Alter Everything Podcast

AlteryxMatt

Celebrate a decade of innovation, learning, and connection in the Alteryx Community! In this special 10th anniversary episode of Alter Everything, we hear from you as we explore the stories and milestones that have defined the Alteryx Community over the past ten years. Hear firsthand accounts from users like you (maybe even you reading this) whose lives and careers have been transformed through mentorship, career advancement, or lifelong friendships. This episode highlights the power of Community in the world of data analytics. Join us as we honor the people, stories, and achievements that make the Alteryx Community truly special.

Panelists

- Matt Rotundo, Engagement Engineer @Alteryx - @AlteryxMatt, LinkedIn
- Alex Gross, Sr. Process Analyst @ Siemens - @grossal, LinkedIn
- Nicole Johnson, Sr. Manager Product Management @ Alteryx - @NicoleJ, LinkedIn
- Matt Montgomery, Data Sherpa @ Montgomery Solutions - @mmontgomery, LinkedIn
- Calvin Tang, Group Manager, Business Solutions & Enablement @ Prudential PLC - @caltang, LinkedIn
- Samantha Clifton, Sr. Sales Engineer @ Alteryx - @Samantha_Jayne, LinkedIn
- Luke Cornetta, Sr. Director @ Alvarez and Marsal - @Luke_C, LinkedIn
- Ben Stringer, Data Consultant @ Bulien - @BS_THE_ANALYST, LinkedIn
- Roan Pilsworth, Data Consultant @ Bulien - @Pilsner, LinkedIn
- Alex Abi-Najm, Solutions and Enablement Lead @ Aimpoint Digital - @alexnajm, LinkedIn
- Shan Miralles, Quantitative Analyst @ JP Morgan Chase - @shancmiralles, LinkedIn
- Dan Menke, Community Ops Sr. Manager @ Alteryx - @DanM, LinkedIn
- Megan Bowers, Sr. Content Manager @ Alteryx - @MeganBowers, LinkedIn

Topics

Ep 192 (YT thumbnail).png

Transcript

Episode Transcription

Ep 192
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[00:00:00] Introduction and Celebration of 10 Years
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[00:00:00] Megan Bowers: Welcome to Alter Everything, a podcast about data science and analytics culture. I'm Megan Bowers, and today's episode is extra special because we're celebrating 10 incredible years of the Alteryx community. Now, if you're listening, you may have interacted with this group, whether it's through viewing a discussion post, earning a badge, joining an event with someone across the globe, or maybe even landing your dream job, thanks to a community connection.

In this episode, we're gonna explore the stories, laughter, learning, and even a little friendly competition that's defined this space. You'll hear audio clips from community members who answered the call when we asked, "How has the community impacted you?" And you may recognize some voices from past Alter Everything episodes.

[00:00:49] Defining Community: More Than Just Troubleshooting
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[00:00:49] Megan Bowers: Let's start this off with a simple question. What makes a community a community? When you think of online forums, your mind might go straight to troubleshooting—a place where you drop a question, get an answer, and move on. But the Alteryx community, it's more than that. Here's Matt Rotundo, one of our community moderators, with a perspective that really sets the tone.

[00:01:13] Matt Rotundo: As a moderator of the community, I think that what makes it special is seeing how willing people of any skill level are to go out of their way to help somebody else out. Like, some examples of this are if I am going through posts and I see someone having issues, no matter if it's like, "How do I create a workflow?" to something super advanced, there's always, without a doubt, somebody in there trying to help, trying to troubleshoot. And as much as that comes from a place of knowledge, I also think it comes from a place of wanting to learn more. Most of the time, it's the people that want to continue to learn and to grow that are going in helping people out because who knows, if you're helping someone on a very small problem that might seem small to you, you might learn something too. It really is nice to see as a moderator. Nobody's left behind. If no solution can be found, they're gonna try their best to find one and loop in other people if they don't have the correct expertise, or they'll give you resources to try to figure it out yourself. But in every sense of the word, I will say, like, it is a community and not so much just like a message board for people having troubleshooting problems. It really is a way for people to connect and learn at any level of skill that you have with the platform.

[00:02:51] Megan Bowers: The helpfulness of our community members is something I've witnessed time and time again. You'll see posts where someone has already answered the original question, but then another user will jump in and demonstrate a more efficient method just to help newer Alteryx users learn and grow. And sometimes what starts as a helpful gesture can become something much more meaningful.

[00:03:12] Stories of Connection and Friendship
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[00:03:12] Megan Bowers: For instance, let's hear Alex Gross's experience with the discussion forums.

[00:03:18] Alex Gross: I initially helped a lot of people by just responding on posts, but some of the problems you realize it's hard to explain them in text. So I offered them, "Let's jump on a Zoom call and try to fix this." Two or three of the people that I helped initially, we later on went to a mentoring concept, and then at this point, I would just call them friends. We have been connected for now five years. Two of them I have already met; the third person, I'm about to meet in a couple months. It's just amazing how something like just trying to help someone on a problem turns out into a friendship.

[00:03:51] Megan Bowers: So then, shifting gears, because there was one thing that came up repeatedly when I put this call out for community stories, and that was how Alteryx community involvement has changed people's careers.

[00:04:03] Career Transformations Through Community
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[00:04:03] Megan Bowers: Let's get started with Nicole Johnson, who began as an accountant and ended up working for Alteryx.

[00:04:10] Nicole Johnson: I mean, at this point, the better question might be, "How has it not impacted my career?" Um, I think that had I known when I joined community, I don't know, probably going on eight or nine years ago, I never would have been able to imagine the impact it would have on my professional track, the direction that my career took overall. I started out as an accountant in a construction company and found Alteryx and found the community and immediately knew that these were my people. Made a bunch of different connections, and in doing so, some of the connections I made led me to the Inspire Conference back in, I don't know, maybe 2017. And I ended up meeting up with some folks who were looking for somebody who was super passionate about Alteryx and who had a bit of an accounting background to be able to help the finance teams with their process automations and transitioned into a job that was a serious bump in career, allowed me to just build Alteryx workflows all day long and manage a server environment, which was something I never thought I would have an opportunity to do. And it really just opened up a ton of doorways for me. But it was really that first like, getting me into the community and meeting folks and getting comfortable and putting myself out there, answering questions and solving problems that got me the visibility I needed to make those connections and to get me that role at T-Mobile. Then I feel like history has repeated itself five years later, when as part of the ACE program, I found out through the grapevine about an opening here at Alteryx for a product manager role for Designer, that product that had initially changed my entire career. And so I took another leap and now I'm here on the other side of the fence, making cool things happen in Designer that I know intimately I would have loved as a customer. So it's been a really cool way to completely change the outcome and the trajectory of my career, but also a testament to how powerful some of those connections can be and some of the networking and experiences and confidence that you build as a part of the Alteryx community.

[00:06:23] Megan Bowers: From accounting to product leadership, all because of the confidence and the visibility that comes from showing up and tackling those technical challenges. And then Matt Montgomery had a similar experience of career growth, and he credits the community's collective knowledge with helping him reach expert-level skills and join the ACE group.

[00:06:45] Matt Montgomery: The Alteryx community impacted my career in a way that I never thought was possible. I came into Alteryx not having a data background, having worked in media and communications for about seven years of my career. And Alteryx was really that gateway into development and building data pipelines and understanding how data worked and downloading Dagon Solutions, Nicole Johnson Solutions, Ben Moss, studying from these individuals helped me get better. I learned what regex was, I learned what Advent of Code was, and getting better at weekly challenges ultimately got me more confident in my abilities. That ultimately made me a better developer and then helped me develop my career as I got harder and harder problems and saw smarter and smarter people showing answers and studying from them was a way for me to learn in a way that was so helpful and has wanted me to give back to my local community, the Milwaukee Alteryx user group, as well as contribute in Advent of Code and various other vehicles. So the community has definitely upskilled me to be expert-level, and I would not have been an ACE without standing on the shoulders of giants and studying and learning from so many smart people that I came up with solutions I never thought were possible. So I started from very little data skills to now being a very proficient with data, and I can say that as heavily influenced by strong members of the Alteryx community.

[00:08:15] Megan Bowers: And then there's Calvin Tang, who summarized it perfectly.

[00:08:19] Calvin Tang: Being active in the community has given me the spotlight, so a lot of people can see what you're doing online. It's basically your portfolio. You can show people. And it's how I got hired for my jobs. Everyone would ask me, "Okay, what kind of Alteryx experience do you have?" And normal people would say that, "Oh, I've built workflows, I've done Alteryx before." But the community is basically a living document, proof that you exist, proof that you know your stuff, proof that you've helped people, proof that you spend your time, you invest it, you have your certifications there. You can't lie on the community. You can't say that I'm expert certified without having the expert certification badge, for example, and you can't lie about being an ACE or you can't lie about the projects that you did. It's all visible for everyone to see. And it's really propelled my career because it's given me the opportunity to travel the world, basically. I've made friends as well and helped me find all my jobs so far. And being active in the community has been a blessing. So I've done all this, and I never thought it would lead me this. It was just my passion. I just loved doing it, and it ended up being a good thing.

[00:09:28] Megan Bowers: Over the past 10 years, the community has been a place where you can learn and then show what you can do, and that can really open doors. It's partially what brought me to Alteryx as well. I was writing about analytics best practices with some articles focused on using Alteryx Designer, and I published some of my articles on the community. When they were looking for a blog editor, they reached out about the position. So that's just a piece of my story, but really it's not all about leveling up your resume.

[00:09:59] Fun, Competition, and Camaraderie
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[00:09:59] Megan Bowers: The Alteryx community is also super fun and at times pretty silly. It's full of inside jokes, competition, and genuine connection. Take Samantha Clifton, for example, who recalled the moment she realized she'd found her tribe.

[00:10:15] Samantha Clifton: When community started, I was a user before community, and everyone was logging in and talking about their number. I was very, I was very like, "What is everyone talking about their number for? What does that mean?" And then it wasn't until I actually created a login, many moons later, that I realized when you log in, you get like a user number on your URL. So at the top, when you search right at the end, there's your user number. And I kick myself today because I didn't create a login when Alteryx was first created. I only ever searched it to help me solve my issues. So here's a tip for everyone out there: Create your login, get your number, because everyone swears by them like, "I was user number X." And it does mean something in this community. And the fact that it's a whole family of people coming together across the world who all love data, all love solving problems with Alteryx and just understanding that camaraderie where you maybe not have met your people yet, but this is certainly that place. And it really highlights to me when I first met Ned Harding in London in 2016, he gave me this slack band, USB with Alteryx, installed all the installation files on it. The note on there said, "You're not an outlier, you just haven't met your distribution yet." And he slapped it on my wrist and I went bright red 'cause if anyone knows Ned, he is absolutely the brains behind Alteryx and really the just beauty of software that we all love today. And he put that on me and I was like, "Oh my God, this is it. I've found my people," and I will never forget that. That was a massive early memory for me.

[00:12:04] Megan Bowers: I really loved hearing this story, and if you've attended Inspire, you really know what it feels like to "meet your distribution," so to say. I also heard from Luke Cornetta who spent months racing with other community members to answer questions the fastest without knowing these people in real life yet.

[00:12:24] Luke Cornetta: The connections that immediately come to mind is when I started really getting active in the community, probably in 2021 or so. I would always be posting, trying to get the medals and answering questions, and it was always like a race to get the solution posted and get that, the check mark. But it was kind of a healthy, unspoken competition because we never, we didn't know each other, but I was always with guys like Nathan Purvis, Dave Nathan on the community, too, Jang. Those guys, we always were posting against each other and liking each other's solutions. And then cut to the first Inspire after COVID in Vegas and getting to meet a lot of them in person. It's come full circle and having real life in-person discussions with some of these guys that for years just through screen names and through posting on the same community, it was like we already knew each other in a way. And it was really cool to get to meet them all and then continue those relationships as, uh, you know, subsequent Inspires have happened.

[00:13:21] Megan Bowers: On that same thread of friendly competition, we had Ben Stinger Cullen, who really found some of his people through this same competition in the discussion forums.

[00:13:32] Ben Stinger: I love a lot of things about the Alteryx community. I've got a background before I came into data as a a maths teacher, and then into being a professional gamer. I'm highly competitive, so when I found myself on the Alteryx community, starting in the world of data, jumping on weekly challenges, looking at what some of the OGs had done for their challenges, inspiring me, making me wanna be better, um, that really sparked my interest. I just love that competitive nature, the gamification of the community. I love a badge, I love all these sorts of things, points and levels. It's just really engaging and I guess even Designer Discussions, that's where I really got hooked, just racing all sorts of people to get the answer first. I'd finish work and then grab myself a coffee and then just straight into seeing if I could provide the best solution in the quickest time, really. And I think the wonderful thing is you'll find there's a cohort of people alongside you who are also trying to do it. And then they're my like digital friends, so to speak. I'm looking on their profiles, if they answered questions, how many have they done? And yeah, I love the challenge and I just love the people and how inclusive it is.

[00:14:35] Megan Bowers: It's amazing because there are so many experts online, ready to answer your questions, but then at the end of the day, people are making real connections while climbing up that leaderboard. One more story on this topic of connections. Our in-person community user groups help connect the dots for many people, and one of whom we heard from was Rowan Pills Worth.

[00:14:59] Rowan Pilsworth: I think there's two sort of biggest things for me. The first one, I'd have to be the user groups. So obviously like the solutions and the weekly county are fantastic on their community. But whenever you go onto one of them, you already know the answer that you're looking for, you or you're going to solve a problem, and you know that's what you're going in for. But the user groups, it's seeing things that you hadn't even thought of doing yourself before, hadn't even thought were possible. And it's other people's ideas completely fresh that you just see unfold before you with thanks to Alteryx. And I think that's particularly special from the community. And the other thing would be the sort of career growth, because I think everybody wants to improve in their career. Everybody always wants to see themselves getting better, and I think all the little badges on the Alteryx community is just a fantastic way to, to get that sense of reward, that you're always improving and are making further progression.

[00:15:50] Learning and Growth: From Beginner to Expert
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[00:15:50] Megan Bowers: Of course, none of this happens without learning. The academy, the interactive lessons, the certification paths—all of these are launching pads that we hear podcast guests mention frequently when we're recounting their Alteryx journeys. Here's Alex Abi Naum, who went from beginner to expert and even competed in the Alteryx Grand Prix.

[00:16:11] Alex Abi Najm: Grand Prix last year was all about having to qualify into the preliminary round because they already set three of the spots for previous winners. They wanted a fourth person to go in and qualify in via a spatial problem, in this case here. So I was able to qualify for that final spot because they didn't know who it was. They didn't have a sign made, but they did make some signs for the mystery person here. And it was a fantastic experience to be on stage with awesome competitors and would absolutely do it again at any time.

[00:16:45] Megan Bowers: And then there's Shan Miralles, who started using Alteryx just three years ago and is now training hundreds of professionals.

[00:16:52] Shan Miralles: I am currently a data design instructor. I am a co-lead for the newest user group in Alteryx, which is from the Philippines. And a proud recipient of the top contributor badge for 2024. I really love the gamification that we have in the community. People are having a hard time, um, believing that I only was able to touch or interact with Alteryx back in October 2022. And back then, I was really afraid navigating, so I was just watching the community, uh, interactive videos that we have, which is very helpful. I would really recommend people using that. When I gained the confidence on maneuvering around the Alteryx app desktop, that's when I started treating myself to take the abstract certification. Then after some time I gave the core certification, and then I was absorbed as one of the volunteer instructors for Alteryx globally. So the first class that I had, I was able to train around 300, if I'm not mistaken, students. And that would be via Zoom, and that would be a mixture of entry levels up to manager levels, which is, for me, when I was looking back, oh yeah, that is pretty amazing from my, from my point of view. After that, I would always encourage them to go to the community 'cause I told them that's where I have expanded my knowledge. One of the success stories that I have with the community is when I received my first affirmation to an answered community question, because there are other experts, ACEs in the community, and I was like, I just want to try if my answer matches what they do, and lo and behold, the person who posted the question affirmed that my answer answered their inquiry. It was like, "Yay!" that's, that's the diverse. And I was really happy. Answering those questions also helped me gain my advanced radiation for the Alteryx desktop for the green badge. So those are the things that really I enjoyed about the community and helped me as well grow not only as an Alteryx user, but a community member and someone who is trying to really improve myself every day as well. Alteryx has helped me be all of those things and more.

[00:19:20] Megan Bowers: The best part is those success stories aren't isolated. Whether it's "Sparked," helping users during the pandemic, or the "Road to Inspire" initiative highlighting real-life transformation, the community is a place that really builds people up.

[00:19:35] Impact Beyond Work: The Road to Inspire
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[00:19:35] Megan Bowers: Dan Menke from the community team reflected on the fun "Road to Inspire" effort to bring the online community into real life.

[00:19:43] Dan Menke: The "Road to Inspire" started out because of a contest. We started around understanding the impact Alteryx and community had on our users. So we decided, "Let's find out," and so we did this contest for people to submit their stories of how Alteryx has impacted their lives. We then had the community vote on who had the best stories. And once we decided who that was, we went and actually visited those people who won, videotaped a day with them. We interviewed them and talked about the impact that it had on them, you know. And everybody had really cool stories. Somebody was a single mom, and learning Alteryx and participating in that really shot her career off and gave her more time to spend with her kids and stuff like that. So, stories like that. And then we took them to do some fun stuff like taking people to Mall of America, and we went to Catalina Island, and everybody went zip lining. We went to a theme park in Orlando where everybody did like the bungee thing where you have to pull the cord and you drop like 10 stories. And so we videotaped all those things and did these interviews and reposted them on the community so the community could really see how Alteryx is impacting other people's lives and how the platform is not just a thing to get your work done, but to open up your life as well. I think it continues to do that. It gives people time back to either automate what they're doing or get them out of the "Excel hell," it was really positive and then that actually went into Inspire, so it was this whole production. But it was a very cool, uh, experience, I think, for everybody involved. And again, it really just showed like the impact this platform has on people's lives and not just their work lives.

[00:21:46] Community-Driven Product Development
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[00:21:46] Megan Bowers: So then before we close, I do wanna highlight one more thing, that the community doesn't just help users, it can shape the product itself. So let's go back to Nicole Johnson to close us out.

[00:21:59] Nicole Johnson: I certainly was excited for the opportunity here to come fix some of the things that bugged me and drove me nuts as a user, but now looking at the depth of the ideas and the cool things that our customers are doing on a day-to-day basis, and then the ideas that they're suggesting because of that, there are so many incredible things that we could do as a product and as a portfolio to help solve increasingly interesting and complicated use cases. And there is nothing I love more at this point than going into the community and being able to mark an idea as "implemented," just because I know how exciting it is. Not just for all the users who are gonna get to use that feature, you feel like you've contributed to the product when you had an idea and you were able to provide the use case and the justification for why this thing is so important, and then to see that come to life in the product makes you feel a little bit like you own a piece of that product now, like you were a part of the product engineering lifecycle. And I think that is a really cool way to be a part of the bigger picture and is probably one of the reasons why our community is so powerful and so fanatic and something that makes it, I think, the best, the best of the best in communities out there because it's not just the folks that work at Alteryx that are building our products, but it's that entire community of thousands of users who are helping to contribute to the things that we build here today.

[00:23:27] Megan Bowers: I know for me, seeing the excited comments on blogs about a feature request being implemented never really gets old. It's super fun to watch.

[00:23:37] Conclusion: Join the Conversation
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[00:23:37] Megan Bowers: So whether you're in the Alteryx community to get certified, compete, make a friend, or just learn one new thing, you belong. This is a place where data nerds become mentors, where leveling up is rewarding, where helping someone else might just change your own path, too. And if you haven't already joined the conversation, I encourage you to log in and get started. Answer a question, contribute an idea, post a solution. You never know who you might connect with along the way. So happy 10 years to the Alteryx community and cheers to many more. Thanks for listening.

Ep 192=== [00:00:00] Introduction and Celebration of 10 Years--- [00:00:00] Megan Bowers: Welcome to Alter Everything, a podcast about data science and analytics culture. I'm Megan Bowers, and today's episode is extra special because we're celebrating 10 incredible years of the Alteryx community. Now, if you're listening, you may have interacted with this group, whether it's through viewing a discussion post, earning a badge, joining an event with someone across the globe, or maybe even landing your dream job, thanks to a community connection. In this episode, we're gonna explore the stories, laughter, learning, and even a little friendly competition that's defined this space. You'll hear audio clips from community members who answered the call when we asked, "How has the community impacted you?" And you may recognize some voices from past Alter Everything episodes. [00:00:49] Defining Community: More Than Just Troubleshooting--- [00:00:49] Megan Bowers: Let's start this off with a simple question. What makes a community a community? When you think of online forums, your mind might go straight to troubleshooting—a place where you drop a question, get an answer, and move on. But the Alteryx community, it's more than that. Here's Matt Rotundo, one of our community moderators, with a perspective that really sets the tone. [00:01:13] Matt Rotundo: As a moderator of the community, I think that what makes it special is seeing how willing people of any skill level are to go out of their way to help somebody else out. Like, some examples of this are if I am going through posts and I see someone having issues, no matter if it's like, "How do I create a workflow?" to something super advanced, there's always, without a doubt, somebody in there trying to help, trying to troubleshoot. And as much as that comes from a place of knowledge, I also think it comes from a place of wanting to learn more. Most of the time, it's the people that want to continue to learn and to grow that are going in helping people out because who knows, if you're helping someone on a very small problem that might seem small to you, you might learn something too. It really is nice to see as a moderator. Nobody's left behind. If no solution can be found, they're gonna try their best to find one and loop in other people if they don't have the correct expertise, or they'll give you resources to try to figure it out yourself. But in every sense of the word, I will say, like, it is a community and not so much just like a message board for people having troubleshooting problems. It really is a way for people to connect and learn at any level of skill that you have with the platform. [00:02:51] Megan Bowers: The helpfulness of our community members is something I've witnessed time and time again. You'll see posts where someone has already answered the original question, but then another user will jump in and demonstrate a more efficient method just to help newer Alteryx users learn and grow. And sometimes what starts as a helpful gesture can become something much more meaningful. [00:03:12] Stories of Connection and Friendship--- [00:03:12] Megan Bowers: For instance, let's hear Alex Gross's experience with the discussion forums. [00:03:18] Alex Gross: I initially helped a lot of people by just responding on posts, but some of the problems you realize it's hard to explain them in text. So I offered them, "Let's jump on a Zoom call and try to fix this." Two or three of the people that I helped initially, we later on went to a mentoring concept, and then at this point, I would just call them friends. We have been connected for now five years. Two of them I have already met; the third person, I'm about to meet in a couple months. It's just amazing how something like just trying to help someone on a problem turns out into a friendship. [00:03:51] Megan Bowers: So then, shifting gears, because there was one thing that came up repeatedly when I put this call out for community stories, and that was how Alteryx community involvement has changed people's careers. [00:04:03] Career Transformations Through Community--- [00:04:03] Megan Bowers: Let's get started with Nicole Johnson, who began as an accountant and ended up working for Alteryx. [00:04:10] Nicole Johnson: I mean, at this point, the better question might be, "How has it not impacted my career?" Um, I think that had I known when I joined community, I don't know, probably going on eight or nine years ago, I never would have been able to imagine the impact it would have on my professional track, the direction that my career took overall. I started out as an accountant in a construction company and found Alteryx and found the community and immediately knew that these were my people. Made a bunch of different connections, and in doing so, some of the connections I made led me to the Inspire Conference back in, I don't know, maybe 2017. And I ended up meeting up with some folks who were looking for somebody who was super passionate about Alteryx and who had a bit of an accounting background to be able to help the finance teams with their process automations and transitioned into a job that was a serious bump in career, allowed me to just build Alteryx workflows all day long and manage a server environment, which was something I never thought I would have an opportunity to do. And it really just opened up a ton of doorways for me. But it was really that first like, getting me into the community and meeting folks and getting comfortable and putting myself out there, answering questions and solving problems that got me the visibility I needed to make those connections and to get me that role at T-Mobile. Then I feel like history has repeated itself five years later, when as part of the ACE program, I found out through the grapevine about an opening here at Alteryx for a product manager role for Designer, that product that had initially changed my entire career. And so I took another leap and now I'm here on the other side of the fence, making cool things happen in Designer that I know intimately I would have loved as a customer. So it's been a really cool way to completely change the outcome and the trajectory of my career, but also a testament to how powerful some of those connections can be and some of the networking and experiences and confidence that you build as a part of the Alteryx community. [00:06:23] Megan Bowers: From accounting to product leadership, all because of the confidence and the visibility that comes from showing up and tackling those technical challenges. And then Matt Montgomery had a similar experience of career growth, and he credits the community's collective knowledge with helping him reach expert-level skills and join the ACE group. [00:06:45] Matt Montgomery: The Alteryx community impacted my career in a way that I never thought was possible. I came into Alteryx not having a data background, having worked in media and communications for about seven years of my career. And Alteryx was really that gateway into development and building data pipelines and understanding how data worked and downloading Dagon Solutions, Nicole Johnson Solutions, Ben Moss, studying from these individuals helped me get better. I learned what regex was, I learned what Advent of Code was, and getting better at weekly challenges ultimately got me more confident in my abilities. That ultimately made me a better developer and then helped me develop my career as I got harder and harder problems and saw smarter and smarter people showing answers and studying from them was a way for me to learn in a way that was so helpful and has wanted me to give back to my local community, the Milwaukee Alteryx user group, as well as contribute in Advent of Code and various other vehicles. So the community has definitely upskilled me to be expert-level, and I would not have been an ACE without standing on the shoulders of giants and studying and learning from so many smart people that I came up with solutions I never thought were possible. So I started from very little data skills to now being a very proficient with data, and I can say that as heavily influenced by strong members of the Alteryx community. [00:08:15] Megan Bowers: And then there's Calvin Tang, who summarized it perfectly. [00:08:19] Calvin Tang: Being active in the community has given me the spotlight, so a lot of people can see what you're doing online. It's basically your portfolio. You can show people. And it's how I got hired for my jobs. Everyone would ask me, "Okay, what kind of Alteryx experience do you have?" And normal people would say that, "Oh, I've built workflows, I've done Alteryx before." But the community is basically a living document, proof that you exist, proof that you know your stuff, proof that you've helped people, proof that you spend your time, you invest it, you have your certifications there. You can't lie on the community. You can't say that I'm expert certified without having the expert certification badge, for example, and you can't lie about being an ACE or you can't lie about the projects that you did. It's all visible for everyone to see. And it's really propelled my career because it's given me the opportunity to travel the world, basically. I've made friends as well and helped me find all my jobs so far. And being active in the community has been a blessing. So I've done all this, and I never thought it would lead me this. It was just my passion. I just loved doing it, and it ended up being a good thing. [00:09:28] Megan Bowers: Over the past 10 years, the community has been a place where you can learn and then show what you can do, and that can really open doors. It's partially what brought me to Alteryx as well. I was writing about analytics best practices with some articles focused on using Alteryx Designer, and I published some of my articles on the community. When they were looking for a blog editor, they reached out about the position. So that's just a piece of my story, but really it's not all about leveling up your resume. [00:09:59] Fun, Competition, and Camaraderie--- [00:09:59] Megan Bowers: The Alteryx community is also super fun and at times pretty silly. It's full of inside jokes, competition, and genuine connection. Take Samantha Clifton, for example, who recalled the moment she realized she'd found her tribe. [00:10:15] Samantha Clifton: When community started, I was a user before community, and everyone was logging in and talking about their number. I was very, I was very like, "What is everyone talking about their number for? What does that mean?" And then it wasn't until I actually created a login, many moons later, that I realized when you log in, you get like a user number on your URL. So at the top, when you search right at the end, there's your user number. And I kick myself today because I didn't create a login when Alteryx was first created. I only ever searched it to help me solve my issues. So here's a tip for everyone out there: Create your login, get your number, because everyone swears by them like, "I was user number X." And it does mean something in this community. And the fact that it's a whole family of people coming together across the world who all love data, all love solving problems with Alteryx and just understanding that camaraderie where you maybe not have met your people yet, but this is certainly that place. And it really highlights to me when I first met Ned Harding in London in 2016, he gave me this slack band, USB with Alteryx, installed all the installation files on it. The note on there said, "You're not an outlier, you just haven't met your distribution yet." And he slapped it on my wrist and I went bright red 'cause if anyone knows Ned, he is absolutely the brains behind Alteryx and really the just beauty of software that we all love today. And he put that on me and I was like, "Oh my God, this is it. I've found my people," and I will never forget that. That was a massive early memory for me. [00:12:04] Megan Bowers: I really loved hearing this story, and if you've attended Inspire, you really know what it feels like to "meet your distribution," so to say. I also heard from Luke Cornetta who spent months racing with other community members to answer questions the fastest without knowing these people in real life yet. [00:12:24] Luke Cornetta: The connections that immediately come to mind is when I started really getting active in the community, probably in 2021 or so. I would always be posting, trying to get the medals and answering questions, and it was always like a race to get the solution posted and get that, the check mark. But it was kind of a healthy, unspoken competition because we never, we didn't know each other, but I was always with guys like Nathan Purvis, Dave Nathan on the community, too, Jang. Those guys, we always were posting against each other and liking each other's solutions. And then cut to the first Inspire after COVID in Vegas and getting to meet a lot of them in person. It's come full circle and having real life in-person discussions with some of these guys that for years just through screen names and through posting on the same community, it was like we already knew each other in a way. And it was really cool to get to meet them all and then continue those relationships as, uh, you know, subsequent Inspires have happened. [00:13:21] Megan Bowers: On that same thread of friendly competition, we had Ben Stinger Cullen, who really found some of his people through this same competition in the discussion forums. [00:13:32] Ben Stinger: I love a lot of things about the Alteryx community. I've got a background before I came into data as a a maths teacher, and then into being a professional gamer. I'm highly competitive, so when I found myself on the Alteryx community, starting in the world of data, jumping on weekly challenges, looking at what some of the OGs had done for their challenges, inspiring me, making me wanna be better, um, that really sparked my interest. I just love that competitive nature, the gamification of the community. I love a badge, I love all these sorts of things, points and levels. It's just really engaging and I guess even Designer Discussions, that's where I really got hooked, just racing all sorts of people to get the answer first. I'd finish work and then grab myself a coffee and then just straight into seeing if I could provide the best solution in the quickest time, really. And I think the wonderful thing is you'll find there's a cohort of people alongside you who are also trying to do it. And then they're my like digital friends, so to speak. I'm looking on their profiles, if they answered questions, how many have they done? And yeah, I love the challenge and I just love the people and how inclusive it is. [00:14:35] Megan Bowers: It's amazing because there are so many experts online, ready to answer your questions, but then at the end of the day, people are making real connections while climbing up that leaderboard. One more story on this topic of connections. Our in-person community user groups help connect the dots for many people, and one of whom we heard from was Rowan Pills Worth. [00:14:59] Rowan Pilsworth: I think there's two sort of biggest things for me. The first one, I'd have to be the user groups. So obviously like the solutions and the weekly county are fantastic on their community. But whenever you go onto one of them, you already know the answer that you're looking for, you or you're going to solve a problem, and you know that's what you're going in for. But the user groups, it's seeing things that you hadn't even thought of doing yourself before, hadn't even thought were possible. And it's other people's ideas completely fresh that you just see unfold before you with thanks to Alteryx. And I think that's particularly special from the community. And the other thing would be the sort of career growth, because I think everybody wants to improve in their career. Everybody always wants to see themselves getting better, and I think all the little badges on the Alteryx community is just a fantastic way to, to get that sense of reward, that you're always improving and are making further progression. [00:15:50] Learning and Growth: From Beginner to Expert--- [00:15:50] Megan Bowers: Of course, none of this happens without learning. The academy, the interactive lessons, the certification paths—all of these are launching pads that we hear podcast guests mention frequently when we're recounting their Alteryx journeys. Here's Alex Abi Naum, who went from beginner to expert and even competed in the Alteryx Grand Prix. [00:16:11] Alex Abi Najm: Grand Prix last year was all about having to qualify into the preliminary round because they already set three of the spots for previous winners. They wanted a fourth person to go in and qualify in via a spatial problem, in this case here. So I was able to qualify for that final spot because they didn't know who it was. They didn't have a sign made, but they did make some signs for the mystery person here. And it was a fantastic experience to be on stage with awesome competitors and would absolutely do it again at any time. [00:16:45] Megan Bowers: And then there's Shan Miralles, who started using Alteryx just three years ago and is now training hundreds of professionals. [00:16:52] Shan Miralles: I am currently a data design instructor. I am a co-lead for the newest user group in Alteryx, which is from the Philippines. And a proud recipient of the top contributor badge for 2024. I really love the gamification that we have in the community. People are having a hard time, um, believing that I only was able to touch or interact with Alteryx back in October 2022. And back then, I was really afraid navigating, so I was just watching the community, uh, interactive videos that we have, which is very helpful. I would really recommend people using that. When I gained the confidence on maneuvering around the Alteryx app desktop, that's when I started treating myself to take the abstract certification. Then after some time I gave the core certification, and then I was absorbed as one of the volunteer instructors for Alteryx globally. So the first class that I had, I was able to train around 300, if I'm not mistaken, students. And that would be via Zoom, and that would be a mixture of entry levels up to manager levels, which is, for me, when I was looking back, oh yeah, that is pretty amazing from my, from my point of view. After that, I would always encourage them to go to the community 'cause I told them that's where I have expanded my knowledge. One of the success stories that I have with the community is when I received my first affirmation to an answered community question, because there are other experts, ACEs in the community, and I was like, I just want to try if my answer matches what they do, and lo and behold, the person who posted the question affirmed that my answer answered their inquiry. It was like, "Yay!" that's, that's the diverse. And I was really happy. Answering those questions also helped me gain my advanced radiation for the Alteryx desktop for the green badge. So those are the things that really I enjoyed about the community and helped me as well grow not only as an Alteryx user, but a community member and someone who is trying to really improve myself every day as well. Alteryx has helped me be all of those things and more. [00:19:20] Megan Bowers: The best part is those success stories aren't isolated. Whether it's "Sparked," helping users during the pandemic, or the "Road to Inspire" initiative highlighting real-life transformation, the community is a place that really builds people up. [00:19:35] Impact Beyond Work: The Road to Inspire--- [00:19:35] Megan Bowers: Dan Menke from the community team reflected on the fun "Road to Inspire" effort to bring the online community into real life. [00:19:43] Dan Menke: The "Road to Inspire" started out because of a contest. We started around understanding the impact Alteryx and community had on our users. So we decided, "Let's find out," and so we did this contest for people to submit their stories of how Alteryx has impacted their lives. We then had the community vote on who had the best stories. And once we decided who that was, we went and actually visited those people who won, videotaped a day with them. We interviewed them and talked about the impact that it had on them, you know. And everybody had really cool stories. Somebody was a single mom, and learning Alteryx and participating in that really shot her career off and gave her more time to spend with her kids and stuff like that. So, stories like that. And then we took them to do some fun stuff like taking people to Mall of America, and we went to Catalina Island, and everybody went zip lining. We went to a theme park in Orlando where everybody did like the bungee thing where you have to pull the cord and you drop like 10 stories. And so we videotaped all those things and did these interviews and reposted them on the community so the community could really see how Alteryx is impacting other people's lives and how the platform is not just a thing to get your work done, but to open up your life as well. I think it continues to do that. It gives people time back to either automate what they're doing or get them out of the "Excel hell," it was really positive and then that actually went into Inspire, so it was this whole production. But it was a very cool, uh, experience, I think, for everybody involved. And again, it really just showed like the impact this platform has on people's lives and not just their work lives. [00:21:46] Community-Driven Product Development--- [00:21:46] Megan Bowers: So then before we close, I do wanna highlight one more thing, that the community doesn't just help users, it can shape the product itself. So let's go back to Nicole Johnson to close us out. [00:21:59] Nicole Johnson: I certainly was excited for the opportunity here to come fix some of the things that bugged me and drove me nuts as a user, but now looking at the depth of the ideas and the cool things that our customers are doing on a day-to-day basis, and then the ideas that they're suggesting because of that, there are so many incredible things that we could do as a product and as a portfolio to help solve increasingly interesting and complicated use cases. And there is nothing I love more at this point than going into the community and being able to mark an idea as "implemented," just because I know how exciting it is. Not just for all the users who are gonna get to use that feature, you feel like you've contributed to the product when you had an idea and you were able to provide the use case and the justification for why this thing is so important, and then to see that come to life in the product makes you feel a little bit like you own a piece of that product now, like you were a part of the product engineering lifecycle. And I think that is a really cool way to be a part of the bigger picture and is probably one of the reasons why our community is so powerful and so fanatic and something that makes it, I think, the best, the best of the best in communities out there because it's not just the folks that work at Alteryx that are building our products, but it's that entire community of thousands of users who are helping to contribute to the things that we build here today. [00:23:27] Megan Bowers: I know for me, seeing the excited comments on blogs about a feature request being implemented never really gets old. It's super fun to watch. [00:23:37] Conclusion: Join the Conversation--- [00:23:37] Megan Bowers: So whether you're in the Alteryx community to get certified, compete, make a friend, or just learn one new thing, you belong. This is a place where data nerds become mentors, where leveling up is rewarding, where helping someone else might just change your own path, too. And if you haven't already joined the conversation, I encourage you to log in and get started. Answer a question, contribute an idea, post a solution. You never know who you might connect with along the way. So happy 10 years to the Alteryx community and cheers to many more. Thanks for listening.

This episode was produced by Megan Bowers (@MeganBowers), Mike Cusic (@mikecusic), and Matt Rotundo (@AlteryxMatt). Special thanks to @andyuttley for the theme music track, and @mikecusic for our album artwork.

shancmiralles

Amazing! Thank you for this opportunity excited to be part of this celebration launch!!! celebrating a decade of innovation and magic with Alteryx 🥳

#AlteryxKababayan 🇵🇭

caltang

Thank you for having me and I wish Alteryx community a very happy birthday. The best out there.

TheOC

So many amazing Panellists... and @BS_THE_ANALYST 😅.

Excited to give this one a listen, Happy Birthday Community 🎂!

BS_THE_ANALYST

@TheOC shots fired 🔫🔫

Finally made it on a podcast! Mum, I'm famous 😎! Can't wait to have a listen. Thanks for putting this together @AlteryxMatt @MeganBowers 🙌🥳

All the best,
BS

Pilsner

Happy Birthday Community🎉

It was a pleasure to be involved, can't wait to give this a listen. Thank you for having me!

MeganBowers

Thank you all for sharing your Community stories! You are what makes this Community special 😊

Hub119

Hey, I know these people... Happy Birthday Alteryx Community! 🎉🎂

Dean4U

Happy Year Ten, Alteryx Community! 🙂

Alter Everything Podcast

Podcast Guide

192: Celebrating 10 Years of Learning and Growth with the Alteryx Community

Panelists

Topics

Transcript

This episode was produced by Megan Bowers (@MeganBowers), Mike Cusic (@mikecusic), and Matt Rotundo (@AlteryxMatt). Special thanks to @andyuttley for the theme music track, and @mikecusic for our album artwork.