 Live from Orlando, Florida, it's theCUBE. Covering Microsoft Ignite, brought to you by Cohesity and theCUBE's ecosystem partners. Welcome back everyone to theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite here in Orlando, Florida. I'm your host, Rebecca Knight, co-hosting with Stu Miniman. We have two guests for this segment. We have Anna Chu, who is a senior product marketing manager at Microsoft, and Shauna Chi, product marketing manager, diversity and tech community lead. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, happy to be here. So you are dressed very similarly. Yes, we are. Yes, so we're going to get into diversity because I want to go there, but I'm going to start with you, Anna. So you are really in charge of the community within this vast ecosystem of Microsoft. That's a big job. So how do you go about it? What's your approach to the Microsoft community? Gosh, well, it's a lot of work. I've been leading the community efforts at Microsoft Ignite for the past two and a half, three years. And ultimately it's all about the people who are in the room. These are IT pros, these are developers, people who care about technology. It's also end users as well, people who are business focused. So we really want to make sure that we're delivering content that is going to help them go back to their communities, go back to their offices and be able to share all that knowledge back to the workplace. And Shana, so then you are within a slice of that community. So focusing on diversity in tech. So what is your, how do you operate? We see diversity as really closely in a minute with technology. So we are a community that lives on the tech community. So there's a direct latest aka.ms slash diversity in tech, but what we're pretty much doing is bringing people together on the tech community to talk about important topics of diversity inclusion. So traditionally it's always been very HR driven, a lot about talent, acquisition and recruitment, but for us it's really about what about the people in career? How do we help them feel like they belong and they're a part of this ecosystem? So that's where we see the symbiotic relationship. Yeah, and I have to say it's my first time coming to the show. I've watched it from afar. I knew lots of people that were at Microsoft MVPs over the years, very impressed. Maybe give our audience a little bit about what goes on in the show. You've got all the podcasts going, there's meetups, there's lots of good flair you're giving out of the show and everything else like that. So what's everybody missing that didn't come to this community gathering? Gosh, I hope I didn't miss out on anything really. I really hope that we were as inclusive as possible. But every year we try and make the event more community-infused than ever before. In previous years we just really focused on content that would be live on a stage such as at a theater or a breakout, but we really want to add a little bit more of the networking side of things too this year. So we've invested in meetups which are more formalized ways for the community to find their people. But we've also invested in idea swaps which is a brand new concept that we've landed here at Microsoft Ignite where we have group idea swaps where people are putting together topics that they want to meet with others about. And we also want to facilitate more one-on-one networking because personal relationships are such a critical part to being professionally strong in your career. You can't be successful without other people. So we really want to enable Ignite to be that platform because we've got people from all around the world. Sean has got this amazing pinball in the diversity and tech area that showcases where everyone is coming from. There are people coming in from really remote areas to people all parts of Western Europe and the US and I think there's a lot to be gained from people being able to find each other through Ignite. And what we always tell attendees is everything is live stream recorded in terms of sessions. So the biggest takeaway here is really people and community. So we really encourage people to meet up, build valuable connections, just talk about topics that might be uncomfortable so that we can learn from it. It's just such a great point there. It's funny, it is one of those pro tips out there. First of all, we're in this really big convention center and there's a lot of people. There's certain sessions that you want to be at. Maybe you want to talk to the speaker and do, but when you find time on the plane ride back or you know, spend a little time next week, you can go re-watch some of it. The people is really what drives everybody to the event. Yeah, where else would you meet 25,000 people in one venue, right? So it's been exciting. Shawnee, you said talk about topics that are a little uncomfortable. I mean, those are the hardest things to talk about, particularly with a group of strangers. So what has been your experience at this conference? What are people saying, the things that might cause that? Right. So diverse inclusion has really come front and center in terms of topics that's hot in the IT industry in particular. So traditionally people think about diverse inclusion as gender, right, men and women, but we're seeing that it's a lot more multifaceted than that. We're talking really about intersectionality of identities. All of us hold multiple identities. We are, I'm a woman in tech, I'm an IT professional, I'm a millennial, so there's multi areas that we deal with, but we need to address each and every one of them. So for example, this year we have a lot of sessions focused on LGBTQ, and we also have our partners talking about these topics as well and just really getting people in a room to say, help me learn more about this area that I'm not that familiar with, or let's talk about race and culture. What do people in your culture do? What is the norm? What is acceptable? And that's why we also partnered with Tech Women. It's a U.S. Department of State initiative where we invite women from developing countries to come share their experience, being an IT pro in those countries, like Algeria, Tunisia, Lebanon. So we really want to get a platform to interact with attendees, but also giving our mostly North American and European customers a chance to hear from someone in a completely different cultural setting. And just talking about all the various, all the identities that we all encapsulate, I mean, is the workplace the right place to talk about those things? I mean, that is another question too, in the sense of we are bringing our full self to work and we are spending so many hours at work, but at the same time, what is the right balance, do you think? Yeah, I think that's a great point. On the Monday leadership panel, we actually talk about leadership and building inclusive work cultures. Like you said, we spend so much time in the office. Sometimes our coworkers become our family almost, right? So I think it's how do we create an environment where people feel like they belong, where they feel like they can be genuine and not feel like they have to hide something because inauthenticity really shows and we want to encourage people to just feel like they have a safe place to express themselves. Yep, absolutely. So in terms of advocating for yourself at work, I know that's another big theme that is in the diversity and tech workshops. What is some advice that you have for women, for underrepresented minorities, for people of various sexual orientations to make sure that they are having the careers that they are capable of having and not coming up against bias and other challenges. Right, so in the Tuesday session, Donna Sakkar actually talked about this, which was a great point. She said, you can write your own story. You can't control what people are saying about you, but you can control what's out there in the media. You can control how you do your social media profiles. And I think it's really encouraging people to take a look at what's online, brand yourself, how you want people to see you and be proud of it. I think that's one of the biggest points. Yeah, but I also think that Microsoft Ignite brings so many people together, but they all have a common mutual passion, which is about technology. And if that manages to build bridges between people who may not necessarily get to know each other, so people from different religions or from different ethnic backgrounds who don't really have that opportunity to get to know each other. And then they find a common passion or they also are facing the same challenge on how to govern teams or things like that. Then suddenly we're actually, we're doing a lot to help, I think, you know, build bridges and just drive that human connection so that we can get beyond some of those challenges that we face in 2018. One of the edits at Bridges is kind of, both the community and diversity is career pass. I know a lot of the shows I go is, how are we taking somebody from a certain role to that growth mindset that we hear Sajid talking about? How are you looking to address that and how's that discussed in the communities? Career, gosh. I mean, we've just launched a new, completely new Microsoft Learn platform as well. We've got, one of the things that is really important about learning is actually learning through community too. And if we can enable people to find their own people by helping them share best practices and tips, we've made a huge, huge inroads there. So one of the things that we've run as part of Microsoft Ignite are community socials. So community socials are ways for people to find their people. So we've hosted ones for Microsoft Exchange and Outlook and we can make an element of fun out of that too. So there seems to be a certain personality in that community called Squeaky Lobster, I don't know if you've heard of Squeaky Lobster. It's some sort of inside joke that even I don't understand, but apparently he's a personality and he's here to unite the community together. And then people will come together and they'll talk about Exchange 2019 and they'll talk about how that impacts other parts of Office 365 and Microsoft 365 and then they'll talk about all the different ways that they can connect with each other as well. So it's all this, it's a very amorphous thing. From a learning perspective, we have a lot of things that we can do to create platforms for learning, which is really awesome, but at the end of the day, we have to learn through community because it's just where IT professionals and developers are having to learn at a crazy pace more than faster than they've ever had before. So yeah, that's a really big part. And I like that you mentioned a career path because we just partnered with the MVP community to launch a community metrics program. And that's where we partner with over 700 participants all around the world from 65 countries and over 800 years of combined industry experience to have mentors work with mentees from other countries and do a lot of cross-sharing, just sharing expertise and best practices. Yeah. Oh, and you have your student ambassadors here too, yeah. So that's a new thing that we've also rolled out at Ignite this year. We invited seven student ambassadors from three local colleges here and we invite them to work with our community reporters to push out some exciting video content. So that helps them to get a flavor of what kind of roles are out there in tech. We want to debunk the myth that you have to learn coding to work in technology and that is not true. There are so many amazing IT pro roles out there that we really want to educate people on. Yeah. So the technology industry at this point in time has a very bad reputation in terms of diversity. There's not enough women, there are not enough minorities, there's not enough sexual orientation diversity. What, and coupled with this real bro culture. So how, what's your best advice for technology companies today to be more inclusive? And that's one of Satya Nadella's real guiding principles is embracing diversity, different perspectives and being inclusive. How do you do it? I would say the first thing is really just take the first step. You know, we're all on a journey. This is a really big, hairy issue that we're all working to tackle and we cannot do this alone. And that's something we've heard consistently with all our partners. We are working together to tackle this as an industry and I can't speak for other companies, but at Microsoft we are really, we have a strong culture of empathy and as you know from Satya's keynote, we know we're all about empowering people to be the best that they can be and that is why we've developed code of conduct, we make sure people know what's acceptable, what are the boundaries that we can talk with but still push the limit and say, hey, I want to learn more about your culture. I want to know more about the LGBTQ community. I want to know about inclusive design and accessibility. How do I build technology that is assessment, you know, for everybody? So I think it's not easy for sure. I think even for Microsoft, we are still trying a lot of things for the first time. We learn and we grow from it and we just keep improving it every year. So we hope that in future ignites, it'll be even better. Yeah. And having community members even individually own, being a champion for diversity too, whether it be in their own organization or in their own user groups that they run, we really want to make sure that they are feeling like, you know, I can be an ally for diversity, whether you are, you know, someone who is a, you know, the typical persona in the ITU Pro world, which is a white male, you know? And I'm really glad to hear a lot of these stories of people saying, you know what, I am going to be that person who's going to step in and say something when I don't think things are right, so yeah. And there are topics that everybody can relate to as well like mental health and wellness. Like that's an issue that's really come into spotlight with a lot of stress in the industry. So it doesn't matter whether you're male, female, what your gender identity, like all of us are human beings, we all feel the same pressures and stress. And we just had that lunch session where literally tears were shed because people felt like I now have a space to say, like I'm struggling with this, like can you help me? And I think that's a really powerful thing to even just get started. Yeah. It does require a lot of bravery, I think. It does. Because for me even, I like to be able to find other people that I can relate to. I also share some of the same challenges that I have. And so I think that's the first step really, is basically opening the doors and letting people express themselves so that, and then other people are also going to feel like they're included. I think that's really one of the first steps to take. And we're better to do it than the community. Totally. Finding your people in the space, so yeah. Exactly. Great. And I want to ask about the buttons you have on. So you're, Anna says ringleader. Yeah. Shawna, game changer. Networking Ninja. And Networking Ninja. I love it. Can you explain what these mean? Yeah, so this year we want to try a really interactive button wall. And we want people to come and feel like they can share what's their diversity superpower. So all of us play a really important role. We wear many hats from a day-to-day basis, but we want to know what do people feel like is their ultimate strength. Whether you're a mentor, are you an enabler, are you a supporter, what is it? And these were just great conversation topics. So if I saw that, and as a ringleader, I might come up to him and be like, oh, that's me too. Like, can we talk and schedule an idea swap? So we just want to create a fun way for people to interact. But another important thing we've launched this year is the pronoun buttons. So we want everybody to feel like they can be comfortable telling people what is the pronoun that they prefer rather than what visually people think they are. So that is something that we've launched this year as well. It's been really cool. Very cool. Yeah. Well, thank you both so much for coming on the queue. It was really fun talking to you. Yeah. Thank you for having us. I'm Rebecca Knight for Stu Miniman. We will have more of theCUBE's live coverage of Microsoft Ignite coming up in just a little bit.