Alter Everything

BrianO · ‎07-02-2018

We're joined by Lauren Uyeno, Tuvy Le, and Maddie Johannsen to discuss Alteryx User Groups and the ACE program.

Guests

Lauren Uyeno (@LaurenU, Twitter)
Tuvy Le (@TuvyL, Twitter)
Maddie Johannsen (@MaddieJ, Twitter)
Brian Oblinger (@BrianO, Twitter)

Topics

Customer Advocacy

Alteryx User Groups

User Group stories - the challenges, wins, etc.

ACE Program
- Metallic Day at Alteryx Irvine

Community Picks

Lauren:
- Marqueecrew on the Alter Everything Podcast

Maddie:

Tuvy

Brian:

Transcript

Episode Transcription

BRIAN 00:06	[music] Welcome to Alter Everything, a podcast about data and analytics culture. I am Brian Oblinger, and I'll be your host. We're joined today by Lauren Uyeno, Tuvy Le, and Maddie Johannsen to talk about Alteryx User Groups and the ACE program. Let's get right into it. [music]
BRIAN 00:27	All right. So I'm here with Maddie, Tuvy, and Lauren. Welcome to the show.
MADDIE 00:30	Hey.
LAUREN 00:31	Hi.
TUVY 00:31	Hi.
BRIAN 00:32	So, this is a very special episode, I believe, of the podcast. We're going to sort of step outside of our normal topic set today and talk a little bit about User Groups and ACEs. But before we do that, maybe let's go around the table and hear who you are, and what you do, and a little introduction. So, Maddie, we'll start with you.
MADDIE 00:50	Yeah. My name is Maddie Johannsen, and my journey here has been kind of a mixed bag. I actually got my degree in art history from Colorado State University, and then I worked in project management, email marketing compliance, and then I was actually working in trust and safety at a transportation network company. And then my life ended up bringing me to California and I was lucky to find a spot in customer advocacy here at Alteryx.
LAUREN 01:21	Hey, everyone. This is Lauren Uyeno. It's funny from all the stories that I'm hearing about how we've been here and how we got here at Alteryx. Mixed bag as well. I got my degree from Cal State, Long Beach in public health. I was looking into non-profits, found myself in a non-profit working on events there and doing some voluntary management. Got a random rec from one of our lovely recruiters here at Alteryx. I went through the interviews, talked to Brian, it sounded great. Love the energy, love the community that we have here. And I want to say from that conversation, Brian, that it kind of sold me that I wanted to join the dark side [laughter].
BRIAN 02:01	The dark side?
LAUREN 02:02	Yeah.
BRIAN 02:02	This is the light side[laughter].
LAUREN 02:03	All right. I don't know. I'm [inaudible] it right now that I'm giving you such high praise [laughter]?
BRIAN 02:08	Most people do.
LAUREN 02:09	I know you'll not hold this against me, but yeah, I just kind of found myself here. And cheesy as it sounds, Alteryx, my favorite tool is the viewing tool. I just think Alteryx brings in all of our great qualities and really amplifies them, and I really do feel like working here has really brought out my creative side, and being able to try things, challenge boundaries, altering stuff. So I'm happy to be here.
TUVY 02:33	I'm Tuvy Le, a customer advocacy coordinator as well. And my degree was in kinesiology. I started out working mostly with people with spinal cord injuries, so most of my earlier years were in rehab, private, and at hospitals. And then I moved to DC, worked for a tech company also, ended up at a home care company, so kind of back to where I started. But all of my jobs have always sort of been client-facing. I just love working with people physically, on the phone, online, whatever it is. And so moving back to California, I was referred by another Alteryx associate and found myself here in customer advocacy where I'm again working with customers, client-facing. The only difference is, I just have to say it's the happiest customers I've ever had the chance to work with. So it's pretty much a dream job.
BRIAN 03:41	Cool. All right. Well, we'll try to keep it that way [laughter]. No pressure. No pressure.
MADDIE 03:47	I don't know, Brian.
BRIAN 03:48	No pressure. Okay. Great. So I think that's a really interesting intro because everybody has, again, this sort of varied backgrounds that come from different things. So maybe tell us, what would you say you do here, right [laughter]? On the daily, let's talk a little bit about the things that you do to support customers, ACEs things like that. Maybe Lauren, we'll start with you.
LAUREN 04:13	Yeah. So basically, what I do here is accounting [laughter]. I'm just kidding [laughter]. Everybody asks me what I do here. I always joke, I'm the Chandler Bing of-- I don't know if you guys do this. I'm Chandler Bing. Nobody knows what we do. I don't know, I think we do the fun stuff. We get basically all of our wonderful customers together to talk about Alteryx, and a public setting, to hang out, to kind of foster and nurture the excitement that is Alteryx and finding solutions to their business problems.
MADDIE 04:53	Yeah, absolutely. I think that kind of goes into what we were discussing earlier about what customer advocacy is and what it is not. So Tuvy kind of said it well earlier, it's not a help desk. We don't really facilitate the support questions about the platform, but it's more how can we keep everyone engaged and excited. And I mean it speaks for itself. I think people are already excited about what Alteryx is, but for the part, what we do is just-- it's the exciting stuff. We really encourage people to stay excited. And for me as well, I help book the guests that we have on the podcast. And so for me, it's getting people excited that we have a podcast, and we have all these different things and ways for people to stay engaged. So that's been really exciting for me.
TUVY 05:49	Yeah, I want to say we have, I think, not just the best customers, but the best advocates. And people do this-- obviously, some of them, it's part of their job at work but they do it on their own time too. Our User Groups, when they meet, it's usually after work hours. They take their time to present, to spread their knowledge, and they do so with such joy that it's very contagious. This is post-Inspire, but even at Inspire, they were so excited to present, and then afterwards, they were reaching out to all the customers who had questions and they are continuing that conversation whether it's on Twitter or on our wonderful community, and it's just nice to see that. So we definitely are lucky enough to support that kind of activity.
BRIAN 06:44	Yeah. I've been doing this community thing for a long time and I can tell you that it's straight up like pulling teeth at a lot of companies trying to get people to advocate for you and be excited about your products. And it's one of the things that excited me about coming here in the first place. So I think we're very fortunate, and to all of you listening, thank you for making our lives easy. So let's talk a little bit about what are the specific programs now that we're putting into place. You've all mentioned the bunch of them. Maybe we'll start with User Groups because I think that was kind of the first of the programs that we have and one of the more mature ones. So maybe Lauren, I think you have the history here on how that got started, and maybe walk us through what's happened along the way and where we're at today.
LAUREN 07:29	Yeah, yeah. Everybody gather around, gather around [laughter]. I've been with Alteryx for almost three years, and I initially got hired to help support User Groups. So I want to say in 2014, we ran NPS survey, and one of the questions was just because Alteryx was kind of starting to hear some movement and momentum behind this concept of User Groups. So the survey asked would you be interested in the User Group? And I believe we got a return on about 20 contacts. The original team went forth and was knocking down doors, begging people to get User Group started. And from that, be original 17 groups were established in early to late 2014. So I came aboard around 2016. Around the year 2016, we expanded to about 50, needed some additional support, hired another associate, grew to about 80. Looked around, we weren't even in the US anymore, we were global and starting to reach the far areas of APAC. And that's when we brought Tuvy and Maddie onboard. It's just been a thrill. A couple of years ago at my first Inspire, I was begging people to look at the User page, try to compare what that value was. But as a new hire, it was hard to see what that value is. Since then, I've gone to a few User Group meetings, talked to many of you guys, and just seen and heard all the stories of how great it's been to connect with other like minds to talk about the same challenges or wins. And it was just so rewarding this year at Inspire Anaheim to just come up to people-- having people come up to me and just saying thank you. I'm so glad I got to meet these 10 people. They helped me solve my problems and things like that. it's been very, very rewarding.
BRIAN 09:19	Great. And so Tuvy, you came aboard a little a while ago and have jumped into helping out at least with some of the User Group stuffs. So how's that then from your perspective and maybe tell us some of the-- do you have a good story about a big win with a User Group or something exciting we'd like to sort of talk about?
TUVY 09:38	Yeah. So I joined in-- it's funny, I talk to friends and people outside of Alteryx about my job, and a lot of people are like, "Wait, so are these people-- do they work for Alteryx when they lead these groups or these ACES that are-- they're employees, right?" And I say, "No, they're customers [laughter]. We don't pay them." I mean we'll send them swag, and we'll, [laughter]--
MADDIE 10:01	We love the swag.
BRIAN 10:01	We pay them in swag and love.
TUVY 10:04	Yes, lots of love. But yeah, I jumped onboard and noticed that so many of the groups that I was working with were just on top of their game. [inaudible] was one of them, for example, who I got to meet at Inspire this past year. They did this thing in January in [inaudible] where because our tagline is for the users by the users. Obviously, Maddie, Lauren, and I support them from Irvine, but they do all of it. They come up with our agenda, they find presenters or the leaders who present themselves. It's very grassroots, I guess you can say, and they thought, "Well, why don't we do this, I believe it was Felix and Anthony who said, "Well, why don't we do-- it's the new year, we'll do Resolution to Solutions." And so on the Eventbrite, when we sent out these invitations, when you registered for the meeting, you could type in what your Alteryx resolution would be. And now we're here in June and we still have more submissions to go through, and they are solving those problems at their meetings in person, and it's amazing. Really, truly, they're taking questions locally and then solving them as a group and I don't want to say that I have any favorites, but I'm just really amazed by how much they've done. And Felix, shout out to him because he presented at Inspire, at our User Group meeting.
LAUREN 11:40	Yeah, I always find that rewarding just hearing the feedback. My favorite takeaway from most groups and I feel like the successful meetings are the ones where we just talked. We didn't really have a set agenda, we just talked and somebody new came in and said, "I have this problem", and 10 other people had the same problem magically. Wow, surprise, surprise, with a User Group, and they were able to solve that problem and then also make a bunch of friends, and that's where we get those advocates.
BRIAN 12:10	Great. So we've been talking primarily about the in-person groups, the local groups. Maddie, maybe you could tell a little bit about internal and industry groups.
MADDIE 12:21	Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So as you said, we have three subsets of the User Groups. So we have the local groups, the internal groups. So those are groups that companies meet internally with their users of Alteryx. So they might not be able to share their information with other people, so they just meet internally. And then we have the industry groups. We have two right now. We have health care, and we just launched transportation. By the time that this comes out, we will have had our first transportation User Group meeting. But the industry groups are really nice because we record the content as well. We meet virtually via WebEx and then we record it and post it to the community page afterwards. So for people all around the world, if they don't have a User Group in their area, they can watch that content anytime that they want. It's streamed right to their desk. Or if they have families, and they can't take the time to go to a local User Group after work, we usually do the meetings during work hours in the US, so it's really nice for people to be able to gather together and do a Lunch & Learn. I know a couple of companies that gather the whole team in a conference room and they do kind of a bring your lunch let's all watch this together. So it's really nice to-- just as a different learning environment, just as a different experience than the local groups. It's a great opportunity just to get that content.
LAUREN 13:51	Yeah, the internal groups are really interesting. I heard one kind of use case of-- somebody wanted to get their own internal group. It was one of the first internal groups to get started. He goes to work, he sits down at his desk, he doesn't talk to anybody. He wanted to get this internal group up so he actually could meet his colleagues at his company. I thought that it's just really interesting. I think it's really cool what the internal groups can provide in terms of connecting users, not only city-wide but just even organizational-wide.
BRIAN 14:25	Yeah. And I think too from a prospect perspective, someone who's just found about Alteryx or wants to learn about it might not even be a customer yet. These User Groups are just gold, right, because they can go, they can meet people, they can see presentations, they can hear use cases. They might even get some workflows thrown their way or some presentations that they can take back to their org. The value of these things, I think, from whether you're someone who's never even seen Alteryx before all the way through, "I've been using it for five, six years, whatever. I'm a wizard." I feel like there's value in there for everyone. And now that we have it where you can either go to a local group or you can do an online group kind of on your lunch time or something like that, I feel like there's a really good spread for a really big spectrum of users that almost anybody can get something out of this with a very small investment of their time. And I use the word investment intentionally because I think it's a worthy investment for people.
LAUREN 15:30	It is. Yeah, definitely. And what I suggest to people who haven't yet been to a User Group meeting or are just curious, join the community, join your local User Group pages. You'll receive those email notifications when we post meetings. Another kind of tip I've been passing along since Inspire is, "I have these questions. My User Group isn't really suiting my needs." Just to us. Message on the community. Just say, "Hey, I need help with Spatial." A lot of times, our User Group leaders, they're volunteers like Tuvy mentioned. They're kind of looking around to the community for that direction and we love it when people say, "Hey, I have this question," or, "I have this use case that I would like to share with the group." That definitely helps kind of foster the growth and support of our User Groups.
BRIAN 16:19	Great. So last on the User Group piece before we segue. What if I live in a place where there isn't a User Group, how do I get started? How do I jump into-- aside from the ones that are available online, how would I start a User Group?
TUVY 16:34	I would say, first of all, on the Community, there's on the right-side panel. There's a little banner that says I have a question. I want to start a new User Group. So you can definitely email us, reach us on the Community and let us know that you are interested in studying a new user group. And this is what we want to see. And I'd say about 90% of our User Groups, we have about three to five User Group leaders. Not because it's so much work to maintain one, but just you all have your full-time jobs, and again, this is you volunteering your time. So it's nice to have three to five people to spread out the work evenly. One person can plan the agenda, one person can source speakers, one person could be in charge of the snacks, checking in, things like that.
MADDIE 17:29	Snacks are important [laughter].
TUVY 17:31	Snacks and swag. So once you contact us, we'll look and see if there's anybody in the area who might be interested. We definitely keep a little nice list of people who have raised their hands, and then we'll connect to with the right people.
LAUREN 17:46	Yeah, I think just to touch upon that, some of the challenges that we do see with newer User Groups is just building up that moment. A lot of times, it's waiting for that right time to catch that bug. Your community need to see the value of what and why User Groups are for. Tuvy mentioned having three to five other volunteers to help out. It's nice to have three to five volunteers in other organizations because if you can think, it expands the idea of what User Groups are. It's a little bit challenging to have three different User Group leaders from the same company. It's just going to be all circulated internally. But in that case, now since we're starting to support internal User Groups, that is definitely a great option to look into.
BRIAN 18:28	Great. And Maddie, what about internal User Groups or industry, how do they get in touch with you to help present or help out with that?
MADDIE 18:35	Yeah, please, reach out to me on the community. I'm at MaddieJ on the community. And I can definitely set you up with resources on simple agendas for your first internal meeting; what survey questions to ask when you email your company and say, "Hey, who wants to be a part of this? I need help organizing." Or, "What time of day works best for everyone?" That kind of thing. So I'm definitely here to give you resources and just be a general support. So answer any questions that you might have. When it comes to the industry groups, we're always looking for more speakers and leaders for the healthcare and the transportation User Groups, and we're hoping to start more industry User Groups soon, so stay tuned for that. But a good place to stay in touch is just message me or just keep your eye on the User Group page and community. [music]
BRIAN 19:31	All right. So let's segue to the ACE program, another of our--
TUVY 19:35	Yes [laughter].
BRIAN 19:35	--big, beautiful [laughter]-- take it away [inaudible] [laughter].
TUVY 19:39	No time to shy.
LAUREN 19:41	No, she is shying right now. She's wearing some kind of metallic, sparkly outfit.
TUVY 19:47	Today's Theme Thursday so FYI, we're all wearing flowers, and well, except for Brian.
BRIAN 19:55	Sorry, guys.
TUVY 19:56	Brian is forever tentative.
LAUREN 19:58	Yeah, I only mentioned the sparkly because last week, I believe it was metallic--
TUVY 20:03	Yes.
MADDIE 20:03	It was metallic day.
LAUREN 20:04	I got some kind of great GIF that's on my Twitter right now.
TUVY 20:07	Yeah, yes [laughter].
BRIAN 20:10	About that ACE program.
MADDIE 20:11	Back to the ACEs. No. So another reason why I love my job so much is because I get to work with a wonderful group of ACEs that we have. So the ACE program basically highlights some of our biggest ambassadors and they all have different experiences, they're all over the world. Somebody just published a book that you can buy on Amazon, Heather Harris. [inaudible], who blogs, I think he has over a thousand blog entries. It's in Japanese so I have not read them but there's just so many of our ACEs who are doing just amazing things reaching out to people on the community, answering questions, presenting. Like Lauren said earlier, they are always presenting at User Group meetings. And so it's a dream really to work with them and to see how much are not just our Alteryx community, but the greater community gets from them. There's a lot of inspiration that just kind of gets recycled around, which is really wonderful to see.
BRIAN 21:20	Great. So I have a question that I'm going to ask you, but I think I'm going to stomp you because I don't think ever heard this question before.
MADDIE 21:26	Try me.
BRIAN 21:27	How does someone become an ACE?
MADDIE 21:29	Oh, my gosh. I've never heard that question [laughter]. I think I have about--
LAUREN 21:32	Can I become an ACE?
MADDIE 21:33	They sent me seven emails in my inbox right now. So I've said this before but just like our weekly challenges or any problem that you can solve using Alteryx, there isn't just the one way to become an ACE. It's not a linear path, there's many ways. I want people to be comfortable in their way of advocating. And so like I mentioned, some people have written books, some people have done training manuals. Some people blog, some people speak. So honestly, in my mind, it almost doesn't matter which way you take as long as you are very passionate about it, as long as you do a lot of advocating work. And as long as you really put the community first, you want to help people, you want to give back, you want to mentor someone who is maybe new at using Alteryx. So there's so many ways to do it, and I would say the easiest way for you to be visible is to be on the community. Get your name out there, answer questions. Even if you're the seventh person to answer a question, it's likely that your answer will be different than everyone else's. So those are the ways to become an ACE.
BRIAN 22:58	Great. And we added four more in Anaheim
MADDIE 23:01	Yes. Five.
BRIAN 23:02	Five. I'm sorry, five in Anaheim. And is there going to be some more in London or what?
LAUREN 23:08	There's going to be some more but you're just going to have to stay tuned, and again, up your activity. If I see you, I see you.
LAUREN 23:14	I think Alteryx band wrote a song [laughter].
MADDIE 23:18	Oh. Also, so there's a lot of people are very active on the community, so we've changed a lot-- not a lot, a few of the rules of play to get into the ACE program. And I think, to me, the biggest thing is that we are now opening it up to not just include one person per company. So there are so many companies out there and so many wonderful advocates and ambassadors, so just letting people know, just because there's an ACE at your company now doesn't mean that you don't have a chance at becoming the next ACE. So I just wanted to give a shout-out to people, to not feel worried or discouraged that they can't be chosen. [music]
BRIAN 24:09	All right. So let's segue to our community picks. Lauren, let's start with you. What has been exciting to you in the community lately?
LAUREN 24:16	So it's kind of a game that we have in the Irvine office, but [inaudible] Crew and his avatars, I kind of almost obsessively look at them every day just to kind of guess. I always like to guess. That's my game. And I know he's probably going to call me once this podcast drops and we can talk about the daily one. But I always find that one exciting. I always nudge Maddie and Tuvy, and be like, "What is it today [laughter]? It's teacher something." "Oh, it's teacher appreciation day." Oh, I like that little sandwich [laughter].
BRIAN 24:47	Yeah. And on his episode of the show - we had him on a few episodes back - he explains how he does this, how he decides which avatar to pick. And you'll have to go listen to that episode. But it's a pretty funny little story about how he does it and why every few days he has a different GIF funny avatar, so.
LAUREN 25:06	Oh, that guy [laughter].
BRIAN 25:08	What else? Anything else from your perspective?
LAUREN 25:10	Yeah. This is just kind of an oldie but a goodie. We're all avid animal fans. If you go to the Orlando user group page, there is something called Animals of Alteryx. And take a look, there's a few adorable animals working on some workflows. If you have your own adorable little animal as well, I would highly encourage you to post that. I'm thinking we probably should move that section to maybe the community news areas so we can see everybody's pets.
BRIAN 25:35	Pets. There's a lot on Twitter right now too because you give out those bandanas at Inspire
LAUREN 25:38	Yes.
TUVY 25:38	Yes.
BRIAN 25:39	And so I'm seeing people-- I saw Nicole Johnson, I think, posted her dog, her cat the other day with the bandana on.
MADDIE 25:46	I took a photo of my cat with the pet bandana on and I haven't tweeted it yet but I'll do that later after we finish this.
BRIAN 25:51	Maddie.
MADDIE 25:52	But I know--
BRIAN 25:53	But you're holding out on us.
MADDIE 25:53	I don't know why I'm waiting [laughter]. But it's glorious, so I'll be sure to share that.
BRIAN 25:59	We're waiting with bated breath, as are our podcast listeners.
MADDIE 26:01	I want to say that day that we did, on social, Pets of Alteryx was the best day.
BRIAN 26:06	It was huge.
MADDIE 26:07	Oh, it was great.
TUVY 26:07	It was great. I think it's hashtagged #alteryxpetz on Twitter, is that right?
MADDIE 26:10	Yes.
MADDIE 26:11	With a Z.
LAUREN 26:11	With a Z.
TUVY 26:11	With a Z.
MADDIE 26:12	Alteryxpetz.
TUVY 26:12	I have to say that Bruno won.
MADDIE 26:16	Yeah, we did have a competition.
LAUREN 26:16	The cat [laughter]?
TUVY 26:17	Yes.
MADDIE 26:18	--here in the office, and Tuvy's cat, Bruno, won the competition for #alteryxpetz
LAUREN 26:22	What was he doing?
TUVY 26:23	Very handsome.
LAUREN 26:24	What was he doing in his photo?
MADDIE 26:25	Let's [inaudible] the picture here
TUVY 26:28	He had stolen some rice from my plate and was hiding under a chair with a big piece, a big clump of rice in his mouth--
MADDIE 26:38	Dangling out of his mouth.
TUVY 26:39	Yeah, yeah. And he was growling at me [laughter].
BRIAN 26:43	Wow. Alright, we'll put wings to this in the show notes, community.lteryx.com/podcast, if you want to go see Bruno [laughter] and all of the other pet shenanigans. Maddie, how about you? What's your community pick?
MADDIE 26:55	Yes. So my community pick is an article that I read in the New York Times that came out on June, 13th. And it actually highlighted a study from Stanford researchers that found that boys are much more likely to outperform girls in math at school districts whose student body is composed of children who are from multifamilies living in mostly sub-urban neighborhood. So this isn't really a surprise. I feel like that's something that is kind of a stereotype. But the article goes on to explain that the future earnings of these kids appear to be influenced by the circumstances of their upbringings and the resources that are in their schools. So which is to say that having more resources and academic environments is just really crucial in educating both boys and girls, and I really love it. This article does a good job of really hitting that point home. So now with this information, what can we really do about it? At Inspire, we kind of touched on earlier that we had a User Group session and we had a really special guest speaker from the Commit partnership, her name is Marie out of Dallas, Fort Worth. And she got up on stage and really just explained kind of everything that this article was saying and more. And that it's just really important to get those resources for those kids that are in underprivileged communities. So just to bring it back to the User Groups, the User Group in Dallas uses Alteryx to help them advocate for these kids, and it uses Alteryx to help really clarify that research and really visualize it, and to understand why it's important to get these resources for kids. So if you guys are interested in learning more, I'll link the article in the show notes. But also, Marie pointed out at Inspire that there's a Strive Together network. So if you're not in Dallas, you can look at Strive Together and learn how to get involved.
LAUREN 29:07	And I want to say two User Groups right now, I think, are working with the Strive partnership. I think--
TUVY 29:13	Houston is one.
LAUREN 29:14	Houston and Chicago are studying that, so that's awesome. What this non-profit does is amazing. They take all his data and they bring it up to the local government just to show them, "This is what's happening to our future." So thank you guys so much, Commit.
BRIAN 29:31	Yeah, I think of all the people I talk to and inspire on the podcast, every single person that was somehow attached to a User Group also talked about Alteryx for good in some form or fashion, and there's this really strong connection between the two. So yeah, that's great. Tuvy, how about you?
TUVY 29:47	So I have two community picks, and they kind of go right into what Maddie was talking about. But AFG, we do promote it to our User Groups, to our ACEs, to all of our customers. But I feel like just being here in Irvine and being so close to it, it's also really inspired me to become active myself. So the first one I want to shout out is Crisis Text Line, and it is a non-profit that, basically, it's all in the name, right? So when someone is in crisis, they can text his number and then they can get help. So you basically apply to be a volunteer and then you do 30 hours of training, and then you can just get on the platform anytime you have a free two hours or three hours, and you just chat with people who are in crisis and say you're able to help people all over the world. And I just think it's a great organization because you get to do it at home in the comfort of your pajamas or whatever, and you're really making a difference. Some people are intimidated by volunteering because they don't have the time to go to a specific spot in-person. So this one has a lot of flexibility. And then the second one is coastal GSR, and it is a non-profit that rescues German Shepherds. And I didn't really love German Shepherds, and specifically, prior to this, but they came here to Irvine and had a little adoption event, and I fell in love with one, and so I've been going there. Again, you have to do four-- you have to take for courses where you train their dogs, and then after that, you can just go whenever you're free and walk a pup or two. So it's really nice to get to hang out with them, pet them, and then get them ready for adoptions.
BRIAN 31:41	So when are you adopting?
TUVY 31:44	That is the million-dollar question [laughter]. Every time I go-- every time I go, I see one specific dog because I have completely fallen in love with him, and the owner, and all the trainers there, whenever they see me, they're, like, "Oh, there's Milo's mom." And I can't snag it, but hopefully, soon.
MADDIE 32:04	I feel like at least twice a week, Tuvy comes in to work, and the first thing that she says, "I walked my Milo yesterday. Let me show you all the pictures that I took. And he's so great and I love him so much."
TUVY 32:13	He's just so great. And he's the biggest German-- he's an XL German Shepherd, and I'm probably the shortest, most petite person there, and they gave me this dog on my first day, and I was like, "Okay." But we're just an odd pair and it works.
BRIAN 32:30	Awesome. All right. And I'll wrap us up on the community picks with something that I was thought was really cool, which was our expert certification. So at Inspire, we did all of the training that we normally do plus some. And then we've introduced, obviously, the certification which we talked about on the show a bunch. But I wanted to sort of single out one person. His name is Jessy Clarke, and he was the sole person to pass the Alteryx designer expert exam which is brand new, and we made it really hard on purpose because we think that to get that certification, something that's called expert, you really have to be an expert. And it was really awesome getting to know Jessy, and we have a great picture of him in his cap-and-gown. We sort of busted out the cap-and-gown, and we were playing Pomp and Circumstance through my phone while he was "graduating". So we'll put the link to that in the show notes. But there was also a bunch of people that got really close and they were so excited about, "Oh. Now I know what I need to do and I'm going to come back next time." And it just kind of warmed my heart to see people so excited about learning, and the certification, and what it's going to do for them in their careers or their usage of our platform, and so on. So awesome job, Jessy and everybody else that took training and passed both the beginner and the advanced certifications as well. If you want to check those out online, you can. Those are on the community, under Alteryx Academy. And that's another one where it's like if you haven't certified, I don't know what you're doing with your life right now.
MADDIE 34:05	Come to London.
TUVY 34:05	I don't have a background-- well, I don't have a background in data and I'm slowly making my way through. So don't make me pass you [laughter].
BRIAN 34:15	Awesome. All right. Well, thanks for being on the show. Thanks for all your insights about the programs, and we'll put everything in the show notes so people find out where to get more. We're here to hear more from you and contact you about these wonderful things. So thanks for being on.
MADDIE 34:28	Awesome.
TUVY 34:28	Thanks, Brian. Thank you.
LAUREN 34:29	Thanks, Brian. [music]

BRIAN 00:06 [music] Welcome to Alter Everything, a podcast about data and analytics culture. I am Brian Oblinger, and I'll be your host. We're joined today by Lauren Uyeno, Tuvy Le, and Maddie Johannsen to talk about Alteryx User Groups and the ACE program. Let's get right into it. [music] BRIAN 00:27 All right. So I'm here with Maddie, Tuvy, and Lauren. Welcome to the show. MADDIE 00:30 Hey. LAUREN 00:31 Hi. TUVY 00:31 Hi. BRIAN 00:32 So, this is a very special episode, I believe, of the podcast. We're going to sort of step outside of our normal topic set today and talk a little bit about User Groups and ACEs. But before we do that, maybe let's go around the table and hear who you are, and what you do, and a little introduction. So, Maddie, we'll start with you. MADDIE 00:50 Yeah. My name is Maddie Johannsen, and my journey here has been kind of a mixed bag. I actually got my degree in art history from Colorado State University, and then I worked in project management, email marketing compliance, and then I was actually working in trust and safety at a transportation network company. And then my life ended up bringing me to California and I was lucky to find a spot in customer advocacy here at Alteryx. LAUREN 01:21 Hey, everyone. This is Lauren Uyeno. It's funny from all the stories that I'm hearing about how we've been here and how we got here at Alteryx. Mixed bag as well. I got my degree from Cal State, Long Beach in public health. I was looking into non-profits, found myself in a non-profit working on events there and doing some voluntary management. Got a random rec from one of our lovely recruiters here at Alteryx. I went through the interviews, talked to Brian, it sounded great. Love the energy, love the community that we have here. And I want to say from that conversation, Brian, that it kind of sold me that I wanted to join the dark side [laughter]. BRIAN 02:01 The dark side? LAUREN 02:02 Yeah. BRIAN 02:02 This is the light side[laughter]. LAUREN 02:03 All right. I don't know. I'm [inaudible] it right now that I'm giving you such high praise [laughter]? BRIAN 02:08 Most people do. LAUREN 02:09 I know you'll not hold this against me, but yeah, I just kind of found myself here. And cheesy as it sounds, Alteryx, my favorite tool is the viewing tool. I just think Alteryx brings in all of our great qualities and really amplifies them, and I really do feel like working here has really brought out my creative side, and being able to try things, challenge boundaries, altering stuff. So I'm happy to be here. TUVY 02:33 I'm Tuvy Le, a customer advocacy coordinator as well. And my degree was in kinesiology. I started out working mostly with people with spinal cord injuries, so most of my earlier years were in rehab, private, and at hospitals. And then I moved to DC, worked for a tech company also, ended up at a home care company, so kind of back to where I started. But all of my jobs have always sort of been client-facing. I just love working with people physically, on the phone, online, whatever it is. And so moving back to California, I was referred by another Alteryx associate and found myself here in customer advocacy where I'm again working with customers, client-facing. The only difference is, I just have to say it's the happiest customers I've ever had the chance to work with. So it's pretty much a dream job. BRIAN 03:41 Cool. All right. Well, we'll try to keep it that way [laughter]. No pressure. No pressure. MADDIE 03:47 I don't know, Brian. BRIAN 03:48 No pressure. Okay. Great. So I think that's a really interesting intro because everybody has, again, this sort of varied backgrounds that come from different things. So maybe tell us, what would you say you do here, right [laughter]? On the daily, let's talk a little bit about the things that you do to support customers, ACEs things like that. Maybe Lauren, we'll start with you. LAUREN 04:13 Yeah. So basically, what I do here is accounting [laughter]. I'm just kidding [laughter]. Everybody asks me what I do here. I always joke, I'm the Chandler Bing of-- I don't know if you guys do this. I'm Chandler Bing. Nobody knows what we do. I don't know, I think we do the fun stuff. We get basically all of our wonderful customers together to talk about Alteryx, and a public setting, to hang out, to kind of foster and nurture the excitement that is Alteryx and finding solutions to their business problems. MADDIE 04:53 Yeah, absolutely. I think that kind of goes into what we were discussing earlier about what customer advocacy is and what it is not. So Tuvy kind of said it well earlier, it's not a help desk. We don't really facilitate the support questions about the platform, but it's more how can we keep everyone engaged and excited. And I mean it speaks for itself. I think people are already excited about what Alteryx is, but for the part, what we do is just-- it's the exciting stuff. We really encourage people to stay excited. And for me as well, I help book the guests that we have on the podcast. And so for me, it's getting people excited that we have a podcast, and we have all these different things and ways for people to stay engaged. So that's been really exciting for me. TUVY 05:49 Yeah, I want to say we have, I think, not just the best customers, but the best advocates. And people do this-- obviously, some of them, it's part of their job at work but they do it on their own time too. Our User Groups, when they meet, it's usually after work hours. They take their time to present, to spread their knowledge, and they do so with such joy that it's very contagious. This is post-Inspire, but even at Inspire, they were so excited to present, and then afterwards, they were reaching out to all the customers who had questions and they are continuing that conversation whether it's on Twitter or on our wonderful community, and it's just nice to see that. So we definitely are lucky enough to support that kind of activity. BRIAN 06:44 Yeah. I've been doing this community thing for a long time and I can tell you that it's straight up like pulling teeth at a lot of companies trying to get people to advocate for you and be excited about your products. And it's one of the things that excited me about coming here in the first place. So I think we're very fortunate, and to all of you listening, thank you for making our lives easy. So let's talk a little bit about what are the specific programs now that we're putting into place. You've all mentioned the bunch of them. Maybe we'll start with User Groups because I think that was kind of the first of the programs that we have and one of the more mature ones. So maybe Lauren, I think you have the history here on how that got started, and maybe walk us through what's happened along the way and where we're at today. LAUREN 07:29 Yeah, yeah. Everybody gather around, gather around [laughter]. I've been with Alteryx for almost three years, and I initially got hired to help support User Groups. So I want to say in 2014, we ran NPS survey, and one of the questions was just because Alteryx was kind of starting to hear some movement and momentum behind this concept of User Groups. So the survey asked would you be interested in the User Group? And I believe we got a return on about 20 contacts. The original team went forth and was knocking down doors, begging people to get User Group started. And from that, be original 17 groups were established in early to late 2014. So I came aboard around 2016. Around the year 2016, we expanded to about 50, needed some additional support, hired another associate, grew to about 80. Looked around, we weren't even in the US anymore, we were global and starting to reach the far areas of APAC. And that's when we brought Tuvy and Maddie onboard. It's just been a thrill. A couple of years ago at my first Inspire, I was begging people to look at the User page, try to compare what that value was. But as a new hire, it was hard to see what that value is. Since then, I've gone to a few User Group meetings, talked to many of you guys, and just seen and heard all the stories of how great it's been to connect with other like minds to talk about the same challenges or wins. And it was just so rewarding this year at Inspire Anaheim to just come up to people-- having people come up to me and just saying thank you. I'm so glad I got to meet these 10 people. They helped me solve my problems and things like that. it's been very, very rewarding. BRIAN 09:19 Great. And so Tuvy, you came aboard a little a while ago and have jumped into helping out at least with some of the User Group stuffs. So how's that then from your perspective and maybe tell us some of the-- do you have a good story about a big win with a User Group or something exciting we'd like to sort of talk about? TUVY 09:38 Yeah. So I joined in-- it's funny, I talk to friends and people outside of Alteryx about my job, and a lot of people are like, "Wait, so are these people-- do they work for Alteryx when they lead these groups or these ACES that are-- they're employees, right?" And I say, "No, they're customers [laughter]. We don't pay them." I mean we'll send them swag, and we'll, [laughter]-- MADDIE 10:01 We love the swag. BRIAN 10:01 We pay them in swag and love. TUVY 10:04 Yes, lots of love. But yeah, I jumped onboard and noticed that so many of the groups that I was working with were just on top of their game. [inaudible] was one of them, for example, who I got to meet at Inspire this past year. They did this thing in January in [inaudible] where because our tagline is for the users by the users. Obviously, Maddie, Lauren, and I support them from Irvine, but they do all of it. They come up with our agenda, they find presenters or the leaders who present themselves. It's very grassroots, I guess you can say, and they thought, "Well, why don't we do this, I believe it was Felix and Anthony who said, "Well, why don't we do-- it's the new year, we'll do Resolution to Solutions." And so on the Eventbrite, when we sent out these invitations, when you registered for the meeting, you could type in what your Alteryx resolution would be. And now we're here in June and we still have more submissions to go through, and they are solving those problems at their meetings in person, and it's amazing. Really, truly, they're taking questions locally and then solving them as a group and I don't want to say that I have any favorites, but I'm just really amazed by how much they've done. And Felix, shout out to him because he presented at Inspire, at our User Group meeting. LAUREN 11:40 Yeah, I always find that rewarding just hearing the feedback. My favorite takeaway from most groups and I feel like the successful meetings are the ones where we just talked. We didn't really have a set agenda, we just talked and somebody new came in and said, "I have this problem", and 10 other people had the same problem magically. Wow, surprise, surprise, with a User Group, and they were able to solve that problem and then also make a bunch of friends, and that's where we get those advocates. BRIAN 12:10 Great. So we've been talking primarily about the in-person groups, the local groups. Maddie, maybe you could tell a little bit about internal and industry groups. MADDIE 12:21 Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So as you said, we have three subsets of the User Groups. So we have the local groups, the internal groups. So those are groups that companies meet internally with their users of Alteryx. So they might not be able to share their information with other people, so they just meet internally. And then we have the industry groups. We have two right now. We have health care, and we just launched transportation. By the time that this comes out, we will have had our first transportation User Group meeting. But the industry groups are really nice because we record the content as well. We meet virtually via WebEx and then we record it and post it to the community page afterwards. So for people all around the world, if they don't have a User Group in their area, they can watch that content anytime that they want. It's streamed right to their desk. Or if they have families, and they can't take the time to go to a local User Group after work, we usually do the meetings during work hours in the US, so it's really nice for people to be able to gather together and do a Lunch & Learn. I know a couple of companies that gather the whole team in a conference room and they do kind of a bring your lunch let's all watch this together. So it's really nice to-- just as a different learning environment, just as a different experience than the local groups. It's a great opportunity just to get that content. LAUREN 13:51 Yeah, the internal groups are really interesting. I heard one kind of use case of-- somebody wanted to get their own internal group. It was one of the first internal groups to get started. He goes to work, he sits down at his desk, he doesn't talk to anybody. He wanted to get this internal group up so he actually could meet his colleagues at his company. I thought that it's just really interesting. I think it's really cool what the internal groups can provide in terms of connecting users, not only city-wide but just even organizational-wide. BRIAN 14:25 Yeah. And I think too from a prospect perspective, someone who's just found about Alteryx or wants to learn about it might not even be a customer yet. These User Groups are just gold, right, because they can go, they can meet people, they can see presentations, they can hear use cases. They might even get some workflows thrown their way or some presentations that they can take back to their org. The value of these things, I think, from whether you're someone who's never even seen Alteryx before all the way through, "I've been using it for five, six years, whatever. I'm a wizard." I feel like there's value in there for everyone. And now that we have it where you can either go to a local group or you can do an online group kind of on your lunch time or something like that, I feel like there's a really good spread for a really big spectrum of users that almost anybody can get something out of this with a very small investment of their time. And I use the word investment intentionally because I think it's a worthy investment for people. LAUREN 15:30 It is. Yeah, definitely. And what I suggest to people who haven't yet been to a User Group meeting or are just curious, join the community, join your local User Group pages. You'll receive those email notifications when we post meetings. Another kind of tip I've been passing along since Inspire is, "I have these questions. My User Group isn't really suiting my needs." Just to us. Message on the community. Just say, "Hey, I need help with Spatial." A lot of times, our User Group leaders, they're volunteers like Tuvy mentioned. They're kind of looking around to the community for that direction and we love it when people say, "Hey, I have this question," or, "I have this use case that I would like to share with the group." That definitely helps kind of foster the growth and support of our User Groups. BRIAN 16:19 Great. So last on the User Group piece before we segue. What if I live in a place where there isn't a User Group, how do I get started? How do I jump into-- aside from the ones that are available online, how would I start a User Group? TUVY 16:34 I would say, first of all, on the Community, there's on the right-side panel. There's a little banner that says I have a question. I want to start a new User Group. So you can definitely email us, reach us on the Community and let us know that you are interested in studying a new user group. And this is what we want to see. And I'd say about 90% of our User Groups, we have about three to five User Group leaders. Not because it's so much work to maintain one, but just you all have your full-time jobs, and again, this is you volunteering your time. So it's nice to have three to five people to spread out the work evenly. One person can plan the agenda, one person can source speakers, one person could be in charge of the snacks, checking in, things like that. MADDIE 17:29 Snacks are important [laughter]. TUVY 17:31 Snacks and swag. So once you contact us, we'll look and see if there's anybody in the area who might be interested. We definitely keep a little nice list of people who have raised their hands, and then we'll connect to with the right people. LAUREN 17:46 Yeah, I think just to touch upon that, some of the challenges that we do see with newer User Groups is just building up that moment. A lot of times, it's waiting for that right time to catch that bug. Your community need to see the value of what and why User Groups are for. Tuvy mentioned having three to five other volunteers to help out. It's nice to have three to five volunteers in other organizations because if you can think, it expands the idea of what User Groups are. It's a little bit challenging to have three different User Group leaders from the same company. It's just going to be all circulated internally. But in that case, now since we're starting to support internal User Groups, that is definitely a great option to look into. BRIAN 18:28 Great. And Maddie, what about internal User Groups or industry, how do they get in touch with you to help present or help out with that? MADDIE 18:35 Yeah, please, reach out to me on the community. I'm at MaddieJ on the community. And I can definitely set you up with resources on simple agendas for your first internal meeting; what survey questions to ask when you email your company and say, "Hey, who wants to be a part of this? I need help organizing." Or, "What time of day works best for everyone?" That kind of thing. So I'm definitely here to give you resources and just be a general support. So answer any questions that you might have. When it comes to the industry groups, we're always looking for more speakers and leaders for the healthcare and the transportation User Groups, and we're hoping to start more industry User Groups soon, so stay tuned for that. But a good place to stay in touch is just message me or just keep your eye on the User Group page and community. [music] BRIAN 19:31 All right. So let's segue to the ACE program, another of our-- TUVY 19:35 Yes [laughter]. BRIAN 19:35 --big, beautiful [laughter]-- take it away [inaudible] [laughter]. TUVY 19:39 No time to shy. LAUREN 19:41 No, she is shying right now. She's wearing some kind of metallic, sparkly outfit. TUVY 19:47 Today's Theme Thursday so FYI, we're all wearing flowers, and well, except for Brian. BRIAN 19:55 Sorry, guys. TUVY 19:56 Brian is forever tentative. LAUREN 19:58 Yeah, I only mentioned the sparkly because last week, I believe it was metallic-- TUVY 20:03 Yes. MADDIE 20:03 It was metallic day. LAUREN 20:04 I got some kind of great GIF that's on my Twitter right now. TUVY 20:07 Yeah, yes [laughter]. BRIAN 20:10 About that ACE program. MADDIE 20:11 Back to the ACEs. No. So another reason why I love my job so much is because I get to work with a wonderful group of ACEs that we have. So the ACE program basically highlights some of our biggest ambassadors and they all have different experiences, they're all over the world. Somebody just published a book that you can buy on Amazon, Heather Harris. [inaudible], who blogs, I think he has over a thousand blog entries. It's in Japanese so I have not read them but there's just so many of our ACEs who are doing just amazing things reaching out to people on the community, answering questions, presenting. Like Lauren said earlier, they are always presenting at User Group meetings. And so it's a dream really to work with them and to see how much are not just our Alteryx community, but the greater community gets from them. There's a lot of inspiration that just kind of gets recycled around, which is really wonderful to see. BRIAN 21:20 Great. So I have a question that I'm going to ask you, but I think I'm going to stomp you because I don't think ever heard this question before. MADDIE 21:26 Try me. BRIAN 21:27 How does someone become an ACE? MADDIE 21:29 Oh, my gosh. I've never heard that question [laughter]. I think I have about-- LAUREN 21:32 Can I become an ACE? MADDIE 21:33 They sent me seven emails in my inbox right now. So I've said this before but just like our weekly challenges or any problem that you can solve using Alteryx, there isn't just the one way to become an ACE. It's not a linear path, there's many ways. I want people to be comfortable in their way of advocating. And so like I mentioned, some people have written books, some people have done training manuals. Some people blog, some people speak. So honestly, in my mind, it almost doesn't matter which way you take as long as you are very passionate about it, as long as you do a lot of advocating work. And as long as you really put the community first, you want to help people, you want to give back, you want to mentor someone who is maybe new at using Alteryx. So there's so many ways to do it, and I would say the easiest way for you to be visible is to be on the community. Get your name out there, answer questions. Even if you're the seventh person to answer a question, it's likely that your answer will be different than everyone else's. So those are the ways to become an ACE. BRIAN 22:58 Great. And we added four more in Anaheim MADDIE 23:01 Yes. Five. BRIAN 23:02 Five. I'm sorry, five in Anaheim. And is there going to be some more in London or what? LAUREN 23:08 There's going to be some more but you're just going to have to stay tuned, and again, up your activity. If I see you, I see you. LAUREN 23:14 I think Alteryx band wrote a song [laughter]. MADDIE 23:18 Oh. Also, so there's a lot of people are very active on the community, so we've changed a lot-- not a lot, a few of the rules of play to get into the ACE program. And I think, to me, the biggest thing is that we are now opening it up to not just include one person per company. So there are so many companies out there and so many wonderful advocates and ambassadors, so just letting people know, just because there's an ACE at your company now doesn't mean that you don't have a chance at becoming the next ACE. So I just wanted to give a shout-out to people, to not feel worried or discouraged that they can't be chosen. [music] BRIAN 24:09 All right. So let's segue to our community picks. Lauren, let's start with you. What has been exciting to you in the community lately? LAUREN 24:16 So it's kind of a game that we have in the Irvine office, but [inaudible] Crew and his avatars, I kind of almost obsessively look at them every day just to kind of guess. I always like to guess. That's my game. And I know he's probably going to call me once this podcast drops and we can talk about the daily one. But I always find that one exciting. I always nudge Maddie and Tuvy, and be like, "What is it today [laughter]? It's teacher something." "Oh, it's teacher appreciation day." Oh, I like that little sandwich [laughter]. BRIAN 24:47 Yeah. And on his episode of the show - we had him on a few episodes back - he explains how he does this, how he decides which avatar to pick. And you'll have to go listen to that episode. But it's a pretty funny little story about how he does it and why every few days he has a different GIF funny avatar, so. LAUREN 25:06 Oh, that guy [laughter]. BRIAN 25:08 What else? Anything else from your perspective? LAUREN 25:10 Yeah. This is just kind of an oldie but a goodie. We're all avid animal fans. If you go to the Orlando user group page, there is something called Animals of Alteryx. And take a look, there's a few adorable animals working on some workflows. If you have your own adorable little animal as well, I would highly encourage you to post that. I'm thinking we probably should move that section to maybe the community news areas so we can see everybody's pets. BRIAN 25:35 Pets. There's a lot on Twitter right now too because you give out those bandanas at Inspire LAUREN 25:38 Yes. TUVY 25:38 Yes. BRIAN 25:39 And so I'm seeing people-- I saw Nicole Johnson, I think, posted her dog, her cat the other day with the bandana on. MADDIE 25:46 I took a photo of my cat with the pet bandana on and I haven't tweeted it yet but I'll do that later after we finish this. BRIAN 25:51 Maddie. MADDIE 25:52 But I know-- BRIAN 25:53 But you're holding out on us. MADDIE 25:53 I don't know why I'm waiting [laughter]. But it's glorious, so I'll be sure to share that. BRIAN 25:59 We're waiting with bated breath, as are our podcast listeners. MADDIE 26:01 I want to say that day that we did, on social, Pets of Alteryx was the best day. BRIAN 26:06 It was huge. MADDIE 26:07 Oh, it was great. TUVY 26:07 It was great. I think it's hashtagged #alteryxpetz on Twitter, is that right? MADDIE 26:10 Yes. MADDIE 26:11 With a Z. LAUREN 26:11 With a Z. TUVY 26:11 With a Z. MADDIE 26:12 Alteryxpetz. TUVY 26:12 I have to say that Bruno won. MADDIE 26:16 Yeah, we did have a competition. LAUREN 26:16 The cat [laughter]? TUVY 26:17 Yes. MADDIE 26:18 --here in the office, and Tuvy's cat, Bruno, won the competition for #alteryxpetz LAUREN 26:22 What was he doing? TUVY 26:23 Very handsome. LAUREN 26:24 What was he doing in his photo? MADDIE 26:25 Let's [inaudible] the picture here TUVY 26:28 He had stolen some rice from my plate and was hiding under a chair with a big piece, a big clump of rice in his mouth-- MADDIE 26:38 Dangling out of his mouth. TUVY 26:39 Yeah, yeah. And he was growling at me [laughter]. BRIAN 26:43 Wow. Alright, we'll put wings to this in the show notes, community.lteryx.com/podcast, if you want to go see Bruno [laughter] and all of the other pet shenanigans. Maddie, how about you? What's your community pick? MADDIE 26:55 Yes. So my community pick is an article that I read in the New York Times that came out on June, 13th. And it actually highlighted a study from Stanford researchers that found that boys are much more likely to outperform girls in math at school districts whose student body is composed of children who are from multifamilies living in mostly sub-urban neighborhood. So this isn't really a surprise. I feel like that's something that is kind of a stereotype. But the article goes on to explain that the future earnings of these kids appear to be influenced by the circumstances of their upbringings and the resources that are in their schools. So which is to say that having more resources and academic environments is just really crucial in educating both boys and girls, and I really love it. This article does a good job of really hitting that point home. So now with this information, what can we really do about it? At Inspire, we kind of touched on earlier that we had a User Group session and we had a really special guest speaker from the Commit partnership, her name is Marie out of Dallas, Fort Worth. And she got up on stage and really just explained kind of everything that this article was saying and more. And that it's just really important to get those resources for those kids that are in underprivileged communities. So just to bring it back to the User Groups, the User Group in Dallas uses Alteryx to help them advocate for these kids, and it uses Alteryx to help really clarify that research and really visualize it, and to understand why it's important to get these resources for kids. So if you guys are interested in learning more, I'll link the article in the show notes. But also, Marie pointed out at Inspire that there's a Strive Together network. So if you're not in Dallas, you can look at Strive Together and learn how to get involved. LAUREN 29:07 And I want to say two User Groups right now, I think, are working with the Strive partnership. I think-- TUVY 29:13 Houston is one. LAUREN 29:14 Houston and Chicago are studying that, so that's awesome. What this non-profit does is amazing. They take all his data and they bring it up to the local government just to show them, "This is what's happening to our future." So thank you guys so much, Commit. BRIAN 29:31 Yeah, I think of all the people I talk to and inspire on the podcast, every single person that was somehow attached to a User Group also talked about Alteryx for good in some form or fashion, and there's this really strong connection between the two. So yeah, that's great. Tuvy, how about you? TUVY 29:47 So I have two community picks, and they kind of go right into what Maddie was talking about. But AFG, we do promote it to our User Groups, to our ACEs, to all of our customers. But I feel like just being here in Irvine and being so close to it, it's also really inspired me to become active myself. So the first one I want to shout out is Crisis Text Line, and it is a non-profit that, basically, it's all in the name, right? So when someone is in crisis, they can text his number and then they can get help. So you basically apply to be a volunteer and then you do 30 hours of training, and then you can just get on the platform anytime you have a free two hours or three hours, and you just chat with people who are in crisis and say you're able to help people all over the world. And I just think it's a great organization because you get to do it at home in the comfort of your pajamas or whatever, and you're really making a difference. Some people are intimidated by volunteering because they don't have the time to go to a specific spot in-person. So this one has a lot of flexibility. And then the second one is coastal GSR, and it is a non-profit that rescues German Shepherds. And I didn't really love German Shepherds, and specifically, prior to this, but they came here to Irvine and had a little adoption event, and I fell in love with one, and so I've been going there. Again, you have to do four-- you have to take for courses where you train their dogs, and then after that, you can just go whenever you're free and walk a pup or two. So it's really nice to get to hang out with them, pet them, and then get them ready for adoptions. BRIAN 31:41 So when are you adopting? TUVY 31:44 That is the million-dollar question [laughter]. Every time I go-- every time I go, I see one specific dog because I have completely fallen in love with him, and the owner, and all the trainers there, whenever they see me, they're, like, "Oh, there's Milo's mom." And I can't snag it, but hopefully, soon. MADDIE 32:04 I feel like at least twice a week, Tuvy comes in to work, and the first thing that she says, "I walked my Milo yesterday. Let me show you all the pictures that I took. And he's so great and I love him so much." TUVY 32:13 He's just so great. And he's the biggest German-- he's an XL German Shepherd, and I'm probably the shortest, most petite person there, and they gave me this dog on my first day, and I was like, "Okay." But we're just an odd pair and it works. BRIAN 32:30 Awesome. All right. And I'll wrap us up on the community picks with something that I was thought was really cool, which was our expert certification. So at Inspire, we did all of the training that we normally do plus some. And then we've introduced, obviously, the certification which we talked about on the show a bunch. But I wanted to sort of single out one person. His name is Jessy Clarke, and he was the sole person to pass the Alteryx designer expert exam which is brand new, and we made it really hard on purpose because we think that to get that certification, something that's called expert, you really have to be an expert. And it was really awesome getting to know Jessy, and we have a great picture of him in his cap-and-gown. We sort of busted out the cap-and-gown, and we were playing Pomp and Circumstance through my phone while he was "graduating". So we'll put the link to that in the show notes. But there was also a bunch of people that got really close and they were so excited about, "Oh. Now I know what I need to do and I'm going to come back next time." And it just kind of warmed my heart to see people so excited about learning, and the certification, and what it's going to do for them in their careers or their usage of our platform, and so on. So awesome job, Jessy and everybody else that took training and passed both the beginner and the advanced certifications as well. If you want to check those out online, you can. Those are on the community, under Alteryx Academy. And that's another one where it's like if you haven't certified, I don't know what you're doing with your life right now. MADDIE 34:05 Come to London. TUVY 34:05 I don't have a background-- well, I don't have a background in data and I'm slowly making my way through. So don't make me pass you [laughter]. BRIAN 34:15 Awesome. All right. Well, thanks for being on the show. Thanks for all your insights about the programs, and we'll put everything in the show notes so people find out where to get more. We're here to hear more from you and contact you about these wonderful things. So thanks for being on. MADDIE 34:28 Awesome. TUVY 34:28 Thanks, Brian. Thank you. LAUREN 34:29 Thanks, Brian. [music]

This episode of Alter Everything was produced by Maddie Johannsen (@MaddieJ).

Alter Everything

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11: When advocating becomes contagious

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