy, and that's what really, really excites us. Rob Collie (00:39:44): I could definitely see where that would be a positive change. It served its purpose back in my day. It was the antidote for complacency. There are multiple potential different antidotes for complacency, but you do need at least one. Of course, we did see some of the downsides of the old antidote, the bogeyman antidote. I think it's a very close cousin, at least, of the trouble that Microsoft landed in in 1999, 2000, with the feds. Even if the actions that Microsoft was taking at the time, you could argue them one way or another, the attitude that went with it did not play well. I remember, we were sitting there as employees at the time, watching our executives in their depositions going, "We're the bad guys." Rob Collie (00:40:35): It was kind of a, "Yeah, are we the bad guys?" It didn't feel good. Every other aspect of working at Microsoft had always felt good. That was a dark time, not just for the company but even just for the esprit de corps of working there. I think I wold much prefer the new antidote to the old. With such success, how far away from a saturation point are we? When automobiles were first introduced, for a while, the goal was to sell an automobile to every family that didn't have one, and so there was sort of a gold rush growth period of that flavor. Rob Collie (00:41:09): It's not like the auto industry died after that, but it definitely changed from that first acquisition of an automobile to, now we've got to think about, how do we appeal to people that already have one. If we were going to use that metaphor, where do you think we are in the Power BI colonization story? How much longer do we have before we run out of that one dimension of growth? Where do we start reaching diminishing returns on that? Arun Ulag (00:41:36): It's a really good question. I'll make the argument for why I think we're just getting started, and you tell me if you buy it. Let's look at it in terms of three dimensions. Our objective is to help our customers drive a data culture, where everyone can make every decision on the data. If you look at the workforce on the planet, it's approximately three billion people. Everybody from frontline workers to customer service representatives, to manager, everybody, how many of these folks have data on their hands that they can use to make decisions today? Not very many. I would say, hey, in terms of reaching people who need access to data to make better decisions, we're just getting started. If you look beyond the working population and to students, and we have, I would say, approximately, maybe a billion and a half or so students on the planet, and if you go look at middle school and above, maybe it's about somewhere over a billion, how many of them can learn with data? Arun Ulag (00:42:30): How many of them get data literacy as they get into middle school and above? Not very many, so there again, we're just getting started, and then let's look at the third dimension that I like to think about which is, if you look at the volume of data out there, not just your transactional systems or record, the forms of data that have existed for quite a while, but your IoT systems, your human interactions, your product telemetry. How much of that is available and used for analytics today, even in the best companies? I would say, a trickle, so if you look at all of these three dimensions, the workforce, the learning population, and the amount of data available or useful for analytics or can be used for analytics, we're just getting started, so it feels to me that saturation is just so far away. It just feels like we're at the very beginnings of a massive opportunity here. What do you think? You live this world, too. Rob Collie (00:43:21): I buy that. I think, in a way, you just described my side of the business. I'm working my way around like Socrates to this self serving angle here in this line of questioning. I'll just clear that upfront, but the three dimensions you talked about, loosely, with some exceptions here and there, but loosely I could sort of put them under the umbrella of adoption, and I used the word we when I asked you the question originally, and it's a bad habit of mine. I still feel like I'm part of the Microsoft crew. Arun Ulag (00:43:51): You are. Rob Collie (00:43:52): I'm waiting for my paychecks to come in. Arun Ulag (00:43:55): They do. It just comes in a slightly different way. Rob Collie (00:43:57): Yeah. You guys have lost my address. Let me get you my direct deposit info. I wouldn't mind a little supplement. Okay. I didn't know really anything about the field, how it was organized, when I worked in Redmond. There's still a lot of mystery there, to be honest, but I have a much, much, much clearer picture of it now, obviously, as a Microsoft partner. There's a level of customer, where there's enough seats at a potential customer, that they start to get direct Microsoft attention. I completely agree that within an organization that has signed on the dotted line and started to adopt the Power Platform at the highest levels, there's a tremendous, tremendous amount of runway of adoption, and I agree with you. We're in the single digit percentages completion of that story, for sure, but in terms of the number of nodes that are more central in towards Microsoft in terms of the number of enterprise customers, I'm really asking you, from your perspective, how much longer do you expect to be in that phase one growth in terms of getting big enterprise customers to buy in at a high level? Arun Ulag (00:45:11): The way we think about adoption is, it doesn't start with enterprise customers signing on the dotted line. It really starts with people choosing to adopt Power BI, and so, literally, every organization almost, pretty much, without exception, every organization that's using Power BI, they got started because somebody went to powerbi.com and downloaded Power BI Desktop. It's typically somebody did that at some point, and that's completely free, because we don't want to choke content creation. That was radical, believe it or not, when we shipped Power BI Desktop, to make it completely free, and we update it monthly, so that's how it starts, and starts with people adopting Power BI because they want to do something with data, and then they find something interesting and then they share it with somebody else, and that gets the adoption of the service going. Arun Ulag (00:45:55): The final adoption really just is how Power BI gets started. Somewhere along the way, IT notices and the next data project, they say, "Everybody is using Power BI. Why not use it to build a data project?" Further along the way, somebody goes and says, "Hey, maybe we should standardize on this BI platform. We have 18. Let's look around and see which is the one that people are using and which is the one they like. Oh, well it looks like it's Power BI," and by the way, it's the industry leader. Gartner says so, Forrester says so, let's look at the price. Oh, God, is it really a quarter of the price of what we're paying for everybody else? Arun Ulag (00:46:28): They're like, "Come on, why wouldn't we go with Power BI?" That's typically what I say, and the way we always think about it is, Microsoft salespeople are most efficient when we're not trying to heavily sell the product, where there is strong customer demand. That is viral adoption, and then the salespeople can come and help customers figure out the most efficient way to buy it, buy it with something else, talk to procurement, talk to the CIO. That's kind of how we see the balance. We really do think that adoption has to grow first, followed by sales, and there, I will still go back. There are three billion people in the workforce. There are a billion and a half people who are studying. Arun Ulag (00:47:05): There's a tiny amount of data in the world that's being analyzed by Power BI today, and so, it does really feel like we're just getting started. Rob Collie (00:47:12): Something that I say all the time is that every day you open up your web browser and you'll see something to the effect of, "The next big thing in data is X," and it's like, short attention span theater, we can't sit still very long. We've got to have something new and hot to talk about, and of course, it's just how the media works. Tech media is no different than regular media, and I'm just, no, no, no, no, no. The next big thing in data is really getting the basics, the fundamentals done right for the first time ever." That's how much green field I think there is, and I think this is something where it's kind of funny, like, listen, there's no bad news here. The Gartner Quadrant position, the evolution from, as you said, we made Power BI free. That was kind of a rogue move. Rob Collie (00:48:01): It wasn't that long ago where this whole technology stack was considered a rogue entity, for no good reason. Arun Ulag (00:48:08): It was just new. Rob Collie (00:48:09): The technology was solid. It did have some very provocative messaging to it, this notion of culture, this notion of bottom up, this notion of citizen developer, the original wording of self service. It was a very threatening message to many, many, many people. It was almost like a guerrilla campaign promoting this stuff out in the world for a long time, and our earliest clients reflected this. Some really aggressive early adopter, like people who were looking for revolution. There aren't that many of those running around. We're well into the early majority now. There aren't many of those revolutionaries out there. We ran out of those years ago, so this is all really good news. Last month, we sold an amount of work, and keep in mind, when we sell work, we don't sell single large projects. Rob Collie (00:49:02): You don't expect us to have a lot of variation month to month. Not much variance. It's lots of fast projects, because that's what the Power Platform allows, and we lean into that fully. The amount of work we sold in February is equivalent to 25% of last year's total. Arun Ulag (00:49:22): Wow. Congratulations. Rob Collie (00:49:23): Unreal, right? Everything we're talking about here, like becoming the responsible choice, becoming almost like a default choice in some cases, and this is all good news. I'm not complaining, and yet, at the same time, oh, I've got to have something to be dissatisfied about, so there's something almost lost when people say, "Hey," and I see this, they go, "Oh, look, Power BI sure looks a lot like Tableau. It's being used by about as many people in the organization today as Tableau, and it costs a lot less and it's easier to manage. Just go with it," as if it's a commodity, and it's not. It is not a commodity. Power BI is magic. Arun Ulag (00:50:09): I love it. Yes. Rob Collie (00:50:11): It is life changing magic, so I'm benefiting from this notion of, no one ever got fired for hiring IBM, that old saying, like Power BI being this responsible, kind of boring choice, is good for the bottom line a lot of ways, and yet, when I start hearing these tools mentioned as if they're equivalent, I go, "Oh, no. No, not equivalent." I don't really have a question there, to be perfectly honest. That's just a statement, really. Arun Ulag (00:50:43): I see where you're going. I don't know if it's a choice, necessarily, because in the past, it has been a choice. You go pick one of these legacy BI platforms and make it the platform and people hate it. They just hate it, and they hated it for good reasons. The user experiences were terrible, the performance sucked, and these tools rarely changed. If you look at Power BI, adoption always starts at the ground up, even when IT has stepped in and they say to standardize on Power BI, and folks who may have used another platform are moving to Power BI, you will see some things that are still true. Arun Ulag (00:51:17): One is the fact that Power BI's about people. It's about teams. It's about viral adoption, so people are always sharing and discussing and collaborating, so it's alive in many ways. The second thing is that Power BI's always changing. We ship new features on the service every week. We ship a new release of Power BI Desktop every month. People thought that was cute when we started. We've been doing it for five and a half years, and it comes out like clockwork, and a lot of our innovation is user driven. There are 23,000 ideas on ideas.powerbi.com. 23,000 ideas, okay? Arun Ulag (00:51:46): Well, there are some that are redundant, but still, that's a lot of ideas that customers want to go build, and we take a lot of pride in getting those votes off the table, to say, "How many votes did we ship in this week, in this month, in this quarter, in this semester?" The fact that it is responsive and it's alive and it's changing keeps creating a community, keeps creating fans, keeps creating enthusiasm, so even in the case when somebody didn't choose to use Power BI, maybe the day they started, somebody said, "Hey, you got to go use this today," but then they get sucked in because they see a team, a product, a company that's listening, that's evolving, that's growing, and that's exciting. People want to be part of something like this, so that's why I'm so excited. Arun Ulag (00:52:30): Each time we come up with a new feature that takes votes off the table, we celebrate. That's my reaction to what you just said. Rob Collie (00:52:35): You and I have never had an argument. There's never been anything like that. We've always gotten along really well. The places where we, backstage, occasionally have a difference of opinion or something, I've been thinking about this, and I've come to the following theory. I wanted to share it with you and see what you think about it. If you ask me if I care about adoption or selling, in terms of Power BI, I'm of course going to say, "Well, I care about both. If the C-suite signs off on Power BI being the tool, or even just an approved tool and is providing support for it, then things are going to be a lot better than if they don't. We're not going to get the service stood up without their help." I'm not going to say no to either of those, and the same thing for you. Of course you're going to need to care about both of those things. Rob Collie (00:53:31): It's just that the nature of our roles, yours versus mine for a moment, each one of us is a little closer to one end of that spectrum than the other. It is a spectrum. My company is more on the adoption side than on the convince the CIO it's the right move side, or address the CIO's concerns or whatever. Every now and then we are. Again, this is not 100%. We work with a lot of the Microsoft field, and actually been making an effort to do more of that. We originally grew our company with nothing, no cooperation at all, which of course makes total sense, me being ex-Microsoft, we would never work with Microsoft, but we've been doing a better job of that over the past couple years, and you can't take a pass on adoption, either, but if a CIO has a complaint or a concern or something, you're likely to be talking to them, whereas we're closer to the trenches. Rob Collie (00:54:24): It's just the difference in our jobs, really, and the things that we see. I'll just go ahead and put all my cards on the table. What I'm really hoping is that, sooner or later, because you kind of run out of new, large enterprise accounts to convince, that we're going to find ourselves increasingly talking about almost exactly the same things. Those two ends of the spectrum are going to start to collapse into each other, and the things that I care about, the things that I'm seeing, I don't know that they would be appropriate today for them to be your primary concerns. It just wouldn't make any sense. Rob Collie (00:54:59): A secondary concern, for sure, but for me, they're all primary, and so. I'm not sure I'm going to land that. This is an example of instructions to loop. I don't know what the hell I'm going to do here, man. You're going to have to bail me out in editing so I don't sound stupid. I agree with you. Adoption is very, very early, and that's really, really exciting, so this brings me around to the Excel user, and this is, of course, fantasy. If all Microsoft were, were two products, Power BI and Excel, there would be a very different integration story than what we're seeing today, and the reason I say this is that out in the world today, in terms of future Power BI authors, people who would actually build models, build data sets, the number of them that are currently VLOOKUP and Pivot people is so large that the rest of the audience rounds to zero. Rob Collie (00:56:07): That's the audience. We talk about growing adoption. What we say about growing adoption's also all of those other things you're talking about, all those data sources that are the variety of data that's not being analyzed, that's not being intelligently inspected at all, that's really the same problem as penetration into this VLOOKUP and Pivot audience, and again, the shift from Power Pivot to Power BI, yeah, I was a little grumpy about it at the time, I'll admit, but whatever grumpiness I had was misplaced, again. It's been very, very good for our business. This has been a good thing. I'm not complaining, and yet, this holy grail of how do we ... We again. How do you, Microsoft ... Arun Ulag (00:56:53): No, we. Rob Collie (00:56:53): Okay, fine. I do include myself in it, because we're part of the same crew in this sense. How do we reach those people, because I still run into people all the time who are up to their eyeballs in manual work in the old, traditional VLOOKUP and Pivot and they have no idea that Power BI is essentially like modern Excel for them, and this is the shame. The other thing we were talking about before, like Microsoft being this big company with all these incredibly lateral resources and all this integration that we get and everything, we benefit from that. The flip side, though, is that when you have important products with different incentives, it's very hard to get the level of intensive investment that's required to do something that if the whole company was just those two products, it would be relatively easy to align for, so my only criticism, it's not even really a criticism. Rob Collie (00:57:49): It's more like a criticism by omission, about the Excel integration features that we're seeing these days, is that they're all downstream from model creation. They're all downstream from data set creation. The thing that keeps me up all the time, the thing I not really worry about but it's like my hobby that I obsess about, is, how do we save these people? We're literally improving their lives. We're not spreading awareness like wildfire through that crowd. We're allowing so much suffering to continue. Ignore the money for a moment. Rob Collie (00:58:22): A big part of what keeps me going, keeps us going as a company, at least originally and to this day, really, is just how much people light up, they just become happier. I just want there to be some future in which something that's deeper than lip service, that's deeper than a skin deep functionality, that does something about this. Even with Power Pivot today, it's off by default. To get to DAX, you have to go into COM add-ins. It's like, we couldn't hide this functionality from those people better than what we are today. This is obviously something that's near and dear to my heart. You knew it was going to come up. Arun Ulag (00:59:04): Let me share a couple of thoughts. First of all, we've always been working with the Excel team closely. The last 24 months, our partnership has gone to a completely different level. The head of Excel product management is Brian Jones, awesome guy. He and I talk, like, twice a week, and we've been talking twice a week for a couple of years. His teams and my teams are working very, very closely together. We are acting in many ways as a single product team. Obviously, they have a much larger population with all the caveats, but we are really trying to figure out how we serve our customers together, and it helps the fact that Power BI is sold through Office and licensed through E5 in many cases, really helps, because the incentives are aligned across their management chain and ours, so I'll start with that. Arun Ulag (00:59:43): Then, I'll break it down into two things. Let's talk about consumers and let's talk about creators. For consumers, our vision is that, hey, it shouldn't matter if you choose to consume in Excel or Power BI. Regardless of whether you choose to consume in Excel or Power BI, you should be able to work with the same data sets in Power BI. They should be automatically [inaudible 01:00:01]. The right security logic should apply. They should be MIP labeled appropriately. They should have the right level of organizational certification. You should be able to put this content together into a single Power BI application and distribute that through Teams. Arun Ulag (01:00:16): All of that, the consumption experience, are deeply intertwined, because you shouldn't force anybody to rebuild their Excel workbook as a Power BI report. It's pointless. Excel's great at a number of things that Power BI isn't great at, and Power BI is great at a bunch of things, so at the consumption level, our vision is to enable seamless interoperability between Power BI and Excel and mix and match them together at will, powered by the same underlying semantic models which are Power BI data sets. That's where I've been going with the consumption experience, and it really addresses a huge problem for enterprise customers, because Excel is the world's most popular tool for working with data by far. However, there's lots of Excel disconnected workbooks where people typically refer to as Excel sprawl, which means that people are sometimes not making decisions based on the right data and that drives people crazy because they're making the wrong decision or arguing with each other about whose Excel is right, so, consumption, we're bringing them together and allowing them to mix and match, as well. Arun Ulag (01:01:11): Let's shift to creators. There, we're taking two different approaches. The first is, even VLOOKUPs are not super simple, and building a Power BI report ain't that simple either, because it has a lot of sophistication to it. What we're trying to do is we're saying, "Hey, for your first step into Power BI, for your first step into modeling, no modeling should be required." Just a few months ago, we took our very first step, here. We shipped something called Quick Read, which is the ability for you to copy and paste a table in. Power BI will figure out what visualizations make sense and give you a couple of clicks, but you can adjust it. That's it. Arun Ulag (01:01:46): It's designed for the business user who doesn't know anything about Power BI or VLOOKUPS and then it instantly builds a report for you and you don't really think about it as a report. You think about some way to represent your data so you can get some insights out of it. We are seeing really quick adoption for that. Now, imagine this experience everywhere where there are tables of data, everywhere, and our experiences will get better as we learn from consumer behavior. One is, for creators, we're saying, first step is no creation necessary. The service does it automatically for you, and then you can tell us what you're interested in, so that's one angle we're taking. Arun Ulag (01:02:21): The second angle we're taking, for the tens of millions of advanced Excel developers, is really to put a ton of power in their hands. VLOOKUP was amazing, because imagine ... I remember the time when I discovered VLOOKUP in Excel. I said, "Oh my God. Look what I can do now." Everybody's gone through that, and then you see Power BI and see what it can do and it opens your horizons to all these things that are now possible, data, so [inaudible 01:02:44]. You can visualize with hundreds of visual, all these things that Power BI makes possible, but look beyond that. Where we're going is to say, "Hey, you can do everything to build a full data solution, full data preparation at scale, billions of rows of data running on Power BI data flows, AI enrichments, large scale Power BI data sets, hundreds of gigs of data, again, build through desktop without having to necessarily go into professional tooling, the ability to analyze realtime data with, again, drag and drop experiences." Arun Ulag (01:03:14): When you think about the advanced Excel user, we're really thinking way beyond modeling. We're thinking about the full data experience, the ability to go from where the bytes originate, all the way into full analytical solutions without having to ever call IT, without having to call a pro developer and put this power in the hands of business, all the time making sure that IT has full governance and control, and with premium per user, all of these capabilities start at 20 bucks per user per month, so that's kind of where we're going. When I think about consumers and for creators and create as two different ends of the spectrum, help people just get started with no modeling or design skills required, and then all the way to building full end to end data solutions. Rob Collie (01:03:55): I'm going to be very deliberate with my word choice here. I look forward to your ever-evolving creator story as it evolves and progresses over time. That's the appetizer. I want to talk about a main course some day. Let me change gears for a moment and say, by the time this podcast goes live, this will be kind of old news, but the long overdue removal of Power Pivot from our name is happening this evening. Tom Larock (01:04:27): What? Rob Collie (01:04:30): We have been Power Pivot Pro since 2009 when I started the blog, and Power Pivot Pro was just meant to be my name, my avatar. Arun Ulag (01:04:39): You are the pro. You're the Power Pivot Pro. Rob Collie (01:04:41): I was the pro. If I was thinking about it being a company, I would have put an S on the end. Arun Ulag (01:04:45): Pros. Rob Collie (01:04:49): Of course, over the years we've become known to a lot of people, in short, as P3. Turns out there's a lot of P3s. There's even a P3 Pro Team Pack running around that even users our color scheme, strangely, and so, we've deliberately executed a two stage process where rebranded our website about a year ago to bring the P3 forward in the logo and to put the Power Pivot Pro text, put that in the background, while maintaining the powerpivotpro.com URL. We are going to be forever known as P3 Adaptive. We're going to be p3adaptive.com. Powerpivotpro will redirect. We will never again put a Microsoft product name in the name of a company or a URL. We've learned our lesson there. We're not going to be, like, Power BI Incorporated or something like that. Uh-uh (negative), because you know what's happening six months from now, is you're just going to rename yourself Chart. Arun Ulag (01:05:51): Nice. Rob Collie (01:05:52): Or Microsoft Data. These are the places where we've had discussions in the past, which is the ones I'm really talking about. I'm not really in on Power Pivot, really. For me, Power Pivot is almost like a placeholder for this creator evangelism, and I mean the citizen developer creator evangelism, the ones that are capable of VLOOKUP and Pivot today, and these are such an enthusiastic net promoter audience of Microsoft. These people love, love, love the tools that Microsoft has given them and they still don't know about the best ones, in some ways, for their analysis, anyway. This will be forever my religious mission, is whatever the technology solution is, it doesn't matter what it is. It doesn't have to be anything that we've seen so far, but it's almost like we owe it to these people to make this stuff more discoverable, make the on ramp from their existing work to the new world, make that an easier discovery and transition. End of soliloquy, monologue, filibuster. If there's anything you want to react to there you can. Otherwise, we can move on. Tom Larock (01:07:09): I'm shocked. I will tell you, if you want to avoid having or being tied to a Microsoft product name, just don't use the word power and you'll be fine. Rob Collie (01:07:20): Or mesh. Tom Larock (01:07:21): Or mesh. How many meshes do they have? Rob Collie (01:07:24): All right, so, I'm sure you have. Have you seen the Wolfram dat types in Excel? Arun Ulag (01:07:28): Yes. Rob Collie (01:07:29): As data types, I was like, "I don't care," but when I saw all of the rich federated data, like, third party data, that was available through these data types, I just went, "Wow. Give me some of that in my Power BI models." Microsoft is forever unable to comment on plans, but is this something that interests you, this Wolfram stuff that's showed up in Excel. Arun Ulag (01:07:57): It absolutely interests me, and I would go so far as to say we would love to have that in Power BI. Some things have to happen for that to be true, and we are working on it, so it will become true at some point. I don't have a specific date for you, Rob, but I'd love to see that in Power BI. However, there is a capability that not everybody's already aware of, which is Power BI data types in Excel. What Wolfram gives you is the ability to take your objects and essentially associate them with a single cell, so the single cell no longer is about a specific value. It can represent a whole city with any of the properties of the city, or it can represent a celebrity, or it can represent anything in real life. Arun Ulag (01:08:31): Now, with Power BI data types for enterprise customers, you can do exactly that. You can go define the entities that make sense for you, your customers, your products, your suppliers, et cetera, and associate those tables with Power BI, and publish them to Excel, so, essentially, you get the ability to have enterprise data types live and work in Excel just magically, and they're all relevant and important for enterprise. This is was the single biggest point of feedback that Excel got when they demoed their data types capability to enterprise customers. They were like, "We love it," and we want to make sure that we can do it for our own data types. Arun Ulag (01:09:05): The good news is that we work closely with the Excel team. That's in the product today. Everyone can go try it. Rob Collie (01:09:10): That's encouraging. Again, no promises, no timeline. Were you around and paying attention when Azure Data Market was a thing? Arun Ulag (01:09:17): Yes. Rob Collie (01:09:19): I was so excited about that. I know that the team that was working on it was, as well, and I understand some of the headwinds that they ran into. It's just such an obvious connect the dots. All this data out there, that, whether you're paying for it or not, whether it's free, public domain, or whether it's premium, it should just be so easy to connect to it and cross reference. Oh my gosh, Power BI is a cross referencing tool for the ages. That's the thing about data models, I think that most of the world hasn't woken up to yet, is just how powerful, spliced across silo, data sets are. It's just mind blowing. I go to developer conferences sometimes where everyone's a big data specialist. They're developers. I'll throw a demo out there across multiple fact tables, and I'll just say, "Look, I'm the least technical person in the room and I can do magical things that you can't." Rob Collie (01:10:17): I just throw down the gauntlet, and it lands. They're all jealous. They're like, "How are you able to do this?" It's just magic, and every time you get some data like that that you can cross reference against, gosh, things about markets and demographics, and temperature trends and so many things that would trigger whole new lines of thinking, and Power BI has really got the kind of ecosystem that this sort of thing can plug into. This is another one of those ideas, it's like, the first couple times that maybe it emerges above the water line, it isn't quite in the form that it's ultimately need to be, but this is an idea that's going to keep coming back. Arun Ulag (01:10:53): Yeah, and, look, it is a real need, and I'm sure we'll figure something out here. I'm sure we'll figure something out here. I can't say more about that right now unfortunately. Rob Collie (01:11:02): I totally understand and appreciate you saying what you have. All right, so, as we wrap up here, five years out, what do you think's going to change? Do you think, five years from now, Power BI has moved closer to association with Azure, has moved closer to association with Office? I badly want to make you ... Like, the congressional hearings. You have to choose one or the other. Yes or no. Arun Ulag (01:11:25): If I had to pick one, I would pick Office, and here's why. Our objective is to put Power BI in the hands of everybody so they can make decisions with data, and most people on planet earth, they are familiar with Office, so if I want to get Power BI in the hands of everybody, I would say, "Hey, Office is where most of the users are." That's what I lean towards, because if we don't have users, then nothing else matters. Rob Collie (01:11:48): All right. Ding. That was the correct answer. Okay. Moving on. Arun Ulag (01:11:51): Rob from the Office team says, "Correct answer." Rob Collie (01:11:55): These demonstrations are always meant to capture the imagination. That's what they do, but the Mesh, which used to mean something different ... There was a former Microsoft product called Mesh that was a file sharing tool. We were watching the Mesh thing and going like, "Oh my God, we've been talking about dashboards all these years, this two dimensional metaphor for the control panel of your business or whatever." With Mesh, are we going to go 3D? Are we going to have cockpits? If so, I just want to be on record as being, just like data culture, Microsoft was the first to talk about it, you heard cockpit here first. Arun Ulag (01:12:31): Love it, Rob. I think you're onto something. I think we do need to bring Power BI in to the real world, into the world that we live in and work in every day. You know that Power BI's the only BI product today that supports mixed reality, that we actually have a Power BI app in production in HoloLens and we have real customers using it today. One of the best demos I saw from our team in Israel which is a core part of our Power BI development team, is that they actually have a brand new building in Herzliya and it's close to Tel Aviv and they have maintenance apps for their building elevators with Power BI reports that are pinned right next to the elevator, so you wear your HoloLens, you walk down the corridor, and right next to the elevator, hovering in air over there is a Power BI report, and you can see the stats with that elevator right there. That's crazy. You can say, "Hey, that's great that you have it in HoloLens, but how many headsets do people have?" Arun Ulag (01:13:26): I would say this, we're really ahead of the curve. The price of these headsets will drop. The user experience will improve. The field of vision will increase. The battery will lost longer, and it will get much lighter. That's what happens with technology, and as we do that, Power BI will enter more and more in the real world. There's one other thing that I want to say that's going to be another exciting announcement at MBAS, the Microsoft Business Applications Summit. I can't tell you what it is yet, but it'll take a giant leap forward where we'll show you how Power BI comes into your physical world with very, very broad adoption, so come to Microsoft Business Applications Summit. Arun Ulag (01:14:01): You're going to be blown away. Three major new capabilities will be demoed for the very first time. I'm so excited to tell you about it. I have to hold myself back, otherwise my team will kill me, especially my marketing team. Rob Collie (01:14:13): Will all three be in the keynote? Arun Ulag (01:14:15): Yes. They will all be in the keynote, and I think this time we might have to do two keynotes because each one is 30 minutes, so we might have to do two of them back to back, so attend both, please. It's going to be exciting. Rob Collie (01:14:26): We'll definitely set time aside to do that. I'm contractually obligated to ... Now, I'm really excited. Normally I'd put it off, but not anymore. Three things? That's a lot of things. Arun Ulag (01:14:39): Never before seen in public. Rob Collie (01:14:41): All right, well, is there anything that we didn't talk about that you'd like to talk about? Arun Ulag (01:14:45): There's lots of things we didn't get to talk about, Rob, and we could spend the rest of the day and I'd have so much fun, but I'd say, hey, thank you so much, Rob. We love the folks at P3 Adaptive. You guys have been such a huge part of the Power BI story. We love our community so much. You guys are a core part of the community itself, so, thank you. Speaker 3 (01:15:00): 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.

Donald Farmer is a data artist and Jedi of sorts.  His BI wisdom is unmatched and he shares this knowledge as we cover his early interest in computers (and the power that they gave the user), the history of PowerPivot from one of the former "faces of Microsoft BI", and so much more!  It's so very easy to respect this venerable figure of the data world.  Here's Donald's website, Treehive Strategy References in this episode: Thomas Davenport's Competing on Analytics Donald's Treehouse Donald As PowerPivot Yoda Donald As Qlik Yoda Rob's Blog Post Featuring Alison Farmer's Artwork Episode Timeline: 3:45 - Donald has had the data itch for a very long time and discovered power at an early age. It's a heck of an origin story! 11:15- The guys share some Donald Farmer stories, Tom's Donald inspired epiphany, and the Data Mining Add-In 20:00 - The history of Project Gemini AKA Power Pivot, the death of ProClarity, and the importance of tools of choice 39:45 - Data Artistry, some great Bill Gates stories, remote working 58:45 - The Community of purpose, and Power BI's features vs the competition, and the Treehive Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello, friends. Today, we welcome Donald Farmer. I had the pleasure of working with Donald way back when, during the earliest days of Power Pivot, and even greater pleasure, the greater honor of calling him an old friend. In the world of data, you're just not going to find someone warmer, more sincere, funnier, or dare I say, wiser, than Donald Farmer. He's also pretty humble, so he probably wouldn't like me saying those things about him. But tough, I'm recording his intro on my own. As is customary with our guests, Donald's got a very interesting backstory path from then to now, but I would dare say his backstory would take the Pepsi challenge with anyone's. Rob Collie (00:00:39): We had a really free-flowing conversation. Didn't really set a lot of agenda for this one. And I think it played out really well. We just got into some really interesting corners, some really funny vignettes, and of course, pearls of wisdom. That's what Donald's here for. We talk about his brief involuntary stint as Power Pivot Yoda, his more than passing resemblance Tommy Chong, and also how his willingness to blend his creative talents, artistic side with this world of data really inspired me and gave me the confidence to lean into my own voice, which has been incredibly important to me over the last decade. He's a great person. It was a great conversation. I hope you enjoy it. So 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, Donald Farmer. How are you, old friend? Donald Farmer (00:01:51): I am great, thanks. Thank you for having me. Rob Collie (00:01:53): We invented this podcast so that we could have you on, and we played it cool for a while. We didn't want to just go rushing right in and have you be right out of the gate, but this is our reason. Donald Farmer (00:02:04): No pressure then. Rob Collie (00:02:06): No pressure at all. Yeah. Just be yourself. Donald Farmer (00:02:08): Well, I'm delighted to be here, really. It's great. Rob Collie (00:02:11): Well, we're going to have fun. So I thought we'd start here. We've had some very interesting people on this show who have careers in data. We've had some very, very, very interesting backgrounds, some very interesting origin stories. We've had horse trainers, we've had NFL quarterbacks, we've had marine biologists. I think you're also in contention. One of your former lives puts you on this map. I'm fishing for it. What am I fishing for? Donald Farmer (00:02:39): I'm not even sure what you're fishing for, because I've done so much in my so-called career, but I've worked in fish farming, I've worked in archeology. I met my wife when we were working for an archeological excavation unit. What else have I done? Rob Collie (00:02:51): It was the archeology that I was fishing for, but I hadn't thought about fish farming as I was fishing. Was it medieval archeology? Donald Farmer (00:02:59): It was. I was particularly interested in medieval cities and the growth of medieval cities. Rob Collie (00:03:04): Not to be too specific. That is so awesome. So, which was first, the fish farming or the medieval archeology? Donald Farmer (00:03:14): Oh, the medieval archeology. The fish farming was a kind of site thing. I can tell you a little bit about that. It is interesting, but the study of history, archeology, and languages were really important to me. That was really where I started, and drifted into doing all sorts of things, creating applications for the study of archeology, creating applications, databases for managing archeological sites, things like that. And then we lived very remotely in Scotland. The nearest house was about two miles from us, the nearest town was 15 miles from us. And so we lived fairly remotely, and there's a relatively limited amount of things going on out there. There's some forestry, there's some farming, and there was a fish farm. Donald Farmer (00:03:54): And so I ended up helping them with their computer systems. And then from there, I ended up developing a business doing fairly complex data analysis for fish farming. Rob Collie (00:04:02): That sounds very believable, the sound of authenticity. And somewhere in there though, there is evolutionary step change, where you first encountered data software. Do you have any idea where that was? Where did you first get that itch? Donald Farmer (00:04:18): Oh, so that's actually been there all along. We had computers in the house very, very early. So when I was eight or nine, which would be in the '70s, we had a computer in our house because my father was an electronics designer for British Telecom, which was the national telecom company. He designed the first digital exchanges for example. Rob Collie (00:04:37): Oh my gosh. Donald Farmer (00:04:38): So he was really into this, and we had computers in the house pretty early and really clunky hex programming that we had to learn in order to do the basic thing. The real breakthrough for me was when I was probably about 11 or 12 and we got our first computer that I could actually play with. And I remember the first experience that I had there, which was a program, the Sieve of Eratosthenes, calculates all the prime numbers. And I calculated all the prime numbers up to a million, and it just seemed incredible. Then a couple of extra lines of code up to 10 million, up to 100 million. It was just so exciting. Donald Farmer (00:05:16): And it was tremendously exciting for me. And I had this feeling, this experience of power that was really remarkable. To come back to my father, he also had a big old car because as an engineer, he fiddled with everything. We this huge, big old car. And one day, he had to change a tire or something, so he let me use a hydraulic jack to pump up the car, to lift the car. And there I was, this little kid like nine or 10 with a hydraulic jack. And with one hand, I was lifting this like two-ton old British limousine. An amazing feeling. I just felt so powerful, I felt like Superman. Donald Farmer (00:05:46): I had exactly the same feeling. First time I was able to program a computer. I just have this power, it was like an intellectual power. And then I immediately started doing things like I started writing applications to handle my book collection and my collection of wild flowers and things like that, so all the things I wanted to do. And of course, I was data programming, I didn't know it. And then I had this tremendous breakthrough, which was, I was using arrays, I didn't know about databases, so I was using arrays and matrices in order to store data in a grid format. Donald Farmer (00:06:19): And then I realized that a cell of the array could contain the address of our cell in another array. It could contain a variable. Well, you guys know this, but at the age of 12 or 13, that's an incredible insight to have. I don't mean that I was genius, I don't mean that, it's a very powerful insight to have, it changes your life. At that point, when I discovered that you could navigate, you could manage, you could make all these incredible connections. That's when data really took off for me. And so all through my career, what I've always been looking for is that feeling again of, "Wow, that's incredible." Rob Collie (00:06:58): That leverage. I'm laughing here. So Luke and I, Luke, the producer here, we were computer partners in computer class in middle school. So around that same age 12, we were experiencing the tremendous feeling of power of Apple II low resolution graphics, simulating someone sneezing and a droplet of slim flying across the screen. That didn't have the same feeling of power. Here you are at the same age, but an earlier point in the world calculating primes, cataloging your book and wildflower collection. We were little boys at a computer, there was nothing going on that was remotely serious. Rob Collie (00:07:41): I didn't know about pointers or arrays of pointers, hell, I'm not sure I've ever programmed an array of pointers, but I didn't even know that their existence until college. So yeah, you're right, it was there for you from the very beginning. Holy cow. Donald Farmer (00:07:55): Yeah. That was just tremendously exciting. Now, that actually has an important pattern then in my so-called career, because I never thought of computer science as something that I wanted to study. I never have formally studied computer science. To me, it was always a means to an end, it was always something else. So I just felt it was just this tremendous power that I had and that I enjoyed, but I wanted to use it for something. So I've never really been very interested in computers in themselves or computer science in itself. Donald Farmer (00:08:27): Right now, for example, I can tell you that I'm running a Mac. I have no idea what processor's in it, I have no idea how big the hard disk is or the memory or look at that. None of that matters to me compared to, what can I do with it? Sometimes you have to know things in order to do things better, but I'm actually really not interested in the science of computation and computer science in its own right. Rob Collie (00:08:50): I think that's the way to be. That was one of my fields of study in college and it didn't change my life really. I still wasn't going out of my way to write arrays of pointers or anything like that, there was just nothing to do with it. I think you and I both agree 100% on the role of technology, you should not strive to be a technologist, you should strive to be someone who solves problems and knows when and how to deploy technology. Yeah, the tech is never the star of any story. Donald Farmer (00:09:21): It is for some people. Some people get really into it. We probably couldn't do our jobs unless there were those people who are really into it doing their jobs. Rob Collie (00:09:29): That's true. Donald Farmer (00:09:30): So I think there's room for everyone. Think of it in terms of building a team, the team has to include people who, in a sense, don't care about the technology but care about the problem. And if you have people who don't care about the problem and care about the technology, well, you need to find a role for them, but you have to be pretty careful in managing that role. Otherwise, you end up with the engineering led software, the danger of boys with toys, the technology becomes its own excitement. Rob Collie (00:09:57): That's the thing that I've been steering away from now for more than a decade, because I did experience exactly that, especially in my early days at Microsoft. There were often entire teams organized around tech for tech's sake. And so it requires an enthusiasm for technology in many, many instances to get something done. And in fact, I have enthusiasm for certain technologies, the ones that I've found that are really effective. It's more just like a strategic mindset to adopt, is that technology is a means to an end rather than an end in its own, which should be obvious, but in some cases isn't. Donald Farmer (00:10:32): Well, everyone, to be effective, needs a sense of purpose. And there are of course different purposes. My purpose is always, what problems can I solve? But more interestingly for me, I think, how can I do things differently? I guess I'm always a contrarian. I'm not that much interested in doing things better, so much as I'm interested in doing things differently in order to get a better result. Incremental improvements aren't super interesting to me. I'm a radical, I want to burn the house down and build it again. I'm not a version two guy of anything. Rob Collie (00:11:00): I'm a fan of that mindset. I don't know if you know that about me, that burn the house down is... Or at least the houses that deserved burning, but not every house. That's a perfectly good house over there. Donald Farmer (00:11:12): And make sure you're not in it when you do it. Rob Collie (00:11:14): Yeah, that's right. So do you know Tom. Have the two of you crossed paths before? Donald Farmer (00:11:20): Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. And it's been a while of course, because nobody's seeing anybody on the circuit nowadays, so it's been a while since we caught up. But absolutely, I know Tom. Thomas LaRock (00:11:29): In the time waiting for you to join today, Donald and I got caught up, and I shared my earliest memories. He was at a past summit sitting on the floor, teaching people how to use, I think he said it was the data analysis add-in for Excel. Was that it, or? Donald Farmer (00:11:44): Yeah, the data mining data mining add-in. Thomas LaRock (00:11:46): Data mining data mining add-in for Excel, which was revolutionary at the time. Of course you know, Rob, how exciting this was. But he had about 20 people gathered around while he sat on the floor doing an impromptu demo to make sure people understood. But the other memory I have is when he dressed in costume to get on stage at the past summit as part of the keynote, and he was tweeting to us from backstage. So this had to be 2008- Donald Farmer (00:12:15): Sounds about right. Thomas LaRock (00:12:16): And I'm like, "I can't believe I'm tweeting to the person behind the stage at the keynote right now." And then I remember I went and I chatted with you and Buck Woody for you in the speaker room. Anyway, I'm starstruck. I was like, "Oh my God, It's Donald Farmer. I get to talk with Donald Farmer." And he never once mentioned you, Rob. Rob Collie (00:12:34): I know, I know. I used to do that to Donald at conferences. If I'd pass him in the hallway, I would immediately put on my fanboy voice, "Oh my God, it's Donald Farmer. It's Donald Farmer," running towards him. Thomas LaRock (00:12:46): Here, fans of the podcast won't be able to see this, but there's this book, and I showed Don earlier, it's called Competing on Analytics, and it's from 2007. And I asked Don for some advice, like, "Hey, what should I do to get started in this weird world of data analytics?" Because I was a guy that was only focused on that little database engine. And he said, "Yeah, go buy that book, Competing on Analytics, start there." And so I did immediately, and my eyes were just... Of course I'm not computer science guy, I'm a math degree, I have a master's in mathematics, actually. Thomas LaRock (00:13:20): So when I saw that data and math was basically being combined, it really hit home for me. I'm like, "Oh, I get it now." When I was getting my degree, the only thing you thought you might do with math was become an actuary, which is also data and math. But when I started seeing it getting applied in what this book was talking about and I saw it happening in sports industries as well and taking off, that's when I got excited. And actually, that's right about when Rob came into my life. Donald Farmer (00:13:49): Well, that book Competing on Analytics by Thomas Davenport, one of the things I really liked about that at the time, and I still like about it now is it's not a technical book, but it's not only a business book either. It takes you one step beyond saying, "Here are the business environment that you're working in, here are the business issues that you might come across, and here are ways to address that analytically. And here's why it's better to address it analytically." I think Thomas Davenport is a great thinker in terms of business, but I like the way he lays out the path to success, which is so different. Donald Farmer (00:14:21): You've got a degree in mathematics, and yeah, at one time, your only option, if you like, would be to an actuary. Actuaries were data scientists, actuaries still are data scientists. They were data scientists before the term. And they were always data scientists that were operational engineers who specialized in optimizations who were doing data science. There's still a lot we can learn from them, especially from... I look at people developing all sorts of fancy neural net algorithms, and I sometimes sit back, I say, "You could solve that problem quicker, more easily and more reliably with simulated annealing or some such analysis from the 1970s or '80s." And sometimes, again, it's this tendency to get caught up in technology for its own sake. Rob Collie (00:15:05): Yeah, the hot new hammer. Donald Farmer (00:15:06): Exactly. Rob Collie (00:15:07): Let's go back to the data mining add-in. Donald Farmer (00:15:08): Yeah, gosh. Thomas LaRock (00:15:10): Before we get too far off track, I do want to know your origin story, the two of you. So I'm hoping, does the data mining path get us there? Rob Collie (00:15:18): I think that almost gets us there. It gets us passing in the night, which is a weird thing. Donald Farmer (00:15:23): Yeah, it does. And actually, I think it does get as there more directly than even you might know, Rob. So data mining add-in, there was a great data mining team at Microsoft. And they were really, I would say along with Oracle, they were the first people to really embed predictive analytics inside the database as a platform. And so there was a team led by ZhaoHui Tang and Jamie MacLennan, they took algorithms that had come out of Microsoft Research and brought them directly into the OLAP engine, in fact, into the OLAP framework. And so people were able to do real predictive analytics and data mining within the database. Donald Farmer (00:15:56): That was great, but it didn't really help bring that into the hands of business users because you had to be deep into the language and the architecture of the OLAP engine in order to use them. So they had this great idea of, "Well, why don't we surface this through an Excel add-in and make it simple to use and find a way of showing the results or various ways of visualizing the results from predictive analytics that would make it easy to understand, or at least simple to understand?" And so that was the data mining add-in. There was a couple of things about that. You spend all this time building this beautiful interface, and it really was very effective as one-click, two-click data mining add-in that to my mind could actually have changed the world of business analysis if we'd had the support to do it. Donald Farmer (00:16:40): And then it turns out that, what are we allowed to call this? We have to call it the Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Data Mining Add-ins For Microsoft Office System 2007, or something. You ended up with this name, which was literally 200 characters long because that's the branding guidelines. I do can call it something like quick side or something like that, which would have been much more impact. Very often, I was trying to give presentations where I literally couldn't fit the name of the product into the 200 characters of the presentation title. So it was frustrating, but it was a great product. A lot of fun. Donald Farmer (00:17:17): And when I presented it, your story, Thomas, it's actually really true. People would come out up to the conference, want to see so much more, I'd have to sit down in the corridor and demonstrate it again and show people how to use it. What's relevant for that to my meeting with Rob ultimately is the Excel part because that really opened the eyes of a lot of people to what you could do in Excel in terms of interface, in terms of usability, in terms of simplicity and the fact that rather than making a data mining product which brought users to data mining, we did it the other way around, we built a data mining product that took data mining to the user and met the user where they lived and worked, which is in Excel. Donald Farmer (00:17:59): And that really started to transform our thinking within the SQL Server team about, how do we enable business analytics? Rather than building a special tool, rather than requiring users to discover rise and come to us, why don't we go to them and enable business analytics where they already live and work, and that's the Excel environment? And at that point, Rob can pick up that side of the story because this was where you got super-involved. Rob Collie (00:18:26): That's right. The part where I had mentioned that I think we passed in the night was that I had a couple of meetings when I still worked on Excel with, I believe Bogdan and Jamie, a series of meetings, actually. I don't remember you being in them. Donald Farmer (00:18:43): I would not have been in those, no. At that time, I was probably still deep inside integration services. Rob Collie (00:18:48): That's right. And so I got to participate in the design of that add-in. Looking back, those meetings were as much about getting office buy-in as they were about getting office input, which is obviously very clever and basically just me. I was a lead program manager at the time and my team was all very, very busy with their individual projects. I had also been reaching this conclusion that I was like, as a lead, at that time, I had no direct responsibilities, I wasn't doing any of this stuff that I used to enjoy, which was actually designing software. So when this thing came along, Jamie and Bogdan showed up and said, "Hey, we'd like some help designing this add-in." And I was like, "Oh, yeah, Okay. I'll take that. That'll be my thing to do for a couple of months and stay interested." Rob Collie (00:19:33): We called one of the buttons, Key Factors. And I remember that was my idea. That's something that came to me, was to call it Key Factors. And I was very proud of it at the time. And now later on, we see it in Power BI called Key Influencers. I'm like, "Oh, damn it, that's so much better. That's such a better name." We were close to working together there, but shortly thereafter is when I disappeared over into the services side of the house, the Bing and MSN. And it was like about a year later year and a half later that project Gemini, Power Pivot, the Excel plan came knocking. And that's when we really started to get to know each other. I ended up going over there and reporting to Donald on Project Gemini. Donald Farmer (00:20:15): Right. I got involved in Gemini at a really interesting time because it had been incubated by Thierry D'hers, who led the client side of the incubation, the great work there. And he'd had just a great experience of building business applications within analysis services, within the Office team earlier in his career at Hyperion. So he'd done some really interesting work. He had a great understanding of business analysis at a depth that was really remarkable. He understood all the calculations that people would have to do. And there were other parts of the incubation that were also very important. We had Cristian Petculescu developing the Vertipaq Engine, which has become a really important part of the BI infrastructure, Dave Wickert, doing all that crazy work that had to happen to integrate the management and administration side of Gemini into SharePoint, which was a thankless task. Rob Collie (00:21:04): Indeed, indeed. Donald Farmer (00:21:05): What a nightmare that was. And then there was the client side, which was just a lot of fun. And we had DAX, we should talk about DAX at some point as well, of course, close to your heart. But I took over the Gemini team at that point and I just really, really enjoy that process. I guess Gemini gave me part of that sense that I'd had before as a kid. Look at the power of God, I don't just do a million rows in Excel, I can do tens, hundreds of millions of rows in Excel. And that was tremendously exciting. If you remember the demo, we used to have the Moovly at demo, which was the movie database, which was 50 million, I think it was. And that was really intense. That was quite exciting. Rob Collie (00:21:44): To back up, Gemini was the code name for what became Power Pivot part. We'll make that 100% clear to the listeners. And yeah, I still tell people to this day, the Vertipaq Engine and DAX and all of that, is the only time in my entire career at Microsoft that I felt like I was witnessing science fiction. It was just insane what that engine could do. We almost didn't believe it. And I agree with you, it's like that moment of cosmic leverage and that really hasn't worn off. Donald Farmer (00:22:16): Sure. I know the feeling. Rob Collie (00:22:18): Every time I go and load several gigabytes of text dump into a Power BI file and I look at the resulting file and it's like 50 megabytes and it only eats about 100 megabytes of Ram, I'm just jiggling. I'm just like, "This is crazy." Donald Farmer (00:22:34): This actually caused me a real problem, a huge problem once. I was in Israel, visiting Microsoft in Israel and doing some presentations about Power Pivot, that was our Gemini as it was still in that stage. And I was demonstrating to the Microsoft Israel team, but also to a lot of our customers. And as you know, a lot of the Gemini team were Israeli originally. They came from an acquisition. So I'm in Israel, I'm doing this presentation and I have to come home and I get to the airport and the flight was leaving at about two or three o'clock in the morning. And I don't know if you've ever been to Israel. Have you ever flown there? Rob Collie (00:23:04): Yeah. I have, one time. Donald Farmer (00:23:05): So you've been through the airport? Rob Collie (00:23:06): Yes. Donald Farmer (00:23:06): They take security somewhat seriously. Rob Collie (00:23:09): Yes, they do. Donald Farmer (00:23:10): Really seriously, including the fact that if you've got a laptop, they will ask you to boot it up to make sure it's actually working, that its interior is working. They'll even ask you to click in a couple of files and open them to prove that it's working. Of course, what file does the security officer ask me to open? The Moovly Excel file sitting on my desktop, which is 50 million rows of data. It takes about five minutes to load at that point because we were still in beta. And of course, I then have to explain, but it's just an Excel file. Yes, but it's got 50 million rows of data. No, it can't possibly have 50 million rows. Meanwhile, my flight is leaving and I'm waiting for this damn [inaudible 00:23:50] to boot up. Rob Collie (00:23:51): Yeah. That's the kind of security that you encounter in that airport. Donald Farmer (00:23:55): I think they knew they were talking about. Rob Collie (00:24:00): You are interacting at that moment with the best and brightest. Donald Farmer (00:24:05): Yes. Not some poor soul and minimum wage. Rob Collie (00:24:08): It feels like our version of the Ivy League about to be road scholar type people are interviewing you at that airport? Donald Farmer (00:24:17): Right. Psychologically profiling you as well. Rob Collie (00:24:21): And they're like, "Bullshit, Excel only holds a million rows. And you know what, that's only in the most recent versions, it was 64K just a moment ago." They're going to know their shit. Donald Farmer (00:24:32): Yeah, exactly. And the security is really serious unlike a lot of countries. I remember going and getting on a plane once in Sea–Tac or going through security at Sea–Tac, the guy in front of me had a gun in his bag, and it set off the alarms and everybody is, "Gun, gun, gun." And there was security running around. And then he gave it back to him and told him to check it. He just tried to put a gun on the plane in his hand and you are telling him to check. This is not A1 security people. Rob Collie (00:24:59): No, no. It is really jarring flying back from there and landing in the United States. It's literally like your very next interaction with humanity is JFK. And you're just like, "Oh, things are just so dumb here in comparison." Donald Farmer (00:25:15): Well, yeah. And it's that tone of seriousness and the fact that they take it seriously. And to be fair also, many things the application of technology and the fact that they hire great people, it's actually a good example of how something that's very routine in our lives can actually become a specialty if you focus on it intensely enough, plus we have drifted. Rob Collie (00:25:36): Oh, that's the whole point. That's the whole point is to drift. We were talking about almost an organizational epiphany on the SQL side that we can bring the tools to the users. A lot of things in SQL up until that point didn't even have an interface with their own at all. They were just essentially an API like analysis services on its own. All it was was it's API. Donald Farmer (00:26:01): Right. If you want it to do anything with it. There was this very interesting third-party browser, which had been built specially for browsing analysis services. The fact that at first it was the only engine you could connect to as your analysis services engine was built by some guy out of Stanford and he called it Tableau or something. I don't know whatever happened to that. Rob Collie (00:26:19): Oh yeah, yeah. So it was just a little throwaway tool. Donald Farmer (00:26:23): Oh my God. Rob Collie (00:26:26): I thought we were setting up for a ProClarity joke or something, like going acquire the number one front end for your flagship data platform and then kill it. Donald Farmer (00:26:36): Well, yeah. This is really interesting. We did kill ProClarity and we killed a number of products that we're actually very promising by making one huge mistake, which was, we assumed that standardization of the interface was critical to simplicity and ease of use. So we had a ton of interesting applications that ended up getting thrown into this SharePoint environment. So we had data quality services, which ended up in SharePoint, hosted by the Office team and a SharePoint environment. We had master data services, which ended up plugged into the same SharePoint environment. Donald Farmer (00:27:16): SharePoint is very limited in its user experience. So all sorts of radio buttons and check boxes and endless forms that you had to fill out in those applications to do anything. And one of the things that we totally missed was the importance, and this is something I just talk about all the time though, so I'm going to rant, is the importance of a tool of choice. That is, it's one thing to deliver capabilities to someone, but it's another thing to have them have a tool of choice. I want to use this, not just I want to solve this business problem and here's a platform which does it, but this is something I want to use. Donald Farmer (00:27:53): Tableau did an amazing job, Christian at Tableau did an amazing job of building a tool of choice that people wanted to use. They identified themselves as Tableau users and they became what they would call them, Zen Masters or whatever. But to them, that was then part of their definition of their career, I'm a Tableau expert, I'm Tableau person. And that's a tool of choice. And Microsoft for many years was in the wilderness of pushing out standardization, "We already own your platform, so we're going to integrate everything into that platform." But Gemini was this big breakthrough, it was one thing that really happened that people could then adopt that and say, "This is our tool of choice to use." And that was a breakthrough for Microsoft, I think. Rob Collie (00:28:35): That tool of choice, something that you actually love. And I've heard the story, I have no idea if it's true, but it seems like it's believable that Steve Jobs put the switch on the back of the Apple II so that in order to turn it on, kids with short arms had to lean forward and essentially hug the Apple II turn it on and off. It doesn't even really matter whether that's true or not, that story still illustrates the point. And we did, we hugged our Apple IIs before we programmed them to have phlegm flying across the screen. Donald Farmer (00:29:10): Well, one of the things that Apple have always done, which is really great is they've never oversimplified everything. They have had a design philosophy, which is based around simplicity, but they've never oversimplified. In fact, if anything, they require you to put some effort in. There's a point at which... I love this idea of the iPod. We had iPods, we had phones, I had an iPod, I later had a Zune, which I enjoyed actually, but I had an iPod, I had a phone, I could travel anywhere in the world and make phone calls. I had music with me wherever I went. I had two chargers, I had two cables, I had headphones. It was a mess in some ways, but I had these devices. Donald Farmer (00:29:47): And then what was super interesting about what Apple did was they used to even meet this joke when they launched the iPhone. They made a joke in the first keynote that what they were actually going to do is just create an iPod that could make phone calls and they had a dial on the front of it. They had this old telephone dial on the front of an iPod, which they actually patented that as well. I think perhaps deliberately leading people astray. And they made a joke of that, but what the actually launched was the iPhone, which didn't just solve the problem of I've got two devices, it was beautiful and it was expensive, and it didn't work very well as a phone, did other great things. Donald Farmer (00:30:21): And had all sorts of things in the user experience, which were completely unnecessary, the little map pointer, which animated and wobbled as it landed, there was all sorts of stuff there. And the touch keyboard, the people were very skeptical of that, how could you possibly type into thing I'm using this touch keyboard on the class? They not only did he make all that work, but that's actually a lot more effort than they had to do to solve the problem of having too many devices. The actually took you on a journey, into a new place that is a different environment altogether and requires a commitment, financial and a commitment of usage from you as a user. Donald Farmer (00:30:59): So rather than dumbing it down and let's just solve the problem, they actually created a new world that they would take you on this journey into the new world. That seems to me super interesting. When I look at what we did with Power Pivot ultimately, and then with Power BI, we actually took people into a new world. We expected to learn new things. It was actually quite demanding in some ways although it was a simple product, it was still demanding, you had to learn DAX, you had to learn some new concepts. But that in itself gave you a commitment, you now had a sense of a practice that you had adopted in order to use that product. Donald Farmer (00:31:35): That's much more satisfying ultimately to a user than just simply solving a problem. If all we done was extend Excel to be able to handle 500 million rows, that wouldn't have been interesting, not nearly as much as taking people into a new world. Rob Collie (00:31:51): There's a parallel there to what fraternities do to their recruits. You beat them as a group and just abuse them for some number of times and then they value being a member of the fraternity even more than what they would otherwise because that's what forges the bond. Donald Farmer (00:32:08): That explains so much about your specifications, but I can go with this. Rob Collie (00:32:12): Hey, I was never in a fraternity, but I hear that's how it works. Donald Farmer (00:32:16): People have told you. Rob Collie (00:32:18): Yeah. My friends would come back and go, "Oh man, they made us drink a gallon of milk and then do setups and so we threw up." I'm like, "Oh, that sounds great." Donald Farmer (00:32:28): So you weren't just taking people into this new world as you put it because that almost to me implied that you had this group of users that you were then dragging... When Gemini became a Power Pivot, it opened up the door for people like me. So you didn't just take people, you cast even the wider net and you dragged people along into a much better future. I cannot imagine a world where you didn't have Power Pivot or PivotTables. All the time, I'm talking to my wife and she's working with real estate data and I'll look out and go, "Oh, we'll just make a PivotTable." And she's working saying Google Sheets or something that, but it's everywhere. Donald Farmer (00:33:07): I'm doing Python, they're like, "Oh, so we'll just make a PivotTable of that data frame." They're everywhere. And I can remember a time when they didn't exist in my life and now I can't imagine going back to that. PivotTables are a great example of a data structure, an interface, a user interface that we're very, very familiar with, but we're so familiar with it that we overlook the power of them. When they first came out and VisiCalc or Lotus 1, 2, 3, that was just a tremendous breakthrough, the ability to do that work. And if you remember at the beginning of the Gemini process, the Power Pivot process, we actually defined our potential user as somebody who understood PivotTables and used VLOOKUP or HLOOKUP. Donald Farmer (00:33:49): And if you did those two things, then you were potentially a Gemini user. I thought that was fun. But one of the odd things about our users, I don't know if you remember that our business intelligence users hated Gemini at first. You brought in the MVPs, we brought in people Chris Webb, who now works at Microsoft. I remember Chris saying, "This is terrible. This is a terrible product because you're killing our careers. Our whole career is based on consulting with people who need our help in order to do these complex scenarios. And now you've made it so simple that they won't need us anymore. And you're undercutting your partner base by making everything so simple." Donald Farmer (00:34:26): And then either luckily or unluckily, depending on how you look at it about a year later, Chris came back and said, "Actually, it's not so simple after all, we're going to be okay." But it reminds me of that because Microsoft in some ways, I think a general story about Microsoft back at that time, we had great understanding of user experience in certain areas, but we had a relatively poor understanding of how user experience and the daily life of our users came together. And I think ProClarity is a great example of that, just bringing on board the capabilities wasn't enough to sustain the product because ultimately the product died because we'd forgotten that is not just about what you can do, it's about how you do it and the daily life of the user. Donald Farmer (00:35:12): ProClarity users were rightly furious with us for missing that aspect of it. That we'd actually implemented all the features and lost all the soul of the product. Is that fair? Am I being super hash? Rob Collie (00:35:25): I think that's completely fair. And I'm not even sure that we implemented all the features. The first move after an acquisition like that used to be, "This was the playbook," was announced that is not going to ship again, there's no new versions of it coming out. So you burned your ships in the harbor to commit the team to integration, because you know that if you leave that door open, you're just going to keep shipping that product separately forever and it'll never get integrated. So some executive will draw a line in the sand and say, "No, it's not going to ship anymore." Rob Collie (00:35:58): Well, then all the regular software engineering practices kick in and we say, "Okay, so how do we fit this into our existing products? And the answer of course is, "Not very well." And it's integration, especially if you go back to that point in time at Microsoft, even if everyone's head was on completely straight and everyone was onsite in a way that was just not the case back then, and even much, much less so then than now. I don't think we could have pulled it off. How would you bring something like that experience you're talking about of ProClarity, the life of a ProClarity user, how would you keep that alive inside something Excel while at the same time, not turning Excel into the tourist trap of billboards that are all garishly colored. Rob Collie (00:36:51): Bill and I talked about it is, why are these amazing things in Excel still hidden? And it's because you can't turn Excel into the tourist trap. Donald Farmer (00:37:00): By Bill you mean Bill Baker or Bill Gates? Rob Collie (00:37:04): No. Bill Jelen. Donald Farmer (00:37:05): Oh, Bill Jelen. Okay. Right. Another great- Rob Collie (00:37:07): MrExcel. He's slot somewhere in that Pantheon? Donald Farmer (00:37:10): That's a great example. Rob Collie (00:37:12): And so that was always one of the tensions for us on the Excel team was that we'd be working on something new and exciting. And of course, I would want it to be pulsating in the interfacing, click me, click me. And as a steward of the overall product, you can't do that because next thing you know, the entire screen is posting. Donald Farmer (00:37:30): Well, that's why I was asking about Bill Baker or Bill Gates because Bill Baker who ran the SQL BI team used to say that what we have to avoid is the Fisher-Price user interface, the big yellow button. Rob Collie (00:37:40): I actually like Fisher-Price interface. Donald Farmer (00:37:43): That also explains a lot about your specifications back in the day. Rob Collie (00:37:49): Hey, it was a simpler time. Donald Farmer (00:37:51): No, I think it's a really important point. When we were not developing Power Pivot, but actually marketing Power Pivot, one of the big breakthroughs that we had there, which ultimately led to me coming on in costume at the past conference, but one of the breakthroughs we had, there was Daniel Yu who currently runs marketing for Azure sign ups at Microsoft. Daniel Yu and I were sitting down, how do we explain the value proposition of this to a business user who doesn't know anything about it? It's one thing talking to an analysis services user, is one thing talking to Excel MVPs who get this, but what about the business user? What sells it to them? Donald Farmer (00:38:27): And in order to find a message, we actually built a little story, which was the story of a day in the life of the user, literally from what do they do when he get up? What do they do on the way to the office? What they do when you come into the office. And then what does that story look with, or without Power Pivot? And that really gave us a breakthrough because we started to realize that Power Pivot fitted into their daily life, into their working life in a way that was actually distinctly different from Excel, but still complimentary to it, that this wasn't just something that rolled into the Excel world. And equally, it wasn't something that took the place of BI. Donald Farmer (00:39:05): They still sat down first thing in the morning when they're in their office and looked at their reports, for example, and we're not going to take the place of your reports and your dashboards, but we are going to take the place of what do you do once you find something in the report that you need to take action on, or once you notice something in the dashboard and now you're in Power Pivot world. And that was a real breakthrough for us, and it came from this idea of modeling the daily life of a user. Rob Collie (00:39:28): You're speaking of the silent film that you made, right? Donald Farmer (00:39:30): Oh, you're right, we made these little films. They were cool. Rob Collie (00:39:33): What was that called? Donald Farmer (00:39:34): Oh, I can't remember. We made a few of them. Rob Collie (00:39:37): It's like The trouble With Data or something that? Donald Farmer (00:39:39): That's right, The trouble With Data. And there was few, we made a little brought voice over it, so I'm sure they're still out there on YouTube. Thomas LaRock (00:39:45): I need to see these. Rob Collie (00:39:46): Yeah. This was eye opening for me. I think by the time this was out there, I think I had already left Redmond and it really got my attention. Seeing you do certain things, opened a door for me, which is that you can bring an artistic side to this data world. I'm not an artist. There's nothing I can do, I can't draw, I can't compose music. I can see things in my head. And you putting together this silent film, this spoof of a silent film that paralleled a day in the life of a business user of a business analyst, really lodged in my brain. So like a lot of the things that I've done since then like with stick figures and all this stuff, it were in large part inspired by having seen it executed so well. Rob Collie (00:40:35): And knowing that you didn't make those film segments, that you spliced together, I'm like, "Oh, I can do that. I can do that sort of composition." In a funny way, have you ever heard the C language, the C programming language was invented so that they could write the Unix operating system? Seems really bizarre. Like, wait a second, don't you need an operating system to run the language on? Anyway. So in a way, it's kind of like the Gemini experience, the Power Pivot experience. In a number of ways, I participated in building a set of tools that allowed me to become a different version of me. I kind of stepped through a door. Rob Collie (00:41:12): It's not just the technical capabilities of like DAX and data modeling and all that, which was a crucial, crucial, crucial component, but also the inspiration of seeing things like, I think it was called the trouble with data. I hadn't really thought about that until you just walked right past it. And I'm really deeply appreciative of you having done that. It's had a profound impact on me. Donald Farmer (00:41:31): Well, thank you. That's actually great to hear. And I think the work you've done since then, now that you mentioned it, I think you have brought that. You might not think of yourself as an artist, but you do bring a lot of creativity. The thing that we did at Microsoft that was always effective in some ways, although we didn't always execute well on it, was we had the resources to go out and do things that would be difficult to do in another business. And that included experimentation, taking some risks on that. And the leadership were more than capable of taking that on. Donald Farmer (00:42:03): But the other thing was, we also had big purpose. I remember perhaps when I interviewed at Microsoft being told that the Excel has 500 million users. What does an interface look like for 500 million users as opposed to the target market of a few thousand users for another desktop application? And thinking in that scale and thinking that big picture is really important. Rob, when you were at Microsoft, did you ever have to present to Gates in one of his business reviews and things? Rob Collie (00:42:30): One time. Donald Farmer (00:42:31): One time. Never again? Rob Collie (00:42:33): One time only. It was brutal. Donald Farmer (00:42:37): It was brutal. Gosh, I once had to do a one-on-one with Bill Gates and Ray Ozzie so I guess a one on two. Actually no, because Caroline Chao came with me, so it's two and two. Gosh, that was nerve wracking. Rob Collie (00:42:48): You're like, "Okay, look, you set the pick, I'll roll." Donald Farmer (00:42:51): Exactly. But the fascinating thing about Bill Gates, and it's still fascinating, still, when I see them talking and maybe in meetings where he's presenting or something, he still has the same quality. You know the rabbit and duck picture, you can see the rabbit, you can see the duck? Nobody can see both at the same time, you have to switch between the two, see a rabbit, now you see a duck depending on your perspective or your focus. Bill had this huge image, this huge efficient of what computing can do, what computing can do for individuals, what it can do for businesses, what it can do for the world and society in general. Donald Farmer (00:43:29): This enormous vision, which was greater than any of us could really take in. And that was his capability. But he could also focus tremendously on, why is that button on the left rather than the right? But he could also do both of these things at the same time. He could keep these focuses in mind at the same time. And so presenting, say something like Gemini to him, you never knew which Bill is going to show up, you never knew if the question that comes next is going to be about the impact of this on society and the world and the future of education, or if it's going to be, why is that not called key influencers rather than key factors? That's the dumbest thing I've ever seen. Donald Farmer (00:44:09): And you never knew which one you're going to get, which made talking with Bill very, very difficult and a real challenge. But it was fascinating. You learn so much from it. This ability to see the big picture and the detailed picture at the same time. Rob Collie (00:44:23): My experience of that was that the detailed picture had a 50-50 mix. 50% of the time when you dive into the details, you did learn something, and the other 50% of the time, you dive into the details and you'd feel like it's just because he couldn't help it. It was a derailer which could derailed the whole conversation. Our BI review with him, we lost... This was one I wasn't invited to, because of my poor performance at the first one we'd done. The second one devolved for like 15 minutes about how in one of the completely graphically designed, it was like done in Photoshop mockups, someone had used a pie chart to represent years. Rob Collie (00:45:03): And he was saying, "Listen, anyone that would do years on a pie chart," he was basically saying, "Shouldn't be working here." Donald Farmer (00:45:11): I've got to agree with him. Rob Collie (00:45:16): Yes, yes. But also looking back years later, I'm like, "Bill, this was a culture that you created. Hiring the computer scientists, the people who could solve these brain teasers or these academic riddles without ever having been polluted by the real world." Of course, as a 25-year-old, I wouldn't have known any better either. I would've drawn a pie chart and I would've just slapped years on. I wouldn't have ever thought twice about that. I can also understand the stupidity of it, but sympathize completely with the mindset that would do it. Donald Farmer (00:45:48): For sure. But that's actually not a derailment in a sense for Bill, that is part of that. Rob Collie (00:45:53): I agree. Donald Farmer (00:45:54): The detail and the big picture are a part of the same thing. It's fascinating. It was always a complex process, because I say you never really knew who was going to turn up. He'd have been perfectly capable of overlooking that and going on to some completely different topic, which could have been even greater in scope. It was always difficult to bring your story to him because he always brought his story, and that's a real challenge. But the guy was amazing. A tremendous privilege to have any time to work with him at all. Rob Collie (00:46:22): Yeah, I concur. It's completely not what I expected. I remember being struck by just like, I think this goes hand in hand with what you're saying, is he had a tremendous recall of basically everything. Donald Farmer (00:46:34): Yeah, that's true. Rob Collie (00:46:37): The data structures that he uses to record things about the world, he has this like lossless storage and the ability to index into any particular thing no matter how detailed. Donald Farmer (00:46:50): His brain is an array of pointers. Rob Collie (00:46:52): Yeah, that's right. It wouldn't surprise me if he remembered what shirt I was wearing that day that he chewed me out. That would be completely believable 20 years later. Donald Farmer (00:47:02): Yeah, absolutely. Well, it's that connectivity, which a lot of people find difficult, the fact that everything is connected for him. The really creative people have that, and we don't all have it in the same degree. But he has that extraordinary connectivity. And the most interesting people I've worked with have it in all sorts of ways, they're able to make those connections. And then they're also able to make sense of new connections and to create connections. You'll remember, Rob, when I was at Microsoft and I was your manager, whenever I wanted to do a one-on-one or whenever you wanted to do a one-on-one, I always wanted to go for a walk. I always wanted to walk into campus walk, walk around the trails around Microsoft. Donald Farmer (00:47:37): And one of the reasons I always enjoyed doing it is not just because I like getting out, but because your conversation always go somewhere else when you're walking. And there's two dynamics to it. One is that you can't be face to face with someone when you're walking unless you walk into each other. You have a lot of contact, you have a lot of ability to read the other person, but you're not constantly focused on their micro expressions and how they're feeling, responding to you, whatever. But the other thing is that new things happen when you walk, a squirrel runs across in front of you, you see something, a beautiful flower, that you need to describe. You see some crazy building work going on in campus and you need to talk about that. Donald Farmer (00:48:18): And it takes you off subject, but it also provides you with a whole new set of connections that you wouldn't have if you just sat down in the office and speaking to each other. And I noticed this just so much now that we're all connecting online, that we just don't have that extra input. Our conversations, not this one, but our conversations... Because we haven't spoken for some time, this is a great conversation. But very often, my weekly conversations with people or my daily conversations with people just the same old, same old, because there's no new stimulus into that conversation except what has happened in the business since the last time we spoke, which gets old for pretty quickly. Donald Farmer (00:48:55): And I can't wait for the time that I have walking conversations with people. I've had one of the companies I advise, the lady I'm working with, she came up from Portland in order to have a socially distant walk with me. So we were walking along the trail here, eight feet apart, yelling at each other because she knew we had to have a conversation while we were walking rather than sitting on Zoom when we just had the same old conversation. Thomas LaRock (00:49:19): You mean yelling because you were eight feet apart and not because you were angry with each other? Donald Farmer (00:49:23): Right, because we were eight feet apart. Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:49:24): Yeah, okay. Because you basically just described every walk I have with my wife, but that's fine. Rob Collie (00:49:30): Don, did I ever tell you about when I had a walking treadmill desk? Donald Farmer (00:49:34): I know you had one. I could hear it in the background sometimes when you called me. Rob Collie (00:49:38): Yeah. The idea was to get skinny while working. That didn't happen. That low intensity exercise, I just would replace the calories. Whatever calories I burned walking those eight miles that day, I would just re-eat them and nothing changed. But I did find, even just walking on a treadmill desk by myself, that I focused in a different way, just the movement. So in addition to everything thing that you're saying, there's also, I'd like to add one more benefit, which is that just physically moving- Donald Farmer (00:50:07): It's that slight stimulation of the heartbeat and increase of oxygen. Rob Collie (00:50:09): Yeah. And for whatever reason, I don't struggle with this as much as I used to. But for a while there, like for a good decade of my life, I would sit down in a chair to work, my ADD or whatever would immediately have me opening a browser window and like navigating to the ESPN homepage without even knowing that I'd done it. It was like this craving of stimulation. And for whatever reason, when I was walking, I was scratching that itch. That part of me, that fidgety part of me had something to do, and that was walk. And then my brain could actually go a lot more focused work. I missed the treadmill desk because of that. Rob Collie (00:50:47): Eventually, the treadmill desk broke and I never bothered to replace it. It didn't have its magical redefining shape properties on my body that I was hoping for. But I do miss the focus, the clarity, the calm that it brought, even though I'm just walking in place, in a corner of a room. Maybe we should all get walking treadmills and conduct our meetings that way. It would be like a control. And then every now and then, we could just like release a squirrel in the room. Donald Farmer (00:51:15): Well, it's going to be fascinating over the next year, probably two years, as we start to look back on this very strange pandemic year that we've had to see what working practices were effective and which weren't, and then which ones we want to carry forward. I hear a lot of people saying they don't want to go back to the office, I hear other people saying that they're to go back to the office, and it's going to be fascinating just over the next year to see how that plays out. Rob Collie (00:51:41): Yeah. Once it's a choice, once it becomes optional, whether for the individual or the company as a policy, that's when you're going to find out for real. Right now, it's all what-if. Donald Farmer (00:51:54): Well, I'll tell you, I speak to quite a few startups and smaller companies. And the managers of those companies were often telling me that they really miss having people in the office. I speak to the employees and they're not actually missing it so much. But what people seem to miss, or they say that they miss when they talk about, I wish we could all be in the office together is, "Oh, we miss the creativity, we miss the interaction." And then I speak to other teams and they say, "Actually, we don't miss that all. We're doing fine without all that. Thanks very much." Donald Farmer (00:52:21): And I've done some analysis of it, not just making it up, I've done some analysis of it for one company in particular, and we did some surveys. And it turns out that, of course, the manager in some ways is right, that there is a missing creativity and connection, but it's their inability to scale the conversations. They'd walk around the corridors, they'd see somebody at the water bottle and they'd have a conversation about it, they'd stand having coffee. They're not organizing a meeting, they're not scheduling that, they're not sitting down with the person. In fact, it might be a very casual conversation in which they can give a pointer, "Well, maybe you should think about it this way. Maybe you should think about it that way." Donald Farmer (00:52:58): It's the very light touch interaction. And to them as managers, that's a critical part of their world, not sitting down having regularly scheduled conversations, but the light touch interaction that enables them to, as they see it, scale their interactivity and creativity across an entire team, which you can't do when you're all sitting on a Zoom meeting. On the other hand, it turns out that a lot of the developers, especially, are actually very happy not to have the manager giving their ad hoc direction, because they see that as randomizing and distracting. Donald Farmer (00:53:30): So from the manager's point of view, it's, "Oh, I'm so creative, I can have these light touch points and that's me adding value." And to the developers, that's, "Oh my God, that guy's going on about years on the pie chart again, just let me get on wiTh mu job." Rob Collie (00:53:43): You were there for no-meeting Wednesdays, right? Donald Farmer (00:53:45): Oh, no-meeting Wednesdays. Yeah, that was a great day for meetings. Rob Collie (00:53:46): Yeah, that was great. And you remember me calling it snarkly no-decision Wednesdays? Again, it's pros and cons. The developers loved it, but I always felt like as a program manager that I might as well not even come in that day. Donald Farmer (00:54:01): Yeah. Nothing to do. Rob Collie (00:54:03): We couldn't do anything without the people. Donald Farmer (00:54:05): Well, I don't know if you were there at a point where I gave some of my team pedometers. Did I give you a pedometer? Rob Collie (00:54:11): I never got a pedometer. I demand a pedometer. Donald Farmer (00:54:12): Well, I'll send you one. No, the idea was that program managers shouldn't be in their office. If you're in your office, you're not doing your job. You need to be out there talking to people. Rob Collie (00:54:20): Yeah. Just blows my mind that there are program managers that can work today remotely ignoring the pandemic. The program management position has now become somewhat remote friendly at Microsoft. I struggled with the phone, I really relied on being able to go and talk to someone face to face. Donald Farmer (00:54:41): Absolutely. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:54:44): It would've been crippling for me to have had that taken away. And so it made sense to me that when I moved away from Redmond, that I wasn't going to be doing that job anymore. I look back now and, again, I go, "Oh, there are a lot of people doing that job remotely now, I wonder how that works." Donald Farmer (00:54:57): I can't remember exactly what it was, what the issue was, but there was some issue in specification that had a dependency on another team. And at that time, we were in Building 35 and the other team, SQL Server core team was in 34, and they were not supporting us. And we got these emails from their program manager saying, "We're not going to do this feature. We're not going to do that feature." And we really wanted this feature in order to enable our own work. And the program manager who was reporting to me, she was kind of, "I don't know what to do about this. They keep blowing me off. I keep raising it in meetings, they don't do anything." Donald Farmer (00:55:30): And I said, "Well, let's just go talk to them." "Well, I don't have a meeting arranged, I'll set something up." "No, let's just go and camp out in their office." So we walked across to the building at, across to 34, down into the basement, sat in the office. The guy wasn't there, waited for him to come back. He came back in, and we said, "So here's what we need and here's what you're not giving us." And what I'd said to my program manager was, "It's going to be much more difficult for him face to face, sitting office to say, 'No, you'll not get it. We're not doing that.'" And I was so disappointed and I said, "Okay, well, we're going to push for this. We're going to keep pushing for it." Donald Farmer (00:56:06): We came back, went back to our offices. I clearly had lost all credibility as a manager and as a reader of human beings. And so the next morning in ship room, guess what? They'd implemented the feature overnight and done it. It was kind of funny. It was very revealing that, yeah, he still was able to say no, but actually, deep down, he understood our need at that point because we'd seen face to face. It was kind of funny. Rob Collie (00:56:32): I mentioned earlier that you were in many ways, the inspiration for some of the more creative efforts that came later in my career, but you also killed one. Donald Farmer (00:56:41): Oh no. Rob Collie (00:56:42): You killed Power Pivot Yoda. Donald Farmer (00:56:43): Power Pivot Yoda. Wait, what? Rob Collie (00:56:48): Yeah. Power Pivot Yoda was going to have a bright future. Donald Farmer (00:56:51): Is this like a Clippy thing? Rob Collie (00:56:53): No, Power Pivot Yoda was a Twitter account. That was a photo morph of Yoda and Donald. It was really kind of amazing. It was like one of those one in a million things. Donald was the face of Power Pivot, he was the community voice at Microsoft for all of this stuff at the time. It was a funny little joke. And then like three months later is when Donald left for Qlik and like, "Well, I can't use Donald's likeness as Power Pivot Yoda anymore." And so that was the end of one of my creations. But you miss 100% of the photo morphs you don't make. Thomas LaRock (00:57:27): I don't understand why we can't just do that now. Donald Farmer (00:57:29): Well, do you know the irony of that? As I went to Qlik and one of the first things their marketing did was build an entire comic strip around Qlik Yoda, which was me as Qlik Yoda, which I suspect they got from Power Pivot Yoda. So your idea in a sense did live on- Rob Collie (00:57:44): I didn't know that. Donald Farmer (00:57:45): ... just in the service of a different business, Rob Collie (00:57:47): I feel redeemed hearing that later. I probably would've been upset at the time, but now is a really good time to hear that. That's great. The other things, Tom, that happened back in that day is... Don is such a good sport, and is so well known and so loved, that he is just a really easy figure to have some fun with. And so I posted this photo gallery of like, "Is it Donald or is it Tommy Chong?" Donald Farmer (00:58:12): I remember that. That was on camera. Rob Collie (00:58:17): And it was really close. And it was so funny that someone else, about six months later wrote an article about Donald and used a Tommy Chong picture on accident. So you know where he got it. Donald Farmer (00:58:30): That's great. Yeah, that was crazy. Thomas LaRock (00:58:36): I want to ask something slightly off topic, but I'm going to ask anyway. I remember this event, I don't know who, I suspect it's the SQL Server marketing team. I don't know what it is, but I believe Donald, you hosted a wine pairing with SQL Server in some secret room like the back cave or something inside of Microsoft. I remember I was invited to fly to Redmond. Donald Farmer (00:59:01): That's right. Thomas LaRock (00:59:03): Was it for SQL Server 2008 R2? It had to be. There's this launch event for what is essentially, let's call it a mid-major release of SQL, and it's a wine pairing with Donald Farmer. So what was that room first of all? What's that secret room on campus? Donald Farmer (00:59:23): That secret room was in the Executive Briefing Center and it was at the back of the Executive Briefing Center where they had a section, which was the Office of Tomorrow. And then at the back of that, it was a set that they'd created for the Home of Tomorrow. And that had actually gotten nowhere and they'd more or less abandoned it, but it was beautifully equipped as this lovely home with big screen televisions and couches and things out there. And that's where we held that event. Thomas LaRock (00:59:51): Again, I was invited, but I couldn't make it. So I'm assuming because I was still working for a previous employer. And I remember photos from the event on social media where Donald was basically introducing one of the features in 2008 R2 and he was pairing it with a class of wine. Do I have this correct, sir? Donald Farmer (01:00:12): You do. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And we had these funny things about IT and business working together like wine and cheese. It sounds really corny, but actually it is really corny. Of course, it was an excuse to have good wine and nice cheese, but it was also a way of getting people into a different minds set so they thought of this less as a set of features and more as the creation of a community of people who felt connected by a shared experience of this product. So that R2 launch, we had a group of people who felt very committed to each other and to us as a team. It was social engineering. Thomas LaRock (01:00:49): Yeah. I am sorry I missed that, because as it was happening, I'm like, "Oh, well, they'll do it again next release and maybe I'll get to go to that one." It's never happened since. So it's been like 12 years and there has yet to be a decent SQL Server launch event with wine pairing. And I'm going to have to mention it to the folks, MVP Summits coming up. I think I'm going to have to put the bug in some of these ear about this because absolutely this should be happening and I should be invited. That's how I feel. Donald Farmer (01:01:17): I'm a great believer in actually building community and in building that sense of shared purpose. And far too often, we actually present products to people as if they are passive receivers of our products rather than part of our shared creative community. When I joined Qlik, for example, Qlik at a really bad reputation for talking down to industry analysts and for regarding industry analysts as people who didn't really understand Qlik and didn't understand its unique value proposition. And therefore, we always mansplain to them about why we were so unique and different. Donald Farmer (01:01:52): One of the things we did was at a tech event in Vegas, where there was a lot of analysts and influencers present, we did a little event that I set up and the marketing team were great in supporting this Lara Shackelford at the marketing team, did a great job of pulling it together. We actually held it in the art gallery of the Bellagio rather than the typical Vegas event we have in some kind of meeting room, no. Scott Humphrey, my friend, who's an amazing PR guy, we got the art gallery, we held it in the art gallery. We had the nibbles, we had the wine, we had the pairing and we didn't talk about the product, we talked about us. Donald Farmer (01:02:28): We talked about why we were at Qlik, what we were doing, what we wanted to achieve. And we talked about that apart from a brief introduction, we talked about one-on-one with people rather than presenting to them. And what happened after that event was the analysts were our friends, literally. There were people at Qlik who had never sat down and had a meal or a drink with an analyst, and the whole experience then changed because they now became part, of course they weren't part of our community uniquely because they're industry analysts, they're objective, but we did have this sense that we're all part of a shared community of purpose, community of practice that I felt was really important. Donald Farmer (01:03:05): And I think you're right, by the way, Thomas, I think Microsoft have lost a lot of that. They're still doing this thing where Microsoft is explaining their products to you rather than we are part of a shared community of purpose. To be fair, I've been doing a little work with the Azure signups team, where of course it's been really difficult in the last year because we can't have those events. We plan to have a great event in Woodville, pull people together and it was going to happen last year, and of course it couldn't. I think we need to do a lot more of that, of building, not a community in a sense of a support group, a community, isn't a support group. Donald Farmer (01:03:39): You don't need to join a community, you're part of a community because that's who you are. I was brought up in a small village and you don't join a village, you're in a village because you were born there, because you live, because love them or hate them you're in a shared community with other people. You join a user group, you join a support group, you log onto a forum, but a community is much more organic than that, and you have to do a lot of work to build that. And I think be perfectly honest, I think Microsoft on the BI side, on the SQL Server side, on the Azure side to a certain extent lost that sense of shared community of purpose. Rob Collie (01:04:12): Yeah. I was thinking about Tom, as you were saying, I need to get on it and let them know they need to do a wine event. I was thinking about things Donald had said earlier like the Lampoon version of this as Microsoft will say, "Oh right, yeah, we should do that again." So they'll analyze the ingredients of that event. So there was wine, there was cheese, and so they'll have like three different, "Okay, we need two whites and two reds," and they'll just take the first absolute vanilla versions of all of those, and you'll get a handful of cheeses and think that that's the same thing. That's the whole point is that it's not. Donald Farmer (01:04:45): Well, nowadays you would just do it online and send everybody a coupon to go to Costco and that's the same thing. Rob Collie (01:04:52): Yeah. And I'd come home with hot sauce or something? Thomas LaRock (01:04:55): I think I have to agree with Donald, Microsoft may have lost a little bit of that community focused. What I will say is they continue to hire from their MVP community, which I think is somewhat brilliant because that's instant credibility with your best advocates, because now the people that you were sitting in that room with, now one of you, they're the principal program manager in charge of whatever. And it's really hard to look at somebody that was a friend and a colleague, you only assume good intentions. You know they're a good person, you know now they're doing good work over at Microsoft. Thomas LaRock (01:05:35): And so I find that there's a nice, solid connection between people building the product and their advocates, their community of MVPs. But I think you're right in the sense that outside of that community, that's still fairly closed, that there hasn't been that outreach beyond that circle. I don't know how that's happened, but I'm just reflecting back on the past, say 15 to 20 years of my involvement in this community. And I think they have gotten away from that. I'm not sure why or how. Donald Farmer (01:06:09): Well, I think it's partly to do with the success of the product. I'm going to make a suggestion here which they may well dislike, but I think it's true, is that earlier I was talking about the importance of tools of choice as opposed tools which are provisioned and Power BI is no longer a tool of choice. That's not entirely true because of course there are people who choose to use Power BI, but mostly it's just provision. It's provision by IT, it comes, I don't know, we're not allowed to use the word bundling in the Microsoft context, but it comes bundled with all fees or it becomes bundled with an Azure deal in some way. Donald Farmer (01:06:41): Very few individuals sit down and say, "I want to use Power BI." There are some who do and they're great at it, don't get me wrong. But unlike the world of the newer tools, and I think Tableau again is a great example of a company that has always done a good job of this. People choose to use Tableau, people choose to use Power BI in anything like the same way. Rob Collie (01:07:01): This jumps off the page to me in any interaction that I have with Microsoft these days is that they're doing such a good job selling the product at that top-down level. And I come at it from a completely different perspective, which is, the bottom-up adoption. I never had that phrase, tool of choice, but now I do. Excel is one of Microsoft's only tools of choice, it's an accidental tool of choice. The people who are good at Excel really love that product. They love it. There aren't many things like that at Microsoft. And Microsoft's inability so far to directly harness that audience that's already theirs and turn them into passionate Power BI developers still really bugs me, even as they've been really successful. Rob Collie (01:07:48): Financially, the product is doing incredibly well. And look at the Magic Quadrant, look at how well it's being received by those analysts we talked about earlier, in some sense like on every metric that matters, they're doing incredibly well. But it is hard for me to connect with them on that bottom-up level because it doesn't really seem to be hurting them. Donald Farmer (01:08:07): No, no, it doesn't. But you can see it in the product, and this is something that's super interesting to me. It does get reflected in the product because what I see in the product is there are features which have to my mind clearly been added almost as demo features. There are very lightweight, not particularly well thought through features. And in fact, very often I come back and talk to people a year later, question and answer is a great example, the natural language interface. How many people have actually been using that for two years and are still using it as a daily practice after two years? Donald Farmer (01:08:38): It's not a long term feature that. It's not a product, not a feature that you use for two years. As soon as you've learned how to use it, you abandon it and you go straight to the data again. And there's a lot of features like that in Power BI that continually pop up. And what I find when I look at those features and when I start working with them is inconsistency of attention. There are some aspects of Power BI where clearly people are giving it long term focused attention on the quality of this feature. And there's other features, which just feel like they've been hacked together and pushed in order to check a box, "Oh, ThoughtSpot are doing this so we'll do that and compete against them." Donald Farmer (01:09:18): "Oh, Tableau, I've got this, we've got that too." And that inconsistency of attention, I think, is actually long run potentially damaging. And the great success of Power BI is in some ways also its undoing because it's going to be just a default product, and at some point, because it's default, it'll no longer move the needle. Rob Collie (01:09:40): Yeah. And when it's unenthusiastically adopted, it's adopted incorrectly. Donald Farmer (01:09:47): A lot of that. Rob Collie (01:09:48): And it doesn't work well. It gets a negative reputation amongst that workgroup because they watched those demos and everything was so easy, but they also completely miss that it is a world-beater. When properly utilized it is a world-beater of a tool that should have been charged ridiculous amounts of money for. But you're right, now it's just part of the E whatever, skew, and it's issued to you. And my conversation with Microsoft, for good reason, you can understand this, it's not a bad thing, their overwhelming concern is what the CIO thinks of the tool. And the thing that makes it truly great, the thing that makes it the tool of choice, that people get excited about has nothing to do with what the CIO thinks. Rob Collie (01:10:38): You're right, it probably does long term, and it is, even medium term, short term. This is causing them trouble, adoption after the sale is now something that's a concern for them. Donald Farmer (01:10:49): For sure. There's a lot of shelfware out there. We used to call it shelfware, I don't know what you call it when it's on the cloud. Rob Collie (01:10:55): You might as well call it shelfware, it's a virtual shelf. Donald Farmer (01:10:57): And what's super interesting, of course, is the CIO may well be adopting Power BI for all the right reasons, but the tools of choice in the organization are other tools of choice and are starting to have that impact. Rob Collie (01:11:08): Yeah. What's TreeHive Strategy? What are you up to these days? Donald Farmer (01:11:10): Well, TreeHive Strategy is just a cute name for my consulting practice. And what I primarily do nowadays is strategic advising to vendors, to investors, and to enterprises about data and analytics strategy. We have a simple mantra that any software company is a data company, no matter what you do. If you're a data company, you need to be an analytics company, otherwise your data's just sitting there and not taking action requires analysis. And if you're an analytics company, you probably need to be an advanced analytics company sooner than you imagine. Donald Farmer (01:11:42): And therefore, what does that map look like to get from being a company that has data to being a company that actually is actively and innovatively using it? I have a lot of fun, I speak with a lot of investors, which is great, because I can go into their portfolio companies and then I start to deal with a whole lot of software vendors doing everything from manufacturing and retail, restaurant software, all sorts of things that I otherwise might not get to do. So I enjoy that, and I help vendors large and small from the largest vendors to small startups. And I work with enterprises ranging from manufacturing and robotics. Donald Farmer (01:12:15): So I have a lot of fun and I'm lucky in the sense that I still have to work, but I can choose what I do, and that's a great pleasure. Rob Collie (01:12:22): And just so people know, where is the name TreeHive come from? Donald Farmer (01:12:26): Well, TreeHive comes from our treehouse. There's a great TV program. Well, I think it stopped now, but by Pete Nelson, who's a treehouse builder based in Fall City, which is about 15 miles from us. And he built a treehouse for us and it was on the TV program and my wife built a sketch of it. It looked like a beehive in a tree, and Pete Nelson came along and said, "Well, that's impossible, let's try it," which is a great attitude, and built it. And it's beautiful. If you search for beehive treehouse, you'll always certainly find it. It's a beautiful place. And that's my thinking space. Donald Farmer (01:12:57): I retreat up there in the afternoon, no Wi-Fi up there, just the ability to sit there and be on my own and think. It's great to have a thinking space. So that's TreeHive Strategy. Rob Collie (01:13:06): Yeah. I remember there not being Wi-Fi in the TreeHive, but I was wondering all these years later, if you broke it down and hooked it up. Donald Farmer (01:13:14): No. Absolutely not, you've got to have somewhere that you can't get Wi-Fi. Rob Collie (01:13:18): Yeah. The pictures online and the videos, they actually surprisingly do it justice. I've been in the TreeHive, I've made that pilgrimage and it's awesome. It is just so cool. Donald Farmer (01:13:28): It is very beautiful, it's just a beautiful place and we're tremendously lucky to have it. And so it's become almost a defining feature of our work. My wife's an artist and a wonderful artist and I do my creative thing and it's become an inspiration for us in many ways. Rob Collie (01:13:43): Do you still have the Goblin Hut? Donald Farmer (01:13:45): We still have the Goblin Hut, which is a little octagonal building that we can go into and escape from as well. That's fun. We have an art studio. We have, what's called a House of Doors, which is a building made entirely out of doors, which is very interesting. And we have a little log cabin codding shade because our builder, our contractor is a log cabin builder and so he built us a porting shade, which is actually a log cabin. And we have all sorts of stuff and everything's painted as well. And that's the other thing, my wife's an artist so anything that's doesn't move gets painted. Rob Collie (01:14:14): Back in the day, there was even one of your wife's works, put a picture of it on the blog, the Three Seconds of Now. That painting that was in your office at Microsoft for so long. I've always been captivated by that work. Donald Farmer (01:14:26): Yeah. A big six-foot square painting. Rob Collie (01:14:28): It makes an impression and it is, it's just called Now, right? Donald Farmer (01:14:31): It's called Now, yeah. Well, there's this psychological thing that when we talk about the period of now, when you talk about something happening now, we're actually talking about a three-second period of time typically. In all the languages of the world, a line of poetry typically takes three seconds to say. So three seconds becomes this point at which a thought is focused. And if something takes more than three seconds, your mind drifts away from it. So I actually use it a lot. It's analytical, it's in our user experiences, in our thinking, we've got three seconds to hold someone's attention and have them move on to the next thing. Rob Collie (01:15:04): Yeah. If you click a filter and the results paint within three seconds, your mind doesn't really wander. On the other side of that three-second boundary, you've become asynchronous, you're no longer engaged. And that was the point of that blog post all those years ago was to try to get your slicer click, refresh in your Power Pivot reports, three seconds or less. It's like the biological quanta for time. Donald Farmer (01:15:28): It is, exactly. And of course, nowadays we expect the results to come back in millisecond, but the point being if you've actually overloaded the user with information so it takes some more than three seconds to take in all the data and information that you are showing them, you've still lost them. So even if your user interface is highly responsive, there's still three seconds of thinking and absorbing that you need to do. Rob Collie (01:15:51): All right. I'm looking forward to getting back out and hanging out in the Goblin Hut or in the TreeHive. The House of Doors was under construction last time I was there. That's how long ago? Donald Farmer (01:16:00): Wow. Guess what, that's all completed. Well, we need to get you out here, we need to get Thomas out here so we can do some wine tasting. Rob Collie (01:16:05): That's right. And we'll do it right. Donald Farmer (01:16:07): We'll do it right. Thomas LaRock (01:16:08): And we'll discuss Tableau, I guess. Donald Farmer (01:16:15): We can do that. Thomas LaRock (01:16:15): I'm sorry, no, we won't discuss Tableau, we'll discuss why we wanted to work for Tableau or something. Rob Collie (01:16:21): We'll discuss why the Microsoft SQL Server data mining tools for Office System 2000, whatever, pairs so well with this Kranti. Donald Farmer (01:16:33): That's exciting. Rob Collie (01:16:35): Well, Donald, thank you so much. I appreciate you coming down out of the TreeHive to where the Wi-Fi reaches to have a conversation with us. Donald Farmer (01:16:42): It's been a tremendous pleasure. Thank you Rob and Tom. Announcer (01:16:45): 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!

Kasper de Jonge's areas of expertise are many-Business Intelligence, Power BI, DAX, PowerPivot, General BI, Datawarehouse, SSIS, Reporting Services, Analysis Services, SQL Server, and you can include a mean basketball crossover to that list! As Analytics Advisor and Principal Program Manager of Power BI, he knows a great deal about the problems that BI customers face daily.  He shares some of these experiences and his expertise, and we have some good laughs along the way as well! Check out Kasper's awesome blog Kasper on BI References In This Episode: Inglorious Bastards Italian Scene Episode Timeline: 2:45 - A basketball challenge in New Orleans, Kasper's MS history with Power Pivot and Power BI, and the culture change at Microsoft 15:45 - The culture shock in moving to the United States 28:50 - The death of Power BI V1, and some James Phillips stories 40:00 - Office VS the Freedom to Innovate, Excel/Power BI Integration, and how software development has evolved 51:15 - The Amazing Power BI Cat Team, and the processes that they use to solve problems 1:05:50 - Some bad Microsoft product names, DAX VS MDX, and the many different people that are in IT Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello, friends. This week's guest is Kasper, Kasper DJ. I call him Kasper DJ here because I'm completely unable to pronounce his last name. But anyone that's been following this community for a while, if I just say Kasper, you know who I'm talking about, don't you? Rob Collie (00:00:15): Now, I met Kasper over the internet in 2010. This was shortly after I had relocated from Seattle to Cleveland for family reasons. And during 2010 is when I started to say something I thought was pretty funny at the time which is I have more friends in foreign countries than I do in the city I live. It was a very strange departure to suddenly be part of an international community on the outside of Microsoft all sort of coalescing around this thing called Power Pivot. Rob Collie (00:00:43): It was right around then in early 2010 about the same time that I was getting to know Kasper that I had seen something in Power Pivot that told me that the world was going to change. And most people that I talked to about that I told that Power Pivot which became Power BI was going to revolutionize the BI industry and change the way it was staffed, changed the way that the projects were, changed the whole business model. Rob Collie (00:01:05): The overwhelming majority of people that I said that to would immediately reject it and almost like attacked me. They told me I was wrong. Those days are over so long ago that it's hard to even really kind of remember what that was like. But Kasper was really striking back then. He had been part of the traditional BI ecosystem. And he was good at it. And he was seeing the same things in Power Pivot in those early days that I was. Rob Collie (00:01:27): And that was like instant international nerd bonding. He's gone on to do some amazing things. He ended up working on Power Pivot/Power BI at Microsoft for a greater number of years than I did when the dust settled. Today, he's still at Microsoft. He's now part of the Power BI CAT team. And he's a deservedly well-known and well-respected member of the Power BI and Power Platform Community at large. Rob Collie (00:01:50): Unlike me, Kasper had a ringside seat during some very, very transformative years at Microsoft. When the culture of the software teams was being completely remade around continuous release rather than the two-year, three-year waterfall cycles, he was there for the transition to Satya and the cultural changes that brought and the strategy pivot from Power Pivot to Power BI. Rob Collie (00:02:15): We talked about all those things and more. We had a really good time. I hope you would enjoy it as well. So, let's get into it. Announcer (00:02:23): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please? Announcer (00:02:27): This is the Raw Data by P3 Podcast, with your host, Rob Collie and your co-host, Thomas LaRock. Find out what the experts at P3 can do for your business. Go to powerpivotpro.com. Raw Data by P3 is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:02:45): Welcome to the show, Kasper De Jonge. How do you do? Kasper De Jonge (00:02:48): That's pretty good. Rob Collie (00:02:49): No. You're just being nice. Kasper De Jonge (00:02:51): I am. I am. Thomas LaRock (00:02:52): Yeah. He is being nice. That was awful. Kasper De Jonge (00:02:54): It's unpronounceable if you're not Dutch. Rob Collie (00:02:58): The American patois isn't really able to absorb something so sophisticated. So- Kasper De Jonge (00:03:04): I wouldn't say that. But in the Second World War, we had passwords between each other that only Dutch people can say. We would ask someone to say [foreign language 00:03:13]. It's like it's a city, and no one could pronounce it. So, if you were German, you couldn't pronounce it. So, that's how you would know that you were not Dutch. Thomas LaRock (00:03:21): Wow. Rob Collie (00:03:23): It's like that scene in Glorious Bastards where he's asking Brad Pitt to say the thing in Italian over and over again [crosstalk 00:03:29] buon giorno. Kasper De Jonge (00:03:36): Great movie. Rob Collie (00:03:39): Yeah. There was also in World War II, the United States used the Navajo Indians with their code talkers, just absolutely unbreakable code that happen to be a language. Kasper De Jonge (00:03:50): I actually know some Navajo. Rob Collie (00:03:52): Do you? Kasper De Jonge (00:03:52): Kasper [Yinicia 00:03:54]. It means Kasper is my name in Navajo. I don't know why I know it. But- Rob Collie (00:03:58): Well, it's because of the Navajo population in Holland clearly. Kasper De Jonge (00:04:02): Probably all about the same. Rob Collie (00:04:03): Yeah. So, believe it or not, when I met you in person for the first time was the same trip where I met Tom- Kasper De Jonge (00:04:11): Really? Rob Collie (00:04:12): ... in person. It was that same New Orleans conference. Thomas LaRock (00:04:17): Did you accost Kasper like you did to me? Rob Collie (00:04:21): No. See, I already internet knew Kasper before we met. We'd even arranged a basketball duel to happen. Kasper De Jonge (00:04:29): I didn't want to bring it up, Rob. But- Rob Collie (00:04:31): Go ahead. Go ahead and bring it up. Kasper De Jonge (00:04:33): No, no, no. Rob Collie (00:04:34): We challenged each other to a game of one-on-one basketball over the internet to be played in New Orleans when we got together. We found a gym. We paid for like a day pass to a gym. And we went in there. Rob Collie (00:04:45): And the way I remember it is that I am on a lifetime one game winning streak against Kasper. But he annihilated me. He annihilated me in the first few games. It wasn't close. He even did that move where he triples the basketball between your legs. Oh my god. So humiliating. But I quitted myself well at the end. For some reason, I managed to find my second win and find my shot. Rob Collie (00:05:12): I regained some measure of respect. I was able to walk off the court feeling like I was still okay. Kasper De Jonge (00:05:18): And you told me about hurricanes. Rob Collie (00:05:19): Oh, my god. Our livers aged like a decade on that trip. Every morning, I wake up going, "Oh, what do we do? Why do we do that? We're not going to do that today." And then, the next day. This was 10 years ago. Holy cow, it was 10 and a half years ago. Really interesting. Rob Collie (00:05:36): I remember in the course of talking to you Kasper in New Orleans over hurricanes, et cetera, watching sort of this idea come over your face over the course of that week, like, "Oh, my god I could move to Seattle. I could do the job that you used to do, Rob." Kasper De Jonge (00:05:52): Oh, yeah. I mean I never thought about it. But you introduced me to a lot of people at TK and all the people from the [inaudible 00:05:58] services team and Power BI and, yeah. It was definitely a good time. And I'd never thought about like I was a consultant doing multi-dimensional models and reporting services models for years and building data warehouses and all of these things. But maybe I'm going a bit ahead of it. Kasper De Jonge (00:06:13): When we started talking about Power Pivot, I don't know something happened in my brain that just I got obsessed by it. I was blogging and started blogging and started doing presentations about it too. That's one of the first [inaudible 00:06:27] common from the Netherlands, SQL PaaS when we had SQL Saturdays there. He said, "You have to come present." Kasper De Jonge (00:06:32): And, yeah, I just was obsessed by it. And I loved our conversations and talked about DAX. And that trip was amazing. Rob Collie (00:06:39): To give you your due here, I really want to make sure that I say this. For someone who had come from what I would call the traditional BI world, you are building multi-dimensional cubes. You were writing MDX, the feared MDX that I could never write. I really just couldn't learn it. Rob Collie (00:06:57): For someone who is immersed in that world and essentially validated by that world, you were good at that stuff. For you to see Power Pivot and to embrace it as something cool and with something with potential and value rather than being afraid of it, it wasn't a threat to you. But it was a threat to a lot of people with your background. So, you stood out to me. And, yeah, we really bonded over the internet over Power Pivot, over DAX, over this awesome new thing. And then, it gets a little hazy. And then, I beat you in a basketball game. And that's all I remember. Kasper De Jonge (00:07:34): Exactly. I do remember people telling me afterwards a couple of years after I started to work at Microsoft is there was a lot of debate whether or not they would actually hire me. Rob Collie (00:07:44): Really? Kasper De Jonge (00:07:44): I heard. Yes. Rob Collie (00:07:45): I'll tell you that years later. Kasper De Jonge (00:07:46): They tell me yesterday exactly. There was a lot of debate about them hiring me, and, yeah. Rob Collie (00:07:51): Well, I mean you were filling an awfully big pair of shoes there. Kasper De Jonge (00:07:55): Exactly. Yes. Rob Collie (00:07:56): I mean you actually filled the head count that I had vacated. I mean I think you knew. From a distance, it'd be hard for someone to know whether you would feel like sort of like one of that team until you meet some members of that team. And meeting, I mean we can even just make a joke about it like after you met me, you're like, "Oh, my god. I can totally do what that guy used to do." But, yeah, you did. You get to meet a bunch of people on that team. And I remember being very, very, very excited about that. Rob Collie (00:08:23): When that thought first became sort of acknowledged across the table or whatever day it was at that conference , I was like, "Oh, totally yeah. You should totally do that." That sounds like such a good idea. I'm so glad that came to pass. That's really awesome. Thomas LaRock (00:08:38): After all that, can you tell me what it is you do there? Kasper De Jonge (00:08:41): Well, things have changed significantly over the years. But when I just moved to Microsoft in Redmond, I was a program manager on the then analyst services theme/Power Pivot team. And I was working on some of the UI aspects of it like building the product there and shipping it into Excel as an add-in. And then, later, Office 15 shipping it as part of the Office add-in. Kasper De Jonge (00:09:08): And after that, the first version of the tabular model and also tabular the way we have it that was one of the PMs on that team creating it and shipping it. First version of Power BI that we killed luckily, the one that shipped inside of Office 365, that was not a good thing. So, we kind of killed it. Kasper De Jonge (00:09:27): After that, we really went full steam with Power BI when James Phillips came along. And that was, I must say, I mean that's really for me before and after time. Before, we were like we have SQL server shipping releases where it takes two years or four years to ship something and the world where all of a sudden, we were like no longer inside of the SQL server organization. But we're now part of a different team with James Phillips who came from a completely different world. He was starting Couchbase. He comes from Silicon Valley. It was a completely different world. Kasper De Jonge (00:10:01): And he said, "Okay. I don't care about any history. What do we need to do?" And what I want you guys to do is to say to build a new product that says five minutes to wow. That's really what he said. Someone needs to be able to log in and go to Power BI and five minutes to wow. You need to be able to say wow. Kasper De Jonge (00:10:18): That was a fundamental shift for us. That was completely different to anything else that we've done before even though we already were pretty amazing all the things that we were doing with Power Pivot in my mind at least then, but this was taking to the next level. And also, Satya came on board. It was also a big difference like Steve Ballmer before Satya. And he brings James Phillips there. Kasper De Jonge (00:10:40): And it was a tough time for a lot of people on our team as we talked about before. A lot of the old school guard, it was tough because he had to do things very differently. And he came. I remember as see, can you imagine James Phillip is a vice president. And he comes in. He storms into the room and says, "I need DAX. Help. I'm writing DAX." What? He's running it. And everyone points to me. [crosstalk 00:11:03] shit. Kasper De Jonge (00:11:02): And he says, "Come. Come." Okay. I had to go to his Office. And he was doing something. And he was like, "How do I write this DAX formula?" And then, it's magical answers. It's like, "What you're doing? You don't even need to write DAX," because he would try to solve problems in an Excel way. But he actually created the table. I said, "You just create some relationships here. You drag it in. It just works." Thomas LaRock (00:11:27): Wow. Rob Collie (00:11:28): Oh, that's awesome. Of course, James has a strong Excel background. Kasper De Jonge (00:11:33): Yeah. He's an exec. And although [inaudible 00:11:38], you've probably seen all his keynotes and all these things. He comes across an exec. But I mean he's very technical. He was one of the founding people of Couchbase. He definitely knows what he's talking about. Rob Collie (00:11:47): Well, just the fact that even attempting to write DAX is an awesome, awesome, awesome story. That's so cool. Kasper De Jonge (00:11:55): Well, I must say that's another thing. So, one of the first jobs actually on the Power BI team, me, together with Josh Kaplan, we were doing Power BI Embedded. So, it's an embedding story. And you have APIs. It's not really because I had some developer background too because I used to be a developer way back when, some developer background. So, we were PMs for that. Kasper De Jonge (00:12:15): One moment, we got an email saying, "Oh, yeah." So, Scott Guthrie tried out your API. And he has some feedback. Shit. Scott Guthrie has some feedback. Oh my. Rob Collie (00:12:25): Remind for the audience who Scott Guthrie is. Kasper De Jonge (00:12:28): So, Scott Guthrie is, I don't know exactly what the title is, but he's the vice president reporting to Satya. And he owns everything of Azure and everything Power BI. I don't know how big his team is. They're probably 30,000 people or something on development side. Rob Collie (00:12:44): Yeah. It's like- Kasper De Jonge (00:12:45): He's the big guy. Rob Collie (00:12:46): It's like an Amazon-sized team. Kasper De Jonge (00:12:49): Yeah. He's that guy. And he's trying these things. And he's looking at the documentation. If your documentation sucks, he'll tell you. Rob Collie (00:12:55): Here's a similar story just to... We'll definitely come back to what you're talking about. But I want to make sure I share this. So, for a brief period of time, when I worked in Office, I drew the short straw. And my team was assigned sort of maintenance ownership of the Office web components which were ActiveX control versions of Excel essentially. Rob Collie (00:13:18): It's this completely false step into the web like ActiveX, like, "Oh, god. The whole thing was a debacle." So, these Office web components someone needed to, I don't know, shepherd them. We weren't really actively developing them. So, we were given ownership of the support distribution list, the email list where people would ask questions about how to get their OWC components to work. And we woke up one morning, came to work. And we checked the distribution list like we were supposed to every day. Rob Collie (00:13:48): And at three o'clock in the morning, someone had asked a question like, "Hey, I'm writing this script to this ActiveX control. And it's not working, blah, blah, blah." And like at 3:05 AM, five minutes later, vice president Steven Sinofsky replies and says, "Hey, this is the code you need to use instead," and gives them the alternate script that works. Rob Collie (00:14:10): And the person goes, "Oh, thank you. That works great." So, we're all sitting there just sort of chilled to the bone that morning, like, "Did you know Steven was on this distribution list?" Like, "No." He's been watching us this whole time every single thing we've ever said. He's seen it. Rob Collie (00:14:24): And furthermore, he knew the answer to a question that most of us didn't. It was like, "Oh, it was inspiring and terrifying all at once." Kasper De Jonge (00:14:35): Yeah. I always am impressed with people at that level at Microsoft at least the ones that I've seen is how engaged they are. I remember one since long time ago, I joined Microsoft when Bill Gates was already gone. But I once saw him present in some conference in the Netherlands long time ago. I don't know exactly what it was. And people were asking him, like, "So, I have a setup installer. And I have this on Linux." And I don't really remember exactly the question was. But he said, "Oh, okay. Yeah. You just do this, this and this on your Linux distribution. And then, you do this, this, and this." Is this Bill Gates talking about... I was just sitting there in awe- Thomas LaRock (00:15:14): Especially the old guard. They were just loaded with stuff like that. So, let's underline something. You packed up your family. You were married, right? Kasper De Jonge (00:15:22): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:15:22): You moved internationally to pursue this dream. How did that go down family wise? That's got to be a tough sell. Kasper De Jonge (00:15:30): Well, it was not that tough to sell actually except my mom, obviously. But other than that, I mean this is just a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity really. I never thought that it would... I was having a nice job. And it was nice. But worked at Microsoft. I actually developed products. And I was super passionate about Power Pivot that really helped. Kasper De Jonge (00:15:51): I don't think I would have packed up my things to work on exchange or whatever other products. No. I was passionate about it, really. That really helped. Rob Collie (00:15:59): And also, didn't you have a newborn about that same time? Kasper De Jonge (00:16:02): She was one when I moved to the US. Yeah. It was a big change. I mean go to a whole different country. But I think the good thing is you've had him on the podcast with John Hancock was my manager then when he hired. Everyone's taking care of me and making sure everything was okay and nice flights and the CATs were taken care of. And there was something like I had a place to stay. It's not like I'm packing up for [inaudible 00:16:27]. Kasper De Jonge (00:16:27): It's a corporate America. Microsoft's taking care of you. So, you get taken to the bank with some lady who helps you. You go to the bank and say, "Okay. So, here's the account you're going to open up," because of course in the US, it's a lot about credit scores. Kasper De Jonge (00:16:41): Obviously, I did not have any credit score because you come from outside. But they say, "Well, this bank doesn't care about your credit score because they are friends with Microsoft. And they don't really care about your credit score. And they think you're going to be good for it." And they give you tips and tricks and things to do and settle in. So, that's really a big change. Rob Collie (00:17:00): So, there's something in detail in there that I find jaw-dropping. Is there any equivalent of credit score in the Netherlands/ Kasper De Jonge (00:17:07): No. Rob Collie (00:17:08): Wow. Thomas LaRock (00:17:09): How could that be possible? Kasper De Jonge (00:17:10): No. There's a reverse. So, if you do not pay things on time and you get your really bad shape of paying back things, then, you get noted in some register. And then, when you want to do a new loan, they look into that register. And then, they say, "Well, actually, you're delinquent payer. Let's talk before we do anything else." Rob Collie (00:17:32): So, it's pass, fail. The credit score in the Netherlands is pass, fail. But in the United States, we're like, "Oh, we really need a thousand-point scale to rate you." Thomas LaRock (00:17:42): Yeah. A thousand-point scale that only goes up to 849 or something. Kasper De Jonge (00:17:46): Yeah. It was mind-boggling. One of the things they told me like I was there. And I wanted to buy a car. And he said, "Oh, you're not going to buy a car with cash. Are you crazy? Take a loan because otherwise you'll never get a nice credit score." I had never taken a loan in my life except the mortgage. We don't do that. Rob Collie (00:18:03): The fact that Tom and I are just stunned, it really speaks to the American culture, doesn't it? It's like there's another way to do- Thomas LaRock (00:18:12): Take a loan so you can have better credit. And you need to have three or four accounts open and maintain a certain balance month to month in order to maximize your chance to go more into debt. Kasper De Jonge (00:18:25): So, this lady was explaining this all to me in the couple first weeks. There was a lady that you get assigned to. And she explains all these things. And I was like, "What?" Rob Collie (00:18:32): I've actually been thinking for you a long time that the United States like the credit score system like we should call it what it is. It's like, "Are you a good milkable crop scorer?" Kasper De Jonge (00:18:42): Yeah. Well, I mean this show, are you spending nice money? And if you're spending a lot of money, then, you're getting better. Rob Collie (00:18:47): Yeah. Are you a good consumer that we can extract a lot of money out of? There's a little bit of a loophole in it in this system which is that if you're constantly paying off all of your debts all the time like really quickly, you get a good credit score. But you're not very profitable for the credit agencies, et cetera. That's the way to really stick it to the man, is to- Kasper De Jonge (00:19:08): Yeah. You have to be a little bit depth. Rob Collie (00:19:10): Yeah. It's a weird system. Kasper De Jonge (00:19:12): I definitely like the US. There's lots of opportunity there. And the vibe that you get and see... I've never lived anywhere else. But the vibe you get in Seattle is just amazing. I don't see anything like his here in the Netherlands. You go to a birthday party. And you have people from Twitter and Facebook and Google and Amazon. And they're all there. And they're all talking. Kasper De Jonge (00:19:32): And I mean there's energy. There's really energy there that I love. I haven't seen that anywhere else. Rob Collie (00:19:37): That's pretty much universal the United States. I found that same energy in Cleveland. I'm kidding. I did not. Seattle is a bit special in the US, I think. Kasper De Jonge (00:19:45): Yeah. And that, and then, of course the nature and the trees. And there's so much space. We don't have a lot of space here in Netherlands. The same amount of price I can buy a house here. But it's in the street where I can see neighbors everywhere. Rob Collie (00:19:56): And how does the Netherlands feel about global warming? How does the Netherlands feel about sea level rise? Kasper De Jonge (00:20:03): Actually, we're not that scared of it. Rob Collie (00:20:05): No? Kasper De Jonge (00:20:06): I live right now under the sea level. My house from the sea level. Rob Collie (00:20:09): Yes, which was apparently New Orleans fatal flaw at one point with the hurricane. Kasper De Jonge (00:20:13): Yeah. But we've been having this for five, 600 years. We know how to handle it. We actually made land. We made land. We had a sea. Thomas LaRock (00:20:22): They're called the lowlands for a reason. And they've been that way for centuries. Rob Collie (00:20:26): Exactly. Yeah. I mean to be below sea level and on the ocean, you had to make that land. Otherwise, we call that ocean floor otherwise, below sea level. Kasper De Jonge (00:20:36): No. That land's actually because they didn't have more lands for people to build houses on. So, they just cleared up... Its inner sea, it's not out... We have an inner sea, if you will. And that's where they just cleared up that land. And people live on it now. There's whole cities on it. Rob Collie (00:20:51): So, I guess what you're saying is that if you've been fighting off the ocean for centuries, a sea level rise that's six inches or whatever, even something extreme like that, it's not going to bother you. It's just a rounding error. Kasper De Jonge (00:21:06): Well, obviously, I mean I'm just over generalizing a little bit because everyone is concerned about it. But I'm not necessarily we're concerned about the raised sea levels. It's about everything else that is a concern. And we're a very small country. So, there's not much really we can do. Thomas LaRock (00:21:21): The ecosystem, they'll change as a result, right? Kasper De Jonge (00:21:25): Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:21:25): Like shellfish or some something that doesn't exist there anymore as a result because of warmer waters and things of that nature. That's a bigger concern. Kasper De Jonge (00:21:32): Yeah. That's a bigger concern. Yeah. Two weeks ago was -15 Celsius. A week later it was 15 Celsius. And this week, we're back to minus two. We've never seen this before. Rob Collie (00:21:43): Oh, it's just so interesting though. Isn't variety the spice of life? I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. [crosstalk 00:21:49] I'm just kidding. So, I think about this through the lens of Florida, especially South Florida. It should be pretty damn concerned about sea level rise. I don't think it's going to be too long before insurance companies are going to take a very different stand on oceanfront property in Florida. Rob Collie (00:22:06): And that will be the place where this starts to really come home to the average American. Kasper De Jonge (00:22:12): I actually read in the Atlantic, there was an article about Hawaiian beaches are disappearing because people are shoring up. All the rich people are making nice walls. So, their property won't get gone. But there's no beach left. The beach are disappearing. Rob Collie (00:22:26): They're kind of making their own little micro-Netherlands around their property. Kasper De Jonge (00:22:31): Exactly. Thomas LaRock (00:22:32): I see pictures from Andre Common from time to time about he goes to the beach in the Netherlands somewhere. And low tide, I swear it's got to be a kilometer, Rob, from where they park. And they just keep walking because it's just this slow gradual decline. And so, the beach just seems to extend forever before you get to the water. It's amazing. Rob Collie (00:22:56): Wait. Did you just translate into Kasper's units? Did you say kilometer? Look what a metropolitan man of the world, Thomas. Thomas LaRock (00:23:03): I try to make our guests feel as comfortable as possible. You know this, Rob. Kasper De Jonge (00:23:08): Yeah. I didn't do that. I was like, "No, the sea level's going to rise by six inches. Damn it." Thomas LaRock (00:23:11): You did. Rob Collie (00:23:12): It's not centimeters. Kasper De Jonge (00:23:14): All my cars in the US, I set to kilometers. I never could get used to miles. Rob Collie (00:23:18): But how'd you deal with the speed limit then? You're just, "I'll just tell you what. I'll just drive really slow. I'll just drive 55 kilometers per hour and a 55-" Thomas LaRock (00:23:24): Stay with traffic. Rob Collie (00:23:26): There you go. That is the move. The speed limit just doesn't really matter, does it? Kasper De Jonge (00:23:29): Not in Seattle. Rob Collie (00:23:32): Really, not anywhere. 465 around Indianapolis. There's just certain stretches where it's been declared an Autobahn. There's never any cops and- Kasper De Jonge (00:23:42): Oh really? I have more mental traffic wise in Seattle, is never a point that you can actually drive fast enough to get in trouble. Rob Collie (00:23:49): That's true. That's true. How long were you in Seattle because you're back in the Netherlands now? Kasper De Jonge (00:23:53): Yeah. Back in Netherlands now. I was in Seattle for six years. Rob Collie (00:23:56): Wow. Kasper De Jonge (00:23:57): Yeah. It's quite a long time. But a second kid got born in US. I don’t like US part. But there are certain areas that in us that I think I would feel better to raise my kids in the Netherlands then. I just hated the fact that when I brought my kid to school, she had active shooter drills, my daughter. Kasper De Jonge (00:24:20): And then, six years ago, she's now 12, she still remembers. She was telling me after like, "We had to go into some closet." So, active shooter drills. And we were living in Redmond. Redmond, it's all Google. It's all Amazon. It's all Microsoft. And there were little kids in my daughter's class that didn't have money to eat because their parents were the cleaners. They didn't have money to eat. And we had to pay as parents, you give some money to the school. And then, the school gets them some breakfast. Kasper De Jonge (00:24:50): And a couple of streets over, there was lots of things that happened to deck over time. A couple of streets over, there was a party and someone got killed, shot by accident because there was a gun laying around. These things don't happen here. Rob Collie (00:25:02): I completely understand what you're saying. But especially if you've had the benefit of growing up someplace different where the sense of we're all on the same team and we're all going to sort of take care of each other. I mean it's not a yes, no thing. It's a dial like how much do we acknowledge it. How much do we take care of each other? How much do we protect each other? Rob Collie (00:25:23): If you grew up in a place where that dial is sort of cranked relatively high and then you come to some place where it's not and I know that we're not, the United States has got a relatively low score on the take care of each other thing. And that's not me being anti-patriotic or un-American or whatever. It's just sad. I really think we need to as a country be doing more to crank that dial the other way. Every little bit helps. I can imagine is that really sort of the primary reason for going back? Kasper De Jonge (00:25:52): It's that and also parents who are getting older. So, at one point, it's hard for them to travel. And, obviously, I was in an incredibly lucky position that I had an amazing team that said, "Yeah. If you want to move back, you can keep your job." Rob Collie (00:26:11): And in 2010, when I left, that wasn't a thing yet. When I moved to Cleveland, if I had left seven years later or whatever, they probably would have let me keep my job. And my whole life would be very, very, very different because I would not have left. I relocated for family reasons. And I'm glad that I did leave. I think it's worked out better. I've really enjoyed and appreciated the path that my life has taken since then. But I wouldn't have if I'd had the option. Thomas LaRock (00:26:38): Yeah. Now Kasper, you left before the plague, right? You left before last year. It wasn't a COVID thing. Kasper De Jonge (00:26:45): No, no. I left in 2016, quite some time ago. No, no. Before COVID, yeah. I miss the work because I don't do exactly the same I used to do because I used to be a product PM actually developing features and working with the developers and brainstorming and all of these amazing things that we would huddle together and do all these things. That I definitely miss because you were talking about your thrones and names and Rob for like Marius. And those are some people that no one have heard about because they never really go speak out at conferences. Kasper De Jonge (00:27:18): And then, they have no presence online to talk to the community. But they are amazing people. The ideas and the brainstorms and the things that are happening there is just, yeah, next level. And that's the unfortunate thing now with COVID. I haven't been to the Office in a year or more than a year, actually a year and a half. I haven't been to Seattle in a year and a half. Kasper De Jonge (00:27:39): I used to soak that up like fly to Seattle and stay there for a week and just brainstorm and hear and talk and see what's going on and, yeah. That's not happening. And that I definitely miss because I'm sitting here. I work fully remote. I already since 2016. I changed from the product role. Kasper De Jonge (00:27:59): We're actually developing product two what we now do was our customer advisory team which I have an amazing team too. We have Adam Saxton, Patrick Leblanc, Matthew Roach, Chris Webb, a lot of other people on our team. They're really good guys. Thomas LaRock (00:28:17): I was going to mention how Kasper mentioned the names of the people on the team. It was Patrick Leblanc, not Leblanc, Leblanc, Leblanc. He did it perfectly. Rob Collie (00:28:27): See, it can be pronounced. We can't use Leblanc. We can't use that as a World War II test to trap the Germans. Kasper De Jonge (00:28:36): So, many people know French. Thomas LaRock (00:28:36): I bet you could. Rob Collie (00:28:40): Yeah. I'm positive that I would never be able to pronounce a French sentence the way that Olivier could. That's never going to happen. It just sounds so much cooler from a native speaker. Thomas LaRock (00:28:50): So, I have a quick question, questions and comments. Kasper, you said you killed Power BI V1. Tell me why you killed? What was wrong with it? What was so grotesque that you just said, "This Franken monster just needs to go?" Kasper De Jonge (00:29:06): The really good thing there was I mean back and then, it was really Office is everything. And we need to be able to get people everyone uses Office. I mean it's still the case like Excel. I listen to you guys a podcast too with Bill Jelen which is awesome too. Excel is really the place to be. Office is the place to be. So, what we're trying to add on our way of doing things and are trying to... That came up in that call too. Kasper De Jonge (00:29:31): Office is a different ballgame than our team. It just takes forever to get anything done. And that is what killed us because we wanted to iterate. And we had to compete then because that was the big problem. We had to compete with Tableau because when we started with Power Pivot, we were doing Excel which is great. And a lot of people were using it. And I think you guys mentioned it there in too. Kasper De Jonge (00:29:55): It's so hard to find Power Pivot. It's so hard to find the data model. It's so hard to find the features that could compete with things like Tableau or Qlik or whatever the tool is at the time. And then, we're building on top of that inside of Office and all of these things. And then, James Phillips was the guy who came in and said, "Guys, this is not the way forward. This is not the way that we can compete because we're going to lose if we do it this way." Kasper De Jonge (00:30:20): And that's where he really came along and said, "Okay. We're going to do it completely different. We're going to look at things completely." And he had the guts to go do this too. He had the guts to go in against Office, not really that they were kind of going against. But he said, "If we need to compete with these guys who don't have Office," they are a startup team, they have dedicated people working on this amazing product because I mean Tableau was definitely an amazing product, and it still is, yeah, we have to do something. Kasper De Jonge (00:30:49): So, that's really why the [inaudible 00:30:50] of Power BI got moved out. And we went to a completely separate product where James came in and said, "You need to be able to sign up with your email address, just like he just did the startup trick with us." He said you need to be able to sign up with your email address, your corporate email address, not your Hotmail. We don't want that, corporate email address. You log in. And within five minutes, you have to have some insights to where you can say, "Wow, this is cool." And he did it. Thomas LaRock (00:31:20): So, I'm going to share my James Phillips story because I have one. I have one James Phillips story. And I'm going to say the year was 2015. I could be off a year or so. And James Phillips drives from Seattle to Vancouver to meet with me and the members of the past board of directors. Kasper De Jonge (00:31:41): Oh Yeah. I know what this is. Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:31:43): And he does that five minutes to wow speech. And I'm sitting there while he's talking. And he says five minutes a while, five minutes a while. While he's doing all that, I log in. I sign up. I can't use my Hotmail account. I have to use my Thomas LaRock or create a new account and all that. Thomas LaRock (00:32:00): I clicked on I think the Google Analytics widget for the dashboard to get some data. Less than five minutes, I had insights. It was up and running five minutes a while. So, when he gets done talking, I just turned over. I go, "By the way, the five minutes, the wow is a real deal." And I show my laptop. I go, "While he was talking, I'm up and running with Power BI right now." Rob Collie (00:32:19): At that moment, James is like, "Oh, I like you." You, I like. Thomas LaRock (00:32:24): Within 10 minutes, he didn't like me anymore. Rob Collie (00:32:26): Well- Thomas LaRock (00:32:28): No, actually, it didn't happen then. It happened later. He was there to ask for pass to help him launch essentially Power BI events and user groups. And he gave his pitch. We asked a few questions. We essentially told him we needed time to talk about it. He was supposed to have dinner with us. He decided not to have dinner, started driving home immediately. We took that as a bad sign. Thomas LaRock (00:32:56): And, eventually, the answer that came back from us as a board was PaaS was simply not equipped to provide the support that he needed to do the launch that he wanted. And I feel like we really failed there. He was handing us an opportunity. But because of who we were and what we could offer, and Rob knows this, we could not execute. And we were not the right place for him. Thomas LaRock (00:33:26): And I feel bad, but I had no option, but to say, "Hey, this sounds great. But we can't do that. And James, I know you just want us to just take this on and make all this magic happen. And I felt like the best thing was to say no to you now instead of disappointing you later. I'd rather just you start looking elsewhere immediately and get your stuff up and running." And that was essentially what we ended up doing. Thomas LaRock (00:33:50): But every time somebody talks about James Phillips, they always have pleasant things to say. He does all these great things. He's a great person. And I'm always like, "Yeah." And I'm the guy who kind of disappointed him. So, I always feel like if I ever see James again, I have to just apologize profusely. He's going to be like you. You could have been a part of this. Rob Collie (00:34:11): Oh, Tom, I wouldn't worry about it. Thomas LaRock (00:34:13): Yeah. True. He doesn’t remember. Rob Collie (00:34:14): Everything always works out in the end. I mean things worked out great for pass. I wouldn't sweat it. Thomas LaRock (00:34:18): Yeah. And I think years later, it's pretty well known that no was the correct answer. I hope James, if he's ever listening to this and we should have him as a guest, I hope James understands why we were just not going to be able to execute for what he needed. And I wish. And then, immediately, you had your own data analytics conference there within the next year or so. Rob Collie (00:34:46): Data insights. Thomas LaRock (00:34:47): Data insights. I'm like, "Great. I'd like to go." I couldn't even get in the door. They're like, "Sorry. Sold out." I'm like, "Really? I'm the president of PaaS, just like... Right. You're not on the list. Rob Collie (00:34:58): Not on the list. Thomas LaRock (00:34:58): That's how I knew I was just being cut from James Phillips. Rob Collie (00:35:02): In fact, they flip it over to the other sheet. And they go, "Actually, you're on that other list. You're on the Dutch bad credit score." Thomas LaRock (00:35:08): I couldn't even get... Kasper De Jonge (00:35:09): Exactly. Thomas LaRock (00:35:10): I'm like, "I'll pay my own way. I'll give you money to attend your event." And they were like, "No." Rob Collie (00:35:16): Yeah. Under no circumstances am I permitted to let you in here with Mr. LaRock. Thomas LaRock (00:35:20): That's exactly what happened. Rob Collie (00:35:22): So, Tom, you asked that question. I think we're getting into the really cool stuff right now. So, let's stick with it. You asked that question about why did you have to kill Power BI V1? And before I even heard Kasper's answer, I was dying to jump in with the snarky joke because it was too tightly integrated with Office. Rob Collie (00:35:39): So, first of all, we get this out of the way. It was the right decision. There's no two ways about it. It was the right decision. At the same time though, it is a tremendous shame, in my opinion. And it's not the blame for the shame here. It does not lie 100% at all with one or the other. But I've said it a million times. If Microsoft were just... If all it was, was Excel and Power BI, that was the Microsoft corporation, Excel and Power BI, they would rule the world. There would never have been a Tableau. Rob Collie (00:36:15): All these other tools, there wouldn't have been any room for them because it rounds to a 100% of the important users of these tools, these BI tools. Just round it to 100. They're the Excel people. There are people who are not Excel, people who build BI. Kasper De Jonge (00:36:32): I mean it's not that easy, I think. I mean, while I do agree, it's not that easy because as you know, beginning especially with Power Pivot, we were struggling with the fact that people are running their business on Excel with macros and VBA, Scripts and- Thomas LaRock (00:36:46): Totally. Kasper De Jonge (00:36:46): ... whatever it is. And they're not going to upgrade. And while Tableau is upgrading every month or every couple of weeks and they're doing new features… So, even if we wanted to do it, customers are going to say, "No way. We're going to upgrade Excel." Rob Collie (00:37:01): I've got no objection to what you just said. I completely agree with all that. But I'm still saying though that if that was the whole company, these problems were solvable. Kasper De Jonge (00:37:10): Yeah. I mean you can see it, for example, our sales organization, if you compare to our sales organization to Tableau or any other competitor sales organization, they have dedicated... We have some guys too. But in every country, we have a handful of people where they have a whole company full of sales guys who go in and do all these things. Yeah. I mean they have more resources and things to do. But they don't have the integration. Rob Collie (00:37:35): So, think about if you're familiar with it, the engineering effort that went into Office is Click-to-Run initially, that thing is insane. It is like a Manhattan project of software in terms of compatibility and deployment. It's unbelievable what they've done there. It is such a radical, radical, radical departure from everything else that they've done. Now, it's all a matter of competing priorities. This is the thing, is that Microsoft isn't just those two products. Rob Collie (00:38:08): But if they were just those two products and you're capable of pulling off something like Click-to-Run, you absolutely, Microsoft, could have solved this alternate Microsoft. Absolutely could and would have solved all of these compatibility problems that we're talking about. Rob Collie (00:38:21): But they weren't high enough of a mutual priority for the teams with these separate incentives. This is what big companies do. Kasper De Jonge (00:38:29): Like in the Office world, they were competing with the Google that was coming up with all the documented [crosstalk 00:38:34]. Rob Collie (00:38:35): That's right. That's right. Kasper De Jonge (00:38:36): And so, that was more important because they don't want to lose everything. And that's what they did. Rob Collie (00:38:41): So, this is why I'm saying simultaneously, even though I kind of griped about it at the time, I have absorbed and admit that this was absolutely the right move. It's been very, very good. It's benefited my business tremendously. I'm nothing, but a winner in this story. And at the same time, I think we should all still admit to ourselves that it is a shame that marriage sort of had to come unglued because the most impact, the absolute most optimal outcome was down that road. Rob Collie (00:39:09): It's just that parties involved for good reason weren't incentivized to pay that level of cost to tackle these problems. Kasper De Jonge (00:39:17): Yeah. I agree. It is tough. But I think it's actually the right decision. And the way that we can move and operate now and we have some amazing people like visionaries on the team, I'm not saying that Office is now visionaries. But they are bound within the organizations and expectations that they have. We said we just tell them, "Every month, probably desktop is going to ship, and you have to update." Kasper De Jonge (00:39:41): And I mean, sometimes, things break. Well, can you imagine, Rob, that Excel is going to break things? Rob Collie (00:39:47): Not allowed. Kasper De Jonge (00:39:48): Yeah. Exactly. And for good reason. And people built their business on top of that. But people like Amir Netz go, "They have amazing ideas. And they can be constrained." Rob Collie (00:39:59): [inaudible 00:39:59]. So, back to this Office versus kind of the freedom to innovate kind of path, I mean it's a very overwhelmingly net positive trade-off that was made. It still is a trade-off. Rob Collie (00:40:14): I believe the place where Microsoft is seeing the downside of the trade-off is that adoption of these tools is harder to force top down than it would be if it were bottom up. Bottom up adopt is always fun. So, an organization commits. They buy the licenses. They purchase Power BI. They commit to it. Thomas LaRock (00:40:34): Well, actually, we do see it most of the times it comes bottom up. Rob Collie (00:40:39): Yeah. That's the way it has to happen. I agree, even if the organization has purchased and is committed to Power BI. Now, it's not a yes/no thing whether or not they're going to adopt it. Of course, yet the answer is going to be yes. There's a question of how fast and how well. It's a measure of degrees, right? Kasper De Jonge (00:40:55): Exactly. Rob Collie (00:40:56): And that alternate reality, I talk about where the two orgs had really ponied up all the resources required to solve all these very difficult problems, oh man, the bottom up adoption would just be like wildfire. That's the thing that we lost. But we didn't really lose it because we were never going to get there as it was, right? Kasper De Jonge (00:41:14): No. But I think we're getting back to it. I mean I don't know if you've seen any of the new things. Chris Webb has a new blog post out of it. And it's about actually being able to have an Excel spreadsheet and a PivotTable hosted inside a Power BI and running against the data set in Power BI. Kasper De Jonge (00:41:32): We're getting back to it. And you can have a PivotTable inside of Excel and say, "Okay. Connect to my data set that are sitting in Power BI." So, we're getting really back to it. Rob Collie (00:41:43): I agree it's not the 100% A-plus score though, right? Kasper De Jonge (00:41:47): Of course. Rob Collie (00:41:48): A large percentage of these things that I see the integration points between Excel and Power BI, they're all things that happen after you've already built a model, after you've got a data set published. The thing is how do these data sets get created? It's the author. It's the Excel author that I think we're not collectively as an ecosystem doing enough about. Kasper De Jonge (00:42:09): Yeah. I totally agree. I don't see that happening. Rob Collie (00:42:12): What are you going to do, right? Kasper De Jonge (00:42:13): But we see more and more. This is really one of the areas that we, as Microsoft, are really amazing at and especially, again, I see this as also a change after Satya came along. It's more cooperative. So, all these amazing things like the security stuff that we integrate with, just mind-boggling. No one has this. And it's just because we're working together with all these AED people and MCAS. And there's so many. No one has this. And we just integrate, and, yeah, we just do it. And teams integration. Rob Collie (00:42:43): It's true. Kasper De Jonge (00:42:45): It's really amazing. Rob Collie (00:42:46): Yeah. We're talking about this divorce in a way from Office. But no. Power BI runs in Office tenants, right? Kasper De Jonge (00:42:54): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:42:54): It is a shared security and administration framework which is that in itself would have taken an act of God in the days that I was there. That sort of cooperation was never going to happen. It is really, really, really impressive. It's not a secret or a mystery as to why Microsoft is so successful in the business space for business customers and not just enterprise either. It doesn't have to be enterprise. It can be mid-market. It's really hard to find something of better value than Microsoft. Kasper De Jonge (00:43:27): But I think also this is again going back to the mindset that James Phillips brought along. I mean I keep talking about it. But we started out not having any of these things. We just shipped something, and we created this market. And we created this excitement around things. And then, at one point, we got to this inflection point where, okay, now we're starting to talk to security teams. And now, we're starting to talk in the boardroom instead of bottoms up. People are just excited and doing things and writing DAX formulas and ability to just say... We talked about with Bill Jelen. Kasper De Jonge (00:43:58): So, instead of actually having to redo the same Excel spreadsheet and copy and pasting and stuff, you can just press refresh. People were excited about it. And they went to their managers and their IT teams and said, "Guys, we want this. And we want this for more people." And they started sharing. And then, oh, now, we need licenses. Kasper De Jonge (00:44:17): And then, the security team comes along saying, "Oh, what is all this information stuff, all this data that you are putting inside of the cloud? Are you crazy?" And then, we get all this resource. So, now, we have all these features bring your own key. You can encrypt all your data with your own key and stuff like this that we needed to add it. But we didn't. Kasper De Jonge (00:44:38): Previously, when we were on the SQL server team and we were building all services, we would think about all these scenarios and just ship them. And that's why it took so long. But now, now we just add it afterwards. Rob Collie (00:44:48): It's amazing. The cloud shift too, right? In the beginning, such resistance on the customer front for putting something like BI in the cloud. And even though they already had their email on the cloud, it was always so funny. Rob Collie (00:45:03): There aren't that many organizations anymore that have a no-cloud rule. - Kasper De Jonge (00:45:07): Yeah. There are still some countries where things are a bit less cloud, like, Germany, for example. They're a bit less and easy. They use Power BI report server, for example, on-prem. But the majority, that's a night and day between five years ago and now. People willing to go to the cloud. Thomas LaRock (00:45:28): I want to make a comment about because we've said a big difference between then and now like Satya and somebody like James Phillips coming in. And for me, I think the biggest turning point or one of them that I've seen between, say, old, new Microsoft, and you guys touched upon it earlier, you mentioned you can't have Excel break. Excel can't break. That would be bad, so, this whole idea of backward compatibility. Thomas LaRock (00:45:52): And for us over in the SQL world, the SQL MVPs, now the data platform, MVPs, for years, we asked about certain features. And we were told we have to be concerned of backward compatibility. Whatever we're going to introduce, we have to make sure nothing ever breaks. So, along comes SQL 2014 and introduce a new cardinality estimator. And it was almost like the surgeon general's warning right at the top just to let you know, the new cardinality estimator may help your queries run faster. And it may help some queries run slower. You should know that. Thomas LaRock (00:46:29): And we're going to keep going forward. And that to me was this turning point of a new Microsoft. I'm like, "What about backward compatibility?" They're like, "Yeah. Something might run slower. If it runs slower, we'll give you a flag to make it run as good as it used to be. And you should look at [inaudible 00:46:43]." And that was it. Just move on. Thomas LaRock (00:46:44): And I see that with Power BI like Kasper said, every time I load Power BI, I feel I don't know how far behind I am on updates. I just know I need to... Sometimes, I don't want to fire it up simply because I know I'm going to have to update it immediately. But I'm okay with it too because I know that's the way I want it to be. I want to be up-to-date with the latest features especially security features, things like that. Thomas LaRock (00:47:09): So, that whole notion of backward compatibility which for years was almost a way I thought for PMs at Microsoft to just not do things because it was hard. And it might break something else. So, I'm just not even going to worry about it. Yeah. That sounds like a great feature. But I ain't going to do that because something might break. And that is no longer the mindset. Rob Collie (00:47:27): The whole backward compatibility edict in its day was important because without it, those same program managers were more than happy to just wreck the world with their new ideas. It was to control the drug addict that would destroy things. Kasper De Jonge (00:47:46): Shipping software at Microsoft is just a whole different ballgame than shipping software anywhere else. At least, I've never worked in actual other product companies. I was a developer too. And I worked for hospitals and other things. And we wrote software. Kasper De Jonge (00:48:01): But building products that has been used by millions of people, you really have to be careful. And you have to think about so many more things than just backwards compatibility is one. Even in Power BI, we don't break things. The APIs, we won't break. And if we do so, then, it's probably not meant to be. So, we still have to think about backwards compatibility a lot. Kasper De Jonge (00:48:20): But it's different. We can take more a little bit more risks than, for example, Office. When I want to give you a new Power BI desktop file, I check it in now. And it's going to be there a couple of hours from now in your Office store. If there's something wrong with the Power BI service, we can go in and fix it like in an hour. That's not possible in your Office. We're set up differently than Office. And we're set up ways in ways that are different than where before. Kasper De Jonge (00:48:43): But still, there's a lot of other things too. A lot of people are very surprised by it. If you write software at Microsoft, you have to think about... And Rob was probably there in the real days like OAPI. You have to document everything that you do because the EU in, I don't know exactly one of us, like 2000 something said, "You cannot have APIs that you're not telling everyone about because it's unfair." And they lost this big lawsuit. Rob Collie (00:49:08): Yeah. Internal APIs that Office would expose, the SQL team could use, or vice versa that were undocumented for the rest of the world. They took that fun little toy away from us. We weren't allowed to do that anymore. We weren't doing that. You'd think that cases where we were doing that were meant to be sinister. They never were. They were never meant to be sinister. Rob Collie (00:49:27): It was just like, "Look, if we can allow something to work without having to carry the backward compatibility burden of it forever for the rest of the world, that would be awesome." Well, we got that toy taken away. It was taken out of our toolbox as well. And I understand why. It is something that could be abused. It wasn't a sinister thing that we were doing. But, yeah. We had documented everything from that point forward [crosstalk 00:49:50] every last little bit like your file format areas. It just became this massive clerical problem in addition to the software engineering. Kasper De Jonge (00:49:56): It's not just this. It's also about they're saying that Microsoft runs on trust. And it's really something that everyone it needs to be secure. I mean, sometimes, we're not doing it as much as we can. But we try to be accessible for everyone. If you use a Microsoft product. And you have a disability or something, you can still use it. We will try our best to be able to use it. Kasper De Jonge (00:50:18): That's definitely not going to be the case with every other product. Secure by default. Lots of things that we have to think about that other companies really don't have to think about which makes it good too. You can trust it. Rob Collie (00:50:29): Yeah. Microsoft does get held to a higher bar than a lot of other companies do. And part of that is the outcome of the antitrust case and the court battles with the EU. I mean it's not a 100% source of it. It is that Microsoft your reputation, the reputation of Microsoft is just super, super, super important to preserve. And we're still watching this next wave of technology companies. Rob Collie (00:50:54): So, a lot of them are still operating in that before era where they haven't really been held to account yet. Their turning point's coming. Kasper De Jonge (00:51:03): I mean it makes total sense if you ask me. If you're a startup company, you're just going to go. And you're going to listen to feedback and listen to customers. Rob Collie (00:51:10): But we have tech giants today that aren't being held to the same standard that Microsoft is being held to. Kasper De Jonge (00:51:17): It's because of the legacy. Rob Collie (00:51:19): They're in different businesses. So, Kasper, I had a question. If we think of the Power BI CAT team as these smoke jumping ninjas that get called in to solve problems or navigate obstacles for a customer, things like that, how many people are in that talent pool? How many candidates are there? If a new customer question or obstacle comes up, how many potential people can that be assigned to? How many people like yourself? Kasper De Jonge (00:51:46): So, we don't have a lot of people on the team. And there's multiple different people who are doing different things. I think, probably, there's around 10, 15 people worldwide that are actually talking to customers in scenarios like this. But again, really, the big thing that we're trying to do is because Power BI is growing so massively, it doesn't scale. Kasper De Jonge (00:52:08): So, we are also trying to scale in different manners in different ways because we want to help more people because, every day, we get emails like, "Oh, my customer, you need to talk to my customer because he has trouble connecting with SAP, using single sign-on with Kerberos." And who knows? Rob Collie (00:52:27): Yeah. It's sort of Adam when we had him on the show. He was talking about back in support, he could answer support calls or he could go out and blog proactively about the 90th percentile of problems. I think I see where you're going with the scaling thing. Let's talk about that. Rob Collie (00:52:42): Before we go there, when a problem comes up or a question comes up from a customer, that for whatever reason, the CAT team is going to put one of you on it, how is that assignment process made? Is it just based on availability or is it based on geography or is there some sort of matching of skill set? Kasper De Jonge (00:52:59): All these things are escalations. Escalations, that's the first thing. It happens like an email comes from James or an email comes from Scott Guthrie or Satya saying, "This customer is having this Power BI problem. They reached out to me. This usually how it goes. And it reached out to me and, yeah. We need to get it solved." Kasper De Jonge (00:53:18): So, then, we go and look. But usually, it's not really something that we can really do. It's just making sure that maybe sometimes, it's a support case that didn't go the way it's supposed to go or there is a really bad bug for them that just hits their edge case. It hits them, and really hasn't found anywhere else. And the support case got lost. Kasper De Jonge (00:53:36): And so, we just need to put people to the right people together because we know the right people, you put the right people together, and things get solved, or they have an architectural ready to go start a new project or something that is big spans all kinds of products and things, and they want to just verify it with someone because we go in, and we tell them, "We're not going to do the project for you." That's out of scope. We're not doing it. Rob Collie (00:54:02): You can't. Kasper De Jonge (00:54:03): We can advise you. Oh, we can't. And it just doesn't scale. Rob Collie (00:54:06): Not enough people. Kasper De Jonge (00:54:07): And there's tons and tons of other people who can do it. There's this whole partner's site on the Power BI website whereas amazing partners. There's plenty of other people who can do it. We're just there. We're going to go in and give them advice. And this is how you can set it up. And, maybe sometimes, we know a bit more about the future than the rest of the people. So, we tell them, "Okay. Maybe, we should start thinking about it in this way or that way." And then, we usually go back out of the way and give it back to the field. Rob Collie (00:54:32): So, those emails, well, let's say that come from James or whatever, do they go to Mark? And then, now, we've got to sort of figure out is this a Kasper or an Adam or a Patrick? Kasper De Jonge (00:54:43): Yeah. I mean usually we're somewhat interchangeable, really, most of the folks. They have the same skills and things like this because we never really have to go really deep. Sometimes, it happens like, "Oh, I have this model, and it doesn't fit in my premium capacity." Okay. It's just, yeah. You open VertiPaq Analyzer. And you take a look into how everything is going and how... Yeah. Kasper De Jonge (00:55:06): I mean most of the team can handle this, those things. But, obviously, when things get really hairy, we have people like Michael Kovalsky on our team who's really deep into analysis services. Obviously, we have Chris Webb. And also for us, when things get really hairy, we can just call up a developer and say, "Guys, come look at this with us. Something really fishy is going on here," and no one else obviously has that backdoor. Rob Collie (00:55:28): Yeah. So, mostly interchangeable. Every now and then, there's something deep that you would sort of specialize and say, "Okay. This is a Chris Webb or whatever, right?" That's something I was really interested in coming into this, was as we sort of have, at our company, a similar sort of matchmaking need. We have a new client project or whatever. Rob Collie (00:55:46): And like what you described, most of our consultants, the average job, the average project that we're engaged with is something that really fits many different members of our team. But every now and then, they'll be like, "Oh, we're going to be coding a power app in this one." Okay. We got to make sure that we get one of these couple of people engaged in it then. So, it sounds pretty similar. Kasper De Jonge (00:56:03): So, we are thinking about because again, for everything, Power BI is growing. The team is growing. So, we're also thinking about growing our team. So, we need to think about something here too. So, we need some deep experts. For example, we have a guy on our team Serge. When you talk security, he knows everything like TLS 1.4. I don't know. He knows all these things and all the encryption keys and how this works. Kasper De Jonge (00:56:28): And so, when big security questions comes up, we call in Serge. And then, he goes talk. The InfoSec teams love him. He goes in deep. And he talks about all these things. None of us can do that. And probably going forward, we're going to have a bit more people who have in-depth skills because there's also more and more integration with dynamics. And we have someone who helps us with SAP because again that's a whole different ballgame too. So, we do have some expertise. But, in general, everyone has to know models and VertiPaq Analyzer because that's comes up a lot as you can imagine. Thomas LaRock (00:57:04): Does your team have a need for someone that is on Twitter a lot? Kasper De Jonge (00:57:08): I think we all are very much a lot on Twitter. So, I think- Thomas LaRock (00:57:12): Okay. So, or writes LinkedIn posts. How about somebody who just can be critical of the data they're working with? Kasper De Jonge (00:57:20): Critical data they're working with. Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:57:22): Your model stinks. These nulls are horrible, things of that nature. There's no real need for that skill? Kasper De Jonge (00:57:28): No. Rob Collie (00:57:28): All of SQL Twitter just cried out in anguish. That's our core competency. Thomas LaRock (00:57:38): How about just somebody that has for years been able to just look people in the face no matter what and just say, "No." Kasper De Jonge (00:57:45): No. I think we're really good at saying no. All of us. Thomas LaRock (00:57:50): All right. So, I'm halfway there. Kasper De Jonge (00:57:51): Exactly. Thomas LaRock (00:57:52): All right. I'm halfway there. I can say, "No. I'm on Twitter. I just have to learn Power BI." [crosstalk 00:57:57] Rob Collie (00:57:59): We've already talked about this in five minutes, you were cranking out the wow and that James Phillips meeting. Kasper De Jonge (00:58:05): Exactly. You're ready to go. Rob Collie (00:58:06): Yeah. Because I logged into Power BI. You're hired. All you need to know is star schema. And I think you've got that. Kasper De Jonge (00:58:13): That is the part of the feedback in our team. Most of the people in my team, you have credibility. And when we go back to the engineering team and we tell them, like, "Guys, this is really a problem . You need to go fix this because, otherwise, it's going to be a massive, massive problem. Hey, listen." Kasper De Jonge (00:58:32): And that's really important, I think. And, actually, the one thing that I didn't really touch upon, we do have some specialists too because that's really a big problematic area, I think, in probably the whole of the BI industry, is we all love our data models and our DAX and our joints. But if you really can't tell the story, it's a problem. We have two guys in our team who are amazing at it. Kasper De Jonge (00:58:59): They can take some model and some questions and some things from customers, and they transform it into a UI. I called it the UI, not just necessarily a report, a user interface and a report that looks stunning. And it just tells the story so amazing. Kasper De Jonge (00:59:16): And that is definitely an area that I think all of us can learn a lot from. Thomas LaRock (00:59:22): Hey, Rob, we had Hugh Millen. And what did he tell us? He feels accomplished when something he's done that's by presenting data. He finds something meaningful. The two things he says here is, "Is it comprehensible, and do I get from point A to point B? And do I tell that story?" So, it's amazing how this guy, Hugh, and what he's in his background wherever has that same connection to the Power BI CAT team. Rob Collie (00:59:49): Yeah. This is another episode where a former NFL quarterback is without realizing, he doesn't know, I don't think, that there are books out there and a whole thing about data storytelling and stuff like that. But he talks the talk because he's learned it in the trenches the hard way with his radio show. Kasper De Jonge (01:00:07): Yeah. It's pretty amazing. And it's really amazing to see how these guys get it. And we're trying to get a lot of that stuff into Power BI too. How can we make it easier for people to tell the story? Actually, I said we're kind of generalized. Actually, now, I'm thinking about it, there are definitely some specializations in the team. And the more we grow, we need to go continue in that way. Rob Collie (01:00:25): It really does sound very similar to the composition of our consulting team. I'm not saying that we're the same people or whatever. But in terms of like there's this core that is shared, there's 90% core. But there's a lot. That's specialization. There's a long tail of specialization because there are many, many, many different specialties, core, power query, and data modeling and DAX and navigating the Power BI service. Rob Collie (01:00:51): I mean that's everyone. That's the table stakes. Everyone's got to be really, really, really good at that. Not everyone needs to be the expert on writing power apps or whatever. I really like, by the way, that you're security expert. Even his name sounds like security, Serge. It's just like if you say it really fast, it sounds security. It's like he was born for this. Kasper De Jonge (01:01:11): Hey, I think he is. It's pretty amazing all these things that are happening there. And I think the way I sometimes say it, we are tip of the spear. We see things months before everyone else because we hear this from these big customers. We're doing these crazy things with Power BI that no one has ever thought was possible. And they're running into problems. And they're turning into things that no one haven't even thought about. Kasper De Jonge (01:01:34): And then, we try to help them in a way that makes it work for them. And if it doesn't work, we need to bring it back to the engineering teams. And, for example, a lot of the feedback that we're giving today to the engineering teams, look, I run a meeting every month with all the Power BI leadership team like Amir and Arun and all the PMs are there where we share the feedback that we're getting from the field, that we're getting from the customers, that we see on Twitter, as you know where everyone is on Twitter a lot in my team. Kasper De Jonge (01:02:03): But also, we interact with people. And they come up. They ask questions and, yeah. We give that feedback back and say, "Guys, now, we're seeing this, and this is a problem." And they're taking that into account when they're going to do their next semester plan. So, Power BI does... We only think we do six months. We work. We plan for six months. We do the work. Kasper De Jonge (01:02:23): And then, we're going to plan the next six months of work. So, we're never going to go at further than that. Obviously, there are some longer term goals and visions than things that people want to think about. But all of that feedback comes in. So, all the burning questions that customers have right now, I mean they're probably going to be solved in the fall of this year. That's how quickly things go. And that's pretty amazing. Rob Collie (01:02:45): I really wonder how hard it would be for me to adapt to that kind of software pace because I lived the old pace and left before the transition. You got to live through the transition with everybody else. I bet that would be a real culture shock for me being dropped in that river. Kasper De Jonge (01:03:01): It was hard for a lot of people. And there's people who still can. The specs and the spec reviews that we used to do have to do. I mean you had documents and documents, pages and pages of documents describing everything. And then, you have spec reviews where all the engineers would come in the room. And they would beat you up on the stuff that you didn't think about. Kasper De Jonge (01:03:22): I mean that doesn't happen anymore. It's not there. We have a one-pager. And you have some docs in note. And you work on it collaboratively. And it's get taken as it goes along really. Thomas LaRock (01:03:33): That might be a lot of fun actually. You describe it that way. Kasper De Jonge (01:03:34): It is. I think the author was fun too because this stuff I learned from those spec reviews and the things and not just technically, but also communicating things well. And I always tell people after I've seen House of Cards, I said "Okay. This is Microsoft." This is the way it used to be. Rob Collie (01:03:50): Oh yeah. A lot of maneuvering, machinations. Kasper De Jonge (01:03:54): Exactly. Thomas LaRock (01:03:54): That show is eye-opening about power, I think. I learned a lot from the first two seasons there. Rob Collie (01:04:01): Those specs you talked about, there was actually a moment back in the day when we were doing the dreaded stack ranking meeting that Microsoft doesn't do anymore. Get in a room and have to rank 30 people from one to end in terms of how valuable they've been for the last year. It's just awful. Just the worst thing ever. And our director of program management at the time, he introduced this new wrinkle which was all the managers, we had to print out all of the specifications, all the specs that our people had written over the past year and bring them into the room. Kasper De Jonge (01:04:32): What? Rob Collie (01:04:32): And I swear. I swear he took them all and assembled them and almost physically weighed them. And there were all these stacks of specs. Some of them were small. Most people's stacks of specs were sort of in the same range of height. And then, you get to the end of the list, the end of the row, sit on this giant table. And there was this one stack that loomed over all the others and ruled them from on the high like a tyrant. And that was our friend, Alan Folding. Alan Folding stack of PivotTable and related specs. And you flipped through them. And they were not padded with fluff either. I mean Alan had just... He had outspecified. Kasper De Jonge (01:05:12): I can only imagine. Rob Collie (01:05:15): And as silly as that exercise sounds, there actually was something objectively valuable about it. You would have been able to see just how much work Alan had done, if you hadn't. I mean, of course, there's all kinds of things. It's really hard to reach the decisions to write a short decision down. And so, it probably wasn't fair to the people who had small stacks. But Alan's large stack of specs was 100% legitimate. Kasper De Jonge (01:05:42): I can only imagine. Rob Collie (01:05:45): Yeah. Earlier, the very beginning you said five minutes to wow. You repeated that a few times. I'm just sitting here laughing to myself because to you and I, the word wow means something else too, doesn't it? Kasper De Jonge (01:05:56): Yeah. World of Warcraft. Rob Collie (01:05:59): Yeah. So, have you gotten into Classic? Kasper De Jonge (01:06:01): No, no, no. I'm not touching that thing anymore. Rob Collie (01:06:04): You're clean. You're clean now. Kasper De Jonge (01:06:05): Oh yeah. I've cleaned this for many years. Rob Collie (01:06:07): Yeah. I was. I was clean from 2009 to August of last year. And then, I made a deal with my wife. I will give up watching the entire NFL football season in exchange for being allowed to play World of Warcraft Classic two nights a week with my old buddies just as a social outlet. And she was terrified because it's like you're letting that beast back into our lives. But she hates me being gone for football on Sundays. Rob Collie (01:06:39): I just disappear for eight hours. She's a football widow. And it's been a positive trade. I've been getting my Warcraft. I've got another rogue. I've been raiding knacks. Kasper De Jonge (01:06:53): No. I'm not touching that thing anymore. Rob Collie (01:06:55): Yeah. We want you back. Come on, Kasper. Kasper De Jonge (01:06:58): Yeah. Adam says the same thing, Adam Saxton. Rob Collie (01:07:01): Really? Kasper, first taste is free. Come on, Kasper. Kasper De Jonge (01:07:05): Yeah. I know. I know. Rob Collie (01:07:09): It's bad. Kasper De Jonge (01:07:10): I did grab myself an Xbox. So I'm playing with that. Rob Collie (01:07:13): Fine. I mean if you want to play Xbox, a game that you can turn off whenever you want- Kasper De Jonge (01:07:18): Exactly. Rob Collie (01:07:19): It doesn't creep into your life. The only way that I can make it work playing two nights a week, this will tell you everything you need to know about World of Warcraft. The only way that I can sustain an entertaining two nights a week of playing is to buy in-game currency on the black market on a regular basis. Two weeks, I've got to go spend 60 bucks on gold. Otherwise, it's a job. You've got to go farm stuff so that you can play those two nights a week. You can't just play. You've got to have the materials. Yeah. It's a beware. Tom, you're about to say something. Thomas LaRock (01:07:58): I wanted to be a bit cheeky. I'm looking to blame somebody for something. So, Kasper, are you responsible for giving it the name as your Purview? Was that you? Kasper De Jonge (01:08:09): No. Thomas LaRock (01:08:11): No? Are you sure? Are you sure that wasn't [crosstalk 01:08:13]. Kasper De Jonge (01:08:13): I'm very sure. Thomas LaRock (01:08:14): Somebody at Microsoft did it. And I plan on asking every employee until I find the person that thought Purview was the go-to market name. Rob Collie (01:08:23): What's wrong with Purview? Come on, Tom. Out with it. What's the problem here? Thomas LaRock (01:08:26): I feel out of all the possibilities for naming that particular security product, Purview should not be on any short list. Now, we have Microsoft Mesh to go along with the Azure Service Fabric Mesh because if you're going to overload a product name, Mesh is a good one to start with, I guess. Yeah. Rob Collie (01:08:48): And by the way, Mesh was a previous Microsoft research product that carried that name as well. It was based the forerunner to OneDrive. It was the first peer-to-peer file sharing service that Microsoft put out. They called it Mesh. And we were using it. Kasper De Jonge (01:09:02): I saw a tweet by Ray Ozzie about it. I think he was the one who came up with the original. Rob Collie (01:09:07): But I think that's right. Yeah. Kasper De Jonge (01:09:10): And he said he's on Twitter. Nice name. I like it. I must say in their defense, naming is hard. super hard. I remember in when I was in Power Pivot and I had to come up with names for the buttons or drop downs or, oh my god, it is hard because you do user research. And you ask people. And everyone thinks differently about what names are, what they mean. Oh, yeah. Rob Collie (01:09:37): Yeah. If you want proof that naming is hard, just look at all the names Microsoft has chosen over the years. I tell people that Microsoft is amazing at building software. They are the best at building software. And they are bad at basically every other thing. Rob Collie (01:09:55): And naming is absolutely one of them. Naming is hard. But also, Tom's right. Naming doesn't have to be quite as hard as Microsoft makes it for themselves. I think there needs to be a new engineering discipline at Microsoft that is just dedicated to naming. Kasper De Jonge (01:10:11): You know it's not engineering. It's marketing. Rob Collie (01:10:13): But there's marketing within the product. Even the product sort of has to market in a way, market its own buttons to the user. It's a tricky thing. And the same people who are deciding how multi-directional relationships need to flow and how they need to behave, five minutes later, they're being asked to name a button. And it's a hard contact switch. Kasper De Jonge (01:10:34): That has changed a lot too in the last couple of years. Before, we had one designer sitting somewhere in the corner who were doing some research. Now that it's completely gone, we have proper design teams. And we have people who actually know what they're doing instead of getting some PM like me who has no idea around this to come on board and to think about naming. Now, we have actual designers who have actually have a design degree to come and do it. Rob Collie (01:11:00): I think it shows. I recently upgraded to one of my computers anyway. I did the switch to the new model view. And I feel the arrows on the relationship lines are, now, they're just a little too hard to see whether it's one directional. That block is really big. And the arrow is kind of small. There's still some room. Kasper De Jonge (01:11:20): There's lots of feedback already on that one. And that's the good thing though. Yeah. People look into it. And that's I think the good thing. Yeah. Rob Collie (01:11:27): And you really are on top of this stuff. I am so distant now. It's hard to even imagine a huge chunk of my day. Most of my day is not spent with these tools anymore. It's company stuff that I'm doing most of the time. Kasper De Jonge (01:11:41): Yeah. I can imagine. Rob Collie (01:11:43): I'm not one of the consultants. The consultants on our team are far more capable than I ever was. And I'm also distant from the software team. I have this weird... This history of being so tightly tied to all of these things, I keep a prize of some of it. But it's just there's no way I can keep up. Kasper De Jonge (01:11:59): That's really the fun thing about the role that I'm in and the position that I'm in because I came from the engineering team. I know a lot of the people who were there and built error. So, I have connections with them. I spent time working on projects with them. But now, I spend a lot of time with the community. I see what's going on. We have a huge internal team site over 3000 people from the field who are every day talking to customers. Kasper De Jonge (01:12:23): And they're asking questions to the probably a CAT team there. And we're trying to answer. It forces me. Today, I had this question about VNets. I didn't know what VNet was. But I had to go figure it out. What is a VNet and how does it work? Kasper De Jonge (01:12:37): But I do not know DAX anymore the way I used to because I haven't really written it. I haven't really done it the way that I used to be able to. It's more superficial and more broad. Rob Collie (01:12:51): I sympathize. I'm definitely off peak. My DAX skills are not what they used to be. Kasper De Jonge (01:12:57): Yeah. And so, much has changed too. Rob Collie (01:12:59): That's true. Kasper De Jonge (01:13:00): I have to watch Marco and Alberto's recordings to see what's going on. Rob Collie (01:13:03): Yeah. The style of people's formulas has evolved quite a bit. There's actually stylistic variants of how you write DAX. After a while, if you can look at someone's DAX and go, "Oh, I know who wrote this," there's that much personalization in terms of how you go about doing things. Rob Collie (01:13:22): And my way of writing DAX is very, very, very straight to the point, straightforward which isn't necessarily the most efficient in terms of how it runs. Kasper De Jonge (01:13:31): But often, with the access, this is the way. If you have a certain patterns to solve problems, that's, oh, wait, you're going to go back to the same thing. It's usually the same thing really. Overwriting some filters in a certain way, and that's really what you need to do. And if you need to do some market basket or whatever returning customers, you go online. And you look at some examples. I sometimes come back to your old blogs from 2011. And then- Rob Collie (01:13:57): That's true [crosstalk 01:13:58]. Kasper De Jonge (01:13:57): This is how you did it. Rob Collie (01:13:58): Yeah. It is amazing. The power of a DAX pattern is really something to behold. Back when I used to teach classes, I used to tell the Excel crowd this. It's like, "So, if you go on to Google and you search and you find an Excel formula that does something that you didn't know how to do, very often, you don't understand how that Excel formula works." Rob Collie (01:14:17): When you're googling something you don't know how to do, almost by definition, you're finding a technique that you don't understand. If that technique happens to just fit your data and fit your existing question perfectly today, you can just copy paste. It's a black box. I don't know how it works. But it works. Of course, then, when the road bends and someone asks a slightly different question as they inevitably will, now, you're exposed because you need to edit that formula to fit this new context in Excel because you don't understand it. you have no idea how to edit it. Rob Collie (01:14:49): Beautiful thing about DAX is that you might not understand the pattern just like you did in Excel. But then, when someone asks a different question, all you do is just rearrange the field list. You just drag, drop. And it responds to the new context and answers your question. And it still works. Rob Collie (01:15:04): And there are patterns you don't have to understand in order to use them effectively. It's easier and better to steal DAX than it ever was to steal Excel. Kasper De Jonge (01:15:15): Yeah. By the way, Rob, have you read a calculation group? Rob Collie (01:15:18): I have not. Kasper De Jonge (01:15:18): Oh, that's going to blow your mind. Rob Collie (01:15:21): Is this essentially like the calculated member or calculated set type of thing? Kasper De Jonge (01:15:26): Yeah. From MDX world. It's a fundamental shift on how to write DAX, and the possibilities and things that you can do. Rob Collie (01:15:34): So, is this sort of, let's say, I write a measure that is current year-to-date versus prior year-to-date, that's for revenue. And now, I want that same thing, but for-profit margin. Before, I have to copy-paste that whole formula and just change a couple of the base measures in it. This allows me to sort of not play that copy paste game to the end [crosstalk 01:15:58]. Kasper De Jonge (01:15:58): Exactly. One new function that is the trick it's something called selected measure. Rob Collie (01:16:02): I love it. Kasper De Jonge (01:16:03): And whatever measure you put into it, you can do whatever you want with it. That's opening up so much different things and so much improvements that we- Rob Collie (01:16:11): I love this. This is one of those things like when you layer it on as a sort of the software elegant architect type, we'll look at this and go, "Layering this concept on later a Band-Aid, this is so gross." But really, it's genius because if the DAX language had been built from the very beginning to include this concept, it would have been so much more complex at its base. Rob Collie (01:16:38): DAX could have been built to be the new MDX that was this giant learning cliff at the beginning rather than a curve. I would have face planted into that cliff. Kasper De Jonge (01:16:46): People tried. Rob Collie (01:16:47): Yeah. I know they did. They do. But you can still walk up to it today and write a simple sum. You can write a simple if in the same way that you would write in most cases anyway, the same way that you would write an if in Excel. And that was all the difference in the world for me versus MDX. There is no simple. There's nothing simple. Kasper De Jonge (01:17:06): I don't know. I don't agree with that. I mean I used to write MDX too. Actually, we had an interesting discussion yesterday with a lot of the folks like Christine Wade and Chris Webb. I've talked about MDX versus DAX. I mean they're definitely things that were easy there too. And there were patterns there too. But especially being able to use hierarchies. But the biggest problem is before you get there, you have to get your model in such a shape that you can actually do it. It needs to be hierarchical. Your data needs to be in a certain way. Kasper De Jonge (01:17:35): You have to define everything and process it. And then, it works. Now, you can write the code. Rob Collie (01:17:41): Oh, I think I saw. This might not be the same conversation. But I saw a conversation like this going on, an email distribution list with these people recently, MDX versus DAX. And I wanted to jump in and say, "Oh, my gosh. No." If you're someone that was able to learn MDX in the first place, you are not qualified to speak on how easy it is relative to DAX. I understand that once you know it, there were things that were easier to do in MDX than in DAX. Rob Collie (01:18:08): But the whole point that I wanted to make was like, "But I never could learn MDX. I just couldn't even get in the door." I couldn't get into the door to discover that certain things were easier. The fact that I went from not being able to learn MDX to writing a best-selling book on DAX, it's kind of the end of the story in terms of which one's easier. But at the same time, I understand that there are concepts in MDX or facilities in MDX that we miss in DAX. Rob Collie (01:18:36): And we're sort of going back, not we. I have nothing to do with it anymore. But we're experiencing this as we sort of go back and we're layering some of those things back in the same way that Excel is a programming language like formulas in Excel or a programming language. But Excel has forever lacked many of the things that we take for granted in "real programming languages." And a lot of those concepts, you sort of see them get layered back in over time with the lambda functions recently and dynamic arrays. Rob Collie (01:19:06): It's the inspiration for ideas. But none of those come back and say, "Let's reinvent the Excel grid into something more scary." I think that's good. You maintain that learning curve that you can sort of forever perpetually climb incrementally. That's a really good feature of a lot of Microsoft's platforms. And it's certainly true of DAX. It's true of them. These things are wonders of the world. Kasper De Jonge (01:19:32): I think probably the most fun part of working on the Power BI team is being able to talk to people who were never even an IT person. The guys I went to school with or the girls I went to school with and the people I worked with in the beginning as programmers and all these things, the people I meet now, they're just different people. And they're also still there because when you want to write the really big models and IT projects, it's still the same people that we had before. Kasper De Jonge (01:19:56): But now, you get people from the left field. They were not working on this. And actually in my team, we have a few. Mark, my manager, he was a finance guy. This is an amazing story. You should probably get him on the show. It will be very entertaining. Kasper De Jonge (01:20:08): He comes from a finance background. And he did all these amazing things. And I remember back in 2012 or something, he started talking about power view and the way that you can do things, you can visualize it. And he started changing the way they were running because he was a finance manager at Microsoft. He was doing finance discussions. Kasper De Jonge (01:20:29): And he was having these, I mean you've heard the story many times before, the gazillion Excel spreadsheets. And he replaced it with one Purview on top of some data that they've created. I think that's one of the most cool things that we see in the work that I do. Rob Collie (01:20:44): And you wouldn't really expect this because I was part of the software engineering team. But that's really me. It's kind of in get shorty, they say to John Travolta, "But you've been a wise guy all your life." And he goes, "Yeah. But I was never that into it." I was not the techie. I'm more into tech than the average person, I suppose. But compared to the average Microsofty, I wasn't the one that had a Windows media PC at home. Rob Collie (01:21:05): I wasn't coming in every day saying, "Hey, look at this neat little script that I wrote last night." No. So, for me, I would say that in all the ways that are important, my transformation into an advocate for this stuff and a practitioner of it and all that, is almost exactly the same as Mark's story. They're really the same thing. Rob Collie (01:21:24): I am one of those citizen developers that we talked about with Chuck. Like you say, those are the most compelling people to meet and interact with. They're just the most fun and the most gratifying. Kasper De Jonge (01:21:36): Yeah. Exactly. Rob Collie (01:21:36): I can't get enough of that. Kasper De Jonge (01:21:37): I mean the opportunities that you get, you guys have Shannon and Stephanie on the show too. I went with Stephanie to Kenya. I did a week-long Power BI training for the people who work there. And that was just amazing to see the things that they are now able to do. I mean I don't mind that either. But it's not for the shareholders. It's to help pediatric aids. That's a whole different ball game. Rob Collie (01:22:06): Yeah. That's not something that on the software team, even though you're the one building the tools that do that for everybody, there's no way you're ever going to get any significant exposure to that real world impact. And that's one of the things that I've really enjoyed about switching to the consulting side of the equation, is that that's basically our whole life now, is living that directly appreciated. We can see the change in people's lives. It's just the emotional component of this job is actually quite a bit more satisfying than building software ever was. And that's a little surprising. But it's indisputable. Kasper De Jonge (01:22:42): That also has changed significantly. I remember way back when before we also started the Power BI journey, it would have some tap customers. You remember? And then, he would talk to them a couple of times before the release. And that's about it. But now, we talk to customers all the time. And we have people telling, sharing their stories. And that is I think again one of the really nice things of the things that's going on now. You actually see it way more. And it's more way more practical. And I think that's good. Rob Collie (01:23:12): Yeah. And I believe that. I think sort of the shame for the software team is that most of the time, that's going to be talking about the pain points. That's where the attention sort of should be professionally focused, is on the pain points. In the consulting world, they have a pain point to begin with. But we're there for the triumph. We're there for the revolutionary impact. And those are good feel-good stories. But as the product team, you really can't spend a lot of time wallowing in that. You've got to focus on the problems. And so, t's kind of a happier job being on the front lines of it. Kasper De Jonge (01:23:51): Actually, I had a discussion with one of my colleagues today who's pretty new on the team. We are the shit-solving team. So, we hear all the problems. And, usually, we cannot do anything about it because we're not the developers ourselves. When you're a PM on the team, and you can get angry and you can walk over to the engineers, you can do something about it. We cannot. And that's sometimes frustrating. Rob Collie (01:24:17): Even when you can solve the customer's problem, again, just about the nature of your job, you're not there when it actually gets solved. Kasper De Jonge (01:24:24): We won't hear from them anymore when the problem is solved. It's like they drop off because... Yeah. Thank you. Rob Collie (01:24:30): That's got to be at times, like a torturous purgatory. Kasper De Jonge (01:24:34): It does. Also, we have more ongoing connections with a lot of customers too. We have programs where we spend a lot of time with our customers. And we build better relationships with them. Things have definitely changed. But I totally get to just saying, as a consultant, I used to be a consultant too. It's definitely... Yeah. You see the big change that you can get. Rob Collie (01:24:58): When's the last time you played basketball? Kasper De Jonge (01:25:00): Well, it's corona. So, no. We're not allowed. Rob Collie (01:25:03): You'd totally be allowed to play basketball in the United States. I mean at least here, I mean high school football is still going on. Kasper De Jonge (01:25:10): So, I can't even go. It's almost 9:00 PM here in the evening. I'm not allowed to go. We have a curfew. Rob Collie (01:25:17): Wow. Kasper De Jonge (01:25:18): So, I can't go out. Rob Collie (01:25:21): Oh, your chances of going out and ruining your pass fail credit score go down too, don't they? Kasper De Jonge (01:25:26): Exactly. So, I was playing basketball every week. I found a really nice team here. Rob Collie (01:25:31): So, post-COVID, some point in the distant future when we're all in the same place, me and Kellen versus Kasper and Tom, two-on-two. Kasper De Jonge (01:25:43): Sure. Rob Collie (01:25:43): Tom's a bit of a ringer. I'm probably the Not probably. I'm definitely the worst of the four of us. I'm not stacking the teams in my favor. I can't stack the teams in my favor because, by definition, I'm always on my team. But that'd be fun. Kellen can play. So can Tom. Kasper De Jonge (01:26:01): Thomas is not saying anything. Rob Collie (01:26:03): No. We lost him. Thomas LaRock (01:26:05): I'm not going to comment. I haven't played in so long. I like hearing Rob just say that I can play. That's all I need right now. But I'm old. I haven't played in a while. And it's not my chair [crosstalk 01:26:19]- Rob Collie (01:26:19): Me either. Thomas LaRock (01:26:19): ... you hear squeaking. It's actually my bones. Kasper De Jonge (01:26:23): I didn't play. All the time when I was in Seattle, for some reason, I just couldn't find... I couldn’t go to the gym and play with these pickup games. I just didn't like it. When I come back to Netherlands, we find a nice team. And I started playing again. But I had to work out because if you're not in a good shape, I mean you're going to get in trouble. You get hurt all the time and all these things. So, I got into shape. And I started playing. I mean it's the highlight of my week really, just playing for an hour and a half with the guys. It's just amazing. I love it. Thomas LaRock (01:26:52): Yeah. Basketball is fun. I miss it. Rob Collie (01:26:55): COVID isn't the reason I'm not playing. I haven't played in six years. Kasper De Jonge (01:27:00): I saw something new on ESPN yesterday [inaudible 01:27:04]. It's a combination of basketball and wrestling. Rob Collie (01:27:07): Oh really? Kasper De Jonge (01:27:08): Yeah. Apparently, it's something new that they're starting doing in Russia. Thomas LaRock (01:27:13): Of course. Rob Collie (01:27:13): Why would this remind you of me? Thomas LaRock (01:27:15): I don't know. Rob Collie (01:27:19): Because I cheat? Thomas LaRock (01:27:22): I remember the chicken wings. Rob Collie (01:27:24): You do the chicken wing. You know what? I didn't even know I did that at all until my friend, Ben, pointed out to me back here in the late '90s that like, "Oh, you're always doing this chicken wing." And then, you brought it up in New Orleans. I'm like, "Yup. Apparently, I'm a chicken wing player." Isn't that a big a position in basketball now? They talk about the wing, right? Is that what I would be, the wing? Kasper De Jonge (01:27:55): The wing, no. Rob Collie (01:27:56): It's good to talk to you again, Kasper, and good to see you. Kasper De Jonge (01:27:59): Yeah. We talk more often. Rob Collie (01:28:01): COVID is on the wind down. We'll be seeing you back over on this side of the ocean at some point. There will be in-person conferences again. I believe it. Kasper De Jonge (01:28:10): I hope so. I really hope so. Rob Collie (01:28:12): There has to be. It's almost like we need a party or a victory lap sort of conference circuit just to compensate for all the time we've spent inside over the past year. I really appreciate you making the time especially in the evening for you. Kasper De Jonge (01:28:25): I really enjoyed it. Rob Collie (01:28:26): Thank you so much. Thomas LaRock (01:28:27): It's good to get caught up. Rob Collie (01:28:28): Thank you, guys. Announcer (01:28:29): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Podcast. Find out what the experts at P3 can do for your business. Go to powerpivotpro.com. Interested in becoming a guest on the show? Email lukep, L-U-K-E-P@powerpivotpro.com. Have a day to day!

It was an honor to sit down with two of the creators of Power Query, Sid Jayadevan and Miguel Llopis.  You get to hear the history of Power Query from their perspective! These guys are so busy it took quite a bit of coordination to get them together to record this episode.  We hope you enjoy it as much as we did! References In This Episode: Reese's Peanut Butter Cups Old School Commercial Office Space Jump To Conclusions   Hitler Hits A Breaking Point With Tableau    PQ Diagram View (Preview) Episode Timeline: 4:45 - The Origin of Power Query, and the importance of M 19:00 - How the various Microsoft departments come together for a big project 30:15 - The many uses of PQ and the Power Platform, error handling in PQ, and some solutions to some common problems 53:30 - What's next for PQ and Dataflows Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello Friends, this week's guests are Miguel and Sid, the data integrations team at Microsoft. They were both around and involved when Power Query essentially emerged from the primordial ooze at Microsoft. And that's what this week's episode is mostly about, which is, what is the Power Query origin story? I've long been fascinated by that question as an outsider and observer, since this all happened after I left Microsoft. It's kind of hard to imagine a time when we didn't have Power Query. But there was actually three or four years in there, when we were building DAX data models for clients without benefit of Power Query. And this is where I use my old man voice. Kids these days, they have no idea how easy they have it, back in our day, we didn't have fancy Power Query, you just had to cobble the data together by hand. And so I'm not just fascinated by the origin story here, I'm actually deeply impressed and appreciative, especially as a former software engineer, who knows how challenging it is, just how gorgeous Power Query really is. Rob Collie (00:01:06): And because of that, along those lines, during this conversation, I kept trying to get these two gentlemen to take the victory lap. They didn't take that bait, too humble, too cognizant of the work yet to be done, which of course, is really how we would want it, isn't it? Because seriously, it's good to know that there are people like this at Microsoft, who are stewards, really, of our futures. They're the ones building, not just the tools that we already use, but the tools that we're going to use in the future. There are a few places in here where we geek out a little bit as computer scientists, but mostly, the conversation stayed very firmly rooted in the human beings, the human element again, which is what it's all about. I'm sincerely honored that they took two hours out of their busy schedules to spend speaking with me and speaking to you on this podcast. I hope you enjoy it. I hope you learn something from it. So let's get into it. Announcer (00:02:03): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please. Announcer (00:02:07): This is the Raw Data by P3 Podcast, with your host, Rob Collie. Find out what the experts at P3 can do for your business, go to powerpivotpro.com. Raw Data by P3 is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:02:23): Welcome to the show, Sid and Miguel, how are you today fine gentlemen? Sid Jayadevan (00:02:27): Very well, thank you. Many thanks for having us. Miguel Llopis (00:02:30): Yeah, doing great, Rob. Thank you so much for having us, it's a pleasure. Rob Collie (00:02:33): Seriously, to get a hold of the two of you, and coordinate calendars and make this happen, it's an honor for us. So this was something that almost from the moment we launched the podcast, asking members of our team at P3, what would be interesting topics. One of them that just sort of keeps insistently coming up is where did Power Query come from? And so I was on this mission to hunt down some of the people who could speak to that. And there's a lot of things we can talk about. What are your roles today at Microsoft? Miguel Llopis (00:03:06): Sid, do you want to go first? Sid Jayadevan (00:03:07): Yep. So I am an engineering manager at Microsoft Manage, the team that works on data integration, with Power Query being one of the key elements, but we have a variety of other things we do with connectors, gateways, data flows, all of which are very symbiotic. Power Query depends on all of those things, and all of those things depend on Power Query. So there's a larger space that we operate within, but Power Query has been around the longest of all of those things. Rob Collie (00:03:39): So I didn't know this going in. But I have some complaints about this QuickBooks connector. I'm sure you know what those complaints are too. They will not be ones that you've heard the first time from me making a note of that. Sid Jayadevan (00:03:55): No points for guessing. Rob Collie (00:03:56): No points. Okay. Miguel, what are your responsibilities today? Miguel Llopis (00:03:59): I'm the program manager lead for Power Query, and connectors and data flows. So a bunch of technologies and experiences that Sid was talking about. Been up on the team for quite a while, maybe about the same as Sid, maybe a bit less. He's older than me, so that would show through this interview. Rob Collie (00:04:17): Oh, yeah. Well, we're only recording the audio here, you can't really tell. Miguel Llopis (00:04:22): I meant from his wisdom, not from the look. Rob Collie (00:04:24): Oh, I see. Sid Jayadevan (00:04:26): That's Miguel's way of saying I'm Palaeolithic. Miguel Llopis (00:04:30): There you go. Rob Collie (00:04:30): Oh, yeah. I see. You're also a free range gluten free? Miguel Llopis (00:04:35): Of course. Rob Collie (00:04:39): So you both go back aways on Power Query specifically. So from my perspective, from outside the company, I left Redmond in 2009. And then I sort of formerly left Microsoft in February of 2010. So I've been formally gone for 11 years, and sort of informally gone for a little longer than that. It's really kind of hard for me to even get back into the before mindset, when we had DAX, and data modeling, and we had the VertiPaq Engine, they're all still so incredibly central to Power BI today. And we had them in the Power Pivot form, we didn't even have SSAS Tabular yet. Rob Collie (00:05:16): But we had nothing in this giant void that Power Query came along, to me, basically, out of the blue. I had no advance notice of this. My sources in Redmond, my spies, they hadn't hooked me up with the information that something amazing was coming to come along and complement the tools. There are so many times, guys, seriously so many times where I or we would be working with a client and we would know what the ideal data model would look like. But they couldn't do it because the data that they were getting wasn't in the right format to build the right data model. Even something as simple as you need a lookup table or dimension table, and no one's giving it to you. Rob Collie (00:05:58): So it was always like, "Oh, now you need to go find a DBA," that you're either lucky or you're not, you either had one or you didn't. And if you were unlucky, you were just out of luck, there was no recourse. You were just going to have to make these changes to these tables manually. There was no automatic refresh anymore. It was really a tremendous limitation. And then suddenly, and at the time when it first arrived, what was it? The first name? Was it Data Explorer? Miguel Llopis (00:06:27): Yes, Data Explorer. Rob Collie (00:06:30): Even that initial name sort of conveyed a different mission than what it sort of morphed into. I don't even really remember. It was also a way to connect to lots of different things, wasn't it? And Power Query is today. Were you around when Data Explorer, when that name was chosen? What was behind that? Miguel Llopis (00:06:46): Yeah, that would be an interesting story. So actually, just going one step before that, and I think we're getting towards 2012 at this point, I think. The very first incarnation of what today's Power Query in market was something called SQL Azure lab for data exploration. It didn't even have an actual product name, we're going to call it that way. It was SQL Azure Labs was a set of initiatives across the SQL and national teams back in the day to actually a spike different sets of technologies that will help in different segments, like data exploration will be one, data visualization. There were a bunch of things that came out that way. Miguel Llopis (00:07:22): It was actually a full cloud based Power Query like experience to actually connect to data, transform data, and then output data in different ways. There's ways to actually get your data out as an all data endpoint that you could use maybe to create an app, maybe to consume from Power Pivot, to your point drop. The feedback back then, and again 2012 was, hey, Pivot is working in Excel, we want these experiences in Excel. So we repivoted all of that, no pun intended with repivoting, towards a client base experience that was actually an Excel add in that we initially released for Excel 2010 and 2013. Miguel Llopis (00:07:59): There was quite a bit of naming related discussions, but I think the data exploration aspect, everyone got used to it. So we ended up coming up with Microsoft codename Data Explorer for Excel. That was a very first name for the Excel add in, which later than that, a few months later, as we went into GA, they actually got renamed to Power Query. And really the alignment there was with the power family, the power tools, Power Pivot, Power View, Power Maps back in the day as well. And then Power Query as a way to actually bring data in. Maybe Sid remembers some of these discussions more than me. I know there was also an alternative option, which was Power Import, that really, we went for the term query because it really reinforced the notion of repeatability and refresh ability of those queries, no pun intended. Sid Jayadevan (00:08:45): I think we tested many, many terms, and import was just one of them. But we felt like the essence of the product was that ability to query ad hoc and at will, and so we really wanted to focus on that. And so that's how we ended up with the query piece of it. Rob Collie (00:09:03): I think Power Query was a great name. Honestly, it didn't really land for me what y'all were giving us when it was still called Data Explorer. That name was actually a very large cognitive obstacle for me, explorer, it sounds like an analysis tool. Now, knowing where the roots were, you had a name, there's a more appropriate name for what you were doing, probably when it was still that Azure Lab thing. But it's so funny, this happens all the time, when your mission pivots, certain parts of it still kind of leak through, like the old name, by default. Rob Collie (00:09:36): Just like the old story, whether it's true or not about the railroad tracks being the width that they are because the Romans chariot was that wide. It's just like, what we did yesterday is because we did it that way the day before and whatever. Certain things just have a momentum that carried forward. When the name changed to Power Query, suddenly, I was like, "Oh, okay, this is awesome." But it was Data Explorer, it was just a really cool novelty. I didn't have a sense of its purpose, or I didn't feel like it was a serious tool yet. It's really kind of interesting the power of naming, isn't it? Sid Jayadevan (00:10:08): Neither did we, to a large extent, we were trying to find that identity. And I think as we got deeper into it, the query first aspect became a lot clearer. Rob Collie (00:10:20): I also think the Power Query versus Power Import, I think the right decision was made there. The repeatability, you know this, but I'm going to say it anyway, if I only get five minutes with an Excel person who's never been exposed to the power platform, I have five minutes and I have to drop their jaw, I'm going to show him Power Query. I'm not going to show them the data model, I can show them DAX. Now, I think that ultimately, you absolutely need to be using both. But Power Query is such an amazing life changer for the Excel crowd and they can immediately appreciate what it's going to do for them. Rob Collie (00:10:57): It's harder for them to appreciate what the data model is going to do for them. Which is why, if I've got five minutes, I don't go subtle. Isn't it amazing? You're talking about figuring out your own mission over time, that was something amazing. It sounds like from what you're saying that the M language, and the engine that goes with it, and all the stuff that's really difficult to build and to design, a lot of that was already kind of done before the Excel crowd became a focus. Is that true? Sid Jayadevan (00:11:28): Yeah, that's true. Power Query is essentially a visual interface on top of the M language. The M language is absolutely the essence of the product, it's the foundation. And that foundation was built before the product as was often necessary, you need the foundation in place. And there is a long history around M that predates 2012, by let's just say, several years. And we won't delve into all the details, but much like we had to get clear about what Power Query was for and who we were targeting, there was a similar process with M. M was from a technology point of view, this very simple, yet powerful thing, in that it was functional, it composed, in our opinion, reasonably well. And so you could do lots of different things with it. But we wanted to put it in the hands of lots and lots of people who didn't necessarily have not even a programming background, but necessarily a query background. Sid Jayadevan (00:12:29): And so that was the goal that we set for ourselves to bring all of those people on board, to make things possible for them that perhaps were a little harder in the past. And so M was really the foundation, and it was well in place CIRCA 2012, we made some changes to make it more friendly to the visual experience, to make it just a little more designer tool friendly, if you will. But the core of the language was already in place. And on the language front, we had tried lots of different things. And many, many people at Microsoft were involved in that effort at many stages. Rob Collie (00:13:08): Something you said there really struck me and I wouldn't have thought about it this way until I heard the history. You made some changes, just some almost cosmetic changes to the language to make it more friendly to the visual composer aspect of Power Query. As soon as you said that, I'm like, "Oh, my god, yeah, this tool is super, super, super friendly to being edited and written from a graphical tool." A lot of times, you can go back into the M code and hand edit it and the visual editor is still completely okay. It totally understands what you did. That sort of round trip of hand editing and visual composer, exposing both to the user and still having a language and a tool that survives that duality, that's a challenge. That's a really big challenge. I've tried it multiple times at Microsoft. And I think I'm old for a lifetime on having designed a system that worked like that. So I can certainly appreciate it from a software engineering perspective, even just that one little detail of a language that was already pre built. That's kind of amazing. Sid Jayadevan (00:14:08): We're still working on it, it's very much a work in progress. And there are aspects that are a little more, what should I say, language oriented, that remain an M that remain extremely powerful that the visual interface doesn't leverage quite as much. Rob Collie (00:14:25): I've been talking to Miguel about this. And it's not just a deep power, but I think the Power Query transform, there should be many more tabs, because the language is so flexible. And I know that not everything can be turned into visual, some things are just absolutely going to forever remain 100% in the realm of I have to hand edit the M. I'm really nothing but a fan here. Rob Collie (00:14:45): I told Miguel on a previous call that back in the early 2000s, when I was on the Excel team, and I caught the XML bug. The first feature set that I was a lead program manager for was the XML import and export capabilities. Not the XML file format, but data payloads, invoices or whatever, be able to move those in and out of Excel. And I spent two, four years of my life chasing a dream that I call Data Merge. There are huge, elaborate graphical mock ups of all of this, it was a really ambitious. It's exactly the kind of project you'd expect a young software engineer to get all amped up about and geeked out about. Rob Collie (00:15:27): The thing I thought we needed to do was build some sort of repeatable data transformation logic into Excel. And I tried so hard to get budget, to get approval, to get greenlit to build a team to do this. And I got shot down four times a year for multiple years, every quarter, I make another run at it, like, "Come on, let's do this." Now that I've seen what you built, I am so glad that I never got approval to dive into that. Because once I've seen what it looks, a complete solution to it, I realized, oh my gosh, we were so overmatched. We would have never, ever succeeded, never come close. The fact that you had to go build a language first, makes sense to me now in hindsight, but it's really chilling. Oh my gosh, imagine they let me do my passion project. Thank you, Richard McAniff for never believing in me. Miguel Llopis (00:16:24): Well, I'm sure you- Sid Jayadevan (00:16:26): Yeah, not so sure about that, Rob. You might have done a lot better. Rob Collie (00:16:30): I doubt it. Sid Jayadevan (00:16:31): [crosstalk 00:16:31] Well, we'll never know. Rob Collie (00:16:33): Well, I do, and I wouldn't have it. Miguel Llopis (00:16:36): Well, Rob, I think you're being too hard on yourself. We don't have answers to everything. I assume you would have just like us, just fail fast, learn fast, iterate, learn from customers, learn from you, Sid, and just refine and get better over time. Here we are 10 years later, or eight years later, and we still have a lot of things to improve on. Rob Collie (00:16:56): It's not even really just about me, it's also that Office doesn't have the right culture, to do something like what you've done. We would have gone and tried to solve a handful of simple cases, that's what would've happened under scheduled pressure. And we would have gotten committed to a system that wasn't elegant at its core. And then we never would have been able to really scale it to address... Because you know how it is, if you address 99% of problems that people have, it doesn't matter, that 1% is still going to plague enough of their workflows, that is the difference between they can adopt your tool or not. You've really got to be complete. We would have never been complete enough. And I can say that with confidence, knowing myself at the time, and also knowing the culture that was around me. We would have never gone and done the right thing, we would have hacked it, and we would have paid the price. And it's not just a question of me not being up to the challenge, just organizationally, we weren't at the right place. Rob Collie (00:17:48): Office has really leaned into Power Query, it's a core part of the Excel ribbon now, basically taken over the prime real estate. So I think they're absolutely in on Power Query, and they're absolutely in on the value that it brings. It's just that they're not the right place to have invented it. In the same way that Office wasn't the right place to invent DAX, it's just not what Office does, Office does other things. Rob Collie (00:18:12): If I wanted to turn this around and say, the historical struggles of the data side of the house has been that there haven't been traditionally as good at user experiences as Office was. But that gap is really closing, that has become an engineering discipline on your side of the house that it really wasn't when I was there. I used to describe Microsoft as there were user teams and engine teams, and there was no such thing as a team that was both. Office was the user team and the data platform, they built engines. But the engine team couldn't build user experience and the user experience team couldn't build engines. And so I think that's changed a lot. And this is a great example of it. Sid Jayadevan (00:18:48): I mean to the point about Office and Excel, one of the things that has been a little different with Power Query is that we've embraced the open source model, perhaps a little bit more than for other products like that. We have the Office team contributing very heavily in our code base, not all aspects. It's the Power Query team that drives the majority of changes, but the Excel team is very, very involved. In fact, if you look at a lot of the developments around Excel on the Mac, the Office team has contributed very heavily to that. And so that ability to have other teams come in and make changes and they've really been a poster child for this on the Excel side, that has helped build Power Query into more of an ecosystem even within Microsoft. Rob Collie (00:19:38): I didn't know that actually, I really had no idea that there were Office engineers contributing code. I just sort of naively I guess, assumed it was a one way street. You guys were sending them a build update every now and then and they were ingesting it. Sid Jayadevan (00:19:51): And that is fundamentally how it operates because we do want everyone within the larger Microsoft ecosystem to be benefiting from the same enhancements, so there is a build that goes out every month for Excel desktop. But we also have a lot of teams across Microsoft who are contributing in a fairly big way. Rob Collie (00:20:11): In terms of, we talked about the M language and all of that. I just told you the story about never getting the chance to do Data Merge on the Office team. I'm really deeply curious about how the M language got greenlit, how did the need for it get recognized and bubbled up into something that they got resources. Because like I just said, it's such a crazy thing. If you haven't experienced the pain of the world, in terms of automatically munging and transforming data, if you haven't experienced it, and most people have it, even at Microsoft, most people haven't experienced that, trying to convey that pain to other people is very, very difficult. I look at Power Query as, look, this is something that the world needed, not just like a demographic, this is something had improved the world. And yet, I know from experience, it's very, very difficult to explain to people who are already on board, what the value is. Is there anything that we can talk about there? Sid Jayadevan (00:21:06): Without getting into all of the details, we went through a number of iterations to get to where we are and where it started was with some precursors to M, which were more about modeling, what we set out to do. And there's a large number of people who contributed to this. And so some of this predates some of our contributions. I've been involved with the project on and off, in fact, I left at some point and came back to it. And a lot of the seeds of the project were in modeling related efforts. So ways of modeling your data, modeling your relational data model. And as I guess, in hindsight, could have been expected, folks started to realize that a lot of what you needed to do to have a successful modeling environment was enable transformations as a first class thing. And so at some point, you had a language that was a little bit of data modeling, and a little bit of transformations layered on top of that. Sid Jayadevan (00:22:12): And frankly, over time, we talked about how the query thing became more and more important and became the essence of the product. The data modeling side of things faded to some extent, and the focus shifted towards transformation. And it shifted towards transformation of all data. There was a period, not just at Microsoft, but in the industry where very focused on data as not necessarily a silo but homogeneous data stores. And when that heterogeneity of data became a reality that no one was going to change, the focus of tools like ours, and languages like M shifted more towards that ability to embrace all kinds of data, wherever it might live, of course, change the language and give us what we have today. Rob Collie (00:23:04): This will show how old I am, there used to be a series of commercials for Reese's Peanut Butter Cups, where two people would be walking along, one of them will be carrying a chocolate bar and one would be carrying an open jar of peanut butter for some inexplicable reason. And they'd bump into each other and the two would accidentally mix. And then they'd accuse each other, "You got your chocolate in my peanut butter." "No, no, you got your peanut butter on my chocolate." And then they would take a bite of it, go, "Oh, my God, this is the best thing." It kind of has that feel to it, doesn't it? The origins of M and Power Query, it's not like there was this anticipated union with some DAX and what we think of as the VertiPaq, Power Query data model. That wasn't a mission statement from the beginning, it's just these two things ended up going together super, super, super well, sort of an accidental union. That's been my sense of it forever. Is that true? Sid Jayadevan (00:23:53): I think that's a very fair assessment. Miguel, what do you think? Miguel Llopis (00:23:59): Yeah, I tend to agree. I was actually thinking about the previous comment you made about the heterogeneous nature of the data space right now. So yeah, really, when you talk about big data, it's not really only about the volume of data, there's also the variety of data, both in terms of the sources you connect to, the schemas they have, the different keys on either side, and the need to use things like fuzzy matching and mapping tables and whatnot. Miguel Llopis (00:24:22): And then lastly, is also about the velocity of the data, there's some data that changes once a day, there's some data that changes once a quarter, there's some data that changes multiple times per second. And so providing tools for non technical users, which is the vast majority of people in the world to actually be able to do this efficiently and with ease and that even for somebody who can do the hard thing, of course, who wants to do the hard thing if you can do it much simple ways. I think that that was key to us and just democratizing this whole problem space and of course, there's a lot more that we can do. Miguel Llopis (00:24:55): And thanks, Rob for your list of suggestions from the team. We love those and within our team, we do have this whole bucket of what we call customer law, which is about, "Hey, give us a problem that you've ever tried to solve with Power Query and it didn't actually make the cut for you. And I will try and generalize that and give you a feature out of it." That's how many of our existing transforms came about. Rob Collie (00:25:17): It's just such a rich canvas. When you start from a language, you have a lot of future flexibility in what you can do, it's awesome. The heterogeneity thing again, I also really reacted to that, that speaks to me. Another thing that shows my age, I grew up during the peak Cold War between the US and Russia, or NATO and the Warsaw Pact, whatever. And so I read a lot of Tom Clancy and I was one of those kids. Rob Collie (00:25:44): Something that really strikes me from that is that the two different philosophies of the 1970s, 1980s, Russian military strategy versus the United States is, you see it in every morning or every day of operations at a United States Air Force Base. Everybody at the Air Force Base, gets out in a big long line, and walks the entire length of the runway, picking up pebbles, and all kinds of foreign objects from the runway, because if any of that gets sucked into the intakes of these really sensitive airplanes there's going to be hell to pay, it's going to break it, it's going to go down. Whereas, the Russians built everything that they had, at least in theory to eat mud. Rob Collie (00:26:23): I think the old world of BI was that 1980s American strategy. You had to have this absolute clean room. It's ideal, frictionless circumstances in order for everything to work right, which is, of course, it's completely unrealistic. The real world is dirty, it is noisy. There's chickens running across the runway, it's not just pebbles. Is there even a runway? And this wave of Microsoft tools, the Power BI beating heart, which Power Query is part of it, I mean, it is built for that real world messy, dirty reality. It's not the kind of thing that you imagine when you're sitting around in a whiteboard doing computer science. And when computer science can meet that kind of reality and perform, it's really something to behold. It's just a whole new era, isn't it? Sid Jayadevan (00:27:16): Yeah, I couldn't agree more. It's messy and dealing with that messiness is still very much a work in progress. But that's the thing we're trying to embrace, that messiness that isn't going away anytime soon. Rob Collie (00:27:29): It only gets messier, even our company. Miguel Llopis (00:27:31): But at the same time tools get better and smarter. So how can we actually make it so that it's even easier and easier for you to do these things with Power Query in this case? Rob Collie (00:27:41): Yeah. Some of the things that you can start to do with machine learning and AI to write the code for them, there's some scary stuff that can be done there. A no column by example is sort of the most straightforward poster child for that kind of thing. I do want to at least make one joke with you, which is actually the truth but it's funny, is that back when I would teach classes, we still teach a lot of classes, but they don't let me teach them anymore, because I'm not as good as the people on our team. But whenever I bring up M, and I would show people the code, and so we'd using Power Query a little bit, and then I'd show them the code that it was generating. And then I would zoom in on that code. And I'd say, "And this word here at the beginning, tells you everything you need to know about where this thing came from." The first word of every Power Query script being the word let, I just talked about like the messy real world reality. Rob Collie (00:28:31): But the word let at the beginning of every Power Query script, tells you this came from the ivory tower. I look at the class and say, "It's almost like a philosopher smoking a pipe, who then says to you, 'Suppose.'" What if we pause it, and then the script starts? Like I said, I admire what M can do. But the M language itself doesn't speak to me in its raw form. I look at it and I kind of want nothing to do personally with editing it. A lot of people, especially on our team, they do, I'm just one of those people that's like, for whatever reason, I was willing and able to learn DAX and I typically don't learn stuff, I don't learn new tool sets, I don't learn new languages. The fact that I learned DAX is really an outlier for me. I'll never learn M, not in its raw form. I'm a button pusher, dyed in the wool. Sid Jayadevan (00:29:25): And then we want to cater to all the constituencies, the folks on your team who wanted at the end, we want to make that possible. And for the many folks who would rather press the buttons, for that we have the visual interface. Rob Collie (00:29:41): Do you have those personas behind the scenes where you talk about the person who only wants to push buttons, you have the unsophisticated user of M persona. Can we just name it Rob and I'll give you a picture of a me going... Miguel Llopis (00:29:53): Actually, I call dibs on that one because I'm that kind of person as well. And that's what I would push for most of the time. Rob Collie (00:30:00): Damn it. And you being on the team, you got an inside track to be the persona. All right. Well, listen, I'm waiting in the wings. I'll be your understudy. So how much of the two of you got an exposure to the next part of the chain, which is, do you sit around building Power BI models? Do you write DAX? Do you build data models? Miguel Llopis (00:30:20): Yeah, big time. I mean, we use our tools, the tools that we build, we use them internally for for example, understanding how users are using our products or understanding our backgrounds and our feature tracking report, you name it. Not to talk about personal projects, I do have my personal projects with Power Query and Power BI as well for non work related stuff. And that's actually, in my experience of this is, to me has helped me the most actually understand internalize all of the end user pain points around this area and actually push the tool to actually become better. And I know Sid does quite a bit of this as well. Sid Jayadevan (00:30:57): Yeah. The entire team does a large amount of eating our own dog food, dog food, and you've heard myself term for this. That's always been a very large part of what we've done. It's not just about using Power Query, it's about using in the context of all of the things that Power Query is hosted within. And so Power BI, of course, and Excel and Power Apps, and aspects of Azure, we try to ensure that we're experiencing the end to end experience as much as possible. Rob Collie (00:31:29): It's just a complete divergence from the path we've been on. But I want to at least mention to you before I forget that, in the past seven days, last two work weeks, off and on I've been teaching a little bit of Power Query to a high school football coach. We're just kind of messing around for the moment with a Power BI through a pro bono project. It's just sort of a passion project of mine. I got to tell you, it's fun. This guy's eating it up. He's loving it. I'm showing him how to add error checking and things like that for when there's the temp Excel file still in the folder that he's trying to load from, that's going to mess things up. Well, you could filter that out and everything. And yeah, he sponging it up. It's just cool to see it. It's all these unexpected places, you see these tools end up being used. Rob Collie (00:32:14): So both of you seem to have a lot of opportunity to sort of drive the race car that you build. And that was not something that I really felt like I had much chance to do when I was at Microsoft. It's like, we built race cars, we have no idea what it feels like to sit behind the wheel. And so it's always surprising to people that with whatever tool I've been working on, the customers were better at using it than I was. It's nice that there's a little bit more of a culture now of using the tools even for personal use. Personal use is fantastic, there's nothing better than personal use. Sid Jayadevan (00:32:46): Absolutely. As Miguel mentioned earlier, it's for both hobbyist projects, pet personal projects, as well as internal day to day work. Love using it for all of those things. And Miguel in particular has I think some soccer things that he probably use it for, but I'll let him speak to that. Miguel Llopis (00:33:10): Yeah, definitely soccer as well as a bunch of other things I wouldn't name. Yes, quite a few personal projects. Rob Collie (00:33:17): It's really nice of you to call it soccer for us. I'm sure you don't call it soccer with your fellow soccer fans. Miguel Llopis (00:33:24): Yeah. You mean with our football fans? Rob Collie (00:33:24): Yeah. What are some of the craziest things you've seen? I'm sure that you've got just some really crazy stories of things that you've seen customers doing with Power Query that you never would have expected? Anything like that come to mind? Miguel Llopis (00:33:37): Many things. So I guess could take crazy in a couple of dimensions. One could be unrealistic expectations on the tool or the technology. The other one could be tremendously complex projects. So I'll actually head down the second path. Rob Collie (00:33:53): Sure. Let's do that. Miguel Llopis (00:33:54): I think the biggest Excel workbook with PQ queries I've ever seen, had probably about 280, 290 queries on it. I'm glad we introduced query groups as a feature because that person will be there in the world without them. But even there, it's a pretty heavy to maintain project. Rob Collie (00:34:13): And the dependency. Miguel Llopis (00:34:14): Yeah, I was going to say understand query dependencies. So you do have some support for that in Excel today with query dependencies. We're working on way more interactive, highly visual experiences that eventually will make their way into Excel. But as of now available in the Power Query online experiences with what we call the Diagram View, which is currently in public preview. Sid Jayadevan (00:34:35): 290 queries. Miguel Llopis (00:34:36): Yep. And they're all legit, that we literally sat together and say, "Let's simplify this." And actually, yeah, it could have combined a few things, but it actually made sense the way he had it organized. Rob Collie (00:34:47): And is the endpoint of that data landing in Excel? Miguel Llopis (00:34:52): Yes, it was inside an Excel workbook. Rob Collie (00:34:53): Wow. Wow. You don't have any examples of people using Power Query or data flows to automate their home? For example, I have a friend of mine right now, who is setting up using Power Automate, he's setting up where if he gets a text notification from a certain Internet of Things system, it will go in and adjust the temperature gauge, the thermostat, turn on heaters, turn on humidifiers, things like that. It's a terrarium, he needs to maintain the balance in this biosphere that he's built. And he's got monitors in there, but all they'll send them or text messages. That's all he can get. But he's like, "No problem, I'll eat those text messages and feed him into the power platform. And next thing, we're adjusting temperatures and humidity and all that kind of stuff." I bet there's a lot of stuff out there like that, it's data transformation but analysis isn't the endpoint. It's being used for something else. Sid Jayadevan (00:35:54): We're blown away by a lot of the creativity, seen a lot of these very self regenerative programs that people have created, where the queries adapt and do all kinds of things. It's a ton of creativity. Rob Collie (00:36:11): One scenario, and now we're doing the program manager feature design thing. And one scenario that I've wondered about for a while is failures in a Power Query, the error handling. Using the moment of error, harnessing that, and activating a human workflow to address it. The way you're nodding, this is not the first time this idea has come up, right? Miguel Llopis (00:36:38): Yeah, I was wondering if I had mentioned some of that stuff to you. Because today, within the Power Query Editor experiences, you do get some help with data profiling features, you understand duplicate values, you understand errors. To some degree at least within the data in the preview that was for you to run that over the entire data set. But nothing really helps you with, after you save that, and you say, "Yeah, refresh this thing every day at 8:00 AM." With understanding if that still is correct, if you get a new outlier value, if you get a new duplicate value, and you get some errors around that. That's one of the areas that we're looking at. And it goes back to the thing we were talking about earlier about, how can we further simplify this tool and make it more productive for the real users of it on a day to day basis. And this is clearly one of those areas. I mean, if you're putting together a report or a dashboard for your boss, you want to make sure that they don't start looking at the wrong data without you even knowing. Rob Collie (00:37:32): Oftentimes, it manifests in some very sinister ways. Like if a data source succeeds in refresh, but it feeds you back nothing but zeros. [crosstalk 00:37:42] There's no runtime error. And then, of course, if you saw a report with nothing but zeros on it, you'd notice, you say, "Oh, clearly, this thing's dead." But if those zeros are only one leg of a five leg platform that makes a single metric, the answers you get on your report can still be credible. Miguel Llopis (00:38:00): Yes, that is a problem. Rob Collie (00:38:03): And I'm speaking from experience, I've been burned by exactly this sort of thing in the past. Even when there's a runtime error, it's almost always a human being that has to go do something. If a duplicate key comes in, that wasn't there before, what do I do about that? I have to- Miguel Llopis (00:38:19): Would it be nice if we just fix it for you? Or if we maybe ask you, "We saw an issue and this is what we think you might want to do." And we give you a couple of options. And maybe you don't even have to go to the tool, maybe there's a quick text message you get, maybe somebody is giving you a phone call while you're driving, maybe it's an email that comes in and just with a couple of clicks, you can just get it fixed. Rob Collie (00:38:41): This are all good ideas. I like this. This sounds promising. Sid Jayadevan (00:38:44): One thing that we recently added in this space was integration with power automate. So that's more on the data flow side. And it's early days for that, but we've already seen some very interesting solutions. One of the things you can now do is have your data flow include a bunch of these reports for issues that you mentioned, you could perhaps partition off the errors or have a bunch of litmus test queries that check the data quality. And if those queries start yielding results, you can fire a power automate that can engage whatever workflow makes the most sense for you. Whether it's sending an email, whether it's writing something out somewhere for someone to take action, going all the way to sending someone a text message. All of those things are possible. They're perhaps not as frictionless and out of the box as they could be, but we're making some of those things more possible. Rob Collie (00:39:42): I think that problem of merging the automation with human like referees of the occasional error is probably as ambitious of a problem to address as Power Query was originally. I've got a lot of respect for that problem, placing myself in your shoes. Might not be that quite that ambitious, but it's a large problem. It's a product level problem to solve as opposed to a feature. Every now and then like, I get some data where someone keyed in an exclamation point instead of a one, because their shift key was down, and all hell breaks loose over that exclamation point. Rob Collie (00:40:24): You got a hard job, the error tracking in your system, it's many levels deep. We all know the experience of you get the error, and the top 11 errors all say exactly the same thing. And you scroll through the list to get to the one at the bottom that tells you hopefully, what really happened before the downstream errors happened. It's hard to bubble up the right error to the right person at the right time when almost by definition, you don't know, you can't anticipate what this error is going to be, you have no idea what's going to come in. So I recognize this as sort of a frontier for you, but I do not mean to trivialize it at all. It's only an improvement. It's not like you need to do this otherwise, everything you've done is... No, you can stop today completely and Power Query is arguably complete, you just have so many places where you could- Miguel Llopis (00:41:16): Go and tell that to Satya, we want to still keep our jobs. Got to find new challenges. Rob Collie (00:41:20): Well, next time I talk to Satya, next time he calls me up for advice. Yeah, I think it would be a shame if you did stop. It's a compliment to what you've got, that if you stopped today, it's already well past amazing. I'd say to students and clients that there are two engines at Microsoft, two data engines in particular, that all of Microsoft's competitors wish they had it instead. What are you going to call the DAX and data model VertiPaq. Microsoft is not very good at naming, I don't know if you all know that. And then the other one is the M engine, the Power Query engine, which also by the way, goes nameless in all of your products. It's just get data or import or whatever now, getting transformed. Miguel Llopis (00:42:03): It's the M engine and Power Query is the experience. Rob Collie (00:42:06): These two engines, wherever you call them, they belong in the software Hall of Fame. I believe that. And this is a very vicious critic of software, who's talking to you right now. I hate software. And these two things, they demand your respect, it's got to feel good to have been involved in something like that from such an early stage. It's got to be one of the most gratifying sorts of experiences for a software engineer because most of the time, it's not like that. Miguel Llopis (00:42:33): This is such a tough interview, Rob. Rob Collie (00:42:36): To make you guys feel all gushy about yourselves. Miguel Llopis (00:42:43): Yeah. Don't know what to say [crosstalk 00:42:44]. Sid Jayadevan (00:42:43): That's very kind of you. Rob Collie (00:42:43): Oh, come on, you've lived it. Right? You've probably also lived as software engineers, you probably lived the other kind of project too. There's all kinds of dead ends in software that you can chase them for years. Sid Jayadevan (00:42:54): I think one thing that's been a big differentiator with this one is, so Miguel and I are here today, but there's a team that has stuck together over an extended period of time. And it's the most fun I've had in my time at Microsoft. I'm very, very fortunate to work with those folks. For a problem like this, there is a kind of continuity that becomes necessary to... You talk about the iteration and needing to keep going. And we have a lot of work ahead of us. Sid Jayadevan (00:43:24): But the thing that has made this easy and fun, at least from my point of view is the team has been phenomenal. You tend to have a lot of churn on teams, and you go through phases, and people come and go. But this has been one where there's a set of fun. And I'm not talking about a handful of folks, it's probably a few handfuls of folks who really pushed on this over many, many years. I think that's one thing that's been a little different vis-a-vis a lot of other projects, that there's been a set of folks who have stuck with it and have been incredibly passionate about it. And that's been a big part of Power Query. Miguel Llopis (00:44:02): Completely agree. Rob Collie (00:44:03): Some products really require that kind of continuity in order to continue being successful. Excel, by the way is one of them. I think Excel, I don't really know what it's like today, but when I was there, there was pretty healthy turnover every release on the Excel team. And the developers, the engineers, the actual writing the code, they had a bit more continuity, actually quite a bit more than the program managers. It was every two years, the school bus would drive up, all the program managers we get on, it would leave, new school bus arrives with younger program managers and would drop them off. I got off that bus one day and enjoying the Excel team. And the engineers on the team were just like, "Ah, the new youngsters, we got to train these people now too." Rob Collie (00:44:55): It was a year and a half of working on Excel before I stopped coming up with feature ideas, like wouldn't it be cool if Excel could do this. It was a year and a half before I stopped coming up with ideas like that, where they'd look at me and say, "Yeah, we already have that." Honestly, I think that culture, that continuity was enforced more by a handful on the Excel team when I was there, they were keepers of the flame, if you will. And there was like one on the program management team, half a dozen on the dev team. Sid Jayadevan (00:45:27): And you have a lot of those projects where you'll have one or two keepers of the flame. And I think what's been unusual with Power Query, at least compared to other projects I've been on is that there have been many, many keepers of the flame. And of course, you want fresh ideas. So you want people to be coming in and bringing those ideas, and we've had a lot of that as well. And so there's been keepers of the flame, there have been challengers of the flame in a very good way. So we've had that mix. But there has been a lot of good cohesion. Rob Collie (00:45:59): It sounds a good title for a Kickstarter funded board game, challengers of the flame. I'll tell you what, well, you all get equal rights. We'll call it a common intellectual property, that name. I'm here by seizing 1/3 ownership in Challengers of the Flame, LLC. Sid Jayadevan (00:46:19): What was the board game at the end of Office Space, the jump to conclusion board game? Rob Collie (00:46:28): I don't actually remember, I've seen that movie so many times. Now, I've got an excuse to go watch it again. Tell my wife, "Listen, this is important. This is for work." Sid Jayadevan (00:46:38): That was our quandary, what do you name the thing? Rob Collie (00:46:43): So how much commonality is there, I'm assuming a lot, between data flows and the version of the M engine that lives in Power BI? Miguel Llopis (00:46:55): Basically is the same engine. So data flows, the way I like to talk about this is layers of the onion. So if you think about the M engine as the core of the onion, then the next wrapper around that is the Power Query experience that allows you to create queries that run in M. Outer layer on top of that is really the data flows, which really automate and orchestrate many different sets Power Query projects that were defined with a Power Query experience to generate M that runs. Miguel Llopis (00:47:23): So whereas you could have a data flow that maybe brings say, your customers data, your customers table. Or your customers entity, you may have another data flow that connects to that customers entity and then maybe does a bunch of additional Power Query and M query transformations to do your customers who are most likely to churn. And it's the orchestration of that whenever that customers table gets refreshed, cascade refresh everything else that depends on it. That is what data flows are. Rob Collie (00:47:55): That makes sense to me. One of the challenges that I know that Power Query faces is that at tremendous scale, when the data is just gigantic volumes, the elapsed time of a query can get up there. And it's just an optimization thing. It's almost like the ideal software problem to have as engineers. How much progress has been made over the years? I haven't really been paying much attention to it. I just remember from the very early days, people saying, "Okay, it's great, but we can't use it for the 500 million row data set, going through a Power Query, just takes too long." Have there been any strides made? Again, I'm really sympathetic to this, it's a really hard problem. Power Query has to process every single row, it can't do the things like the VertiPaq Engine does where it sort of groups rows into clusters and treats them as one band of rows, you don't get those really nice columnar in memory tricks when you're performing transformations. So you're kind of up against physics in a way. Miguel Llopis (00:48:56): Yeah, great point. So there's actually two avenues we can take to answer that question. I'm going to talk about both, I'll just call them out. And then I'll answer the easy one and I'll let Sid answer the hardest one. One is about increasing the scale of what you can process with Power Query. And of course, you need to do that. But on the other extreme, there's also the make it clear to the end user clicking those buttons as Drobo usually does, that there is a problem, and so that they can correct that problem before it actually becomes the root cause for things that are many, many steps further down the pipe. Miguel Llopis (00:49:29): And so on this area on making things more clear to users, we're actually introducing quite a few new features. We just announced something called the step folding indicators. So it's a feature we recently launched inside Power Query online, inside data flows that as you connect to a data source, let's say, SQL Server, and you connect to the customers table, and then you apply a filter to maybe say exclude customers in the US, then you get your filter versus they will actually give you a tick next to it to say, "This has actually been pushed down to SQL because SQL can run filters like this one." Now you go to a different operation that does not fold. As a new step, it will actually immediately tell you, "Hey, this thing is no longer when I run in SQL, we're running it locally, we're compensating here, this is what's going to happen. In the extreme, this might actually cause you issues, click here to learn more, learn some best practices for how you could do things be different." And many other features that we're working on there. This is the most basic way to tell the most basic end user about, "Hey, there might be a problem," is like the engine in your car dashboard. Miguel Llopis (00:50:33): We're also looking at things like query plans, more detail, deeper information for slightly more advanced users who actually understand the underlying SQL, the underlying code behind it, to go reason about okay, where are actually things going south? How do I understand this better? So I answered the easy part of the question, which is how do we make it clear that there's a problem? Now Sid can talk about the exciting stuff we're doing on the scale. Sid Jayadevan (00:50:56): And I'll have, I guess, an unsatisfying, cryptic answer to that, because it's probably our largest area of investment right now. But we don't have anything that we can really announce yet, but it's something we're working on. And that should come as no surprise, because we hear a lot of feedback in the space. And there's a lot going on at Microsoft and in the industry in this space around making compute more available, even if your data lives somewhere where there isn't compute. And so that's something that we will definitely be investing in and that we're actively working on. Rob Collie (00:51:32): I actually find that to be a very satisfying answer. Because honestly, all I want to know is that A, people are working on it, and B, there's optimism, there's still improvements to be made. That's all I really need to know. I mean, there's a nerd part of me, it's like, "Okay, come on. How do we do it?" But even then probably, if I got too close to it, I probably go, "Oh, yeah, now we're on board." I'm really just interested in the fact that it's going to happen. Have either of you seen all of these, a meme, but it's a YouTube meme, a format that's Hitler losing his cool, screaming at his generals in the bunker, and the subtitles have been replaced with something completely different? You seen these? Sid Jayadevan (00:52:15): Yep, seen those. Miguel Llopis (00:52:16): I've not, I'm too young for that. Rob Collie (00:52:18): Oh, really? YouTube didn't go and record Hitler in his bunker. I don't know if you know that YouTube is relatively recent invention that probably has happened in your lifetime. Miguel Llopis (00:52:30): But I just don't have time to watch it. There's just so many soccer games to go watch. Sorry, football games. Rob Collie (00:52:36): Football games. I agree. So I made one of those a long time ago, making fun of Tableau. And in terms of the first three months of its existence it's probably the video that's been watched the most of all the things I've ever done on YouTube. There's a part at the end where he mutters under his breath, he turns to look at his subordinates and say something like, "And if you think we're paying for those Alteryx license, you better be sprucing up your LinkedIn." So as the Power Query folks, I made that joke for you. Miguel Llopis (00:53:09): [crosstalk 00:53:09] Geek. Rob Collie (00:53:10): There's a lot of inside baseball in that video. Even the Tableau employees that have seen it, look at me say, "Okay, that actually was pretty funny." What's next? What am I not asked about? Such an exciting space with so many opportunities. Sid Jayadevan (00:53:26): We have a whole new interface coming in terms of a more diagrammatic visual representation of the queries. Miguel may have alluded to this before. That's a big one, changes the profile of the product quite a bit. We're not taking anything away. And we don't want to make things tricky for people who are familiar with the existing interface so it's strictly additive. But that's one we're really excited about. We've tried a few things there. It is a new interface, but we're also using it as a way to address some of the feedback that people had, just surround how you track relationships and make it a little more fluid to chain things together. So that's one that I think the team's very excited about. So we're going to push that one out pretty soon. And that's already in preview, so you can go play with it. Rob Collie (00:54:19): I think I should as one of the absolute sloppiest designers of Power Query scripts in the world. If you ever want examples of really, really, really ugly, I can't believe this Rube Goldberg sequence that someone's written, all you need to do is just ask me for anything that I've done. I've got stuff now that I'm just like, "Okay." I've got four queries that are basically one to one linearly feeding into each other, that their only purpose is to feed the next one. And they're not even sorted in the proper order in the query pane. Even I don't remember which one is the root, I don't remember which one is the first one in the assembly line. Every time I go back and look at I have to re sort of trace, trace, trace, trace. Like, "Okay, that's right. That's how this thing works." You want ugly, I got you covered. Miguel Llopis (00:55:06): Yeah, we would love to see those and see what we're reinvesting and actually behaves against that. So yeah, I just sent you a link on the chat window for the Diagram View, would love your feedback on that. Let's you share feedback about every other area. And again, we will take it and we'll generalize it, and we'll make it into something that improves the product. Rob Collie (00:55:26): And this poor high school football coach, his first exposure to Power Query is with exactly the example I just told you about. He has no idea how much better it can be. Sid Jayadevan (00:55:37): That's cool. You know that ad hoc style of using the product where you don't necessarily architect how your queries come together, in some ways that we want to cater to that even more, we don't want to go in the direction of some very formal modeling exercise. And we want to keep enabling that style of using the product. And so this tool is not meant to police any of that, it's more just to help you understand it better. I have some mashups where I have so many queries, and they could have been designed way, way better. And over the passage of time, a few months later, I look at the thing, and I have no clue what I did, back when I created it. So this is meant to help with those sorts of things. It's more to help you decipher what others did, and sometimes help you decipher what you did. Rob Collie (00:56:29): A previous version of you is almost just as inscrutable as another person's work. I can be away from it for two days and come back and go, "What was I doing here?" Same is true, by the way, with spreadsheets, traditional spreadsheets, non DAX spreadsheets. I can generally go back to one of my DAX models, and pretty quickly get back into the personality of what I was doing there. But the old spreadsheets, using just the Excel formula language, and really pushing it to its limit, oh my gosh, those things. I'm always impressed at how smart I must have been in the past to have put one of those together. The current version of me always feels dumber than whatever the version was, that was able to do what I did in Excel back in the day. So, connectors? Miguel Llopis (00:57:14): There's a roadmap on connectors, there's some... Overall, our strategy with connectors is one where we have the custom connectors as the key that empowers anyone to build connectors. This could be you building your own connector for whatever you're trying to do. Or this could be an actual ISB company who owns an underlying data source backend, who actually wants to provide connectivity to that from Power BI from Excel. And we do have certification programs around that. Miguel Llopis (00:57:42): So really, there's some new connectors coming out of our team, there isn't much in terms of net new connectors. There's a bunch of connectors that our team owns from the early days when we didn't have this way to actually extend our SDK. And there is where you see most of our investments on making sure that X connector now can use this certain new feature that the underlying back end added or that customers are demanding now, more than others. Miguel Llopis (00:58:09): So I wouldn't say there's much in terms of excitement there on connectors to cover at this level, is very point wise feature level things on existing stuff, does have experiences, Power Query experiences. So yeah, everything you want to talk about regarding diagram views, or more by example, like experiences infuse AI into the product. On the data flows prompt, we talked a little bit about the refresh base data quality and monitoring stuff, which is actually not formally in our public roadmap. But just because I think the discussion we have, it just screams at, hey, this is actually a useful area that I think is just okay. Those are kind of the big pillars. Rob Collie (00:58:47): There was something interesting that as you were talking about the connectors. Of course, Microsoft cannot write connectors for everything, the list of everything is damn near infinite. And reasonable percentage of the time, the systems that I wish there was a connector for is a non Microsoft product that, at best is sort of neutral towards integration with Microsoft technology and other times it's openly hostile to it. And so, at our company, of course, we're Microsoft at its core, we use a lot more Microsoft than other stuff. Miguel Llopis (00:59:21): Come on, you don't need to apologize, what else are you using? Rob Collie (00:59:24): We use a lot of things. And so like Salesforce is our CRM, and in terms of workflow, it's one of our most central systems. Certainly not our only system. Right off the bat, we've got an alien right in the middle of the story. And we park a lot of data for our own internal BI. And by the way, our internal BI is very, very, very sophisticated today, it's not a stretch to say that we simply could not survive without it. It's not like our business operates and then we use BI to optimize it, it is life support. It's the oxygen supply, it is really, really, really, really critical to us and our business model. Rob Collie (01:00:07): So we use another third party product called Stitch, which you've probably heard of that they've written a bunch of connectors essentially, will then dump data into various endpoints that they know about. And so we get a lot of data out of our core systems into the Azure Data Warehouse, so not just Azure SQL, via Stitch, and then Power Query kicks in. It's not like, it just lands there. Gosh, our Google AdWords data, we're grabbing that from Stitch into Azure Data Warehouse. Rob Collie (01:00:40): And then because the data that's grabbed... It's so weird, guys. AdWords data is like day to date running totals. So every time you take a snapshot of it, it's like you had three clicks last hour, now you have seven clicks. Does that mean you have 10 clicks today? No, you have seven. So we've got Power Query that is doing a group by and taking the max, or grouping by the most recent timestamp on that day, because Stitch doesn't do anything magical for us, all it does is just raw data dump from one place to another. Rob Collie (01:01:14): It's really neat like this, going back to that metaphor of, you want your jet plane built for the reality of the world, with all kinds of noise, and all kinds of variety, and all kinds of unpredictable things. And even without dedicated Power BI connectors, for a lot of our systems, it doesn't matter. We're going to get that data. And the fact that the Microsoft tools participate in this larger ecosystem. Rob Collie (01:01:39): I've always been really ambitious about defining sort of the new template for what consulting firms should look like in this new world. It sounds like a cliche, but 11 years ago, I'm sitting in my office one day in Cleveland, and I was using Power Pivot and it just hit me like a thunderbolt. I'd suddenly done something that was not possible. And I'd done it in a space of like an hour that had taken weeks and weeks in the previous world. And I could kind of see that the world was going to change, that the size and duration of a typical project was going to shrink dramatically, still have the same amount of impact as the big long project, in fact, actually better. It's going to have more impact because the short projects means that you're actually holding people's attention long enough to iterate and get the real results that the longer projects never got to because people got too exhausted, and just called it done even when it wasn't. So the size of the average project was going to compress dramatically. Rob Collie (01:02:37): So the utilization model for a traditional consulting firm, which has long been like park a handful of people on a six month minimum project. That whole business model was going to die. Now I thought it was going to happen a lot faster than it has, it still hasn't happened, really. We've reached the point where the world is intellectually, agreed that citizen developer model is primary, and is important. But for a long time, that was still heresy. So we've reached the point, we've intellectually accepted that. Rob Collie (01:03:06): But that doesn't mean that the real on the ground muscle memory has changed. This has been the mission for 11 years, go and build this firm. However, we never took any investment. It's not like really people who would ever want to fund a consulting startup anyway. Angel investors and venture capitalists, they're always looking for tremendous intellectual property. They don't want people involved. Consulting firm has too many people, it's too good of a deal for too many people. They want something where you can essentially charge rent when it's done. So we wouldn't have really been able to attract that kind of funding anyway. Plus, they would have ruined it if we had taken their money. Rob Collie (01:03:40): So we've organically grown, all of our hires, and all of our growth has been funded out of revenue, which makes it slow or slower anyway. But someone told me something a long time ago, which is like, "Let me tell you about my 10 year overnight success. It's not overnight, but it has been 10 years." And I'll be completely honest with you, I think that there's really no limit to how large we can be. It's been a long road, but the way we operate is to run with these tools as fast and as impactfully as they allow. So we're great for the customer. We're great for the customer in a way that I don't think really any other Microsoft partner is. It's a very hard business model. It's obviously the thing that the customer needs. But it's a hard business model to sustain which by the way, we've used the Microsoft platform to make it work internally. Miguel Llopis (01:04:32): So you're ceiling, your bottleneck is actually going to be at the very least talent acquisition so that you can scale to more people as you scale to more customers. Rob Collie (01:04:41): Yeah. I learned a lot of things at Microsoft about interviewing too. And we're using a lot of systems, we have a lot of actual both software and delegation to assistants and things like that, that allow us to scale. The hard lessons that I learned about interviewing at Microsoft, we apply that at national scale. So we have like a 2% offer rate for our candidates, and we get to pick the best of the best. So I actually don't think we have a supply bottleneck either. Sid Jayadevan (01:05:13): That's a lot of interviewing. Miguel Llopis (01:05:15): We're hiring. So if you have any pointers, we appreciate them too, both engineering as well as PM. Rob Collie (01:05:21): Well, I don't know, that's the kind of consulting fee that I'm going to have to [crosstalk 01:05:27]. I'm going to have to have McKinsey white label me, so that I can charge Microsoft the millions of dollars that they would pay McKinsey, but they would never pay Rob Collie. Definitely, yeah. Sid Jayadevan (01:05:42): Very interesting. Fascinating story. I mean, I've watched from afar, but I didn't know many of these details. And so yeah, very helpful. Rob Collie (01:05:52): The engineering mindset, I think both of you actually would be really sincerely kind of interested and fascinated by all the things that we've developed and found about how to incentivize the right things with our consultants, for our clients. And there's something almost, it's not patentable, it's not protectable. But there is something in the same way that software has intellectual property, our system are all up system, software, people workflow, all of that. I'm pretty sure this is the only instance in the world like it of a company that operates like this. We've had to discover how to do this rather than there was no template to follow. You guys both know how exciting that kind of problem is. The same sorts of things that get you geeked up about going to work at Microsoft to solve that performance problem or whatever we're talking about, that same itch being scratched, but in a different plane. No, you can't have any of my people, Miguel. Miguel Llopis (01:06:48): Good to know. Sid Jayadevan (01:06:50): And have you been geographically distributed throughout? Rob Collie (01:06:53): Yeah. It was really like 2015 was the first time that I realized I was bringing in the demand for work was exceeding my personal capacity to address it. And it was just me running the website and doing the trainings and doing the consulting up until that point, basically. And I knew that I didn't have time to train up another consultant that could do the work that I was doing, I needed to find someone who was basically ready today. And I knew that I wasn't going to be able to do that, if I was just like, "Let's just find someone in the vicinity of where I currently live." Rob Collie (01:07:30): So the very, very, very first candidates, the very, very first interviewing that we did as a company was remote. And the first few people to pass this interview, which again, was designed 100% from my experience interviewing program managers at Microsoft, and especially the fact that I've done it the wrong way for years and then I did it sort of the right way for the last third of my career. The first people to pass it were in all over the country. They were in Oregon, they were in Iowa, they were in Iowa, they were in Alabama, and I was in Ohio. Rob Collie (01:08:05): So it's actually something that's really interesting. And I'm almost a little bit bummed about the fact that COVID has rewired everybody this way. Because for a while, I think we'll still have this advantage for a long time in a way, but especially given the nature of the consulting industry that we're in, which is still very in person. When you can hire from any geography, you can afford to be a lot more selective. You just have a bigger denominator. If you want to hold a really, really high quality bar and clear it, you can do that, if you're not geocentric. So in a way, we were kind of forced into behaving optimally from the beginning. It wasn't some fiendish genius plan, like, "Oh, we will be geo distributed, and we will therefore get the best talent, and bahaha." It wasn't like that at all. It's just like, "I need a person and there's no way that I'm going to find one in Cleveland." And all followed from there. So it's really insane. Heck of a journey. Sid Jayadevan (01:09:09): It's an amazing success story. And sounds like you guys feel like you're just getting started. Rob Collie (01:09:16): And trust me, plenty of failures along the way. I found out somewhere along the way that I actually am not good at running a business. And it's like you find out you're not good at driving a boat and the way you found out is I just crashed it onto a reef. I did that. I almost killed my own baby at one point. And I had to realize that I needed to share the steering wheel. And so the guy whose podcast went live this week Kellan, he's the architect of almost all of these good things I've been talking about. My vision and the things that I wanted to have happen, never ever would have met reality without Kellan to bring them to life. Rob Collie (01:09:54): And he was one of the first people to pass the interview. I hired him as a consultant originally. I had no idea that I was hiring my other half at the time. It took a long time for me to come to terms with that. So hard road, lots of humbling, really humbling experiences. Well, guys, I'm sincerely grateful to be able to grab a couple hours of your time. Thanks for doing it. Miguel Llopis (01:10:16): Thanks. Sid Jayadevan (01:10:16): Thanks for having us. Announcer (01:10:18): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Podcast. Find out what the experts at P3 can do for your business. Go to powerpivotpro.com. Interested in becoming a guest on the show, email lukep@powerpivotpro.com. Have a data day.  

Hugh Millen is a former NFL quarterback and currently a television and radio sports analyst.  He's also a data aficionado, whose story is another great example of a unique path that a person with a keen interest in data has taken.  He's leveraged that data knowledge and used it to further his NFL career and he applies it daily in his analyst job.   Random References In This Episode: Teddy Roosevelt's Man In The Arena Speech The Pale Blue Dot   Episode Timeline: 3:10 - The humble Hugh Millen 12:40 - Hugh's data origin story heavily involves football and his data knowledge parlayed into big bucks 28:30 - The impact of data in sports and the parallels of Sports and Business analytics 57:20 - A discussion about the value of football in society yields some deep and philosophical tangents Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello, friends. I'll be honest, what sorts of stereotypes come to mind when I say the words, professional athlete. We'll up the ante and say, what about professional NFL football player? You probably don't think data nerd when you hear those phrases do you? Yet 10 years ago, when I was in Seattle on business visiting Microsoft, I went on this cloak and dagger side mission one night, drove out into the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. It was a very small town, with one stoplight, I parked my car in what was essentially like a logging bar, like a bar where vloggers would hang out and drink at night and that's when I met this week's guest, Hugh Millen. He walked into this joint with a gigantic laptop under his arm, and sat down with his back against the wall, so no one could see what was on his screen. Rob Collie (00:00:54): Then, he showed me what was the most amazing spreadsheet I have ever seen. I won't give away what was in that spreadsheet, but I will tell you, this was the first and last time that I've ever seen the arc tan, arctangent function used in the wild. He was the real deal. He was legitimately an NFL star in his day and he loves data and that's why we've been friends for more than a decade now. Whether you're into sports or not, whether you're into football or not, listening to the way his mind works and the conversation that we had about that domain, I think is still incredibly relevant to the things that we do in the business space, and so many times during this conversation, those parallels just kind of jumped off the page at me, I hope you get as much out of it as we did. Tom really enjoyed himself on this one in particular. So let's get into it. Announcer (00:01:48): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please. Announcer (00:01:52): This is the Raw Data by P3 podcast with your host, Rob Collie and your co host, Thomas LaRock. Find out what the experts at P3 can do for your business. Go to powerpivotpro.com. Raw Data by P3 is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:02:10): Welcome to the show. Hugh Millen, how are you today? Hugh Millen (00:02:14): I'm doing real well guys, how are you? Rob Collie (00:02:17): Fantastic. This has been sort of a dream of ours for a while to get you on this show and it's an honor to have you here. Seriously, I'm really, really pleased. Hugh Millen (00:02:24): Well, thank you. I'm flattered. You're obviously uneducated about my career because you wouldn't make those statements if you do, what a hack I have been through the bulk of my career but I'll take a nice compliment. Rob Collie (00:02:38): Yeah, I hear you, so not many people in the world can say that they have competed in anything at the absolute highest levels that the planet has to offer and you have. I love the humility about your career, but one of my favorite sayings, I don't know if you know this, I have repeated a sentence that you said to me years ago. I have repeated it a million times since then to other people. Hugh Millen (00:03:05): I didn't know that. Rob Collie (00:03:06): I don't know if it's a regular line for you or if you just ... I suspect it's one of your go to lines, but you said to me one time like, "Hey, you know, I might not have the best NFL career or whatever," but then you turn, you looked at me and said, "But you got to beat out an All American for your chance to suck." Hugh Millen (00:03:23): Yeah, right. Yeah, you got to beat out an All American in a first round draft pick to get the chance to suck and I've done all three. Thomas LaRock (00:03:32): That's awesome. Hugh Millen (00:03:33): Yeah, that's true. Rob Collie (00:03:34): That's an important ... the reason why I repeat that line to people is because like, I do, I run into people all the time, including myself who are ... People who are executing at whatever it is they do at a relatively high level or sometimes an extremely high level, and you're still going to hit adversity. It's not going to be peaches and cream. So, a lot of people, especially like in our line of work suffer with imposter syndrome. When they hit that adversity, even though that they're actually doing very well, right, they hit something and they hit a failure, they take it very personally and it's like invalidating of their whole narrative, their whole life story. You shouldn't be that way. That's when I tell them the story. It's like, "Look, essentially they have, in our world, they've beaten out the All American or the first round draft pick or whatever and now they've had their chance to suck," right? Okay, fine, but what do we do now, right? Hugh Millen (00:04:28): Sure. Right. Rob Collie (00:04:28): You got to have perspective and that balance perspective about your background is something that I have immense respect for. Hugh Millen (00:04:36): Well, thank you. Rob Collie (00:04:37): Most people, they tend to err on one side or the other. Most people will either say, I'm the greatest and I got screwed over or something, right? They'll do everything that they can to rationalize their great self narrative or they will positively trash themselves. It's hard to be in the middle. It's hard to have that perspective. It's hard to balance the two and so, this is one of those little nuggets of wisdom that I like to think that I go around harvesting and I've used that line so many times. Hugh Millen (00:05:08): Good. Good. Thank you. Rob Collie (00:05:10): I'm enriched. Hugh Millen (00:05:10): Yeah. Well, it's a little bit of wisdom. I think, I ... early on I had grown up in Seattle, the University of Washington was my favorite football team. They were the local team and they had played in Rose Bowls prior to me playing for them and in my junior year, we started off, we were eight and O. We beat some good teams. Michigan, for example, in the big house. If you're a college football fan, you kind of know that. They were ranked number two in the country. Anyways, we're ranked number one and then about a month later, I had a really bad first half, weather was a part of it but I just totally stunk and I got benched at halftime and I was getting booed in Husky Stadium, and it was so painful that driving home from the stadium, I pulled off into a Safeway parking lot, a grocery store parking lot and both my arms were folded over on my stomach, and I just was kind of like rocking back and forth. Hugh Millen (00:06:01): The pain was in my gut and at that time, one of the inspirational quotes for me was the Teddy Roosevelt, the Man in the Arena. Rob Collie (00:06:10): Yeah. Hugh Millen (00:06:11): I think it would apply to people in tech world and in all works. It's worth a look, if you can Google it. I don't have the script in front of me, I'd butcher it, so I don't even want to try but the essence of it was, there's few people, who are aspiring to do really great things but there are many people who want to be critics and it's really easy to be a critic or unfortunately, the Bible tells us about the seven deadly sins, pride and envy, particularly envy, I think most people, all of us were afflicted by that a little bit. So a lot of times when you're trying to write this killer code and do something, in whatever profession that you're doing, if you're trying to be a high achiever and really soar, and fly with the Eagles, there's somebody who sees you on the ladder above them and that makes them uneasy, and they want to grab your ankles and pull you down to their miserable level. I wish I didn't have to learn that lesson when I was 20. I don't know how it shaped me. Rob Collie (00:07:13): It's a hard thing at that young age in particular. Hugh Millen (00:07:16): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:07:16): Like you've had the experience of 80,000 people cheering for you, but you've also had the experience of 80,000 people booing you. Hugh Millen (00:07:23): Yeah, yeah. Rob Collie (00:07:24): That is intense. Hugh Millen (00:07:26): Yeah, it's tough. You got to be mentally strong and I think just through the adversity, I think for me, I walked on, I didn't get a scholarship until I earned it later, I had to go to a junior college, so it was a circuitous route, even to be a college football player, let alone to the NFL and I tell my kids now who are aspiring quarterbacks, I just said, "You know, looking back on it, I never got discouraged." Even through the elements that discouraged, I might say, "Okay, you tell me ..." and I'm not saying straight to the face but the evidence is that maybe I suck now but that's okay. I'm not going to suck tomorrow, metaphorically. Thomas LaRock (00:08:01): Yeah. Hugh Millen (00:08:01): I had this vision of, "Okay in 12 months or 18 months or whatever, I'm going to be a different player then and maybe you're right now." I had a coach in my high school, I was all league, led the league and everything, first team all league, kind of honorable mention in all state. So I was a decent high school player, far from any John Elway or aggressively recruited guy, but there was a school, Eastern Washington University, which is Big Sky division two. Not the Washington Huskies or Washington State Cougars that you may know who play in the Pac-12. I'm talking about Eastern Washington. The coach came out, spent the entire day at my high school watching the tape. When I met him after the afternoon, he'd been in there for six hours, he goes well ... he seemed to take glee, looking me right in the eye and say, "You're not the caliber of player we're looking for at Eastern Washington." Hugh Millen (00:08:49): He seemed to really like relish saying that to a 17 year old and just kind of twisting the knife. I remember just being ... it stung but I just like, "Okay, maybe you're right now, but you won't be." Anyway, I think we all kind of go through some challenges like that, if we're trying to ... I don't want to say cheap greatness but if you're trying to do something that's competitive and a real challenge, and really be rare in the world, I think that you're going to encounter a lot of those type of setbacks. Rob Collie (00:09:20): The Roosevelt thing, it starts off with, "It's not the critic who counts." It's not often that you get Hugh Millen and Brene Brown bingo, in the same conversation. I mean, that's a big theme of her work and it's something that I'm a big believer in, our whole family is a big believer in, like you're going to have naysayers, like our company's business model for instance, and I won't belabor the point. I've said it so many times on this show, but we're doing things right now that a number of people told us, respective people told us was impossible and we had to ignore that, to go do it but the criticism still weighed. I personally still carried those criticisms like I really ... it hurt in a way that people didn't believe, we've proven them wrong now. Hugh Millen (00:10:10): Sure. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:10:10): Okay, I'm not going to look back on this, with a different perspective than I had at the time, but you and I, we didn't cross paths because of the NFL. I didn't even make my flag football team in intramural college. I actually retired from intramural flag football in college, after a pick six. Hugh Millen (00:10:31): You threw the pick six? Rob Collie (00:10:32): I caught it. Hugh Millen (00:10:34): You went out on glory. Okay. Rob Collie (00:10:35): I caught it and I ran out and I just basically like kept running. It's like, leaving on a high note. Hugh Millen (00:10:41): You are Bo Jackson and the kingdom, right? Rob Collie (00:10:43): That's it, right? Up the tunnel and that was it. My teammates were, "You're just going to score pick six and retire?" I'm like, yeah. That's exactly what I'm going to do. Why would I spoil that? Hugh Millen (00:10:54): That's it. Well, your blessings were in other areas. Rob Collie (00:10:56): So we've known each other for about 10 years. Hugh Millen (00:10:58): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:10:59): Another thing that I've always enjoyed about knowing you is that we can take like a year off or even more sometimes without ever talking to one another, and then when we do start talking again, it's like we resume mid sentence. Hugh Millen (00:11:10): Yeah, good point. Yeah, and that's what happens with friends, right, is if you can do that, no, yeah, we made that connection, talking about data and you have a unique affinity to data and presentation of data and then also football, and you come out professionally from the data world and you have this interest in football. I come at it professionally from football who had an interest in data. So we kind of somehow met in the middle. Rob Collie (00:11:38): So you know that saying that all rappers want to be athletes and all athletes want to be rappers? Hugh Millen (00:11:44): Yes. Rob Collie (00:11:44): I want you to be the beginning of a new trend, where all nerds want to be athletes and all athletes want to be nerds. Can we make that a thing? Hugh Millen (00:11:53): I'm a self professed nerd and geek. I call myself that all the time on the sports radio that I do. I don't find it disparaging at all. I'm old enough, I can remember a world without Bill Gates. So nerds were thought to be just kind of interested in things that will never ... help the world or themselves and then all of a sudden, all the tech billionaires came around and nerds and geeks, they say, "Hang on a sec. That nerd might own his own submarine in about 10 years." Rob Collie (00:12:21): With or without missiles. Hugh Millen (00:12:22): Yeah, right. Rob Collie (00:12:23): Yeah, nerds are having a little bit of a moment. I'll give you that. I don't really think that the star athlete has really lost too much luster. Hugh Millen (00:12:32): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:12:32): I think still ... they both retain it. So this is a question I've never actually asked you. When was the first time you discovered your interest in data? What's your data origin story? Hugh Millen (00:12:44): Well, I think there was a couple of inflection points probably in that regard. When I was going through a contract negotiation, this would have been 1992 and I was collecting data, I was doing some of the legwork for my agent, Marvin Demoff was my agent at the time who had Dan Marino and John Elway, and he had a lot of high profile athletes, far more accomplished than me but at the time, we were trying to extract the highest contract in the history of the Patriots. So we had to kind of compare all the quarterbacks, the starting quarterbacks and this was back in Lotus 1-2-3. Rob Collie (00:13:21): That's okay. We had Mr. Excel on a few episodes back and even he started in Lotus 1-2-3. Hugh Millen (00:13:22): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:13:27): It's okay, we're beginning. Hugh Millen (00:13:28): Right, so it was lotus and ran a couple spreadsheets and a couple rudimentary formulas, and was a friend of mine and he was able to kind of manipulate this data and I kind of slotted myself at about the top of the fourth quadrant of quarterbacks. I mean, I wasn't trying to say, "Hey, look, give me Jim Kelly, Dan Marino money." I was down with the slap ease, but I thought it was pretty cool to be able to that on a home computer, right? I had a home computer, doing other things but I hadn't really got into data. So that would be one area where it kind of planted a seed like, "Hey, you need to acquaint yourself with the powers of a spreadsheet." Well, then once I got into Excel and started to discover its power, it was just so fascinating to me. I would say another point worth mentioning was, I had a job, it was really an avocation, discussing the University of Washington, the Huskies football team on the radio. Hugh Millen (00:14:25): There was a point where there was some day where, for whatever reason, as I kind of log the plays by hand, each play, of course, would be a record, right? I was logging the formation and the type of play and the defense and I made a comment, I'm going to butcher the exact details but it's pretty close, I'm going to get it pretty close. For whatever reason, I said, "When the Huskies were on the left hash ..." and this is me on the radio, when the Huskies are on the left hash and they threw an in breaking route to the widest receiver and so, there may have been another variable, but let's just say for the discussion, there was at least three variables. I said those three variables had to be precedent. I said, then the Husky quarterback, his name was Cody Pickett, at the time. I said Pickett had some astronomical success rate. He was ... I said something like that. He was nine for 11 for 175 yards and what have you. Hugh Millen (00:15:24): I said, but on all other passes, he was only 12 for 26 or something for 120. So I was able to, mentally just hit me that when those conditions were present, he have had this success, and then it might have been that day of practice or no later than next day. The quarterback coach from the Huskies, comes walking over to me and says, "Hey, tell me that stat you said on the radio about ..." I recited what ... so he was unaware of it and I had just kind of stumbled upon it by chance and I just realized that there's an interest there and at least some domains about the specificity of the data, that the data, it's laying out there before us and maybe to an observer ... maybe it would be like, staring at a chessboard, where you'd say, "Wait a minute, if you just make one move with your knight and another move with a bishop, you got checkmate." You could stare at that chessboard, and you don't see it. Hugh Millen (00:16:22): So I think data could be like that, where there's something that's really telling and meaningful to people but unless you have a means of crunching the data and extracting the data, then you might be oblivious to it, like somebody staring at a chessboard unaware of how close you are to success. Rob Collie (00:16:44): Yeah, there's two things in there that I want to call out. First of all, something that we say all the time in the business world, is that sooner or later, every individual is going to have a collision, a professional collision with the spreadsheet and at least 15 out of 16 people bounce off of that spreadsheet. You get the hell away from that thing but about one out of 16 at most, one out of 16 human beings, when they collide with the spreadsheet, they stick? Hugh Millen (00:17:17): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:17:17): You never know. We call it the data gene. The data gene is what determines whether you stick or bounce. Hugh Millen (00:17:22): Really. Rob Collie (00:17:23): If you have the data gene, you stick. Data gene is rare. It's not super rare but it's 5% or less'ish of the population and it cuts across every single demographic. Hugh Millen (00:17:35): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:17:35): I love that. I can't believe that I've never asked you when that collision happened for you, and it was in a 1992 contract negotiation. How fascinating. Hugh Millen (00:17:45): Yeah, right and there's been other things. As I learned it, I had some people that started to rely on me at the station. I'm just like, "Hey, we're running a contest, and we want to have people be able to predict college football games," but they can only do it once per week and they can't use the same team. So now we're getting 10,000 people that are texting in and there's this poor guy that was doing everything manually. Rob Collie (00:18:14): That sounds like Luke. Hugh Millen (00:18:17): He was just manually sorting and he was spending six hours a week, I'm not kidding. Rob Collie (00:18:22): At least. Hugh Millen (00:18:23): Yeah, right and I just said, I could take an hour and a half and write you an Excel program or Excel worksheet. program. Rob Collie (00:18:30): Yeah, a program. A program is a good word for it. Hugh Millen (00:18:32): A workbook, I guess would be the technical because it had several worksheets that all referenced each other. Rob Collie (00:18:38): Yeah. Hugh Millen (00:18:38): So there was about 10, 12 worksheets within the workbook. If you want to call it program, fine but I guess that would be the most technical way based on my own knowledge of the vernacular. Rob Collie (00:18:49): You're correct. Worksheet is the official term. One of the things we always try to highlight on this show is that a spreadsheet itself is an application, we think of Excel as an application but when you create a workbook, a worksheet, whatever, a spreadsheet, you're programming. Even formulas are a form of programming and that thing that you produce, you basically ... you built this guy an app. Hugh Millen (00:19:12): Yeah, well, whatever we call it, he was grateful to go from four hours, four to five hours a week down to about 10 minutes. They had to load the data. So I had set out a portion of a week worksheet that he could just dump the raw data and then all the other worksheets reference that. Actually, there was another one with golf. I did at least two or three applications for the radio station and I think Steve Balmer at one point even referenced that in one of his discussions. He was saying ... giving two or three examples of how Microsoft products help in all kinds of strange ways. He says, "Hey, this former NFL quarterback is writing spreadsheets to help a radio show execute their radio contests." I don't know, it's here I say I heard that he had said that. Rob Collie (00:20:02): It sounds consistent with the Balmer I know of. Hugh Millen (00:20:04): Basically, I've said it many times. I think Excel is the coolest spreadsheet on the planet. Thomas LaRock (00:20:09): I was going to say a few things. Hugh, wonderful to meet you. Hugh Millen (00:20:12): Yes, likewise. Thank you. Thomas LaRock (00:20:13): So glad you and Rob cross paths, so now you and I can cross paths. Although one thing I want to say is, as Patriots fan for many years. Hugh Millen (00:20:21): Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:20:21): People always question that. They're like, "Oh, you just like in this ..." I go, "No, no. No, no." I remember Rod Rust. I remember Hugh Millen. Hugh Millen (00:20:31): Okay. Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:20:31): When we logged in, you saw I had Tommy Hudson. Hugh Millen (00:20:33): Yeah. Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:20:34): This is my youth, Okay? Hugh Millen (00:20:36): Yeah. I got it. Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:20:36): Right? Hugh Millen (00:20:37): Sure. Thomas LaRock (00:20:38): So, it's an honor to be able to have this conversation with you. Hugh Millen (00:20:41): Likewise. Thank you. Thomas LaRock (00:20:41): Then, I do a little research and I find out you're a Husky and I'm like, "Well, everybody has to go school somewhere." Hugh Millen (00:20:48): Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:20:49): I did, my graduate school was Washington state. Hugh Millen (00:20:53): Okay, you're a Coug. Okay and where was your undergrad? Thomas LaRock (00:20:56): Merrimack College, north of Boston. Hugh Millen (00:20:58): Okay. Thomas LaRock (00:20:58): When you mentioned Eastern Washington. I'm like, "Oh, yeah, Cheney. I know where that is" Hugh Millen (00:21:02): Cheney, yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:21:02): No, problem, right? Hugh Millen (00:21:03): Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:21:03): Even having this conversation, I'm kind of getting some nostalgia. I'm like, "Ah, I remember all these places and things, but here's the thing I want to get to, is the stats, the level of let's say data in the NFL at that time because you just said, "Hey, I knew I could do this thing in Lotus 1-2-3 in order to leverage it for a contract negotiation," and I have this picture of you walking up to Billy Sullivan, with a spreadsheet and you show it to him and he's probably looking at it and go, what the hell is this thing? Hugh Millen (00:21:37): Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:21:37): What does it mean? I'm just wondering, so my first question, did you get the contract, and my second question is what was their reaction when you were using data to make the case at that time? Hugh Millen (00:21:50): I made the notebook and pass it on to the agent, because he was going to be doing the negotiation. So to me, I was obviously acting on my own behalf to try and help me. So, I don't know what their reaction was other than second hand and what my agent said is that we made a reasonable case out of it. So I ended up ... yeah, I get the highest contract in the history of the Patriots franchise and they had been around for 33 years. So I think on some level, we'll never know the variables, you can't isolate the variables. I don't know what contract I would have got without that, but presenting them some dat, and again, it wasn't like I was at the top of the league. I was, as I said, probably at about the 75th percentile, I was trying to clock in. So I was trying to be better. There's 28 teams, I was probably trying to be in the top ... barely the top 20. That's probably what I was trying to do. Yeah, it ended up working. Thomas LaRock (00:22:48): So I often say this, I don't mean to be disparaging in any way, but I tried to tell people I've been a fan for the Patriots for a long time and when we talk about that era, I remember the season. You guys went six and 10. I call into Ordway Show and I'm like, "Hey, patriots, they could have won 10 games. They should have at least had nine. They should be in the playoffs in Ordway." He was polite, I guess back then but he was like, "No, they're not that good." So the following year, there's a bit of a dip. Hugh Millen (00:23:18): Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:23:19): I think you were hurt a little bit as well and of course, Dick MacPherson. That's always a factor. There's the Dick MacPherson factor, but I tell people, without Hugh there is no Drew. Because that one season you had where there was the glimmer of hope that we had the town and the ability to do something when the Sullivans then had to start thinking about selling and everything new and then Parcells comes in. We hit that low spot with Rod and Dick and Parcells comes in and the first thing we do is get a chance to draft somebody to be a potential to be a top level, somebody who's just going to sell tickets. It was a reboot of an entire franchise after 35 years, and it was a fabulous ride. Hugh Millen (00:24:03): The 1990 team, that team had gone one and 15 and I was on the Falcons and played the last couple games, so I had some contract offers, I got nine contract offers, but every one of them, other than the Chargers where they said, hey, it's an open competition with three quarterbacks and the Patriots, it was an open competition with two, just me and Tommy Hodson. So they were giving me the best chance but they had been one and 15, the year before and in fact, the NFL Network, they do their top 10 best rivalries, top 10 rookie running backs. They do all these top 10 shows and they did the top 10 worst teams. So obviously, it's naturally the bottom 10 but the top 10 worst teams and the Patriots of 1990 were deemed by the NFL network to be the eighth worst team in the history of football. Hugh Millen (00:24:51): I mean, like there's like the Canton Bulldogs and all this stuff. I mean, we're talking about 100 years, Bill Belichick had offered me more money to go to the Browns than the Patriots had and he was the head coach of the Browns at the time, but I wasn't given an opportunity to compete for the starting position. So at one point, I was thinking between the Chargers they had, as I said, a three way competition, Patriots two. Dick MacPherson, as you said and guys, he was a legendary college coach at Syracuse, so he was used to recruiting. I was in the College Hall of Fame at some point. So now he's talking to me. He's trying to recruit me to a one and 15 football team from the year before. He knows that I'm considering some other teams, including the chargers, and I remember him saying, "Okay, you tell me why the Chargers are better for you than the Patriots and don't say the beach." Hugh Millen (00:25:46): He was right, that was my best chance. So for us to go six and 10 they were writing articles. Kevin Maddox for example, you know that name. I mean, he was writing ... That was the most exciting season in Foxborough history, just like all of our games were close. We beat the Bills, they were 11 and one and we lost some other games right down to the last minute. I think we had like four 4th quarter wins out of the six. So it was based on having been won in 15, the six and 10 was good and then the next year, yeah, I hurt myself in the first quarter of the first game. Seventh play of the season. Separated my shoulder. We went two and 14 and then everybody got it out of there. As you said, that was Parcells, he came in and as did Bledsoe and I was out. Thomas LaRock (00:26:27): So, also, all the things that we shared, not just the Washington History and Patriots but Dick MacPherson. I just laughed. I'm like, "That's right. He played for Dick MacPherson." You mentioned him as a recruiter. Dick MacPherson came to my high school, I was playing a basketball game, he was there to recruit, a visiting player by the name of Mark Chimera and he sat in the bleachers next to my grandfather, who they chatted each other up for the entire game. I just kept looking at the stands like, what are they talking to each other about? Who do they possibly have in common? Yeah, Dick MacPherson in my gym and I always laugh about it to this day and I think he was ... obviously he was still with Syracuse, but he was on his way out the door. He was trying to get mark before he went to Boston College, but he was on his way out the door heading to the Patriots, I think already. Hugh Millen (00:27:16): Well, I can say with sincerity, if you ask me, okay, the most beloved person I've ever known and it's okay, well, what does beloved mean. The highest number of people that could respond, that they view Dick MacPherson or anybody so affectionately, that they could describe it as they ... without knowing the person, they feel like they love the person, find some reasonable definition of beloved and it's quite possible that he's the most beloved person I've ever known. Now, Don James for whom I played in University of Washington, he's in the Hall of Fame as well and he was immensely respected, but he wasn't beloved like Dick MacPherson. I have great affection for the man, Dick MacPherson. I can't imagine anybody who was ever sideways with Dick MacPherson. Not much to do with data guys, but that's a trip down memory lane. Yeah, Rob Collie (00:28:07): I did want to get this in relatively early. If people who are listening, they're like, "Ah, are they turning our data podcast into sports talk retrospective?" No, it's certainly spicy, right? It's very interesting and we're going to season the conversation appropriately. One of the things that I want to bring front and center very early is, why are we so fascinated, why does sports analysis ... when it comes to data, why does sports come up so often and why is it relevant to talk about sports data and sports analytics, to a business person? Not everyone that listens to this podcast is a sports fan, but everyone listens to this podcast as a data fan in some form or another, right, in a professional sense. Why is it and I believe that it is, I believe that talking about sports analytics is actually an incredibly powerful sort of learning tool. Even if you're never going to perform sports analytics, if all you're going to be doing is business analytics. Rob Collie (00:29:10): First of all, the data is public. The data is public. The data is shared. There aren't many data sources that you can crunch on, that are both interesting and have relatively high stakes. There's a lot of money on the line, at least for the organizations involved. There's a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure to succeed, and data is public. Every last play of an NFL game or any football game for that matter is now recorded from 18 different camera angles is dissected every which way, like there's nothing ... on the surface anyway, there's nothing hidden. All the data is out there. It's like a freaking public domain. We don't have too many things like that. The number of COVID dashboards that have sprung up in our community over the last year. I mean, it's like there's almost more COVID dashboards than there are COVID cases. Rob Collie (00:30:02): I think it's the same thing, right? It's a public dataset, relatively public anyway, with consequences. If you've ever been interested in the COVID dashboard, you might as well be interested in the sports dashboard, even if you're not into sports, like I'm not into catching viruses either. Hugh Millen (00:30:16): Yeah. Imagine a sports world without statistics. Sports world without statistics, you never knew that Joe DiMaggio had a 56 game hitting spree. How do you even compare the completion percentage of the passer rating? What's Michael Jordan's scoring average? It's almost like you wouldn't even enjoy the entire world of sports. You referenced music earlier. Okay, I don't think you need statistics to enjoy music. If you like The Rolling Stones, now you might tabulate how many albums they have, or the Beatles or something or songs that made number one, but I don't think that that's central to the enjoyment of it, but I almost feel like, if you didn't have statistics, it would be far less interesting if you weren't aware of how the teams and how the players are doing and to that end, after an NFL game, for example, they have what's called an NFL game summary. They have very capable statisticians that are logging these plays. Hugh Millen (00:31:19): Obviously, there's an application there that's sorting out the statistics, within 12 minutes of the game being over, they have a 17 page game summary of all statistics. Rob Collie (00:31:32): Yeah. It's crazy. Hugh Millen (00:31:33): Almost an on ... play by summary there, but of the 17 pages on average, there's 12 or 13 of them are stats. So yeah, you're right, it's difficult to conceive of sports without statistics. Rob Collie (00:31:47): Well, when you think about it, and I only think about it now because of what you said, even who wins is a question of statistics. It's a number on a scoreboard. Hugh Millen (00:31:57): Right. Rob Collie (00:31:57): It determines who wins, right? Someone, somewhere decided that a field goal is worth three points and touchdowns is worth six and all of this, right? Those are coefficients. It's a it's a weighted average of your performance, right? If we decided that field goals were worth five, it changes the whole game. Hugh Millen (00:32:12): Yeah, yeah. Excellent point. I just think that being able to comment for me to comment on the radio, to find reflection, for example, we're out here in Seattle where Russell Wilson is an all pro level quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks. Most people think he's bound for the Hall of Fame. He had a really tough year in the second half of the year. So just yesterday, I was on the radio, so the end game is ... and this is kind of typical how I use data. I say, okay, I start with a question that can be asked in plain English, without any statistic. I want to know where the Seattle Seahawks is more aggressive in terms of their propensity to throw the football, were they more aggressive in the first half of the season, versus the second half of the season. Okay now, how do I determine a reasonable way to measure that? Hugh Millen (00:33:07): Well, it's easy to just take the entire data of all plays and say, "Okay, this is the run percentages. This is their past percentage, right?" Because every play is either a run or a pass so we have that aspect, but a lot of times teams when they're ahead, the better teams, they're trying to kill the clock, they're more likely to run or teams at the end of the second quarter, if you happen to have a drive at the end of the second quarter, you might have nine straight pass plays. Well, that can skew things. So there's these elements, so it was pretty crude but what I said was okay, I'm going to go the first and third quarters, because that eliminates the second and fourth quarter, the second quarter can have those two minutes situations that I described. Fourth quarter, if you're behind, you're going to throw it all the time, if you're ahead, you're far more likely to run. Hugh Millen (00:33:53): So I said, first and third quarter. Now, I also wanted to eliminate third down because third down is a down that, if it's third and long, you're more likely to throw it. If it's third in the yard, you're more likely to run it, whatever. So I want to eliminate third down. So really the neutral down, so I said let's go first and second down and then, let's go yards to gain between two and 10 because if I do that, I'm picking up all first and 10s and I'm picking up all second and two to 10s, so I'm eliminating second and 15s when you had a sack or penalty or something. So, it was a roughly crude way to do it. Well, as it turns out the Seahawks in the first half of the season, they were second in the NFL in terms of their pass propensity, pass-run ratio, Second only to the Kansas City Chiefs who were the world champions at the time. They're not the world champions now, but you get my point. Rob Collie (00:34:45): Yup. Hugh Millen (00:34:47): In the second half of this season, they fell to 18. So that's something that's meaningful enough that I can take that to the radio. It's just simple crunches. It's under three, four minutes. Three minutes, I can ascertain all this and then I can decide is that something that's compelling enough to present to a radio audience? Well, in my estimation, it was. Rob Collie (00:35:10): It sounds good to me. Yeah. Hugh Millen (00:35:11): Yeah, if you lay out a reasonable standard that would define what you're searching for, because when numbers interact, you get these rankings, right? You're going to be second place and 18th. Had it been ninth and 11th, I wouldn't have taken it to the radio but the numbers ... so you've got to think through, okay, feed these numbers that are binary in the equation and then try and glean some data that's meaningful. Rob Collie (00:35:36): So if you're listening, and you're not into football, let me kind of break that down for you a little bit. You just heard a human being who used to get paid millions of dollars to play football, go through an analysis where he compensates for and filters out all the external variables that would confuse the hypothesis, right, and dial out the situations. So basically, like we could sort of talk about ... you got down to the situations, you filter down to the situations where the Seahawks faced neutral situations. Situations where the external variables don't indicate strongly that they should do one thing or another. Hugh Millen (00:36:20): Correct. Rob Collie (00:36:21): In order to find out what they did when they sort of had a choice. Hugh Millen (00:36:24): Correct. That's exactly right. That's better stated, yup. Rob Collie (00:36:27): We call this ... for lack of a better term, we call this fair metrics at our company. The top level metrics for a business or a sports team, they sort of like appear at the bottom line, are so conflated, they're so confused with so many other external variables, that you can't use them to make decisions most of the time, right? You've got to do something like what you just did. You've got to develop the more fair metric, right? There are versions of this running around, I'm sure but we could try to trademark one now and call it like neutral situation tendency rank, dropped from second to 18th in terms of their decision making. Hugh Millen (00:37:04): Yeah. Now, if I'm going to confess and this is something that I'm assuming, if you're listening to this podcast, you have a keen interest in data. Now, I'm going to have to bring up a little topic that all of us who work in data have to confront, which is I also ran the data with all the variables I just described, and I ran it when the score was plus or minus eight points, meaning within a touchdown either way, because of touchdown two point conversion. Rob Collie (00:37:35): Yup. Hugh Millen (00:37:36): The data there was the Seahawks were number one in the first half of the season, but only fell to like, I don't have it in front of me, it's like number seven. So now, it doesn't sound like as drastic of a drop. Yeah, there's almost a moral dilemma to me because we all know that we can find ... if we're looking for a conclusion, we can scour the data enough and we can lock onto the one and say, "Aha, that's the one," now it's factual. Rob Collie (00:38:11): It is. Hugh Millen (00:38:12): I would never use false information, but is there an obligation we have morally to disclose the fact that hey ... and in fact, I will do that. I will say ... from time to time, I will just say, "Look, I thought I had this hypothesis, I ran the numbers and actually didn't pair out," and I will confess to that but there's other times where I kind of like, "Hey, I run the numbers. Yeah, it didn't really support my ..." and I'll rerun them in some other way that changes it. "Okay, I like that number. That's going to sound better on the radio." I would imagine that Rob, certainly, you've encountered that, where you ran the number, it didn't come up to the results you wanted and let me try and run it a different way, right? Rob Collie (00:38:59): Back in the day, we've even been fired for giving the conclusion to the client that they didn't want. It's like, we don't really have those kinds of clients anymore but nearly going, we did have a couple it, apparently hired us just to help support their original hypothesis but never told us that. Hugh Millen (00:39:17): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:39:17): Let's keep going on that exact example you talked about, I think this is both very interesting and also it reflects the integrity and the curiosity that I think you really need to bring to anything like this. So when you become more specific, and you're dialing out ... so what you're saying is like, in one analysis, I removed ... I controlled for essentially, some number of external factors and in that analysis, they dropped from second to 18th. Okay, but then I added an additional external factor that I controlled for, so I became even more specific and the Delta isn't as large in terms of their ranking drop there. Now, of course, at the same time, you've also reduced your sample size by filtering down further, you're now looking get fewer and fewer plays and I think it's in the book Fooled By Randomness that talks about this college professor in statistics, who starts every semester by challenging the entire class to like a duel. Rob Collie (00:40:13): It says okay, "We're going to randomly ..." and I won't know which 50% is which 50%, "We're going to randomly assign half the class to flip a coin 30 times and record the results factually," and the other half of the class gets to or has to fake it. They've got to write down 30 coin flips, as if it was fake. Hugh Millen (00:40:39): I know how you differentiate. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:40:41): Yeah and the class knows, obviously, who was who but he doesn't. Then, they all turn them in and he just very confidently goes through them, and puts them in the, "You were real, you were fake. You were real, you were fake," and just nails it overwhelmingly. The reason he can do this is because in reality, there's always going to be some really improbable sequence of consecutive heads or tails. It's going to happen, you're going to get five in a row, and a human being would never believe that, right? So when they're doing it, if they've got three or four in a row, if they've got even three in a row, they pretty quickly flip back to the other one, right? Hugh Millen (00:41:19): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:41:20): The point there is, is that as you get to smaller and smaller sample sizes, there's going to be something compelling. That jumps off the page or potentially anyway. You can't trust the small numbers, right? So, it might be that your theory ... I agree that like falling from second to 18th, that's a compelling narrative. First to seventh isn't so much, but at the same time ... Hugh Millen (00:41:45): If there's 32 teams, yeah. Rob Collie (00:41:47): It might be, that's a good point, right? People don't really necessarily know how many teams are there. Hugh Millen (00:41:49): Yeah, if there's like 500 teams then. Rob Collie (00:41:52): Yeah, it's definitely not. It might be that what you're discovering was still holding up really well. It's just that with a smaller sample size, you got the Fooled by Randomness thing sort of compensated the other way. Furthermore, there might be a huge difference between first and seventh. What if teams seven through 32 are all clustered like together in one clump of tendencies? Hugh Millen (00:42:15): Yes. Rob Collie (00:42:15): And there's a really sharp slope from one to six. It could still be a huge difference, right? Hugh Millen (00:42:22): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:42:23): Look at this, even this one thing you're talking about is so fascinating, like you can just like really just dive into it. Hugh Millen (00:42:31): Yeah, but then you got to be knowledgeable of your audience. Rob Collie (00:42:34): Yeah. Hugh Millen (00:42:35): And know that they can handle some statistics but you can't get too dry. It's got to be something that, for me to start citing statistics, it's got to be comprehensible and it's got to tell a real meaningful story. I've got to feel like I've accomplished something by presenting data. Rob Collie (00:42:57): Yeah. Hugh Millen (00:42:58): It's usually you're buttressing your argument, you mentioned that you ... the ever present availability of the statistics, if you take some quarterback, let's say whether it's Ryan Fitzpatrick or Josh Allen or Deshaun, Watson and I've just mentioned a guy who's close to average, and then two guys that are pretty damn good but not at the almost at the top of the NFL. I'm pretty confident that if I wanted to pick one of those quarterbacks, and I really wanted to steer it towards a narrative, I could come up with enough data and really compelling sounding data that would make those guys either ... for example, Josh Allen, quarterback of the Bills, I could probably come up and say, make an argument, he's as good as anybody in the NFL or I could probably find data, if I wanted to push the narrative that he's just average. He's dead middle. I could probably find data. Now, most people, would just say, "Hey, look, I've watched the guy play." Hugh Millen (00:44:02): "He's ... for this most recent years, he's in the top five," but you'd be surprised how compelling you could present a statistical encapsulation of guys and so data can be really powerful. Rob Collie (00:44:16): Yeah, I think NFL GMs are wise to that today, whether they're data savvy or not, they know that the data can be used to paint one story or the other, so they know that it's sort discounted if it comes from a slanted source, a potentially biased source, but in 1992 they were defenseless. Hugh Millen (00:44:33): Yes. It's like, what is this? What? Rob Collie (00:44:40): Give them the money. Hugh Millen (00:44:42): You know what's funny on the front page ... so the team never supposed to know that I did it, right? I took some clip art. Remember the clip art? Remember clip art? Remember now, this is 1992. So we got some clip art of like a referee holding his hands up like touchdown, like some subliminal message like, "Hey, as a sign of humility, you're going to get more touchdowns," which the statistics actually didn't bear that out but maybe the clip art would, right? I remember the agent kind of like ... he goes, "I don't know about the clip art," and he goes, "Ah, we'll just leave it in." It's like he had bigger fish to fry than me and he had bigger fish to fry than trying to take out the referee in his raised arms but 27 years old and you're new to computers or ... computer is in evolving stage, you do silly stuff like that, right? Rob Collie (00:45:26): They were defenseless. We're known some circles as the stick figure people of data. We use a lot of clip art. Tasteful, tasteful clip art Hugh Millen (00:45:36): Yeah, right. Good action. Well, yeah, we've come a long way. Rob Collie (00:45:42): When you're talking about, you've got to be careful to still be compelling to your audience, there's a parallel there in the business world as well. Think of it this way, you're one of the 5% of sports people, fans or industry figures, whatever 5% of people who are interested in sports, who have the data gene. So when you get on the air, you've got to be cognizant of that 95% that only have a certain amount of attention span for it, they're not as interested in it as you are and you can't make the mistake of thinking that everyone else is as interested in this stuff and is willing to kind of like Rainman it with you. Hugh Millen (00:46:20): Sure. Rob Collie (00:46:20): That you will and that's true in business. The 5%, people who are running around in business with the data gene, aren't typically running things. So not only are they outnumbered like 19 to one in their organizations, the people who outrank them tend to be in the 19. Even more than statistics would indicate. Hugh Millen (00:46:42): Sure. Rob Collie (00:46:43): So, we have to be relevant. We have to be digestible. We have to be actionable. All those things you talk about, that you go into when you're performing your analysis before you slide up to the microphone, that is 100% true in the business world as well and like, there are many, many, many stories of heck, even my own personal experience with this stuff, where I kind of overestimated how interested the audience was, and ended up kind of alienating them accidentally in the process, and therefore losing our opportunity to find something meaningful because like, they kind of became less interested in data as a result of me being a little tone deaf. I've learned a lot over the years, I don't think I'm nearly as likely to repeat that mistake, as I was like in the earliest days of this, but it's a road all of us have to walk. Hugh Millen (00:47:35): So what we don't want to do is try and impress the audience, by the fact, "Hey, look, I know how to manipulate data and I can write a spreadsheet with formulas that are three lines long." Well, we want to say what's the end game? The end game is the data should be illuminating and it should be like, the numbers supporting an argument that you can speak with words. Does that make sense? It's like, think of the SAT. You've got the verbal portion and the math portion, right? So in that analogy, we're making arguments that can be structured merely in words and then we bring in the math, and we try and make it as simple as possible to then augment the argument that we're making with the words only. Does that make sense? So, I could talk real fast on the radio and I could start seeing data and use some of the vernacular within Excel and confuse the hell out of people, right? Hugh Millen (00:48:37): Some people say, "Oh, boy, he sounds really smart. He lost me." That's not the end game. I am willing to have people say that I'm hard to understand in terms of the schemes that I'm presenting but I try all the time to really dumb it down. For example, in football, there's a defense called cover three. It's a three deep zone, that may or may not mean much to you. Then, what I'll do is say, think of it like this, think if you got four defensive lineman and rushing the quarterback. Okay, now we're down to seven guys. Now, think of like a baseball outfield, you've got the infielders, you got the third baseman, the shortstop, the second baseman the first baseman, because I know people in their minds eye. If they're listening to sports radio, they can do that. You can imagine okay, you're hovering over home plate and you're looking out at the baseball defense and then you've got the left field or the center field and right field. Hugh Millen (00:49:31): I said, a 3D zone defense is really similar to that. You got four guys underneath. They're like your infielder, they're the guys closest to the line scrimmage and then the three guys that are in the deep layer, they're like the outfield. Where's the vulnerability in baseball? Where do you get the big hits? Well, you hit him in the gap between the left fielder and the centerfielder and we have past routes that can kind of hit that area. We call them skinny post and deep in routes. Then there's also, you can hit it double down the line, okay, to the outside of the outfielders. We call those corner routes and comebacks and what have and those are the sidelines. So I'll take the time to stop and I'll describe something I'd figure that most people don't know about. Rob Collie (00:50:13): I love that. Hugh Millen (00:50:14): I'll try and describe it in a way where it's a cover too. Imagine if you were a soccer goalie, you're going to do what? You're going to just stand in the middle of the goalpost, right? Now imagine just for a second that the rules of soccer allowed us to have two goalies? Let's say Thomas, you and I are allowed to be the goalies. All right. Rob Collie (00:50:35): Can I jump in for a moment? Hugh Millen (00:50:36): Yeah, please. Rob Collie (00:50:37): If I come up on a soccer goal, I'm supposed to score and I see Hugh Millen and Tom standing there, I'm going to kick it at Tom every time. Hugh Millen (00:50:43): Yeah, go for Tom. Yeah, go for Tom. What's up with that Tom? You didn't deserve that. Okay, I'll say imagine in soccer, if they said for, let's say half of a game, that they're going to allow two goalies. Well, how would you and, Tom would stand. Well, logic would dictate that we'd stand in a way, we kind of dissect each half, right? So that if Rob had some killer thunder foot shot, right down the middle, right between us, he could beat us that way, or a killer thunder foot shot right next to the goal post. That's how we're going to space ourselves so that's where our vulnerability is going to be. Well, that's like a cover two defense. You got a safety on each half of the field and there is a vulnerability right down the middle and there's a vulnerability all the way deep on the sidelines. Hugh Millen (00:51:34): So, I'll constantly try and think of ways to describe things and then, use the data with ... in my mind, a lot of discernment whether it's comprehensible because I also have to think of this, I'm talking to people who are driving to their meeting or driving home and they're thinking about their day. They're not sitting in earnest, listening at the desk with nothing else going on, perhaps. So I got to take all of that into account, but getting back to the data portion of it, there's kind of a barometer that I run through on whether I'm going to present the data. Is it comprehensible and does it fulfill some objective of I'm trying to get from point A to point B. I'm trying to be persuasive. Usually, I'm trying to be persuasive. I'm giving you my take, and I'm trying to get you to agree with my take and I'm trying to give a strong take. So, if I'm introducing data, it's in an effort to have a stronger take, it's really what it is Rob Collie (00:52:35): That thing were used to sort of dumb down, what cover three is. Hugh Millen (00:52:39): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:52:40): I think that's it's just like, "Ah, that's doing God's work, in my opinion." Dumbing things down and getting through all the jargon is so valuable in any domain. I was just sitting here, I was listening to you, going like, "Oh my God, we should do a podcast called like football dumb down" or something like that. Hugh Millen (00:52:59): Yeah, yeah. Rob Collie (00:53:00): If you heard the story, it's actually an interview, where he's speaking at a dinner or something. Brett Favre talk about the Nickel Defense with Holmgren Hugh Millen (00:53:08): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:53:09): Have you heard that? Hugh Millen (00:53:10): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:53:10): He, Brett Favre was like three years into his NFL career and didn't know what a nickel defense was. I mean, it doesn't matter whether you know what a nickel defense is or not, it doesn't matter. Brett Favre didn't know, right? When he finally got, what was it like Ty Detmer to explain it to him. Hugh Millen (00:53:28): Yeah. Yeah, you got it. Rob Collie (00:53:29): Ty Detmer said the nickel defense is when like they take out a linebacker and put in another defensive back. Favre goes, "That's it? Who gives a shit?" Hugh Millen (00:53:38): Yeah, that's it. You got it exactly right. Yeah, so he make ... so they set the standards for DBs, you bring in one more guy defensive back that is and it makes the fifth, hence nickel, five, right? Rob Collie (00:53:51): It's like the old Chris Rock joke when he's saying like, "You can't even tell your kids anymore, not to smoke crack because the mayor of DC has smoked crack." He's like, "You can't smoke crack. What do you want to be when you grew up?" I could be mayor. How do you expect to succeed in football if you don't know the difference between a nickel defense and a standard defense? Well, I could be Brett Favre. Hugh Millen (00:54:17): Yeah. Well, Favre was an outlier in that regard, right? Let's underscore that point. He had so much talent that they could have put 15 guys out there and he still would have found a way to figure it out, that's a good option. Rob Collie (00:54:37): It's so awesome. Well, here's the thing, NFL, whether you're interested in it or not, it is a multi, multi, multi billion dollar industry. It's huge money. I think I'd rather live in a world where the NFL was less important. Even though I love the NFL, I love football and everything. I think I'd prefer a world whose priorities were a little bit more aligned with overall human thriving. Hugh Millen (00:55:03): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:55:03): I don't get to decide. So in the meantime, it is huge business. You can't really even think of a place where better decision making in terms of like team construction or team strategy, you can't really think of a place where there's more money at stake for success. It's not just for our entertainment, successful teams are really good business. Hugh Millen (00:55:27): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:55:28): This is something you and I have been ... you've been fascinated by this longer than I have, but that same industry that we just talked about that has tremendous resources and everything in the world possibly at stake, we just watched Tom Brady at age of like, is he like 60 yet. We just watched him win yet another Super Bowl with yet another team. Thomas LaRock (00:55:47): He is 43. Rob Collie (00:55:48): He's 43. Okay. I was just rounding him up to 60, and we're like one Drew Bledsoe injury away from having potentially never even known that he existed. Hugh Millen (00:56:01): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:56:01): This really highlights, despite all of the resources, despite the rise of analytics, and its popularity and how front and center it is now, I still don't think they've even begun to figure it out. Hugh Millen (00:56:13): No, they haven't, and that's borne out by how much they fail in assessing quarterbacks. As you mentioned, Brady, we all know he was a sixth round pick, 199th overall pick in the draft. So everybody failed on him, including the Patriots because if they had any idea how good he was, they certainly wouldn't have waited to the sixth round, and that's a part of where I'm fascinated, and Rob, where you and I have been talking and I've had to put this project on hiatus, because I've been coaching my kids, but my youngest is now a senior in high school. So I'm going to divert my attention to a project that you and I have been discussing for a long time, like the challenge, "Hey, is there a way to scout either college quarterbacks or even NFL quarterbacks, possibly high school quarterbacks? Hugh Millen (00:56:58): Is there a way to crunch enough data that we can have any kind of predictive value as to their success," because if that can happen, then you can literally write your own check because as you mentioned, it's such a billion dollar industry and quarterback is the hub of the wheel for any football team. We'll see how that plays out. I did want to respond to what you said about football and the value that it has, and I agree with everything you said, but the way I kind of view it is this and my favorite movie of all time is, "It's A Wonderful Life." Rob Collie (00:57:34): I was going to guess Pulp Fiction, but very close. Hugh Millen (00:57:37): Not close and there's so many great scenes and themes in that. Remember, George Bailey, Jimmy Stewart's character. There's a point where he's complaining to his father and I'm going to butcher this but hopefully I get enough of the details, right? His father runs a mom and pop hardware store at some point, George Bailey sitting down at the dining room table, and he's saying, "Hey, I want to do big things. I want to go build skyscrapers. I want to travel the world, what have you. I don't want to sit back in little old Beaver Falls, this little town and see if we can make an extra two cents on a length of pipe," I think is one of the lines, right? Just the routine mundane aspects of running a hardware store. So, his father just kind of very poignantly just says, "All the people here, they do the living and dying in this community and is it too much to ask that they could have their own fireplace and their own roof as they go about their mundane lives?" Hugh Millen (00:58:31): I put myself in that, by the way. Most of us aren't going to make a huge impact in the world and you know, how I can prove that, tell me the first names of your eight great grandparents? Rob Collie (00:58:45): Yeah, no chance. Hold on. Tom might have it. Thomas LaRock (00:58:49): I did a lot of genealogy. You had me stumped now, but I'll tell you what, you gave me 10 or 15 minutes? Hugh Millen (00:58:56): Did you get it? Thomas LaRock (00:58:56): I think I could? Hugh Millen (00:58:57): Well, then you're in the minority? Thomas LaRock (00:58:58): Yeah, only because I spent a lot of time on genealogy, a lot of that. Hugh Millen (00:59:01): Okay. So even if you're one of the few that could hit your eight great grandparents, okay, now tell me your 16 great, great grandparents. My point is just a couple generations down the line, your descendants aren't even going to know your name. That's right, for over 99% ... They're not even going to know your name and guess what you might leave pictures to them, and they're going to throw them out, because they're going to look at your picture and they're not going to know who you are and even if you wrote, "Hey, Rob 2017," that's not going to mean anything and your descendants are going to throw your photos out and they're not going to remember your name, and that's true for well over 99% of us. We're just going to live in and breathe and die and not make an impact. Was it too much to ask that people could be excited about a Sunday afternoon game, once a week? Rob Collie (00:59:53): Yeah. Hugh Millen (00:59:54): So that entertainment, right, wrong or indifferent, whether or not the NFL has captivated America, the fact is, depending on how you want to find it, for a substantial percentage of people it does and it's something that as they're going to work, whether it's a white collar job or a blue collar job, they're looking forward to Sunday at 1:00 and for those people, and not everybody, there's a good portion of the population that couldn't care less but ... and maybe have other interests. Maybe they can't wait for the opera and if they can't wait for the opera, God bless them and then I hope the opera fulfills, but there's got to be something, why do we have taxes for parks? We can do something other with that money but we should be able to go to the park and throw a Frisbee and let our kid slide down a slide, right? Hugh Millen (01:00:38): I mean, a park should be nearby and we're going to live and die and breathe and have our great grandkids forget our first name at least we could have a park to go to and have the Steelers to root for on Sunday. Rob Collie (01:00:53): I mean, count me amongst the people, that an NFL red zone seven hours of commercial free football coverage, the countdown music. I actually am like, viscerally excited, watching that thing count down like the last five or six seconds before it kicks off. Hugh Millen (01:01:09): Got it. Bless you. Yeah. Rob Collie (01:01:10): I mean, it's like Christmas morning, in a way. I'm in. Hugh Millen (01:01:14): Well, I saw this newscast, there's some lobster fest in Marysville or something, whatever. Slow summer day, so they actually had a camera out there, and this old gal, she must have been in her 90s. She got this big smile, they asked him how the lobster is. She goes ... they're always talking about how food that's good for your body, what's the nutrients, what's good for your body? She goes, "Sometimes you just have to have food for your soul and lobster is my soul food." I thought, "Wow, that's just great wisdom." So you should have a soul activity. Hey, you look forward to that. It's good for your soul. It makes you feel like you're living a more honest, I won't say energized or fulfilled or whatever, but it's a more interesting life. It's a more appealing life because you have that. So if that's football or whatever it is for you, painting, piano. I just think that there's endeavors like that. Most professions aren't North Korea nuclear politics. Rob Collie (01:02:14): That's true. That's true. Hugh Millen (01:02:16): Or most diversions, I should say. The people that are providing that for us. Maddie Damon, when he makes a movie. Thomas, right? People in Boston call him Maddie, right? Is he changing the world? Now, his great grandkids may remember his first name. Rob Collie (01:02:30): Yeah. He's the one. Hugh Millen (01:02:31): He's the one. Rob Collie (01:02:32): Generations later everyone claims to be related to him, whether they were or not. Hugh Millen (01:02:36): Right. Rob Collie (01:02:36): So I have a personal story that underlines in business, data is used to test or displace hunches. Decisions that have been made because of historical tradition and even those sports, at the highest levels have access to everything. They're still I think, heavily, heavily, heavily influenced, especially football. Especially American football is heavily influenced by traditional thinking, gut instinct. So I have a cousin who, unlike me, is incredibly athletic. He can stand with his weight evenly placed on both feet, with his chest facing me and throw a football farther than I can with a running start, turning sideways. Yet, whenever we talk, he'll constantly like ... he's so humble about all of this, right? He's like, "No, no, no. You're like, almost as good at all of these things as I am and I am not." He has access to all of the same information I have and he knows better. Rob Collie (01:03:39): He knows that we're not really the same species, but he's still really humble about it. He's always like that. Then one day, I asked him because he'd been a walk on receiver for some Urban Meyer's teams at Florida, and I asked one day. I'm like, "Hey, what is it that really separates you, Brandon, who was sixth string, seventh string, never really saw the field, from someone like Riley Cooper, who was out there as a starter?" I was expecting to get some sort of like, reasonable answer about like, "Well, he's just a hair quicker on a turn or he's a hair quicker in a decision that he has to make," or something like that, right? I was literally looking for that differentiator and he said, the only difference between me and someone like Riley Cooper is opportunity. That's it. It was such a surprise to hear this answer from him because again, he's so humble about this all the time, right? Rob Collie (01:04:30): So it really stood out at me. Riley Cooper was a highly touted recruit. The coaching staff was invested. They felt pot committed and you see this everywhere. This is why Brady can sit the bench behind Bledsoe. An ex NFL player recently ... I very rarely see these sorts of things but this one happened to come by, a tweet from Martellus Bennett. He went on this actual like series, it was a thread of tweets. One of them was like, "You know those coaches that you admire, half of them are idiots." Hugh Millen (01:05:02): Yeah. That's true. Rob Collie (01:05:05): You got all this analytics and all this horsepower and all this incentive on one hand. All this pressure to break these bad habits and yet at the center of everything, are these human beings with these bad habits, who are in charge? I still think that some of the biggest mysteries ... and this is just fascinating, right? Some of the big Just mysteries about talent evaluation or about strategy or whatever, have yet to actually happen. Some of these biggest revolutions in it have yet to happen, because it's still ... Again, it's that human element, right? Hugh Millen (01:05:40): Yeah. Well, I think that the example you cite, you could also talk about Kurt Warner, who was the fourth quarterback in the Packers training camp, where they had Brett Favre as we aforementioned. Mark Brunell was the second. You have Ty Detmer was the third and Kurt Warner. Think about Ted Bevvy and Holmgren this is a common story. They're at a scrimmage and Kurt Warner, he had been a box boy at a supermarket. His crew is floundering while he gets in this camp, there's a scrimmage. At the end of the scrimmage, they're playing another team in a scrimmage, not a preseason game but a scrimmage and said, "All right, Kurt, your turn to get the reps," and he turned it down. He said, "I'm not ready." Holmgren is like, "You don't understand this. You got to get in there, and you're going to get four or five plays here. This is ..." and he didn't go in and of course, he got cut and now, he's in the Hall of Fame Rob Collie (01:06:34): In a subsequent year when Trent Green got hurt in the preseason. Dick Vermeil, the coach is on TV crying about their season being ruined, at the beginning of the year before it even gets started. He's like so disappointed for his team and all of that. Hugh Millen (01:06:51): You could argue that he was crying because he felt bad for Trent Green Rob Collie (01:06:55): For Trent Green. Okay. All right. Hugh Millen (01:06:57): Because he's a crier. Thomas LaRock (01:06:58): That's why he was crying. Rob Collie (01:06:58): Come on, Hugh. Don't let the facts get in the way of the story. Just to bring that story home for people who aren't football fans, right? That happened, and the aforementioned Kurt Warner, they have to turn to Kurt, the unknown Kurt. They've got to settle for the unknown Kurt Warner and they go on, like a historic tear and win the Super Bowl. Hugh Millen (01:07:17): Yeah, that very year. Yeah. I mean, it's ... if there's ever two guys worthy of making a movie that had played in the NFL, one would be Pat Tillman, who was an Arizona Cardinals safety and he chose to go into the Special Forces and he was killed, walked away from $35 million to go be Army Ranger or whatever he was. Rob Collie (01:07:36): I know, just amazing. Hugh Millen (01:07:37): Right, and then the other would be Kurt Warner, because it's the most extraordinary rags to riches story of all time, even for me, I get nightmares about once every two months. I played 11 years and my last conversation I had, Jim Fassel was the head coach of the Giants and he called me and he was on his cell phone. He's driving. He had been the quarterback coach and office coordinator at the Denver Broncos when I had been with Denver. So he knew me and he says, "Hey, you want to come out and be Kerry Collins' back up?" I was like, "I'm tired of bouncing around or whatever." So, in a technical sense, I said no, the last conversation I had, I said no. Now, I'm haunted. I wish I would have played a few more years. Like I said, every couple months, I have a dream that I ... I had this opportunity to get 12 or 13 or 14, which if I had to live my career again, I would do that because I got the rest of my life to not play football, right? Hugh Millen (01:08:30): So I'm always like, I could have had 14 years but I also look back and I piecemeal my career through and I like wait a minute, my career might have only lasted three years because if I didn't do this at that time, I would have been out and then there's another point a year or two almost every single year, my career is bouncing on the blade of the knife, so I guess the perspective is that, I should be grateful for what I have and I am. It's human nature, right? I always say this, Unless you were the single most privileged person in the world which to me would be like the son of some oil Sheik and his dad is worth 60 billion and he's got 120 foot boats and Bentley cars and helicopters and- Rob Collie (01:09:18): 747s with pools in them. Hugh Millen (01:09:20): Yeah, yeah, exactly. If you somehow, somebody, you were tasked to say, "Find me the most privileged person in the entire world out of eight billion population," or you're the single most oppressed person. Think of like the most oppressed ... I don't know, if he's in a North Korea prison camp. Maybe it's some kid in India living in a landfill. Those are the two extremes. Everybody else is in the middle so that you can either look ahead of you and say, "Man, why can't I be like him," or you can look below you and be grateful that you have it better than them. It's all just, what group of people do you want to look at? So there's only two unique people in that discussion and we ain't one of them. Thomas LaRock (01:10:05): Briefly that I was going to mention ... I don't know why, but earlier today I was thinking to myself, about how NFL drafts, everybody gets it wrong, right? So you would think in the first round 32 teams pick, that's their number one choice. That should be the best player in the team in the next year or two. They should be all pros. How many of those first rounders become all pros? They're just so wrong about so many people. You guys, you want to talk about predicting quarterback and I started thinking about it, and you touched upon this right? So why do we have Tom Brady because of one incidence, right? Mo Lewis, Marvin Lewis almost kills Drew Bledsoe and for that we have Tom Brady and it comes back to where ... when people talk about you just get lucky, you got lucky here? No, no luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Thomas LaRock (01:10:53): So whatever you guys pulled together, and I'd love to help you and be a part of it, I've been trying to do a lot more machine learning, predictive analytics and that's the thing that you have to factor. It's not just the talent they have. It's their ability to prepare, and will they be ready for the opportunity. So that's why you have situations where a guy like Eli says, "I ain't going to San Diego, I need to go somewhere else. San Diego is not the right opportunity for me." Unless you have that factored in somehow ... I mean, right now on Kaggle, there's a competition they do every year. It's called March Machine Learning Madness. So you're supposed to build a model based upon all the previous NCAA years to factor and come up with who rightfully should win and then apply that model to the upcoming tournament. Thomas LaRock (01:11:40): I'm like, "Yeah, but what about time zones. You got a team that travels East and has to play at noon, which is really 9 AM for them on a Thursday. That's a huge disadvantage. I don't care what their seat is." That's why you have a thing where Holy Cross almost be ... I forget who it was Kansas or something, right? There's so many factors to this equation, a simple equation. Luck is when preparation meets opportunity. Hugh Millen (01:12:03): Yeah, but for those of us who are interested in data, in college football, there was a period where the computers were part of the discernment of who was winning national championships, right? When people say that computers as if computers are just orbiting around Mars, just kicking out data, right? It's obviously ... it's whatever we feed that in, a sign is important. So what you're saying is that that needs to be factored in the algorithms, right? That you're playing off the ... but at some point, I think those of us who have any interest in data, we have to feel like there's something to get back to the Tom Brady. At the very moment of draft day, let's just use it, May 15th, 2000, all you had is what Tom Brady had done in his life. We can agree with that, right? Everything that we could apply about ... relevant about Tom Brady had to have occurred up to that date. Hugh Millen (01:13:02): So what had he done in any way, is there anything that he had done ... For example, if you could input every conceivable data point, "Okay, this is a guy that ... he ate oatmeal, all through childhood instead of Froot Loops." I mean, if you could have every conceivable variable, is there anything we were interested in data, that we could have put into an application that could have predicted that? I have a very fuzzy vision of the following. They say, what would be the obvious thing that people missed about Brady? Well, he had this penchant for making comebacks in college when he was at Michigan, and he had a bowl game against Alabama, where he had four touchdown pass and he brought them back from two touchdowns back on two different occasions in that bowl game against Alabama. Hugh Millen (01:13:58): They said, "Well, that's exactly like Joe Montana." Joe Montana was a third round pick and he had this comeback against Texas, in the Cotton Bowl. The chicken soup game if you're a big fan, because he had the flu. So maybe you start to crystallize on that, where you say, "Okay, those who have a pension for having those type of comebacks, do they have a higher likelihood of being a star quarterback?" Well, regrettably, I'm sure that what we'd find is that there was a lot of guys who had a comeback or two, and then you drafted them and then they didn't do anything. So what is it? Is there something that we could have identified, that would have said, "Hey, this thing is really spiking. Our application is spiking. Our application is telling us that while you would think that Tom Brady, the future six round pick that he's got like a 2% chance of ever doing anything, this computer is actually just going haywire and saying that's actually more like an 82% chance, that he's going to do something. Hugh Millen (01:15:04): I just use pretty extreme numbers but what if it went from 2% to 32%. Now, he's not a sixth round pick, maybe and some people ... maybe he's a third round pick. There's one thing data can tell us after the fact but that whole realm of can you ... you guys are in the business, you use the right term but just a predictive component of that if we can get into that, now, all of a sudden we're the nerds with the submarines. Thomas LaRock (01:15:32): I want to suck right now. My God. Hugh Millen (01:15:35): Yeah, you want a submarine. If you want a submarine, how about this, you go tell Bob Kraft who's the next Tom Brady. He'll buy you a submarine? Thomas LaRock (01:15:42): Actually, if I know Bob, I think he buys everything in pairs, right? He's got the two jets. I think you'll get two submarines, yeah. Hugh Millen (01:15:49): Yeah. Well, he'll give you one. Thomas LaRock (01:15:51): Before we sign off, I just wanted to show this the genealogy sheet. So I knew four of the names. Hugh Millen (01:15:56): You knew four, four of the eight. Thomas LaRock (01:15:59): So here's what's funny, right, is I've got all eight because I spoke with my grandparents while they were still alive and so I recorded their names and then I was trying to do research. I only have six of the 16 after that. I can't trace my history, like you say, it's forgotten. I can't even find it. It's completely lost. Hugh Millen (01:16:17): Or, you never knew it. Yeah, but the point in saying that is pretty humbling like you guys know the blue dot, the Hubble telescope ... that wouldn't have been the Hubble. Thomas LaRock (01:16:27): Pale blue dot. Hugh Millen (01:16:27): The pale blue dot, right? That wouldn't have been the Hobble. There was some photo of Earth taken from halfway across the universe and it's this little ... and you think of everything that's ever transpired. It's all taken place on that dot. Thomas LaRock (01:16:39): Everybody who lived, everybody who's died. Hugh Millen (01:16:41): So it's humbling and I think that thinking about all the things we worry about or whatever, to think that in two generations or no more than three, our descendants aren't even going to know our name. Rob Collie (01:16:54): Those are our descendants. Hugh Millen (01:16:55): Those are our descendants. Yeah, they have our blood in ... Yeah. Rob Collie (01:17:00): Yeah. Hugh Millen (01:17:00): Yeah, our descendants. Rob Collie (01:17:01): Not to mention everyone else. Hugh Millen (01:17:03): Yeah, not to- Rob Collie (01:17:03): Really doesn't give a shit. Hugh Millen (01:17:04): Yeah, yeah. Yeah. People who owe their existence to us aren't even going to know our names within a couple generations. It's astounding. Thomas LaRock (01:17:13): What I just read, I read a quote this week that basically said, "Just remember, no one here gets out alive." Rob Collie (01:17:19): Yeah. Existentialism with Hugh Millen. Hugh Millen (01:17:23): Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we've just kind of circumnavigated and barely touched on data. Rob Collie (01:17:29): This is pretty typical. I think we probably got more into data on this conversation than on average. Thomas LaRock (01:17:35): Look, if we have to refund listeners' money, we will. Rob Collie (01:17:38): We'll give them back 10X what they paid. Thomas LaRock (01:17:40): Yeah, 10X Hugh Millen (01:17:41): At least, right? Rob Collie (01:17:42): Yeah, this was great. I really, really, really enjoyed this. Hugh Millen (01:17:46): Likewise. Announcer (01:17:47): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 podcast. Find out what the experts at P3 can do for your business. Go to powerpivotpro.com. Interested in becoming a guest on the show? Email lukep@powerpivotpro.com. Have a data day!

Get to know the C-Suite of P3 as we welcome Kellan Danielson to the show!  He's President and COO at P3 and is responsible for the development of so many of the essential inner workings that have allowed P3 to grow as successful as it has.  His journey from humble introverted data and business intelligence enthusiast to humble company President is wonderful, and his business acumen is unmatched! Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Hello friends, we're going to do something a little bit different today. Our guest is Kellan Danielson, President and COO here at P3, my business partner and the person I like to joke about as he and I combined make one good leader. This session took on a bit of a retrospective journey kind of feel. Today, our company P3, we really feel like we have it figured out. And that's an unusual thing for me to say, given myself deprecating nature. But I think it's a part of having been on this journey, and we've spent so many years figuring it out, so many years solving puzzles, so many years cracking the riddle that is our business model that today it doesn't really feel arrogant when I say that I think we've really solved it. But it was a hard road and it's one that Kellan and I traveled together over the last six plus years. And so a big part of what we talk about in this podcast is that journey, that road that we were on, the challenges that we faced and how we adapted. Rob Collie (00:00:56): It's been a technical journey, it's been a business journey, but it's also been an intensely emotional and personal journey. I'm insanely grateful that Kellan and I crossed paths and teamed up. It just wouldn't have worked probably with anyone else. There's a very Jerry Maguire, you complete me sort of feeling here. And I do get a little bit emotional mushy at a couple of points in our conversation. I'm a little too close to this story, of course, and so it's hard for me to tell whether this will be one of our more popular episodes or one of our less popular episodes. We'll find out, won't we? I'm really curious to find out actually. So let's get into it. Announcer (00:01:35): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention, please. Announcer (00:01:39): This is the Raw Data By P3 Podcast with your host, Rob Collie. Find out what the experts at P3 can do for your business. Go to powerpivotpro.com. Raw Data By P3 is data with a human element. Rob Collie (00:01:55): Welcome to the show, Kellan Danielson. Kellan Danielson (00:01:59): Thanks for having me. Rob Collie (00:02:01): Yeah. You're so thankful. This is the thing you're going to look forward to the most for like a week. I'm sure of it. Actually I was going to say, thank you for being a good sport and willing to join us. This is a little bit different. You and I work together all the time. Normally on these shows we're connecting with someone we've never met before or reconnecting with someone from the past. So we work together all the time. We almost need to explain to people our own history. Let's start here. You were one of the first two or three people to pass what we now call the interview of death. Kellan Danielson (00:02:41): That's right. Rob Collie (00:02:42): And at the time I was "just" looking for people who could do the job of consulting in the Power BI space and could do it as well as I could or better without a lot of coaching, without any coaching. I had no idea that I was going to be getting also the future president and COO of this company. It's a very interesting journey. Do you remember how you felt at the time when you were doing that test? There's this weirdo on the internet emailing you a DAX riddle essentially. Can you put yourself back in that place? Kellan Danielson (00:03:23): Yeah. I think it was with stages because what you needed at the time was evolving. Initially I think it was more a like moonlight kind of a gig, which I was very into because what I was doing at Columbia Sportswear, I was just getting very good at it so it didn't take as much time. So I was like, "Well, I want more of a challenge." It was really all about the challenge. I want to help more people instead of less, I guess. But this is the same thing we talk about with new hires too. It's like, let's take them out of positions of unappreciated employees and put them in places of, not authority necessarily, but trusted advisors with clients that almost implicitly trust what they're saying because they are trustworthy and experts in it. Kellan Danielson (00:04:10): And some people gave me that kind of respect at Columbia. Some people didn't. I have no ill will towards Columbia at all, but I wanted more of it. I wanted more of that kind of challenge, that kind of respect. And so moonlighting seemed like a good... I didn't know if I'd get the job or whatever, but it was like staged. And the stages happened, I think pretty quickly, at least in retrospect. I mean, I'm still today trying to slow my heart rate down because there's been so much change in the last four years. Probably so much change that... Actually, I have a good analogy. What I say when somebody comes into this job as a principal consultant, let's say, they learn more as a principal consultant in the first six months than they do in their whole entire career. Kellan Danielson (00:04:56): I mean, they're going around the country talking to every single industry and vertical and department and various levels of an organization. There's just no substitute for this kind of work in the real cubicle world in a single company. Anyway, so that first six months was just a wild ride and then your guys'... but time PowerPivotPro, P3 needs changed. And makes sense because earlier on, I think you thought this change might come quicker and that's what's happened over the years too. It's like we hit these little step changes and I think that's what occurred. That's why I'm talking about these stages that I went through. First was moonlighting challenge, blah, blah, blah. And then the second was like, oh, maybe I should just do this all the time. Kellan Danielson (00:05:47): And then that was a big one for me when I was taking that diabolical test, I got up the moonlighting thing and was like, that wasn't an automatic full-time thing. It was like, okay, well, I have a really comfortable 9:00 to 5:00 respected job, should I take this leap? And at the time I remember doing Excel work for my own budget, for my own finances. How much can I afford to lose? Rob Collie (00:06:16): Another refrain on this podcast, only bet as much as you can afford to win. We're going to someday need to have the originator of that saying on the show. Scott [Suncresty 00:06:29]. We'll give him some time. Kellan Danielson (00:06:32): No, he'd be a good guest for sure. Rob Collie (00:06:33): You've done a lot of things. You have had a lot of jobs. Not Kevin Overstreet number of jobs, but some fractional number of Overstreets. You're on the Overstreet scale. Kellan Danielson (00:06:43): I think I've had average nowadays. What I struggle with is, I tend to get bored if it's not challenging. I want to keep challenging myself. A lot of times that means trying new things. So over the years, probably in the last decade, I try to do less of that just because I have a family and people rely on me and things like that. But before P3, it was Columbia Sportswear more like an analyst planner. It would be more like global planning. I mean, I wasn't a demand planner or supply planner. I was helping all of them come up with the right forecast, aggregate threat information, a lot of sales reporting, selling type stuff. A lot of data, essentially data from everywhere. There was no department at that time other than FP&A and FP&A really stopped at a certain level of detail that they call the category like sportswear or outerwear, things like that, that no other department at Columbia focused on Skew almost like the UPC level where is actual product around the world? Where is it selling? Where is it located? How long we've been storing it? All that stuff. Kellan Danielson (00:07:56): So that's a lot of data, and Power Pivot and just Tabular actually was same kind of thing. But it was so much data that Tabular was the solution to Columbia's problems. They just fought it every step of the way and I just kept saying, "No, we're going to keep going." And eventually it was done and it was just very cubed and they could report however they wanted; Excel, Power BI, Power Pivot and Excel, just PivotTables by themselves. I mean, there was analysts all over the company that I didn't even know that were using these models. And that was some of the benefit of it. The CEO, Tim Boyle benefited from those. He probably doesn't know, probably doesn't care but he would get those reports a lot quicker and more accurate and updates however often he wanted them. And then before Columbia, I was in distribution and warehousing. Rob Collie (00:08:55): You did some stints over in the United Kingdom, right? Kellan Danielson (00:08:58): Yeah. I was the, maybe a blend of a warehouse manager and a office manager, because a lot of the stuff I was doing was warehouse performance, distribution metrics, P&L management. So it was like a blend and we would implement new warehouses, and that's what you're talking about with the UK. When in London I was there for like a month, because there was an operation that went sideways and they weren't getting stuff out. So I was just at my laptop for a month. I still remember I was working 90 to 100 hours a week. It was brutal. Rob Collie (00:09:36): They sent the Kellan. They sent the fixer. Kellan Danielson (00:09:38): And it wasn't just me. There was a few other people there too that were... I was out there on the floor packing stuff sometimes. I wasn't just on the computer. Rob Collie (00:09:45): Yeah. This is all just your training montage in the movie. This is all preparation for what you had to do at P3. Kellan Danielson (00:09:56): I share this with my dad too. Actually my dad was at that same company. We just did some work for them this week, I think. And I share this kind of trait where I don't need to be sitting in the seat. I'm happy to go out. Let's make the numbers better by action. Put me in, coach. I like to be the player coach. I struggle with people to have this issue, I can get over it. But I struggle with where it's like they're almost too good for menial task. And that's funny because I like automation. Rob Collie (00:10:29): Yeah, you do. You love it. Kellan Danielson (00:10:31): But also I recognize the value of menial tasks. Sometimes you can't repeat in automation what a human gives you. Oftentimes times actually. Rob Collie (00:10:42): Or it takes forever to build the automation that the human being could have gone and done one time. If you're going to do it one time, the human is usually better than building some system to go run once. Kellan Danielson (00:10:56): I'm a big proponent of MVPs, minimum viable products, things like that where it's like, look, let's just see if this thing has any legs and I don't want to over build this thing. Let's just see if it's going to provide the value we think it is before we sink all of this cost and effort and exhaustion into it to then scrap it. That's where I learned that blend of technology and hands on work played such an important blend. Rob Collie (00:11:26): You need a lot of clubs in the bag, to use a golf metaphor, and I don't really golf. But you need a lot of clubs. But you also need to know when to use which one. Kellan Danielson (00:11:34): Right. I have a funny story, actually, one that now Power Platform can do this probably just in a second. But back then it was a little bit more challenging. We had this separate computer. Well, actually first we had an order planner. What she did was she just took orders from our clients, customers, and then she made them into waves and those waves would be then sent to the warehouse to be picked and packed and shipped. But that process was the same. And it was a critical thing. There was no way that she couldn't do this. She had to do this, put the orders in to the waves, send the waves, priority ones, priority two based on overnight shipping, whatever, all that stuff. But it was the same, no variation. The only variation was the orders, but they always got batched in the same way. I found this thing where it would just take over your mouse and keyboard and it would just... and this was AS/400 kind of system so there was no way to automate in a traditional sense. Rob Collie (00:12:35): Right. No API. Kellan Danielson (00:12:36): No API. So we just automated the task with enough spaces for... because they gave us not very good computers. So enough spaces to let the computer catch up and all this stuff, tap, tap, tap, tap, tap, enter 40, all that stuff. We set up a separate computer that was always on so we could see it because it was kind of fun in the middle of the office. His name was Launchbot or her name, whatever preference. We had a chair with Launchbot in it and Launchbot was working and it would just do that task anymore... It was task that nobody wanted to do by the way. People were already overworked anyway. So there was no like, oh, we want to cut a head count. No, head count stayed the same, but people's energy went up, people could divert their attention to other things that actually mattered. It was a fun almost like foray into desktop automation. Rob Collie (00:13:34): Yeah. But the fact that you had a separate computer set up because it was fun to watch, I have a name for this. I call this watching the Roomba. You don't want to vacuum your house so you get a Roomba. But inevitably when the Roomba starts, you just sit there and watch it. I remember the first several months we had a Roomba, when that thing started, I knew what I was doing for the next hour and a half. It wasn't saving me any time. Kellan Danielson (00:14:07): Yeah. Exactly. Rob Collie (00:14:09): I had the same experience back when Power Pivot... we didn't have Power BI back then, back when in a former job, really our first client, we had just these whole folders full of workbooks that were all front ends to the same Power Pivot model. For various pseudo security reasons, we had to keep all these workbooks separately. They were all identical, but they all had different filters in them. You want to make a change to your work books like, oh gosh, now I've got 41 workbooks I've got to touch to change the font or something on all 41 of them. So I ended up getting better at VBA in that role than I'd ever was at Microsoft. Rob Collie (00:14:48): I'd have this whole library of macros. And by the way, anybody that wants these macros just email us. I'll give you this undocumented library of macros. I've given it to lots of people at trainings before and your mileage may vary. But I would kick these things off. And they would go ripping through the folder, opening one workbook at a time, making that change, saving the workbook, moving on to the next one. And what would I do? I'd sit there and I'd watch the damn thing. It's like I couldn't walk away. Watching the Roomba, it's a real thing. Kellan Danielson (00:15:24): Yeah. Watching the Launchbot. So that was fun. Before Power BI, Columbia Sportswear was where Power BI was starting to hit the scene. And even then, towards the end, it was still a new tool. So before distribution of those OI Global, at that point it was really only two jobs. And I count those two jobs as almost like internships in a sense for this job. Like I said, with the whole, six months you learn more than your career is really true. And for me, it's probably like three months. It's almost like my resume doesn't matter. I don't know. It sounds weird. It does to some people. It doesn't to me that much. Kellan Danielson (00:16:03): But the stuff that I've learned with fortune 100 companies, pretty high up in these companies, is just not even really an opportunity that my prior employers would've allowed me to even do, which in effect gave me the kind of experience in such a short period of time that sure, you have imposter syndrome for a little bit. I still do. But I do know that if I walk into the room, someone else might get nervous with, I'm pretty confident with my capabilities where I'm at. And that's why I never really had any issues with stage fright, that kind of stuff because if it was something I didn't know, I would. If it's something I know and I'm passionate about, I don't care. Rob Collie (00:16:50): You're not the kind of person that's going to be on stage talking about something you don't know about. That's just not- Kellan Danielson (00:16:55): That's not my personality. Rob Collie (00:16:56): You're not going to find yourself in that spot. And I think a lot of people are waking up to this. There's a lot of people who are becoming voices in the Power Platform community that never expected to be community voices of any sort, never expected to be giving presentations and stuff like that. But it's like, when you're talking about your own life story, when you're talking about the things that you're good at, it's not nearly as challenging. Not to say that it isn't still challenging, because it is. But I'm a lot more confident speaking at conferences and things now about the things that we do and the things that I've learned since leaving Microsoft than I ever was when I spoke on behalf of Microsoft. Because when I was speaking on behalf of Microsoft, I was talking to the real world. I came from inside the ivory tower in a way. I didn't have time to go out and do the things that the real people were doing. Kellan Danielson (00:17:49): Yeah. And I want to say something real quick, because everything is about a matrix. There's no simple issues in the world anymore. They all revolve around multiple topics. And if you think you're on one side or the other, you're probably just wrong. It's not right and left. And the issues are complicated. Rob Collie (00:18:09): So many things in that story that just leap off the page. First of all, we talk about it and it sounds like it's bullshit. It sounds like it's a made up story in a way, because we think of career as primarily being about money. And yes, it is about money. I'm not going to say that it isn't. At the same time, if you're in some position out in the world in business where you don't think of yourself as an Excel analyst, that's how the business world flows through you is through Excel. You're like a symbiotic being with Excel that's doing something, and then you're doing something else like supply chain or whatever, then you discover these tools. You discover Power BI and it's like Neo waking up from the matrix. There's no going back. You cannot unwake. Rob Collie (00:19:00): And it's not like your previous job you were properly appreciated. No one really appreciates the person who's good at Excel the way that they should. The business programmer that makes it all work. But now the delta between what you can be doing and how you can be valued and where you're actually valued is now just an order of magnitude wider. You still got to think about the money thing. It's not like that goes away, but that discomfort, it's weird. You became more capable and now you're less satisfied with where you are that you just can't go back to sleep. You almost wish you could in a way, but you can't. And this is the common thread for most of our team. Most of our company is that. Kellan Danielson (00:19:44): I like the combination. So when I went full time, I was principal consultant and I split my time between training and consulting. And I really liked that. I have a family of teachers. I enjoyed the classroom teaching, even as an introvert. And I like being in the background in my current role, but I enjoyed people's light bulbs going off and seeing what it could do for them. And that's really, really true. I mean, you talked about it. They're starting to think like a different way. Wait a second, I didn't realize I was being undervalued even sometimes. Rob Collie (00:20:21): Yeah. You're welcome for that piece of wisdom. Go back and be dissatisfied. Kellan Danielson (00:20:27): That doesn't mean necessarily people are leaving the jobs or anything like that, but it does sometimes give a different narrative for them to use. It also helps when those managers are in those trainings too, and even if they're not going to be necessarily code writing, they start to see, oh, my team is unbelievably powerful. One additional headcount is insanely valuable. It's no parallel to it almost. I can't think of a whole lot of parallels where it's like you add one, let's say Excel analyst and you get so much for it. Rob Collie (00:21:00): Wow. I never really thought about that. I've always thought about it from the perspective of, oh, it's great that their manager did come to this training. I've only observed it. Kellan Danielson (00:21:08): Right. Rob Collie (00:21:10): But thinking about it from the perspective of, yeah, you should bring your manager to the training. Try to drag them kicking and screaming. Kellan Danielson (00:21:19): Yeah. A lot of times I'd be in those trainings and I wouldn't really have to worry too much about the analyst because they're going to eat it up. You almost have to convert some of the... The managers, obviously they're writing the checks, but I think a lot of times they're questioning what I'm saying in a sense almost like hyperbolic and it's not. That's the nice thing about our trainings is it's like multiple days. So I can ease them in to the, no, there's no hyperbole here. Rob Collie (00:21:48): Yeah. You can walk the walk after we talk it at the beginning. Kellan Danielson (00:21:51): It's really funny, when I've done trainings for Big Four firms, and those are really funny when you have directors and you're like, "Should I even be telling them this stuff?" The pie chart on need for this stuff is so much bigger than any one firm can swallow up. So it doesn't even matter. As a matter of fact, sometimes they go in and they got their other people behind them and they're ruining it in other ways. Rob Collie (00:22:21): Yeah. There's some stories right there. There's a lot there. Kellan Danielson (00:22:29): I think a big thing for me was, there's two key stages, I think, that mentally I had to get past. And I think a lot of this is entrepreneurial, that mindset like that was my degree so I should have been prepared for it, but I don't think anybody really is until you get into it. Going full time, leaving a comfortable job, getting on my wife's insurance, those kind of things. And the second was, when you asked if I wanted to not be a principal consultant anymore, because being a principal consultant, there's a lot of very visible benefits to it. You get client feedback, you get immediate return on that investment. Whereas a part of the management team or whatever, like growing the business is a different return. It's almost like you have to find that kind of feedback internally, as well as with your peers, which is just me and you essentially. And you almost need to live vicariously through your team, but still give them the dues they deserve. But also try to give yourself some too. Rob Collie (00:23:36): The thing that originally dragged you in to moonlighting was that emotional satisfaction of doing what you were capable of doing for someone who appreciated it, right? Kellan Danielson (00:23:50): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:23:50): So when you moved up the ladder here, basically it's like we built a ladder so that Kellan could climb it. I mean, there is a ladder now, but there wasn't a ladder. It was like, there is no spoon. Kellan Danielson (00:24:05): Yeah. Let's build this ladder. Rob Collie (00:24:08): But when you do that, now you walk away from the thing that drew you in, in the first place. It's a good thing we had some other places for you to scratch that itch, wasn't it? It turns out. I think when people look in at our company, if we described our company as ex Microsoft software leader, Rob, with a bunch of "former Excel analysts", I think that would really give people a very lopsided view of the talent equation here. And I think that's a natural picture to have looking in from the outside, but it's off. It's off, isn't it? First of all, I'm really not that important. The background that I had coming from Microsoft and all the things that I've done, I think that was important for spotting the need for a different kind of company, spotting this opportunity. Rob Collie (00:25:04): If you focus too much on the ex Microsoft guy, you're really missing the point because it's the team, isn't it? The team, they're the rock stars. They're the ones that make this work. And as consultants, they are all far more talented than I am and far more talented than I think you would expect them to be. And it's probably because the people that we found, the people that make up our team, they had tremendous amounts of latent talent and capabilities that were not being properly utilized, if utilized at all, in their former roles. In a world that made more sense, the consultants that work for us now, in their previous roles, they would've been far more appreciated and far more used. They would've been able to tap into those talents. They would've been encouraged to tap into those talents. And the organizations would have actually built frameworks around them to leverage those talents. Rob Collie (00:26:05): So in a way, all we've really done is righted that wrong. We've really put these people in a position where they can shine as brightly as they were really supposed to. For the people who are listening who don't know, which is part of why we're doing this, our company operates on an impossible business model. Let's let that sit there for a moment. All the jokes that we make about nobody believed in us, blah, blah, blah, there's a reason for it. We've set up our company in a corner of the market landscape that was previously thought inhospitable, uninhabitable. It's like the Mars outpost out in the middle of the desert or something. It's a difficult business model. Now, it's not a difficult business model in terms of the customers. It is the ideal business model for our customers. Kellan Danielson (00:27:00): Yes. Rob Collie (00:27:01): So that part's easy. Being the best possible deal, the highest possible tempo, the best possible results using the modern tools is a great deal for the customer. I think everyone knows that. But how do you keep things organized? The thing you said earlier where in the first six months of working here, you learn more than you learn in your previous career to date, that's true. There's this really nerdy thing. Like in physics, the inverse of frequency is wavelength. If you crank the wavelength down, which is what we do, the duration of a project that delivers value, we are insanely fast for our clients relative to our competitors and relative to the traditional model. But that also means when you crank that down, that means that for the individual consultant, you're seeing a lot, you're getting a really compressed treatment of how the entire world works, because you're moving through a lot of stuff. Kellan Danielson (00:27:57): Definitely. Rob Collie (00:27:57): And I live that because I was the first consultant, the first and probably least capable but the first. And I learned so much about how the world works because of that high frequency exposure. So if it's a great deal for the customers, there's a magic level of utilization that you need to maintain across your consulting team and in any consulting business. Unless you're like one of those insane people that charges $10,000 an hour. And that's not us. So whether it was possible to move at this high frequency model the way that the tools allowed it to move, the new way that became possible. So whether we could build a business that was internally sustainable, that sustainable business model thing, whether that could be done. And that was more of a question, wasn't it? I was committed to finding out and I was probably stubbornly committed to it being yes we can kind of thing. But that doesn't mean that I knew how. Rob Collie (00:29:00): So you Kellan, more than any one person for sure are responsible for having solved that problem, the how. The dreaded Tetris problem. How do you A, make all these small irregular shaped blocks of work that are dictated by the clients flow with them? So how do you make all of those fit into the container that is an average consultant month so that we can be sustainable and be a viable business and continue? And not just that, but scale that. It's one thing if you are sitting there as a human being very carefully crafting all of these pieces together for an individual consultant and you're spending hours on it like a beautiful mind with the chalkboard or something. As you scale up, you can't put that effort in. It has to just flow. And I am not the person to solve that problem. I thought I was. You got to have some hubris, something about entrepreneurship. You have to almost have an irrational belief in yourself to even take the leap. Rob Collie (00:30:17): So then the flip side is, at what point do you realize you're in over your head, you've got to get help? And this is where you come into my story, which is crucial. I underestimated how hard this was. The reason we got into this is because you said it was hard to step back from that frontline satisfaction of delivering what we do for our clients. That was the original emotional draw anyway. We had a little bit of a puzzle, didn't we, behind the scenes. I like to tell people that we're our own case study for the Power Platform? And it's not like we a hundred percent use Microsoft tools. That makes it even better. It's exactly what the Power Platform is supposed to do is make your "hybrid, best of breed"... Our company should be a case study for Microsoft. They have no idea. Here we are, look, the Mars outpost in the market absolutely thriving where no one dares tread because of the Power Platform support. Kellan Danielson (00:31:28): Yeah. I don't think you're the least talented. The nice thing about a growing company is that you actually have to start diversifying where your talents are. In the beginning, it was 1099 consultants. If you couldn't do the work for a client, you probably weren't going to be on the team. Unless for a few require... like an accountant. It's things like that that we had to do to run a company. But now we have people with talents that other people don't have that we need. We have copywriters and designers and dedicated sales people. This is part of the equation. Kellan Danielson (00:32:01): Tetris isn't just about an individual or team's utilization. It's about how do you make a company operate in such a way that it's not just efficient, but effective. And that requires a balance of financial priorities with client and internal priorities. That means shifting from 1099s to of full-time employees, because that's what they need. People need full-time jobs and they need benefits. We don't have universal benefits in this country. People need benefits. They have kids and they need work life balance, which 1099s, there's not always a good work life balance in the 1099 world because it's all about bill. Rob Collie (00:32:46): Yeah. And let's pause for a moment there and try to slow motion that one so that people understand. I was operating the website back in, let's say 2015. So 2015 is when we crossed paths and I was basically fully utilized as an individual, as a human being. Between running the website, the blog, running trainings, doing consulting. And that's when I realized that I needed more help, but I wasn't prepared to hire people in a full-time capacity. There was more work than I could do, but not enough that I could get people to forsake their full-time paying gigs. When we say 1099, we mean people who are working as independent contractors. You can think of it as moonlighting, but it needed to happen during the day. Because our clients needed to interact with you during the day. We called it daylighting. So how many people in the world, how many total freak shows were out there that were willing and able to daylight for our company? We ran out of those people pretty quickly. Kellan Danielson (00:33:56): Yeah. That's definitely a component as well. Rob Collie (00:33:59): Yeah. So at some point you're right. But by the way, 1099 was a great fit for the "company" at the time. Because it was when work comes along, that little Tetris piece, we just farm them out. It was path of least resistance. It made a lot of sense at the time. But when the Tetris piece didn't fit or didn't come along, it wasn't the company's responsibility. Was it? You go back to your day job. So that transition to full-time W2 with benefits, it brings a lot of overhead. It was necessary because to do the work, you need to have people and boy does it complicate things, doesn't it? And that's in 2017. So we're really on the four year anniversary right now of people being full-time W2 employees with benefits at the company. It's crazy. It does seem like yesterday. Kellan Danielson (00:34:56): Yeah. I think it was February 1st, 2017 was the first payroll. Rob Collie (00:35:01): Crazy. Kellan Danielson (00:35:03): Yeah. I think I was in Hawaii on my honeymoon. Rob Collie (00:35:10): Yeah. You're on your honeymoon. Everything is going to be smooth sailing from here. Kellan Danielson (00:35:16): Yeah. I do remember my wife not being too happy with me on my phone. I tried to set some rules but that's tough. Rob Collie (00:35:23): Yeah. You're one of the least capable vacation takers I've ever met. You've gotten better. Kellan Danielson (00:35:29): Yeah. I'm not very good but I try. Rob Collie (00:35:33): You have gotten better. Yes. Kellan Danielson (00:35:34): Yeah. I think a big part of this, which kind of relevant now, but it's been our lives, which is everyone's remote in our company. There is no office. I think that most people know that already, but that makes the company Tetris, the back office help, the principal consultants working on multiple clients, clients working with multiple consultants, all that stuff, funneling the information back to you and I extremely critical to making sure that we have the right Tetris pieces, we have the right skills, capacity, fit so that we can actually run a company. There's no hallway chats. I think a lot of people can relate if they really think about it for a second how much important things happen in the hallways. Rob Collie (00:36:21): That's right. Kellan Danielson (00:36:22): It's extremely valuable. Executives might think of it as time theft, but it's really not. There's an incredible amount of stuff that happens, "Hey, do you want to grab lunch real quick?" And all of a sudden a breakthrough happens or some critical information that you're not on that project, but you got somebody on the inside that now you tell them, "Oh no, but if you do that, that's going to really negatively impact me." Rob Collie (00:36:46): Yeah. I was thinking as you were saying that, that imagine that we just magically did have a physical office and we all lived in the same city and there was COVID. That office would still be empty. Kellan Danielson (00:37:01): Yeah. Probably. Rob Collie (00:37:01): And maybe not really. But I guess in a real sense, this high velocity up tempo version of things, it's like you've got to be engaged with the customer. It wouldn't be the first consulting office in the world that was largely vacant during the day. I mean, again, even pre-COVID, the average Microsoft field office is a ghost town. Kellan Danielson (00:37:30): Yeah, I've seen that. Rob Collie (00:37:30): When they let me in over there to do something or whatever, I'm often the only person in the place. Kellan Danielson (00:37:36): And sometimes they don't want you to use the room. And like, well, no one else is. Rob Collie (00:37:40): Yeah. I'm just here for the free soda. Kellan Danielson (00:37:45): No, that's a really good point. I mean, there's a reason why a lot of that hallway chat is done in airports. At least on five occasions that I can think of, I've met with consultants in transfers and layovers just because we happen to be at the same airport at the same time. Rob Collie (00:38:04): Airports, what are those? Kellan Danielson (00:38:06): I don't know. Haven't been to one in a while. And I think the only way that really effectively happens, especially with the team, which is growing rapidly now and has been, is tight, daily and weekly communication, knowing where people are and how they're doing and just having a friendly human kind of culture where it's like the president and a consultant or a president and designer. There's hierarchy but we try to make it pretty flat. We may bear more responsibility on the wins and losses, but it doesn't mean that we're any different. That's why I like working here. When we had our team meeting in October two years ago, we didn't do it this year, it was really great. It was pretty much a bunch of peers. And I hope to do that this year again. And hopefully October we'll see where we're at. Rob Collie (00:39:00): It's hard on an audio format like this, to give people a sense of the living thing, the system that you have built. This network of systems that runs our company and that makes it possible, that sustains us in that... And it's not just technology. It's people, it's workflow and it's the blend of that with software. I do think that this system, the way that we operate is actually a form of intellectual property that we've developed. We're not just a bunch of really capable people. I mean, we don't want to give away too many secrets. Now do we? But we got a lot of complexity behind the scenes. It's more than just the Tetris problem. We have a lot. Rob Collie (00:39:42): And so this living creature, the hybrid, the cyborg of software and different systems and also the human beings, is there any way to do that justice? Can we talk about it as a narrative over time like how we evolved it? At some point we decided that we were going to use Salesforce, and we made that decision originally, just to track leads. It was the purest sense of CRM, just like a sales tool for just tracking what's out there, what's possible. That's where the dangerous game began, wasn't it? Kellan Danielson (00:40:22): Part of my background at Columbia was master data, which for those that don't know is really just your standard elements like customers, dates, vendors, all those kind of things that you just need standardized across multiple systems and that you have owners who own these things. But when we implemented Salesforce... Well, actually let me back up real quick. I think the key to anything is understanding what the overall workflow is, what teams you have, what's your overall goal. And our goal is increased revenue and maintain cost. So we need to balance supply, which is people that can actually do the work and everybody that surrounds those people that they need to do the work. And then demand, which is how many new clients we have, how big clients, and then everybody around that, that we need to do that work. So that would be like sales people, things like that. Kellan Danielson (00:41:16): So Salesforce was just like you said, really just for leads, but quickly became... And this would happen with any CRM we chose. We just weren't going to get out of Salesforce. Rob Collie (00:41:26): Once we picked it. Kellan Danielson (00:41:27): Yeah. It's just really hard to get out of Dynamics or Salesforce or any real CRM. Rob Collie (00:41:32): They know that. Kellan Danielson (00:41:34): Yeah. I mean, that's their model. We had considered moving to Dynamics like a year ago. Once we did the due diligence, that wasn't going to happen. It might in the future, Microsoft, if you're listening to this. Rob Collie (00:41:45): We'd love you to send a team to migrate us. Kellan Danielson (00:41:48): Yeah. If we had a migration team and... Rob Collie (00:41:51): Yeah. Maybe we can talk Austin into coming back for two years to help extricate us from the Salesforce he committed. Kellan Danielson (00:42:00): He's pretty busy. Rob Collie (00:42:00): Yeah, he's pretty busy. But what can be more meaningful than coming back in here and migrating us from Salesforce to Dynamics? I mean, really? Kellan Danielson (00:42:10): Yeah. I think we would set him off. So we had that supply and demand kind of overall picture that needed to be solved. And the demand part, we got that Salesforce. That was for the demand side, let's track the leads, let's make sure we're responding to them on time, get them assigned to a consultant, which now we're into the supply side, which there was nothing. That's what I was talking earlier. The only thing we had was a coordinator, essentially, part-time coordinator, basically, that was like, "Who wants this?" There wasn't any type of what I call the trifecta in a sense like the skill, capacity and fit. There was no assessment for, does that person have the right capacity to meet that client's needs? Do they have the right skills? Not just Power Pivot, but maybe there's Power BI visualization or there's data platform. And fit like has somebody worked with them before? Do they have a good personality fit? So none of that was happening. It was really just like a free for all. Rob Collie (00:43:15): It's like the old mainframe days. I want mainframe time. I'm talking about an era that I never experienced, but I've heard of it. I want mainframe time. So you go to the scheduler and you request mainframe time. And there's a human being that decides how to allocate mainframe time. And eventually that human being becomes what we know of as an operating system. Right now the CPU is balancing between a million things, a million different jobs and it's automating it. Originally, the operating system was a human being. So there's a parallel here. Our scheduler, our match making system was originally a part-time human. Kellan Danielson (00:44:01): Yeah. I mean, in some ways I see myself in those days as an industrial engineer identifying the workflow, what are the largest bottlenecks? And then trying to eliminate or minimize them as much as possible. That's basically what an industrial engineer does is try to map out end to end what's going on. And it's like simplest forms as possible, but then they go all the way down. Rob Collie (00:44:24): Oh yes, Mr. Detail. Kellan Danielson (00:44:28): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:44:28): You go to all those boring places that are absolutely essential. Kellan Danielson (00:44:33): Well, you have to start at the top and eventually go all the way down, otherwise it doesn't get fixed. So I think that big supply problem, the first solution we had with that was the biggest gap in that handoff was really training because there was a time where it was just you. And so pretty quickly it was like, Rob, Kellan, two other people, we have four people. And then now we're in 2017 now we have four other people. How do we transition Rob and Kellan off of this as much as possible so that they can do some of the management stuff and growth stuff and things like that? So we implemented really just, I would consider it MVP called trainer match, which was just effectively like a slot management tool. Rob Collie (00:45:22): It was SharePoint, wasn't it? Kellan Danielson (00:45:23): It was SharePoint. SharePoint Online basically allowed that coordinator, managers, directors, whatever, to put in the request as they saw them so that they could fill trading slot needs with the client in real time. Whereas before, there'd be this back and forth like, well, let me see who can do it and blah, blah, blah. So we could actually figure out really quickly... because they put their capacity in it ahead of time. That's key. So the trainers say, "I have four days this week," and they had to do eight weeks out. Rob Collie (00:45:54): This is the first time that tech really entered the picture. Kellan Danielson (00:46:01): Definitely from a supply side, because that happened before I think, we introduced Breezy, I think. That's three, four years ago so I don't know. But I went on a honeymoon, Austin and I had talked about Breezy and when I got back, he had set it all up. Literally. I wasn't gone that long. Now we obviously extended it more in the years to come but that was a very... I mean, I think we even have a case study on it. Rob Collie (00:46:28): Yeah, we do. Kellan Danielson (00:46:28): Okay. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:46:29): Breezy, we're on their website with a case study. And that is "just our hiring process." So how many different technical software systems do we have? Kellan Danielson (00:46:41): We have as many as we need. Rob Collie (00:46:43): Oh yes. That's a movie quote for you. Tyler Durden fights go on as long as they have to. All right. So let me see how many I can think of. Kellan Danielson (00:46:57): Okay. Rob Collie (00:46:57): I am going to miss at least half of them. I know we have Salesforce. I know we have Harvest. We got to have an accounting system, QuickBooks Online like so many companies do. Those are pretty foundational. But now we have a system called Precursive. That's our new- Kellan Danielson (00:47:19): That's the new trainer match. Rob Collie (00:47:20): The new trainer match. That runs in Salesforce, but really, we might as well consider it a separate system. Kellan Danielson (00:47:27): It can run separate. Rob Collie (00:47:27): And it's highly customized to us. We didn't just buy that off the shelf. What else am I missing? I'm missing a bunch. I know that. But I just wanted to prime the pump with the easy ones. Kellan Danielson (00:47:37): We use Asana for project management. Rob Collie (00:47:40): That's right. Kellan Danielson (00:47:40): Zapier for lightweight business automation in addition to flow. We use a lot of the tools in the Office 365 stack. So we have Azure and different databases and data warehouses and things like that, that you would expect a Microsoft data specialist to have. Rob Collie (00:47:58): Power BI. I mean, we use that to death. That's not just talking our own book. All these systems... There's a hazy set of shoulders to that bell curve of systems. We've got Stitch, we've got WordPress, we've got AdWords and Google this and just crazy number of systems. It's like the smooth slope off into the darkness of systems just like really any company. Kellan Danielson (00:48:32): Oh yeah. Rob Collie (00:48:33): And so we have the same level of complexity in terms of mishmash of base systems and number of systems and variety of systems as really any enterprise does. It's on a micro scale in some sense, relative to the fortune 100, but really to operate effectively today, you've got to take on big company complexity at whatever scale you're at. That's part of the game. In fact, if you're bigger, you can almost get away with lower complexity because you can throw more human beings at a problem. From an IT perspective, we actually have a very complicated business and not a huge IT department to throw at it. Kellan Danielson (00:49:15): I think what I'm struggling with is, people that are in it, they get that this is not something that happens overnight like overlaying BI and action with actual process almost seems like a tagline, but it's not, it's a skillset. Like you said, it's IP if you can do it right. And if you have all these systems and none of them are talking to each other, even at the BI layer, unless they're explicitly not meant to, which rarely is the case. Kellan Danielson (00:49:47): I mean, it may be that you have one system that has a very specific task. It doesn't actually drive towards the overall goal like revenue or something. But if you have, let's say like a Columbia, you have Korea on a system, you have United States on a system. They're two different ERPs. Effectively somewhere... You don't have to change their ERP. Somewhere they need to be in the same analysis if you want to know how your whole company is doing. That's the hard part that I would like to drive home if we're talking about that, which is, we have BI as a mechanism for effective change. It's not just so we can see numbers. It's so we can act on them quickly. Rob Collie (00:50:33): Yeah. And at all levels, there's tactical actions that are triggered all the time. Kellan Danielson (00:50:38): We've had serious problems when we didn't have data bubbling up at the right times. We learned our lesson. Rob Collie (00:50:48): Yeah, we did. Kellan Danielson (00:50:49): We said, "Oh, this BI stuff seems like it's pretty good. Maybe we should do that ourselves." And now we have a suite of reporting that is not just squishy, it's extremely pain oriented. It's like, what are the things that I need to know so that I can act in the shortest intervals possible. Rob Collie (00:51:12): There's something you were saying that I really, really wanted to key in on, which is that the reports that we use, the interactive, really amazing Power BI reports that we use, it's like the short story ethos, which is in a short story, there's no single word wasted. That's what they teach you if you're trying to write short stories is every single sentence, every single word has to have utility. That's what these reports feel like. They're not just information for information's sake. If a number's on that screen, if anything is on that screen, it's because we need it. Kellan Danielson (00:51:43): Yes. That's critical. I think another thing too, is that our reports evolve because there are times where a number matters more than another time. Well, like for instance, our company dashboard, which is about all systems, really, all processes is meant to simplify it to our core. That used to just be a two month dashboard. I mean, it had the budget and things like that, but that was it. Now it's a three month and it has fields on it that didn't exist because it wouldn't have made sense for it to exist in that different time. Rob Collie (00:52:25): Yeah. So there's an important takeaway there is that nothing's ever done. A report or a dashboard can be done at a particular point in time. And it turns out that in the old days we never even got there. And I'm not talking about P3, I'm talking about the world. Reports never, ever got to where they needed to be for that day, ever. But when they get to that point where it's like, hey, this is what we need today, you still shouldn't look at it and say, "Okay, that's done." It's done for now, it should remain flexible and pliable. And these systems do allow that, thankfully. Kellan Danielson (00:53:03): Yeah. And I really try to harp on that with my consultants that given a very small preface to a client or internal customer, they're okay with done being where it's at right now. I think there's an illusion out in the world, I think, that's core to BI for some reason. But I think it's true in a lot of places, which is, until it's my done, it's not their done. I need it to be my standard without ever checking their standard first. Rob Collie (00:53:39): Which is such a weird inversion. You're talking about essentially the BI professional, having a version of my done that exceeds the client done. That's weird because it used to be the exact opposite. The BI professional was well short. So what we're talking about now is a problem that didn't even exist before, which is that as consultants, we might have ambitions for where this thing goes that are out ahead of our clients. First of all, let's take a moment and just respect that we've reached the point in the world where that problem can even exist. That's awesome. But you're right. There's different ways in which the client might not be ready. Kellan Danielson (00:54:24): Because this is a balance here. We have a core product, the Jumpstart. And the Jumpstart's requirement is that you're not going to be done, done. But what you are going to be is on your way. You're going to see stuff on paper. You're going to see results. That's the same thing. I would've never ever... Still to this day, I would've probably never actually had my dashboards out if it was my standard. All the lessons and the experience and the generated wisdom over the years has taught me that the numbers are the only thing that really matter. Make sure they're accurate, timely and presented in such a way that people can understand them. And a lot of times it's self-serving. Sure, they're my dashboard so I need to be informed. But a lot of times, I need my folks informed too. That doesn't mean it always has to be pretty. I'm a big believer in tables, as long as the table isn't a million rows long. Rob Collie (00:55:26): Right. Again, every number is there because it's at least sometimes necessary. Kellan Danielson (00:55:31): Right. My only point was that we can almost impress a client more with the generation of an incredible metric formula than we can with a pretty visualization because the impact that that single number does on their organization. Rob Collie (00:55:51): Yeah. Do you remember at one of the data insight summits, I started it off with what I called the sexiest data visualization of MDIS 2017. And then the next year I just had the same slide with 2017 crossed out and 2018 replaced. And all it was, it was just an Excel grid of numbers that were color coded that was from the command scorecard from back in the day, where when the president of command or the CEO saw that for the first time turned to Mike Miskel and said, "I want you to press the gas pedal as hard as you can." This is the most amazing thing that they'd ever seen. It was so incredibly compelling for their business. And on screen, it didn't impress anybody. But the point was, it was valuable to that business, those numbers. Kellan Danielson (00:56:49): And I talked a while ago about blending the overall goal with the workflow and we mentioned a bunch of systems that help us manage some processes like Precursive with scheduling and assignment, the whole capacity skill fit thing. And Google Ads or AdWords and different type of tools we've used for landing pages, Pardot, et cetera, all that stuff for the demand side of things. Our dashboards are really intended to bring it all together. I think a big one is just because of with COVID uncertainty and just our business model going through the different challenges with our business model, figuring it out was cashflow. So we have cash flow, uncertainty, which all stems from those two things; do we have the right people to do the work and do we have enough clients to satisfy our financial requirements? Kellan Danielson (00:57:50): So all of those systems are critical for that. QuickBooks, we need our bank balances. We need to know what's on our AR our accounts receivable, what's on our accounts payable. Now, that just tells us actuals. What's out in the future? Well, Precursive, we need to know what kind of revenue we can generate and how much it's going to cost us to generate that revenue. So there's a lot of things that you need, all these systems to come into the same to understand, well, what's our margin going to be? Are we going to have enough cash? Is there going to be a cash short run? Do we need to pull in some of our line of credit or do we need to take action? There's a reason why we have every single report that we have. Rob Collie (00:58:32): For people who are listening, given the nature of our business model and the speed at which we operate, for us, you hear us talking about two months and you go, "That's it?" But two months for us is like two years for a lot of people. And we're talking about seeing into a very distant future in a way. We don't hook people on six, 12 month, 18, 24 month projects. Kellan Danielson (00:59:06): I mean, sometimes it happens, but it's not... But I think the key thing here is that the projects... The contract is a contract. That's different. But the project, they just so rarely last more than a couple of months. Rob Collie (00:59:20): Yeah. They go as long as they have to. Kellan Danielson (00:59:22): They don't need to. These are BI projects. I mean, sometimes there's some data platform parts that make it a little bit more complicated, but even then they don't have to go longer than that. We live and die on making sure those projects are a success as fast as we can do it so that we can sell the next project because we're like, "Look, we're not going to nickel and dime you. We want you to be happy and fast." That means fast. BI is fast. You have to be fast otherwise you're irrelevant in BI. One other thing about the dashboard I think that was important. There was some evolution with our reporting too, where it was like, I had reports that were almost like meant to make you feel good like this consultant killed it or whatever. Nobody ever looks at those. They look at them once. And then they're like, "Yeah. Okay, I feel good. I'm gone." Kellan Danielson (01:00:17): The evolution that we made in that 1099 to full-time transition was like, look, there's a lot of things that work with the 1099, which is like, the incentives are implicit. You bill, it benefits both parties. With full time, that doesn't necessarily work that way. If you just think of it they get a salary. If they bill or not, it doesn't matter. The incentive is for them to not bill actually. So a big part of our compensation scheme across the board, not just for consultants, but for back office people too, is how do we let this be like a pull mechanism, not a push one? Because we're all remote and so our dashboards actually are leveraged, not just from a management perspective, how are we doing? Where's cash flow? Where's our forecast at? But also from a team perspective. Kellan Danielson (01:01:11): Our consultants know exactly where they're at from an incentive perspective. They're looking at their incentive dashboards because it directly impacts their wallet. And I know how much people are looking at those because I have the usage metrics reports, and they're looking at them and they were not looking at the other ones. So incentive dashboards worked really well. They actually get looked at. They drive performance to wherever you want that... You got to make the incentives right. But if you got incentives out in front of people, it's not necessarily a carrot. They put whatever thing they want in it. So we try to make that cash as much as possible, but we have other things too. Anyway, so that's a big part too, is just like this operational incentives, that kind of piece. And then there's the strategic dashboard side to it as well. Rob Collie (01:01:58): So many crazy ideas. I'm just going to be all kinds of touchy, feely, appreciative of. All these crazy ideas, the company, the fact that it could be done, leaning into this idea of incentives, sharing the upside. And as a result of sharing the upside, they're being more upside and weaponizing that. Having to systemize, build the systems to make those incentives work and follow that. I am so sincerely appreciative on this journey to have a partner like you who is willing to go on those crazy journeys first of all. But also to help make them reality. Even these ideas, these things that I wanted us to chase, I found out I couldn't have done them on my own. I didn't have the talent to deliver on the things that I wanted to see. So I don't want this recording to go by without me saying, thank you. It's been a hell of a journey, man. It really has. Kellan Danielson (01:02:59): Well, you're welcome. And it goes both ways. Rob Collie (01:03:02): It does. You come to me with like, "Hey, I want to try something?" Your batting average has been spectacular. Kellan Danielson (01:03:12): We do try to keep that as a cultural thing, because if we're going to try new things, you have to be okay with them not working. You don't want them to end up that way. But if you can have an incentive program that you're humble about. Look, we are going in with this with the best intentions. Here's what we want to happen. If it doesn't happen, we're going to adjust it so that it's still... And that doesn't mean we're adjusting it to hurt you. We want it to help everyone that whole thing works with us too. So it's like, as a company, I think if we just consistently take that always learning philosophy to everyday, it allows for one person to not always have the right answer and it allows the right answer to come up, bubble up. Rob Collie (01:04:00): Give time to evolve to it, just like the reports. Kellan Danielson (01:04:03): Yeah. Just like the reports. Over time, we figured out, oh, we don't really need 30 columns, we just need 15 or whatever it is. Or we don't need five, we need one number. And we just evolve to where you need to be. Rob Collie (01:04:16): Once again, I really just am so appreciative of having you as a partner on this journey. In some sense, a big part of that journey is behind us. A lot of things have been solved. I know that something you were saying earlier, you need a challenge and I do too. And we're going to do new things. I'm excited about what's ahead of us as well as proud of what we've done. And thanks for being a good sport and being on the show. Kellan Danielson (01:04:44): No problem. Rob Collie (01:04:45): Drag you out. You're more introverted. Get it out here. Talk about yourself, not something you typically do. Kellan Danielson (01:04:52): My favorite topic. Rob Collie (01:04:53): I know. So man, thank you so much. Kellan Danielson (01:04:57): Yeah, of course. Announcer (01:04:57): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data By P3 Podcast. Find out what the experts at P3 can do for your business. Go to powerpivotpro.com. Interested in becoming a guest on the show? Email lukep, L-U-K-E-P@powerpivotpro.com. Have a data day!

Chuck Sterling's journey is another example of the uniqueness of the people in the data field. The short version is that he's a Marine Biologist turned Senior Program Manager at Microsoft. He has intimate knowledge of the entire Power Platform and he shares that knowledge and insight.   References made on the show: Power Virtual Agents Revell Model Ships Who Moved My Cheese? By Spencer Johnson, MD Episode Timeline: 3:45 - The remote workplace, it's not going anywhere 15:00 - The Microsoft Power Platform explained 32:00 - The future of Microsoft 40:30 - Microsoft licensing, specifically Power Apps licensing, explained 56:00 - Chuck's data journey was a long and winding road 1:12:00 - The Dawn of the Citizen Developer Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Welcome, friends. Today's guest is Chuck Sterling, a long time Microsoftie. And he's another one of these people with these really interesting backstories, not one of those deliberate paths where you set out to become something in particular over the course of 10 years and get there, a very jagged, lots of twists and turns, the kind of story we like here at Raw Data. Most recently, Chuck is part of the Power CAT team. And the funny thing about Chuck is that I think he simultaneously manages to be two things that are difficult to be at the same time. He is both a public figure and low profile. How do you do that? Rob Collie (00:00:35): For a long time, Chuck ran the MVP program for Power BI. And during that era, he also worked closely with a lot of Microsoft's largest customers in terms of their Power BI adoption. But on the Power CAT team, Chuck is now focused on the other members of the Power platform family, so Power Apps, Power Automate, and the new Power Virtual Agents. We spent quite a bit of time actually focused on that last one because it's new and it's pretty interesting, but all of those fit nicely into theme that we've been talking about for a while on this show, which is that BI is really about ultimately taking action. Rob Collie (00:01:11): And it's neat that Chuck has moved from the Power BI side, the more of the taking action side of that equation. That's what this Power platform is turning into. It's a very exciting thing, a very exciting time, and he's right in the middle of all of it. When we finished recording this one, I was convinced that we're going to need to add him to our list of recurring regulars. I hope you find it as stimulating as I did. Let's get into it. Announcer (00:01:35): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Announcer (00:01:39): 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, go to powerpivotpro.com. Raw Data by P3 Adaptive is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:01:57): Welcome to the show, Charles "Chuck" Sterling. How are you, man? Chuck Sterling (00:02:03): I'm doing good, Rob. Thank you for actually having me. I'm really honored when you actually reached out. It's been way too long. This pandemic is not being great for going out and visiting friends. Rob Collie (00:02:11): No, no, it hasn't been so great. I didn't plan to go here, but one of my favorite memories of you is you visiting Indy and not knowing anything about Indy, and asking, "Hey, what should we go to eat?" And you're running down this list of all these nice restaurants. And then right in the middle of this list of nice restaurants, you throw in Steak 'n Shake. You had no idea that was like McDonald's, essentially, right? Chuck Sterling (00:02:33): Exactly. From the name, it sounded okay, and it has like a bazillion five out of five thumbs ups. But I am in Indy, so of course. Rob Collie (00:02:43): So then we just decided to slum it with the steakhouse and the porterhouse steaks and everything. Chuck Sterling (00:02:48): That was not slumming it. The fact that I got to choose my knife. They have the knife drawers, like, "How would you like to cut the meat that you're going to eat?" I'm like, "Oh, I want that one." So yeah, it was fun. And Indy was a lot of fun too. If people haven't been to Indy, I highly recommend it. It's a beautiful city. And if you are a car guy, oh, the airport. I didn't know this going in there, the airport is just full of all this memorabilia. It's actually a really neat city. Rob Collie (00:03:15): Yeah. They even rotate those cars. Those Indy cars in the airport are not the permanent installation, that is a revolving collection. It's really fascinating. I haven't been in an airport. Last year was the first year of my adult life that I was never on a plane. I wonder if the cars are even there, I have no idea. Crazy. Chuck Sterling (00:03:35): Yeah, me too. Actually, I climbed at an airport coming back from New Zealand and visiting my friends, [inaudible 00:03:41] at their conference, and I also have not been in an airport. I don't think I've told you this, but I am now residing in Florida. Rob Collie (00:03:46): What? Chuck Sterling (00:03:48): Yeah. I took the pandemic actually as an excuse to go out and live quite remotely, everybody is, and I wanted to pick a warmer climate for the winter. So get this, Rob, I drove 63 hours from Seattle to not be in an airport. Rob Collie (00:04:03): Wow. That's dedication. I like it. Chuck Sterling (00:04:05): Well, I have two puppies, I have two dogs, so I wasn't going to put them in boxes. Rob Collie (00:04:09): So where in Florida? Chuck Sterling (00:04:11): Near Key West. We looked all over. Like Donna Saker has been living in Barbados, and I looked at places like Costa Rica and Guatemala. And it turns out if I want fiber optic to the house, if I need to get out of here, I wanted to actually have a continental highway and large airports. This was actually a tropical location that fit all those check boxes. The only downside, of course, is it's not cheap here, they don't give away houses here. Rob Collie (00:04:36): Okay. Yeah. I love the Keys. I grew up in Florida. Chuck Sterling (00:04:40): I did not know that. Rob Collie (00:04:41): And Luke, the silent producer here, he's in Florida right now. That's where he and I met years ago. Thomas LaRock (00:04:47): Isn't Luke in Miami, Fort Lauderdale? Rob Collie (00:04:50): West Palm. West side. Chuck Sterling (00:04:51): West Palm, just up the street. He gets to visit our former president on a regular basis. Rob Collie (00:04:56): He does. Chuck Sterling (00:04:56): They're tight? Rob Collie (00:04:57): They're so tight. Yeah. Chuck Sterling (00:05:02): I love the facial expression of Silent Bob, our producer. Rob Collie (00:05:05): So tight. Yeah. Like many people in the software and data industry, your start is a marine biologist, right? Chuck Sterling (00:05:14): Of course. That's where everybody starts. Without a doubt. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:05:16): Microsoft is just kind of like finishing school at that point. Chuck Sterling (00:05:19): With a life science degree in Seattle, you were either going to get a job at Boeing or Microsoft, and I'm still hoping for that phone call from Boeing. Any day, it's going to happen. Rob Collie (00:05:33): And they're going to say you can't live in Florida anymore. Are you planning to stay in Florida? Chuck Sterling (00:05:38): No, we're going to be... Yeah. I'll be snowboarding from here on end. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:05:42): Oh, that's fantastic. What a great idea. Someone should think of that, snowboarding in Florida? Chuck Sterling (00:05:47): I think lots and lots and lots of people have. Matter of fact, the inventory outside of big cities is just disappearing for real estate. Its mass exodus. And when I came in, my realtor was like, "You'll be like the fifth house I've sold this week, and I don't think there's any other houses for sale on water, etc." So yeah, the inventory in places that people want to go is dried up. Crazy, who would have guessed that this economy was going to happen as a result. Rob Collie (00:06:14): Yeah. It's really, really interesting. There's a lot of people collectively holding their breath about downtown real estate in various cities. Now, I have some friends who dabble a little bit in the real estate hedge fund space, and they keep saying, "Oh, this is great news. We're going to be able to gobble stuff up at cut rates." But is it good news? Are you buying low or is commercial real estate going to suffer like a 30% occupancy hit that's relatively permanent? We don't know. Chuck Sterling (00:06:46): What is it? Twitter said that they're never going back to their offices. We are now into a July timeframe, and yeah, it's crazy to think of those buildings sitting empty. Rob Collie (00:06:56): It's one of those things where it's a debatable thing whether it's better or worse for companies. You could imagine it being one or the other, worse in terms of productivity. There's something about in-person. I think we can all probably agree that productivity is probably a little higher, especially for like software firms, when you can have those face-to-face conversations. There's something inherent about collaboration in that job. At the same time though, your talent base is potentially infinite if you're not geocentric. And then there's the competitive aspect of it as well. Like now, Chuck has tasted the half the year in Florida lifestyle. If they tried to take it back, like, "Hmm." It's one of those genies that can't be put back in the bottle, I think." Chuck Sterling (00:07:47): I'm going to hypothesize, some of the productivity hit that we're seeing right now, Rob, is actually based on the fact that the infrastructure that supports people is missing. Let me explain. Like right now I've got a lot of my coworkers who can't take their children to daycare, therefore they are actually minding their children and the infrastructure of having services like mowing their lawns means that they are now their own gardener, etc. So I think if we can get those infrastructure back and we reclaim the time from the commute... You used to live up here, the Pacific Northwest, if you can get that time back into people's portfolios, yes, there's still going to be productivity hit because you're not in-person, granted. Chuck Sterling (00:08:29): I think it actually might level itself all out to where it's a similar, really, really close productivity net sum game but a much happier employee because they get to live in Indie and they get to live in West Palm, they get to live in Key West, etc. But that's a hypothesis. I'm guessing [SATI 00:08:49] has actually done some of the numbers like that. I haven't actually done a whole lot of research myself. Thomas LaRock (00:08:54): I have strong opinions on working from home. Chuck Sterling (00:08:57): Well, do tell. Thomas LaRock (00:08:58): After having done it now for 10 years, and even before then, I was at a company where... I'm sorry, I should never shame where I used to work. I knew of a company that- Chuck Sterling (00:09:10): I had a friend at a company. Thomas LaRock (00:09:11): ... that had a policy back in the day, it was you could work at home two days a month. And I thought that was the stupidest thing ever because where I was physically located, I was still supporting offices globally. What did it matter if I was in the office or not? And I didn't need to have access to the data center. If something is wrong with the server, I was still not physically doing anything with it. Anyway, I transitioned when I went to work for Confio. I asked if I had to relocate to Boulder, and they're like, "No, because you're going to be on an airplane most of the time. So it doesn't really matter where you live." I'm like, "Oh, this is great." And when SolarWinds came in, it was the same thing- Chuck Sterling (00:09:55): You've realize that's a silver lining in a cloud, right? I don't know if you pick up on that. Thomas LaRock (00:10:00): And then when SolarWinds came, I said, "Are you going to make me relocate?" And they're like, "Nah, you should be fine where you are." So the strong feeling I have is, I think there's a lot to do with the individual and their work style. You've hit a lot of good points about the infrastructure things and the stuff that maybe we're doing for ourselves these days. And so it's an adjustment there for everybody. But some people have that style that they need to be able to get up and walk into some of these office or cube and have a face-to-face discussion. That's just how they operate. And sometimes, that's a CEO, which means everybody below him acts like that person because that's the culture, that's a social thing. You can imitate what the boss is doing. Thomas LaRock (00:10:48): I'm not that person, I don't need to physically... I prefer the solitude, and I've gotten used to being able to work on my own, set my own schedule. You know what? I promise I'll get you that thing today. I will. It might not happen. What that really means is you'll have it before tomorrow, so you might get at nine o'clock tonight because that's when I'm going to actually have the time to do it. So I think it really comes down to the individual, their work styles, how they feel productive, and are they in a position of influence? And the higher up that person is that says, "Oh, everybody's got to be in the office," then that's what that company ends up doing. Chuck Sterling (00:11:26): I'm going to add to that. A piece you didn't mention, that Intel did studies on, it's the team dynamics. So if you have a team that can actually effectively work remotely... I work on a team right now, the Power CAT team, they were remote, and they spend a lot of time going out and doing.... Right now, I'm missing one of their happy hours, right this minute. They really do actually focus on making sure that that communication, that connection is there. And I work on other teams that while they were geo located, they had to have the interaction or they just couldn't work. They're falling apart. They're not doing as well in this world as the other team. The other team was like, "Yeah, this is almost business as usual. Not quite, but almost." So team dynamics. Chuck Sterling (00:12:09): When I was in Australia, we all lived in a different state, and still that's a big country. And I know that we were more effective on that team and much, much closer. When we went into that state, we actually stayed at those people's houses and we knew what their wives and their children were doing, and their cats and their dogs, in case of Rob Collie. Yeah, we had that personal connection and we had that sinew between us. And that is actually a big point on these new teams, this new dynamic and this new brave world. So I'm agreeing with you. Yes. Rob Collie (00:12:39): The nature of the organization matters a lot and what the kind of work is. For example, our company has been remote since its inception. It has always worked very well for us as a company. To be fair, though, large amount of our work, a disproportionate amount of our work is done on an individual basis. We do collaborate with one another, but each consultants working on their own projects, and sometimes there's a couple of consultants collaborating. But the amount of coordination that's required across consultants is relatively low, it's the low order bit in the equation. Chuck Sterling (00:13:15): And it's almost an unblocking, right? It's like, "Hey, I'm just up to this." They don't need to know that the meta around the problem to just say, "Hey, I need to grab an IP address out of this data stream. Hey, do that." And then somebody would be like, "Oh, I've done it." Rob Collie (00:13:27): Yeah. We have a whole channel on our Slack for exactly those sorts of like, "Hey, has anybody seen this problem before?" That kind of thing. And so we have a very social culture remotely, but the end of the trenches work. When I was at Microsoft, a couple of the teams that I was on, the developers declared that there were this thing called no-meeting Wednesdays, which was to give them the solitude to execute their jobs without being interrupted and without having to do the context switching, and that made sense. But my job at Microsoft was always coordination. There's nothing I could do on those software teams if my developers were unavailable. So they called it no meeting Wednesdays, I sort of snakily called them no-decision Wednesdays. It was no-progress Wednesdays. Rob Collie (00:14:18): At least for me, collaborative meetings are inherently more exhausting remotely than in-person. But something about the in-person version of the collaborative meeting with the physical whiteboard, being in the same space, it at least for me, sustains me energetically and I don't get that over remote. It feels more draining. At our company, I run more of the marketing and growth side of the company as opposed to the operations of the consulting team. And now that we've been building a team recently, we've hired people like Luke, we have a copywriter, we have a designer, we have a full-time web dev. Rob Collie (00:14:56): Now I'm back in that spot where like, "Oh, this is a collaborative, build-something-together team. And it's over remote." And I'm feeling that pain again for really the first time in 10 years. Now I'm like, "Okay, now I need to figure out how to operate like this remotely," really for the first time ever. Thomas LaRock (00:15:14): I assume Power CAT is the customer team for Power BI. Chuck Sterling (00:15:20): When you talk about the Power platform, it's four products, Power BI has their own CAT team, it's the Power BI CAT team. And they actually were created before the Power platform existed. So there is a Power BI CAT team, and it's got some of the best people in the world. It's got Adam Sexton and Patrick Leblanc and Casper and Phil Seamark. If you guys have not had Phil Seamark on there, the guy's just wicked smart. Ted Patterson, actually living in Florida, is on that team. On the other side of the house, which includes the Power Apps, the Power Automate and the Power Virtual Agents, is my team, the Power CAT team. Thomas LaRock (00:15:54): So, and just to be clear, because Power is such an overused term, that means you have nothing to do with PowerShell? Chuck Sterling (00:16:04): My background is with Excel like Rob, and PowerShell is still my go-to. Thomas LaRock (00:16:13): Power is everywhere. So Power CAT, so it's the Power platform. Got it. Chuck Sterling (00:16:18): It's the Power platform. It has nothing to do with PowerShell. Exactly right. Rob Collie (00:16:20): We are, I think pretty closely associated with the Power platform on this podcast. But we have people listening that don't really know the Microsoft platform, all that well, so let's give them a tour. Chuck Sterling (00:16:30): Yeah. And let's give you guys a nod yourself. Before we talk about the technology, let's talk about the motivation or why Microsoft walked down this path, is that we went out and identified a need where there were these people who weren't developers and yet they were maybe more technical than an information worker. I don't know if of any of these people, Rob, you may have worked with a couple of these. Rob Collie (00:16:52): Just a few. Chuck Sterling (00:16:53): A couple here or there. And we identified a need where they needed the tools to make themselves more successful. And the first of those tools was in, Rob's space. Actually, how do you make a data analyst out of an Excel practitioner? How do you give them access to big, big data? So the first one of these was before Power platform got created, and that was Power BI. And we're like, "Hey, this not just works, this is taking the world by storm. Who else needs this sort of metaphor?" And I don't know if you guys know my background between the marine biology and where I'm at now, I actually worked on a little product called Visual Studio and the .Net Framework. Chuck Sterling (00:17:32): And James Phillips went out and said, "If it works for data analysts, we can do this for developers." We've taken a couple of runs at it before, we had light switch, the info path. And again, I don't mean any grimaces here, but we've taken some runs out, and James has that a track record of getting done and actually delivering the goods. He says, "We can do it. This is the time." So he went out and actually said, "Let's take everything that Visual Studio has got and give that to "our makers" or our citizen developers, if you will. Chuck Sterling (00:18:02): But the Excel users, Rob's family, if you will, so Power Apps and Power Automate or the second two, and actually for a while, Power platform was just three products. And if you haven't played with Power Apps, Power Apps is a way of actually doing UIs in interaction of an application. Power Automate is, how do you automate tasks and drive a lot of that UI. Again, a lot of my Power Apps are nothing more than calling those flows from Power Automate. A canonical example I give is that when I'm driving home, I would actually want the garage door opener to go out and turn on my stove, turn on my thermostat, and maybe turn on my TV. Chuck Sterling (00:18:48): And that's actually something all you can do with the SDKs, the garage door openers and the Samsung stoves and whatnot. I can also create an application in Power Apps on my phone to have hit a button to actually do that maybe three or four miles out. That's actually three of the technologies. Any guesses as to what the last one is? You guys have been tracking us at all? That's an interesting world. I'm excited about that last fourth piece of the Power platform. Rob Collie (00:19:13): You mentioned it earlier, Power Virtual Agents. Is that what we're talking about? Chuck Sterling (00:19:17): Yeah, that's exactly it. I hadn't realized that I had mentioned it. Rob Collie (00:19:20): You gave us the answer and then asked us the question. That's very kind of you. Chuck Sterling (00:19:25): I'm nice that way. But yeah, the way of actually creating chatbots. So if you've ever gone in and said, "What's your problem today?" "It's my flight's delayed or my airplane's missing," or whatever the case is, and you get an automated response, this is a way of... Literally, when we can talk about no code, by far, it is the closest that we've got to delivering on that Power platform promise, if you will. In Power BI, there's M an DAX that you sometimes have to devolve into the UI just doesn't have everything. In my world, there's a Power Apps script language that you actually go out and automate your buttons with. Chuck Sterling (00:20:03): Like if you want to say, hello world, you actually have to go out and set the property to say hello world. Power Automate has its own expression language that you will generally get into. No, that's not true with Power Virtual Agents, you go out and create these topics that have interaction and it's really, really well done. Hats off to the team. If you have a play with it, I'm going to give myself a little bit of shout or the team a shout out, it's aka.ms/TryPVA. Rob Collie (00:20:27): Try PBA? Chuck Sterling (00:20:29): PVA, Power Virtually. Rob Collie (00:20:32): PVA. Okay. Thomas LaRock (00:20:33): Chuck, just hear me out. You're inside Microsoft, you have some influence, if you need some product ideas... Yeah, yeah, you do, shaking his head. Just hear me out, few thoughts for you, Power Kubernetes, just think of it. Chuck Sterling (00:20:49): You have containers? Thomas LaRock (00:20:50): Yup. Power blockchain. These are ideas that would make billions of dollars and offer nothing of value to the world. Rob Collie (00:20:59): Power stocks, just chew on that. Thomas LaRock (00:21:03): Just put power in front of anything and print money. Chuck Sterling (00:21:07): Making blockchains easier to use, you promise that it won't actually solve any problems or give the world value? I'm going to question that, but power containers and making those easier, maybe, I don't know. It seems like with the cloud, that's actually something that will just get solved just by nature of how you're using it. I'd like to say that when you go out and hit the run in any of our products, we can take care of if we have to do containerization for you. Thomas LaRock (00:21:37): Or things like power no SQL, or how about just power agile? Rob Collie (00:21:41): That covers a lot of ground there. Chuck Sterling (00:21:42): I worked on the dot-net world where everything got dot-net in front of it for a little while. Thomas LaRock (00:21:46): Yeah. So you had told me that story how you were the initial release for dot-net, right? Chuck Sterling (00:21:52): Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:21:53): You were the program manager or? Chuck Sterling (00:21:54): Product manager. Thomas LaRock (00:21:56): Product manager. Chuck Sterling (00:21:56): So Rob, I was on the dark side of the house for that one. So there's program managers who own features and schedules and product managers generally own a business stream or a cost center, if you will. And so I actually was on the business side, I got to play on the technical community side of that house. Literally, I was in the marketing side of the world at that point. A brief way, it was interesting, I learned a lot, got to pick up a lot of airplane miles. So if that's good, then it was. Rob Collie (00:22:28): I don't want to lose the thread about Power Virtual Agents. Can we go back for a moment? Thomas LaRock (00:22:32): Of course. Rob Collie (00:22:33): I would like you to object. So what will they do for me? What gap does that fill in the world's needs? Chuck Sterling (00:22:40): Power Apps enables you to have a metaphor if you know what the application looks like and you know what your customers or your constituents or your coworkers need. You've sat down even if it's in a bar napkin over dinner like me and you did and withdrew some things out and it has buttons and drop downs and whatnot. What about the case where I want to answer the questions and I'm not positive what it needs to look like, and I'm actually not positive what information they need. So for instance, you might actually create at your company a one to apply for leave chat bot, go out and say, "Hey, how do you apply for leave?" Chuck Sterling (00:23:17): Then it goes out and gives them one link. And what you do is you look at the topics and you say, "Hey, wait a minute, they're actually asking things about babysitting or they're asking about new computers, let's add those topics." Now, you're actually learning from what the topics were and they're adding that value. But the UI for them actually still stays a natural language interaction, where they went out and asked a question, "Hey, Rob, how do I get a new laptop based on the company budget?" And then pretty soon you see the next question is, how do I do my gasoline expenses? Chuck Sterling (00:23:51): For you, you don't have to actually rewrite a new screen, you don't have to code new buttons, you just add a new topic. Rob Collie (00:23:56): I see. That's cool. So is there always a chat bot front end? Is that consistent? Chuck Sterling (00:24:01): Yeah. That is actually what they're delivering. Let's talk about it at a philosophical level right now is that typing is certainly one medium that people interact with. And I don't know that we've done announcements in other spaces, but let's imagine if you will, how else might I interact with this? I think, what are we doing right now? We're not typing, we are doing what? Rob Collie (00:24:20): We're talking, we're speaking, conversing. Chuck Sterling (00:24:22): We're talking, we are conversing. So it seems like if you actually have the intelligence in the back end to go out and parse words and then go out and give responses, that's the next logical progression. So you can go out, and I'm not here to do disclosure, I'm not here to do announcements, but there's natural evolution in that space. Rob Collie (00:24:42): Yeah. We don't want you to disclose any secrets here today, but can you tell us some secrets? Chuck Sterling (00:24:46): Yeah, absolutely. How would you like me to break into jail? How would you like to chat-retire today? Rob Collie (00:24:54): We don't want that. Chuck Sterling (00:24:55): I actually I've been downloading cool feature that you guys would be very interested in, and I got blessing from the Power BI team to actually go out and demo this is that, you've probably seen my demo where I go out and put a Power app and set a Power BI report so you could go out and update your underlying data set or add your data. You've probably seen that. Now, what I just started demoing this week for the first time, and these aren't builds that are available yet, this is actually still pretty rough, is that if I order to go out and add that Power app inside of a Power BI report, I'm actually generally pushing or editing one record. Just the one I'm looking at or the one I want to update, or the one I want to add. Chuck Sterling (00:25:37): Now, there's lots of use cases where your guys' company, maybe you guys have actually decided that these customers need a discount or these customers you're going to go out and defer their billing for whatever reason and you want to email all of them and oh, maybe they're just delinquent and you want to email all of them and say, "Hey, could you actually just pay your bill." Having a Power app that you go out and click on the button says, "Send email, send email is not the best solution for that." So what we're actually doing is giving a new type of button inside of Power BI that lets you call one of those flows from Power Automate, passing in the entire dataset, and then letting you iterate through like a whole bunch of garage door openers had just been clicked, turn on stove at this guy's house, turn on stove at that guy's house and do whatever the right steps were. Rob Collie (00:26:20): Sounds like Obi-Wan Kenobi quotes. I just had this vision of millions of garage doors all closing at once and then suddenly going silent. There you go. The ultimate power in the universe, that one button Chuck Sterling (00:26:35): That's where I met you is actually the dark force of data analytics. What was the name of that title? That's actually the first time I ever saw you present? Rob Collie (00:26:44): The Data Insights Conference? Chuck Sterling (00:26:46): Yes, but it was actually titled like the dark force of- Rob Collie (00:26:49): Oh, right, The Dark Matter. The Dark Matter for BI Project. Chuck Sterling (00:26:52): The Dark Matter. Thank you. Rob Collie (00:26:53): The Dark Matter for BI Project is The Communication. Chuck Sterling (00:26:55): And you had lots of Star Wars references and the dark matter presentation. Rob Collie (00:26:58): Oh yeah. Those jokes always only like land with like 30% of the crowd. It's like, "I'm at a data conference." The right room? Chuck Sterling (00:27:11): Is this my cab, hello? Rob Collie (00:27:13): That's right. Some of the things you were saying about the success that Power BI had on behalf of the citizen developer, and you've seen my trap that I lay for people in my presentations where I ask them what the number one programming language, most popular programming language in the world is, and everyone guesses Java and all of that. And eventually I spring it on them that it's Excel formulas. They pass the test of, they are programming language, they're just hiding in plain sight. Chuck Sterling (00:27:39): Number one BI feature all applications have is? Rob Collie (00:27:42): Export to Excel. Chuck Sterling (00:27:43): Export to Excel. That's right. Rob Collie (00:27:46): It's actually like any application that has anything to do with data. That's the button that gets worn out. The label gets worn off over time here, so much erosion. Chuck Sterling (00:27:53): I was almost able to not use Omniture because they move that button. It's like, "Oh, oh, what happened here? Oh, oh." Rob Collie (00:27:59): We just had Bill Jelen, MrExcel on. And I've known this guy for a long time, we've been business partners for a long time and friends for a long time. And even I didn't know that he started his career as an export to spreadsheet guy making reports out of the expensive six-figure reporting system that didn't do what it was supposed to do. And he was exporting to Lotus. Thomas LaRock (00:28:23): He was Mister Lotus 1, 2, 3. Rob Collie (00:28:24): Yeah. He was only like three years into Excel when he launched his site. It was really fascinating. But I think of Bill as an accounting guy almost, and that is where he worked, but he was a BI backstop. He was the black market BI guy, the export to Excel, they just didn't call it Excel back then. Chuck Sterling (00:28:43): Ken Puls has got the same background. Rob Collie (00:28:45): Isn't that crazy? Chuck Sterling (00:28:46): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:28:46): And Ken is a developer's developer. Chuck Sterling (00:28:50): He's become one. Rob Collie (00:28:52): Yeah. He is now. We have a joke at our house, if I bring like a new device home or something like that, I got this new heater for our garage and it's a beast. And I look at my kids and my wife and I say, "Hey you know what I found this on?" And they all know, they look back at me and they said, "Did you find that on the not effing around aisle at the store?" Well, Ken's parents found him on the not effing around aisle. He's in our gun sites for a future recording. Chuck Sterling (00:29:21): You have to bring him in. Rob Collie (00:29:22): I can describe the way that I observe Microsoft in two different stories, it depends upon who I'm talking to, which story I'll use. So I'll tell you both of them. One version of this story is that I try not to be tainted or confused by the information that Microsoft produces or that other people in the community. I just try to like filter all that out and look at like, watch what the person's chest is doing because that's where they're headed, all those pump fakes with the head and the hands and everything. They can fool you with that, but if you look at their chest, that doesn't lie. So I watch Microsoft that way. Chuck Sterling (00:29:55): How do you get that signal? It's great to say that, but how do you get that signal? I'm genuinely curious because I've been looking for that, I've only been working here for what, 28 years. I'm still looking for, how do you focus on the chest? Rob Collie (00:30:06): You know this, I don't have anything that's going to light you up, but always watch what they do and not what they say. The mouth is easy. For example, you don't have to confirm or deny any of this, but I was laughing my head off the whole time years ago when Microsoft was saying, "We're not deprecating MDX, we're not moving on. We're not moving on from multidimensional. No, no, no." But then you go and you look and you see all the stuff that they were doing wasn't supporting it. And I'm like, "See, they haven't pulled the plug on it. It's still a good product, it's still doing things for people. It's just that investment in it has stopped." Rob Collie (00:30:45): And so that's all that really matters the end game action. Of course, the other way to describe this perspective is like I'm lazy or I'm not out there consuming all this information all the time. It's like a slow cooked meal, I don't come up with observations about what's going on with any pace or any frequency, but as the slow picture starts to evolve, the way you described it as exactly what I've been conjecturing is going on is that we look, we went and we did for all that modeling and for ETL, we came up with citizen developer Excel crowd focus technologies that bring a lot of that industrial strength power of the traditional world, the traditional IT world to these people. Rob Collie (00:31:31): And it has been such a smashing success, I completely agree. Once I saw what it looked like, I bet my future career on it, I went all in. So to see Microsoft now going, "Well, that was a good trick. What else can we do that trick with?" I have been thinking that that's the game, but one particular thing I want to get into with you as a central figure in the Power platform world is this thing that we talked about with Lori, the Gartner VP that we had on a few weeks back, this is another part of me reading the external tea leaves of what's going on at Microsoft. I'm going to name drop. Rob Collie (00:32:08): I have bounced this off of James Phillips in email. He listened to that one section of the podcast and gave the thumbs up like, "Yeah, that's what we're doing." I felt very validated at that moment. But all these things are interrelated. It's not just that there's areas, they're domains that a citizen developer population can colonize, that's a theme that unites them for sure, but these things aren't in their own worlds. They actually interact and overlap with one another quite a bit. And that I think is unrecognized genius of what you all are up to. Rob Collie (00:32:40): Again, as a like a practiced observer of Microsoft, I'm looking around, I'm looking at Microsoft, then I look over at their competitors, then I look back at Microsoft, I look back at their competitors and I stay looking at their competitors and I go, "Oh, you're in trouble. Microsoft has got mate-in-five," to you use a chess metaphor. It's like, it hasn't happened yet, but it's coming. Chuck Sterling (00:33:07): Yeah. As you mentioned, it lives in a continuum. That's actually the where we're actually now not refocusing, but additionally are adding into our repertoire of offerings. If you go out and take a look at our old Power BI messaging, it's about self-service, self-service, self-service, citizen developer, you could be your own data analysts and these were very Excel focused. And if you go out and take a look at the chest now, to use your metaphor, I like that metaphor by the way, where's that chest looking at? What are the new features that we're delivering? And it's actually going back to that enterprise integration. How do I actually put it back into the hands of our traditional VBAs? Chuck Sterling (00:33:45): What am I talking about? I'm talking about well, premium capacity, I'm talking about data flows. All the Power query stuff that you did, now I can actually hand them as an end point, or I'm just going to start pumping it back into your analysis cube or your data lake. So Power BI is actually now got this whole grow-up story called enterprise BI as part of that self-service and Power Apps has picked up exact same charter in the last semester where we're actually really focusing on, how do we not just make the maker successful, but have a grub story where we can hand it off to the development team? Chuck Sterling (00:34:20): So go out and look at the big announcements that we've actually made this month was, "Hey, inside of your Power Automate flow, you can actually now do check-ins to get hub and to create new repositories." That's clearly not a maker story, but that was actually a big feature. The other biggest feature that we had last month was the ability to go out and use visual studio code to parse your applications. Those are not maker features. What they are is makers have got it to the line it now works, how do I hand it out to my operations to operationalize it and make sure that it actually does safe and accessible in all the right ticks now that it actually has all the domain knowledge? Chuck Sterling (00:35:00): So you're definitely calling it correct in that. Yes, we want to enable those people, but we want to enable a grub story as well. So there's where our chest is pointing, I think, at least looking at my dev team. Rob Collie (00:35:12): Yeah. You look around and you see the absolute top end monster experts from the previous MDX world, and they're happily slinging DAX on a daily basis now. These are people who would be Olympic gold medal contenders if all that data modeling were an Olympic sport. And we're teaching that same language to the citizen developer, to the Excel crowd. I guess it's really, really cool. Whether you're the citizen developer turns into Marco Russo or Alberto Ferrari someday, it doesn't matter, every now and then one of them does. But the important thing is that language doesn't have to be rewritten or re-understood or re-imagined if it experiences a grow-up transition. Rob Collie (00:35:59): And that's a really big deal. When I was on the Excel team and we would visit Wall Street, one of the things we would get every single trip we go out there, we'll get the same request, which was, "Have you guys got something that will take an Excel spreadsheet and like convert it to C or C# or C++?" Chuck Sterling (00:36:18): Repeat after me, Excel is not a database. Rob Collie (00:36:22): That's right. So what they were doing was they were hiring all of these the quants, the stats people, whatever that would build these just absolutely insane Excel models, and now they want to run them on a server. So in some sense, this Excel model that had been built, you could think of it as a specification, like a very, very, very precise specification for an enterprise app. You'd think that'd be a gift like, "Hey, you can even test it. You got edge cases, go back to the original and ask it what it does," all that kind of stuff. And yet the innards of that thing are so complicated and written in a language that is completely foreign to IT that is a non-starter to convert this thing. Rob Collie (00:37:09): And so that's why that thing kept coming up. And so that example looms over my head every time I'm thinking about DAX and its grow-up story, it's not a rewrite. Maybe there's some formulas that IT looks at and goes, "Oh, we can make that more efficient," or something like that. Chuck Sterling (00:37:23): It's a tuning process, it's not a recreation. Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:37:27): That's also following those same responsible paths. So the underlying you get really down closer to the metal, whatever codes being really built behind the scenes, it's enterprise grade. Chuck Sterling (00:37:39): That's right. One of our primary missions is called development is a team sport. And it's actually to make sure and enable those fusion teams across larger enterprises grow these applications up. They're not the access to of yesteryear that people will have to go out and fare out, you know the challenges that Access to credit and that they were just get pocketed away and solve problems, but they didn't have a way of actually growing up into a big story. Rob Collie (00:38:06): You mentioned access, I have to ask you, have you crossed paths ever with Howie Dickerman? Chuck Sterling (00:38:11): I have, yeah. I interacted with them quite a bit when I was in the Power BI team. And matter of fact, he's delivering for Ken Puls at the Vancouver User Group this month. So yeah. Rob Collie (00:38:21): Oh, that's fantastic. Part of me imagines that the universe wouldn't be able tolerate the two of you in the same room. There's like too much directness in one place and an obsession with fishing and boats at the same time, I just imagined the two of you hanging out all the time. Chuck Sterling (00:38:39): Separate buildings and I guess not enough overlap business-wise. I know what he does. I track him and I've actually gone out and praised him in some of my events, but as far as being in the same room, I don't know if that's ever happened. Rob Collie (00:38:55): Well, let's not take that chance, okay? Chuck Sterling (00:38:56): Yeah, yeah, of course. That's crossing the streams in Ghostbusters. That's not fair. Rob Collie (00:38:59): That's right. Did you know that he had like this completely, when he was working on the Excel team, he had this landing craft, it's like all aluminum landing craft boat built just for him, and he had a business called Illuminator because it was an aluminum boat? He was like towing boats in distress out in the San Juan Islands and running fairies of motorcycles and stuff over to the islands and everything, just seems like- Chuck Sterling (00:39:23): We probably hang out in different financial circles. My boats tend to come in boxes that say Revell on them. Rob Collie (00:39:33): Yeah, he's a long timer, he's been at Microsoft a very long time. Chuck Sterling (00:39:37): I have two, but my first stock option was zero, and I don't know if you'd multiply zero by a whole bunch of numbers, Tom, you got to help me out with the math, it gets complicated for a marine biologist, it's still not a real big number. Thomas LaRock (00:39:48): So it's a lot of zeros after a number, are you talking just zero? Chuck Sterling (00:39:52): Yeah. It was a whole number. It was an ant of zero. Rob Collie (00:39:57): You know what they say, zero here, zero there, sooner or later, it adds up to real nothing. Chuck Sterling (00:40:05): My last boat cost $100, and the one before that I bought for a dollar. I'm certainly Craigslist aficionado, apparently. Rob Collie (00:40:14): I think he even sold as his custom boat that was like the most exciting thing that ever happened to him at the time. He was like, "Ah, I got rid of it." Chuck Sterling (00:40:20): Yeah. And that's the old joke, because one of the two most exciting time in a man's life is the day he buys a boat, and then of course the day he sells the boat. Rob Collie (00:40:28): True. True. Well, he's had both. He's gone full cycle. So can we talk about Power Apps licensing? Chuck Sterling (00:40:35): I'm not a licensing person, but sure, absolutely. Rob Collie (00:40:37): Neither am I, really. Microsoft software licensing is famously byzantine and there are people who actually identify as professionals that all they do is navigate Microsoft licensing. We need Power Microsoft licensing. That's the next citizen developer frontier. Chuck Sterling (00:40:54): We need licensing MVPs to get by those guys capes. Thomas LaRock (00:40:57): I think they're called lawyers. Rob Collie (00:40:58): Power of blockchain, that's a good idea, but I'd push it down the stack one notch, get the Power licensing in there. I've only got a vague sense of this. I'm far enough removed from the actual tech implementations these days. I don't tend to personally and run up against the actual licensing obstacles and things like that. But one of the things that struck me is I've now heard from a few different people who are reasonably significant paying customers of things like Power BI, who can't use Power Apps because there isn't a breaking point for them that's smooth in terms of the pricing. Rob Collie (00:41:39): That might even be old stories at this point. All of those people might've found solutions by now, there might've been even changes. Is there anything going on there that has addressed that? Are you even familiar with what I'm talking about? Chuck Sterling (00:41:52): Yeah, yeah. I'm, again, not a licensing person, but let's recap what some of our peers have done and that we're being compared to, because that's actually important. Power BI and SQL Server, you go out and buy an instance sort of thing. I'm talking about premium here. And I then go out and dole it out as much as I bought. So if I bought a Greyhound bus worth, I could go out and put a Greyhound bus worth of people. Or actually, I can put a lot more than a Greyhound bus worth people, I just hope to God they never try to get all on the bus at the same time. So that's actually a capacity model. Chuck Sterling (00:42:26): And again, it's something that we're familiar with, we're accustomed to, and I think we've actually trained our customers to do that. Power Apps has gone much more like what your team has done when they went into the cloud, and they have a per user license. So if you want to use Excel as Rob Collie, you get an Excel license. For Power Apps, we actually have a per user license. So if you want to use Power Apps, I can actually go ahead and license it for me, Chuck, and Tom and Luke, we could actually go out and get them a Power Apps license, just like Excel. Chuck Sterling (00:42:59): What's happening is, those companies are going out and saying, "Well, hang on, that's more than me being able to put the entire state of Michigan on this bus for the cost of just one bus. Yeah, I should have bought 20 buses, but they're never all there at the same time, and I'll go ahead and take the hit when they are." So what we've also done is we've actually added this notion of licensing an application. I can actually have people at the application get registered. And again, people are going out and try to compare it to a SQL server capacity, or if you translate it to an Excel or a Word or a E3, E5, then it actually makes a little bit more sense. Chuck Sterling (00:43:43): Where it gets challenging for me, and you've seen my demos, you actually see that I actually often have turducken. You're smiling so you know what I'm talking about. I often have turducken where I go out and I'll start my journey with Excel, and that's an E3, E5, and then I'll actually go into Power BI, and that's now a Power BI user or a premium. And then I use Power Apps, and now I'm in Power Apps. And I use Power Automate and I use a lot of it, and there's a capacity for that. And then I actually go out and show AI builder to do sentiment analysis. Or actually, what's the one I've been using? Classification. I'll use data classification. That's actually the one that excites me a lot right now Chuck Sterling (00:44:21): And that is yet an additional license. And if I'm counting them right, I think I'm up to five, and I didn't try very hard. And I haven't got a PVA chatbot on there. Because you often decide, I want to build it to answer questions on, "Hey, how does this application work? Or what does this acronym mean?" Or whatever the case is. And that's a sixth license. I've been talking with Charles Ramona in my organization, and he understands that there's a problem. And what he is actually got his business people doing is going, do we go back into an Azure sort of paradigm or does he actually go and follow suit with maybe suite of Office? Chuck Sterling (00:45:01): And they're looking at both. They want to actually talk to the customers and actually deliver the needs, but there are too many licenses, it is too complicated, especially when you do the turducken marriage. I don't think anybody's going to be confused at, what is this feedback you're getting, Rob? I hear on a regular basis, and I think it's when people start going out and compairing Power Apps to a SQL server at $10 a month for everybody I can possibly add onto it. Rob Collie (00:45:28): Yeah. I'm sympathetic with this, again, as a former insider. People outside the company, it's hard for them to truly put themselves in the other chair and see it from the other side. First of all, the fact that there is such complaint or difficulty, first of all, you've got to take it as a compliment. Chuck Sterling (00:45:49): Yes. They want it. Rob Collie (00:45:51): They want it. Chuck Sterling (00:45:52): If it was silence, then you have a much bigger problem. Rob Collie (00:45:55): That's right. That's right. So, by advancing to this stage of griping about it, we're already saying, "Hey, this is hot. We really like this. And it's a shame that there are these odd pricing inflection points or cliffs that you've.... " Sometimes it's not even just the money, sometimes it's the people who need it aren't the ones that negotiate the deal with Microsoft, and so there's a political problem. They've got to go get someone's attention at their company and say, "Listen, we need you to go buy this for us." And they're like, "Nah, I feel pretty non-helpful today." There's a lot of silos and things like that that end up standing in the way. Chuck Sterling (00:46:33): At your company, how many times do you work with the marketing division and they're like, "We're in. We're willing to write the check. It's done." And they're like, "Ah, you need to talk to your tenant administrator and hand them the check so they can actually go out and spin it up." And they're like, "Oh, that gets hard. That gets hard. There's no check big enough to make those guys do what I want." Rob Collie (00:46:54): Yeah. In the early days of the Power BI cloud service, it felt like an act of God to get someone to go add the DNS records to light up Power BI for that domain. Chuck Sterling (00:47:04): You know what's funny, is one of my most read blog posts when I had to move from MSDN to my personal blog is buying an Azure Power BI Embedded skew. Not because they wanted to do embedding, but rather these are internal people where that were buying it to actually get premium capacities because we can't. We could not inside of Microsoft get the tenant administrator to actually back bill it to a particular business group. So I look at all this traffic and I get all these questions, and they're all with @microsoft.com. Matter of fact, I got another one last night. Chuck Sterling (00:47:36): And this blog post is like four years old. They're like, "Hey, in this picture of your Azure tenant, how do I actually go ahead and add my Power BI apps?" Again, it's just because it enables all of those features, but using an Azure subscription model, which of course anybody with a credit card can spin up. Rob Collie (00:47:56): Yeah. It's so funny how like just internal bureaucracy, even if there is an outright opposition to something, the amount of inertia, it's just like, "No, we give up." Chuck Sterling (00:48:11): My wife works at SAP, and between the two of us, we have some interesting pillow talk about who had the hardest time to get the simplest thing done. I want to say it's a push. I was going to say, I think she may win having a little bit more, she come in from the concur side of the business and they're actually, we're doing things a little bit more streamlined. They're now SAP, SAP, so I think it's a push now, but yeah, it's funny. Rob Collie (00:48:40): There's no project more unending than an SAP implementation. The old BI projects, the traditional BI projects that I like to make fun of, and they're not really old, they're still happening, unfortunately. The world has recognized the new way is better, but that doesn't mean that they're doing the new way exclusively. I still think the old way, we've got some work to do. Even those old traditional BI projects, those things seem fast compared to an SAP rollout. There's The Dutch House saying about soccer. Of course, it gets lost in translation and then Rob retells it and it's even worse. Rob Collie (00:49:20): It's something like, "Soccer is a beautiful game that goes on for 90 minutes, and in the end, the Germans win." And I saw someone skew riff on that years ago and said, "ERP is an implementation that goes on for years and years, and in the end, the Germans win." Chuck Sterling (00:49:37): Yeah. Pretty appropriate, actually. Rob Collie (00:49:40): Who knows whether that applies to internal operation of the actual software company. It's tempting for me to theorize that their internal workings mirror what their projects feel like, but that's probably not true. Chuck Sterling (00:49:52): I guess I could probably go out and posturize a big, company's a big company's a big company. I don't know if there's a whole lot that actually get to act as startups after certain size. Rob Collie (00:50:01): Yeah. One of the first things that Bill John and I bonded over was all of his perfectly rational conspiracy theories about like why Microsoft did something X, Y, Z. And my answer was always, Nope, nope, just stupid big company politics," or just stupid big company bureaucracy, not even politics. And it was like my answer to everything like, "No, there's a really dumb, stupid reason for all of this." Chuck Sterling (00:50:23): Never apply malice where ignorance is just as easy to explain. I think it's the Occam's razor of industry. Rob Collie (00:50:30): Yeah. And it doesn't matter how smart the people are that you comprise the big organization of, every organization's got different incentives, and so they all end up pulling in different directions and the rest is predictable. Thomas LaRock (00:50:43): So you guys actually have met? Chuck Sterling (00:50:45): Yes. I don't know if Charles remembers or not, but you guys came up and did a bootcamp at the Commons. Is that where we met, Tom? Thomas LaRock (00:50:56): No, you came down and did the keynote at SQL Live in Orlando for me Andrew Brust, that's where you and I first met. Chuck Sterling (00:51:02): Got it. And actually, I was just starting to play with Power Apps at that point, so I snuck over... You had a parallel track, and I was actually hanging out over there as much. And what we did, and I regret to this day, I think, was we went out and used buttons in Power BI and recreated all of PowerPoint. So everything that we showed was a Power BI page and we actually navigated everything, including the animations, using Power BI buttons. And then what I also did, and it's actually probably the coolest demo. So the demo I wish I did more of was, how do you go out and talk about the cost of performance? This is actually really cool. Chuck Sterling (00:51:42): So if your website, Rob, is five seconds slower, how much does that cost? And it turns out what I was able to do is I actually grabbed the application insight data off of a real website, it was actually use some PowerBI.tips, and you know Mike Carlo and Seth Bauer, I don't know if the you know boys up in Wisconsin. And did a little bit of modeling in saying, they sell ads, and by having a page render a little bit faster, they're able to sell this many more ads. And then what I was able to do is grab the pricing dynamically using M from the Azure pricing page, and then slide up and down the different SQL capacities to serve pages faster or slower. Chuck Sterling (00:52:23): Because it turns out, most websites are a direct result of how fast your database actually serves the data. This isn't going to come as any surprise. The faster your database, the faster you can serve a page, but are you going to buy SSD Z series for every single page? Does it prove the price. Does it actually make it more cost effective? So using application insights, the Azure pricing, and a little bit of modeling, I was able to go out and say, "Hey, if we slide it to the G series of Azure SQL capacity, this is actually how much we're getting and this is actually how much we're losing in terms of pricing. Chuck Sterling (00:52:58): And that was actually the demo that we did, and I was able to actually show that with real websites, real pricing, and a little bit of modeling on their ads that they were selling. And of course, the easier thing would be to do on a real website would be, how often are they clicking on buy or seek engagement or whatever the case is for your business rather than selling ads. But the model is actually no more complicated. Does that make sense? Thomas LaRock (00:53:25): Yeah, I was there, so it makes sense. Chuck Sterling (00:53:27): No, I was asking, Rob. I don't know that I've ever seen a demo that goes out and shows the cost of performance or the value of performance. Rob Collie (00:53:36): That's really neat. It's almost like using solver. It's an optimization problem? Where's the peak, the relative maximum? Chuck Sterling (00:53:45): It's right. And I had different pages, and they obviously had different loads, and I could actually go out and start factoring that across into different instances. So we could actually go out and use your solver metaphor to say, "If I take these three pages and put it on this instance, I then actually can go out and save the company a lot of money because they're easy to solve, their static," or whatever the case is. So yeah, that's exactly what it was. And I showed it using all of these tools. My application of sites in Azure is really isn't, but I think it is actually well within the realm of people that implement telemetry on their application. And I could have probably used Google Analytics as well. Thomas LaRock (00:54:23): So what I'm waiting for is the cost of a query. And I don't know why we don't have it yet because I know all that data exists inside of SQL database, especially depending upon the cost model with like DTUs. So the idea is you should be able to look at your bill. And right now, I can look at the bill and it can tell me how much that SQL database costs me for the month. But I'm like, "No, no, break it down. What were my top 10 expensive queries, dollars?" Because then you could look and you can optimize for costs and say, "Hey, I don't need to run that query 1,000 times, I just need to run it once, store it in cache somewhere and serve it up that way." And I don't know why we don't have that yet. I really don't. Chuck Sterling (00:55:02): Azure monitoring doesn't show me SQL queries. Thomas LaRock (00:55:05): But it could. Chuck Sterling (00:55:05): It could, I'm just saying that if I had Azure monitoring wired up, we could do that right now today, I wouldn't even need the bill for that. Thomas LaRock (00:55:12): In SQL database, of course, there's the query store. It's just a blending of two data sets, that's all it is. You're Microsoft, you have all the data. Rob Collie (00:55:22): Unite the clans. Unite us. Chuck Sterling (00:55:24): And you can save somebody, I don't want to throw any names out, but some of the big players, you can probably save them millions of dollars by going... Seems like there's might be some smart data guys, entrepreneurs that are looking for that next chapter. Anyways. Rob Collie (00:55:40): I don't know what you're talking about there. Chuck Sterling (00:55:42): I have no idea what we're talking about. Rob Collie (00:55:43): Yeah. And these citizen developers that you're talking about, these Excel people who are really good at spreadsheets, it's a pleasant fiction, isn't it? Thomas LaRock (00:55:51): I'm just a data janitor, I don't know much. Rob Collie (00:55:55): On the personal front. How did you go from being the marine biologist out in the, what, Bering Sea? Chuck Sterling (00:56:01): Yeah, like I said, super, super as easy. If you are in Seattle with a life science degree, literally there's only two places you're going to get a job. Rob Collie (00:56:09): Well, wait, wait, wait. One of them apparently was on a boat in the Bering Sea. So we're already at three. You decided you did didn't want to be out in the Bering Sea anymore? How did that even just personally- Chuck Sterling (00:56:21): So Oregon State University, I have a marine biology degree. I've got this sheepskin... And what is interesting is that while I was getting this degree at Oregon State, I was actually running a saw mill at a Douglas County Forest Products. It's now warehouser mill. So I was running a saw at night to pay for my college. I was pulling down $65,000 a year at that point. I was driving a 280Z, I had ski boat, and going to college. I wasn't sleeping a whole lot, but I'd given up on that for the most part. And then I get this degree and I'm like, "I'm going to make some real money now. I'm big time." And I went out and the best job I could find was working for National Marine and Fisheries, part of NOAA, at 100 bucks a day. So I dropped down to $36,000 a year from 65. Chuck Sterling (00:57:05): So I basically halved my salary, and now I'm on a steel can with a whole bunch of people I really didn't want to get to know, 30, 40 days straight, back to back to back. And by the time you got off that boat, you were almost damaged goods, you weren't the same person as when you got on that boat. So I'm like, "Okay, this isn't working out. We need to do something different than this." So I'm like, "Okay, where can I take Chuck's degree in the Pacific Northwest?" And I looked at the help wanted daily, and the big money at that point was Oracle DBAs, they were just killing it. I'm like, "How do I get to do that?" It's like, "Clearly, I need to figure out this software." Chuck Sterling (00:57:46): The reason my degree is a marine biology and not oceanography, Rob, is because the marine biology degree did not require a single computer class. Oceanography required one computer class, that's why I don't have an oceanography... So that's worked out well for me. And now I'm looking at, "Okay, I've got to get in the software industry. Where do I do that? Hey, there's this Micro Serve thing in Seattle, I'm going to go apply there." So I go from 65 to 36,000, and they offer me my first job supporting at Excel at about half of my NOAA job. I'm pretty certain that if I had actually got a job where I was asking, "Do you want fries with that?" I would've been making more at my first Microsoft job with how many stock options, Tom? Thomas LaRock (00:58:31): I believe there was zero options. Chuck Sterling (00:58:33): Zero, yes. So if you ever called Excel support during the Excel 3.0 days, you probably spoke with me or David Ferguson or Kat McFarland, almost positively. Rob Collie (00:58:44): Whoa, whoa, David Ferguson, who ended up writing setup scripts for the configuration management team in Office? Chuck Sterling (00:58:50): Yeah, absolutely. And he did a startup. Actually, it was called [inaudible 00:58:54] and actually did voice stuff. Yeah, those were my peeps. I hung out for two years there. And the whole time I was like, "Clearly, I'm not a Microsoft good fit. This is not a long term thing for me. So how do I actually find that Oracle DBA job?" So what I did was I actually started studying at night. I volunteered for the night job at Excel, and I started studying something called Lightning. You're going to laugh because he knows that that's Access, is what that lightning turned into. And I go in and apply for the job after studying this to actually leave, to go out and be an Oracle DBA and this Access team after eight grueling hours; you need to do a podcast on just the interview process at Microsoft, grueling hours, said, "You're not a good team fit. You don't have the intellectual horsepower. We're not even certain about your hygiene aspects, but"- Rob Collie (00:59:46): Well, that's saying a lot. I know what the access team looked like back in that day. Chuck Sterling (00:59:50): Yes, "But you passed the breath test and the stack is you. We're down to you. So how would you like to join the team?" I'm like, "Yes. Now, I can go out and get that Oracle job I've been dreaming about," after I learned Lightning, because I still didn't have a name. So I joined the support team and my manager, Connie Sullivan is actually who it was, she sits me down and says, "Hey Chuck, I know that we hired you into the lightning team, welcome to the team. It turns out, we actually just bought this other product nobody else wants to support it and since you are the low man in the totem pole, you get to figure out how to support this." Chuck Sterling (01:00:26): And they handed me a white box with a purple fox face on it, and it said Fox Base, I think, or FoxPro one." And they're like, you're the FoxPro guy. You're that person, nobody else wants to do it." So hired to the Access team supporting FoxPro? So I got to continue the story because it's actually fun is that I'm looking at the whole part, so I'm like, "Okay, it looks like the C++ developers, actually just seed developers are making more money than the Oracle developers. I got to get rid of this Microsoft thing. This isn't a good fit for me. They're going to figure me out." Chuck Sterling (01:01:02): It's not even an imposter syndrome, it's help wanted poster syndrome, "They're going to figure me out and I'm going to be on the street. So how do I go out and parlay this into a C developer job? "So what was my old play? I volunteered to work nights on the FoxPro and I started studying C and C++ and the Windows SDK. And I went out and interviewed a year later. So I did that for a year, and I interviewed for the Windows SDK, I don't know if you remember, you guys can't see my hands on the podcast, but the Windows SDK was a box about 50 pounds and it was big. It was like the size of your desk, and I applied for that team. Chuck Sterling (01:01:42): Once again, you really don't have the skillset, you can't type in algorithms, you don't know how to do bubble sorts and honoring and trance algorithms, your coding skills are shocking. Again, personal hygiene stuff aside, you're not a good team fit, but nobody else interviewed, welcome to the team. So I joined the team excited that I'm going to learn development to actually go out and get a development job in the real world where I'm going to pull down the big dollars. And [inaudible 01:02:12] sits me down, I think it was and says, "Hey Chuck, welcome to the team. I got some news is that the team actually just acquired another piece of technology, nobody else wants to do it, nobody else. We don't understand it, you're it." Chuck Sterling (01:02:24): And they had me this product called Visual Basic. I was the Visual Basic guy that. I did that, and once again, I'm like, "Ooh, this stuff's hard. It's not easy at all and I don't know if that I wanted hard. That was not what I signed up for. What was the path before? Oracle. Let's get back to that game." We had just licensed Sybase, it's like, "Oh my God, SQL Server is just like Oracle. Let's get back to that Oracle path, I'll make that money, I'll be out of here. I'll be done." Volunteered to support FoxPro at night and I started learning tuples and attributes and COD stuff and Sybase SQL Server and applied for the SQL Server team. Chuck Sterling (01:03:05): And couple things worked against me here. A, when I volunteered to work at nights, I didn't know that I was going to be supporting every development feature at Microsoft. So I wasn't just supporting Windows SDK, Visual Basic, and C++, everything that had in SDK is what I did. So that was a tough job technically and challenging and fun. And I went out and interviewed for the brand new SQL Server team. Sean Abby was running that, great guy, and he asked me probably one of the scariest questions I've ever been asked for in an interview at Microsoft. Chuck Sterling (01:03:36): And if you guys ever hear a question like this, my suggestion is actually go out and say you need to use a restroom, leave. Just don't come back to that table. Rob Collie (01:03:46): Like that scene in Fargo, where William H. Macy just excuse himself and he goes driving by and he's fleeing the interview. Chuck Sterling (01:03:56): Yes, do that. So the question was, "Hey Chuck, after you joined the team, did you want a mountain view or a lake view? And you can actually choose any computer you want and we give you your own pager." So the part after you join the team, if you hear those words as the first question out of your interviewer's mouth, that's not a team that you want to be on. It turns out that the SQL Server team at that point were getting more server downs and escalations in a week than the rest of all support was in a month. And again, we had just it in from Sybase, so I can probably get by a little bit. Chuck Sterling (01:04:35): We were learning, it was new and it was what it was. And so they desperately needed escalation engineers. And it got to the point, one of my greatest skill sets was figuring out a DBCC command that would run longer than my shift was. Did I say that out loud? I need you to figure out a DB SYS indexes, SYSCONSTRAINTS and... This 15 minutes short. Oh, and SYS calls. Go ahead and get those and do a validation check of your data. Give me a call back at this number when we validated the data that is actually back in good shape. Rob Collie (01:05:12): Man, there's so many people that I know where part of those stories as you told them. Like this tour, 11 times I wanted to jump in and say, "Oh, did you know this person? That person?" You probably did. It's a heck of a tour. Chuck Sterling (01:05:29): Yeah. We have such a French movie similar paths. I can can't believe that we haven't intersected, but then again, I was in Lincoln Plaza, you were on campus, so I rarely got up to campus and all of us were in Lincoln Plaza. Rob Collie (01:05:41): My similar stories I interviewed as an afterthought, I was so set on going to work for Andersen Consulting, now Accenture, and Microsoft had a bad reputation on campus back in the '90s. They were the evil empire. Chuck Sterling (01:05:56): Well deserved. Rob Collie (01:06:00): Microsoft really, really grew into that reputation with the antitrust trial the way that was conducted, we were just sitting around going, it's like that Key & Peele or whatever that skid is, like, "Are we the bad guys? We have skulls on our uniforms. Are we the bad guys?" Chuck Sterling (01:06:16): Did you have to do any Bill reviews? Rob Collie (01:06:19): No. Chuck Sterling (01:06:19): I was going to say, I don't think there was a lot of questions, are we the bad guys? Some of those were... There was no, how do you feed kittens and how's the homeless back then. It's different Microsoft now, it's much warmer and friendlier. And literally the conversations are, how do you make sure and service the customers first? Rob Collie (01:06:34): I am very deeply suspicious of this smiling Bill Gates that we see in public these days. I'm like, "What are you really up to Bill?" Chuck Sterling (01:06:50): And what Rob's talking about for you guys on the podcast is Bill has a very different vernacular of words he uses enclosed doors. Let's leave it at that. Great guys, still smart, wicked smart, different set of words with different number of silvers. Rob Collie (01:07:05): I'm going to go as far to say that it goes beyond that as well and it's like what I see in public, I wonder like, "This is a cloaking device, right? Chuck Sterling (01:07:20): It's been great changes though for everybody. The fact that we actually start thinking about all those things, so chops to build. Rob Collie (01:07:26): Yeah. I think everything finds its way. Like so many people that have been on this show, this is still a pretty young show, we haven't had 30 episodes yet. So many people, I'm not picking people, we're not picking people to come on the show because we're like, "Oh, this person's got a really random ass background." We're not looking for the eclectic back stories, we're looking for people that are interesting to talk to in the data space. And it turns out so many of you, of us, have these crazy random paths that you never would've planned it. And so there's a lesson in this, which is, it's like that whole thing, oh, it's the Mike Tyson quote or everyone's got a plan so they get punched in the mouth. Rob Collie (01:08:07): You can plan your career, and some people can pull that off. Props to those people. I'm not trying to take anything away from them because they've got a capability that I don't. So if you're not that person though, being the flexible one, the dynamic one that can surf those waves and can seize those opportunities as they come along, and can follow that random chain, I think that's the rest of us. Some people are pedigree and can call their shot, we're the other people. Chuck Sterling (01:08:37): I have them here, my history at Microsoft, I count myself very lucky, has been a series of buying lottery tickets and winning iterably. Again, I really do feel that every step was this crazy pseudo exit strategy that actually really did set me up to succeed the next step. I had amazing interactions with the people like you and all the teams I worked on were great, and it actually set me up to go to the next level of the thing. And right now, we're talking about, I get to play the absolute latest in cutting technology. Chuck Sterling (01:09:08): I don't know how I got here, but I'm certainly not going to look at the gift horse in the mouth. I think I find myself very fortunate, very lucky here. Thomas LaRock (01:09:16): But that's who you've always been. You just described yourself, something new came along and it got handed to you. I think it just gravitates to you. Chuck Sterling (01:09:24): Yeah. Again, I want to count myself lucky, I was actually able to be in those positions at that time. I don't know how or why, but yeah, it's been cool, been a fun ride. Rob Collie (01:09:33): It's a myth to suggest that, this isn't a myth for them, but for most people, it's a myth to suggest that you're going to be in control of your own life. Things that happen external to you are going to have tremendous impact, but it's also a myth that you're helpless. You have this middle degree of control. I'm not sure if I've told this on this show before, but I learned this really powerfully from being on a white water trip with someone who really knew what they were doing. It's true that this guy in this raft, because we're on the river and we're in a raft, it's not like we're going to be able to go overland, we're not able to paddle overland. Rob Collie (01:10:08): So we're confined to the river, and there's that external constraint that the river's going to take you sooner or later where it wants to take you. But within that river, this guy could call his shot, "We're going to just go over there and hang out in that little pool and we're going to go over there in that little rapid, and we're going to deliberately get stuck. We're just going to sit it there." He could take us anywhere while directing a team of novices, and it was pure excellence. It was unbelievable. And there's a very close parallel to career. You were in that river, but within that river, holy hell, were you maneuverable? Chuck Sterling (01:10:44): And to bring that back to technology, by setting yourself, by knowing how to take advantage of each situation, being able to, I may have actually had three other different skill sets I was able to do when I went from FoxPro to SQL, but the fact that I actually knew that SQL one, let me actually take advantage of that one. So the river guide one that you're talking about, the fact that he knew how to actually read a riffle, enabled him. The fact that somebody on the Excel team knew Power Query was able to read that story as far as what's the next thing and actually make it an industry. So it's enabling yourself to take advantage of a situation, I guess, is what you're saying. Rob Collie (01:11:21): And there was something else about your story even though it was like the funniest refrain in the story. It was like, "This is going to be the way I'm getting out, I'm going to go make the big bucks," over and over again, that's like a standup routine man. There's also at the same time, there's something I think real about it. Even at our company, I'm always telling people, at least on my team, I'm telling people that they should always be thinking about their resume and what it looks like for the next job, whether that job is here or not, that is a good mindset, I want you to have that mindset. Rob Collie (01:11:52): And so you were inadvertently always thinking about your resume for the next job. Actually deliberately not inadvertently. It was just like, this wasn't your strategy, but you could look back at it and say, "You were following that strategy for a long time and it's taken you places." Chuck Sterling (01:12:08): And for your listeners, if they haven't read, Who Moved My Cheese? it's a requirement. You guys can't see Rob's facial expression, but he lit up, obviously he knows the book as well. I've been on teams where managers would give that to employees. And not as a signal that you need to go out and figure out the next thing, but you always need to make sure that your knife is sharp for whatever you want to do next. You need to actually create your own future. Who Moved My Cheese? is what, 70 pages, Rob? And it costs like five bucks on Amazon. Rob Collie (01:12:32): That's smart. It's one of the only nonfiction books that's worth its length. Chuck Sterling (01:12:37): Yeah. That whole enabling makers, I guess, having people outside of Microsoft and this podcast, thinking about how they can take advantage of it is actually fun. And I don't know what that means in some cases, and that's the fun part of this business is, what is it that... I recently saw that there are going to be more applications in the next 15 years that have ever been traded, ever. So in the history of mankind, if you take all of that code and everything that's ever been done, in the next 15 years, we're actually going to maybe even double it. I know it's a monumental shift in velocity, and 70% is going to be written by non-traditional, non-developer sort of things. Chuck Sterling (01:13:21): And what does that look like? And I think that's the next cool thing is that it's going to be our kids on phones that are going to figure out how to solve problems that we don't know. And I see them playing with Minecraft and I see them playing with these games, and I think those are the building blocks that tomorrow that I don't understand yet. Rob Collie (01:13:39): And when you say things like, and you hear things like 70% of them are going to be built by citizen developers, just the way the sentence is constructed, it has you thinking about just the shift in the labor. It focuses on as if the apps are going to be the same, which they're not. And that's the other half of it that I think is like the possibility is here, what we're going to see in terms of value creation and efficiency gains and things like that. It's not just that the audience is going to change, we don't know what's going to happen, we don't know what we're going to get out of it, and there's some really exciting things that are going to come from that. Chuck Sterling (01:14:16): And that was the point I was trying to make is that we are literally in the precipice of a break new world and I'm excited to see, is it chat box? Is it smart services? I love my new Roku TV and I keep thinking, "There's got to be something here and I don't know what it is." I'm looking forward to that next thing and I'm always looking around. That's why I'm always asking kids what they're going to be when they grow up because I'm still looking for pointers. Rob Collie (01:14:38): Well, let's circle back. Let's do this again in 18 months. A lot's going to change between now and then and you're right in the middle of that milestone. Chuck Sterling (01:14:46): I'm looking forward to it, Rob, I'd love to. I'm honored that you'd even consider it. Rob Collie (01:14:49): And I think this would be a really valuable one for the audience to tune into, so much appreciated, sir. Chuck Sterling (01:14:54): Not a problem. Tom, it was a pleasure again. For some reason, I thought you came up with Rob to one of his data clinics that he did on campus, but I'm glad we figured out that it was actually in Orlando. Thomas LaRock (01:15:05): It was in Orlando that we physically met. And of course, I see your name come through the MVP distribution list every now and then when you have to herd those cats for whatever reason. Chuck Sterling (01:15:15): One of my truest joys in the job actually is getting to play with you cats. Thomas LaRock (01:15:19): It's just every now and then something and goes off the rails and you get this email from Chuck. He's just like, "No, this." And it's like, "Oh, okay." Chuck Sterling (01:15:26): One of the things that I actually plan on doing for the MVPs and you guys might think it's interesting to listen to, is so far when we actually measure KPIs, we often measure how many MVPs do I have? And the group just started measuring, it's actually CSAT, so we can figure out how happy you are. And I'm so thankful for Lana Montgomery for adding that. I have that in my review. So when you look at my review, I actually have those two numbers, but they're table stakes. You don't want unhappy MVPs and you want to have MVPs, so there's a number. Chuck Sterling (01:15:59): What actually I'm proposing is that we start carrying numbers around how much that we can actually go out and grow your membership. So instead of actually looking at it is, "Hey Tom, what are you doing for us? How many views did you actually drive in the end of this URL? How many times did you come in and do something for us?" I'm saying, "Why don't we go out and get reports of your YouTube and your Twitter channels or whatever voice say you've got and say, 'As a result of you being my MVP, I want to see me do things that cause it to grow.'" Because of Chuck, Tom grew 20% last quarter. And that's actually literally the number that I've got in my goals. Chuck Sterling (01:16:38): We're actually trading those reports right now, I'm going to start with Twitter and YouTube. There's this thing called LinkedIn, but whoever owns that product, Rob, I don't know who owns that, their API is really hard to use. Luke, you can cut that part out. Thomas LaRock (01:16:54): Do not cut that out, Luke. Chuck Sterling (01:16:57): Okay. And I'm sure the team's working on it with the due diligences that it deserves. There you go. But anyways, I thought you'd be interested that I'm actually having those conversations with Lana Montgomery and the team right now, and it actually seems to be going well. The hard part of course is the reports. Thomas LaRock (01:17:13): Yes. As somebody who works in marketing, I understand that these are metrics that can be hard to quantify. I know one of the things for MVP that it's been hinted at, but basically, it's about who makes the cut. And sometimes the word that gets thrown around is influence, is that somebody who's seen as influential? And it's like, how do you measure that? But I like the idea of you saying, "Hey, Tom's got this many Twitter followers, can I help grow that for him in some way?" Chuck Sterling (01:17:42): I want to unwind the last one. Yeah, they do throw around impact and influence a lot. And I keep going out and saying, "That's an our problem, that's Chuck's problem, that is not a Tom's problem." And let me explain in that if Tom were based in Indonesian and he spoke, God, I don't know what they speak in Indonesia. Thomas LaRock (01:18:02): They speak Java, I think. Rob Collie (01:18:03): Oh really? Object oriented or JavaScript? Chuck Sterling (01:18:07): Anyways, if you were in a small demographic in a fringe language, your impact and your influence is actually going to be marginalized as a result of that, but your contributions and the effort that you put into actually going out and supporting us and the community could be every bit as much. And I keep actually asking my peers to think about us focusing on increasing your impact and your influence and having them awarded based on contribution effort. So if you guys are putting in 30 hours in Indonesia speaking Java or Indonesian or whatever the case is, and I get somebody that is actually in Massachusetts with a big pipe and he's able to actually work a quarter of the time and get twice as much impact and influence, is he twice as important? Chuck Sterling (01:18:53): And in Chuck's eyes, I usually know, I would say that one's working much harder and I should probably go out and recognize the efforts of the person putting into it, not the fact that they actually have bigger lovers, because I want to go out then say, "How can I help that person with their lovers?" And it changes the dynamic quite a bit. So anyways, if you saw me go out and grab my head and sigh, it's because the impact and influence conversation is something I have all the time and it's near and dear to my heart. And you guys are so important, I want us to actually look at you the right way and making sure we focus on the right things. Thomas LaRock (01:19:26): I appreciate that. Thank you. It's amazing to hear. Rob Collie (01:19:29): I'm honored that you came on the show. We've really enjoyed it. Chuck Sterling (01:19:31): Thank you very, very much. I really appreciate it. Announcer (01:19:33): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Podcast. Find out what the experts at P3 can do for your business. Go to powerpivotpro.com. Interested in becoming a guest on the show, email lukep, L-U-K-E-P@powerpivotpro.com. Have a data day!

Data guy by day, crimefighter also by day!  John Hancock has revolutionized the Law Enforcement space with his company Hubstream.  His team uses advanced data techniques and tools to assist investigators to battle all manner of illegal activity.  His story, his data journey, and even his accent are fascinating! Episode Timeline: 1:35 - Project Gemini is how Rob and John met, the evolution of BI tools, and that pesky status quo 13:50 - The story of John Hancock the crimefighter AKA Captain Correlate...and how Hubstream was born 31:25 - How do you build a data warehouse that doesn't fail? In part, it's understanding Humans.  And an explanation on the marvel that is Hubstream 1:30:45 - The team is...everything! 1:40:10 - How are Power BI and the Power Platform involved in Hubstream Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Today's guest is John Hancock. And as he told me, when we very first met back at Microsoft, like in 2007, no, he did not sign the declaration of independence. John and I worked together for several years, working on power pivot, the forerunner of Power BI. And I had just enormous respect for this guy, but I had no idea the double life that he was actually leading. John didn't choose to fight crime with data. It chose him. Left Microsoft, started a company, inspired others to join him, built it the hard way, and it's paid off. Rob Collie (00:00:35): It's really blossoming both for them and for law enforcement. Oh, and did I mention that it's built a hundred percent on the Microsoft platform, including things like Power BI. That's what we call badass. He even rocks a little bit of a superhero accent. As usual, we talk about a lot of things. Talk about data. We talk about building startups. We talk about people, the value of teamwork. And at one point he even uses the words, " the human element" completely unprompted. Such a good time, we're definitely going to have to have him on again at some point in the future. Don't take my word for it though. Let's get into it. Announcer (00:01:10): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Announcer (00:01:15): This is the Raw Data by P3 podcast with your host Rob Collie and your co-host Thomas LaRock. Find out what the experts at P3 can do for your business. Go to power pivotpro.com. Raw Data by P3 is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:01:33): Welcome to the show, John Hancock. How you doing, man? John Hancock (00:01:37): Good thanks. How about you? Rob Collie (00:01:38): Doing all right. You and I, our way of getting to know each other was we intersected so briefly in the grand scheme of things back on project Gemini Power Pivot at Microsoft. John Hancock (00:01:50): Who would've thought that would take us all this distance, right? Rob Collie (00:01:53): Yeah. John Hancock (00:01:54): It seemed like a pretty revolutionary thing at the time, but it's super cool to see how it's all unfolded over these many years now. Rob Collie (00:02:00): It felt special when we were working on it. I don't think any of us really imagined deep down that it was going to be anything as special as it actually turned out to be. I had to leave Microsoft to discover how amazing it was. Just such a revelation to me that like, wow, this thing we were working on actually is good. In fact, it's better than we hoped. John Hancock (00:02:22): It turned out way better than and I think any has had any right to hope. It seemed like so controversial and weird at the time, this basic idea. Hey, you don't have to have these super high paid BI consultants of which I was one to actually get any value out of your data. Like actual normal humans. One day in this far off future land we'll be able to connect to information and build things themselves. And we go around and tell people that, and it'd be like, "No, that's never going to work, no chance." Rob Collie (00:02:47): And of course, people telling us that didn't have any vested interest, and us being wrong, cause who are you going to talk to at those times, you're going to talk to BI consultants, right? John Hancock (00:02:57): Yeah, exactly. Rob Collie (00:02:59): That's the only people you're going to ask. It even turned out to be this radical way of doing things that was so controversial back then. Turned out to be... That's actually a better tool set. Even for those existing high priced BI consultants. A lot of them have really, really embraced this tool set. It just turned out that it was just better for humans. John Hancock (00:03:20): Yeah definitely. It's sort of sure. I used to do these huge projects. It would take forever. They'd wheel me in there as this SQL server analysis consultant and I'd be part of a team of six and we'd go build these ETL pipelines and all this stuff, all the while having somebody translating the business. It'd be out there as talking to the business and come back to us and they'd tell us things and we'd build this whole big thing, get it out there in the world. And of course, no one would use it, because by then the business had kind of cruised along. And so, all the rigor that we had, all the data integrity rules and all the stuff like, we're so much better than you with your crazy spreadsheets and your formulas, which are bound to be wrong. John Hancock (00:03:58): Well, actually the Excel sheets and that iterative process was just so valuable that real world businesses, they need that. They just needed that to be better. So, it's interesting when I've had quite an evolution over the years, in terms of thinking about that from somebody who, as you say had that vested interest. I was the number two data guy at Microsoft, Canada, heart, helping customers with that technology set. And you go out, you do enough of those engagements. You realize, holy crap, this isn't working. The projects we did were successful on their face, but every time you went back a year or two later, it was like, no, there's these dashboards that sit there and everybody else in the meantime, that's reverted back because there's now a new business unit and new business prices, all these things just keep on going at the scale or speed of the business. John Hancock (00:04:41): It's super cool to see now, people just take this for granted. The terminology's even changed and people just think of this as BI now, this is how it works. It's not these big projects anymore where it's actually more agile. And of course there are all kinds of problems as a result of that. But those problems pre-existed on any of this technology and they'll live with us for a long time. How do you know this is right? Where's your data coming from? Those sorts of questions. Rob Collie (00:05:04): We've always had those. I've got all these potential fight starters, that I'll say at conferences or whatever, for example, there has never been a traditional BI project that was a success. John Hancock (00:05:18): That's a good one. Rob Collie (00:05:19): And what you're describing, your previous experience is exactly what I mean by the traditional... It's a team of six and you're translating the business and it grinds forever with tons and tons of infrastructure and plumbing. And then by the time you're done, it probably doesn't even actually deliver on the original requirements, be perfectly honest because you need that iteration to deliver. But even if you did hit that initial target, that target has moved in the two years that it took to execute. I think you're right that the new way of doing things is now considered to be like the right thing. It's sort of like intellectually, however, the real world hasn't caught up to that reality at all yet. It's like the intelligency have decided, "Okay, this is the new way," But you go out and you witness the reality and reality is very stubborn. It's got a lot of inertia. We still probably got a decade maybe even, I don't even know of catching up. The real world has to actually adopt and change to meet this new agreed upon best way. John Hancock (00:06:26): I agree. I also see a lot of people out there where you feel like they have to age out of the system for change to happen. Anyone who comes from that world, who hasn't made the leap by now into look, your job is to actually service the business. They're moving faster than you can. Anyone who uses the word ontology, if you hear that word or something like it, variations on that thing, that's it. You are the anchor. You are not the person who's facilitating what needs facilitating here right. Rob Collie (00:06:52): Yes. On our previous podcast, we actually talked about the Max Planck Theory of scientific revolution, which is, that it's not this meritocracy of ideas that everyone wants it to believe. The old guard has to leave. John Hancock (00:07:05): Yeah, definitely. And I think that the other interesting part of this, from my sort of part of the world, which is really about helping people to investigate crime, what I see as well, is this big revolution going on where the sort of analytics used to be something that you bolted on and it was something you did in the rear view mirror. And even in the new agile thing is still, most of the stuff I see is rear view mirror stuff, right. We are doing this new thing and we need to be able to count the metrics or do the KPIs of this new project, which is great. But you're always looking in the rear view mirror. You figure out what data you're collecting, you clean it up, you build analysis around it. And there you go, look, now you can see behind you. John Hancock (00:07:45): So what we are finding interesting in our space, is trying to figure out how you sort of marsh that data analysis in a forward direction, because for investigating crimes, the value isn't in the rearview mirror, it's going into the process that they're doing on a day to day basis and saying, "okay, every single step you take along your journey to do these investigations, how can we marsh all this information of which there's tons, it's messy, it's large. How can we bring that into your day to day work and help you see forwards?" Because what we're trying to do with crime is you're trying to bring all that together and say this is where you should focus your attention, all the sea of noise, here's where you're headed. John Hancock (00:08:24): So it's kind of like for us, we want to be more sort of like ways, where you're driving along and it's not looking in the rear view mirror. You get these little popups along your day today, which is, "Hey dude, there's a big traffic jam ahead. You want to go to the left" or "There's this good opportunity over here" And so trying to martial all of that into their day to day is what I think is interesting. Especially since with SAS, I think the next 10 years as it evolves is going to be more and more about that forward looking approach to data analysis. How do you like start altering people's behavior on their day to day as they're executing, whatever it is you're trying to do, rather than just having these projects where you can measure the thing that you're doing anyway? Rob Collie (00:09:06): So I want to make the transition into your alter ego crime fighting, doctor data. We're going to come up with some sort of superhero, Marvel-ish name for you, but... John Hancock (00:09:18): That's fantastic. You guys should totally do that. I suck at marketing personally. Rob Collie (00:09:21): [inaudible 00:09:21] John Hancock (00:09:21): My name is John Hancock. That's not weird enough. I mean it's... Rob Collie (00:09:26): Yeah. I remember. And when you introduced yourself the first time I met you, you introduced yourself to this whole room and you said, "Okay, and first of all, Americans, yes, my name was John Hancock." And that's my first memory of you. It is literally that. John Hancock (00:09:41): It's pretty memorable. That's right. I still, when I was out in the world, I used to get one to two jokes a day on average about that one. And so, you kind of get a little bit bored of it, but whenever it was somebody at US Customs making that joke, I would laugh like it was the first time I heard it. They look at your passport. They make the John Hancock joke. You're like, 'Oh, you're so funny, Mr. Customs guy. Yes. Please let me in." Rob Collie (00:10:04): Don't don't send me back. But before we go there, I want to almost pick a fight, but I actually think in the end we really agree. So I hear this a lot about BI, the rear view mirror thing. I want to seize this apart a little bit for our dear listeners. So first of all, I think one of the reasons why BI has had, or has this reputation as a rear view mirror is first of all, it was so damn slow, right? And even when you had reports that you liked, which of course we've already agreed, never happened. They would be run like monthly and it would be too late to make any difference whatsoever. And as you increase the frequency, as you increase the velocity and the speed at which you're able to see, I start to think of it as no longer the rear view mirror. Rob Collie (00:10:51): I start to think of this as the windshield, because you know, like truly seeing the future, that's predictive analysis, right? And so we want to make a distinction there, but I think the point is, is that if you're using data to look backward, this is a subtle philosophical shift. If you're using data to look backward, versus you're using data to try to decide what to do today factually mathematically, it might be in some sense, you could argue it's the same thing, because you're using things that have happened. John Hancock (00:11:25): Yes. Rob Collie (00:11:25): The other way to describe things that are happening in the rear of your mirror is facts. John Hancock (00:11:31): That's true. Rob Collie (00:11:31): They're the only things that have happened, everything else is a guess, right? But you're using it to synthesize your move. I agree, that's one of the things we've been talking about a lot is that it's all about the action that you take. Being informed is worth nothing on its own. John Hancock (00:11:45): Right. It's about the behavior that results from that. So I think that is kind of maybe a way to slice this problem a little differently, which is that data analysis or data that's changing, where you take the car, changing the direction you would've steer. And if you didn't have that thing available to you, you would take different actions as a result. So that's, I think the next sort of 10 years of how to measure the value on this. It's really about what did you do differently that you wouldn't have done. And then you go back and you say, well, because of course, as I was doing the thing, the system around me was aware of all the information and was telling me all the good things we should go do. And so we did it, and that just becomes a normal way of doing it. John Hancock (00:12:24): And you see this showing up, I think in micro areas where you already had people doing their work on a day to day basis, that needed guide like CRM, where like here, or call center's a classic one, "Hey, I'm in a call center." And the system's telling you stuff like, "Hey, ask them about this and tell them to add, telephone service, because it'll save them, and we'll make more money." So what are these systems like that? But they've kind of pointed at the kinds of areas of the world that are very easy to, relatively speaking, to guide people. There's a finite set of actions. They bring them in. When you start getting into the more complex areas, which I think fit the bill for most of what the value is that's being created in the world, then it gets much more complicated. John Hancock (00:13:07): And I think we're starting to enter into a new era where giving you useful guidance as you go, it's becoming more and more a possibility out of the sea of noise, the unstructured and the structured and all the things that are happening to start to be able to learn from that and go look, you are sitting here as an expert in your domain and the value I'm giving you is things that you couldn't possibly have gone out and found yourself. And that thing is actually helping you to change the direction. You're going to do a different thing now, because I've told you out of all the thousands of things, here's the most relevant thing you need to know. And the most actionable thing you need to know. Rob Collie (00:13:41): It's almost like to continue the metaphor. It's like, we've finally, as an industry developed the art of windshield and window glass. Right. And so now we can talk about steering. John, you and I overlap for probably two years. John Hancock (00:13:55): Something like that, yeah. Rob Collie (00:13:55): Too good, well, they were tumultuous years for me. But two years back in the formation of essentially what became Daks and the tabular model and the beating heart of Power BI, but all this time, our friend John was leading this double life. I don't remember you ever once talking about it. I'm the kind of guy, if I'm living a double life, all you're going to hear about is my other life. Like that's all I'm going to be... You're going to be inundated with it. Like, "Okay, come on now, Rob stop." But you, I don't think you were keeping it a secret. It's just wasn't the thing... It just wasn't that important to the work at hand that we were doing every day. And so it just never came up. But can you tell us about this double life as a crime fighter? John Hancock (00:14:39): Sure, absolutely. It has been an interesting journey. So back at the beginning of all this, I was working, as I said, as a business intelligence consultant. I ended up working at Microsoft consulting services in Canada. And so I would go out there and help people do those projects I talked about, right. I'd be the Microsoft guy on that six person project team. And we'd go and help banks make more money. In that whole process, one of the days I went back to the office and walk in the hallways and one of the engagement managers comes out to me and he says, "John, I'm so glad to see you. You're one of our top data people. I have this great opportunity for you to volunteer to go do something." I thought, wow, that's a pretty weird thing for one of these guys. John Hancock (00:15:15): I bail out at X amount of dollars per hour for Microsoft. You're asking me to volunteer. This is weird. She says, "Yeah, yeah. We got this opportunity for you. You can go in and help Toronto police investigate crimes against children, like child pornography offenses." And I was like, oh, no way am I doing that. No chance. Thanks dude, but no, I'm out. So I went home and thought about it and talked to my wife. And I was like, "Can you believe this guy wants me to go help Toronto police for this?' He was like, "Oh, so you're going to... You're just going to carry on helping those banks make more money then so, okay." So kind of molded over and went back in. I said, "Look, idea of like helping investigate crimes against kids is horrifying to me. I don't know what value I could add. And I probably can't take it." Many people in the world, if you say those words to them will be like, "Hey, I can't handle that." And some brave individuals were out there dealing with this, not me. John Hancock (00:16:07): Long story short, I ended up getting pulled into this project, had Toronto Police and it turned out that back then sort of 2003, they really just started realizing that the technology revolution had carried on and kids were chatting on MSN Messenger and all these other products. And they were out there in the world. And there were all these predators who were starting to reach kids in domains over the internet, as opposed to just the real world, which is terrifying enough. And so I ended up going in and trying to help Toronto police who had just formed a unit to go after a crime type, which they're called child exploitation, which covered a vast array of bad things that happened to kids online and in the real world, and then published online. John Hancock (00:16:51): And so I spent about three months embedded with Toronto police and trying to figure out what to do. And it's big challenge. As a data guy, I showed up there and expecting that there would be drowning in data, just like the banks and all the rest, which is why I got sent in. And I showed up and biggest source of data they had was an Excel spreadsheet, they're managing. Now they would go out and then make a risk and they'd come back with machines and they have vast troves of information. But the day to day things they were using, they didn't have a data problem to solve. So as a BI guy, you kind of taken away my typical act. There was no way I could go in and go, 'Well, you need to assemble your data and build an ETL pipeline and blah, blah, blah." So I ended up having to actually listen to them and spend time figuring out what they needed to do. And it was a pretty low point actually. I was over there in the summer and I was like, "Oh my God, I've really got myself into something here. People are expecting me to use information, to help these guys, and I really don't know what to do." So two months into it, I thought to myself, "Well, this is going nowhere." I'm not coming up with things. They're not coming up with things. So I started to just take people out individually for coffees, right. So I went for one of the senior people in the team, took him out for a coffee. It'd be in Canada. It was Tim Hortons. I have to do a Tim Horton shoutout. Maybe he can get a sponsorship for your podcast. John Hancock (00:18:06): And so we sat there and I said to her, "Okay, look, just tell me about any success you've had. Let's see... Can we talk about your successes you've had so far?" She said, "Yeah, funny you should mention that. It was a really great case we finally did last week." And so what happened was as Toronto police, we got a report from a parent in Toronto saying that their kid was on MSN Messenger and they're chatting to a friend on MSN Messenger who they thought was an 11 year old boy. And the parent had found these messages that included pictures and all kinds of stuff. And so the parent was super worried. So they reported her to Toronto police. So they get the report. The only information in there is, this is a made up email address just for everybody, but they get an email address like Bob54@hotmail.com, that's it. All they have to go on. John Hancock (00:18:51): So the cops said, "I spent the day trying to find information online, found nothing. We've read nothing, ready to go on." So it's not actually illegal behavior. It's just shady. So there was nothing I could do. So he said, "I went out for drinks that night with my buddy from Vancouver police. And we were sitting there having a few beers and talking about our days, and he's also in this new child exploitation domain. So I was bitching about how I've just had this really bad day. I've got this parent, I've got this kid out there. I've no idea who this Bob54@hotmail.com is." She's just complaining about how much this day sucked. And the Vancouver cop goes, "Wait, did you say Bob54@hotmail.com?" And it turned out that they'd had this huge, big, undercover operation for months in Vancouver. John Hancock (00:19:35): And those Bob54 alias had kept coming up, but they didn't have enough information on that side either to do anything about it. So the two cops then put their information together. Now they've got enough to actually go and get the information. They put in a request to Microsoft with all the legal backing to get the guy, so result. So at that point, my brain just completely exploded because I finally got it. This is the actual problem. Finally, I found the real issue here. And the issue is, while the criminals are starting to adopt all these new technologies and they're out there completely unbound and completely borderless, the way we've organized law enforcement response is completely geography based. It's been like that since forever. And that's how we've organized all of our criminal investigations, which is Toronto police is reporting to the Toronto mayor. They're paid by Toronto taxpayers. And if you drive down a particular street, you cross over a magical geographical boundary. You're now in the territory of a different police service. Those two different agencies are not connected. They're not sharing information. They are completely siloed. John Hancock (00:20:42): And so right there in 2003, I just had this huge revelation of the fact that all the crime that starts to get to be mediated on the internet or anything that revolves around the internet, all of a sudden is this totally borderless space. But all of our response as a society is organized around geography. So I'm like, got it. Finally, I'm not going to sit here being a useless data person with no data anymore. I'm going back to the office and I'm going to tell him the news, right. So I go in there and go talking to the president of Microsoft Canada at the time who was awesome guy, who also had two young kids. John Hancock (00:21:14): And I said to him, "Look, I get that you probably sent me in there hoping we donate a few copies of office, but I've got some great news. Instead of doing that, we're going to build a giant system to unite the whole of Canada. We're going to build this massive project to integrate all the people who are doing this kinds of investigations together. So that every piece of information that comes in can be correlated and matched against all the other stuff." And so we basically pitched that to Microsoft corporate and we ended up building this huge system for Canada as a totally pro bono effort out of Microsoft citizenship project. We basically over a year and a half built a system that is still being used to really manage the flow of information in, into Canada and help them to figure out that there are these different connections. And so that was really the start of my double life, right. Because I switched from doing just BI consulting for banks into running this project as the solution architect for a number of years. And even when I ended up leaving that project and moving to Redmond to start work on Project Gemini and all the other BI technologies, I was still kind of acting as an informal advisor to that project, which ended up at Microsoft's digital crimes unit for many years. So I always had this double life, as you said, where I would do my day job of PM on the Project Gemini team and in lead and eventually GPM. But all the time, I was also like driving over every now and then into digital crimes units and talking to the people and still staying in touch with the law enforcement, who, as you can imagine, 2003 was actually pre-Facebook. John Hancock (00:22:46): And so the world had continued to evolve at an incredibly rapid rate. And so the things that we thought were going to be tough right at the beginning, just got tougher and tougher every single year, the amount of information coming in doubled, so this is something that we've seen over and over in all types of investigations, which is just as the whole of society moves online. Everybody around you is using technology. You're Skyping your mom in a foreign country. Everybody is just technology based. Well, of course, crime moved with it. So there's no such thing as offline crime anymore, right? Everything that is crime in the world has some online footprint. And because of that, the information that you have available as investigators is huge, right, because there's all these different things that are collected, but the problem switches over to how do you actually figure out what's important? John Hancock (00:23:36): How do you actually, as you said before, how do you steer in the direction of the worst harm? So that as an investigator, you can do something about it. You've got a finite amount of time, finite amount of resources. You have to be able to synthesize all that information together. And then on a day to day basis, be focusing on the things where you can make the most difference. And that's really where the company that I found at Hub Stream with some great people out of Microsoft, we've put together a company that really builds the software that takes that project we originally did at digital crimes unit and has kept on making it available for that crime type, but also many others. Rob Collie (00:24:12): At least one of the people that went with you to Hub Stream was one of our absolute ACEs in the hole on Project Gemini. Let's come back to him in just a second. John Hancock (00:24:22): Sure. Rob Collie (00:24:23): I want to appreciate that guy. Yeah. I really do. So a lot of things about this problem space that are unique and sort of domain specific, I'm not going to try to pigeonhole it into saying it's the same as everything else, because it isn't. At the same time there's still some themes here that are familiar. It's this siloization is a huge problem in the business world. And some of times it does sort of take a geographic silo, right? Like if you were a company that has grown through mergers and acquisitions. John Hancock (00:24:52): You have all these subsidiaries and... Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:24:56): You got the operations in different countries and everything. So you have that silo problem, but you also even have a silo problem across line of business systems. That's been one of the big, big, big themes, really that Power BI is amazing at. See the silo problem and you recognizing that it was a silo problem, right? It was kind of the moment where the light bulb went on and your life basically changed forever. It's a dramatic way to say it, but it's true. John Hancock (00:25:19): Absolutely. Rob Collie (00:25:20): This is the sort of problem that once you get a hold of it or once it gets a hold of you, it's never letting go. It's easy to see and understand how it maintained a place in your life. You were still going back over to the digital crimes unit. John Hancock (00:25:35): It's a combination like a really challenging problem in data generally, but just a generally challenging problem, but also the opportunity to make a big impact, which was really just so driving me. And that's how I managed to persuade people to quit their great jobs on Microsoft and come over to this crazy adventure. It's that combination, right? It's a super hard problem that's going to keep growing every day we show up it gets more complicated and we're constantly having to innovate and come up with new things. And at the same time, the impact that you can make in the space, particularly crimes that are so obviously horrific and that where everybody watches TV and movies and they see these like fancy CSI type systems. But you actually walk the hallways of any police department or service or agency that's responsible for investigating crimes. John Hancock (00:26:23): And what you see is ancient technologies completely out of date, three or four different things, many national federal agencies. If you go there, they have three terminals on their desks. There's these three systems that don't interconnect and they swivel their chair in order to integrate. And so it's just such a huge opportunity as those law enforcement agencies have started to modernize. And particularly now that they've started finally to move towards the cloud, there's these massive opportunities to make a difference in their lives and in the effectiveness of their day to day investigative activities, as a result of that. Even large corporations, which increasingly are customers of ours in areas like pharmaceutical companies, that sort of thing. They do vast scale investigations where they're getting so much information in, product counterfeiting is another great one. You know, if you've got a big brand and you start to dip your toe into, "Hey, there are people selling my brand on the internet. John Hancock (00:27:21): And it turns out to be totally fake or it's been diverted," It's actually gray market or whatever. The, the volume you need to actually to assemble and put together and actually have a reasonable understanding of is just growing and growing and growing. So that's how come we've ended up starting this hub stream adventure, which was, I saw back then what was going to start happening, and we've really spent the last several years at Hub Stream building that technology platform. And we just wake up every day with that problem space. We go back to it and we keep pushing forward and some days we make progress and we're ahead and it's an arms race, right. As soon as you make something better, the criminals adapt and then we have something else to go solve. So it's this never ending journey, I think, which has been a really exciting thing. Rob Collie (00:28:05): It sounds to me like you helped Canada build a watch list. John Hancock (00:28:10): Yes, kind of. What we really did was we re-engineered how they think about investigations. Rob Collie (00:28:16): Okay, but you essentially built them a data warehouse. John Hancock (00:28:21): Yeah. We started out doing this simple thing, right. Which was, he said, "Look, if you're in this place and you're in this place and you both touch upon the same entity, we should let you know." And so that's a great start, but then you scale it up. And so where that goes after that it's complicated, right? Because now, well, where's that information coming from? Well, you start out with humans typing. And that was where we started. 2003, I was a human typing that stuff in there, Rob54@hotmail, so great. Then fast forward a few more years and you start to get feeds of information in, and this is the same thing you see happening in companies as well right? They start with a sales team of one, they're out there prospecting, they're finding stuff. Then they hire two people. Then they start bringing in data feeds, same thing with investigations. And so the problem starts to show. John Hancock (00:29:03): Bringing in data feeds, same thing with investigations. And so the problem starts to shift from connect the dots of what humans are doing in any given day over to, okay, I'm signing on as an investigator this morning, I have a hundred things that got reported to me. Okay. I'm now going to have to take action on one of them and I might get to three. By the end of the day, I'll have figured out three of them to go do. So which three? That's the challenge that comes in. How do you start to alter the day to day flow? And then when they start to get those data volumes, the other big challenges that start coming in are how do you help people understand that much information? We hit this tipping point I would think about five years ago now, where issue used to be how do I acquire the information that I need in order to do these investigations? John Hancock (00:29:46): And today the problem is I've got so much damn information, whether it's law enforcement or corporate investigation, whatever it is, you can get feeds, there's crawlers, there's all sorts of sources of information. Now, the problem that people are dealing with is in a world where you've got so much information, you've got so many opportunities to go do things, how do you put that in front of somebody in a way that they can understand quickly, make sense of it and also have some ideas about what the options are and do that in a scalable way. And so that's why, like I say, every day we come in with different challenges and it's really about how do you start taking those emerging things. Like Bitcoin comes up. Well, now Bitcoin has a whole thing about it, it's a whole different element. John Hancock (00:30:32): That's starting to play into your investigations. Six months ago that was a completely irrelevant side show. And today 30% of your investigations are featuring Bitcoin, because it's a nice easy way to move money around. So, okay. How do you take an agency that has probably persisted for a hundred years in the case of these large national law enforcement investigations and help them change that quickly? Six months in Bitcoin's now a thing. Six months ago was a totally non entity. How do you start to shift? And so building the pipeline of data of visualizations of actions into the day to day systems and day to day work of the investigator, that's really what we've ended up focusing on. So our system for it to work, your investigators are using that as the system. They show up, everything they do is through that system. Everything's tracked, everything's audited, everything's logged and then we have the opportunity to put all that information together and help them do the right thing. Thomas LaRock (00:31:28): So we had started earlier, we were talking a little bit about the old school data warehousing and basically all data warehouses, in my opinion, are destined to fail. I've never worked on a successful one. I ask a room for of the people I say, "Who here has worked on successful data warehousing project from start to finish?" And everybody's like, "Yeah, actually no." So I was going to ask you, how are you able to maintain a level of success? I mean, is it just your background? Do you know that if you just let things go, it would just fail? So what are you doing? What are the iterations you're doing to allow it to be successful? John Hancock (00:32:06): Yeah, that's a great question. So I think part of the reason why if you'd diagnose the data warehouse malady it's that thing where super smart people get together and they're way away from the actual day to day problems. And so there's this ivory tower issue. I see that over and over particularly in big law enforcement projects or investigative projects. There are some amazingly smart people out there. And so I think the way that we constantly approach this problem is with humility. We don't do investigations, we aren't investigators. We don't use our software to do investigations. We are our software people. And so the way that we've tackled this issue with the help of our awesome chief design officer, Joe Mylan, who also was one of the people who worked with us back in the project Gemini days, it's really about talking to people, talking to the investigators. John Hancock (00:32:56): So the reason I had that funding revelation was because I was sitting there having coffee with somebody who was trying their hardest to do a very difficult job, listening to that person, and then going back and thinking, how can I help that person be more successful? That's what we do all the time. And so I've assembled a team of people who lead with humility. If you meet them all, they're all the good ones who are able to check their technical skills at the door and actually come and listen, and then go back into the technology space and marshal the things they can think of, but do it in a way that you keep constantly in touch with the investigators who have the problem to try and make their lives better. And we don't always succeed. A lot of the time we put so mean together, we get it in front of them and we realize we just haven't hit it. John Hancock (00:33:43): We've built 80% of the useful feature. Now we've got to go back and spend double the time building the extra 20% and actually make it show up. We know this pattern and yet we still keep repeating it. We just built some software, we got it all the way through, looked at it and realized once we started showing it to the humans that previously talked to, we built it in a way that was not going to be in their day to day flow. It just wasn't going to make a difference. It was some cul-de-sac. So got to go back and redo that and put it right in front of their actual flow. So that's the thing. I completely agree with data warehouse failure as a patent. I do think it's that super smart people who are not the domain experts as a patent that keeps cropping up. Rob Collie (00:34:24): That thing about the ivory tower and smart people getting together and doing something completely detached from reality while self reinforcing each other. John Hancock (00:34:34): Yeah. That's the other part, right? Yeah. The people who are on that project, I bet you if you went and talked to those data warehouse projects, quite a lot of the people who led that project got promoted, right? Rob Collie (00:34:44): Yeah. John Hancock (00:34:45): And so there is a self fulfilling thing about that. Rob Collie (00:34:47): It's weird, isn't it? This is like just an ongoing theme for me is the technologists of the world, the people that you need in order to be good at doing something like that, to execute a data project, to execute a software project, you need a certain kind of background. And that background almost overwhelmingly brings with it this other mindset, this ivory tower academic mindset. And it's when you can have that tech background, but break that ivory tower mindset. The technology isn't some way to insulate you from the world. There's a lot of refugee mindset in tech. If I can just mathematically encode the world and all these human beings that I've struggled to deal with, I can finally make sense of it and it's a fools' errand. So yeah, the success has happened when you have that humility, when you step out of that, but retaining your technical skills obviously. John Hancock (00:35:43): Yeah, absolutely. I think that there's another psychology element of that, which comes into play as well, which is that the people who are interested in data in particular and data technologies and all the rest of it, many of us including me are quite introverted. And so the actual act of communicating with other humans, getting up, walking to somebody, picking up the phone, it's counterculture to a lot of people who are interested in data. I still see that the extroverts of the world are not flocking to data science jobs, right? Rob Collie (00:36:13): Yeah. John Hancock (00:36:13): It is like that old joke how can you spot an extroverted DBA? An extroverted DBA is one who looks at your shoes when he speaks to you. So that joke has stuck with me because it's just so damn true, right? So I think that's that intersection that the introversion as well plays into that where a lot of people like me and data, they have to push themselves out of that to go and actually talk to humans. It's a big challenge. It's a big psychology thing that I think is inherent in all the things we do. Rob Collie (00:36:45): On the video feed here, I'm watching Tom rethinking his entire life. John Hancock (00:36:51): Yeah. I think I have compassion for that because as I say I'm the CEO of a company now. I actually, I do a lot of sales myself, but I'm constantly pushing myself out of that psychology issue. So I think that's part of our foundational DNA as a company and Hub Stream is that a lot of us are data nerds going back and we just constantly try and push ourselves out. The other nice thing about our culture is that because we have these super interesting customers, that's the other thing, the things they're working on are not boring by any stretch of the imagination. So that helps you to push yourself out because you can be genuinely curious, what is it like, what are you trying to do? What are you trying to achieve? How can I help you? John Hancock (00:37:29): And then you do something and it actually makes a difference. And there's this huge reinforcement loop. Because if you can actually make a difference in the day-to-day lives of any investigator... We work with a pharma company that's doing investigations that medications that are counterfeit are killing people all over the place. If you can help that team be a little bit more efficient, a little bit more effective, we wake up every day trying to figure out how to do that. And so that gets us out of that silo and that psychology trap of moving into just let's think about the technology space and back into the real world and back into the day to day lives of real people wherever we can. Rob Collie (00:38:05): When did you leave Microsoft to do Hub Stream full time? John Hancock (00:38:09): Seven years ago now unbelievably. Rob Collie (00:38:13): Wow. That's crazy. Okay. So what triggered it? What triggered the departure? But to me just as even more interesting perhaps is how? Did you get funding? I mean, did you just walk away from that and how did you get people to follow you? It was like this Jerry McGuire moment where you're walking out with the gold fish saying who's coming with me. John Hancock (00:38:39): Yeah. It's been definitely a... It's so interesting. Such an interesting journey. So the thing that precipitated it was while I... I was having a fantastic time at Microsoft. I loved working there. Working on PM at Microsoft in the various jobs that I had was awesome. Loved it. It was just so fantastic to be working on that. And I finally was working with a fantastic team who was starting to do new stuff. We got to hang out with Bill Gates occasionally, which was so great. And we were just having a wait over time. And so I was settling in for the duration, right? This is it, here I am now, I'm going to stick around and do this cool thing. And like I said, I had stayed in touch with the digital crimes unit. And what had happened was it had come to the end of its life. John Hancock (00:39:22): The project that we'd been working on or they'd been working on, it was out there in the world. It was being used by big law enforcement agencies. And for various reasons, its really hard to maintain a product at Microsoft which this was without a billion dollar market. That's just the reality of it. And so digital crimes unit had done their best, great people, but they couldn't figure out how to continue on the innovation that was going to be required in order to keep up with the demands. And so the guy in charge, the fantastic guy, he just basically eventually said, "Look, we can't continue on doing this. We're not doing them any favors anymore. We're actually in the way of innovation rather than facilitating it." So they had decided that Microsoft was no longer continuing on this journey. So at that point, once I had that conversation with them, I had this massive overwhelming dilemma here, which is okay, I know I could make this work, right? John Hancock (00:40:20): I don't need a billion dollar business for this to be successful. I know some awesome, fantastic people that I could take with me and we could go build this company where we could make a difference in the world, we could have an impact and we could also make a successful business out of it that would grow and grow into new areas. And funny enough nowadays when I talk about that philosophy of I'm going to make a company that's going to make a difference and also have a sustainable business model actually quite widely accepted now. If you look around, there's a whole slew of companies now that are impact driven. They are sustainable, they are organized as profit making enterprises and that's how they keep the lights on and pay people salaries and all the rest of it. They're not throwing Galla dinners, they're not trying to get philanthropists to give them money. They're actually trying to build a sustainable business, but they're also have this direct focus on making an impact in the world. John Hancock (00:41:12): But back day when I was talking about that, people were like, "Wait, what are you saying here? Are you a for-profit or are you an NGO or a charity or what are you? What are you guys even talking about?" I was like, "I don't have to choose. I can do both those things." That's literally how this is going to work. I'm going to make a successful product. People are going to pay me because it makes things better for them. And also I can make a difference in the world. I didn't have to choose. Rob Collie (00:41:35): I love that. Love it, love it, love it. There's something to a small fraction that I find similar in my experience which is that when you set out to be a good deal for all involved, there's something about that that even today sort of runs antithetical to like what's quote unquote considered "good business." There almost has to be a loser somewhere, right? Or someone that's being harvested or milked in order for the real businessy types to like say, oh, you're on the right track. And it turns out if you ignore all of that, you can go and build something that's successful and it is for profit and it has a good business model, but still is good to all the human beings involved in the ecosystem. It's such a thing for us that we even have an internal... It's mostly me that does this, the nobody believed in us, nobody gave us a chance. I didn't watch the super bowl post game but someone said, everybody counted us out, nobody thought we could. It's just guaranteed. And to hear you saying these sorts of things really resonates with me that if you just ignore all of that and go figure out how. John Hancock (00:42:48): Yes, that's a challenge, right? So if you switch your brain and, and try and take the, okay, I'm going to do this. There's not some magic line between making the world a better place and being able to do that on a day to day basis for a long time, which is a sustainable business model. If you think that there's a one thing you're going to go do, then you can start planning for that eventuality, right? Like, okay, how do I do that? And that's going to involve thinking very carefully about the business you're going to go build, where's the money coming from, who's paying it, what are they paying it for? And also what opportunities do you have to make the world a better place? And how are you going to go and execute on those while not going out of business because you're doing things that aren't also then leading into inbound revenue. John Hancock (00:43:28): So it's a funny thing, even now after all this time, I'm in touch with quite a lot of companies that are trying to pull that off. Whether they're doing human trafficking or whatever the domain is, or video interviews for child victims. There's so many things out there where people are trying to build a sustainable business that has an impact in the world. What we still see even today is there's still biases left where people who start a not for profits can tend to be a bit looked down on for profit companies. Like, oh, well you're not really focused on impact. You're actually in this for the dollar. I see your people are well paid and you have a nice office and yet you claim to be for impact and making the world a better place. John Hancock (00:44:10): Somehow the not for profits are better in some sense. But that mental model I think is shifting because the people who fund the impact in that space are also starting to ask questions like, well, what is your long term business model? How are you going to sustain this thing other than us constantly writing checks to you guys and then trying to figure out how to measure your impact. And so we had a lucky thing in our case, which was, I never bothered to try that because in order to go down the road of building a not for profit, you actually have to have background and experience in doing that. I know some people who try to do it without that background and experience and it was a catastrophe because you got to figure out where you going to get the money from, how are you going to measure it? Are you throwing Galla dinners here? John Hancock (00:44:51): I realized that if I threw a Galla dinner, no one would want to attend it. It was just the basic fact of the matter. No one's coming to John's Galla dinner. So, okay. Well, if that's not going to work, as you say, you've got to go focus on what's the art of the possible. And I had done a startup before in the late nineties, which coincided with a dot com boom and crash although it wasn't a dot com company. It was this wacky idea we had which was what we called data analysis. No, we didn't call it that. What was it called back then? Business intelligence probably. Business intelligence over the internet. No, it was decision support over the internet. That's how old it was. 1999, 2000. And we built this BI thing, which was a Java front end and we were FTPing from our customers AS400 systems and then giving them back a driver front end that they could log into. John Hancock (00:45:38): And so I did that startup in 1999, 2000 with a bunch of other great people and we took money for that startup. And that taught me a lot about what happens when you take money for a startup, right? That ended very badly for all concerned, including those who put the money in but also those of those who worked our bets off was a very bad outcome. We were all stuck with... I try to work for a while, which was just terrible. And the thing that that taught me was that who you take the money from and what their objectives are is going to maybe align with you in certain respects is maybe not going to align with you in other respects. And when things start to go bad or get complicated, that's going to be the most important factor about whether this great venture you have is going to succeed or fail. John Hancock (00:46:21): So getting back to there I am at Microsoft, digital crimes unit tells me that they're not continuing on this journey, I've got this business plan. Frankly, I had this little notebook of ideas that I'd been writing in for years. I was like, "Well, of course, I'm not going to do this. But if I did do this thing, what would it look like? How would it work?" And so brought out that thing and looked at it and I was like, "Well, I'm not going down the not for profit road because I don't know how to do that. I'm not going to go and raise money because explaining what I'm doing here is just too complicated. It doesn't fit into the nice buckets that investors are going to go and feel comfortable with. And so I'm really just going to go and do what I see a lot of companies doing in this year, which is bootstrapping. Find a customer where you can add value to them, do the thing with them, keep going and going and build and add more customers." John Hancock (00:47:10): And it takes a long time, I'll be the first to testify on that. We went way faster in the company where they injected a bunch of cash, but we also crashed into a wall way faster too. And the fall art was bad for all concerned. They lost all the money. We lost all our work. It sucked just wasn't good for anybody. So the bootstrapping model is a great model, but just you commit to growing at the speed of you can bring customers in and if you want to do different things, you have to try and find a way to carve out that time in the context of giving these customers value. And so that is what when I'm out there in the Seattle world at the moment talking to other people who are doing this impact thing, pretty much everybody is following a similar model. They're trying to build a bootstrap business. Sometimes they manage to get creative models where they can involve the philanthropic world some way in that journey. But most of us are just trying to figure out how to put together profitable businesses, usually cloud based, usually SaaS while also making the world a safer place in whatever way we can. So now it's a thing, it's out there. Rob Collie (00:48:12): Again, a lot about that resonates with me. We ended up going the bootstrapping approach to build P3 and you're right. You have to be a lot more patient. It takes a long time to build to the same place that you might have been able to build to if someone had just cut you a check. But I know that reliving the history of our company, there are moments in the history of our company where an investor would've forced us into a short term view of things, like a local minimum. The incentives would've driven us in a direction that was not the most resilient and robust version of us. And we probably wouldn't have made it. I can absolutely imagine that. And so you've got to wait for that what they call the, let me tell you about my 10 year overnight success. John Hancock (00:49:02): Yeah. That's exactly it. You see this it's happening quite a lot now that I think the world of venture particularly is changing so radically. Because now you can get going so much more quickly than you could before and that means you can hit customers pretty quickly. By the time I checked my Microsoft badge and exited, I already had line of sight to... Of course we had an advantage because we had the product already from the digital crimes unit area, but we also had customers lined up and we could service them from day one. So as soon as we exit, we had one customer and then another customer, some time went by, we got another one. So we started to build up quickly and that gave us really the freedom to do what we wanted to do. So in addition to growing the business, we've also done insane things. We run this huge global system as a pro bono project. We've never figured out how to get funding for that thing, but it's used by thousands of agencies. And so we just carried on doing that. Rob Collie (00:49:55): So John, if I understand it correctly, the crimes against children stuff, that's something that you just continue to provide basically pro bono. John Hancock (00:50:03): Well, it's an interesting one, right? Because a lot of the things that happen in the world are local like I said. And trying to get a local police department or the local task force or whatever it is, software, particularly complex hosted software is super hard. So for those kind of cases, we've just basically take the approach of, okay, we're going to have to do our best and do it as a pro bono thing. Sometimes we've figured out government grants or whatever to try and bridge the gaps. But for the other agencies that are doing those kinds of investigations, the big federal ones, they needed more than just technology, they also needed help, right? And so some of them also needed hosting when we finally got to the cloud. And so for them, we've got a bunch of paid services that we can offer that are annual base where we basically work with them. John Hancock (00:50:49): We've ended up building an interesting capability as well to go along with that, right? Which is like I say, we make technology. The vast majority of people at Hub Stream are software engineers making the product. It's one big product that used by everybody and then it's tailored to the different domains. It's like a model driven platform, much like imagine if you took the power BI approach of building a model and then you applied it to an active process. So you'd need to have descriptions of the information and things like that and visualizations, but you'd also need workflows and rules and business logic and stuff like that. Take that approach. That's really what Hub Stream, the direction we've gone. So it's a cloud service, it's model driven. So we can go and provide it to people, we can tailor the model to their day to day activities and then they can use that to do the investigations, which may be radically different. John Hancock (00:51:41): So to pull that off, we started out with a few different models. We had consultants for a while, that sucked because every day, the bit one thing would come up and then we'd have to say, "Sure, we can help you with that. Let's put together a project proposal." So that model sucked and really got in the way of actually helping customers. We also had a support thing where you could phone up and say, "Hey, I've got this problem," and support would help you. Eventually we learned from what other people are doing in SaaS generally, but particularly in SaaS where it's trying help people achieve a business outcome, which is we've got a customer success team now. And so we stole all of the reproaches and terminologies from the big companies that went ahead of us and customer success is basically a team that is set up to do what it says, help your customers be successful. They are funded essentially by the fact that your customers will renew. So if you help them be successful at the end of the year, end of the three years, whatever the contract is that customer's going to sign up again for another subscription because they've been successful using the software. So you can fund your work to help them as part of that recurring revenue bucket. So our customer success team is really the key to what we're doing. Rob Collie (00:52:49): Can I be a little difficult for a moment and say you had your consulting and support and those didn't work. So you renamed those two things customer success, and that works. What is it that's truly different? John Hancock (00:53:05): Yeah, that's a great question. So the first and most important thing is how's that group funded? Where's the funding for this? Like for consulting, it's easy. You have to make 20% margin. So if you do fixed price things, you figure out how to quote people that plus 20% and that's how you... So you can go, how do you know you can hire another one? Well, when you've got more work than you have opportunities, you go hire another one, right? And if that goes the other direction, sorry, Mr. Consultant, or Miss consultant, you're out of here. We don't have enough work and you've been on the bench for three months. So that model, I understand having been one of those consultants. So for customer success, the big difference is we price this subscription knowing that we have to fund X amount of people to help be successful. John Hancock (00:53:49): So right from the get go, our pricing model, we don't have a line item, we don't have hourly rates generally. We've gotten completely away from that. Now our subscription, when I pitch it to people, they go, wow, that's really simple every time. We work with you we figure out what your domain is, we figure out how many users you've got, what kind of data you've got, what the volumes are we talking about? And then we use patent matching to go, okay, you're like this customer that we've had already. And so we know roughly how much time we'll need to spend to make them successful. And then the way that model works in practice is you make a huge loss in year one because they need a ton of help, right? They're getting going. Year two, they start to get involved in the system and there's a lot of stability, okay, but they do still find these new opportunities like, oh, we realize we've now got this hub of all our information, but there's this thing over here that we haven't incorporated yet. John Hancock (00:54:41): Year two, you start to balance out and break even. And then year three, then you can be profitable because by then the customer has figured out what they want to do and they're actually incentivized to churn more slowly in terms of their requirements, because they've got a bunch of people all using this thing and they start to only move in smaller increments so that the wave of innovation slows down but still keeps going, but in smaller little increments. So once we figured model, now you can fund somebody whose job it is to help your customers be successful. And on a amortized all customers long-term basis, you can balance out the books. And so that was a huge thing for us. Once we figured out that we needed to incorporate that mentality into how we price the product, that was what shifted us over into a much better place. Rob Collie (00:55:31): John, the more I hear from you about all this, the more I'm glad that you're on the side of good, because your ability to play the long game is something else. And it's one of those, again, we really need to write the comic book. Because somewhere there's your alter ego that's playing on the other side. John Hancock (00:55:54): That's a good one, man. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:55:56): So look at it. In the early two thousands, you saw where the world was headed in terms of law enforcement, something you said earlier, you just saw it all ahead of time. I recognized the way that voice you did see it, I believe it. As a humorous aside at the beginning you said, well, I was the number two data guy in Canad, right? And you'd been trying to catch that number one for so long and you couldn't. And so instead you said, "You know what? Screw this. I'm going to go to Microsoft and help build the platform that destroys the domain in which he was number one. I'm going to take that supremacy from him." And once that was done, that's when you went after crime. John Hancock (00:56:36): Yeah. It sounds great. Actually, to be honest, I was just trying desperately to get to know as much as that guy did it all the time because it was such an inspiration, oh my God. When you get a really good data nerd and they walk in and they look at the query pan with one eye closed and they're like, "Yeah, all you need is an index," and all the lights just come back on, everything's great. Rob Collie (00:56:57): So when we started talking about databases, data warehouses, things like that, we got pretty deep down that particular rabbit hole but I want to bring us back to what is it that Hub Stream is doing? I'm sure it's doing lots of things, but at its core, it sounds like you have a tremendous amount of disparate types of data and more in new types of data every day that you need to be correlating. If you go back to the bob54@hotmail example, right? Am I on the right track? Is that close to the spinal column of upstream? John Hancock (00:57:33): Absolutely. And it goes into the big challenge with investigative data, right? Is that when I came into the space, maybe just tell a little story, that'll probably be the easiest way to frame this. So I was working, helping banks, right? So you're in a bank, you go and collect the transaction data, you bring it up there, you add it up, you slice it, you dice it, you're good, right? It's facts. Like you said before, it's what it is, right? So in investigations, there's this weird thing that happens and I learnt this... John Hancock (00:58:03): In investigations, there's this weird thing that happens and I learned this pretty early on, very publicly and embarrassingly actually, which was, I was starting to get into the space and we had finally got to the point with our conversations with the police agencies we were working with, where we started to put together data sets and starting to look into them. John Hancock (00:58:18): And as you said the first thing you think of is correlation. Okay, let's go and see which ones match together. And so we loaded it all up, matched all the things together, we looked for email addresses, we looked for phone numbers, we looked for all kinds of information that would relate things together right? Correlations. Links. We're super excited, we finish up the query, it completes, and it pops to the top the most correlated thing in the system. John Hancock (00:58:42): We're like "Wow, we found the most correlated thing and oh my God, it's like correlating 26 different cases. This is like a criminal mastermind here. We have found the criminal mastermind. This is awesome." And the cops go "Well, who is it?" And I say, "It's a@a.com." Ah Shit, in that moment I had this radical revelation again, which was, "Oh my God, criminals lie." John Hancock (00:59:06): Oh yeah. The cops that were there, they're looking at me like, "Yeah you, Microsoft guys are smart in like a very specialized kind of way right?" Because, yes my brain criminals lie. That's absolutely true. The data that you're getting in, the signal that's coming into you, is full of incorrect data as we would call it in the old world. But in criminal world, it's people trying to cover their tracks. They are literally out there on purpose trying to deceive you. John Hancock (00:59:34): They are trying to make these things not facts. Because if you can find enough facts, you can go kick in some doors right? So the interesting part about Hubstream is, trying to say, "Okay, we know we're building you your day to day system, because that's the only way we can really influence your behavior. So you sign on, now every single thing you do from receiving a bunch of reports into you, all the way through to the end game of arrest and beyond is in the system, you're in Hubstream, that's what you're doing." So now in order to help you, the trick about Hubstream is how do you actually show them the relevant information, even in a world where a@a.com is a thing? And so at its core what hub stream's doing basically in addition to the usual, line of business type system things which is transactional, audit security, all those kinds of workflow, that's a huge thing for us, workflow automation, all that stuff. John Hancock (01:00:27): The interesting data part of it is about taking in all that different data from all these different sources and then trying to match it together in a way that helps you see these patterns while also excluding links that are really not useful to you. So that's where the system tuning and all the rest of it, all the user experience is really built around that. Because the superpower that you actually have in the scenario turns out not to be technology, it turns out to be the human. So the human staring at the screen has these superpowers, which is that they are trained, they are skeptical, they're cynical, they know what people do, they know if you look at the word a@a.com, they understand, "Oh yeah that's a non-validated email address." Like people could put in whatever they wanted to. So of course that's what they did. John Hancock (01:01:11): So the superpower is the human and that's actually what makes the arrests. When people talk about Hubstream being involved in things, I'm always humble about that. Because, we are not the ones making the arrests. All we're trying to do is, we augment the human that's sitting there in front of the screen. You try and bring all the relevant things together, you try and tune out the noise and you try and actually empower that person to do what they do well, which is investigate. I'm not one, but I know the good ones. And all we're trying to do is power them up. The data nerds among those are probably thinking, "Well, how the hell did you do that? how do you actually model that?" John Hancock (01:01:45): So the cool thing about this actually in a funny way was our experience on Power Pivot. Because in Power Pivot, we spent all this time trying to build models that represent the real world. And now Power BI today, as you said, the beating heart of all that stuff comes back to the model. It's a model driven thing. So when we started building the Hubstream technology, when Devarajan, our CTO, and I were talking about it and we're starting to think this one through, we decided to do something a little different in this world. Which is, we said, "Okay, we are actually starting with a model. This model is going to be driving more than it would do in a BI scenario, which is mostly about understanding data, it's going to be put to even more work than that because it's going to also say what workflows happen and what permissions there are." It does a ton of stuff, but it's all built around an idea of a model at its core. And so the software is set up so that tomorrow, when you come in and Bitcoin is now a thing, instead of having to re architect your system and build these new things, you go in and change the model. So you go and say, "Right now I have Bitcoin as a thing" or payment method or whatever, you end up modeling it as, and you go and deploy that into the system. And voila, now when you sign on next time you hit refresh, you sign in in the morning, "Oh, now Bitcoin a thing." John Hancock (01:03:02): So that evolution, the system's set up to evolve in that way. So it's all completely model driven from the get go. Literally that was the next thing we did. The endeavor after our adventures in BI, we spent all these years in BI so we are a system for investigators built by a bunch of BI people. So it is in many ways the spiritual successor to the semantic models we've done in BI for many years, but applied to this particular domain. Rob Collie (01:03:29): That's fascinating. Okay, I'm not necessarily smart enough to have understood everything you just said in that compactible form. But I do recognize when I'm hearing something intelligent. John Hancock (01:03:42): It's just my accent. It fakes everybody. Rob Collie (01:03:48): I think we're probably better off sneaking up on people. We give you Southern United States draw and people really wouldn't see you coming then which is basically half my family by the way. Smart people with that voice, they kind of catch you off guard sometimes. But yeah, you fit the role. You live up to your voice John. Don't you fret. Rob Collie (01:04:06): So there's code in your product, it's a software product. But are you saying that when something new comes along, like a new type of data, you can go and sort of integrate that into the model without having to really mess with the core code of the rest of the software. John Hancock (01:04:27): That's exactly right. See, here's how that's even cooler than you might think at the beginning. We thought of this originally and thought "This is a cool idea." And me and Devarajan super excited with our whiteboards and tap dancing and, this is great, this is going to be awesome. Like I've never seen anyone build a system like this before we are going to go build it like that. We're going to merge the best of this BI model driven thing with the world of investigations. Voila, a whole new thing. John Hancock (01:04:52): It turned out way better than we had hoped even. Because, it turns out that every organization we worked with has different nuances to how they treat that information. Not only that, but if you look at the different domains of investigations, investigations turned out to be bigger and more complicated than we thought, basically more diverse, more wide ranging. John Hancock (01:05:12): We found investigative scenarios that we're now used in that are radically different than what you would've thought of originally. So for example, one of our biggest projects at the moment is to build a national transportation safety investigation system. So, that's an entirely different domain. If a plane crashes, you're going to go do an investigation, which involves hundreds of people and thousands of pieces of evidence and all this stuff. So the reason we're able to do that project is because of what I just said there, we have a model. Now we walk in there and there are a few concepts in that model that are the same from online crime versus transportation safety investigations. Like, you have an investigation, you have notes, you have documents. But there's a ton of stuff that is completely specific to that. Not just that domain but that particular country's implementation of that domain. John Hancock (01:06:02): And because we're a model driven thing, the process of actually deploying the technology is, Hubstream brings the technology. We usually have consulting partners for a big project like that, who are sitting there talking to the transportation safety investigator saying, "Oh, there's a thing called an aircraft. Okay. What kinds of information are you tracking on and how do you use it?" And they sit there and they set up the model and they hit deploy, time goes by, refresh and then they see, "Okay, great. Now I can relate aircraft to my investigation. Now I can relate all these different elements over to it." John Hancock (01:06:34): So that's actually has been the value of what it was we built. We wanted to have it able to set up to evolve quickly. And boy, was that a good idea. Because like I say, real world is always more complicated than you think. And that's actually been the way that we've got the technology out in increasing scope and increasing variety of investigations because of the fact that every customer you walk up to that's choosing Hubstream, If you go and look at what their model looks like and what their screens look like and their workflows, it's quite different. Even within theoretically the same domain, two countries, two different agencies, they may approach it differently, they may model it differently. Rob Collie (01:07:10): Wow. Okay, so if I didn't know you as well as I do, and I know you well enough, if you were anyone else, if you were a stranger after what you just said, I would've gone, "Oh, come on that's bullshit." John Hancock (01:07:27): Wow. I finally hit the bullshit meter. Yay. Rob Collie (01:07:29): I know. No, but I mean you've actually hit the holy grail. So what you just described in some sense, it's kind of like every computer scientist's dream. Especially like a graduate computer scientist, before they go out into the world, there's just this thing with computer scientists, and I was very much guilty of this at least for the first half of my career at Microsoft, which is "Ooh, everything can be reduced to these symbolic models and really everything in the world is best understood through a mathematical lens." And it's all, as I said, that's all bullshit. Rob Collie (01:08:03): You've acquitted yourself of this crime. John Hancock (01:08:05): In advance. Rob Collie (01:08:05): Multiple times on this recording already. It is about the humans right? And so that thing where you're saying like, "Hey, we can come up with this abstract modeling approach that will flex to completely different domains. And the software kind of just sort of keeps working." That doesn't happen, that plan has been drawn up. There's right now, 5,000 people in the world right now putting the finishing touches on a plan of similar abstractness and not one of them is going to work. John Hancock (01:08:40): Yes, I completely agree. They're going to use the word ontology. Rob Collie (01:08:40): Well that's right. Yeah. John Hancock (01:08:44): Which is of course fatal. So I think there are some factors as always, because here's the thing, we're not actually trying to solve everything. So what I see out there a lot at the moment is this whole, no code or low code revolution where to some degree they're trying to make claims about that. But the thing is that to truly do this as like a universal version of what I said, that can handle apps for collecting project information versus the analysis of, or the sale of tangerines or whatever it's. To do this on a super generic way, I think is impossible in our lifetime. It's not going to work. But what we did was we said, "No, we are focusing in very specifically on investigations" which when you're Microsoft sounds like the tiniest of niches in the universe. John Hancock (01:09:33): But in the actual world, there are thousands, tens of thousands of people who have investigator in their DNA or their job title or their team's name. But by focusing in on what to other people is a very small niche, we can take out of that the basic concepts, not the domain concepts, but the basic ideas of what those humans are trying to do, because that's what repeats. And that's what we can actually say, regardless of whether you're looking in detail at an aircraft, that's shown up in multiple crashes, or looking at an IP address that's shown up in 400 reports of malware, what you as the human are doing, as an investigator, bears an awful lot of resemblance between those two different scenarios. You're trying to manage a large flow of information, you're trying to use your powers of observation, your skepticism, your natural curiosity to go after connections, prune things that don't make sense, add things that do. John Hancock (01:10:28): So that's why I think we've actually been successful with this approach. I wouldn't say that some no code platform could do what I just said and solve every kind of use case that's out there, but having had the track record over the last six years I can tell you that investigators share a lot of common DNA. And so by focusing on the user side of this, you can take away the things that are truly irrelevant actually, which is the structure of the dates, what the domain is, what those concepts are. You just take that away from the core of it. And that becomes the flex part. That's the part that flexes, but you actually sit down to Hubstream, what's common across all of our customers is that they get in a lot of information, they need to resolve it, they need to investigate, and that's actually the common thread the ties it altogether Rob Collie (01:11:11): For each sort of type of information, are you using similar storage for each kind? What is your storage technology of choice? John Hancock (01:11:23): Yes, it's totally proprietary. And I cannot tell you that without... I joke a little bit, but actually, boy have we spent half a decade working on that question. And every generation of our technology, we go out there in search of the universal answer. And actually there isn't a universal answer to that question. So what we actually end up doing is taking a combination approach. Every time we come back to the practical which is, you know what, SQL server, SQL Azure or SQL something is awesome for these things. Blob storage, variations on that, awesome for these things. A NoSQL world with a flexible schema less thing, awesome for these kinds of things. So we end up basically assembling and building integration, building layers on top of, building translations, building, building, building to knit these things together. John Hancock (01:12:17): Now the world of data at the moment, data platforms are constantly... every time I go out there, someone's promising that they've solved this. They have the truly heterogeneous thing. Yeah, that's not true. We haven't found anything that will truly answer that question. I'm sure that all the vendors out there'll be like, "No, ours is the one we have finally solved this truly heterogenous platform thing. It can do NoSQL, it can do Blob storage, it can do relational." Yeah, not for us it can't. So the answer is, the world's a complicated place, our storage layer is complicated. Every generation, it gets smarter and uses more and more cool things. But at the end of the day, there isn't one answer to that problem. Rob Collie (01:12:55): Well, so now I can check off my check mark is that I finally got close enough to something sensitive that you can't tell me all the details. And I love that, but you still answered the question though. John Hancock (01:13:04): I didn't say how we solved it, but I'm telling you, it's a knitting together of the best of things we can find at the generation that we're at right now and next generation will be the same thing again. Rob Collie (01:13:15): Yeah I found that meal to be very satisfying though. That wasn't empty calories. I'm a satisfied customer. Moving on, you mentioned the similarity between investigations, been reading a lot about COVID lately and questions like how effective are the vaccines against the variants. How long does the immunity last, can you get COVID twice, all these sorts of things. And every time a real medical expert gets on the hook with a question like this, the answer's always, "Mm-mm (negative) you don't really know." It's really squishy, it's not facts. And I was wondering do you think that at some point there might be a medical investigation, like this might be within your purview? John Hancock (01:14:02): Absolutely. We actually have a project with one of the big pharmaceutical companies at the moment. That is a really tricky area I have to say, we worked with law enforcement for a lot of years, which I thought was complicated and had a lot of regulation, had a lot of procurement issues. Boy, does healthcare blow them out the water. They are the most complicated area that we've ever worked in. There's a lot of constraints on healthcare generally. But I also see when I go in there that because of that, it's kind of been a [inaudible 01:14:33] into some degree. Like there's not a lot of, I would say from what I've seen, this may not be universally true, but because of all those constraints on them, there's a real sort of limitation in terms of what it is that they can get done. John Hancock (01:14:44): So I think there's actually a ton of opportunity to make the world a slightly safer place by going in there and starting to help them out. For example, law enforcement for many years has not been able to touch the Cloud. Cloud, super scary, not going anywhere near it. Well, in the last three or four years, that's really started to shift and people are moving over. For pharma, it's still not the case. They're still stuck within the constraints. I'm just looking at that as probably one of the bigger areas for innovation in the future. Not just us of course, but all the other people out there who have technologies that they can bring to bear, because it's such a critical part of the world. You look at things like counterfeit medications in Africa that kills a lot of people, counterfeit cancer medications, boy is that a scary term. John Hancock (01:15:28): So I think that there's a huge opportunity to go in there and bring some of the investigative technologies and approaches from, even from things like investigating cyber crime and bring that into the world of medical and healthcare. And so that's definitely something I'm really looking forward to get further into. But boy, is that a tricky problem. Rob Collie (01:15:46): I bet, but I would've never guessed that it was harder than law enforcement. John Hancock (01:15:50): Yeah. I think it's because law enforcement's regulated, but healthcare is just one of those... Such a regulated world. Every step that they take is governed by regulation. It's all private organizations and because of that, how we as a society have chosen to maneuver is we say, "Okay, a lot of the innovation and services are going to be provided by private sector companies but healthcare is a tricky thing, human lives are at stake, so you've got to regulate the hell out of it." So It's this weird combination of private sector, but super critical to as a society and therefore highly regulated. That's been the interesting and fun part about tackling that area. Rob Collie (01:16:29): At first blush, I would think that the regulations would make it easier because everything kind of fits into, one size fits all in a regulated... like wild west would be harder. Are you saying that regulation suppresses data? Is it like the HIPAA stuff? You can't link it back to the individual, so you really can't correlate. John Hancock (01:16:48): Well, it's more like every step you take has regulation. So whatever it is you're doing, you can't color outside the lines because the lines are everywhere. You're surrounded by lines. And so, it's not like you can't do anything, but everything you do, you have to be aware and conscious of the regulations. And so we spend a lot of time talking to the [inaudible 01:17:11] customer about, and they tell us things that surprise us constantly. Like "Really? If you do that, you have to do this? I'm quite surprised by that." So once you get into the actual day to day operations, they're not free to move at all. We've decided as a society that they are going to be constrained and every step they take, they're going to think it through, they're going to think of ramifications. And so that's what makes it challenging. John Hancock (01:17:34): We are learning from them. I'm sure it must be a big learning curve getting into healthcare as a starting point, what exactly the spaces that they have to maneuver and what the responsibilities are that they have as a provider of healthcare solutions, whether that's medication or something else. So for example, if they're find out that something has caused an adverse effect, there's a lot of regulation that says what they have to do next, they can't just go "Oh, interesting." And move on to the next report, they have to actually do something. Rob Collie (01:18:02): And there's also things like even just taking this data from over here and that data from over there and putting them on the same server at the same time. If you do you that you've committed a felony or something and without ever knowing it. John Hancock (01:18:15): That's exactly it. So everything is constrained and that's what's the challenging part about that. But like I said, I really do feel like that area of our society is really ripe for some help, in terms of bringing in technologies to help people understand what's going on. Because there's a lot of crime out there that revolves around this stuff, counterfeit medications is just a starting point. It's a massive, massive thing. As someone who grew up in Africa, it's a lot more often in the news over there than it is in the U.S. but it's definitely something that causes a lot of pain and suffering in the world. Rob Collie (01:18:50): I believe it. And I do believe that it could use a lot of help. That's for sure. I asked that question about the medical field, thinking maybe I was going to stretch your brain. John Hancock (01:18:59): It would've done a year ago. Boy, has it been a year. Rob Collie (01:19:01): I should have caught you a year ago. I'd have felt better about myself. Instead you're like, "Yeah, yeah all over it." Which is awesome by the way. Okay, so something about the way your technology works, the way that the data model is separate and flexible from the code itself, the actual instructions that you've programmed into the software over time. My first job at Microsoft, I was a software tester, a test engineer on Office 97 setup. John Hancock (01:19:29): Okay. Thrilling. Rob Collie (01:19:31): Oh my God you have no idea how exciting it was. For the first six months I was just blissful. I was like, "Oh my God, I'm working at Microsoft." I'm like, "Oh, Office 97." And the setup scripts, the setup engine, Office had it's own setup engine that it wrote for installing software. It was called ACME. And by the way, this became the source of a band name that I had never formed. I never formed the band, but we did name our cross country racing team at Microsoft after this. One time I saw a build report for ACME, something about Swedish ACME had failed, the Swedish language version of the ACME installer had failed its build. So that we named our team Swedish ACME from that point forward, just sounded like some weird Wile E. Coyote thing, but there was another installation engine in development. Rob Collie (01:20:22): The problem with ACME and really with all installers at that point was that it was procedural. The scripts that you would write to install stuff would be like, go write this registry key, go put this file there, go do whatever. Like it was a set of instructions, which is what you would expect to go install the software. Guess what? Then you need to run the other modes like reinstall, to repair if something has sort of gone wrong or uninstall, heaven forbid you need to run an uninstall. Because the uninstall script was then a completely separate pathway through the... It was separate code. You had to write code that says, go remove this file, go remove that registry key or whatever. And so what you found was is that the setup part, the setup script was actually well tested and well debugged relative to every other pathway. Uninstall almost never worked. Rob Collie (01:21:24): And it was just so dumb in a way. So a couple people on that team had a really smart idea, which was to take installation, take software installation and make it a non procedural language, make it a declarative language. Instead of writing code that says, go write this file, put it here, write this registry key. They came up with this idea that there'd be a database that describes the application. The application consists of these groups of files and registry keys, and shortcuts and things like that. And then we built a separate engine. Its job was to read that database and decide how to install things, read that database and decide how to uninstall things. And then we could test that code, the uninstall reinstall code in the main engine, we could test it and really thoroughly debug it, make it solid. And then all that people had to do was basically describe the contents of their application to what's in these databases. Rob Collie (01:22:24): It was my first brush with a concept in the nerdy ontological sense, it's called declarative programming. It's hard to do, it's hard to build systems that work that way. This one ended up being called MSI windows installer. And it actually worked, I mean it was a hard project. It was the first project that I was program manager on. That was my first PM job. And I was allowed to be PM of that project because no one else wanted that crappy job. John Hancock (01:22:56): That's foundational though, that's big technology you end up building there. That sticked around for a long time. Rob Collie (01:23:01): Yeah. It's one of those things that is now amazing because you never notice it and that's what you want in a setup technology and it is a game changer. It actually has made windows far easier to manage. It really has been a great success. And it's also how I got involved in all kinds of places that I shouldn't have been at when I was 25 years old at Microsoft, I was interacting with some people that I had no business interacting with and it showed. There's something about your story, in another show that we've already recorded, but it hasn't gone out yet. We were talking to Chuck Sterling about these power virtual agents and how the code of the front end, the chat bot doesn't change. You're just feeding it new topics behind the scenes. So it's this more of a declarative data driven, leave the code alone as much as you can. And when you can build something like that and it works, it's a home run. It's hard to do. John Hancock (01:24:03): Yeah, It is. We are fortunate in that we started with this idea in mind. I don't fancy anyone's chances of grafting that on later, if you haven't started out with that in mind, good luck to you. But the huge advantage we have is I get out there now and I see a couple of different approaches to building systems for investigations. The one is, that sort of traditional case management thing. And when you go out and look at that stuff, they're written code that says, "Okay, I need to manage a person." The page has this on it, it has a name, it has a picture, it has a save button and they've written the code and everything is all tied together. So you look at those systems and of course they're all horrifically out of date and slow moving. Then I go into large government agencies and there's a name of a company that I shall not mention, but they're a very big multi-billion dollar provider of investigative solutions basically, platforms. When they're out there and they go into their clients, they deploy the technology, they have these sort of black cloud engineers that come in and do the data science and set it all up. John Hancock (01:25:04): And then the customer gets going. And of course the world changes and Bitcoin happens or something else happens. And then they go to that vendor and they say, "Yes, we now need to have a column that says Bitcoin." And they go, "Yes, we'll get to right on that for you. That will be $20,000 to add that field." There's this whole consulting driven world where they're basically building these things, using smart data sciencey engineers. All this is the world where everything is super static and written by developers 14 years ago and imported over through generations. John Hancock (01:25:35): Those two worlds don't work when you go out there and you see it in action. So like I say, we're fortunate to have come from the background we had, the weird sort of unique journey that we got to this place, but then day one was saying, "Okay, we aren't going to go and write hard coded screens in the system and we also sure as hell are not building a consulting company." I was a consultant. I knew I wasn't building a consulting company from day one. So what else is left given that the fact that you're a bunch of guys that just came from Power Pivot. Hey, you start with the model right? Everything has come around that model. And that's actually been the sort of superpower behind it all. Rob Collie (01:26:10): In all sincerity. Congratulations, not just on the product, even just the nerd in me, the nerd that's sort of been tamed and turned into more of an ambassador to the humans. The system that you've built, it just sounds gorgeous in all the ways that count. And it also sounds like you put together an amazing team. John Hancock (01:26:31): Those two things went together definitely. Rob Collie (01:26:34): You're going to be famous. Don't forget about us, John. John Hancock (01:26:37): I hope not. I'll settle for just really, really rich. Rob Collie (01:26:40): Okay. Do you ever worry that at some point your system will be so widely used that criminals will start to try to understand how it works so that they can cover their tracks better against it? John Hancock (01:26:54): Not really, because it's true every single day that there's an arms race, and the arms race is between the criminal and the investigator. So we write tools that help. John Hancock (01:27:03): [inaudible 01:27:00] is between the criminal and the investigator. So, we write tools that help the investigator, but really what's actually going on is people are on a daily basis trying to figure out how to cover their tracks from those people who are society as sent to enforce the law. We are just a part of that machinery. We help build the platforms and the tools, but there's nothing about how the Hubstream system works, that is some kind of unfair advantage to the investigator. Like I said, the only real secret or the truth behind it all, is that the smarts come from the human in front of the screen. Every day investigators show up to work and the criminals are doing something weird that they weren't the day before. That investigator has to adapt or they have to retire. John Hancock (01:27:46): We're basically supplying the platforms that those people use. It's never going to be the case that there's someone's going to find out something about how investigations work, just by looking at either our technology or even the models that our customers have put together. What you really got to do if you... as a criminal, if you really want to get ahead of law enforcement, is you've got to reverse engineer the brain of an investigator and figure out how to trick them. That's actually what criminals do all the time. They're constantly figuring out ways to look like something else. That's what they wake up every day and try and do. They're covering the tracks from the other humans, not from the technology. Rob Collie (01:28:20): Okay. Okay. Fine. But if you ever snapped. If you just had enough, right and you decided to Break Bad... you'd be a better criminal now, wouldn't you? You'd be able to avoid your own system? John Hancock (01:28:34): I don't think so. Here's the thing, you spend all your time in one brain, right. You're going after one thing. What I am is really understanding, and empathetic, and compassionate, about the challenges of the job of an investigator. Particularly in the darker areas where they show up for work every day and they're looking at pictures that the rest of us humans would see one in an entire lifetime, and be traumatized. They look at hundreds an hour, thousands an hour, tens of thousands an hour. Where the sort of weird learnings that I've had over these years have a lot more to do with a real understanding of the job of what investigators have to do. I think, if you were trying to be a master criminal, you should probably get up every day and try and evade law enforcement. That would be the way to go. Just like everything else you'll have to put in your 10,000 hours of evading law enforcement and then you'll get better and better at it. Maybe you'll go hang out with some master criminals. That's really the way to go. Rob Collie (01:29:33): I don't know, man. It seems like that knowledge of their humanity, those investigators, their deep humanity and knowing what makes them tick- John Hancock (01:29:41): Maybe I could turn it against them is what you're saying. Rob Collie (01:29:44): That's precisely what would make you so dangerous. Don't ever become evil John, because by the way, your accent would work well with that too. I could see a movie coming. No problem. John Hancock (01:29:57): Okay. Thomas LaRock (01:29:58): I'm fascinated by the work, the data. Part of my journey has been historically production database administrator, and that's kind of what I was when I came on Rob's radar. Although, I had jumped to a software company. Part of my journey is the last four years now, four plus years, I've been getting much more involved in data science. I've probably touched Excel more in these past five years or so, than ever. What you've built, I just have so much respect for the challenge you've taken on, how you've done it, and the work you're doing is important work. Tip of the hat to you, good sir. John Hancock (01:30:48): Yeah. And this is a probably good opportunity to talk about the other success factor on this, which is definitely team, right. That was the other part you said, we were talking earlier about the whole customer success journey. We had to learn our way into that, right? All these things. We've screwed up things. We've messed up. We've made mistakes. Then we've kind of had two course-correct. I'm really happy where we've ended up. I think the key thing about all of this is definitely team. If I look at the successful products or projects like this, generally, you got to have a different set of personalities all working together to make it work. My center of gravity is about product. It's about... I can spot the problem that needs solving and I can come up with a rough parameters of what a solution's going to look like. That intersection of real world, and then translating all the problems you could go solve into, we're going to focus on this one. John Hancock (01:31:42): These are the shape of it. This is the parameter. That's one element. I don't do so many other things. That's where I had such a great success. I went in mind, all of the relationships that I built in those great people at Microsoft. I found the people in that domain that kind of filled out the requirements. In addition to product, you also have to have design, which I maintain is different. Somewhat controversially, sometimes. I've worked with this fantastic guy, Joe Marline, for many years. When he and I are working together, the lights come up much brighter because he understands the human element and he pushes towards that all the time. He's just this great creativity that comes into figuring out how are we going to do this? What is this going to look like? How's it going to feel? John Hancock (01:32:25): That's just such a key piece. Then the other part of that is, I've... I was a professional programmer back in the day, but I was never at the level to build these big systems. Luckily at Microsoft, there's a lot of people around who can build those big systems. Some of them are not as much fun to work with as others, I will say. I had the really fortunate experience, as did Rob, of working with an absolutely fantastic guy [Devarajan Muthukumarasamy 01:32:55], who is just an awesome dev lead on our team. Then had grown up into this guy who was doing the architecture for these big cloud services and things like that. He was one of the first people to start architecting these large scale things for BI. I was fortunate enough to have a really good relationship with him and he's come over for all these years as our CTO. John Hancock (01:33:14): That means that I now have the super power. I have this fantastic design person who can help figure out the solution. Then I have someone who can build these fantastic large-scale systems, who can manage teams, who can build a team, keep that team productively occupied. Then, the third part of that is the customer element. The third sort of part of this journey is about, how do you get people who can go out there in the world and understand the domain, which is the crime domain? Also have this technology sort of consulting, consultative experience. That's our director at Na VP of Customer and Partner success, Paul Whitaker. He came from military background. Then he went and worked for Microsoft consulting for many years and was helping the FBI to do their systems. John Hancock (01:33:58): I met him at Microsoft and was just so impressed by his ability to join those two things together. Technology and the customer and get them good solutions. That's really, I think, where I lay the sort of credit for how this has gone well, to the extent that we've helped our customers and built the company is, to solve the problems, which are super excruciating hard. As you said, they change all the time. They keep evolving. That's been a real fantastic element of it, is having all these people together who can bring those different sides. The technology, the design, the customer angle, and product, and then build out the product around that. Rob Collie (01:34:32): I want to emphasize something you said about team. I completely agree. This is something that in general, I think the entire society, we should be reminding ourselves of this over and over and over again, multiple times per day. We need it so much. Remember that a single human being alone on the wilderness is a meal for a 60 pound cheetah. We're just so helpless. 10 human beings with pointy sticks though. Hmm. Drive the wooly mammoth to extinction. This belief that you can survive as an island or whatever, or it's us versus them. All of that. Is just so dumb. It's just so dumb. By the way, what's the most dangerous thing to 10 human beings with pointy sticks? Another 10 human beings with pointy sticks. If you're not cooperating, whether at a company or at any level of organization, cooperation is just insane in terms of what it can do. Rob Collie (01:35:38): Having started at Microsoft right out of college, I sort of just joined this massive organization. I got to take it for granted from the very beginning. Starting essentially from zero and building something from the ground up is so educational. I will never view the world the same again. I will never think of myself the same way. The way that I view my own capabilities is different as a result of it. Of course, just the way things work. You would never mention yourself necessarily in the same glowing light, but you are an incredibly important part of that at same team. You, John, that you just talked about. Those people had to leave. Deva had to leave the Microsoft job and go with you. At some point, right? He had to believe in you. I understand that. John Hancock (01:36:29): Yeah. It's a huge learning adventure. I mean, I had done a couple of companies around us, but this has been such a journey of education. It's interesting hearing you point out the office thing. Office, at Microsoft, was one of those organizations that did recruit right out of cottage and grew people up through the office system. Whereas SQL server, where I landed, was very much not that. They kind of tended to recruit from people who had experience and then came in. It did create this differing culture. When I left, I had the opportunity to start thinking through how we would do that. Where we've ended up actually, is, as we scaled up the company, we've actually taken the office model, which is we've been recruiting the vast majority of our company, comes in from as university graduates now. John Hancock (01:37:14): We bring them up in engineering on Deva's team, and then they grow up as a Hubstream engineer through that cycle. We've invested all our energy into basically coming up with a model, that we can scale. Where we bring people in and then we mentor them and we grow them. Then that team grows up. That's not how we started out, because that's not what my background was. It's become a very interesting way to grow the company in terms of how to scale all those different elements I was talking about and still have the way to keep your culture whole and keep growing that kind of office model of growing your own constituents in your own culture. It's hard. It's difficult. It can be slow. At the end of it all, you get more control over how that company's unfolding. Rob Collie (01:38:00): It's really funny, that I grew up in the office system, and at Microsoft, you grew up in the SQL system. You've chosen the office model and we only hire experienced, in our company. John Hancock (01:38:10): You flip over. I think the other element though, is that in customer success, it's different obviously because you know, having some experience helps. The most of my company is actually our engineering. They're building a software product. For that, the office model works fantastically. You can really go hire fantastic people at the very beginning of their career. If you can identify the right ones, if you can give them the right support, then you can grow them into these great teams without having to go out and do recruiting for more senior people. You can grow your own. Yeah, I've very much appreciated that model. That's something we've been doing well over the last couple of years, I think. Rob Collie (01:38:47): We cheat a little bit because we sort of halfway, intentionally, halfway, unintentionally, we sort of select for the culture that we want. Our consulting team is only... is a 100% experienced hire thing. One of the two questions I wrote down, that I want to make sure I get to before we wrap. One of them is, what is the profile of the customer success managers? What are those people's backgrounds? How do you recruit them? Where do you go looking for them? John Hancock (01:39:11): Yeah, that's one that we'd... I wouldn't say there's a template for. That one's a super tricky hire. We're growing that team pretty slowly. One at a time. Everyone is a custom. That's a one where we're trying to find people. We look at them, we look at our customers and we try and see does this puzzle piece, which is a complicated, unique, special snowflake, does that fit into the team that we've got? And how they're going to grow out? That one is, it's very hard. I would say, we will probably have more failures in that area than anywhere else. Trying to recruit into it is super hard. You can get a bunch of benefit out of different angles. If you have a lot of law enforcement experience and investigative experience, that's great. But do you necessarily have the technical experience to help somebody who knows how to investigate, but doesn't know the technology to get more successful? Right? John Hancock (01:39:58): On the other hand, if you have a lot of technology expertise, which you don't know the domain very much, well, that's going to take you a bit of time to get, to be able to talk to those customers. Yeah, balance is what we're trying to go for. I would say the hardest role that we have at the company to scale. Rob Collie (01:40:12): I can imagine that. Another thing that I was wondering about throughout this is that, you're a software company. You build software, overwhelmingly, I think on the Microsoft platform? John Hancock (01:40:21): Yes. Entirely. One of our values is actually that we are completely Azure. We do have some little things that we're trying to get rid of. The Microsoft slow to adopt. Generally, we are pitched to people as no, if you're signing up Azure, which most government agencies are, we are an Azure, a native Azure service. We do all the Azure stuff. Other players in the market are taking the heterogeneous approach where they'll say we'll run on anything. We've gone driving very hard in the opposite direction, which turned out to be a really great bet. Microsoft Azure and government, Microsoft has done a fabulous job in getting to security-level and a level of commitment from government agencies worldwide. That has been second to none. They have won that battle. I would say I would take credit for having correctly forecasted that. I can't accept the real reason we did. It was because we're a bunch of Microsoft people, right? We just naturally built on Azure and now we just tell people it was our strategy all along. Rob Collie (01:41:17): Yeah. I mean, there's going to be plenty of bad luck in building a business. John Hancock (01:41:24): Yeah. That was a good fortune. Rob Collie (01:41:24): You might as well take the good luck. Yeah. You know, you can't... It's like playing blackjack and going, "Oh I lucked out and got the 21 there. I'll give that money back." No you're never going to win if you don't... You have to take the good luck and the bad luck, don't you? A lot of parallels actually sort of emerged in this conversation about Hubstream, as when we had Austin Senseman on talking about Conserv, which is their for-profit. But cultural benefit... I'm starting to sound like Borat, 'Make benefit cultural,' for museums and their collections helping preserve their collections with IOT monitoring. Some of the things you've said, he also has reflected that industry, the museum industry, if you will, if you call it an industry, is the conservatorship type people are very suspicious of for-profit businesses. Rob Collie (01:42:14): Probably for good reason. Maybe not in his case. If you think about Power BI, let's just talk about Power BI very specifically for a moment. If you wanted to relax it a little bit, you could talk about the Power platform as a whole. If you think of it as a BI platform, you're already kind of... not you, but we are already kind of missing the point. Really, the Power platform, Power BI is a software development platform for a particular niche. It's software development. You started Hubstream seven years ago, officially? John Hancock (01:42:47): Mm-hmm (affirmative). Rob Collie (01:42:47): The Power platform was way, way, way less mature. It doesn't even look the same as it looks today. It's a completely different animal now. Today there's sort of a natural progression when you're a software company aimed at a particular domain, such as crime. Whatever it is, right? Is that sooner or later, you eventually arrive at a point where almost everything you've got is custom software built for that. You're not using any of these sort of, Azure as a platform. When you start out from scratch, sometimes you end up using some of the, these sort of general purpose shortcut technology platforms. If you were starting today... First of all, let me ask you a question. Does Power BI appear... in your offering? John Hancock (01:43:26): Yes. Absolutely. It's actually quite an important component of it. Rob Collie (01:43:29): I should have asked that first. John Hancock (01:43:30): Yeah. Well it's for are an interesting reason. Right? Which is, so we provide this end-to-end platform. Okay. Like I say, we do everything from data ingestion all the way through to triage, investigations, referrals out, cold cases, research, trend analysis. The whole shebang. Our whole point is to be the Hub. It's right there in the name. Maybe from Microsoft are not good at naming things, but that one we named right. It's... Things stream into the Hub. That's the Hub. That's what you use it for. The role that the Power BI thing particularly plays for us is, you get this fantastic, highly tuned workflows. All these things go in your day-to-day business. At the end of the day, there's also things that, that particular organization, whether it's law enforcement or private sector or whatever, they need to have certain access to visualizations and scorecards. All these kind of things that Power BI does so fantastically. John Hancock (01:44:23): The way that we've kind of threaded that needle is we go, here's your end-to-end platform. What we've done to facilitate that the development of these organizations-specific, dashboards, visualizations, et cetera, is you can actually connect up to the data which will provide you in a very Power BI friendly way. You can build your Power BI reports. We've let you publish them back into the application. We've done a very interesting integration with Power BI embedded, where the Power BI dashboard that you build can show up as dashboards. You can actually make custom visuals. When I say custom visuals, I don't mean as in the Power BI custom visuals, I mean, you made a Power BI report that looks like X and you can plug it into our application UI so that if you're doing a case and for example, your investigation has tons of IP history, well there you can have a tile that launches your custom Power BI report that does that kind of analysis that you need to do. John Hancock (01:45:17): That's how we've kind of layered in what Power BI does brilliantly, which is the ability for normal humans, as you say, with some Power BI experience, to hook up to data and do specifically the thing need to do. They can still publish that back into the end-to-end platform. That's been a... It was a great bet on our part. Power BI embedded, was a bit rocky at the beginning, but I have to give kudos to that team. They've done a really good job over time of making that into a world-class grade, embeddable solution. Into our actual application. John Hancock (01:45:47): It's part of the thing we sell, which is we go out there and people say, "Oh, what if I need to do this?" And we say, "Well, do you know, Power BI?" And they go, "Of course we know Power BI. It's completely ubiquitous. It's everywhere." So then we tell them, "Okay, well take those Power BI reports and put them into your end-to-end workflow. Hook them up to the centralized hub of all your information coming in. Voila. Now you have all the value of Power BI." You have that put into people's day-to-day workflow, as opposed to just being some separate thing that you go and query. Rob Collie (01:46:14): If you're listening to this and you're involved in any sort of line-of-business software. I mean, I... Okay. It's, almost cheapening to call what you do, line-of-business. John Hancock (01:46:23): It's totally line-of-business. That's exactly right. It is the day-to-day system that people use. It's just that what they use it for is, novel and unique. You've got to think about it as, that is the system. That's the line-of-business system. They use that eight hours a day, 10, 12 hours a day. Many of them, that's what they use. When you think about that process, I agree. Line-of-business systems. If you think about the need to also serve their requirements for custom ways to understand their information, you don't go build that kind of stuff yourself, because Power BI has gone rocketing way beyond anything you would do yourself. John Hancock (01:46:59): The value is that someone can get a Power BI Desktop. It's actually, like I say, normal humans can use this thing. They can create basically a mini application, as you said, Rob. It's really their domain specific programming effectively. Then you can push that back into your Hubstream platform. Now it's part of your day-to-day. It's part of your line-of-business system. That's the approach we started taking a couple of years ago, once Power BI embedded really got going. That was a really good move. I think it's worked out so great for us and the clients. Rob Collie (01:47:27): You completed my sentence. Exactly. You know exactly where I was headed. Don't be that line-of-business offer company that thinks you're going to build the reporting. Unless, you know that your customers all need basically the same, exact stuff. Sometimes that's the way that your industry works. John Hancock (01:47:42): Yeah. Like consumer or these large scale companies, where you're solving a specific problem in a specific way. Line-of-business systems, in the modern era, whether you're doing Salesforce or Dynamics or whatever it is. Whatever's in front of the person, I look around and I see tons of these Vertical SaaS companies, just like mine. Vertical SaaS thing is this huge phenomenon out there for good reason, right? You have some team of people who understands a particular Vertical really well. They can assemble a team that can execute really quickly. They can pull together all these Azure cognitive services and Power BI and they put everything together and pretty quickly they can come up with a solution, which is highly tuned to that Vertical. So the trick in that world is not to develop things you don't need to develop. If you're building things you don't need to develop. If you think you're going to go and crack open D3 and do a better job of ad hoc development of custom visualizations. Good luck to you. It's not going to work. Rob Collie (01:48:35): If I can just edge just a little bit commercial for a moment. By the way, if you happen to be working on a vertical-specific, line-of-business system, P3 would love to help you avoid that mistake, right? We would love to help you integrate Power BI into your offering and offer an actual winning capability for your customers without you spending... It's just crazy. You can spend so much time and money trying to build reporting that works for all of your customers. Just a sinkhole of money and ,never come close to succeeding. John Hancock (01:49:06): That's exactly right. I completely agree. Now the thing is, luckily in our case, we did have that background, in-house, in the company. Since we helped build, as you said, the beating heart of Power BI. We were back there, back in the day and through some of the iterations. We had the experience to just go crack it open and go do it. I do think that anyone is building a Vertical SaaS product, should look at that as an option in their model. Wow, it makes a huge difference. You're never going to get to the point when you can hand over something like Power BI Desktop to your business analyst or whoever, whatever analytic type shows up in your, in your Vertical SaaS world, is somebody who can crack open some kind of tool like that. If you're going to go build a designer from scratch, you're crazy in this era. Rob Collie (01:49:46): My last question, what's next for Hubstream? What's the next big frontier, the white whale that you're chasing? What's the stretch goal? John Hancock (01:49:53): Stretch goal for us is that we have been doing this long enough to know what is going to unlock the next level for us. We know that we're doing fantastically well for big, national and global organizations. If you look at our customers today, it's all the big names that you would recognize. If you go do a search on government procurement sites, you'll see who we're working with. It's all the big ones that you would imagine. Particularly the, what they call the Five Eyes countries, New Zealand and Australia, Canada, the US and the UK. That's where we are, right? Doing a fantastic job on those big agencies. But like I said, the world is full of so smaller organizations, right? They're not going to go and stand up and do an implementation of this big line-of-business system, if you're a local police department or a small brand that's just coming up, or a company that's starting to see fraud in their transactions. John Hancock (01:50:45): None of these people are going to go and say, "Right, we need to reorganize our whole entire universe around this hub". We are working and have been doing for a number of years now on the next generation of our technology, which we'll be launching later this year. You can invite me back to talk about it at that point. It's... Rob Collie (01:51:00): I would love to. John Hancock (01:51:01): Yeah, this is our V4. In the history of software, V4 is when you really start to get your game on, right? You do V1. It's limited. You do V2, which is disaster. Always. All V2's are disasters. V3, you stabilize all the mistakes you made in V2, and you realize what you're actually going to go do when you grow up and V4 is our grown up version. We're hoping to take all of those lessons, all of the scale, all of the way that people work and make it available to a much larger audience. Anybody who is touching criminal investigations or investigations at any scale, weighed all the way down to a single human, we have something fantastic and mind blowing that's coming. That the team has been working their butts off. We triple the size of the team in the last two years to go build that. That's the white whale we're chasing as you correctly discerned. We are after something here and that's it. So stay tuned. Rob Collie (01:51:51): Indeed. We're going to simultaneously release the comic book...Dr. Data. John Hancock (01:51:56): Great. Fantastic. Rob Collie (01:51:59): M. Knight Shyamalan is already on board for the movie. John Hancock (01:52:01): That's great. Like I said, John Oliver can play me. So that's good. Rob Collie (01:52:04): Yeah. Totally. John, this has been a blast. Always loved the podcast excuse to reconnect people that I knew 10 years ago. It's so great. John Hancock (01:52:19): Yeah. It's been tons of fun. Announcer (01:52:20): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 podcast. Find out what the experts at P3 can do for your business. Go to powerpivotpro.com. Interested in becoming a guest on the show? Email Luke P L-U-K-E-P at powerpivotpro.com. Have a data day!

Bill Jelen, known to many as Mr. Excel, was one of the first Internet Tech Celebrities. He turned his online resume into a highly recognizable brand and is a legend in the data community. We get his story, in his own words.  We hope you'll enjoy this candid conversation with Mr. Excel, Bill Jelen   Buy Bill's book Mr.Excel 2021: Unmasking Excel, containing his favorite Excel tips!   Stuff We Mentioned: Hipster Ipsum Copy Filler Tool Dax Studio We Report Space-Bill's Other Website! Rob's Wheel Of Inquisition   Episode Timeline: 3:15 - Mr. Excel's Origin Story 18:05 - The Excel vs Power BI user base 35:35 - Dax is Badass! 47:25 - Lambda Functions in Excel, Mr. Excel asks some Python questions, and Rob gets cynical 1:16:50 - Bill's other passion We Report Space and the story of Tickling Keys 1:28:30 - More on Lambda functions and Let functions and the immense potential there Episode Transcript: Rob Collie (00:00:00): Welcome friends. This week, we have the one and only Mr. Excel himself, Bill Jelen. Chances are, if you're listening to this, you have been to Bill's site, mrexcel.com via search engine more times than you can count. You might have read some of his books because he is factually the most prolific author of Excel books in history. One of the things that I find most fascinating about Bill is that every technical community, these days, is a community. We're familiar with the idea of, essentially, celebrities, MVPs, community figures, advocates, internet stars. Rob Collie (00:00:35): And Bill was doing that long before that was a thing. He was doing this in the 1990s. When websites still looked like the old Windows help files. He might have been the only person that I'm aware of doing this thing that early. He's absolutely a fixture in the data community as far as I'm concerned. And just also a phenomenal person. He's been a really good friend of mine for a number of years. We'll sometimes talk early in the morning when I'm still up and he is already up. We had a great time, wandered all over the place as you'd expect. I hope you enjoy it. So let's get into it. Announcer (00:01:13): Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please? Announcer (00:01:17): This is the Raw Data by P3 podcast. With your host, Rob Collie, and your co-host, Thomas LaRock. Find out what the experts at P3 can do for your business. Go to powerpivotpro. com. Raw Data by P3 is data with the human element. Rob Collie (00:01:35): Welcome to the show, Bill Jelen. Bill Jelen (00:01:38): It is great to be here. Holy smokes. Rob Collie (00:01:41): How you doing today, man? Bill Jelen (00:01:42): It is a beautiful day down here in sunny Florida. 73 degrees. Rob Collie (00:01:47): It sounds awesome. A little sort of Oceanside experience for you. We have freezing rain today. Bill Jelen (00:01:54): That's special. Freezing rain. That's that Indianapolis thing. A little bit further south from Cleveland, the snow changes to freezing rain. Rob Collie (00:02:02): Yeah. I highly recommend it. Bill Jelen (00:02:03): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:02:04): I don't even know what freezing rain was when I ... I didn't know it was a thing when I lived in Florida. Bill Jelen (00:02:10): Great. Rob Collie (00:02:10): Oh, it's just wonderful. The things that ... What was it, the Jimmy Buffett Changes in Latitudes? Bill Jelen (00:02:16): Yes. Rob Collie (00:02:16): That brings you freezing rain. I think he might have been referring to going South. Bill Jelen (00:02:22): Yeah. It's something else. Rob Collie (00:02:22): With a latitude change, it might have been- Bill Jelen (00:02:24): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:02:24): So Mr. Excel, you might be, if not the first, one of the sort of original, the OG internet tech celebrity figures. Everyone's trying for that today. That's a thing today. That's the lifestyle. A whole generation is attempting that right now. Bill Jelen (00:02:44): Right, yeah. Rob Collie (00:02:45): But you, I mean, you were doing this long before it was cool. Bill Jelen (00:02:49): It was easier when there was no competition. Rob Collie (00:02:51): Well, I- Bill Jelen (00:02:52): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:02:52): I agree. Bill Jelen (00:02:53): Yeah, right. Rob Collie (00:02:54): But at the same time, there's a reason why there was no competition. Because no one else thought to do it, or had the energy to do it, or thought that there was ROI. So in some sense, it was harder to start early, right? It was harder to be one of the early people otherwise there would've been more. But yeah, once you're going, it's different. So let's go back to the origin story. The Marvel comic book, or DC, if you prefer- Bill Jelen (00:03:18): Right. Rob Collie (00:03:19): Origin story of Mr. Excel. You were not always Mr. Excel. You were once just Bill Jelen. Bill Jelen (00:03:25): That's true. Rob Collie (00:03:26): Where does it all begin? Bill Jelen (00:03:28): And the nasty secret is that I was originally Mr. Lotus 1-2-3. Thomas LaRock (00:03:32): Oh. Rob Collie (00:03:32): Oh my God. Bill Jelen (00:03:33): Yeah, it wasn't until 1995, when the company I was working for switched over from Lotus to Excel. And then Mr. Excel started in November of 98. So I only had three years of Excel under my belt. Before that- Rob Collie (00:03:44): Whoa, you were three years in before you became Mr. Bill Jelen (00:03:48): Mr. That's right. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:03:50): So were you literally Mr. Lotus 1-2-3? Did you call yourself that at one time? Bill Jelen (00:03:55): No, the whole thing is, I was the guy at the company. There's one of these at every company who knows everything about spreadsheets. Originally Lotus, and then Excel. And it wasn't because I was a spreadsheet geek. It was because we had a miserable tool. They paid $100,000 for a reporting package that did not work. But thank God it had the most important button in the world, export to spreadsheet. Yeah, right? And so then there ... I'm supposed to be using this $100,000 tool, but I'm back in a cube in the back of the finance department. We're using Lotus 1-2-3 to turn everything around. Right? Rob Collie (00:04:31): We think of that button now as, export to Excel. Did they have the foresight in the Lotus 1-2-3 days to call it export to Excel? Was it already called export to Excel, because they knew sort of where it was going? Bill Jelen (00:04:41): No. I'm going to geek out here. It wasn't even an exported .WK1. It was a .WKS. A Lotus 1-2-3 version 1 file, which was limited 2084 records, or some crazy low number like that. Yeah. So the first thing we do was convert that to proper WK1 file with a 16,384 records. Woo! Rob Collie (00:05:02): Get out of here. Bill Jelen (00:05:03): Yeah, right. How would you ever fill that up? Rob Collie (00:05:07): That's too many. Bill Jelen (00:05:07): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:05:11): Yeah. That's great. So I've heard this story before, by the way. This expensive reporting package that doesn't do what you want it to do. But usually there's more zeros on the price tag. 100,000. That's- Bill Jelen (00:05:26): Yeah, that was 1990. I don't know. That was 1995, 1996 dollars. So- Rob Collie (00:05:28): Oh, so in today's dollars it'd be like a million? Bill Jelen (00:05:31): Probably. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:05:32): Yeah. Great. Was that really sort of the origin of your spreadsheet engagement? Bill Jelen (00:05:38): That's how I became really, really good at spreadsheets. Just using this $100,000 tool and then secretly a $99 spreadsheet to produce everything. So that trial by fire taught me a lot. Rob Collie (00:05:49): I'd always thought that, and I've known you a long time now, I'd always thought that you were just sort of in the accounting world. And of course you use spreadsheets in the accounting world and you got good at it. But to hear you tell the story ... Seriously for me this is, I think, the first time I've heard this, that this really started out for you, the primary driver anyway, was a need for reporting a BI need essentially. Bill Jelen (00:06:13): Essentially. Yeah, that's right. And it was ad hoc. I mean, we were never running the same report. It was always ad hoc, which I loved. I loved ad hoc. I loved every day. You'd show up to work and see what fire is burning and what fire you could put out by being the guy who could get the data from the mainframe into, well, spreadsheet. Rob Collie (00:06:31): We have a name for that kind of workflow in the industry. At least at P3 we have a name for it. What fire's burning every day, the different questions every day, the things that twists and turns and all that, we call that reality. Bill Jelen (00:06:45): That's a great name. Rob Collie (00:06:47): You like that? I mean, that's just life. That's just how the world works. That's really, really cool. Seriously, I did not expect, at least this early in the conversation, to be learning something new about the Bill. Bill Jelen (00:06:59): Right. That was it. So I'd been at this company for 10 years and I'm the first generation, I think, that you didn't go someplace and work for your whole life. My dad showed up at a place and worked there for 35 years until retired. And so this place I was working at, they fired people every Friday. HR coming towards your office with a box. It's like, "Ur" Rob Collie (00:07:19): It's just part of the ritual. Bill Jelen (00:07:22): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:07:23): It's like Stalin. It just goes down the row of officers and just shoots every 10th one. Bill Jelen (00:07:26): Right. Right. And you were just hoping that you were not the one that would be let go that Friday. And then they announced. They called everyone out to the parking lot. They made a big announcement that there was a hostile takeover bid. And our hated competitor, our dreaded competitor, was trying to buy us out. But don't worry, we're going to find a white night. We'll find someone else to buy us. Because we hate those guys. And I'm like, "Oh man, this is bad. I'm going to have to go look for a job." I haven't interviewed in 10 years. I don't even have a resume. So in my twisted mind, it was the Friday for Thanksgiving in 1998, I launched Mr Excel. I said, "Send me your Excel questions." And the website said, "I'll write up the best one every week here on the website." Bill Jelen (00:08:08): And the best ones will show up in a book. But what I was secretly thinking was if I could get 50 people to send me Excel questions, then when I lost my job in a couple of months after the hostile takeover, I would have 50 places to send a resume. I mean, anyone who sent an Excel question in, clearly was using Excel. So- Rob Collie (00:08:24): That's right. Bill Jelen (00:08:25): It was a job. It was a job hunt. But then they backed out of the deal. They didn't buy us. They didn't buy us. So now, all of a sudden, I got people sending me Excel questions every day. What am I going to do with this? So that's how it started. Rob Collie (00:08:38): Oh my God. I love that. So that's why I started Power Proof at pro.com originally. Was like an online resume in a way, and had no idea. I mean, I kind of had an idea, but it was a squishy motivation. I love how the accidental things like this- Bill Jelen (00:08:53): Yeah, absolutely. Right. Rob Collie (00:08:54): Yeah I know. Bill Jelen (00:08:54): Right. Rob Collie (00:08:55): It didn't even turn out to be real. The takeover wasn't even real. Bill Jelen (00:08:58): They did come back and get us two years later. And that actually is really lucky, because in those two years ... They say the way to build traffic, you can either buy your way or ... It takes time or money. Either buy ads or just slowly grow organically. And those two years give us a lot of time to grow organically. And then when it came time that they offered us a buyout, I said, "All right. Well, I got six months' severance package here. Let me see what I can do. Let's just hang a shingle out to see if I can get Excel consulting gigs." And I had to wake up and hope that something would come in. There was only one day that nothing came in. So yeah, by the end of the six months, it was a go. Thomas LaRock (00:09:31): See that part has always fascinated me. The fact that, until I met Rob, I had no idea anyone could make a living as an Excel consultant. Bill Jelen (00:09:42): It's amazing. It's amazing. And it certainly requires some VBA. Back then you had to do some VBA. And they were tiny little VBA jobs, like 250 bucks or something like that. But you string enough of those together and you're replacing the old corporate salary. So yeah, it was good. Rob Collie (00:09:59): So When did the book start? Bill Jelen (00:10:01): The book. Okay. Here's the worst part about working from home. First off, the cafeteria at home is last night's dinner, right? Whatever's left over from last night's dinner. There's no choice whatsoever. And I missed not having anyone to talk to. There was no one to talk about last night's game, no one to go golfing with, no softball teams in the summer. There's nothing. And so I started joining the Chamber of Commerce, just to have someone to go talk to. You could go out to breakfast once a month at the networking thing. And this is so weird. There was an event called ... It was the Women's Network. I don't qualify for that, but they said, "It's okay, come on anyway." Bill Jelen (00:10:41): So I would go to the Women's Network thing and there was a lady there who did a presentation and she says, "Yeah, I'm a marketing consultant. I just got started. I want to triple someone's business." And I went up to her afterwards. I said, "Well hey, things are going really good. I'm satisfied with where we're at. But yeah, if you want to triple my business, let's do it." So I explained the business model. I said, "I got all these people coming. They post their questions at the message board. 99% of them get their answer for free. And that's it. They never come back. And I'm counting on one out of a hundred to actually hire me and pay me 250 bucks." And she's like, "Wait a second. You're either charging people $250 or zero?" Bill Jelen (00:11:20): I'm like, "Yes." And she says, "You're missing an important price point. You need a $20 product. If people love you, if you had a $20 product, they would be handing $20 over to you handed fist." So I wrote the first book. The print run. Rob, what was our last print run? Our last print run was thousands, Right? Rob Collie (00:11:38): Yeah. Bill Jelen (00:11:38): It was just some crazy number. My first print run, on Whipple avenue in Canton, Ohio, at the office, Max Printing store, was 10. I printed 10. Cost $10 each. I sold them for 20. Cool 100 bucks right there. Rob Collie (00:11:53): Humble beginnings. Bill Jelen (00:11:54): I took that profit, I printed another 10. And eventually the day I got to print a hundred, it was like, "Woo! Wow, moving up." Rob Collie (00:12:02): You were self-published from the beginning. Bill Jelen (00:12:06): From the Beginning. That's right. Because I hated rejection. I didn't want to go to the publishers. So I just printed, myself. And then once I started getting five star reviews, and then the publishers came to me. And great news, even at Taylor, the marketing consultant, she wanted to triple someone's business. Within 18 months, the book sales had outpaced consulting 5 to 1. And I said, "Oh, look at this." I just write a book once and sell it for 20 bucks. Bill Jelen (00:12:29): I don't have to worry about writing VBA for someone. And the VBA always worked until that person left. And then the new person who took over the job. Yeah. Like, "Hey, your program doesn't work." "What do you mean my program doesn't work? It worked fine for six months. Where's Shelly?" "Oh, she's not here anymore." "When did it stop working?" "Right when she left." I was like, "Ur." And just having to deal with that ongoing tech support was no fun. No fun at all. And the great thing about a book, I've hardly had anyone ever call and say, " Bill, the book won't open." There's just ... That never comes up. That never comes up. Rob Collie (00:13:08): Yesterday, there were words on the page. Today, there's no words. Bill Jelen (00:13:11): Right. Yeah. I had a back cover that got scratched once. So I had to replace the book for that. But it's very, very low probability for bugs to pop up once the book is out. Rob Collie (00:13:22): Yeah. Not a lot of support calls. Bill Jelen (00:13:24): No. Rob Collie (00:13:24): For a book that ... huh. Bill Jelen (00:13:26): And I'm going to whisper this part. I'm not sure I want anyone to know this. I've always said, if you have a great cover and about 10 pages of content, 90% of the people will be happy with that. Because they never actually read the book. They buy the book and they put it on their shelf. So if you just have enough stuff at the front, and then you could just put 190 pages of white space, most people wouldn't complain at all. Rob Collie (00:13:44): Yeah. I think Salvador Dolly, or one of those artists said something similar back in the day, which was like, "Once you've made a name for yourself, once you've established it, after that, it's all just production. Just churn it out. People will buy anything. Once you've started, you just slap some paint on the canvas. And its more important to get quantity than quality." Really cynical, but you kind of get the sense he was speaking from truth. Wasn't he? Bill Jelen (00:14:09): So now, just in the last 30 seconds, I've hatched this grand scheme that I'm going to get a word cloud of all the Excel terms and then use some huge TEXTJOIN function in Excel and just start generating content automatically. Random. Use ram between in the word cloud, and frequency distribution. I bet I can just start, yeah, knocking out. Rob Collie (00:14:29): Have You seen the HipsterIpsum site? Bill Jelen (00:14:31): No. Rob Collie (00:14:32): So you know about Lorem Ipsum, right? Bill Jelen (00:14:34): Yes. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Rob Collie (00:14:35): Fake Latin text that you fill in on a design, like a webpage, before you're ready to write the actual copy. Well, there's a website, it's HipsterIpsum. and it is so funny. It's like, I'm for loco, farmed a table, sustainable. Bill Jelen (00:14:53): That's it. That's it. I just need to hack their website and put my Excel terms in instead. Rob Collie (00:14:57): Yeah. Bill Jelen (00:14:57): And we're good to go. Rob Collie (00:14:59): SpreadsheetIpsum. Or GridsterIpsum. Bill Jelen (00:15:01): GridsterIpsum. Rob Collie (00:15:02): Something like that. I'm VLOOKUP cross reference relative name range. Bill Jelen (00:15:09): Yeah. Thomas LaRock (00:15:10): It's like you're trying to give yourself a rapper name. Bill Jelen (00:15:12): Yes. Rob Collie (00:15:12): Yeah. It is. And a really bad one at that. Thomas LaRock (00:15:14): VLOOKUP. Rob Collie (00:15:17): Yeah. Bill Jelen (00:15:18): There was a service, I don't know, 15 years ago, that you could put a website in and it would translate it to Snoop Dogg. You could send that link ... I said, "Hey, I rewrote my website. What do you think?" You're not serious. Are you? Rob Collie (00:15:32): All right. So you started essentially in BI. Excel is, even today, the BI tool of choice for the entire world. I think Power BI is slowly colonizing that space. And this is sort of the core of what our business does. So at some point though, it seems like you became not ... Once you went sort of solo, the majority of the work you were doing for people and the topics covered in your books and everything, doesn't have that same heavy analytical slant. I mean, there's still some of that for sure. You've written books 100% on Pivot Tables for instance, but you've become a lot more, I think, general purpose in your focus over the years. Would you agree with that? Bill Jelen (00:16:15): And that's because of the questions that are coming in. At this point, the next YouTube video is just going to be the last good question that came in, whatever it happens to be. That certainly goes from taking massive amounts of data down to a one-page summer report to whatever crazy problem someone's having today. Rob Collie (00:16:32): Yeah. There's a lot of that, especially in the early blogging days, right? Right now I'm scrolling to see if there's a function in Excel that starts with MC, MC something. Oh, there's only MD. Nope. There's no MC Excel function. We're going to have to keep looking for our rapper name. If we ever assembled the brain trust to pick the Excel rapper name, this is it. This is the chamber where that happens. Bill Jelen (00:16:53): Sometimes in Excel, you'll use our rapper function. On the video, have a little call out there of some famous rapper. And it's like, not this. This. Rob Collie (00:17:01): Yeah. Bill Jelen (00:17:04): Yeah. Rob Collie (00:17:05): So we are, tangentially anyway, this podcast is usually ... It ties back to Power BI somehow. You haven't really had to make that shift. You have been. I've seen you. You've been dabbling, especially on the Excel side, like the Power Pivot and especially the Power Query side. You've been dipping your toe into those pools. But some of the Excel crowd of yesterday have sort of fully migrated. They now identify as Power BI people. Bill Jelen (00:17:34): I can tell that from book sales. If you go out to Nielsen and look at book sales, the Power BI books are just outselling Excel books by a huge margin. Rob Collie (00:17:44): Really? Bill Jelen (00:17:44): Right. And I- Rob Collie (00:17:44): Across the board. Bill Jelen (00:17:46): That doesn't mean that there's more Power BI people than Excel people. It's the Excel people already know what they're doing. And the Power BI people, the people who are migrating to Power BI, they're the ones who need help. If you've been using Excel for 20 years, you don't need another Excel book. But the people who are just switching to Power BI ... When you said it's slowly moving, I think it's ... Whatever that rate is, that rate is increasing. That's a great thing. Rob Collie (00:18:06): There's also more leverage on Power BI skill than on Excel skill. It's not to say that Excel skill is less valuable, because even I today, I'm constantly throwing together spreadsheets because there's no substitute for a blank canvas that you can compose in any way. And for example, if you want to build yourself a wheel of fortune type app that picks a random person that is then forced to ask a question of you on the spot in a team meeting, there's only one go-to, and that's Excel. Bill Jelen (00:18:35): You're definitely not going to go to Word or PowerPoint for that. Rob Collie (00:18:37): They're not Power BI either, as it turns out. But in terms of institutional impact, a single person effectively applying Power BI can be worth millions of dollars to the bottom line annually. It's crazy, right? A single person applying Excel isn't going to have that kind of leverage. You kind of need a whole culture of people applying Excel simultaneously. You don't get this one to many with that kind of impact, typically. I mean, except for the famous stories where someone messed up a spreadsheet, right? In which case you can subtract. You can subtract millions of dollars from the bottom line in an eye blink if you want. So I think there's, in essence, sort of a higher premium on Power BI learning. I guess what I'm really saying is, is that it's not just the people who know Excel and there's all that. People are more willing to pay for Power BI expertise than they are willing to pay for Excel expertise. At the same time though, there's still many, many times more people who are interested in acquiring Excel expertise even today, relative to Power BI. Bill Jelen (00:19:43): Do you think that there'll ever become a tipping point where the Power BI user base is more than the Excel user base, or will it always be- Rob Collie (00:19:51): No. Bill Jelen (00:19:52): Is there some limit? And you're 40% Rob Collie (00:19:54): I think there's definitely a limit. For the same reason as that leverage, right? You just don't need as many people in an organization slinging Power BI. You need more people in your organization than what IT can provide, but less than what you need from Excel. So It's somewhere in between there. So I think maybe the Power BI audience might be 10 to 30% the size of the Excel audience at equilibrium. That's just me pulling a number, but that's a gut feeling that I've got. Bill Jelen (00:20:24): That's still a ... That's going to be a massive number though. Rob Collie (00:20:26): Yeah. Bill Jelen (00:20:26): Right? So- Rob Collie (00:20:27): If you think of another way it's, take the fraction of Excel usage that is making sense of reports. That's that same origin you had back in the 90s of exporting from one size fits all reporting systems, but we answered no questions. The Excel as BI backstop is a significant percentage of Excel's total usage. It's double digit percentage. It's 10 to 30%, right? That's the space that Power BI is on its way to colonizing. But I still think that's early. I still think it's early. In fact, I would predict that the sales of Power BI books, the sales rate of them is still ... We have not yet seen its peak. Bill Jelen (00:21:09): I would definitely agree with that. And my anecdotal evidence for that is just the number of Excel people that I run into. So up until this year, I was on the road, right? Doing Excel seminars. And so you'd show up in a city and you'd have 100 people from around the city show up, who were all working in accounting. There to get their continued education hours. I would always try engage. When I got to the Power Query point of the day, show of hands, how many of you have used or heard of Power Query? And it was early on, it'd be one or two out of 100. And even at the end, it was 10 or 12 out of 100. So the number of people who still have no clue that Power Query is there ... And for me, power query is the gateway. Bill Jelen (00:21:54): Once you realize that Power Query is there, then you take that Power Query knowledge and move over to Power BI. Because now you can take that data, and instead of spending an hour to clean it, you'd spend 10 minutes on day one and then zero minutes, just click refresh, on day two through day 50,000. Once you learn that you can do that, then to me, the natural next step is, do that with really cool visuals on top. Rob Collie (00:22:18): Yeah. Bill Jelen (00:22:18): Through Power BI. Rob Collie (00:22:19): We're trying to track down one of the originators of Power Query. One of the shadowy figures behind the scenes at Microsoft and get them on the show. Stay tuned. Fingers crossed. We're hot on the trail. Bill Jelen (00:22:32): I would love to be a fly on the wall for that. With a really large megaphone, Right? And just- Rob Collie (00:22:37): That's a fly. Bill Jelen (00:22:38): To shake them and say, "How did you manage to get this product in Excel with no one realizing that it's there?" Excel 2013, it was an add-in. And then Excel 2016, they moved it to the data tab. But if you look at the group, the Get and Transform group, and the group that it replaced, if you're not looking at them side by side, you would swear it's the same thing. Right? So if someone comes along, they look at the data tab, oh, this looks like just what we used to have. Rob Collie (00:23:05): Yeah. The Power Query team didn't achieve that. Don't worry. The Excel team takes care of hiding it. Bill Jelen (00:23:10): Okay. Rob Collie (00:23:10): And that is actually a really tough challenge. Dave Gainer, my old mentor, who was my boss when I was on Excel, he's not here to defend himself. So let's pick on him. He had this thing. I'm not really picking on him. I think he's right. And this is the challenge. I would always want to introduce things into Excel that looked different, kind of stood out, that were their own thing, that did something. It was almost like self advertising in its difference. Bill Jelen (00:23:33): Okay. Rob Collie (00:23:34): And he was always macking me around saying, "No, we're custodians of this product. And we are not going to turn it into some tourist trap of garish signs all up and down the road." Little hole in the wall, firework stands and all these one off things, right? Rob Collie (00:23:49): Those things have a cumulative cost to the product that really adds up. And so you get this legitimate and well intentioned, integrative, holistic philosophy as a side effect of that. You can't tell that anything is new. The things that should be screaming at you, for example, the 2013 awful, awful aberration that we all are pledged to never talk about, but we're going to talk about. When they renamed measures in Power Pivot to be calculated fields for an eye blink in time, right? And you and I know that calculated fields were an existing feature of Pivot Tables and they weren't very good. They were like less than 1% as interesting and powerful as measures. Rob Collie (00:24:34): I mean, I can't even put it on a numerical scale. It's thousands of times less powerful, thousands of times less relevant. But out of consistency, oh, we'll just call it calculated fields. It's the new calculated fields. But when that ends up happening is, you give it the same name as the boring old crappy thing that everyone always hated. And now why would I ever click that button? Instead, that button should be glowing. Three dimensional, jumping out of the screen and grabbing you by the nose saying, "I am the best thing ever. Click me." But if you've got 40 things in Excel saying. Rob Collie (00:25:03): Click me. But, if you've got 40 things in Excel saying that, what is it on the Incredibles? "When everybody's special, nobody will be" Bill Jelen (00:25:12): No, I've always said there should be a red neon arrow pointing at certain features, and that certainly is one. Rob Collie (00:25:19): I've got an idea. It'll be almost like the Amazon rating system. User enthusiasm for features. Data driven, light up. So now it's first of all, it's factual. The market's deciding. Bill Jelen (00:25:35): That's beautiful. Rob Collie (00:25:36): And you can turn it on and off, and- Bill Jelen (00:25:39): No, no, no. Rob Collie (00:25:40): ..Right there. Microsoft, I hope you're not listening because I just gave one of my best ideas ever to you for free when really you could be paying me large amounts of money every year to generate two ideas like this per year. Bill Jelen (00:25:52): It sounds beautiful. But I just followed it through through its logical conclusion. And what we would have in an Excel user interface is a button that consumed 98% of the space with Autosum, just based on what the users use that's, Would, The whole home tab would just be Autosum. That would be it there'd be nothing else. Rob Collie (00:26:10): You're saying this would drive us to the bottom, this would drive us to lowest common denominator? Bill Jelen (00:26:15): It would have to be user usage of the people I like, I would get to nominate the 100 people that actually control what gets on there. Rob Collie (00:26:23): I like it, a curated, an MVP curated system? Bill Jelen (00:26:28): Just my friends. Rob Collie (00:26:29): Do we want Ken in charge of that? Bill Jelen (00:26:31): Everything would Be shouted then. Rob Collie (00:26:34): Very intelligently though. Like the most intelligent, booming voice ever met, We need to get Ken on here too. Don't we? Bill Jelen (00:26:41): You do need to get Ken on here. Rob Collie (00:26:42): All right Ken, we're coming for you. Hey Tom, I'll tell you an interesting... If we're going to keep wandering whatever we want do. I'm going to tell you an interesting detail about our business relationship with Bill. So it's a fact that in terms of retail dollars, our book deal between P3 and Bill has done millions and millions of dollars in retail sales. It's a cool thing to say. Right? I don't think it's eight figures, but I think we're somewhere in the seven figures of retail sales. Bill Jelen (00:27:13): Retail sales. That's right. Rob Collie (00:27:15): And we've never had a contract. Bill Jelen (00:27:18): It's a handshake. Rob Collie (00:27:19): Yeah. I don't think we even shook hands. I think we were you know, Email. It was a distant handshake. Bill Jelen (00:27:25): I think at one point you said, just in case something happens, we should write all this down. And I said, oh yeah. And then we never did. And that was like four or five years in. Rob Collie (00:27:34): It's just like that voice that comes into your back of your head like, oh come on, we're really being irresponsible. But then the short term incentives, they straighten you right out, we were never going to Sue each other. Bill Jelen (00:27:46): Your book is the best selling computer book that I've ever seen by far here. Of all the books I've I published, you've outsold every book. Rob Collie (00:27:53): It was a good handshake. Bill Jelen (00:27:54): It'd be interesting to go out and find the best selling computer book, something back from the day and see if you've eclipsed that. Rob Collie (00:28:02): I'll tell you what let's do that offline. And if the results look good for us, we'll circle back. If, they don't look good. We just won't bring it up again. Bill Jelen (00:28:14): Let us just cut this part [inaudible 00:28:14] Thomas LaRock (00:28:14): I don't know why you don't just say how good they are. Rob Collie (00:28:16): We just bluff it. It's optimistic. We'll say it now on the podcast. And then if it turns out to not be true, then we'll cut it. Thomas LaRock (00:28:21): If you say it enough times, it becomes true. Isn't that the lesson that we've learned? Bill Jelen (00:28:25): What a horrible lesson it is, but yes.[crosstalk 00:03:27] Rob Collie (00:28:29): My book is more popular than the Bible. Bill Jelen (00:28:32): Rob's book has sold more copies than the DaVinci code...For example. Rob Collie (00:28:39): In parentheses, for Excel. Bill Jelen (00:28:42): You know, that would be another great book. The DaVinci code for Excel. And that's the one where you only need 10 pages of content and 90, 190 pages of Blank stuff. Rob Collie (00:28:49): And 90% of the production cost is just licensing a picture of Tom Hanks for the cover. Right? Bill Jelen (00:28:54): That's it. And most of the sales will be people who accidentally, they were trying to buy the real DaVinci code and they bought us instead. Rob Collie (00:29:00): Tom's sitting down at a computer with a spreadsheet on it and he's asking the photographer, why are we doing this photo shoot? What is it again? He's like, "don't worry about it you're getting paid". Thomas LaRock (00:29:10): So how'd you two meet? We haven't talked about that yet. Bill Jelen (00:29:13): Cleveland, Ohio, Thomas LaRock (00:29:15): You have this incredible non-handshake deal, but what's the origin story for the two of you? Bill Jelen (00:29:21): It was Cleveland Ohio. When David gainer was in charge of the Excel team, I got a note from David. I'm living in Akron, Ohio. He says, one of my guys is relocating to Cleveland, Ohio. You two should go to lunch. Know what I got from Dave gainer? I reached out to Rob and I went up to Cleveland and had lunch. And it was the best conversation I think I've ever had because I, sitting in Akron, Ohio have hatched all sorts of conspiracy theories. I was the Qanon of Excel. You guys on the Excel team, you did this because. And then Rob would say, well, you know the story there is, and then he would give me some boring story about why it made sense to do that. And I hated that because my story was so far, much better. My made up conspiracy theory was better than yours, but it was just great to have someone who was almost equally as frustrated with things as I was, You could tell me the backstory behind it. Thomas LaRock (00:30:23): Does knowing the backstory, did that make things better for you? Bill Jelen (00:30:27): It made me less angry I think. Sometimes. Rob Collie (00:30:30): So many mundane reasons for things, right? Just normal big company, hands are tied type of stuff. It's just, On one hand it's reassuring because it's not nefarious. We weren't hiding in the basement of a pizza parlor in Washington, DC, but at the same time, it's kind of depressing in a way, because those sorts of forces are durable. If they were acting yesterday to do things we don't like, they're going to be acting tomorrow to do the same things. Like you'd almost prefer it to be some sort of one off, twisted thing, because tomorrow's going to be different. But when the causes for things are corporate, well corporate's not going anywhere. And we see it over and over again. Bill Jelen (00:31:13): The other thing I've realized is you cannot be angry when a version one feature doesn't do what you want because at any other company, they wouldn't have put it out. They would wait until they had version five and then put the finished thing out. But Microsoft, especially in Excel, they'll put something out just to kind of get the feedback and they'll send it to the insiders fast, and so it's going to some small percentage and they'll react. People will say, Hey, this would be better for you, do this. And they're not afraid to change things. So it used to be like, that's so stupid, That new feature. And now I'm just like, hang on it'll come around, this five years from now this will be the greatest thing ever. But right now, this is what they have done. And they're letting us play with this part. So. Rob Collie (00:31:53): Let's go back to the origin story of us meeting from [inaudible 00:31:55] I think the statute of limitations is the now expired on us needing to keep this secret. So you were writing about the time that we had lunch that first time you were writing a Power Pivot book, you had one in the works. Bill Jelen (00:32:08): That's right. Rob Collie (00:32:10): It wasn't called Power Pivot yet the name hadn't been released, Thomas LaRock (00:32:13): was it still Gemini? Rob Collie (00:32:14): It was still project Gemini. You had gotten basically to the end of this book or close to it anyway. And your book was loaded with screenshots, from project Gemini where the field list said project Gemini at the top and all kinds was project Gemini everywhere. And then out comes the real name, Power pivot. And you're like [Spanish 00:32:37] Bill Jelen (00:32:41): That had to be a very unhappy day. Rob Collie (00:32:42): Do you remember what followed? I can fill it in if you don't. Bill Jelen (00:32:46): Yeah. Tell me what followed. Rob Collie (00:32:47): So the problem was, is that you had to be done with the book by a certain deadline for printing, but you weren't going to be able to get a hold of a beta of the product with the proper names in it, with power pivot in the UI for like another month or so maybe six weeks. It was, You had a real timing problem. It wasn't so much that you had to redo the screenshots cause that wasn't going to take you too long. It was just the fact that you didn't have anything to screenshot. And so the black market came through for you. Right? Shady Rob Collie said, Hey, in the spirit of benefit to my baby power pivot and to Microsoft, I'm going to give you access to my internal build of power pivot that already had the right names in it. You didn't come to me asking for me to do that. You were just like, Rob again, curses!, What kind of evil star chamber has decided to convene at Microsoft and decide to screw me, Bill Jelen personally. Bill Jelen (00:33:41): Yes, Cause that's always what it was. It was just trying to get me. Rob Collie (00:33:46): That's right. Bill Jelen (00:33:46): That's what everyone thinks. Rob Collie (00:33:47): I said, Hey, I got a solution. So we met up again at that sort of sketchy, suburban bonefish grill, parking lot. And I handed you a disc, and your power pivot book was able to go out with the proper on time and with the proper UI screenshots. Bill Jelen (00:34:05): I owe You a bottle of Rum for that or something. Rob Collie (00:34:08): I mean, I'm sad that you've forgotten this because to me, this is what cemented our friendship. The lunch was fun, but it was just going to be fun. But from that point forward, you owed me. Bill Jelen (00:34:18): I remember the lunch, you just had so much power pivot knowledge. Like you would just throw an offhand sentence out and I'd be like, holy smokes. This is something I completely don't understand, and then furiously, at least in my head scribbling notes of things I needed to go back think about in the book. Rob Collie (00:34:35): And, that's how my book was born. At least part of the story for it was that your book gave a comprehensive tour of all the things you could do in Power Pivot, sort of like each what all the different graphical elements do. But you largely had to take a pass on the Dax language because that was a whole universe of its own, and that's how the world's worst book title ever came to be Dax formulas for Power Pivot because it was originally, My book was meant to be a compliment to yours. That's how it all started. Bill Jelen (00:35:10): Why didn't we go with Dax-Vinci code with Tom Hanks and Rob Collie? Rob Collie (00:35:15): We just didn't have the budget back then. We weren't the multimillion dollar international conglomerate powerhouse we are today. Bill Jelen (00:35:23): Let's talk about Dax, let's, just for a second. If we go back to that tool I was using in finance that started the whole thing, a little bit of Dax in that tool would've solved the problem because it was the calculation on the total row that that tool couldn't do. And the fact that total that Dax can basically say, if this has one value, then do this other thing, That ability is I think why Power Pivot and Power BI didn't get caught in that problem of being able to create reports that no one wanted the fact that you can customize that through Dax. It's just phenomenal. Rob Collie (00:35:59): Look at Bill, just so casually throwing out the if has one value, like the ability for a DAX formula to inspect its own filter context and say, I'm over here now, I'm going to behave differently, I'm going to do a different aggregation at the total. Bill Jelen (00:36:14): That's badass. The fact... that is really badass, that one measure can change its behavior depending on whether it's on the parent [inaudible 00:36:22] or whatever. Rob Collie (00:36:24): There's your pull quote, Dax is bad ass. Bill Jelen (00:36:27): Dax is bad ass. Rob Collie (00:36:28): It is, isn't it? Well that in Power Query, are the two of them combined or something else? Bill Jelen (00:36:34): You know what the Power Query, So in my early life in Excel, I was always doing things in VBA, it was VBA. I don't have to do VBA at all anymore because Power Query gets me 99% of the way there. And some of the worst data nightmares that people have shown up in my seminar, I get there early and I walk around and see people have questions and they'll show me their data, some of the worst data nightmares ever you can solve in Power Query in minutes. And the fact that so many Excel people have no clue that it's there hiding back on the data tab. Rob Collie (00:37:06): So for certain aspects of what you used to do, you're now officially or unofficially retired from doing them. You were the seminar workhorse, man. You were like the hardest work in rock band in America, all over the place doing these seminars. How many seminars would you do a year sort of at peak? Bill Jelen (00:37:25): The goal was 35 a year. I was trying to do 35 a year, sometimes a little bit more than that. And as Mrs. Excel would point out 35 seminars a year, doesn't mean that you're gone 35 nights. It means that you're gone 70 nights, 70 days, and 35 doesn't sound like a lot, but 70, all of a sudden sounds like too many. And after doing that for 17 years, it was too much. And I'm glad that I made the decision to stop at the end of 2019 because had I had 35 seminars scheduled for 2020, everything would've been canceled. It just would've. But it, Like now in retrospect, we can say everything would've been canceled, but early on you would be like, oh yeah, this is still going to happen, we're going to make it. Rob Collie (00:38:05): We were touch and go for like our early March public class. It was scheduled for Charlotte. It came down to like, if it had been two weeks earlier, if it had been scheduled for two weeks earlier, or maybe even a week earlier, it would've happened. It was that close. But yeah, we canceled it. It was right when everyone decided, no more travel. So that was kind of a relief because I didn't want to put everybody at risk and it was nice to not have to make the decision, so that's it. That was the last in person thing that we did as a company, It was a year ago. Bill Jelen (00:38:39): I think the same thing for me because I was still going to do things in Florida. So I think I went up to Gainesville last January or Orlando probably early enough for half the seminar or something. Rob Collie (00:38:47): I Got to see on the biggest stage, one of the biggest of these sort of seminar dates, where were we? Tulsa? Bill Jelen (00:38:53): That was Tulsa, I think. Rob Collie (00:38:55): I got to see you in full high priest. I mean, this is a room with hundreds of people in it, it was a big room and- Bill Jelen (00:39:03): 300 people in Tulsa. Rob Collie (00:39:05): ..And there's more than that in the town. Just so you know. Bill Jelen (00:39:11): Some were busy that day I guess. Rob Collie (00:39:13): They didn't all make it. They all RSVP'd, the whole town. I think of myself as a reasonably good public speaker. I got to go before you, so I thought I killed it. And then you got up there and it was like this is next level, you have a lot of funny stories. Bill Jelen (00:39:28): Yes I do. So when I'm on stage in front of accountants, that was my favorite thing to do, because we were going to have fun. We, they had to be there. They had to get their CP credits, but we were going to have fun along the way. And people, if they start to doze off a little bit, it's time for a good, funny story, and I had all kinds of stories and I would love that eight hours, 8:30 to 4:30 being in front of that room. It was just getting there and then getting home that was miserable and the flights and everything. It was definitely fun. Definitely just so much fun. Rob Collie (00:40:05): Can we hear a couple of your favorites? I mean, do we need to pay extra? Do we need those chart, paying appearance fees? If we get some. Thomas LaRock (00:40:11): What happened to the handshake? Come on. Rob Collie (00:40:13): Well, we can make a deal right here. Bill Jelen (00:40:15): So almost always, I would start off with a story, Again these are accountants, these are accountants or finance people. And so I would almost always start the story about when I was sitting up in accounting and I got a call from a woman down in the marketing department, and I go down and she had been in a trade show and they handed her a floppy disc with a list of all the people who had been at the trade show, area code in column A phone number in column B. And she over in column C was typing open parenthesis, area code, closing parenthesis, space, phone number. And she had been doing this for like an hour and Had thousands, thousands to go through. And she doesn't use Excel every day. This is probably the first time she's opened Excel this year. And one of her coworkers walks up behind her and says, what are you doing? Bill Jelen (00:41:04): And he said, I have area code in column A and phone number in column B. And now that guy who was also from the marketing department, he doesn't know either. Because he never uses Excel, but he knows me. Let's call bill Jelen upstairs in the accounting. And there must be some fast way to do this. so then I go down to the marketing department, I show her how to create a formula to concatenate those things together. Then double click, the fill handle and bam!, All 5,000 are done and she's just thrilled. so then I walk back up towards the accounting department and unbeknownst to me, I'm whistling a little happy tune because I know that I've just saved her eight hours worth of work. So I get up to the accounting department and I barely sit down and my phone rings and it's this lady. Bill Jelen (00:41:42): She was so happy. The data she had over there in column C, she says, I don't need this data. And of course people were watching me live, so I click on a drag to B and then right click. I don't need this data anymore. And of course, because I hadn't changed the formulas to values, everything is gone, It's all hash rough errors all the way down. I mean that story. And in the course of that story, you're going to learn how to use concatenate. You're going to learn how to double click the fill handle. You're going to learn how to several different ways, eight different ways, how to pay special values, including rob the way. My favorite trick of all time came from Dave in Columbus, Indiana. So just 75 miles south of you right now, Dave and in Columbus, Indiana showed me a way to copy and paste special values without ever doing the copy in some secret menu that was somehow built into Excel that I had never seen in 25 years of using spreadsheets. But somehow Dave in Columbus, Indiana, and knows how to do this trick. Rob Collie (00:42:35): Well that's, I mean, I don't even know what the feature is, but I know the committee that was in charge of hiding it. We would periodically meet at the pizza parlor, smoke filled room and say between puffs, we'd go. Okay. So we're the coolest things in Excel that we're going to hide this week. Bill Jelen (00:42:56): We have reports of users finding this and we need to put the stop to that. Rob Collie (00:43:00): That's right, it's just a matter of time before Bill sees this and it puts a smile on his face. So we can't have that. Now can we?. Bill Jelen (00:43:10): Like that story from Dave, he's Dave in row one of Columbus, Indiana that all of these people who gave me these tips, I remember them like Derek from row six in Springfield, Missouri, they give me these awesome tricks and it's like, how did you ever discover this? But it doesn't matter. There's 750 million people using a cell. Someone is going to accidentally, discover something. And then I run into that person and they give me that trick and then it's off to the races because I'm going to take that trick, And I'm like the Johnny Appleseed of Excel, you know, I'm going to take it from city to city, to city and make sure that people know, that that's there. Rob Collie (00:43:43): I remember one time I was trying to explain to you, In the early days, one of the cool things about Dax, was distinct count, the ability to get count of unique values and, you agreed that that was really cool, but you disagreed with something else I said in which I said, this wasn't possible in Excel before now. And you said, oh contrary [inaudible 00:44:06], and I said, I was like a bar bet. And I was like you can't do that. And you said, yeah, I can. And then you go through the most elaborate series of Rube Goldberg, gymnastics that I have ever seen. And I knew as you were going through it to not even bother committing it to memory, I could just tell that this was at the end. You had a unique count of something and so now we had a dispute, whether that had actually counted as possible. Bill Jelen (00:44:33): Well, no, I remember you go to the source data, add a new column, one divided by the count, if right. And so if there's seven of them then each one gets 14%, it adds up it's one, right? Rob Collie (00:44:44): My brain is still, right now. Busy, not committing this to memory. Bill Jelen (00:44:48): How could you not know this? You are on the Excel team for God's sakes. But it was, was it, I don't know if it was that same lunch or the other lunch? I was having such a good time because we were resonating so perfectly like everything you said I was, I was absolutely down with that. And then you said the sentence that blew my mind. You said "our internal customers will be really upset with Power Pivot because they can't use Get-Pivot data". And I'm like, what? No, Rob, you don't understand Get-Pivot. Data is the worst thing ever. Everyone wants to know how to turn it off, and you said, "that's the people outside of Microsoft. I'm talking about our internal customers, the accountants at Microsoft". And then you proceeded to show me how they use Get-Pivot data. I'm like, that was Rob from my table in Beachwood, Ohio. Rob Collie (00:45:36): Yeah. That's right. Row one of the fish grill. Rob in the front row with the long island iced tea, So now I think that we came full circle on this, on the Wayne Winston episode. Bill Jelen (00:45:54): That God mentioned on Wayne's Wayne's episode. Rob Collie (00:45:56): we think that the reason why everyone internal to Microsoft was, was using that technique was that Wayne had been teaching it. Bill Jelen (00:46:05): He said that. Rob Collie (00:46:07): And I didn't know that until years later. So it's just like, oh my gosh, the power that one person's innovation can have when you share it is intense. It went from Wayne to like this diffuse audience of all these like finance professionals at Microsoft. And I had to go and like sort of circulate amongst them to pick this up, that this was something that they were all doing. It took a long time to sort of absorb that. And then I take that and transmit it to you and you light up and you go, I could imagine there had been some accident where you take Wayne Winston aside one day and say, Hey Wayne, have you seen what you can get? And it'd be like, that's how you'll write your name on a dollar bill and it comes back to you five years later. So if Power BI had existed back in the mid nineties, that's where you would've gone. Bill Jelen (00:46:58): Yeah. That's true. Rob Collie (00:46:59): The Excel route took you a lot of different places than what Power BI takes you, but based on sort of your first really intensive collision with spreadsheets, that's power BI's turf today. That's really interesting. Isn't it? Bill Jelen (00:47:13): It is. It's time and place. When did that happen? When did I happen to end up in that finance department in Akron and need to create those reports and what were the tools available? So yeah. Rob Collie (00:47:23): Have you gotten deep into Lambda functions yet? Bill Jelen (00:47:25): Lambda functions are awesome and I want to embrace them, but what's funny is so many other people are embracing them better than I am, The recursion in Lambda functions is just wild. And then the people who we could let inside of Lambda functions. Rob Collie (00:47:44): Wait. This just came out. Bill Jelen (00:47:46): Yes. Rob Collie (00:47:47): Okay. So I only know of them through, through the stuff I've been doing in the past few years with Python. And so when you asked him just now Lambda, I was thinking we're going to start talking Python. I got really excited. So I just did a quick search. It just came out in December or there's a post from December. So it was just released in the latest version. Bill Jelen (00:48:06): Just released. It's still in beta. Thomas LaRock (00:48:07): It sounds like it's probably does the same thing because you also said recursion. So sounds like it's similar to the functionality I would guess from Python. Bill Jelen (00:48:15): We would have to assume it is. The Excel team was excited because they said it makes Excel Turing T-U-R-I-N-G complete, whatever that is now means that you can do everything. Every calculation in Excel, thanks to Lambda functions. Rob Collie (00:48:28): You can now mathematically provably. If something's Turing complete, you could use Excel as the software language to build literally anything. If you wanted to build windows, the windows operating system, you could build it in Excel now, it wouldn't be a good choice but you mathematically could. Bill Jelen (00:48:46): So I was wondering why they called it This. Rob Collie (00:48:49): Tom is lighting us up. Thomas LaRock (00:48:50): So, I want-[crosstalk 00:23:51] Rob Collie (00:48:53): [inaudible 00:48:53]...Church. Thomas LaRock (00:48:54): I'm finding a lot of overlap in this stuff I'm doing with Python. Python uses arrays in data frames, things that we would just consider to be tables. A lot of Python is simply being data janitor. You're going to get all these different data sources and how the data is and you're going to bring it in and you're going to sanitize it for whatever purpose you're going to have down the line, which could be data science, or it could just be building a pipeline. So it outputs in CSV, which then ends up in somebody's Power BI. Thomas LaRock (00:49:28): Python is just this brilliant little thing, but I see so much overlap because when you guys talk about Power Query, well there's a whole part of Python, which is just scraping the web So instead of using Python to scrape the web what if I just put that into Excel and call it the Power Query and they just did all that stuff for you, you didn't have to even worry about coding, you just pick and choose, so I live in this world where I have enough knowledge of both tools to see the real power of using them together. I try to do some data science machine learning stuff, I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time trying to. Thomas LaRock (00:50:03): =stuff, right. It's just, I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time trying to clean my data using Python. I'm just going to go to Excel, make it all pretty, figure out from there and then bring it back in as a data frame, and that's going to save me a bunch of time. But anyway, I'm excited now, Lambda functions, this is interesting. Bill Jelen (00:50:16): The other really weird thing, just weird coincidence, about the Lambda functions is everyone knows the mathematician Turing. His professor was a guy named Alonzo Church and he was the inventor of Lambda calculus. And so the Lambda function is named after this guy, Alonzo Church, and Rob, Alonzo Church ended his career at Case Western University and probably, he died in 1995, he probably ate at that bonefish grill that you and I were at. Thomas LaRock (00:50:43): Probably. Yeah. Bill Jelen (00:50:44): I mean we were all within 10 miles of each other at that point. Rob Collie (00:50:48): You remember that old, it was a BBC history show called, Connections? Bill Jelen (00:50:53): No, I don't. Rob Collie (00:50:54): Oh, it was awesome. Bill Jelen (00:50:54): This would make a great episode, wouldn't it? Rob Collie (00:50:56): The host of this show would trace these weird coincidental chains and overlaps, like the thing we just talked about. And Wayne Winston was at Microsoft teaching matter. But then it wouldn't be Rob Collie that crossed paths with those people, it would be someone else famous. And then Thomas Edison happened to be brother-in-law to the bla-bla or whatever. Right? Bill Jelen (00:51:17): Yeah, right. Rob Collie (00:51:18): And sometimes it would span centuries and I think he would bring it back. He'd actually bring it full circle. He'd connect back to the original. It was insane. It was almost like, he had to be making this up. Bill Jelen (00:51:29): Well, so with your GETPIVOTDATA trick, you said that came from Microsoft finance. And I was in Australia, having dinner in Australia and a seminar, and this is one where the Excel team sent someone who was Carlos Otero, who was on the Excel team, but had worked in accounting at Microsoft. I said, Hey Carl, so I've heard this story about Rob, did you guys use GETPIVOTDATA this way? He's oh, we do that all the time. Yeah. So it was we are validation. You go, Rob, didn't just make that up. Rob Collie (00:51:54): Yeah. Bill still not trusting me all those years later, despite our handshake agreement. He's like I'm still going to fact check him. Bill Jelen (00:52:02): Might just, it came up. All right. So Tom, I appreciate that you could say Python. Python scares the heck out of me, not because of the learning curve, but I think Rob, you call it the learning cliff. I've bought a couple of Python for Excel user type things, and it just seems so intimidating to get up that curve to do anything useful. Have you actually, what are the steps? I'm an Excel guy. I know Excel really well. Just what are the first three baby steps I have to do? So, that way I can say I've done something in Python. Thomas LaRock (00:52:31): So let me see if I can get this right. I think around 2016 or so, is when I said to myself, I really, I want to make an effort to pivot slightly in my career as a data professional and the pivot I want to go to is data science. So I have a background in math. I have a master's in math and a lot of what I see in data science was stuff that I was doing in school many years ago, with paper and pencil, right. It's just stats. It's a T value Z value. I'm like yeah, I remember this stuff. So, back in the day, I would've, what we call data science, back in the day was getting a job with a big six as an actuary. That's essentially what our data scientists of today are doing, except there's other cool things, because you can apply it to lots of different projects. Thomas LaRock (00:53:15): So Microsoft and edX had this online courses that you could take. And I blogged about how my journey, where I basically sucked up as many data science certifications I could, through that edX, and a lot of it was at the time heavily reinforced with Azure products. So I got to learn a lot about Azure Machine Learning studio and things of that nature. And there's all sorts of little things in there. For this course, we're going to use Python for this, and they walk you through the one little thing that they need you to learn on that day. Right? So I think I finished in 2017 or 18 or something like that. And since then I've been just trying to apply it. Because how else are you going to learn, except by actually doing it. So I'm all right, so what can I do? So there's some websites there's Kaggle, which has data science competitions. Thomas LaRock (00:54:05): For example, there's a competition, I think the TSA put some money up where they said, when we put your stuff through the x-ray help us build a better algorithm for detecting objects and things like that. And first prize is $500,000 and I wrote about, and I go, so let me know the next time you make $500,000, tuning a sequel query. Because I'm going to be over here doing this stuff, cause that sounds awesome. So what I did next was I started getting into DataCamp and their online Python courses. They're easily digestible for me and I've been consuming them as fast as I possibly can. Now your original question was, what were the three things? And I've given this long winded answer of how I got involved. How I've gotten to this point, is all of those classes that I've been doing is simply reinforcing similar concepts over and over and over again, but by different instructors. Thomas LaRock (00:54:57): So I'm learning it in a slightly different way. So somebody says, hey we're going to do data visualizations today. That might be important to you, but probably not to Mr. Excel. But it might be important to somebody and you end up with a similar class, taught six different ways and it just gets reinforced. Because the concepts and the terms become more and more familiar, but they're showing you a slightly different way to do it. So for example, Lambda is really just a short way to do a recursion function or any function. You don't have to do it that way. You could write a whole function if you want and call it from anywhere. But now you get into this thing of, yeah but Lambda functions are actually more efficient in terms of processing and memory. Bill Jelen (00:55:39): Right. Thomas LaRock (00:55:40): And so now you start getting, now there's a whole course on, hey you want to tune your Python code? Let me show you this stuff. So for you, Mr. Excel, I would tell you that the first thing I think you should maybe, given all your experiences, you should get into understanding the difference between a data frame and an array, when you would want one versus the other, how are they useful. The other things I would tell you is they do have pivot table. You can pivot your data. I think for you, it would end up being so clunky compared to what you do in Excel, but you would understand the concepts of it. And then I guess, really the question is, what would you want to learn Python for? Why do you think Python is something you would need? For me, it was all about the data science. Bill Jelen (00:56:26): I need to be able to walk into a bar with a laptop, put the laptop on the bar, get five people around me and do something in Python and have them all go, that's what I want. Thomas LaRock (00:56:36): The thing with Excel is that it's visual. Python isn't going to have that same visualization. But I do think that there's a Python studio to help with that. Bill Jelen (00:56:44): Okay. Python studio. Thomas LaRock (00:56:45): I don't know if that, that's not what it's called, but I think there's some way for you to have that visualization. Otherwise it's just going to be code. Rob Collie (00:56:52): I've Got a shortcut. Ready? Probably know what's coming. It's going to be cynical. Don't learn it. Bill Jelen (00:56:59): Oh, come on. All the cool kids, all the cool kids are learning it. Rob Collie (00:57:02): I know. I know. And yet with the tools you've got, you can do a tremendous amount of the actual valuable things that you would do with Python. And you can do things that you really couldn't really particularly do very well with Python either. Here's a theory of mine. This is more factual, I think, than the previous opinion where I said, don't learn it, right? There's something real here. Just a question to what extent you agree. So there are certain kinds of tools. There are tools that are sort of purpose built and still flexible. And this is funny, a little bit humane, not a lot humane, but a little bit humane. In the same way that Mac, Apple will approach a problem, a consumer problem and solve it in a way that is easier for people to learn and people will kind of want to learn it, at all ages. Rob Collie (00:57:55): And then Microsoft will walk up to the same problem, for example, signing you in, and end up with a sign in process that is itself super complicated and requires you to sort of anticipate what the machine is trying to do in order to navigate your way around it. Apple would never do that. Now in that same way, Microsoft has a gift of approaching, as a culture, of approaching complicated business systems, complicated business products. And over time anyway, making them approachable to sort of this lower end developer who doesn't think of themself as a developer. The success of Excel under the Microsoft banner is the single greatest example of this. Everyone's slinging formulas in Excel or writing VBA, but even just writing formulas is a programmer, is a developer, but they don't know it. And a general purpose language like Python, is built for and by the computer science set, that was my background, right? Rob Collie (00:58:58): I'm a computer scientist, right? And so I think a tool like that, because it's meant to be everything, any programming language that allows you to draw visualizations and clean data, is so general purpose that it's going to have one of these steep learning cliffs. And it's going to be a cool kid thing, because everybody that's part of that club, worked hard to get into it, and then kind of lords it over everybody else. It's just sort of how people are. I think that something like Python is something that most people are either going to learn at the very beginning of their career. If you're not a computer scientist, right? If you're a computer scientist, you're going to eat this kind of stuff up every time it comes along. A new programming language being unleashed on the world is like a Christmas present to you. You're like oh my God, I can't wait to try out this new programming language because it gives me some sort of, scratches some itch for me to do these sorts of things. Rob Collie (00:59:48): Most of humanity isn't like that. If you're not a computer scientist, you might learn Python at the beginning of your career. Almost like when you're still in college, when you're young and you still have time to do that because the rest of the job hasn't consumed you yet. I just don't think Python has that, I can adopt it, 15 years into my career, sort of characteristics to it. In the same way that say something like Power Query does or Power Pivot or the DAX data model. What you do of course is not really the point. The joke that I made about Bill, don't go do this. It isn't really about you at all. I don't have anything against Python and I certainly don't have anything against you going and learning it. It's more for the rest of the audience, that's listening. If you're sitting here going, what do I do with my career right now? And you're kind of in the Excel space, the first, second, third, fourth, and fifth things you should be doing, are getting better at the things that Microsoft is throwing at you and then hiding. You don't need to have this FOMO, dear audience, about Python. I'm not saying you shouldn't learn it. I'm not saying that it's not a good thing to learn, but when we consider that everything's prioritized, if you haven't already, kind of, quote unquote mastered or gotten competent at Power Query, DAX and Data modeling, that's your next frontier. And you're going to be just ridiculously effective as you climb that curve. And without having to run smack forehead first into the Python cliff. Thomas LaRock (01:01:15): So Rob, I'm not going to disagree entirely because I actually think you are right about almost all of that, except you could just reversed it and talk glowingly about the need to do Python and not worry about Excel. Bill Jelen (01:01:26): But I wouldn't have. Thomas LaRock (01:01:28): You could have. Bill Jelen (01:01:29): I wouldn't have Thomas LaRock (01:01:31): But bill, if you're looking for something cool, then what you're going to want. You have a unique opportunity, I feel, because your depth of experience with Excel, that you can kind of blend the two together. If you're for example, you could use Python to scrape a website and then say, by the way, this is also available in Excel as Power Query. And here's the difference between the two. Somebody might be impressed by the ease at which you can point Python at some URL and just scrape everything necessary and get data from a Wikipedia article. That's one thing. Another big thing though, is sentiment analysis, right? You, you could go say hook into Twitter's API, pull back a whole bunch. You were talking about a work cloud earlier. You could pull back a whole bunch of stuff and say what's the current sentiment for my book, or something like that. Thomas LaRock (01:02:21): But that's something you're not going to really do in Excel, but that's going to be something that also has value for another person out there. They're going to be like, you know what, marketing specifically, oh I can get sentiment analysis fairly quickly with a few lines of Python code. That's actually kind of interesting. There's always going to be some type of unique application. Like Rob said, it's general purpose, Python, right? And there's so many aspects of it, but you should be able to find something, that I would say, you can bring together both worlds because you could do the sentiment analysis and then build a power BI dashboard on top of it. Bill Jelen (01:03:02): Yeah. Right. Thomas LaRock (01:03:03): One thing my friends had done over at Microsoft was sentiment analysis on movies, specifically Marvel versus DC. And what was funny is you found out through the sentiment, you could kind of use that to predict the amount of revenue a movie might make on opening weekend. Thomas LaRock (01:03:23): And what was funny was if you had movies that had, if there was much more positive sentiment, it was going to make a lot more money. So I'd be there, they'd be actively collecting data and then I would be on Twitter, tweeting something negative, slightly, about the upcoming movies. And then you found the movie didn't have enough revenue. So I would then tell Disney and others, that for a low fee, I could tweet much more positive things, so you could make more money. Clearly there's a correlation between these two events. My positive tweets or my negative tweets in your bottom line. Now I'm not saying I'm holding it for ransom. I'm just saying, it's a thing that you can show other people, which is kind of cool. Rob Collie (01:04:04): You're not holding it for ransom. You're just offering it for sale. It's different. So I thought what you were saying now, I was interpreting it as different, which was. I was hoping you were saying, I guess, that it was doing sentiment analysis on the script of the movie. Thomas LaRock (01:04:20): You could do that too. Rob Collie (01:04:21): And Michael Salvino, one of our previous guests, he loves analytics in sports, but at the same time he thinks analytics are ruining sports, because it's driving everyone towards this single optimal strategy. And a lot of the interest values being squeezed out of sports, like famously in baseball, it's all strikeouts and home runs. No one cares about anything else anymore and no one's optimizing for it anymore. So there's a lot of the most interesting aspects of the game are gone. And here's where I would whisper, and baseball couldn't afford to lose the interesting things. Rob Collie (01:04:52): Cause it was already pretty dull. Can't resist, sorry. I have a tendency to say things that are sort of glib and short and dramatic and nasty, in some ways. Even though in my heart, there's something very different. Let me see if I can circle back. So there was a Twitter thread over the weekend that I wanted to Wade into, but decided I didn't, where it involved Chris Webb and Marco Russo and some other people talking about MDX versus DAX. If you don't know what MDX is, it's the precursor to Dax. It was the thing that was in the formula language, expression language of SQL server, analysis services in the old multidimensional format. And there's a lot of diplomatic or partisan team MDX, team DAX, team both sides. But it was all talking about the strengths and weaknesses of the languages in terms of their technical capabilities. Rob Collie (01:05:48): It was primarily focused on that. Or how tedious they were in certain ways to use. And I wanted to join in and say, well, folks, it isn't about MDX versus DAX. It's not about the technology one versus technology two, it's about their adaptability. So for example, I tried multiple times at Microsoft to learn MDX and I had access to all the people who built it, and I couldn't learn it or I wouldn't learn it. I just rejected it. It was awful. Just hated that thing. 15 minutes into the explanation of how to write an if. And I'm oh, I'm out. I am out, get me out. So that's me and MDX. And then me and DAX, all I do is write a book that sells millions and millions of dollars at retail about tax. That's a striking difference, right? Rob Collie (01:06:42): To me it was sort of a silly argument. Which one's better is MDX still, blah, blah, blah. No MDX is not going away. But in terms of a percentage of the population, it is going to round to zero in relevance, relative to DAX because of its adaptability. So, that's what I'm really saying. Yes, Python is like, hey it's turning complete. You can do anything with Python. If you learn Python, you in theory, don't have to learn anything else. Whereas with Microsoft, you've got to learn DAX to do this and you've got to learn Power Query to do that. And yet, each one of those things, Dax, for each particular purpose is both better than Python for that purpose and more learnable for that purpose. And so I think the Microsoft ecosystem of users, especially the Excel crowd, is sort of a demonstrated group that will incrementally learn sort of one new thing about their tool set every two weeks, and just sort of incrementally pile that up into the point where they're just monsters. Rob Collie (01:07:43): They didn't go and learn Python, at some intensive bootcamp, they've been learning these tools sort of in a drizzling rest, never sleeps sort of way, and years later they're gods. And so I'm really just speaking sort of my own ecosystem, that the people that I know. If you are one of the computer science types or one of the types that's looking to completely change careers and things like that, or you just can't help it. And you're just curious about this other tool, not going to make fun of you. I'm going to salute you for going and learning this thing. I'm just saying that most people aren't like that. And there's a lot more people out there who will learn these other tools like Dax and M and that's all I have to say about that. Bill Jelen (01:08:27): So From the Excel point of view, when you look at the DAX formula language and the Excel formula language, there's so much overlap, that an Excel person can easily just start doing simple things in DAX, and they'll feel like it's their home, they already know 80%. And then you add the good stuff on top. That gives you super power. Thomas LaRock (01:08:46): Bill, have you played with DAX Studio. Bill Jelen (01:08:47): No. Thomas LaRock (01:08:48): Okay. Forget Python, go play with DAX studio. Bill Jelen (01:08:51): Okay. There we are. Thomas LaRock (01:08:52): I'm serious. Bill Jelen (01:08:53): I'm writing it down. Rob Collie (01:08:54): One of the number one things, the thing you just said, just triggered it for me. One of the biggest disconnects between Excel formulas and DAX, is the inability to step through it. The inability to evaluate step by step. And Excel sometimes you do this just by splitting your formula into multiple columns. You sort of see intermediate steps. So you can sort of see where the error happened. Where did things go wrong? But you also have the, evaluate formula step through, feature. And so much of DAX happens in places that's invisible. Rob Collie (01:09:25): But DAX Studio allows you to do things, like that filter function that I wrote in the middle of my formula. I can evaluate just that filter function, forget the rest of the formula and just see what the table it looks like that's hidden under the hood in computer memory. And I never see it in my measure formula, but I can see it explode out under the screen. It's not quite the same as a step through. It's not quite as good as that, but Bill, I think, you spend a week with that or less suddenly you'd come back to me and you would be running circles around me in DAX. Bill Jelen (01:10:01): That's hard to believe, but I'm definitely going to try it. Rob Collie (01:10:04): Apparently. I really have it in for Python. Thomas LaRock (01:10:07): You have a thing for Python. Rob Collie (01:10:09): And R we could, we could substitute R in here and I'd be saying the same things about it. Thomas LaRock (01:10:14): R to me, is just very focused data science. And it does that very well. Python, I think is just more extensible. Python's more widely adopted. You find it has more modules. So that's why I went Pythons instead of R. This all actually really started when R got brought into SQL server. That's when I was all right, this is getting a little more serious. I should start learning a little bit more about this. And then it was Mark Cuban who tweeted one night, that he was doing some Python for some analysis on basketball and stuff like that. And I, why would you choose Python over R? And a bunch of people, not Mark replied, helped me understand a little bit about the difference. And so that's when I made the pivot to Python. Bill Jelen (01:10:58): Wow. Right there. I mean, Python was on the list. R was on the list and TikTok. Those are the big three that I [crosstalk 01:11:05] Thomas LaRock (01:11:07): Oh my God is Python and TikTok a thing. Let me check. Cause if it's not, I want a corner in that market. It has to be. Rob Collie (01:11:14): Yeah, right. Thomas LaRock (01:11:15): Bill says, there's someone doing Excel, TikToks. Bill Jelen (01:11:18): Yeah. 15 seconds or less. And it's impressive. What you can learn in 15 seconds and a TikTok Excel tutorial, two variable data tables. Yeah. Thomas LaRock (01:11:28): This is known as, not Rob's medium. I'm still in the process of saying hello and time's up. Bill Jelen (01:11:38): It's a challenge. It's a challenge. How to teach something in 15 seconds. Thomas LaRock (01:11:41): I'm going to create a new platform called TikTok, TikTok, TikTok. It's this 45 second video. Bill Jelen (01:11:47): Gives you 45 Seconds. Thomas LaRock (01:11:52): And even then it won't be enough. That's just the introduction to the lesson. Today we're going to learn this. If you want to see the rest of it, you go to YouTube. So is it a thing, Tom? Rob Collie (01:12:06): Yeah, there are people. I'm finding there's a lot of Python coding videos. Thomas LaRock (01:12:11): On TikTok? Rob Collie (01:12:12): Yeah. On TikTok. Python itself seems to be about actual snakes in addition to some coding. And now I'm more enthralled by these snake videos. Thomas LaRock (01:12:23): So while we're talking about snakes, let's talk about a statistical concept known as risk. I was reading this on Reddit one day and it's just stuck with me ever since. It's just one of the funniest things. We do it all the time. We talk about this all the time at our house in various forms. They're talking about people who have poisonous snakes as pets. You know how Reddit comment threads go. They're very conversational. It sounds like the same voice is talking to itself. These different people on the internet, but it's the same wise internet voice talking back and forth to itself. And talking about how, whenever you know someone, whenever you meet someone who handles poisonous snakes, they have poisonous snakes as pets. What do you hear? You always hear the same thing over and over again. Oh, it's not that dangerous. Thomas LaRock (01:13:03): As long as you know what you're doing, right. As long as you know what you're doing, it's perfectly safe. It's perfectly safe. The risks are vastly overstated. In fact, this person would go on to tell you, my father was a snake handler like this, my uncle was a snake handler with this. And then you go, oh yeah. Are they still doing it? Oh, no, no, they're dead. Well, how did your dad die? Snake bites. How did your uncle die? Snake bites. It's like human ability to properly estimate risk, maybe in a single trial. But underestimate it over a large number of trials. Thomas LaRock (01:13:46): It's kind of the birthday problem. Right? How many people did you have to have in the room, before it's likely that two people share a birthday. It's ridiculously small, right? It's 24 or 30 or something like that. And the chances of two people having a birthday that are the same, are nothing, like oh I'll run that risk, a fraction of a percent. But you keep up in the trial. It's not the same problem. It's not the same as the birthday problem. But the point is, is that over thousands of trials, that fraction of a percent, if you did the math on, are you going to survive thousands of trials? It turns out that no, you are not. Rob Collie (01:14:21): Well, that was always the thing with the data center, right? If there's a 0.01% chance of a disc failure. So that's one in 10,000, but I've got a data center with 10,000 discs, you know one of them just failed. You just, yeah. That's how it works. Thomas LaRock (01:14:37): Yeah. And it's 0.01% over a particular period of time. And so in a six month period, I mean a hard drive's only got a one in 10,000 chance of failing, but we run those discs for five years and we've got banks of banks and banks and banks of them. Yeah, exactly. We're having one every second now I don't know what it was that we were talking about that led to that. Oh, Python. The snake= Rob Collie (01:15:03): Yeah. I don't know what it was that we were talking about that led to that. Oh, python, the snake handly. Bill Jelen (01:15:04): It's snakes, right? The TikTok. Rob Collie (01:15:06): I mean, pythons. Yeah. They've got a lower fatality rate than cobras. Thomas LaRock (01:15:10): Aren't pythons an issue in Florida right now? Don't they have to go hunt them? Rob Collie (01:15:14): Yes. Bill Jelen (01:15:15): Yeah. And I think there's a reward if you get them, I think. Rob Collie (01:15:19): Yeah. And it's gotten to the point where they've realized, of course, that only the females really matter to the reproductive capacity of the species males, biologically speaking, ecologically speaking, males aren't worth very much, right? So they've gotten to the point where if they catch a male, they don't kill it. They radio collar it so that it leads them to the females. Bill Jelen (01:15:42): Wow. Rob Collie (01:15:44): Right? A male, a live male is actually more valuable as a weapon against the population than they are a contributor to the future of the population. Killing a male does nothing. Thomas LaRock (01:15:57): I'm surprised they just haven't reversed engineered their DNA. And inject them with something that they take back to the nest and just wipes everything out. Rob Collie (01:16:05): Well, and then we get movies like I Am Legend where this engineered thing hops species and just... Thomas LaRock (01:16:17): But what's... That's a 0.01% chance? Rob Collie (01:16:20): Oh, I know. I know. Yeah. It's perfectly safe if you know what you're doing. Thomas LaRock (01:16:27): It's like a one in a billion chance that it'll affect a human. Rob Collie (01:16:31): And so, because it's so safe, we're going to generate all these kits that you can do at home. You can engineer your own virus at home. I'm sure it'll be fine. Thomas LaRock (01:16:39): What's the worst that could happen? Bill Jelen (01:16:42): What's the worst that could happen. Rob Collie (01:16:45): Only bet as much as you can afford to win. Here's something that's interesting. So Bill, you've diversified. When the phone rings and it's you, every now and then my iPhone decides to put under your name, Bill Jelen, to put under your name, the words "We Report Space." Bill Jelen (01:17:03): That's hilarious. Yeah. Right. Rob Collie (01:17:05): I don't think of you as We Report Space, I think of you as MrExcel. Bill Jelen (01:17:09): MrExcel. Rob Collie (01:17:09): And holding macro books. That's your alter ego as far as I'm concerned. And then there's Bill Jelen, but now you're also... Bill Jelen (01:17:18): We Report Space. Rob Collie (01:17:19): For a podcast about data, there's a strange near-100% Venn diagram overlap with people who are interested in rockets and Mars and things like that, so what is We Report Space? Are you out there running around, checking on the moon? News reports from the lunar surface? Bill Jelen (01:17:36): I'm going to blame this on Penn and Teller. I was in Las Vegas doing a seminar. You check in, they're like, "Well, can we book you any shows?" I was like, "Hey, Penn and Teller, let's go see Penn and Teller." And then afterwards, Penn and Teller, they talk to everyone in the audience and they're selling their book. And so I buy their book and on a flight home, it says, "You need to go see a space shuttle launch at Kennedy Space Center once in your life." All right. An STS-135, the very last launch. We came down from Ohio to Florida to see that launch and we got there four hours early and we're sitting there just talking with other people in their lawn chairs who were lined up to watch this launch. And some guy next to us says that his friend right now is at the press site, three miles from the launch pad, thanks to some lottery he won on Twitter. I'm like, "What?" Yeah, he says, "Yeah, there's a lottery on Twitter." All right. Bill Jelen (01:18:23): And so two years later I was just cruising through Twitter and there's a lottery to go see a launch. I'm like, "Hey, yeah, I'm going to sign up for that." It was an early SpaceX launch and they scrubbed, which means they didn't launch. And then, 30 people won this lottery and they showed up to watch this. And then they scrubbed. And then a month later, 20 of them came back, and it scrubbed. And then there was another launch. And by the time they finally launched on their fourth opportunity, there were only seven of us that made it to each one. And three of those seven formed a group that is now We Report Space, right? So I'm here 12 miles away from the launch pads. Bill Jelen (01:19:01): We actually started working, the three of us started working for another outlet, right? Another website. And the three of us quickly found that our attitude towards life is "we don't give a shit." That's our motto. It's just... And the guy that we were working for was very angry. He was a very angry guy and the three of us all run our own companies and we're like, "We don't really appreciate this, he's not resonating with the 'we don't give a shit.'" So we finally just decided to leave and start our own outlet where our overriding credo is "we don't give a shit." Right? You can't make it? That's okay. Right? Or, it didn't happen? That's okay. There's other people that got to that photograph. Bill Jelen (01:19:44): But what's really fascinating, it's a techy thing, the ability to leave a camera too close to the rocket for a human to be, and to have that camera take pictures, and the camera's going to be out in the Florida environment for 24 hours or 48 hours. And to engineer this whole thing to work and take the photos right. And just get some amazing photos. It was just a blast and it's a techy thing to be able to get everything to work right. Again, a great group of people out there at the press site. People have been doing this for 30 years. Generally they all share their information. You say, "Ah, yeah, this didn't work." And they're like, "Oh, you should try this." So just a great group of people down here in Florida that cover those launches and are willing to accept new people showing up, I guess. And generally be cool. Thomas LaRock (01:20:32): I was going to say that, I guess you guys don't know this, I thought, Rob, you knew this, but I did win one of the NASA Tweetups. Bill Jelen (01:20:43): You were at NASA Social, weren't you? Thomas LaRock (01:20:46): I was at NASA Social. So yeah. NASA Tweetup is a thing. It's awesome. And now my buddy, who worked for... He did some contract work with Canon who does all the cameras around the launchpad, and he got a nice photo of me watching. It went up. And then I got to see the pictures that they had taken. But as you described, the weather, the acid that comes down from the rocket layer that just destroys these... So they have to be in these boxes and just the entire process of how you can take, like Bill said, a photograph where no human can live. Rob Collie (01:21:18): And they have to be, those cameras have to be python proof? Bill Jelen (01:21:21): Oh sure. Thomas LaRock (01:21:23): The gators by the launchpad, the gators are a thing. Bill Jelen (01:21:26): And the army... Rob Collie (01:21:27): Don't worry, the python's reading those. Bill Jelen (01:21:29): And the armadillos. And it's why... And Tom, I did know that, I knew that about you, that you had been to, the NASA Tweetup is now NASA Social, that you had been to one. I don't know, maybe Rob told me that or something, somehow I connected that dot. Thomas LaRock (01:21:44): That's awesome that you're... I didn't know you were down there doing work with them. I'm fascinated. I need to learn more now. Bill Jelen (01:21:49): When we say work- Rob Collie (01:21:49): You can find Bill's work at his website, we don't give a shit about space dot com. Bill Jelen (01:21:56): We Report Space dot com, yeah. Rob Collie (01:21:58): All right. So let's just recap for a moment. You started in Lotus 1-2-3 as the export to Excel BI guy, which I'm still going to call export to Excel, even though it was Lotus 1-2-3 at the time. Bill Jelen (01:22:09): Of course. Rob Collie (01:22:09): And then that kind of beautifully metastasized into the entire MrExcel empire that we know today. But along the way, I think we missed something in there. Something really, really unique and important. So I would definitely want to circle back. The first time I had to conduct any business with you that involved money changing hands, I had to make out a check to Tickling Keys. Bill Jelen (01:22:35): Tickling Keys, Inc. That's right. Rob Collie (01:22:36): Tickling Keys, Inc. I expected it to be MrExcel or Bill Jelen, or maybe even Holy Macro Books, but no, it was Tickling Keys. And for a while I was just like, "Oh, that's so neat. He's talking about, in that name, he's talking about himself writing his book. He's just sitting there just tickling the keys and just brilliant Excel is flowing onto the page as he tickles those keys." I brought up to you one time after a year of believing that, and the reality behind that name is way cooler than what I'd imagined. So what's the origin of the name, Tickling Keys? Bill Jelen (01:23:14): Tickling Keys, we didn't start out as an Excel consultancy, or even as an Excel website. I grew up, in our basement there was a player piano from 1920, you know the old player pianos, the things that play themselves? You put the paper roll in there and it holes in the roll, press the keys down. As it goes over the tracker bar using some sort of mechanical vacuum system, you're pumping that whole thing, right? Rob Collie (01:23:36): I've never seen one in person, but I know what you're talking about. Bill Jelen (01:23:39): They were cool, but the problem is all the songs were from the twenties. And when I became a teenager, I was more into rock and roll. And there was no one doing Led Zeppelin on player piano roll. And that just seemed like that was something that had to be corrected. Rob Collie (01:23:53): Terrible tragedy, yeah. Bill Jelen (01:23:53): Yes, right. So I would arrange the roll in Excel. I would get the sheet music, I would build an Excel file that had all of the data that needed to be punched in the role. And then I found a guy down in Richardson, Texas, that you would send him a data file and he had a machine that would actually punch the holes in the roll. But the deal was you had to get five, right. And what are you going to do with five copies of Stairway to Heaven? So I actually started a company that licensed that music and then would sell the extra roll. So I'd make one for myself and then sell the other four. And that company is Tickling Keys. And when I opened the website, this tiny little website, that was going to be the offshoot of the player piano, rock and roll player piano company, that's when... I didn't bother to reform another corporation. I was like, "Okay, this is the new division of Tickling Keys. People think it's a computer and that's fine. It's going to work fine." Rob Collie (01:24:52): And then that would've been the thing, right? You'd just be a billionaire today on your player piano rock and roll empire. But if it weren't for Napster, right? Stinking Napster, I mean, the teens all pirating your Tickling Keys player piano music. Kids in dorm rooms, they brought you down, man. So you also told me that, didn't you give one or get it signed by Bruce? Bill Jelen (01:25:24): I haven't gotten Bruce yet, I've gotten a lot of other people in the E Street Band. The big one was Meat Loaf. So I had a roll of Paradise by the Dashboard Light. And the very first time that I ever got to show one of these rolls to someone who was connected to the roll was: Meat Loaf was in town for a concert at Blossom Music Center up in Cleveland, but he did a charity softball game down in Akron, right. And after the game, I went up to the bus and I had two copies of the roll. And I showed it to him and he knew what it was. Bill Jelen (01:25:50): He knew what it was, because he even said, "Oh, this is great. I'm going to fire the band, we'll just put a player piano on stage." But he autographed it. And then he yells back to me, I'm walking back to the car, he yells back to me. He says, "Hey! Hey, it's Meat Loaf, two words. Look at the album." And on the player piano roll, I put meatloaf as a single word and somehow, I gave him one copy and someone on the bus said, "Hey, you spelled it wrong." Rob Collie (01:26:13): Wow. So you said he knew what it was immediately. So you're saying that he recognized it was a player piano roll. He didn't look at it and go, "Oh my God, Paradise by the Dashboard Light!" Bill Jelen (01:26:26): And you say, I think this is the world's only existing copy of a Meat Loaf tune on player piano. And that gets you in. I was at a dinner with a lot of the E Street Band about three tables away from me. And they had decided they weren't going to sign anything. But when I had a player piano roll, I said, this is if you want a player piano roll of a Bruce song. I got Roy Bittan, who's the piano player for Bruce, to sign that. And Max Weinberg, who's the drummer, he instantly knew. He says, "Ah, yeah, you're just X number of years too late." He knew it was 1922. They were really in their heyday. So it's kind of an interesting conversation piece and I've gotten a lot of, under the pretext of, "Hey, will you sign this player piano roll?" I've gotten to meet Mark Cohn from Walking in Memphis and Bruce Hornsby, a lot of the E Street Band, Nils Lofgren, who was with Neil Young, autographed Our House. Rob Collie (01:27:13): That's so cool. And what do these spreadsheets look like? I need to see one, I kind of envisioned originally that it was a bunch of columns formatted to the same width and you're coloring in the squares to make the dots. Bill Jelen (01:27:25): That would've been awesome. Rob Collie (01:27:27): But, it's not like that is it? Bill Jelen (01:27:28): So it was measure number, then beat within the measure, which note? So on a player piano, I think middle C is the 40th note or 44th note. I had kind of in my head that the middle C is this number and you type in the number and then how long it was held down for. And then I probably, I don't know, was it a pivot table or some really cool formulas to take that data and stretch it into whatever, then export from Excel to whatever binary format that the guy in Texas needed. Rob Collie (01:27:58): Yeah I can't stop thinking about this. And then if there's a rest in the music where no notes are being played, do you have blank rows in your spreadsheet, or? Bill Jelen (01:28:11): No, no. I think if you simply don't send instruction to... So it's a little hole punch, right? So you're telling it when to turn on and when to turn off. So if nothing's happening, I think that you just don't send anything at that time code. Rob Collie (01:28:24): I see. Okay. So it's each row in your spreadsheet is time coded as to when it happens. Bill Jelen (01:28:28): Exactly. Rob Collie (01:28:29): Okay. That makes sense. I'm really excited as kind of as a parting shot, as someone who, my profession, even though I use Excel certainly for lots of one off purposes in my day to day business life, professionally, we're in the BI space. And so Power BI is, that's our thing. We don't use Excel for BI purposes as a company. I think LAMBDA functions though, it's one of those unexplored frontiers, in a way, in terms of what it can do. This is one of those things where I'm actually wishing that I had a bit more time to just go screw around with a technology, and that's Excel LAMBDA functions. And I have a bit of a background with it. Rob Collie (01:29:12): I worked on an early sort of specification for this feature many years ago, and it wasn't my idea at the time. So it's not like I'm saying, "Oh, they did my thing." No, it was someone else's idea back then. And it's the same idea has been sticking around for a long time, it's just really hard to implement. But if you think about for a moment, a spreadsheet, like a single sheet, that does a lot of calculations, like an income statement type of forecast, it's got columns for month one, month two, month 24. And it's got a handful of variables that go in, like what's our attrition rate of losing customers? What's our rate of new customers per month? How much are we going to spend on marketing? How many employees are we going to add per month? Whatever, right? Rob Collie (01:29:58): And from these handful of variables, it generates a tremendous amount of intermediate data month to month and it ripples and ripples and ripples along to come up with a handful of outputs. Like, this is how much money this company would be worth if we executed on this plan. What's this internal rate of return? What's its multiple that we could sell it for? How many months until we're cash flow positive? How much money, what's the maximum spend, meaning how much funding do we need? There's a lot of final answers that come out of a spreadsheet like this that you can only to by generating hundreds, if not thousands, of intermediate cells that ultimately then condense down to these numbers, right? Okay. Now, if you want to play with different scenarios, like different sets of inputs, this sucks. What are you going to do? Make a million copies of this sheet and change the variables, or you're going to write some macro that changes the variables and then records the answers on a separate sheet and then goes and changes the inputs again and iterates through like that. Rob Collie (01:31:03): But with LAMBDA functions, as I understand it, if it's the same thing that I was originally, like I was a long time ago, part of planning something along these lines, you could take that whole worksheet that I just described and turn it into a new function, like equal my income forecaster function. And it takes four inputs and it generates three or four outputs. And now you just create a table of all your different inputs, all your different input scenarios. And then you've got a number of calculated columns sitting next to it that are just calls to this function, this custom function of yours and which are the outputs you want. And you just drag fill that thing down and it uses your spreadsheet, this giant spreadsheet on the other sheet as a function. That's intense. And I think that it's one of those things where until you've played with it a bit, you don't really understand its potential. It so reinvents some of the fundamental rules of spreadsheeting that you're going to find yourself able to perform a type of financial modeling analysis, which by the way, Power BI is not really the right tool for a lot of things like this. The type of scenario I just described is a very difficult thing to do in Power BI. Not that you can't do financial modeling and forecast in Power BI, but that particular kind of very iterative ripple forward through time calculation is hard to do in DAX. And so this might be something that the world has never seen in terms of what it's capable of doing. And it's going to end up creating types of business, believe it or not, that weren't possible. Bill Jelen (01:32:40): I think the power here is, give this to a million people who are in a hundred thousand different industries and just watch what happens. Rob Collie (01:32:46): Mm-hmm (affirmative). That's what I'm talking about. Bill Jelen (01:32:47): So people will come up with uses that no one ever imagined. Rob Collie (01:32:51): I'm really excited by that. And it's not often that something comes along where you can say that, think about the accessibility of this. Someone who can build one of those income statement type spreadsheets now has the power to do something exponentially more sophisticated and it's not hard, and the Python person could have done it all along, but it'd probably take them longer, even though they were good at Python. But most importantly, there are fewer Python people and they're not deeply embedded in the business in the way the Excel people are. So this is why we've got sort of this really fertile breeding ground for something, I don't know. I'm really eyebrow raised that this one's come to life. I had no idea it was coming. I'm not one of the Excel MVP insiders anymore so when it landed, I was just like, "Holy cow. Oh wow." I need to go make some time just to screw around with it. Bill Jelen (01:33:43): No, it's cool. The other one is the LET function, LET. L-E-T. Which is, Rob, when you talk about those sub columns, you build your formula and the tiny little columns, the sub columns, and then the final answer out there is the eighth column or whatever. When you start combining that all back into one formula, you find that you're using some of those intermediate results over and over and over again. And so your formula becomes 800 characters because you have to put the LEN of the TRIM of A1 over and over and over. The LET function just, you define that once and assign it into a variable, slap it into a variable right inside the formula, and then can reuse that again. Right and so, yeah, both of those together. Rob Collie (01:34:22): That's a lot like DAX variables, which they didn't have in the beginning. So you can perform that one calculation, in a way if you'd had LET, you wouldn't have needed IFERROR. But you still would like IFERROR, because it's even simpler. Yeah. There's so many things, there's so many places, even now when I'm writing an Excel formula where I'm like, "If this calculation less than zero, then zero. Otherwise-" Bill Jelen (01:34:45): The calculation. So now you're doing the calculation twice. Rob Collie (01:34:50): I just want to scream every time I encounter that, I just want a function that truncates it, floors it at zero. I do that all the time. Bill Jelen (01:34:59): So how do you do that in DAX? Is there a DAX solution to... Rob Collie (01:35:02): Instead of LET, it's VAR, like measure name equals, and then you say VAR, then you make a name, like My Variable equals, here's the calculation, and you can have a bunch of variables and you can say, VAR My Variable 2 equals, my tax rate equals this, right? Then you say, return, you type return. Then you write your regular DAX formula after that but you can plug in the variables above. Bill Jelen (01:35:28): Nice. Yeah. Same thing. That's the LET function right there. Rob Collie (01:35:30): It's sometimes a little funny in DAX, and by the way, you can even use variables as tables. You can have a filter function as a variable, which is pretty hot. However, you've got to be careful because these variables evaluate the raw filter context of the measure or whatever. And then if you use the variable deeper down in your function, in your formula, in a place where it would've had a modified filter context, it won't pick up the modified filter context because it's already pre-evaluated to whatever it was at the very beginning. So you got to be a little careful with it sometimes, but most of the time it's awesome. Bill Jelen (01:36:03): That's cool, that's cool. And when I download DAX Studio, will I... Rob Collie (01:36:08): Oh yeah. You'll be all over this. Yeah. You'll get them. Well, folks. Thomas LaRock (01:36:12): Oh my God. Is there a DAX TikTok? Rob Collie (01:36:14): DAX Studio TikTok? DAX TikTok? Bill Jelen (01:36:17): DAX TikTok, that's it. Rob Collie (01:36:19): All right. I'm filing the copyright now, DAX TikTok. Thomas LaRock (01:36:24): You own that hashtag. Rob Collie (01:36:25): Yeah. I own it. Yeah. We'll just say we own the hat. Just the pound sign. Like the Austin Powers joke- Thomas LaRock (01:36:32): I invented the pound sign. Rob Collie (01:36:33): He invented the question mark. He was prone to making outlandish claims, like he invented the question mark. You know, I haven't been wanting to have you on, Bill, but Tom's been insisting, he's like, "When are you going to get Bill?" Bill Jelen (01:36:48): I think you mentioned this to me before you recorded your first one. But in my head I'm like, "Oh, I should wait a little bit. So that way the show will develop into something." Thomas LaRock (01:36:56): Yeah. We're still waiting. Rob Collie (01:37:00): Maybe this is when we arrive. Bill Jelen (01:37:02): I don't think so. I really don't think this was it. But you know what, I don't give a shit. So... Rob Collie (01:37:09): That's so good. Bill Jelen (01:37:14): Thanks guys. Rob Collie (01:37:15): All right. Announcer (01:37:16): Thanks for listening to the Raw Data by P3 Podcast. Find out what the experts at P3 can do for your business. Go to Power Pivot Pro dot com. Interested in becoming a guest on the show? Email Luke P, L-U-K-E-P at Power Pivot Pro dot com. Have a data day!