 From theCUBE Studios in Palo Alto in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world, this is a CUBE Conversation. Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and welcome to a CUBE Conversation. I'm coming to you from the CUBE's East Coast Studio offices and joining me is one of our CUBE alums from the earliest CUBE event that we ever did. He's also one of our guest hosts, longtime friend of the program, someone I've known for a long time. John Troyer, the chief Reckoner at Tech Reckoning. John, so good to see you. Thanks so much for joining us. Hey, Stu, thanks for having me on. Dialing in here from sunny Half Moon Bay, California. All right, well, John, first of all, it's been good to talk to you a bunch. Normally we would be seeing you at a number of the conferences of course with today's global pandemic. It stopped us seeing in person, but I tell you, a month ago, you held the influencer marketing council and it was one of those weeks where it was just kind of everything's changing, the world is upside down and it was just so nice to talk to, so many of our peers in the community, the people that we've known for a long time, and just commiserate a little bit at first and then all share as to how we're moving forward and what we're doing. So bring us up to speed as to what you're seeing out there in the community. Sure, sure. Well, Stu, I mean, that's one of the ironies of the place we're at here, right? We're learning that connection is so important. We know it is, but we tend to lump it in together with conferences and with sales calls and seminars, webinars, and we're learning that this kind of connection, these relationships are what we as humans are built on and also what business is built on, business is built of relationships. So I work a lot with companies doing, work with their practitioner communities, with advocacy, customer advocacy, partner advocacy, with influencers outside their ecosystem, these kind of relationship-based ways to get attention and ways to fill the funnel. And they've really kind of been both pulled apart and put center stage on this current, with our current pandemic. Yeah, it's interesting, because you think about like, what was online before and there in a lot of communities? You think about the forums there, the way you communicate, lots of online things, short meetups are a huge part of what goes on and those big events that you get together. So is there anything you've seen that's drastically changed, obviously from an event standpoint, we'll spend some time talking about virtual events and the like, but influencer groups, the kind of Vexperts and MVPs of the world, has there been any immediate impact on those groups? Well, sure, I mean, a lot of times there are, like you said, there is a component of offline as well as online to these programs. I mean, going back to the vendor side, the org charts are always confused in the first place, does this belong in digital? Does this belong somewhere else? But the best programs always have face-to-face meetings and of course, those are off the table now. So that really kind of levels the playing field in a certain way. You still have people at home, the people who are working are working harder than ever, a lot of layoffs in the industry. So those people are kind of either trying to cope, some of them have time for more creative outlets. So we're seeing a resurgence in people making content and discussions and online forums and online discussion. So that's really interesting. A lot of- John, sourdough bread, you forgot the sourdough bread. You're making sourdough bread. I made some this morning. It was pretty good. The nice thing is it levels the playing field, right? Whether you're in Croatia or Cleveland or the middle of Silicon Valley, you can start to attend these things. I mean, I know some folks who were saying, I was hampered by attending meetups because I have a family or a childcare or a job duties and now they're able to attend virtually. So even if it's in a different city. So in some ways, this is a great leveler. This allows us, everyone to participate to the level of their interest and their energy. You know, but there are downsides. Yeah, no, absolutely. One of the questions, there were always the people like, oh, I'm feeling left out because I'm not at that event. Well, you know, absolutely. You mentioned, you know, the home strains are there. You know, if you had a family situation that might have kept you from traveling, well, chances are you probably have some family things that might not free you up to be able to spend, you know, multiple hours doing things, but it shifts it and it does level the playing field. So right, you know, whether I'm sitting in Bangalore, India, you know, somewhere in Croatia or, you know, in Silicon Valley, they're all sitting at home right now and, you know, all looking through their webcams and talking through the internet. So sounds like, right, they're, I'm curious if you think there will be lessons learned and it is early days, of course, but one of the questions we say is, you know, what will we have as a takeaway from there and what will be permanent when we talk about, say, communities and how we engage with them? Well, the whole kind of community developer relations space is always a little bit, it's a little bit aside from revenue producing, right? So it's not quite straight marketing. It's not really revenue producing. So there's always a tension there in the tech community. The folks that are connected to their business, the folks that have developed relationships and have that already created asset of these existing relationships are doing well, especially if they're connected back to their business. Because this is a time to make those connections to retrench, my family is talking a lot more and your ecosystem, your tech family should be talking a lot more, your customers and partners. So those folks are doing well. We've also seen a lot of layoffs because these are seen in some companies as non-essential or as just non-productive. And if I got to cut something, you know, the community team goes, if it's not strategically connected to, you know, back to the business. So I think one of the lessons is those relationships in a time like this are strategically important. And I mean, we can drill down on that, but I think that's gonna be one of the takeaways that the companies that have built these networks and built their strong ecosystems are gonna come out the winners here. I mean, John, you brought up a big point here. As we speak right now, I think the number in the US is over the last five weeks, it's about 30 million people that are out of a job. Those are staggering numbers. I mean, it had been decades, you know, there was never a million of new unemployed here and 30 million just, you know, does boggle the mind. Then you have companies like Amazon that have hired 170,000 people and it's not just the manufacturing, you know, and the distribution of things. I've seen people get hired by AWS during these times, but it is, you know, it feels like there's a little bit of falling on some of the movement. Some people that had had jobs frozen a month ago now seem that they are now moving through the system again there, but absolutely the financial ripples of what's happening here are something that is going to be with us for many quarters going forward. Yeah, I think one of the other lessons that we'll learn is the nature of events, right? We were in event overload, the cube is a witness to that. You're on the road many, many weeks a year. In fact, you have to clone yourself. There's so many, you have multiple teams out on the road during conference season. And a lot of people were saying there's too much. I can't get, there's just too many events. I can't go to them all. I can't even pay attention to them. Well, now we're trying to take all those events and squirt them through the tiny pinhole of a digital experience. And Twitter and Facebook and video like this, you had a multi-channel, very rich interactive experience. You could get somebody to commit and get away from their house for a few days and pay attention. We're beginning, I think, to rethink what this, how this marketing playbook works, right? The digital event has many different roles. Yeah, no, you're absolutely right. Donna, I had been asking for a few years to dial down some my travel. I didn't ask for it to go to zero. So I'd be careful what you wish for out there, but good, I'm glad you brought up the virtual events, digital events, whatever you want to call them. We know as an industry that there is work to be done to make them better. You were just an interruption or a mouse click away from being pulled away from this online environment and everyone is learning as we go. We've been spending a lot of time working with companies, trying to learn lessons, trying to ask the questions about what is critically important. And engagement, it's tough. We know community, John, is something that isn't that you just stand it up. It is constant care and feeding. And when events going on, community is a piece of that thing. And how do we maintain that in a virtual world? So anything you've seen that you like or things that you'd like to see more when it comes to, how do we make things engaging? And how do you make people feel welcomed in part of it rather than just watching something on the web and streaming content at me? I think there's a few things. One is we're blowing the digital experience apart, right? There are multiple jobs to be done. There are multiple audiences. I went to a big conference today. I'm not a practitioner for this particular tech company. I'm not interested in all the breakouts. I am interested in the keynotes and I would be interested in some networking. So a large part of kind of community developer relationship, all these, this relationship building happens during and after their dinners and receptions and things like that. So you can replace that and it doesn't have to be right after the big keynote. So we're breaking these things apart. I see people, I've talked to different vendors breaking big events into a series of smaller events, breaking it into audiences and executive series of events, a practitioner series of events. And then I think frankly, the produced thing, the produced component of the show can use an upgrade too. I mean, I'm looking at the way our TV talk shows have adapted over the last month or two and they all started off with like a crappy webcam or an iPhone. And now many of them have a very interesting format that have adapted to their hosts and their guests being both at home and separate. So there's a psychological through comfort level and through line to having an anchor, to having a host, things like that maybe isn't necessary when you're 5,000 people in an auditorium and clapping. It's just a different feeling. So John, are we calling to see, you know, which executive has a child that can help with some hand drawn slides and things that they can put up there? You never know. That's been a rather interesting one. Many people have commented that they like the evening news now when the kids and the wife and the dog and the husband interrupt, right? It's humanizing. And frankly, that's my business and that's what I help companies do is humanize themselves and, you know, you can sprinkle a little bit in. I mean, we'll get tired of the kids hand drawn stuff, you know, if we're staying at home for too many more months. Yeah, you know, I kind of wonder enterprise sales, is that the message we want going through when we want you to do, you know, a subscription that will be millions of dollars a year that there's a hand drawn thing. So a little bit of a gap between the enterprise and, you know, what they might take, but you bring up a really good point, right, John? That experience, personalizing it, absolutely is something that can be done. You know, one of the things we've been talking to all our clients about is you don't just take a physical event and lift it onto some, you know, website and think that, you know, you're going to have some success. You need to think about that audience, focus on what they do. You know, we're always, of course, focused on the cube is, you know, we want really good content and, you know, real conversations with people. And, you know, you brought up, right? That interaction that I get at shows, how much can I make people feel that I've talked to people? You should be able to get more, you know, executive access. And if you're a customer, you know, I've heard some good things. It's like, hey, you want to break out and talk to an SE, you know, live on a chat. The platforms can enable that sort of thing. So, you know, you want to be able to talk. You want to be able to make it personal down to small groups or even individuals. And there is the opportunity to do that. A lot of times people talk about the hallway track. But you've got to realize the hallway track is not the same for everybody. If you have gone to the same conference for 10 years and you know a lot of the people and see familiar faces, the hallway track is great. You run into people, oh, hey, oh, hey. And that's when the real work gets done. But if you are a newcomer to an ecosystem, if you are a new prospect coming in here, even if I provided you the same virtual hallway track, it's not going to work for you. So again, we come back to the companies that have established these relationships, who have built these, you know, have these onboarding experiences, now are going to be the winners. If you just have a bunch of strangers, I mean, you might as well just do an hour webinar and see who you can spam, you know, get your internal sales to call everybody the next day. Right, I'm listening to you and I'm thinking of, you know, the blogger lounge at VMworld where, you know, you and I go and we know lots of people but we also meet lots of new people because they show up and everybody is like, hey, you need to meet all of these other people. So you're right, there's ways to be able to take those influencers and those people to help concierge, help make connections and do those things. A couple of real straightforward tips though. Single track things work really well for those scale events because you can just drop in, you know exactly what's live. Multi track, very much harder to figure out what's going on live. I know it's live. The other thing I've seen from a lot of tech community events is an accompanying Slack with prerecorded talks and with the speaker then in different Slack channels, the speaker's there, you can chit-chat while it's live. So it's Slack or any kind of chat. But Slack, you know, if you're already in a community Slack, that works really well. So this kind of dual multi-channel live interaction I think can be one of the things that works right away. Yeah, absolutely, you know, a little plug that's similar to what we'll have for DockerCon. So on the content tracks, you know, most of them I believe will be, you know, recorded ahead of time. So those experts, you'll actually be able to ask questions. They'll be interacting in real time, you know, whether you like it threaded or unthreaded, there's options that we're choosing on that kind of stuff. All right, John, wanna give you the final word. You know, obviously we're kind of in the middle of things here. You know, it feels like we're in the new abnormal if it were, but, you know, right here at the end of April, just about into May, some states are opening up. We don't know when we'll be able to go from 10 people to 25 to 50 or more people. So, you know, trying to understand some of those pieces. What are you looking for going forward? Any last tips you wanna give the community? Well, I think we're in, I think we're in kind of in here for a long haul, at least before we bring 80,000, 100,000 people together from all over the world. So, you know, the old saw is, you know, the best time to plan a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is today. You figure out what your metrics are. They're not gonna be the same as the old metrics. You figure out what your audiences are looking for. What's in it for them? Do they want training? Do they want networking? And you start to deliver it to them and you iterate. None of us, look, community people and developer relations people aren't experts at digital marketing. Event people aren't experts at digital marketing. In fact, the digital marketing people aren't experts at digital marketing in this context. So, we're all learning. And, you know, it's gonna, there's gonna be a lot of money spent and we'll figure it out eventually. You know, I think over the course of this year. Yeah, absolutely. It's the learning mindset is what we all need. The things that have, you know, brought my spirits up the most are the communities engaging, whether it's working on the pandemic or just, you know, sharing what they've seen, what they'd like to do better. That collaboration has been something really good to see. All right. John Schreyer, great to see you as always. Look forward to talking much more with you in the future. And thanks again. Thanks for having me, Stu. Stay safe. All right. Stu Miniman, thanks as always for joining us and watching theCUBE.