 Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat and I'm talking today with Martha. Hello. Hello. So good to meet you Christian. Great to always great, exciting to talk to brand new this month, MVP so very exciting. So for folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you and what do you do? All right. No. Yeah. So my name is Martha. I'm from Norway. So also based and been doing, oh, I'm a data platform MVP. So into the data world, been, well, I started out with Power BI once upon a time. And that's how I started with the, with the data, data stuff. And then doing Power BI stuff, which is this reporting world, you figure out that how that data is coming into your port is really, really important. So then I started moving back in that modeling view, looking into all more Azure components like ADF and Synapse and Databricks and so on. So then I, yeah, I expanded and figured that, wow, there's a lot of cool things you can do with data. There are a lot of good, cool things you could do. I often remark about how, you know, working in, you know, back in my first third of my career, 30 year career was in data warehousing, you know, like I did data center consolidation and so working with moving data, emerging data, connecting it for, I worked for the phone company, so massive company, you know, millions of users, you know, within the region. And but when I started to get into softwares of service and go moving towards collaboration, I stopped seeing DBAs. I stopped seeing people that lived around like the data, like, you know, they're there, but they were so prominent in my world, in the data warehousing world. And then I got into the Microsoft ecosystem in the mid 2000s. And it was like, there were no DBAs. Like, who's collected, who's doing things with this? Like the data didn't stop growing. Well, I know it's a great question. Like for me, I always, you know, when I'm working and I'm in meetings and then people go, oh, you know, I've been working with data for 20 years. I mean, I know SQL all the way back. And well, I don't, I can't say that I'm, I'm pretty new. I've been working for four years. So so fresh to everything and coming straight out of studies. But I started actually as a marine technology. Like that's what that's what I have studied marine technology. So I'm really good with shapes and waves and things. But then I figured that I needed to know more about boats. No, no, no, sorry. I know more about data that wanted to learn that and started boats would be a completely different focus. I know, I know, but I figured, well, we need to make this marine tech world, which it's kind of old and not that new in tech. I wanted to change that, right? So that's why I wanted to learn about data. So I started as a graduate and a consultancy firm working with data. So that means that I've never worked with a DBA, right? Because I just started and I've only worked with like cloud and cloud resources, that type of thing. So I don't know the answer to that question. I don't know where the DBAs are. But see, that was the interesting thing. You had a bunch of companies. So about 10, 15 years ago that started promoting themselves as big data companies. And I just get to work in the collaboration and knowledge management spaces. Like everything is a big data problem. What do you do? Like companies are collecting so much data. But I think that's one of the things that your example of like marine related data is that every industry, every business is collecting so much data. And I think one of the failures of business broadly, I'm comfortable saying this, we're failing to adequately understand what data we have. What do we know about it? How do we use that? So having data analysts, having data science people on staff is critical for the future. Yeah, I agree. And I also remember just like a couple of years ago, big data. Wow, that was the best word. You know, everyone is talking about big data and how could you do all this compute power and how could you make value out of that data? And then we were talking about shit and shit out and all of that. But I agree now it's and also with this new technology like fabric that was just released and I don't need to think about integrations, you don't really need to think about compute and all of that. You just need to know your data or have solutions that can help you know your data. So what did I do? I have what's the quality of that data and also even some AI on top of that to maybe help you prompt some insights. So it's really exciting times. Things are changing. And yeah, we don't need that. One other important factor to know is that, especially with Microsoft looking at consumption models is also accessing your data, doing things with the data. How is Microsoft charging you to utilize? Yeah, I don't want to I know that's a whole other topic. It's a big question. Get a lot of people angry talking about that. Well, let me ask you this. So what was your what was your path to becoming MVP? How did you hear about the program? How did you get started? Oh, yeah. So I I got a really cool colleague, Johan Ludwig Rachtos, he's also an MVP, a data platform MVP. And he was just talking like one of the first days in the office. He was just chatting and said that, yeah, I'm going to this conference presenting on this thing. And I was like, whoa, amazing. How can you how can you do that? I want to do that. I want to talk about things like tech things and be excited and try to get other people excited about that. And so he just, you know, yeah, nor that's not difficult, just, you know, submit a session on sessionize and you're good to go. So I tried and and then since then it's been a lot of conferences traveling the world and learning and getting to know the SQL community, SQL family, which has been so so amazing and getting to know other MPs and so on. So for me, it's really been about this conference is talking to people, trying to share my passion for data and Microsoft technology and also that two way communication where you can meet people and you can learn from them. Yeah, that's been really valuable. So, yeah, I didn't really know the MP bus, what that was about until being in the in being in the community for a couple of years. And then I was like, oh, wow. So, oh, your MP piece. Wow, now I realize that's so cool. Yeah, they're huge benefits to it. And you just missed the, you know, the in-person and the annual MP summit. But of course, next year should be hopefully even even bigger. It was kind of a last minute thing this year. It's fantastic that Microsoft had the held the event. And I always tell new MPs, like it is. I realize that it's a big expense and time expense to to fly over to Seattle. But it is by far the best perk of being an MP is meeting the product team, the people in person, meeting all the other MPs, learning different topics. I mean, it's just fantastic. Yeah, so and I would plan to go early, stay a little bit long, really kind of soak it in. But so what are your kind of passion topics right now? What are you speaking on and writing about? Oh, well, well, I started out with Power BI. So so that was a natural topic for me. And then and then data governance in general, because everyone was just messing, messing up their power BI setup with too many reports and so on. So that's been my main topics. But then obviously with the new introduction of fabric, me calling from Power BI, I am obviously really excited about that. So now it's all about fabric trying to learn the new new things and and also seeing where the value is and where maybe also where you shouldn't use it. Or like I'm still trying to figure out what's the downside of this, because so far it's really, really awesome and just a really cool tool. So, yeah, yeah, there's there's a well, like any any technology, you need to understand the constraints, the limitations. And so that's with any adoption cycle, you're excited by all the cool things you could do. Then you get frustrated by the things that it can't yet do. Yeah, you get invested in the roadmap. You'd be like, well, Microsoft says they're going to add these things. And then two years later, you're still waiting. Exactly. Yeah, that's going to be interesting. And now and everything is in preview. So who knows what's going to happen? But yeah, there's a lot of promises. So I'm yeah, I'm excited. I always try to temper that excitement, especially with with customers about, you know, like, yeah, you can only go and plan off of what is available today. You can't plan on something though. Microsoft says, oh, by the end of the year, well, that could slip. The it could be half the features that you were expecting. You just you can't live your life that way. So that's one last question for you. But it's a long question, but around involvement in community. So what's what's the community like? What's your involvement in doing things locally, regionally? Yes, I have a couple of really cool things that I'm super passionate about. But so we're organizing the other Saturday Oslo. So I'm a co-organizer and trying to bring in new, new, new speakers and like give them their first stage to shine on. That is free events that's running second of September. If anyone is around Oslo that time, please join. And also organizing Microsoft data platform user group Norway. So that's also really low key meeting area where you can come and ask questions, have discussions around topics regarding Microsoft data platform. So I also think that's a great, great way to meet, meet the local community. Yeah. And then I just recently started this new group, which also I'm really excited about them. So we call it with who lunch, a women in technology who lunch. Where we also have this in real life meetups where we can talk and chat and have this also really low key place to to have discussions and learn from each other. So because I've been missing that place where where we can actually meet and where it's not some big commercial thing around it. Because obviously I mean, it's it's cool to to support women in technology and I love that. But it's also nice to not have that commercial thing where it's only just us meeting to talk and to learn from each other. That's something that is so important. And I've done this at a number of companies I've worked for over my career, too, where it doesn't have to be something huge, even internally, it could be something where once or twice a month, you're getting together and kind of open topics. But that there's real conversation there. It's not just getting together with people at work and having conversations about work. We were actually talking about broader topics and you know, and kind of focused topics. And I love that that model. That's where a lot of that's where things grow and it expands to become, you know, outside of the company, you know, eventually, you know, it's more like what you're doing this more of community focused, which might then evolve into another event in doing so I love that. Exactly. Yes. You have that organic growth and that excitement in the like in the beginning where people believe in the idea. So, yeah, I'm really excited about is your event. Are you coordinating that through the community days dot org site? No, not not the women in technology one. So maybe that's something. OK, yeah, that's it's a community activity. You can certainly post that up there. But your other your other data platform event there, your your data that is that should be that should be there. Yeah. And for folks that don't know what we're talking about, if you go to community days dot org, that is, you know, Microsoft sponsored, but it's community events around the world that are so the formerly SharePoint Saturday, the sequel Saturdays, collab days, you know, SPS events, if you're familiar with any of those, they're now kind of being, you know, one calendar of those different activities. So you can really get involved. It's it points to other external sites as well as sites that are hosted there on community days dot org. So well, very cool. Well, again, congratulations again for your MVP. Very excited. Now you just have to keep the momentum going. It's just that's all you have to do. Yes. I know, yeah, I'm going to try. I'm going to do my best. I'm really excited. And it's yeah, it's awesome so far. That's great. Well, it is. I mean, it's an amazing resource to build out your network to build context. So I always say that, you know, one, don't get overwhelmed by the number of invitations to calls. You don't have to go to all of them. You can be picky about those. But, you know, your core data platform monthly call, I would highly recommend you participate in that one. But other than that, you know, just there's so much. It's just a matter of you focusing on what you want to consume and kind of add to your portfolio. So lots of opportunity coming your way. So congratulations. Thank you. Thank you. Well, thanks so much for your time. And for folks that want to connect with you, reach out to you. Where are you most active in social work? Do people find you? Yes. So I guess it's easiest to reach out directly through LinkedIn after moving in and moving in. Yeah, whatever, whatever works for you. And also Twitter and I also post there as well. Excellent. Well, we'll make sure that people have all those links that are out on the blog and out on the YouTube as well. So thanks so much for your time, Martha. Thank you for having me.