 Hey, this is Christian Buckley with another MVP BuzzChat interview and it's great to have you this morning. I'm talking with Mihaila. Hello. Hello. Thank you for having me. It's a great honor to actually be invited to your podcast. Why don't we start that? Let's do it in like a full introduction. Like, you know, who you are, what you do, where you're located, all those details. Okay. Well, I'm a software engineer located in Romania, simply said. I'm interested in everything that has to do with the technical world. I'm still discovering a lot of things since I'm sort of in the beginning of my career. I like to believe that. And I like to combine public speaking and training with what I know, what I do in my job and try to grow by learning from others and also preparing the content for others. It's like a brand new MVP. I mean, you'd like just earned it in developer technologies, which is actually a broad category. And I've met, I've talked and interviewed people that are more on the non-technical side of developer technologies, but they just kind of found their way into a niche within the space and earned their MVP. So kind of what was your path into becoming an MVP? Well, for me, it was first the passion of knowledge sharing and presentations. And then I found out about MVP. So I started, yeah, because I saw a lot of people speaking at conferences and being passionate about what they were talking about. And I saw that energy. So I was like, okay, maybe I can also give something to the people in front of me. Maybe I know something that someone is interested. And so I started like this, had a successful presentation the first time that I actually held a presentation and very good feedback. And I just got that energy. And I fell in love with it and started to just presenting and preparing every time I had the occasion. And then at some point to someone that is located in the ash, and yeah, we got to know each other from the conferences, he was like, okay, you are having so many activities and you are speaking at conferences and preparing all sorts of meetups and things like this. Why don't you just apply for an MVP award. And I was very like, what I'm so at the beginning and what I, I don't know, I had the, I had doubts regarding to if I would really be successful. So I tried and yeah, it worked in the end. And I appreciate the fact that actually he got me into finding the cottage to do this. That's one of the, I think the kind of misnomers about the MVP is that, you know, some people think well, and there are plenty of MVPs out there that are my go to technical resources for certain areas. But being an MVP doesn't necessarily mean that you are the expert on all of those topics in there. You've got expertise, deep expertise within it that is a requirement. But it has as much to do with sharing. There are plenty of people that are very smart, brilliant architects, but they are not like the social aspect of they don't do the community activities that would automatically kind of push them into the MVP community. So it's, there's a lot to be said about that, that volume and like what was your first topic that you presented on? Do you remember? The first time that I talked, it was about clean code. Yeah, so best practices, clean code, solid principles, if I remember. Yeah, things like this. Well, that's the kind of stuff too that so I found that, you know, even when I was, I started my career as, as a technical project manager. And so when I first did user groups and things that I would present on methodology and I would talk about my interactions, my teams, it wasn't me going in there saying, I know all, here's how you do all of these things. I was sharing my experience. My, I worked in the telephony world. I worked for the telephone company Pacific Well back then, my first user group. And here's the what I do. This is how we do it, why we did it. And in fact, I think my first topic was on building a front door process for our organization's portal and what we did and why we did it. And I got so much feedback from other people who had had similar experiences that I went back and shared. I changed my presentation. I did another version of that. But I also it impacted my day job. I improved the solution because of the feedback that I received, which I would never would have had if I hadn't had the, you know, the gumption to get up and to talk about it from that perspective. That's a lot about what's being an MVP is as well, just sharing your perspective, your experiences. All of my presentation until this moment or and all the content actually that I'm creating, it's based on things that, okay, I encountered in my day to day work or issues that I managed to solve somehow or things that maybe other developers or other teams, if they would know the experience that I have, maybe I could help them. So this is how I actually create content. I really believe in the fact that a presentation or any sort of content sharing, it's more effective when you actually add that experience, that personal experience. Because yeah, talking just the theory is not really working. It's not talking to the audience. And that's the thing too, is that I mean, there are not knocking people that go and write the detailed walkthrough articles or create videos of how to do things. But so much of the benefit of, especially for an in-person presentation, but I would even argue for those, if you're doing that documentation to share those personal stories, that personal experience, the industry specific nuances of the solution that you're building as well. Because you may go build a solution in the healthcare space that might be 95% the same as somebody in financial services, but then they have special nuanced needs. And so it's valid to go do another version of that when you've had that experience with that other industry, or for somebody else with an industry to have, to kind of piggyback on the work that you've done, but then share their version of that in their space with their experience. Yeah, and in this way, you also receive some feedback on the solution that you have, because maybe someone had, as you were saying, the same experience, maybe a bit into the details a bit different, and you're like, okay, they solved it in another way. And that way maybe is helping you also to go further with what you're doing. So it's, I'm having this feeling that when someone is presenting, everyone is like, okay, that person knows it all and it has the best solution. But it's not like that. I really feel that for me, it's a growing experience and a lot of knowledge sharing in both ways when I'm presenting, when I'm talking to people. You know, it's my favorite format, whether for like a conference or like I just did yesterday, or sorry, today's Friday. Yeah, so on Wednesday, time is meaningless now, you know, but had a panel discussion where we're doing it. We did an AMA style ask me anything. And we're answering community questions. And what I love about that is, again, having having five, six people addressing a problem, it may be that only one person knows part or the entire answer to the question, or you might have five or six completely different perspectives, but add to, we might have each have an experience with that problem and have part of a solution. But we then add to that. And so I learned so much from having participated in that. And you know, to your point, I mean, nobody is a complete expert on any, well, I was gonna say there's nobody's an expert on everything on a single topic, but that's not true. There are people out there that that know everything about that. But generally speaking, even those experts that in depth on a technology don't have your industry experience, don't have your experiential learning, your interactions, or don't have your voice in your experience. Like, again, I bring to the table my years as a business analyst, project manager, and that's a perspective I brought into my entire career. And so I always go back to that, how would a PM, how would a BA treat this technical problem? And I feel like I help represent that voice in technical solutions. Yeah, I remember that the first time that I was about to present like the night before or something like this, I was very emotional because again, my imposter syndrome kicked in and it was like, what am I doing here? I'm not supposed to be here. I'm not supposed to talk to a conference. I'm too young and inexperienced. And there is someone that actually said some words to me that I just keep on playing them in my mind every time I feel this sort of, I have this sort of feeling. And he says something like this, okay. So basically, of course, there might be people that know more than you on that matter. And of course, there might be people that know less on that subject. But you have to think that in the way that your content is built in this moment and with your slides and your speech and everything, you know the best, like that form. It's your best and you know it best. Of course, you are going to learn. Of course, you are going to teach others, but you have to be confident about the presentation that you've created in the state that it is now. And then you can just develop it and grow more from that. So that was like the best advice that I received. And I give it forward, of course. That's exactly the point is that you are sharing your experiences. And somebody then provides that feedback. Somebody asks a question. If I don't know the answer to, I have gone back on most of my sessions. I love getting that kind of feedback. One of the worst things is that you get an audience and they're just quiet. They're not asking questions. You're like, did I present the right content? Did I address your questions? And that's one thing that's hard about online versus in-person. If you can see that people are disconnecting, disengaged, or if they're just like, no, in the side conversation, be like, then you can point to them and be like, is there a scenario that I missed here? I've gone and modified presentations with that. I love that interaction. Yeah. Well, even though for me, I have to admit that the pandemic was a very good period for public speaking and the conferences, because I had the chance to travel all over the world and present. Indeed, you lose that connection with your audience. And when you are presenting and you have the audience in front of you, you can see if one of them is maybe a bit bored and things like this. Or you can get the vibe of the room and try to adjust to that. So you're maybe just doing the joke out of nowhere, just to get the energy going again. And when you're on an online conference, it's like so quiet when you're speaking to your camera and you don't get the feedback. So you try to do it as, I don't know, to try to have the energy as up as possible in order to maybe try to engage with the audience. So yeah, it's hard. I find that no one ever talks about the benefits of schizophrenia and having voices in your head, because you can give yourself feedback, have arguments with somebody in the fake audience as you're presenting. It could be a real plus for online content. Yeah, sometimes when I'm doing a joke and yeah, because it's my natural way of presenting or talking, it's like, okay, I said the joke and I know it's funny, but is it funny for you guys also? And yeah, you can hear any feedback and you're like, okay, moving. My favorite thing, my personality is I do the, so I try to deliver very dry. And so people are just like, is he serious? Did he, you know, not know? Like one of my favorites, I was an audience in New Zealand and I did, I butchered the measurement, the conversion to metric on purpose. I just ridiculous numbers and just kept on talking and everybody laughed and I turn and I'm like, what? That's accurate. Is it, you know, just kind of kind of thing. I love that kind of, you know, that same thing. It's a great way, one, to check a pulse of an audience, you know, if they're reacting, if they're not asking questions and they're, this is my interpretation. If they're not asking questions, yet they then laugh at the bit there in my presentation. I know that it's like, well, I'm more confident that what I'm delivering is at least they're listening. And then I may be answering the questions there. But I do find that my style is that I will constantly ask for questions. I'm not a wait until the end to ask your questions. I'm very much like an interrupt me with the question right there when it's relevant, when it's contextual. I know what's, what's your preference? I also like to, to discuss. And the, and here also depends on, I saw that it depends on the conference type. And right now I'm talking for the in person presentation, because when you have a limited time and someone is just after you, you have to be very careful with your time. And sometimes there are people in the audience that just try to discuss their specific topic. So you're like, okay, but let's just discuss after that and see exactly if we can touch into details. And what I've seen when it comes to online presentations is the fact that with unmuting and muting yourself again, and you can't really have that ask along the way question. So you have to leave it for, for the end. So yeah, indeed, it's, it's very weird to talk like for 45 minutes or half an hour and not having any feedback. And then in the end, just wait for the for the questions. Well, one of the things I think we've learned kind of on that. And I wish that you're more when you're running a session yourself and it's all you it's hard to monitor discussion and what's going on while you're trying to present and deliver, especially within a timeframe, having a moderator. And we've done this for years, of course, with with webinars, formal webinars. But when we've done hybrid events or just purely online events, when you have the presenter can be left to focus on that content. But you have somebody who's specifically looking for questions, and then we'll raise their hand and cue that up and ask, like, Hey, Christian, stop you. There was a question about your comment on here about this, and they can kind of cue them up. It's, it's fantastic to have that as a resource. So I would almost argue that for your closest that you can get to in person for online is having the presenter and having someone they're moderating, they don't need to get in there, they don't need to facilitate and speak on there other than, you know, asking questions and being there for the online community. That that's kind of my takeaway from, you know, doing this, like we all been doing it online, but actually doing helping them run the hybrid portion of two in person events the last year and a half. We've got wonderful reviews on, you know, the fact that the moderators that that process helps so people felt more connected and felt heard, because they were able to pause the session and ask the questions that they weren't able to ask. Yeah. But in here, it's also a thing that I've noticed is that in online, people don't ask so many questions. And like, at some point, I just asked for feedback from other MVPs. And I was curious about, okay, maybe it's something wrong with me, and I have to change something in my presentation. But no, I saw that it's maybe it's also because of the lack of interaction. You don't have the same interaction. It feels like, or maybe the audience has the sensation that it's just looking at a video, or just, you know, a tutorial that you that you are. So maybe it's the brain actually that is making some. So what do you do to dissolve that kind of what are your tactics? First of all, as you were saying, I let the discussion open during the entire presentation. But also in the end, I'm just asking like more specific questions from the presentation, as in how you solve this thing, like, okay, let's discuss a bit and do some knowledge sharing about I'm having this and I solve it like this, but I'm not really sure of the solution. How is there anyone that actually work with this, you know, I'm trying to just put some specific questions and asking for some help just to open the conversation and see exactly if really there are no questions or is just that sensation that okay, let's just finish this because, oh my God, I'm tired of looking at my laptop. So one of the things I love doing is going through on a topic that I've done, especially this session I've done several times is I'll have a list of the common questions that I that I receive, or that I, you know, that I have received for that, or that I see on the topic. It's a great way to kind of summarize, hopefully, you know, you've covered that content and answered that, but you know, answer those questions. But that could be a way to kind of free people up so that you're, you don't have dead space of sitting there waiting for someone to ask a question and it's always awkward. If they wait too long, then they're less likely to ask the question because of that big pause there. But if you ask for questions, and then immediately you say, hey, real quick, I mean, this is a common question that I received on this topic and then answer that and then go back again. Hey, are there any questions? Then have another if still nothing say another question I hear all the time is, is this that technique usually gets people thinking it frees up, you know, hey, well, I had this experience and what do you do about this? And it can turn into more of a conversation. But that's that's kind of my way of doing that. That's painful when actually it's a good, it's a good approach. I think that I was doing is trying always to do a better presentation the next time that I'm going to present the same content is by answering both the common questions into the presentation while presenting. But this is also a very good approach on just having more engagement at the Q&A session. I do the same thing. I mean, that's that's how I update that content. In fact, I'll I even say that, you know, while sometimes the title of the session that I do at two different online events might be the same, but rarely is the content exactly the same. I will I'm constantly updating my my kind of my active decks, my those the sessions, the topics that I'm speaking on. And so every time I give it, I've made modifications that like that part didn't really work. Don't be had those questions or I know it's shocking. Microsoft changes stuff all the time. And so making sure that it's up to date is important as well. So yeah, well, let me let me ask you to just the last couple of minutes here. So you so you a developer technologies MVP, kind of what is the scope? What's your passion? What do you focus on within that space? Well, as I was saying, I'm talking a lot about my experiences. So I'm interested in architecture. And also, I talked a lot about APIs and this collaboration between the client side and the server side and also about how many technologies we have at hand right now and how to choose them. So all the things that I encountered along the way I'm talking about right now or what I've worked the most lately, it's with front end technologies more basically on the angular part and also some DevOps and in the area of technical leadership. So I'm trying to combine it and then I just find something that okay, this might be interesting to to share. So this is the area I'm still trying to to find let's say my way. And I'm experimenting a lot with with different areas just to to grow also and yeah, be a better maybe content deliver, yeah, to deliver better content for for the people in front of me. Well, that's that's a I mean, that's a great goal to have out there to constantly be, you know, developing that building that content. And again, I learned better when I'm writing, building content, interviewing people, you know, about about different things than if I just had my day job just did it, there will always be just my personality type, there always be a community aspect of what I do is because I learn through doing and through the interaction by collaborating with people that the name of my series is collab talk, it's about, you know, kind of twofold, like the focus of my most of my career has been in collaboration technology. But it's also about, you know, collaboration and talk and chat, collab talk sounded better than collab chat. That was actually I thought of calling it but you know, so it's it's about, you know, we can do more and learn so much more as, you know, from a community perspective than we can do on our own, which isn't say sometimes you don't carve off and go do your own thing and focus and read and learn and do some things. But you need to come back and validate those things and that's just a tremendous power of community in helping us all collectively learn and improve and help each other. There is a saying that, you know, you've understood a certain topic, if you can explain it to a four year, a four year old kid. And I'm always thinking about the fact that going to this path and the preparing content actually helped me help me grow a lot and gain a lot of knowledge because I'm always thinking about, okay, do I understand this concept? Really, if I'm having this issue is because I'm not like fully aware of the context or is just actually a problem. So a lot of people think that when you're in front of an audience or when you're preparing any sort of content is because you know it everything or because you had all the experiences. And I think that we just don't realize how this can be a motivation and a way of learning for the one that it's also presenting not only for ones that are in front of and just listening. Well, you know, and on that last one, last question here, have you ever had a heckler in a presentation? Like a true heckler, somebody who's just trying to trip you up or maybe they know a lot about the topic and they're trying to poke holes in your presentation. Have you ever experienced that? I had at some point, but it wasn't it wasn't that bad. I had along the way, yeah, people that knew maybe more than me and they were more experienced. But I was lucky enough to have that respect from them and to understand that, yeah, maybe my audience was at another level or maybe some parts of the presentation were for another level. But what I really liked is the fact that after that they still came to me and yeah, there were people that I respected in the industry and they came to me and gave me feedback and told me what they like about the presentation. During the presentation, no, not so much. I haven't had bad experiences. Thank God. I've heard of other people having that. It's like I've never had that kind of experience either. I mean, I had in one presentation early on where a young guy was just making suggestions for improving the session. It was a brand new session and people afterwards came up and was like, I can't believe that he called you out. They did that stuff. I'm like, he was right. It was awesome feedback and I'm really good friends with him now and he became an MVP a few years later. But I mean, I hear about these other interactions and I've seen it a couple of times where it's more negative. But for the most part, I mean, people recognize that kind of the trolling of speakers. They recognize that for what it is and you have to be a little thick skinned. But having said that, you're right. When people have respect for that and they see that you are responding to that and acknowledging that's a perspective I've not covered or that I wasn't aware of that. That's that new change. I'm going to go in research that needs to be included with them a presentation. Thank you very much. Let's talk afterwards. Point me in the right direction so I can improve the content and people respond to that. And also, I noticed that when there are situations like this, the audience is very like helping the speaker. They are trying just to give maybe answers or just they are trying to like make that person fade away and let the speaker continue. So that's nice because the audience really tries to like the group really tries to help the person that is speaking. And that's nice. It's again, for the ones that have, I don't know, a fear of public speaking. Maybe this is a point to take into consideration that the audience is always trying to help the speaker. There are exceptions of course, but generally it works like this. Well, there's a whole other discussion getting into like the fear of presenting. That's another topic for another day. Well, Mahalia, I really appreciate you doing this interview and talking about your experience, your path in the MVP program. For folks that want to find out more about you, get in touch with you. What are the best ways to reach you? They can reach me on LinkedIn. That's where I'm mostly active. And then there you can find a lot of other ways to discuss with me through Twitter and also my email. So yeah. Excellent. Well, thanks so much. Have a great weekend. I know at the end of your day, I'm just kind of at the beginning of mine here with a nine-hour difference here, but thanks so much for your time and we'll talk to you soon. Thank you for having me and have a great weekend.