 Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat. I'm talking today with Matt. Hello. Hello. So for folks that don't know you, who are you, where are you, and what do you do? I am Matt Gordon. I'm in Lexington, Kentucky. As you can see by the beautiful horse farm that's definitely right behind me. Yes. I am a senior architect for centric consulting. So I do data and analytics consulting for us. Have been consulting for a while, but started out as kind of in IT, turned into a DBA, and turned into a data consultant, and off we went. So you've been a data platform MVP for five, six years? This was my fifth year. So yeah, I was renewed this year and the site says five. I checked it. So yeah. I always like to ask because it's sometimes it's really confusing and they occasionally move the buckets around in the order. So what's included within the data platform space? Well, so, you know, way, way, way back when I would say these were the SQL Server MVPs, but it's broadened quite a bit, right? So the data platform, you still got SQL Server folks in there, and that's what they do. And that's awesome. But you've got the whole Azure data platform. So you've got Synapse people in there. You could have Power BI people in there. You could have, you know, any of that data stuff, some of the stuff that's growing, like I don't know that there is one, but you could have one where Azure Data Explorer is your thing and you speak about it, blog about it and know it well and all that. And that that's your route. But yeah, most of the people I know I would say are broadly analytics or, you know, were SQL Server DBAs and turned into consultants or something like that, or are still DBAs that speak or blog or whatever. And that's the world they're in. But we all play nice, mostly. Well, that's why it's interesting because, yeah, people that for non-techies might listen to some of what you just described and say, yeah, but there are Azure MVPs that describe it similar. There are business application MVPs, which are more of the front end, more of the power platform, you know, site of things. But the folks that I know or data platform kind of, I would say the common theme that I see is kind of the DBA traditionally, like the more the DBA function, although some are on the Azure side. It's interesting to me, especially, you know, I got involved in community stuff back in basically 2013. That was the first past summit that I went to. And it's been interesting to see people's journeys. A lot of people that I remember from that event speaking, and their title was lead DBA or DBA this somewhere. And where all those different journeys have gone, you know, a lot of those people that I remember making those notes, like great speaker, great content, want to hear more from them, they still speak, they still contribute to stuff, but not a lot of them are doing what they were. Some of them still are, you know, but a lot of them had gone to data engineering rather in the analytics or, you know, just there's a lot of different paths that data can take you. But I think just the nature of timing and kind of how the industry evolved. You know, a lot of the people kind of maybe around my career age, we came from the DBA world. Some of us are still there and some of us aren't. What's an observation that I had, I would mention this before we started, you know, recording, but is that when I kind of got into the Microsoft ecosystem, like I got involved with the Microsoft space in roughly about 2005 and joined Microsoft and coming from like the data warehousing world and working with the DBAs extensively, in the Microsoft ecosystem, like it just kind of disappeared people within that role. Here we are, we're in this era, we are creating more content, more data than ever before. Remember when the big data platform providers started coming out, I'm like everything's big data. What is this, what does big data really mean? And we're called the DBAs because all that data, it's not like you can just point your front end system at a database and it works magically. There's effort behind the cleanup and organization of that data. Well, and that right, some of these boundaries are hard to define, right? Because like I've gone into some places that as a consultant and you'll have a developer, somebody asked the question like, all right, we have a database that's 20 terabytes or whatever and it's having the issues you would expect it to have. And they will ask like, are we dealing with big data? It's like, well, it's large but conceptually big data really is something kind of different. And right, and that's kind of, as our tools have changed, especially as the cloud providers have matured and things like that, there's, I think there's always going to be a space for your traditional operational DBAs that role is going to evolve, it already has. But right, a lot of these kind of data tools where we can just shove a bunch of stuff in there and visualize it, report against it, all that. It doesn't need, it doesn't need the same sort of supporting roles that we always used to have. So it's certainly an interesting time to be involved. I'm very glad this is the world that I ended up in because there's so many different paths that can take, and I know the one I'm on now and could that change in five years? I don't know because we may not know what the next big thing is and maybe the next big thing is really interesting and we want to pursue that. So two of my four kids kind of went the data science route and two very different. One is the healthcare, one is in atmospheric sciences but both kind of gravitating back towards the tools and the technology side and the data and all the different roles. I advised them, I said, look, you can't go wrong with the career path around a DBA type, data management, data science type function because every company needs that. Yeah. And whether they've realized it or not, you're right. Every company needs people that wrangle data, whether they're DBAs, whether they're data engineers, data scientists, maybe some of both, some of all three. It's not going away and it's not like we're producing less data on anything. I can think of consulting engagements I've had where it's basically like we have a relational system for the industry that we're in. We know there are insights in here. We know that there's value that we can help bring to our clients or we can help increase our sales because we don't have a good understanding of what we're selling and what customers are doing and all that and it's questions they've had. They don't know how to get those answers and then you go, right, then you leave that kind of operational world into, well, let's do some analytics on this. Let's find the right platform and tools for you so you can figure that out. I often use the kind of the analogy. I have a good friend who got his masters in music composition and I was overdoing kind of a studio project. He had a lot of equipment and very talented musician and we were recording a bunch of stuff and we were using, this is a few years back, but we were using Cakewalk. I'm at his house and we're editing some stuff and I'm like, hey, I can do this editing. I get the setup. I went and purchased Cakewalk and installed it and had no idea how to go and set up. He had finally tuned it, massaged it and set it up in a way that it was very, very easy. I look at a lot of what DBAs do, a lot of this world where it's like Power BI. I know how to use the basics of Power BI. I've gone in, I've done a few things, but I also know enough to realize that how much cleanup, how much organization, does somebody that understands how to bring the pieces together, how important that role is. It's Power BI is not an out-of-the-box solution. I would credit whoever I remember saying this, but I can't remember who it was. They said the biggest problem with SQL server is that it just runs. You can stuff data into it, you can maybe take backups and do all the stuff you're supposed to do. The thing, even as smart as it gets, even you watch the keynote in 2022, does cool stuff. The art of the performance tuning and its art and science, that's not going anywhere because you're right. The bigger the scale gets, and you can say, oh, it thinks through some of this stuff. Really where that's headed is, the query engine is a little smarter. It's going to add some intelligence on top of that. You still need somebody that understands that data well, understands the structures underneath, and uses the new tools we had. I would have killed for some of the stuff that we have now 10 years ago. I'd have gotten a lot more sleep, but you still need that knowledge. Maybe you don't have to supervise your backups anymore because you're in the cloud and it's done for you, but making things go faster, that's not going anywhere. Yeah, well yeah, it's right because it's not just about utilizing capabilities that are out there. Data lifecycle, a lot of that stuff you can automate. I work for an ISV that creates those kinds of solutions. You still have to architect those solutions, be smart about that. You still need to be able to go in and optimize based on whatever the new changes are and the features are, but then you have other stuff that changes. As you said, you could throw new data on it, you can expand on what's already there, then you re-ork, then you acquire a company, or then you're acquired, or a million other things that could happen there. Matt, what kind of stuff are you out actively talking about? What are the hot topics in the space right now? My hot topics, because I was involved, I was in consulting for a while, stepped away from that and went to work for a company as their director of cloud administration, basically to manage a cloud migration that they did. In the end, it evolved into essentially a consulting gig that I did for about two years before stepping officially back into that space. Migrations have been on my mind a lot. We were involved in a kind of a soup to nuts one. It wasn't just let's take a couple databases and put it up there. It's our entire on-premise world is going up. I've spent, and leading into that, that's most of what I was doing as a consultant for probably two or three years before then. I've seen ones go well. I've seen ones go poorly, kind of know how to set them up for success. If those elements are missing, what's going to happen? As they run, some things you have to watch out for and taking care of the people that are doing them to. Going back to that kind of operational thing, you got to keep the lights on while you're moving all that stuff. If the same team is doing both, you're going to chew them up. I've mostly been mostly technical topics around that, but one thing I hadn't done until the last couple years was do some kind of professional development around that. For those that are in the operational space, how do you take care of yourself? How do you speak up for you and your team and prevent getting in the boat where you're the on-call for when the old stuff breaks and you're working nights and weekends to get the new stuff up there, have a lot of passionate feelings about that. Isn't that the glamour that you sign up for when you say go down the IT track? Glamour is one way to describe it. It doesn't usually work out like that. Sorry, I meant to say the glamour. I had to have the airfoil. Sorry. Yeah, well, it's kind of one of those things because it's not black or white, you know, because at a certain career stage, I certainly went through that and in the end it was good for me. You know, I worked a ton of hours doing high availability stuff. Well, that set the table for me to go into consulting because there was a firm that was like, we need an HA person. We think you know this. Had I not put in those long hours, you know, I wouldn't have gotten that job. But on the flip side, and that's kind of, and I have a talk that I've been submitting to some conferences next year, but how you weigh that, you know, there is a right time maybe, listen, you talk to your partner, your family, or if it's just you, it's a short talk. But it's, am I going to commit to this? Because I think it's going to set the stage for me to kind of take that next step versus, listen, I'm at the point in my career in life where that's not right for me and that that's okay to say. And then think about what the consequences might be and just how to position yourself for success without running yourself into the ground, which I've done. Yeah. No, that's a, well, I don't think you can work in IT in any role and not have had that own internal discussion around that. And there's, I mean, there's times of my life and I've spent a good portion of my career more of the startup, you know, the front lines than the larger company. And a lot of times without benefits, there's no 401K, there's a lot of high risk around it, I learned so much. And I, you know, and so I wouldn't trade that for any, well, a couple of them I would trade, I'd be happy to trade. Well, it's why I say that's, that's why, you know, it, yeah, I hope that session gets picked up at a couple of places next year. I never envisioned myself doing professional development talks, but I have found them so useful that I was like, well, I think I have something to contribute here and, because it's not, and I'll say this, having been involved both as an outside employee and inside as well, when you go into a migration project, especially a large scale one, personnel is fairly considered. That's all we need this team involved. We need these other teams involved. Maybe not, not always even that, but it's not. Well, we're going to ask our core team to do X and Y. Well, your core team is only so many folks that, and, you know, if probably have some years of experience under their belt, people with years of experience tend to have partners and families and all that that have to be considered. And it's pretty rare that it's like, well, we can't work those people too hard. So let's bring in some outside help. Let's hire more. Let's get consultants, whatever. It's like pedal to the metal, you know, hardcore, let's do it. And odds are, the team is not along for the ride. And the project ends up stuck in a pretty awkward spot as people start to leave. You know, one thing that I mean, it's definitely an industry-wide trend that you're seeing with so much focus. And I know it's a different workload. It's a different area, but around like the Microsoft Viva and all the employee experience stuff, but you do see are those topics permeating across all areas. So to go in, like I was just at this event in Copenhagen and there were sessions on, you know, diversity and inclusion and kind of all that stuff. A lot, there's accessibility sessions. There were career development and networking, you know, sessions is, you know, mixed in with the technology tracks. And it's good to see that and healthy turnout at a lot of those sessions. So people are, are, I think there's a lot more, having had this shared experience of the pandemic, there's a lot more empathy in the tech world. I think there is. I mean, there's been nothing good about any of this, right? But what it did, so all the bad things that came with blurring the line between work and home, I think you're right. The one thing and it just, it's not universal for sure. But the one thing I have seen both in kind of community events like that and even companies that never used to think this way before is more attention to the fact that it's a person. It's not a resource. Right. And that person is dealing with everything we've all been dealing with. And then whatever challenges they have could be from this, could be not from this. Right. And considering that, as you plan work and plan staffing levels, you know, again, not every company's doing this. Some of them are still like, ah, just don't watch the news. Everything's fine and don't worry about anything and also work 80 hours a week for us. But some are, and I think the most successful companies as we move forward are going to be the ones to think about their people as people. Right. Well, we've been all saying this for years, is burnout is real. Absolutely. And especially, again, the vast majority of people within the tech sector have very marketable skills. Even in this down economy, it's like the so much of us are essential to keep all the other areas of the business up and running. We're so, you know, at least in the Western world, we are so tech-reliant on those things. And so you have to be thoughtful about that health and well-being of your employees. Yeah. And from a practical perspective, it's so expensive to replace a good person. Yeah. Somebody who's got domain knowledge, tech experience, all that, they walk out the door because you've worked them too hard or whatever, getting that equivalent person, it's really expensive and takes a long time. So it's better to just not do that. Yep. Treat people nice. Pam, well, treat. Treat people like humans. Yeah. Yeah. Basic stuff. It's not hard. No. Well, Matt, really appreciate your time today. For folks that want to connect with you, reach out to you. What are the best ways to reach you? Yes, I encourage that. I am SQL at Speed everywhere online. So SQL at Speed on Twitter, eventually masked it on. I just haven't had the time to do that yet, but I'll have that handle there as well, hopefully. SQL at Speed on LinkedIn and all my presentations and stuff are up on GitHub. You could go tell me what's wrong with all my slides if you want to do that. That's an interesting approach too. You know, it happens. Sometimes somebody's poked around and said, I think you should change this to say this. It's like I would always learn like feedback. I heard like horror stories of people getting heckled by conferences given sessions. And I always wanted that. I finally had one. It wasn't, I mean heckle. People told me, ah, he was heckling. No, he asked really good questions and I didn't have answers there. I'm good friends with the guy now years later, 10 years later. And I went back and I researched and I modified those slides to answer those questions. And that's the thing, like a lot of speakers say it. I think almost all of us mean it. Like sincerely, we want feedback. You know, the joke I would say, I stole from an old boss and I was like, if you think this was terrible, email me and tell me why. If you think it was good, tweet it so everybody knows. But really, we always want to get better. I don't want to give the same talk if you sat there and you're like, hey, that was all right. I want it to be better than that. And I want feedback on kind of what would have made it better for you. So we all mean it. Yeah. I wish people were a bit more free with their feedback there. You know, we agreed. Yeah. Anyway, well, Matt, hey, it was great connecting. We'll talk soon. All right. Thanks so much.