Worst Mistakes, LinkedIn and Community

Well this is Unpivot and I am not appearing on the screen. The phrase ends up. It's is this is why we don't do live streams for the very first few episodes. Yes. Yeah, we can okay. That's good for the podcast. All right, I'll try and get back on there in a second. Um let's just do the introductions. Uh welcome to Unpivot, uh, the show for excellent power guy people and anyone who loves chatting about data. I'm Wynn Hopkins. I'm not prompt. I'll say bye. And I'm Giles, like Cher.

Yeah. Excellent work. I was gonna say, uh if if you haven't watched the or listened to the last episode, I just sound weird saying that, but there's context. From the last intro. Are there any other famous Giles in the world? Th there there's Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, that's the only one I'm aware of. Am I showing my age there? Do we all remember Buffy the Vampire Slayer? No. Don't remember Charles. Don't remember. I don't remember a Giles in. No.

No. Right, so what's what's news? What's the anybody blogs life? Let's should we start with life first?

Yeah. Oh, I'm excited about patinated reports. Do you want me to do live? Life's cool. Been swimming, been running, been to Greece. Woo-hoo-hoo. Loving life. How is Greece? Oh Greece was amazing. Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. Very cool. I just wanted to ask'cause I've actually been to Bali so I've got some comeback.

If I'd been sat on my own for, you know, in the house for two weeks, I wouldn't have asked a follow up question, but I was just leading leading you guys in to go, Oh, probably when you might. Yeah, so Greece was Greece was lovely. How was Bart? Bali was very nice to you, thank you very much. Right, paginated reports. So in Power BI you can't you can only print what's on the screen. So paginated or reports are a way to have um data that goes out more than one page.

And report builder is um a bit faffy to use and quite old. Rydyn ni'n gallu ei wneud y gallu ei wneud y gallu ei wneud ynghylch ynghylch ynghylch ynghylch ynghylch ynghylch ynghylch ynghylch. Bye-bye. So is that in because it's on the service, that means it's not in preview, it's just there, is that right? Yeah. It's that. Just no. Yeah. Depending upon the tenant. be in every country around the world, right as of the second, but it'll appear

Yeah. Generally. I just had a quick look. It's there for me, which is rare. Normally it's not. I've I've done a very, very quick little LinkedIn post to show how to do it. Nice. I didn't know about it, Sue, until you just sent me an email about it. I was like, oh wow, that is cool. But I was working with working with my customer, we're working at automating process a process and I was like, Oh if we put it into here and I went, Oh, I'm gonna have to do but oh look what I can do.

Yeah, yeah, it's very exciting. For the Excel, you know, users out there that who want to export to Excel. the paginated report can export to Excel as well. Yeah. So and you can actually pretty much do unlimited let's say you want to use Power BI to pull in a whole bunch of CSV file data into one massive data set or data table.

You could use then a paginated report to either export to Excel or to CSV. I did it with I tested it with ten million rows a while back and it took a while, but it it did export it. I think some nice use cases. Yna, yna. Yna, yna. Yna, yna. Yna, yna. Yna, yna. Yna, yna. Yna, yna. Yna, yna. Yna, yna. Yna, yna. Yna, yna. It's just great. They hid that one at the bottom of the blog post, didn't they?

I know, I know. But I just I I saw it somewhat. You know, we were talking about staying up to date the other week. And, you know, and you think you just sometimes you just have to glance things and just register without going to and I remember seeing it and thinking, ooh. So yeah, found it. Excited. Do you think the Excel with the Excel team and the Power BI team, do you think they Sometimes just don't realize that

how important some of the little things are. And they sort of raise up some of the more fancy stuff to the top and then they make all these little changes in the background and you just go, when did that happen? And why don't they shout about it? Because it impacts Do you three get a sense from that? Because you you're you're uh you're in touch through the MVP route, aren't you, with the with the Microsoft team? Do you do you ever get a sense of where their heads at with priorities for updates?

I mean I I'm only a new M V P so um it's difficult to say, but I think sometimes, you know, there is a there is a drive for Mae'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio'n gweithio Okay. And uh you know, it it it'll just save so much time for a lot of people. I think a lot of this stuff it depends on the you have to understand what Mark saw. Goal or strategy is.

So because they are on their c at least this this is just my opinion by the way. They're on their cloud route. They're driving towards cloud. They want everything on to be their power platform, everything else. So They, in my opinion, they will always prioritize a feature that will be on cloud compared to other features that might be useful. So for example, Python in Excel is is a cloud feature.

keep pushing through with that. They're gonna push through with the other features which are all help to benefit that cloud and power platform piece, but other things which are just niggles which desktop users would would love them to be fixed'cause they're not high on the priority chain. At some point they might get fixed, but

uh at some point they they might not be. So I think it's really about understanding Microsoft's strategy, what what they want to do, and that's where the priorities come from. Okay, gotcha. Eso es lo que yo creo.

There's there's often little hidden you know gems that they don't announce really, you know, like can control shift v place values in Excel. Yes. You know, or or unhide all sheep. You know, those those sorts of little things that used to be just big hassles are just they're slowly, slowly picking away at them. Um Yeah. Um any other news? What other news? Anything else happening, Giles? I've got news. I've got oh Mark.

No, no, no, because you put your hand up and I I did I did that last time. Go on, you go. I've got two bits of news. First of all I've got a cold so I apologise to anyone who's listening who thinks Mark sounds a bit croaky today. The other day I was I was on a uh I was on a tool that I use quite often. It's a cloud based tool. Uh I decided to be a a good boy because I was I was reaching my my limit of how many transactions I was allowed.

So I went through the official tool of clearing down some of the older stuff that I no longer needed. And when I did that, the majority of my current stuff disappeared completely as well. No. Yeah, exactly. So I then went through the the help like the the the help thing, which of course a chat bot comes up instantly. How can I help you? And you're like, you can't help me with this. Right.

I mean you'll just look through the documentation and tell me the fact this can't happen or it doesn't happen or it never happens, blah, blah, blah. So so of course I put in the most useful uh prompt you can put into a chat bot, can I speak to a human?

Which I mean it did, you know, it got me through to a human who told me the fact that um But the uh Although they take backups of stuff, they you know, they make sure they back up but they can't recover anything because it was my fault and I I'd done it was like, hang on, no, no, no, no. Eventually we had we went back and forth a few times and they eventually decided it was a bug on their side.

And all the records are still there, but I just can't see them unless I do these specific filters that then display them to me. So so I'm still waiting for them to fix this this bug. I mean it was a Thankfully, I mean I'd I'd kept backups of stuff just in, you know, of of files just to make sure but equally wouldn't it just kind of ten thousand rows of stuff just disappears. You just kinda like uh that that was a bad that was a bad afternoon. Uh combined with my cold, it was uh it was

It w it it wasn't going well. But thankfully the stuff is all there. I just can't see it. A when when when when some cloud third party provider says we take backups of everything, you don't need to worry, they don't trust them because they're backing up for their purposes and not yours. So when you hash something up, it doesn't mean they're gonna oh We will restore the backup because it won't that will restore backup for everyone. And equally, even if you do hash it up.

Which in this case was not my hash app, but even if you do, are they even going to help you or just go, well, I'm sorry, you deleted it, it's your own fault. Um So there's There's some there's some lessons that ev even though they even'cause they I said, You must have logs of what's been deleted and they're like, Well it's it's not in the delete log, so therefore we can't help you. It's not in the delete log'cause it didn't get deleted. But Mm. Thank you.

But that so that's that's my lesson for the um for the week and hopefully people can can learn from that. Is the lesson you should just always use Excel for everything. Is that what I'm hearing? Just just don't ever step beyond Excel. That's Uh that's all I mean that if if it were a tool that Excel could handle then yes, but uh Yeah. No don't trust any system.

Do any of you you have backups of your SharePoint OneDrive site? Do you actually run backups of that? Or you're relying on the SharePoint One's OneDrive holding Yeah. But we we now back up our SharePoint as well. I think I'm gonna start after this conversation. I didn't think we were back in it.

It wasn't Microsoft at all. But equally it was a that I'd never even thought about backing up my SharePoint. Why would I, right? Until that on Tuesday and I'm like, I need to keep backups of I need to keep hard copy backups of everything from because you just ca you can't trust that even if they say, Yeah, we'll keep backups for you, but if your systems goes wrong, are you even gonna help me? So that that's my news. Giles have to you.

Yeah, well I I didn't know whether you were all joking last time, but I've written a speech about LinkedIn. You you tell me when No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Oh, it's not that bad. I think I've been I think I've been quite reserved actually. If you see me going red in the face and start pumping my fist, then you know you're in trouble. But I think I'll be all right. Can I just say one thing about SharePoint before you start? Yeah. Say save me a few times. Yeah.

Yeah. Well Charles, we'll get to the we'll get to the LinkedIn rant. You can open up. That's the main topic for today. Well, the main topic for today's going to be online and offline community and we'll we'll we'll let you we'll let you open with a LinkedIn rant. Um but but more importantly, even though I've been away, did I mention I've been away?

Yeah, if if jumping off a a boat wearing a snorkeler mask with a hundred other people trying to see a manta ray and then getting kicked in the face by somebody's fin is uh is a is a Yeah. That's exercise, isn't it? Getting in and out of the boat. That counts.

So that's about it really. Oh, I did a sur a couple of surfing lessons as well, even though I can sort of I can surf badly and now I can surf slightly less badly. But yeah, not that that was my uh my exercise with holiday. Um Right, so I've got a new new segment. Takes off question of the day, okay. Before we get into the main topic, um, and in honor of that new segment, I've even written a jingle. Okay. Cocktails or without. Hold on, let let's see, let let's listen to the jingle.

Loved it. Excellent. And that is that is quite special. Yeah, thank you. I think it's the first tech podcast ever to have a jingle. So I'm I'm breaking ground here. Um Out at the end it just clipped. Bang. Yeah. Well there is a fade out but I just like I More fun. Um, what is in your career maybe years ago, what's the biggest mistake you've made? In work. Oh, that's less than that. Okay. Going maybe going back sometime or something you just a bit embarrassed about doesn't have to be.

This is recorded, Charles. I'm not sure. Does anybody want to start? Mark put his hand up. Go on then, Mark.

I c I can start. So when I when I worked in audit, um the We used to go out to clients and audit their books and there was one client who said, Would it be easier? I mean this is the early two thousands, so it was less common, would it be easier if we just gave you a login to our system?

To which I said, Yeah, that'd be a lot easier. Thank you. That means we don't have to ask questions. We can find these things out ourselves. That's no problem. They said, have you used our system before? And I looked at, well, I've used one just like it. So my mouth said yes. But my brain said, not exactly like that one, but I'm gonna say yes. Um and then it wasn't until Uh

I can't w whichever day we we went in one day and the uh the CFO came up to me and said, Did did did you log into the system yesterday? And I was like, Yeah and he's like, Did you post our sales ledger for the month, even though it's now like

the fifteenth and I'm like, no, no, I wouldn't have done that. And he's like, Well, did you click here? I was like, Oh yeah, I click there. Did you click that yeah I click there? Did you click here? Yeah I click there as well. And did you click this button there? Yeah I clicked that one as well. He said, Yeah, you just posted our sales ledger.

for the month and now we've got to go back and do all this stuff. We can either go for I mean they had they they had a backup. So it's like we can either go to the backup or we can fix it this way. So yeah, so on a client's accounting system I managed to post transactions which they didn't want to be posted. So that was a yeah. That's if someone says have you used the system before, just say no. Just say no. So you had your hand up next. Go on, you go.

I always say to people, give me the least access that you possibly can. Rydyn ni'n gwneud rhywbeth. Rydyn ni'n gwneud rhywbeth. Rydyn ni'n gwneud rhywbeth. Rydyn ni'n gwneud rhywbeth. Rydyn ni'n gwneud... folder of stuff on their email system. ac wedi'i dweud i'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn i'r cyflawn.

everything ground to a hole, the whole system everywhere. Everyone just went nuts because it just couldn't cope with it. So that was that one. And then the other one, which I still cringe about a bit now, is one of the first Power BI reports I built.

uh built it in so in Power BI Yn ymwneud hyn, mae'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd

I did that in a Power BI report, so I had this massive star schema and I couldn't understand why it was so slow and why my DACs were so complicated and I was just like, but you're telling me I need to normalise, I need to normalise. Not in Power BI. Power BI is normalization to the first. So I'll do that. I still cringe at it. Altyazı M.K. So I think it's so it's Therefore you're okay, Sue. Yeah. Yeah.

I've got two. I've got a short one. Um I once did the classic uh sent out a report to a bunch of managers on uh within a company and there was a hidden column that included salary data for everybody in the company. Now luckily only one manager who uh I knew well spotted it and immediately emailed me and went, don't do this. But had anyone else? Thank you.

It uh there would have been some interesting conversations because obviously not everybody was paid the same. And then the worst one I ever did. was on the a big bid that I worked on. This is really hard to describe without going down too much of a rabbit hole, but three regions of the UK. So you bid for each of the regions, but then there's like an overall

price as well, you you look at. And and the the way the government looked at it was there's a price per customer for this thing based on households in the UK. And they were targeting like you've got to get under five pounds per household, whatever it. And um the denominator of my calculation for the price per household was wrong. It was fixed to the the number of households in the UK in total.

And it wasn't splitting down to the three regions. So when we did the first run of all the costs and the pricing, we were like, we we're smashing this. We're like way under five pounds. We presented the numbers to the CFO Friday night and we found it late Friday night.

And um we were supposed to basically submit everything on the Monday morning. So I just had to own up and say, hey, I've got this wrong. It's a formula error in the model. And luckily my team didn't um throw me under the bus. But that was pretty embarrassing. Yeah. I love the fact you owned up and oh w I owned up and said it's a formula error. I was thinking exactly that Mark. It's not it's not human error. It's not Excel. Always excels for the

I I didn't realise I'd said it like that. It was definitely my fault. Yeah. It's a formula. I always say that to people say Excel will do whatever you want it to do. It just won't tell you whether it's the right Mae'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n yw'n?

it you you can it's so uncontrolled Excel if you let it be that it can it it can do all sorts and that's why it gets a bit of a bad rep really. So um my one was um first job out of uni posting a hundred and forty thousand dollar journal at month end for a ymwneud â'r cymdeithasol ar gyfer cymdeithasol a'r cymdeithasol a'r cymdeithasol a'r cymdeithasol a'r cymdeithasol a'r cymdeithasol a'r cymdeithasol a'r cymdeithasol.

Which was nice. Um uh I've I've I've avoided using auto out of office on my email. because I didn't want everybody to get this out of office reply. So I thought I'd set up a rule. So I went into Outlook, set up a rule, and that rule pinged somebody who emailed me, which was a like a service deck. And the service desk got a re ping me back saying, Please don't reply to the service desk and my rule said, Hey, I'm on holiday

And that went back and forth for about seven thousand emails until the service desk called the company and asked them to turn off my rule because I was away. So stuff like that. It's good, isn't it? So don't do that. Um right. Anywho, good stuff. Question of the day. Lovely. Um Main topic. And Giles, you can kick us off then. We're gonna we're gonna go a bit general in terms of talking about community.

Yeah. Whether it be in person, online sources, where do you go where where do you find sort of, you know, like minded people, solve puzzles, et cetera? But also conferences and other things like that. You know, what do we recommend? Where's good?

those sorts of things. But Giles, LinkedIn as a as a source, a community, you've got views. Oh I'm so excited I get to do this. I can't believe I've got It's it's not it's not long, it's not long, and I've I've worded this carefully. All right, so I have a dream. That's that's not the start of my speech. Um so all right, LinkedIn for me. Um frustrates the hell out of me. Now the analogy I'm gonna put out there is LinkedIn is like an old friend.

And for years and years this old friend has added lots of value to your life. It's introduced you to lots of other nice people and things like that. And every now and then today it still does those nice things. But More and more often this nice friend of yours does things that you don't like. Sometimes it's small things, like you're walking down the road with your friend and it litters.

throws its its its litter on the street and you think, I don't like that, but I'm not gonna say anything. And then every now and then it does something that you really don't like, like kick a puppy, and you think, I cannot stand for And you see more and more of this bad behavior all the time. Now, LinkedIn makes this worse.

Because it's starting to reward bad behaviour. And in my analogy, it's the equivalent of my friend who kicks puppies getting a community service award for good community support, which I don't like. They shouldn't be your friend. Absolutely. Now, what I would say is that there are there are levels to the bad behaviour. And the worst end now, I just think people are

And that these are people that are stealing content, they're leveraging other people's content, they're not crediting them. Rick deGroot just put something out this week of his content being plagiarized completely, and I think it's really unacceptable. So I I've written an article about this. I will repeat what I said at the end of my article. Which is I care about this because I don't want to be going to events like the Global Excel Summit 2026, 2027, whatever it is.

and have to start consciously filtering out, you know, of these speakers, of these top voices. hopefully not MVPs, but you know, of these people Yeah. Who's hacked their way to a following and who's genuinely been adding value and doing sort of thought leadership? You know, I'm I'm sick of Cheat sheets. I'm sh sick of the free course links with dodgy links. I'm sick of all the crazy stuff that you can just see the priority is not adding value. It's not

sharing content that you're passionate about. It's pure how can I boost my follow account? So I think we have to call it out because if we don't call it out, LinkedIn's not going to police it. End of speech. Very young. Good. I feel like we should applaud or something. I don't really know. And you put fake applause on afterwards. Come question of the day again. Yeah, first of the time.

The amount of plagiarism just exploded. And I think I think as soon as you start looking and reporting and commenting on flagging people Who are doing it, then your feed just gets more of that stuff because LinkedIn goes, ooh, yes. You're you're reacting to that um post. So we'll give you more of that stuff.

So yeah, there's a whole there was a whole bunch there's I haven't seen any for a while, but there was a whole stream of just people's books being ripped off and that's you know, the whole PDF thing is is uh unnecessary. Why do you need to publish a one hundred page PDF on LinkedIn? I don't think there's a there's a need for it. Um and some of the some yeah, some of the content on there it's

You know, I I just basically have accepted everyone who's who's who who sort of reaches out these days. So I've made a rod for my own back that my my connections are just everyone and I get some real randoms. nowaday now nowadays I just delete them as soon as they within five seconds message me about some marketing thing. Yeah. Um all that sort of stuff. Um but they're still I think LinkedIn for me is still

People are still having to behave a little bit because it's their name and their picture generally, apart from the completely made up stuff. Sure. So it's still a nicer environment than some of the other, like Twitter and other places. a nicer environment and still get a lot of value from it. But there is you know, that some of the content that's just dished up, just yeah. Not not impressed by it.

It's definitely still the best professional network. It it just yeah. I it just I mean, I found the unfollow button or feature uh this year. So you can still be connected, but you can unfollow people so that at least you don't see what they they post. And that actually is a bit of Godsend. So my feed is less spammy than it used to be because I've had a few rounds of just like the moment I see you post something I don't like, I'll unfollow you. Uh so that's helped.

I'll tell you a true story about about LinkedIn and Giles will attest that this story is true. Rwy'n gwybod i chi Giles'n gwybod i chi Giles'n gwybod i gwybod i Giles'n gwybod i gwybod i Giles'n gwybod i gwybod i gwybod i gwybod i gwybod i gwybod i gwybod i gwybod i gwybod i gwybod about financial modelling and I'd only ever read his name. I'd only ever read it. I'd never heard anyone say it because it's only everyone LinkedIn.

So I introduced him as Giles Marley because I there's no way there's got to be an accident or something a bit more. Yeah. Continental about that name. And his his eyelid went up and he was and he looked quite strange. Quite strange. And I was like and I was like, what's up, John? And he's like, that's not how you say it. It's just Giles Mail. And I'm like, what? No, no, it's gotta be something better than that. So Thank you.

Like you don't know how to pronounce their names. And even sometimes you even meet people in person. A few weeks ago, I met some people in person who I knew on LinkedIn. I didn't associate their physical person with their LinkedIn profile whatsoever. And it wasn't until afterwards. I saw them on LinkedIn. I was like, I was talking to somebody who I'd have talked to. I was asked about this and this and this and this, but I didn't because

In my mind they're just they linked they're just a f like a small round circle, aren't they? So um so on LinkedIn it I I it's a great way to get to know people, but equally you work you end up only knowing their their s their circly face as it were, not really getting to know them personally. So I think the LinkedIn's great for starting things, but then getting to know them personally and going outside of that is where the is where the benefit really comes.

Initially I I really like Link. I I've already LinkedIn for a really, really long time. Initially I really liked it. You get to pick up lots of tips and tricks and there's lots of stuff going around. But after a while, the same tips, the same trick.

the same things go round on a loop, um, sometimes by the same creators, sometimes by different people. And it gets a well that even the content becomes quite stale even though there's people posting things every single day it's the same things day after day or the same methods the same techniques the same tricks and it's like there's

There's more there, but because it's all gotta be short and soundbitey and fit into a post, et cetera, et cetera, then there's a there's a limit to how much you can learn. You kind of have to go you have to choose where you go and go deeper. And in terms of the plagiarism thing, uh that just Like LinkedIn just seem to allow seem I I don't know whether they just seem to allow it to to happen. Um and they don't you know, when someone's sharing a

you know, a PDF of someone's book, it's like all these people are saying, Car, great, thanks, that's great. Oh, thanks for sharing. And I'll so there w there there was one recently where I where I contacted the um the person who s who who had shared this book and I said I said the I'm sure I said the alternate will be really pleased to know that you're selling these books on behalf of them. They'll happily send you an invoice for everyone that's downloaded it based on the

based on the thousand likes and the fifty quid on Amazon, they're they've got an absolute windfall today, so thank you very much. And then and then they then they decided to take it down. Um as soon as the thought they might have to pay for everybody who's downloaded that book, they're like I'm not doing that. And it's it's only the um the author or the publisher that can actually report it to LinkedIn as copyright, which is ridiculous. Yeah. It's printed with the word copyright on the

It's a book, it's obvious. So it's just why they have to go through that rigmarole as well and they can't just take it down straight away. I don't know. So just ask to look single technology. Um, you know, the top voice thing feels like a bit of a joke, to be honest. Um

I I I don't know. It it's it's good. It could be so much better and I genuinely feel like LinkedIn it wouldn't actually be that hard for LinkedIn to do a hell of a lot more to police it. I don't think it would be, but it's it's almost like they strategically don't. Maybe they just like any engagement, even if it's controversial. I I don't know that for sure. One of the bits that's caught me out a few times is the comments on your posts. It it goes to relevance. The defaults don't relevant. Yeah.

And then hide some. So who's deciding that somebody's post is relevant and somebody else's isn't? You have to go to recent to get all the posts. And little things like that, some of the sort of, you know, overly helpful AI type stuff is just Not a huge fan. Recently on LinkedIn the AI stuff has gone a bit crazy that no matter what post is about, there's these link there's these questions generated by AI at the bottom that kind of picks out themes

You know, you mentioned the word Excel, and it's like this AI thing going. You know, what are the best tips to use in Excel? It's like, but what what why you why have you got this AI thing going on? I just it In in some ways it's almost it's di it's detracting for your post, but then also potentially going against what you just wrote in your post, which might be the best practice for how you do something. And it's like why why is that there?

Uh, do you find that LinkedIn helps with lead generation, given you guys are sort of, you know, you run your own businesses and stuff as well? It's it's in a way of it is a good way of getting your your face in front of the right people, the sort of decision makers in business. I think it gives uh validity for me if people are if I'm talking to new clients or customers or people are interested.

y you know, it's a way to actually look at someone and see that they are genuinely interested in Power BI and that they make comments and that they have knowledge. So it gives a good overview of who you are and um you know, you you're and it gives I think it gives a p a feeling of um Safety is probably too strong a word, but a reassurance that you know you are um you know what you're talking about by by your comments, interactions, your posts, it gives an added layer of

of of who you are. I I don't get too stressed by LinkedIn. Um Yeah. Okay. Your point there, Sue's just reminded me there was a a while back I was watching a course on Power BI. I sometimes just watch random courses on LinkedIn, the LinkedIn learning, just to see what people are posting. Yeah. And there was a a po there was a course that was really popular to do with Power BR. And it was awful. Like borderline, um, sort of, you know, just just wrong and yeah um negligent.

Um and then I searched up the presenter who did a has done a bit of tableau, yeah. Bit of some other stuff. No posts about Power BI. Yeah. post about anything. Yeah. And it's just like before you sign up for a course, look who the instructor is. Yeah. And just find out about them and if they're passionate about their topic, the course is probably gonna be good. Yeah. If it's just somebody doing a course because

You know, there's a popular course out that they can sell, it's probably gonna be VS, yeah. So uh yeah, that's And and that's that's where it's a shame for me because you know, there are lots of really good LinkedIn learning courses. Somebody somebody um that's in our community who's actually he's a he's been a professional footballer for his whole career and he's now transitioning over to finance.

Um and he he messaged me after I ranted about LinkedIn and he said, Yeah, he said, Thank you for saying this because as somebody that has no understanding of like what this behavior is, it it feels like potluck. You know, you see an influencer or a LinkedIn learning course. It might be amazing. It might be terrible, which is really hard work for the uninitiated into what goes on in this space.

Um but to answer your question about lead gen, yeah, absolutely. It's it's the only reason I I I'm on LinkedIn and you know, I'll post I'll just post about things that I'm passionate about. Sometimes it's my dog. running or what I'm up up to on the weekend. So, you know, some people might criticize me for that, but it's honest. Um, and I think people get to know me quite well and we get most of our leads from LinkedIn to be honest.

Sue, like as a great example for you. Um I start I said to you just before we started, I started watching one of your meetups from three. Listen. So for anybody that finds Sue through LinkedIn and finds out about her meetups, I I honestly I I got halfway through and I was it was like midnight when I started watching this. That meetup was so good, like the way she talked through M code and and set There's so much value for anybody finding good content like that, like your meetup.

yeah meetups are brilliant we had a fab one yesterday uh juliana smith who's quite new to presenting all about um projecting P6 primavera project data, and she just explained it in such a great way. Nice. And as as I read their post, I was like, they know nothing. They know absolutely nothing about what they're talking about. Literally that it's like this this content is garbage. Eventually.

I met them in real life and they tell me their backgrounds like, oh, I'm not your audience. You're not talking to me. You're talking to all these other people. Yeah, what what they're talking about is really relevant to the people that they're talking to, but because it just gets

sent out to everyone, then suddenly it's kind of like a you and you see it when when somebody posts something and then somebody posts something else, you're like, that's not really quite the point that they're making. And then other people jump on the

you know, making comments like what someone's original comment, original post, everyone thinks that it's related to them. So therefore you end up kind of shaping an opinion as to whether that person knows something or doesn't know something or whether that that content is relevant. And actually often the things that people are posting are at a different they got a different audience or a different technical level.

So in terms of LinkedIn I I've I've decided that the you should kind of you have to decide who who you're talking to and therefore just keep trying to talk to those people. And there's other people that be like, Oh, you shouldn't use this method, you shouldn't use that method, you should you know, you should

You should use a database for this, you should use a database for that. It's like, yeah, but if I could get a database, I'd use a database. But I'm talking to the people who are the end users, who aren't who don't work in IT, who don't have this and don't have that. And so therefore it's kind of a

I've just got to con I've just got to keep trying to help the people who I want to try and help. Um and through that, if people come to YouTube, if people do my programs, if people don't, I'm I'm absolutely fine with that. It I've just got to keep trying to help the people that I think I can help. And that's that's the goal with LinkedIn. No matter what that happens in terms of business or anything else, that's the you should think who who do I want to help and just keep keep going for it.

We had um we you know, at times we have uh taken advice from different marketing people for full stack. So Miles and I sat down and listened and there's been a few times where we've had the advice saying like you need to create five SEO keyword heavy articles a week and it needs to talk about this and this and this. And every time Mars and I just look at it and go, Yeah, but

We don't want to like I don't I don't want to get up every week and be like I have to do this because it's a marketing target. It's like if I've got something interesting that I want to talk about with Excel, I'll post about it. Otherwise I'll just you a picture of my dog and if you don't like it, I guess I guess some people will unfollow me as well. Yeah. Yeah.

So there you go, that that LinkedIn rant wasn't too bad, was it? What was that? Like a six out of ten on the angry scale? I thought it was quite passionate, but Controls.

Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah. Um what about Twitter side of things? Has anybody Using that I I find Twitter really useful just for learning stuff and finding people's quick posts and blog posts and other things. Um interesting. I stick religiously to the

following section on Twitter. You can go to following or for you, which is just what the AI thinks you should be watching, which is just trash basically. And then you can actually I haven't really needed to do this yet, but you can block words and stuff like that. So if

If you don't want to follow a certain topic, you can block those words and things. So you can curate the content. You know, I'm I'm just following techie people. If the techie people start talking non techie stuff, I generally mute them. Or block words that they're talking about. And then I just get a nice curated feed. So I quite like Twitter from that point of view. Twitter for running.

Mae'n ymwneud 46 o'r ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud. I was gonna say I was on Twitter for a while, for for about three or four years, and then it just got again it's it's it's almost a bit like Link LinkedIn. You get you get the same things that keep coming up and there isn't a lot of

progress with it and eventually it's like if I log in I know I'm gonna see the same seventeen different versions of the same seventeen things I saw yesterday or the day before and you just start to get a bit of fatigue about it. So um So I haven't used I haven't used Twitter or

X as it's now known in in a in the last in the last few years. Um maybe I'll maybe I'll get LinkedIn fatigue and then go somewhere else and then somewhere else and who knows. But the I think that's the you you end up getting a bit

tired of seeing similar similar things. And because because all these AIs are are created in the fact they keep serving up things that they think you're interested in after a while they serve up stuff that you're just a bit a bit bored by so um I think that's a challenge for the for their app for their algorithms.

Yeah. The the the content that comes through for me on LinkedIn is now so scattered that I can't really focus on anything. Whereas with Twitter, because because I've deliberately followed two hundred people. I'm just getting their content and it sort of is a bit more focused and I find it easier to find useful stuff that way. Yeah. Rather than LinkedIn is just like a barrage of stuff to me now. It's just a bit crazy. Um I've also tried out

Blue Sky and uh Mastodon, those two, which are quite quiet still, but they're they're n not as spammy as Twitter and stuff. So curate who you're following. Yeah, Blue Sky had got set up by the bloke who left Twitter. I can't remember what the term is, it's federated or something like that, so nobody actually owns it. It's all running on people's computers around the world. Yeah. I use YouTube a lot. I love you. Well yeah, YouTube's good.

YouTube's great. But again, a little bit like you, I've got I've got quite a a filtered list of people that I follow. So it's generally good content.

Yeah, yeah. Um so what about in-person stuff, conferences? What conference is unmissible or what would you recommend? So I did have a question of um Neville Zamet. We got a listener. Amen. Um so yeah, what conferences should they attend if they get in sort of I think they mentioned they've been to SQL bits, but Charles, you gotta

Yeah, the Global Excel Summit. I've got to give a shout out to the Global Excel Summit. Mark, you were there with me this year. Um it's it's gonna be face to face again in London next year. It's it's it's a great event and

You know, we we had loads of loads of great speakers there and you know, uh you get you get to mix with with lots and lots of passionate XL people. So you can get I I don't know what they call it, but there are tickets available now for the face to face event in February next year. So Couldn't not give a shout out to the Global Excel Summit. Yeah, I think I just saw on on LinkedIn. Somebody had just bought a their ticket. Yeah, they would have done it.

Just started the forty percent off of them. Not that I've got any The blind. That's it. Yeah. Um any other conference what about um Mm. XL Days, Bulgaria. Exodase is Das war gut. Borianus? Yes. That's been going a few years now. Mm. And Alan. Alan Murray. Christian and Irving Murray. Oh, yeah. Any others? Pickle bit. That was in March this year. Yeah, yeah. When you say fun, what do you mean fun because everybody's talking about SQL in in a That's right.

you know, Marco Rosso and uh a few others and I met Wynne and we have uh we had we have every evening there's an event so we played um board games which was fun. Hãy subscribe cho kênh La La School Để không bỏ lỡ những video hấp dẫn Bit of a disco, bit of a party. Bit of a puzzle. Some fun. Okay. Yeah, it's really it it's the learning. I mean, I haven't mentioned the learning. The learning is brilliant. That, you know, everyone that presents is is pretty much top of their game.

How many people go to SQL Bits? It's big, isn't it? Yeah, it's probably a couple of thousand. Yeah. Why? It's a massive room. Mae'n gwybod, mae'n gwybod, mae'n gwybod, mae'n gwybod, mae'n gwybod, mae'n gwybod. It's really good. Data Kaylee in Dublin is good fun. What time of year is that? That was about a month or so ago. So that was in Dublin. That was good. That was really good fun. And then Data Scotland's coming up in um September.

Dyna'n Glasgow. Dyna'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna'r Calea'n free. Dyna' Um So did you get on late? Conference. Yes. Oh.

Brilliant. No, no, no. We we we went to uh it started in Copenhagen. Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â Oslo, ac rydym wedi cael ei wneud. Rydym ni'n ymwneud â nhw. Rydym ni'n ymwneud â nhw. Rydym ni'n ymwneud â nhw. Rydym ni'n ymwneud â nhw'n ymwneud â nhw. And then um we so it was like twelve or thirteen degrees in Copenhagen and went running. Then went to Oslo and I met up with three um three of the guys from Copenhagen. And so we went running in Oslo and it was minus one degree.

It's about meeting people, isn't it? With a shared interest and Just having fun. It does make a massive difference just having that face to face couple of conversations with people. Just huge. ¡Suscríbete al canal! We all probably forgot that a little bit, didn't we? I felt that coming away from the the summit, the Global Excel summit this year. Like it it was it really does make a difference when j just not talking to people through a computer screen.

Albeit that's all we're doing. At some point we should do like a live face. We'll have to find ourselves in the same so basically you you should come here, Wynn, because that's way easier. And I will fly over. There is no.

Was talking about a conference, wasn't she? Yes, I I'm not sure how much I can say, but there is a a conference planned for the end of next year. twenty twenty six. Right. Twenty twenty five. Yeah. October twenty five is the preliminary date for an Australian Thank you. Yeah, I'd love that. Probably be heavily Power BI leaning, but I'm trying to squeeze some Excel stuff in there as well. Oh yeah, that'd be great. Definitely.

Um and then in terms of other conferences like Reza Rad hosts one in New Zealand and Australia called Daffinity. So if you're based over there, Reza's is always good. He also does the online Power B I Global Summit. I think it's cool. Yeah. Yeah. And then there's a Power BI Microsoft One hosted this September um fabric conference. Europe Yeah, yeah, that's in Stockholm.

That was straight after the MVP summit in SQL Bits. I know a few people did all three, the tricopter. They they flew to the US, then they flew to UK, and then they flew back to the US for three conferences in three weeks. If you wanted to, you could basically just fill your calendar by the sounds of it, traveling the world. attending conferences. Which doesn't sound bad, by the way. It cost me a lot in doggy daycare, but that sounds pretty good. Tyrin. Two weeks is enough for me.

Yeah. I was yeah, SQL bits. But so this year I think it's um So um very good. Are you going this year? Um, I won't I don't think I'll be going in March. I don't know yet. long way off long way off Congratulations on getting renewed. Oh, well done. Well done, you too. Always nervy. Um so what what else? Uh any other advice about like conferences and things and just attending and

Just go. Don't don't think about it. Go. Say hello. Just and say hello to random people because everyone's just in the same boat. As well. It's really awkward, right? Just standing there waiting, chatting, you know, and just going, I where you from but honestly, no one takes offence and everybody's happy to chat. Yeah. So just go up and start chatting to people. But there's there's live makeup happening all the time. So you can uh that's so yours is online, isn't it?

Wynne, your your meetups in person, there's the there's the London Excel meetup, there's Power BI meetups in London, there's lots of stuff happening all over the place. Yeah. There's no There's a Southampton Excel meetup. There's stuff that is There's live stuff happening all the time. So it's kind of a you just gotta find out where it is. You don't have to wait until the next big conference to to get your your fix of of meeting people and getting advice. So yeah, it's Yes.

Okay. Yep. I'm presenting at Manchester and Newcastle later on in the year. Yn ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud ymwneud. It's good. I saw you I've signed up for your one and then I realised it's one AM when you're presenting in Canada, Sue. Oh yeah, the Ken. Kemples' meetup session. So I'll watch Sue. Click and then it goes the invite comes through the meeting thing. It's like one AM. Uh I'll watch a recording.

Yeah, watch the recording. Tablet editor I'm presenting on. So if if you could Oh sorry, go on, Charles. I was gonna say just cause you mentioned Ken, I've I I bought monkey tools um a while ago and I've still it's just cause I do less actual modeling. I've yet to to use it uh consistently in anger, but I I hear amazing I I know I've tried little bits, um, but it's one of the most highly regarded add-ins out there, isn't it? I I need to block some time out for that.

I think he started to do some courses on how best to optimise usage of it. Awesome. Mm. So ki the sort of guy Kenneth's right. So he I think he he asked me something about Monkey Tool or whether I'd'cause I hadn't used it for a w I hadn't used it for ages or I'd he'd sent me a link and I'd hadn't used it.

And then I went to his website and I said I said this was a year or two two years ago and I said your website's a bit It it it's it still looked it looked like, you know, something from the nine early nineties in terms of like downloadable software from uh And and y he he sort of he took it he took it well. And like honestly, forty eight hours later he just had this amazing looking way. He just like I think worked nonstop. I thought geez.

Rydyn ni'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd i'n mynd. I went to one of his courses in Excel Boriana, Boriana's in um uh Sophia, the course you mentioned, the Excel conference. Oh yeah. And here is just brilliant, absolutely brilliant. Anything to do with Excel and data modelling.

those sorts of folks, you know, I d I didn't really know what an MVP was when I got approached to be an MVP and then I sort of but I sort of I'd I'd read M is for Data Monkey. I'd I'd read uh I think I'd read Matt Allenton's book at the time, the Dax one as well. Um and I'd just I'd been listening to Mr. XL podcasts and all this sort of stuff and I was like

Oh, that's who these people are. I think Ozzy's some of Oz's stuff I'd seen as well on YouTube. Oh, that's what oh right, they're all and then you sort of yeah, you sort of suddenly get to get to s chat to these people and meet them and do all this sort of stuff. It's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah, Ken and Matt were one of my first ones I started working through. Rob Rob Collie. Back in the day. doing that. I remember reading his book on a plane or something and just feeling like I found my tribe.

'Cause you know, he's he's just that data gene and the questioning and the business and the Excel and you know, his his book is just pivotal really for me.

I think as well it made me I it's t totally random going off topic now, but the the sort of sentences or the paragraphs in that book where it just said, you know, you're an Excel person, you are you are valid in what you are doing in terms of data because there was a bit of a feeling like if you were working in Excel, you're not you're not doing it properly.

Yeah. You should be using these tools and you should be, you know, building these big BI platforms and they're the proper things and one day Excel will be got rid of. And then it was just like, nah, you know, this is the proper stuff. This is people creating reports in Excel is the proper stuff and it's the proper way to do it. Right. Great. Somebody's written that down officially.

ac mae'n gwneud yn gwneud. Mae'n ymwneud â'r hyn, mae'n ymwneud â'r hynny, felly mae'n hynny'n hynny'n hynny'n hynny. Mae'n ymwneud â'r hynny. Mae'n ymwneud â'r hynny, ond mae'n ymwneud â'r hynny, ond mae'n ymwneud â hynny. There we are, yeah. Is it a is it a secret that we're bringing on an M V P guest for the next episode? Is that are we keeping that under wraps or are we Oh no, make the announcement.

Going to speed, uh, TikTok legend, Deb Ashby, well and uh YouTube as well. So Deb Deb will be on uh in well whenever it is, when the the next episode. That's why I do too. Uh, which would be awesome, yeah. First guest. I was I was actually with her face to face. We met up in London um and did like a a work day together. So yeah, it'd be good fun to have her on.

Very cool. I think we'll try and cover off things like content creation, ideas. Um, yeah, the sort of training as well.'Cause she runs do she do training courses and things. Yeah yeah and I'm sure she'll I'm sure she'll talk uh I I don't wanna put words in her mouth, but yes she does and and she she's doing a lot of it at the moment. I mean the the the the the cadence and the quality of of content is

from people like Deb is is you know pretty awesome. So yeah, it'd be good to good to um to pick our brains a bit. Mm. She's running Ludden Marathon as well in March. She gets COVID. Sorry, Wynn. Maybe I'll just drop off that one you guys haven't chat. Yeah. I think Mark Mark pulled her up on LinkedIn having a dog as well. Dog. Yeah. Right. Do any of you play musical instruments? I'm tr I'm I'm clutching at straws here, things that I can do. I play guitar. Oh, there we go.

Lovely. We starting a band. Uh I used when I was a teenager, yeah, I I played violin and piano. Um And then I hit eighteen and uh never did it again. Ish. Yeah. Maybe. That's it. Took up Exile'cause it was more What's blue winds? Yeah. İzlediğiniz için teşekkür ederim. Ja, Piano und Guitar. Yeah. And then uh harmonica when when I'm oh sort of just Yeah. Based on their background. Sue we we know Sue must must play the piano because her All right. That she has in her background.

Next week.'Cause she thought your background was real, as I did when I first saw it. So Nice grand piano background there on shoes. Yeah. Virtual background it looks quite Субтитры сделал DimaTorzok Yeah yeah yeah. All right then. So I think that about wraps it up. Any other bits and pieces or should we Catch up with everybody in two weeks' time. It's been a pleasure again. Folks, enjoy the rest of your day. Tables.