 Hey everybody, this is Christian Buckley doing another MVP buzz chat and I'm talking today with Monica. Hello. Hey, how are you Christian? I'm doing well for folks that don't know you. Who are you? Where are you? And what do you do? I'm Monica Rathbun. I'm based out of Virginia Beach, Virginia. I've been doing performance tuning especially for the last 25 years. I'm a consultant with Denny Cherry and Associates and MVP for maybe seven years now. I don't know. Let me count my little disk. I think I'm on seven. And it's I see that you're also you've been involved with formally. I don't know if it's been rebranded to SQL Saturdays. I saw like data Saturdays. You're in Virginia Beach. I mean, that's where the SharePoint Saturday started. I know and you actually used to have a combination user group SharePoint SQL Server user group. But now I run the SQL Server user group. I think I've been running it for years now that I've been running it and did a data Saturday SQL Saturday at the time in 2020 for the first time. Big success. And then we tried for 2021 or 20 whatever the year was for COVID and had to cancel it last minute. All went down from there but user group still going strong. SQL Saturday data Saturdays on the list. Not for this year, but probably next year. We're doing the same thing. Yeah, we did our last one. We called it the M365 Saturday event. We called it the M365 Saturday. Actually Friday. We moved it to Friday anyway. But we were a site rebrand. Same team been doing it for almost a decade but was the February of 2020. And so, yeah, we're starting. We're going to do our first one again in March 1st of next year of 2024. So excited to get those things starting up. How are those events doing in general? Are they popping up again? Yeah, they are. They're picking up steam. For sure, picking up steam. I know the user groups are still trying to get their footing too and getting those going so you can build up to the data Saturday and stuff. I think the biggest problem right now is getting speakers, believe it or not. We can get the bodies but getting speakers to actually travel and commit is still a challenge for everybody. Well, I know that it's still, yeah. I mean, that's an issue for some international folks. Like we used it to do like a 250, 300 person event here in Utah. We would still bring in four or five international speakers and people from across the U.S. and, yeah, so it would be interesting to see how that, and I know folks are starting to travel for other events. I was just in Australia last month. A couple of European trips that are being planned is starting to pick up. You're seeing people come to the U.S. as well. So that's always good to see. I think that was what was making everybody nervous. Those that are event organizers, will people come to the U.S. and get their speakers and show up. Of course, we get, if you're doing hybrid, especially, you can get virtual dollars, virtual sponsors, people that will throw money to help put it together. So what was your path to becoming MVP? It's been a few years, but what was your origin story? Oh, so been doing the DBA thing for a really long time. And then I met some people, and they, of course, you know, they were doing the DBA thing. And I don't know if you know who re Irish is, but she runs the MVP program for the data platforms. And she and I met, she used to work for me. I hired her. And she saw what I was doing and she said, I am not getting paid enough. I am not doing enough. I should be doing more and kind of pushed me out the door, got a new job, started getting into the sequel community, like really into the sequel community. And then I was doing a session on performance tuning. You need to do a session on performance tuning at the time. I was a lone DBA. So I went with what I knew and did the whole lone DBA speaking thing at Spartansburg in 2015. From there, I got into the speaking bug and then started writing and applied. Well, not didn't apply, got nominated for MVP and got it the first time out. Actually got, got it the same joke and was like, oh my gosh, we just got this. And yeah, it was, it was pretty cool. So that was 2017. So about two years from my starting of speaking, I got into the writing and started to grow that way. And then now it's international speaking everywhere, writing a blog, doing all that great stuff webinars left and right. And I absolutely love it. You know, and that's, I realize when I, when I talk to people about and mentor people about becoming MVPs and talk about the process, you get a lot of people that say it's like, I don't know about presenting. I could do a lot of the other things. How do you respond to people about like what they should do if they want to follow that path? Well, it's just first of all being volunteer and kind of getting pushed is a kind of really great way to get out the door because sometimes you just barely want to put your toe in the water and then you need somebody just kind of push you in to do it. So taking the advice, getting the mentor to look at your stuff and know that you have something to give as value, right? Nobody wants to listen to me. I've got the same story with everybody else. Somebody else has covered this topic, all of this great stuff and everybody tells it different. Everybody's had a totally different way of learning or experience and everything. So it's just a matter of hey, get out there, tell your story. Somebody in that audience is going to learn different from you than me. You have value, you know, go out there and just do it. So I have them pick a topic like mine was the lone DBA thing, you know, pick a topic that is true to you that you can just tell the story. It doesn't have to be extremely technical because everybody gets stuck up on the technical stuff, right? Somebody's going to correct me or I'm going to be wrong on something or whatever and you know, you've got to get them out of that thought and it's, you know, your story tell your story. That is important. The storytelling aspect of that because when you talk about well, a lot of us, you know, covering technical topics and there's certainly there are different approaches on the technology side to solving different problems but, you know, with a lot of what we're doing, especially when we're talking about Microsoft products and solutions, you know, we're kind of talking about sharing the same information. So it is more about the story and those personal experiences. I see, I give the same guidance to people about writing. I've had people say, well, you know, I've read there's plenty of content on this, like not in your voice, not with your experience, your story. Exactly. Denny always tells us he's big on blogging and sometimes you just get the writer's block, right? Somebody's already written this. What do I write or whatever? He's like, just put 400 words down. 400 words about what did you see? Did you get an error that just happened? Did you see something really cool? Do you have a tip? Do you have something of, hey, you saw somebody do this and that might have been a great example. Let me give a quick example. If you can do that in 400 words, which is what? A paragraph maybe a paragraph and a half? Yeah, two or three paragraphs. A shorter paragraph. Exactly. Just do it and you should be able to write 400 and half an hour and then it's out the door. So it doesn't have to be this big long blog with all of these graphs and code and this technical stuff. People don't necessarily read that. So yeah, jumping in with the blog thing. I just asked somebody the question. I said, like, what's your average word count on the articles of your blog post? And he said he said, I don't know. It's probably a couple thousand. I was like, I said, you know, and sometimes that's the right number of words I've written longer, plenty of longer things around ideas. Certainly if you're going to write something like an e-book, a white paper, something like that. But for a blog post, how many ideas are you combining? Like, you know, you could stretch that into a five part series where you go through each of the pieces. Why are you killing yourself over this longer technical, longer piece which fewer people are going to read. I was going to say how many people make it past the first two paragraphs. Okay. They just like, okay, or if they scan it and just get the bold words or whatever links that you put down or whatever picture, you just scroll through it and be done. So all of that time, exactly break it down into one a week and then you got five weeks taken care of, right? You know, one of the things that I was nervous about when I started presenting in on more technical topics and doing demos, one was the demos working or my VMs running like all that fun. And then I started somebody wiser, much wiser said pre-record those demos and just run through that and talk through it as you go through. It's still a demo. But was somebody trying to prepare me for being heckled and have you ever had that where somebody called you out or corrected you or challenged you on something? Yeah, that's happened, but it's usually so it's one of those women in tech things. It's usually more of a comment rather than a question or what have you and you got to deal with those kind of things. But most of the time, no, I've gotten pretty good audiences so far in all the sessions that I've spoken at, not too much of that. Usually speakers and other people in the room, if you at least we try, if there's something that was not necessarily correct, you know, you talk to them after the fact, maybe in the hallway or in the speaker room or hey, by the way, you know, let's check this out. Let's prove that this might not be correct and then we can, you know, maybe you can adjust your session or something, but I haven't had experience too. And I kind of feel, I feel bad, like, you know, have I I would like somebody just to outright correct me if I got something wrong. I like to think that I, you know, that while my content has been perfect, the reality is it's not. I've shared things where, like, here's my understanding and like you, I mean, I've had people that have said, well, I've experienced this and here's how I've resolved this adding on to that. But, you know, the one time I had somebody, somebody else other people in the room thought they were heckling, but this person was doing this, was adding on, was extending and I've also seen this like I don't think that quite solves the problem and add to it. And I'm good friends with that person now. I didn't know them then. But I went back and modified my content to answer that question. So I thanked him profusely for helping me out on that topic, but I kind of want to have that experience. So do you still get nervous when somebody that you know that it's really good in whatever you do sits in your sessions. I'm like, oh my gosh, this person isn't my session. I'm going to, you know, waiting for them to do something. I don't personally, because one is confidence in your topic and your material. Like, I generally only speak on things that I know really well. I am like, and this isn't like a vanity thing. It's like, I'm a subject matter of expertise on certain things. That's what I concentrate on. And then I try to when I'm venturing into areas that are new and new features that are out there, lean on the expert. So if I've got somebody in the room, if the product team member or another MVP or RD that is densely, you know, writing about and speaking on that topic, I'll probably quote them in that material. In fact, if I recognize, I just did about a month ago where somebody was sitting in the room and I actually referenced something she wrote about on the topic. It wasn't in my slide, but I actually pointed to her and said, I here's a person that you should ask questions about like that. So that's a good way that you can it's kind of like giving out candy at the beginning of like, if you're teaching like children, you give out candy at the beginning of it, they're usually more better behaved throughout the period. If you if you stroke the egos the strong personalities in the room and you catch that early, then they are more constructive and helpful throughout. Yeah, I think the biggest thing is when I was younger, when I was first starting and those big names would sit in my sessions and stuff like that. Now I don't because I'm friends with all of them, but now it's not that at all. I know their chinks in their armor. I know. Yeah, exactly. But yeah, in the beginning that can be really intimidating when you go and sit in somebody's session and they're like, Oh, don't sit in here. You know, I'm worried, you know, that you're going to correct something or or what have you to get nervous because whoever it is is sitting in the room. So is it part of that, though, having humility as a speaker is a presenter in the first place. I mean, there are some people that go in there are so arrogant is and where people then almost feel like they have to call you out on that find problems in that. But if you're going in there, if you are, you know, you're telling a couple of jokes, you're being personable, you know, that then people generally want to see you succeed and learn from you and add to it and make it more interactive. Yep, I agree. I agree with that. So the hardest thing for me is when you get those audiences where nobody's asking questions. Oh my God. So we spoke at SQL Saturday. Where was it? It wasn't India, Singapore and over in Singapore apparently it's rude to ask questions or interrupt a speaker or anything. So I don't know if you've ever done something over there. It's silent. Yeah, like and it's respectable silent, but you're sitting in there and you're talking there is no engagement whatsoever. And I always pull engagement from my audience. And it was just and I had just come from India. We had done DPS data platform summit over in India and then the following week we did Singapore. It was really interactive over in India. And then we went and was like so we're all coming back to the speaker room but that was eerie. That was weird. I wasn't talking to anyone and it was all just the cultural cultural thing totally different. Well, that's why I try to and I always say at the beginning of my sessions like if you've got questions like interrupt like I'm not a question at the end like let's I want something that's timely that's in context like that but some speakers don't like that they want to get through their material but I'm I look at that as sometimes when I like I just had this situation ran out of time didn't get through all the material I said look I've got this other stuff that's in the slides but we went slightly sideways with other questions and there was value there it was I enjoyed it people came up and said it was a great session afterwards they got a lot of out of that and it's like a look you read the slides for the few other things I try to create content with all the notes and everything in any way so it's downloadable but yeah it's interesting it's good when you're doing international speaking to get a vibe of you talk to other locals like what is the audience like that was interesting yeah total difference because I actually have a slide in mind that has my presentation rules I'm like interrupt me let's have a conversation if you had something because it's performance tuning if I tell you to do this one thing and then you did that before and it was adverse effect let us know because all of our environments are different let's have the conversation don't really worry about the slide deck let's learn from each other and that's you know one of my first slides let's let's just get into it yeah it's hard I always tell people it's like go to the audience I used to do something similar to that I haven't in a while but I used to advise I have questions that you're trying to answer I think I like that style I like it when presenters say hey we're going to cover this material what questions do you have and they list them out even whiteboard them and say we're going to answer these three these other two are outside of this let's talk about this afterwards you know come up and let's have a conversation but that's a great way it's a form of expectation setting and again it always goes more positive when people know I can't remember who said it says like you know tell them what you're going to what you're going to talk about you talk about those things and then recap what you talked about go outline that so they know what they're getting there they know that the coverage was there well especially if they have other places that they can choose right there's other sessions going on at the same time I have no problem if you had an expectation that I'm going to cover this this and that you know what I'm going to cover if it's not falling into that and you're going to get more benefit from another session get up walk out go to the other one it's not about me it's about what you're going to learn right so setting the expectation of what you're going to cover I think that's really important in the beginning I love that too that's especially if you're going to go like I remember doing was down in I think we did it both in Johannesburg and Cape Town but we where we combined SharePoint Saturday and sequel Saturday events they were huge I remember the one in Cape Town and so usually might get in a session down in Cape Town with 200 250 people of the event might get like 25 30 people in my session and this one was packed standing room only people around the back and it was people that were obviously they weren't experts in that that topic they came from the sequel side of things fantastic questions out of that session so what types of events are you doing is it just these community events I'm going to Belgium for what forget what it's called at the beginning of October there is a conference in Belgium my team is going to be there I won't be there it's called it's just blowing my mind for a minute yeah so I've got it in teams and our scrolling to see I know I'm not going to be just had this conversation session so anyways I'm going to be in Belgium I did sequel bits this year I do some sequel Saturdays data Saturdays I did data grilling we did oh so many this year lots of different international ones we're kind of focusing on some of those right now because we couldn't for a while I do virtual events and webinars all time user groups I go down in person I'm trying to get in person more and more to user groups because I run one I know what it's like to get the speakers to get them in the room so I try to do hopefully between five and ten events a year if I can sometimes if they can book them back to back that's the best right I can hit one and then and then the other oh I did pulling I did what I'm pulling this year Oh was that the was it a collab days or was it the AMS or no it was a sequel one of you're going to kill me on names I'm linking out I'm going to check my session eyes it makes it so easy when it's in session eyes because they're all of the sessions are sitting in there let's see my events what did I just do I just did no past events so what was sequel day in May okay so yeah that one's datamines datamines in Belgium is what I'm doing okay so that's the one in October so a couple weeks from now I'm doing a pre-con there all day pre-con on Monday and then I have a session on temp TV I think so you know both technical this time so yeah what one last question user group focus like so how are you with things have gotten very diffused again we used to be a SharePoint user group and now we're just a Microsoft technology group we cover a wide variety of topics that are within that which can make it difficult to find like that audience and pull them in and so we're doing like a lot of user groups are like post COVID how do we and you know so what are you doing are you made any adjustments or changes so we haven't stopped we've had a meeting every month except for one hurricane in the last nine years so we never stopped I kept virtual we never missed a meeting we just got back in person because we lost our venue due to COVID so I finally found a new home for us and we got back in person in March so I'm just now building it up and getting those speakers in and trying to build the audience again we try to stay a sequel focus as possible but we're branching out from just the engine so we'll have data bricks somebody talked about AI as it relates to sequel and and some of those other topics power BI if we need to there's a power BI group so I try not to do that unless we want to merge groups for thing and we're starting to get bodies back in which is good so we're averaging between 14 and 25 people coming in since March now will that fall off I don't know we're trying to stay that focus so I can get my core group back together for now we'll see transitioning from hybrid has been interesting and from being virtual has been interesting of course because we were able to branch out and people from all over the US and you know countries or whatever could join the meetings yeah so we'll see if I get some legs and we keep going in person I did find because I work with a lot of different groups those that have gone hybrid that have them in person and virtual are failing yeah they're failing because it's so easy not to go in right you RSVP and say you're going to come and then you've had a long day you work from home you decided I want to leave the house so you watch it virtually right so it ends up with three people in the room before you'll get your sponsor you'll get your speaker you'll get the leader and then you might get one other person in the room and everybody else is watching virtual so you have a speaker fly in and there's no bodies right so so that's the challenge doing the hybrid thing I know why they do it and those that record it but it I think it's got to get away from that mode we've got to get out of it to get the bodies well you lose all the benefits of the in person you know we're having that discussion it's like for our collab days in next March 1st we said we're not going to do any video we're not going to do any hybrid it's we've got to be there that too and then I have a thing when I do anything virtual I don't have them record my sessions yeah unless it's like for a big conference and it's part of the contract but if you're speaking to 10 user groups it's different when we're in person and it's 10 unique audiences and everything so your whole session is different but when you do something virtual in your session almost stays the same it gets recorded and then you've got 20 copies up there of the same session or why does somebody want to pick that session for the next conference when it's recorded out there or what have you right you missed all of that so I'm trying to get away from that and encouraging other user groups you know I know that something everybody likes we've gotten into this let's stay home and watch things but you're not going to get that transition if we don't yeah no that's the exact conversation we're having and I know I agree I mean we even talked about for when we've done the hybrid and we've done that only make the recordings available for 30 days and then wipe them for that for that reason something we discuss with our speakers as well to make sure because we do want to bring people in that are you know we have folks that are say professional speakers their trainers they're out doing that and so that kind of content they don't want to have a recording of that out there they're out there trying to make a living on that content and expertise as well so you need to be sensitive to that exactly well Monica really appreciate your time and getting to meet you now and I'm sure we'll probably cross paths at the next MVP summit or one of these other events I'm doing more more events I'll be out in the road I think six or seven more times this year I'm adding some like community day some SharePoint Saturday type events as well just trying to get coverage of smaller events as well and like you talked about I'm trying to wrap that into there's a big event like I'm doing live 360 and Orlando and I'm doing twin cities before that and then heading out so nice it's good to combine agreed agreed I'm missing live 360 I'll be in Seattle for summit for ignite yeah it's in the same building same week yeah I know so I that was I was torn between doing the two events so but anyway we'll appreciate the time for folks that want to contact you reach out to you connect with you where are you most active where can they find you I'm SQL espresso everywhere so you can find me on my website Twitter blue sky massive on all of them SQL espresso best way to get a hold of me excellent well thanks a lot for your time have a great one thank you so much