Alter Everything

MaddieJ · ‎08-22-2022

Owen Coyle, AKA "TheOC" on the Alteryx Community, shares the origins of his nickname, his favorite parts of the Community, and how he created a snake game within Alteryx.

Panelists

Owen Coyle - @TheOC, LinkedIn, Twitter
Maddie Johannsen - @MaddieJ, LinkedIn, Twitter

Topics

Alteryx Inspire Amsterdam 2022
Alteryx + Bulien
Alteryx Because I Can - Snake Game - blog by @TheOC
Fun with Alteryx: Random Weekly Challenge App - blog by @TheOC
Alter Everything podcast episode 75: (Fun) analytics for all! featuring @mceleavey

Ep 113 - The OC_Youtube Thumbnail.png

Transcript

Episode Transcription

MADDIE 00:02	[music] Welcome to Alter Everything, a podcast about data science and analytics culture. I'm Maddie Johannsen, team lead of multimedia community content at Alteryx. And for this episode, I talk to Owen Coyle, also popularly known as the OC on the Alteryx Community. We got a chance to chat during the Alteryx Inspire conference in Denver, which happened to be Owen's first trip to the States. We chat about the origins of his nickname, what he loves about Community, and fun passion projects that he's working on with Alteryx. Let's get started. Owen, it's so nice to have you here.
OWEN 00:41	Yeah, it's nice to be here. Thanks for having me on.
MADDIE 00:42	Of course.
OWEN 00:43	It's super exciting for me. I've been a fan of the podcast for quite a while. I mean, obviously had Chris on, who had shouted me I was a nerd. And then so many great guests previously. It's great to be part of the group.
MADDIE 00:54	Totally. Yeah. And for our listeners, he's talking about Chris McEleavey who's on-- I looked this up earlier. I think it was episode 75. You guys work together. And so yeah, he shouted you out as somebody who's always on the community, so.
OWEN 01:06	Yeah, I believe the line was, "Get a life, OC." [laughter]
MADDIE 01:10	I think that sounds right. That's so funny. Well, if you could just introduce yourself. Tell us where you're from, who you work for, what you do, that kind of thing.
OWEN 01:18	Yeah, of course. So I'm Owen Coyle or the OC if you know me on the community. We'll probably get into why I'm called that. It wasn't by my choice. And yeah, I'm from the UK. So I'm from a small town called Stockton, which is close to Newcastle, which is probably what most people know, rather than Stockton. And yeah, I got into Alteryx after seeing Chris who we just mentioned showing it off at a couple of the talks like public talks in the Northeast, and it was fantastic to me. I saw it and I was like, "I need to be in this. I need to be in this world." So quickly got indoctrinated. And Chris likes to joke that I pestered him until he hired me. I did really want to be part of the Alteryx world, especially coming from a computer science degree, where you learn various programming languages. And I also was in a software development role at the time. And I was coming out of love a little bit with programming languages. I didn't find them as intuitive and as fun as what I think there was potential for, and I'm glad to find that that's the truth. So at the minute, I'm working as a consultant at Bulien, so I'm part of the technical team, and it's fantastic. It's great to use Alteryx on a daily basis, and that's the majority of what I do at the moment.
MADDIE 02:28	Awesome. Yeah, lots of follow-up questions that are running through my head, definitely. The first one that I want to talk about, though, is your Community username because I do think most people-- I didn't know your real name for a long time. I always just thought of you as the OC on the community. And so tell us how that came about.
OWEN 02:45	Yeah, so it is an interesting one. I mean, nickname-wise, I've never had a nickname. I do have kind of a family nickname. But as far as friends and things like that, I've never had a nickname. And again, going back to Chris, he has a skill for giving everyone he meets a nickname. So the first day I joined, he's like, "The OC." It just stuck. Everyone's called me it. And it's been interesting going around and meeting people in the community because I introduce myself as the OC. I think that's become my real ego now, and my alter ego is Owen. It really is interesting. Yeah.
MADDIE 03:15	That's funny. Yeah, Chris comes up again. That's really great. Yeah, for our listeners, just a little behind-the-scenes tidbit, we're here at Inspire. We're at Denver at the convention centre, and I have a separate recording room that we're in right now. And yesterday, I was setting up my equipment, and Owen came in, so the OC came in with Chris McEleavey and Claire McCollough who's another ACE. But when Chris was in here, you guys were talking about the breakfast that you ate yesterday, which I also want to ask you about. But Chris, I heard him say like, "Oh, yeah, me and the OC, we went to go get breakfast," or whatever. And he just uses it in conversation, which was just so funny because I only ever see it online, so it's funny that he uses it in person too.
OWEN 03:56	No, totally. I've started doing it as well, which feels weird, but it's how I address myself on the community as well. It's how people know me, so it works easier that way as far as--
MADDIE 04:04	Have you been to the US before?
OWEN 04:07	No. So that's one thing I was going to mention. So it's my first time out of childhood going to the US. I did go to Florida as a kid, but it's debatable whether that counts as going to the US. So I went to Florida as a kid, but no, I haven't been to the US properly. And I also haven't been to an in-person Inspire before as well. So this is all very exciting to me.
MADDIE 04:26	Good. Yeah, Denver's a cool place to visit, for sure, especially for your first time here. A lot of people, I feel, default to New York, LA, but Denver is such a cool city. So you get to see a nice part of it.
OWEN 04:39	Yeah, my impression of it's been great so far. And just on that note of Community handles and things like that, it's been interesting meeting a lot of the people that-- I think with the community, you get to know people very quickly. There's oftentimes that I'd jump on a call with people who are on the community, trying to help them and things like that. And it's really exciting to meet them in person because it's almost weird that you know so much about these people but you've never actually met them. You have no face to the name. It's really interesting to actually meet those people.
MADDIE 05:03	Yeah, face to the name, it's so funny, but. Yeah. Well, and speaking of the community, I looked up some stats that you've done in the community earlier, so--
OWEN 05:11	Okay, this makes me nervous.
MADDIE 05:12	Yeah. [laughter] It's really good, so--
OWEN 05:14	The leaderboard.
MADDIE 05:15	Yeah. Oh, for sure, you're on the leaderboard. Okay. So you joined Community in summer of 2020. And then since then, you've posted almost a thousand times, have had almost a thousand likes, and you've authored 122 solutions, which is absolutely insane.
OWEN 05:29	It sounds a lot when you put it like that. Yeah.
MADDIE 05:30	Oh, for sure. Yeah. Well, I mean, you're all over the community, as you said. You clearly like spending time there. And so I think maybe for people who aren't on the community, how would you describe the entire vibe of the community?
OWEN 05:42	Yeah, it's a really good question. I really like the community. Again, I come from a programming background, and the only thing to compare to there is Stack Overflow. And if you go on Stack Overflow and ask a stupid question, you're going to get verbally attacked.
MADDIE 05:53	Oh, no.
OWEN 05:53	And it's just not the same with the Alteryx Community. You go on and you ask a question that may be simplistic, and you'll get 10 responses within the next 10 minutes. And that's incredible to me. And I think that's one thing that I found really valuable is when I first started, there was a few things I was stuck on because that translation from programming to, "Okay, well, how do I do this in Alteryx?" And having that accessibility to actually ask things on the community and get that instant help is fantastic. And I believe I've heard AJ, one of the ACEs-- I won't try and pronounce his full name.
MADDIE 06:22	I want to say Guisande, but I could be wrong.
OWEN 06:24	I think that's right.
MADDIE 06:25	We'll edit it out if that was wrong. [laughter]
OWEN 06:26	Yeah. [laughter] He put it best when-- and I've heard him say before that sharing knowledge in something like the Alteryx Community isn't like sharing a chocolate bar, where it's I give you half and then we have half each; I have less than I started with. When it comes to sharing knowledge, you end up sharing back and forth, and you both end up with double that you started with. So I think that philosophy has kind of stuck with me is that as Alteryx users get better, the platform grows, and then I grow with that. So it's always best to share knowledge in the community, and I've really found that exciting.
MADDIE 06:55	I could see that as a point of motivation for you, giving back to the community because you had not as positive of an experience before, and so coming here, you get that positive experience. I could see that as being motivating for authoring those 122 solutions for other people. What else motivates you to be so enabling towards other people?
OWEN 07:15	I suppose going back to not having a life outside. We've had kind of a very quiet couple of years. So the first thing that I find really exciting, let's invest so much time into it, and I got [inaudible]. I find that excitement from it. There's plenty of analogies of what Alteryx feels like, like Lego and jigsaw. And it's that we know where we're starting up. We know where we want to get to. And it's that building blocks in the middle that just feels so exciting. Again, comparing it to programming, it's you don't have to build the whole script at once. It's, "Okay, how do I get from where I'm at the minute one step closer to the edge?" And it's so much funner to develop. I think just on that note, I find it so fun. But you're welcome to call me a nerd for that. [laughter]
MADDIE 07:54	I love it. I mean, you're speaking to the right audience, so--
OWEN 07:57	Probably.
MADDIE 07:57	--you're in good company, for sure. You said you went to school to be a programmer?
OWEN 08:01	Yeah. So I did computer science at university.
MADDIE 08:03	Okay, cool. So did you always want to be a programmer, or did you know that you wanted to maybe get into analytics?
OWEN 08:09	I suppose it's an interesting one. So I did AI as part of my degree. And I think that was where I wanted to go down. And obviously, I haven't gone far from that. Definitely touch base with AI on a weekly basis, especially through Alteryx and the numerous tools. But as far as going into data analytics, I think it was a happy accident. It was how do I transfer my AI knowledge and programming language knowledge into something that I can get tangible results in? And I think this just fell into place perfectly. It's an exciting way to turn that around.
MADDIE 08:37	Yeah. Going into that a little bit further. What makes you excited about analytics?
OWEN 08:43	Yeah, good question. I think it is that level of it being so fun and so exciting. But I think also not to simplify it, but I think a lot of the use cases are quite similar. So I think as we start developing in this area, I think it's actually just going to skyrocket because I find typically, that's 60% of use cases with data, everyone's got the same problem. And if we can start automating things and getting things as optimal as possible, that 40% is where things are really exciting. They're the edge cases and they're, "We need this complex model," and things like that, and you really get wings to the projects. And it becomes really exciting at that point.
MADDIE 09:17	Yeah, awesome. So as a consultant now, can you tell me a day in the life? What do you do? How often are you in Alteryx? Are you in Alteryx every day?
OWEN 09:27	Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, obviously, Bulien, we do have other products that we support, but it's typically, I would say, 90, 95 per cent Alteryx. So a day in the life is again 90, 95 per cent Alteryx. So if I'm not on with kind of a client, helping build things or delivering training or anything like that, or more recently, setting up Alteryx servers, I class myself as a server specialist. I've gone down every route you can go down as far as learning server because that to me is something really exciting, especially going back to the idea of automating things. If I'm not doing that, then I'm trying to find something to break the mould on the Alteryx Community. I'm trying to come up with a next blog post or helping out with the solutions and spending longer than I've potentially should on there, I think, but it's what I find fun. So that's how I justify it.
MADDIE 10:12	For sure. Do you have any other hobbies?
OWEN 10:14	I do. Yeah, I venture into video games. It was quite a good way of keeping up with friends when it came to lockdown, especially. Everyone obviously moved into, "Okay, we need to have these Zoom calls," and things like that. And then we quickly became, "Okay, well, let's play video games and do that together." And I think that's been quite a good way of touching base with friends, and I've quite enjoyed that. And as you'll see from blog posts, my snake game, it's something that's always been with me, video games. And my brothers got me into that when I was pretty young. Also, kind of a level of fitness although I probably don't look like someone who's into fitness. I do enjoy running, again, less than I probably should.
MADDIE 10:49	Totally. Yeah, I know. I don't know if I've said this on the podcast before, but I feel like I tell a lot of people I really want to be a runner, but I'm not. It's definitely a process, for sure.
OWEN 10:59	Yeah. It's hard to get into it. It's a battle against yourself, I think.
MADDIE 11:02	It really is. Yeah, I would much rather just go to a 60-minute class and where somebody's just making me do it, rather than a run by myself and I have to stay self-motivated. But yeah, and it goes back to you being self-motivated. I think just to tie it back together, you said spending your free time doing pretty much a work-related thing like this is related to your work. And I just find that unique because a lot of people-- nothing wrong with this either of clocking out, you're done, you walk away for the day. I think that's totally fine. But this really kind of turned into a hobby for you. I just find that interesting.
OWEN 11:35	Yeah. And don't get me wrong, that's not a Bulien work culture. They tell me to go and spend my free time watching TV at 5 o'clock. It's not based on the work culture there. But yeah, you're totally right. For me as well, I think I'm very lucky in that it doesn't feel like work. When you enjoy what you do, you don't work. You just have fun. I am, and I think that's really exciting for me. It just self-perpetuates my learning because if I'm enjoying it and progressing, it's just, yeah, continuous movement.
MADDIE 12:01	Yeah, good. For sure. So you've authored a lot of solutions, done a lot of discussion stuff on the community. But you also wrote, you mentioned earlier, that snake game blog. I wrote down something too that you put in there because one of your opening lines, you said the first rule of the blog is you don't talk about the blog. And then in parenthesis, you wrote, "Nope, I really need the gratification. Please do talk about it." So let's talk about it. Let's give you some gratification.
OWEN 12:25	No, it's appreciated--
MADDIE 12:26	It's--
OWEN 12:26	--that someone picked up on that.
MADDIE 12:28	Yeah. [laughter] It's a great blog. I loved reading it. And yeah, so let's talk about it. I'd love for you to tell our audience what that's about. And we'll, of course, link to it in the show notes, but yeah, just give us kind of an overview.
OWEN 12:39	Yeah, so it's really interesting. I believe a similar line of work has been spoken about at the Alteryx Obscura event later on today. And so we were messing around with a-- I can't remember the name of it, but there's a website that you can go to and access the API. And effectively, you tell it to make something for you. So you say, "Build me a Tetris game in Python." And based on AI and open GitHub libraries and things like that, it will effectively build that for you. It doesn't get you 100% of the way. It gets you 70% of the way, but I think it was on kind of a-- I think it was the Alteryx & Beer chat or meeting that they were going through that. And I just find it really exciting. I was thinking the power of this is quite exciting, and so I told it to make me a snake game. The version it spit out was kind of horrible. So it took a Python knowledge to be able to fix that by getting that to work instead and plugging it into Alteryx. To be honest, when I first run it, I thought, "This isn't going to pop off or anything. This isn't going to work," because I thought there'd be some kind of limitation of Alteryx there, but it just worked first time.
OWEN 13:37	And after a few tweaks, I've got something else I was quite proud of because I think what we're going to try and do with that blog series of Alteryx because I can, a Alteryx For Fun as it's been coined as well, just try and break the mould with some of the things with Alteryx. Yes, you shouldn't play a snake in Alteryx. That's not what it was built for. But proving that you can do things like that, I think opened people's mind to the other things you can do with-- Alteryx isn't just transpose tools and select tools. It's anything you can put your mind to. But it's about that mental limit of what can I bring and what can I do.
MADDIE 14:06	That's really cool. And in your blog, too, you included a quote from the Everest climber. I can't remember what that was.
OWEN 14:13	Yeah, so the Everest climber, his name leaves me, but he effectively said he climbed Everest because it was there. There was no real reason. It was just because it was there. And I think I quite liked that. It really stuck with me because a lot of the things you can do, just do them. Just see what happens. That's part of life. That's part of experimenting. It's trying things out and seeing what works, seeing what sticks. And I think it was quite motivational because you don't need a direct reason to do something. You don't need to be told me to do something. You can have fun with the elements on that side.
MADDIE 14:46	Totally. Yeah, that's super cool. And also, speaking to trying things out, doing new things, as a consultant, you mentioned that you give trainings and things like that. And talking to you now, you're very well spoken.
OWEN 14:59	Thank you. I thought the accent would be terrible. [laughter]
MADDIE 15:02	I--
OWEN 15:03	Hopefully, the listeners can decipher or put the subtitles on, I suppose.
MADDIE 15:06	For sure. No, yeah, it's coming through clearly, you'll be happy to know. But yeah, no, I think that it's definitely another great skill, and so I'm just curious if you had to do public speaking classes or if you've always had an interest in that, or if that's just part of your personality.
OWEN 15:23	I think it's always something I've struggled with a little bit, and I identified that as an early age. But I think it's something that especially through friends and family kind of support, I've always pushed myself out as much as I can to try and fix that. I think it's one of those things that you get better as you do it. I think there was occasions where, for instance, I was head boy at my school, and that was obviously involved a bunch of public speaking and things like that. And my reason for doing that was self-development. As far as getting the head boy role, that was less exciting to me than becoming a better person and becoming better at those public speaking side of things, which my school is probably cursing me for if they hear this now, but. [laughter]
MADDIE 16:01	That's funny. Okay, so in the US, we don't have a head boy, head girl-type thing. Can you explain what that is? Yeah.
OWEN 16:08	Oh, yeah, sorry. So that's kind of a--
MADDIE 16:10	I only know it from Harry Potter, so.
OWEN 16:11	Yes, it's similar then. It's kind of one person that gets elected in their final year in the school, and they basically represent the school. So for instance, I did things like meeting people who came to the school like visitors and things like that. And it's kind of just a public figure of a student side of thing. The main use of it is to help communication between students and teachers and help with things like that.
MADDIE 16:33	Cool. Awesome. Yeah. Do you guys have student council?
OWEN 16:37	Yes.
MADDIE 16:37	Okay, got it.
OWEN 16:37	Yeah. So this would effectively be the head of student council, but yeah.
MADDIE 16:41	Got it. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, we do student council. Yeah. We have president, vice president kind of thing, so yeah, similar.
OWEN 16:45	Yes, so it's probably on the same-- yeah.
MADDIE 16:47	Very cool.
OWEN 16:48	Yeah, it's really interesting. Coming up, I didn't realise how ignorant I was to all of that. So even asking for the bill at the restaurant instead of the cheque. There's always a line there of I need to correct myself and think about what I'm saying.
MADDIE 16:59	Totally. Yeah, I went to London for Inspire twice. The first time I went over, I got a blister from my shoes. And I wanted a bandaid, and so I went to the front desk. I was like, "Hey, can I have a bandaid?" And they had no idea what I was saying. And then eventually, somebody was like, "Oh, she means a plaster." I was like, "What's a plaster?" I would never know to ask for that.
OWEN 17:20	It's so surreal, isn't it?
MADDIE 17:21	Yeah, yeah. It's so fun, though. I love it. But did we talk about your breakfast? Did we circle back to that?
OWEN 17:27	I don't think we did. Yeah, but kind of--
MADDIE 17:28	Okay. Can you tell everybody what you had for breakfast yesterday again?
OWEN 17:31	Yeah. So we went up for breakfast yesterday. And it's been my-- obviously, with America, the food is where a lot of the excitement is. We have a lot of TV shows in the UK that are fully based around American foods. It's amazing. So we went to a lovely cafe nearby, actually. And I went full out and went the chicken and waffles, full American style.
MADDIE 17:52	Nice.
OWEN 17:52	It was pretty good. But I did have a level of regret the rest of the day. It was way too much food.
MADDIE 17:58	Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, chicken and waffles is definitely a staple. What else are you looking forward to doing or eating here?
OWEN 18:06	Yeah. It was interesting. I told a lot of friends that I was coming here, and it was obviously my first time in the US. And the amount of kind of fast food places I've been told to go to, they're really good. I think my list is longer than I can eat. So I intend to take some of them off the list and see what I can try. But to be honest, I think most of my time and most of my excitement is with the conference, so the food is actually less important than I thought it would be.
MADDIE 18:29	Very cool. That's funny, I didn't know that there was a lot of British cooking shows about American food.
OWEN 18:35	Yeah, there's plenty. I think they might be American-made, but it's very big in the UK to see-- it's things like Man v. Food and stuff like that. There's food challenges and things like that, I think because it's surreal towards the portion sizes and things like that. Yeah.
MADDIE 18:48	No, totally. Okay, so circling back to analytics stuff. Can you share with us just a fun analytics moment that blew your mind or something that happened on the community that you're like, "Oh, my God, I didn't know I could do that"?
OWEN 19:03	Yeah, good question. I think I can shout out a lot of people here, I think Danilang being one of them. A lot of his solutions I've looked at and went, "I don't know how you've done that, but I'm stealing it. That's beautiful." And then you've also got people like Thomas Larsen who's made his own SDK. And I just think the amount of work that it's got to go behind that, it blows my mind. So I did manage to see him yesterday, and fanboy a little bit. Again, I'm a big fan of a lot of the people in the community. So a lot of the solutions that come up, I go, "Yeah, I definitely wouldn't have done it that way." And it's really exciting to see someone going that route. But yeah, there's way too many to name. There's so many people coming up with really cool things. I recently saw a blog post that was around creating NFTs in Alteryx. And the application of Alteryx with that all made sense, but the actual-- again, going back to that breaking the mould and breaking the idea of what you should do with it, I thought was beautiful. It fit that agenda perfectly.
MADDIE 20:01	And then you told me-- when we were planning this, you said that you and Chris are working on something, but you didn't want to tell me at the time. Could you share that now or is it still secret?
OWEN 20:12	So I still have to keep some redacted, but I think I can explain a little bit. We have an exciting project. It's completely along the lines of things you probably shouldn't do in Alteryx. But we've effectively created our own event. It's going to be really exciting. We've already pestered a lot of the ACEs to take part and a few of the kind of figureheads in the community. And it's effectively going to be this event that we've-- monthly or however it's going to work. We have kind of a leaderboard and things like that. I think it's going to be really exciting. I am at the point where I think we've caused a lot of excitement for this, so if it comes out and nobody likes it, I'm going to be disappointed. But I think by the sound of things, it's going to interest a lot of people. And I think it will also capture a lot of the nerdiness in people. Again, I wish I could say a little bit more and--
MADDIE 20:56	No, the teaser is perfect. Yeah, people will have to stay tuned in. Where can they find more information? Or how are you guys going to [crosstalk]?
OWEN 21:03	Good question. So our plan at the minute-- and again, it's subject to change based on how much hurdles present themselves, but our plan at the minute is to attend, obviously, the Inspire in Amsterdam. And we're hoping to do a kind of full release there. So whether that's just talking about it and kind of setting up the scenes for the event, or actually hosting the event there and having audience participation and things like that. That's the plan for now, so--
MADDIE 21:27	It sounds fun.
OWEN 21:28	The CEO's Inspire Amsterdam.
MADDIE 21:29	Yeah, for sure. Very cool. Yeah. And for our listeners, an easy way to get updates, you can subscribe to the Alter Everything podcast on the community. And we can comment on this episode with any links to announcements or something like that, but--
OWEN 21:47	Yeah, of course. Yeah.
MADDIE 21:48	--it could just be an easy way to tie it back, so check back there.
OWEN 21:51	Yeah, I'll definitely drop a link however we're going to sort this out.
MADDIE 21:54	Totally. And I'm sure you'll post on social media, and we'll link to your LinkedIn, so make sure you go follow the OC.
OWEN 21:59	It'll be hard to miss out on the community. We're going to make-- I'm going to try and make as much noise as possible.
MADDIE 22:04	Cool. Awesome. Very cool. And I had another question pop into my head. You kind of touched on this a little bit earlier about just your programming background and why you switched to analytics and kind of more data focus with the AI piece. But what else was it about programming? Do you still like programming? Do you still like working with Python? Those kinds of things, I'd love to know.
OWEN 22:28	Yeah, I definitely do. I think it sounds ridiculous, but again, the nerds will relate with me. But being able to sit in front of a computer for a couple of hours and come out with something that does something is so exciting. You've not picked up a saw and started cutting some wood. It's all within the machine. I find that really exciting, especially when you get a solution that works for something that you want, where it can bring you actual value. You can do that a lot with programming and, well, Alteryx as well. So I find that really exciting. And I think it's quite easy to wow people with programming, I think. People that don't understand it, I think are blown away by some things. I remember for a university project, we built this green alarm system. And it was kind of detecting people [inaudible] and things like that, and showing that to kind of people who don't understand programming and things like that. And so explaining it, it blows people away. And obviously, that's true in most industries, but I find that's really satisfying, the getting something working. You've also got plenty of online resource, so I quite like that. I don't like that it's a every man for themselves and you're completely reinventing the wheel every time you're doing something in industry. It's very much let's share information and share best books. So I really like that side of things as well.
MADDIE 23:39	Awesome. Very cool. Okay, and then last question. We'll end on a fun one. I'm curious to hear more about Stockton. What's life like there? What's the town like?
OWEN 23:49	It's a good question. So the town isn't too great on paper. It's not. Yeah, we have a joke internally that the crime rate and stuff is terrible, but it's not really that bad. I quite like it. It's a small town. It's quite quaint. For a small town, there's quite a lot going on. So it is quite a nice place to live. And then I made the jump to Newcastle when I went to university, and that was kind of just Stockton but a lot bigger. It was so much going on in such a compact, quite dense city. And I really enjoy that side of things. It's not quite the Geordie Shore you might know from TV, but it's also not that far off either.
MADDIE 24:24	Okay, interesting. So yeah, is that close by?
OWEN 24:26	Yeah, so Geordie Shore is filmed in Newcastle. Yeah.
MADDIE 24:28	Oh, it is. Okay. Yeah, see, I've never seen it but I've heard about it. I feel like I totally missed out on this cultural phenomenon with the Jersey Shore and Geordie Shore because I didn't watch either, but yeah, everybody's heard the stereotypes. But yeah, no, it sounds like a cool place. Everywhere that I hear of all the little towns and everything in England, they all just sound cool.
OWEN 24:47	I'd definitely recommend visiting the UK. There's so much. You'll hear Chris talking about-- again, McEleavey talking about Durham a lot because that's the city that he's from, but it's also-- if you've seen Harry Potter, you'll know Durham and you'll know York, which are just beautiful places that you tend not to see most other places. It's something to see.
MADDIE 25:11	Thanks for listening. To check out the blogs that Owen has written and to connect with him on the Alteryx Community, check out our show notes at community.alteryx.com/podcast. Also, registration for Inspire Amsterdam is open. Hope to see you there. [music]

MADDIE 00:02 [music] Welcome to Alter Everything, a podcast about data science and analytics culture. I'm Maddie Johannsen, team lead of multimedia community content at Alteryx. And for this episode, I talk to Owen Coyle, also popularly known as the OC on the Alteryx Community. We got a chance to chat during the Alteryx Inspire conference in Denver, which happened to be Owen's first trip to the States. We chat about the origins of his nickname, what he loves about Community, and fun passion projects that he's working on with Alteryx. Let's get started. Owen, it's so nice to have you here. OWEN 00:41 Yeah, it's nice to be here. Thanks for having me on. MADDIE 00:42 Of course. OWEN 00:43 It's super exciting for me. I've been a fan of the podcast for quite a while. I mean, obviously had Chris on, who had shouted me I was a nerd. And then so many great guests previously. It's great to be part of the group. MADDIE 00:54 Totally. Yeah. And for our listeners, he's talking about Chris McEleavey who's on-- I looked this up earlier. I think it was episode 75. You guys work together. And so yeah, he shouted you out as somebody who's always on the community, so. OWEN 01:06 Yeah, I believe the line was, "Get a life, OC." [laughter] MADDIE 01:10 I think that sounds right. That's so funny. Well, if you could just introduce yourself. Tell us where you're from, who you work for, what you do, that kind of thing. OWEN 01:18 Yeah, of course. So I'm Owen Coyle or the OC if you know me on the community. We'll probably get into why I'm called that. It wasn't by my choice. And yeah, I'm from the UK. So I'm from a small town called Stockton, which is close to Newcastle, which is probably what most people know, rather than Stockton. And yeah, I got into Alteryx after seeing Chris who we just mentioned showing it off at a couple of the talks like public talks in the Northeast, and it was fantastic to me. I saw it and I was like, "I need to be in this. I need to be in this world." So quickly got indoctrinated. And Chris likes to joke that I pestered him until he hired me. I did really want to be part of the Alteryx world, especially coming from a computer science degree, where you learn various programming languages. And I also was in a software development role at the time. And I was coming out of love a little bit with programming languages. I didn't find them as intuitive and as fun as what I think there was potential for, and I'm glad to find that that's the truth. So at the minute, I'm working as a consultant at Bulien, so I'm part of the technical team, and it's fantastic. It's great to use Alteryx on a daily basis, and that's the majority of what I do at the moment. MADDIE 02:28 Awesome. Yeah, lots of follow-up questions that are running through my head, definitely. The first one that I want to talk about, though, is your Community username because I do think most people-- I didn't know your real name for a long time. I always just thought of you as the OC on the community. And so tell us how that came about. OWEN 02:45 Yeah, so it is an interesting one. I mean, nickname-wise, I've never had a nickname. I do have kind of a family nickname. But as far as friends and things like that, I've never had a nickname. And again, going back to Chris, he has a skill for giving everyone he meets a nickname. So the first day I joined, he's like, "The OC." It just stuck. Everyone's called me it. And it's been interesting going around and meeting people in the community because I introduce myself as the OC. I think that's become my real ego now, and my alter ego is Owen. It really is interesting. Yeah. MADDIE 03:15 That's funny. Yeah, Chris comes up again. That's really great. Yeah, for our listeners, just a little behind-the-scenes tidbit, we're here at Inspire. We're at Denver at the convention centre, and I have a separate recording room that we're in right now. And yesterday, I was setting up my equipment, and Owen came in, so the OC came in with Chris McEleavey and Claire McCollough who's another ACE. But when Chris was in here, you guys were talking about the breakfast that you ate yesterday, which I also want to ask you about. But Chris, I heard him say like, "Oh, yeah, me and the OC, we went to go get breakfast," or whatever. And he just uses it in conversation, which was just so funny because I only ever see it online, so it's funny that he uses it in person too. OWEN 03:56 No, totally. I've started doing it as well, which feels weird, but it's how I address myself on the community as well. It's how people know me, so it works easier that way as far as-- MADDIE 04:04 Have you been to the US before? OWEN 04:07 No. So that's one thing I was going to mention. So it's my first time out of childhood going to the US. I did go to Florida as a kid, but it's debatable whether that counts as going to the US. So I went to Florida as a kid, but no, I haven't been to the US properly. And I also haven't been to an in-person Inspire before as well. So this is all very exciting to me. MADDIE 04:26 Good. Yeah, Denver's a cool place to visit, for sure, especially for your first time here. A lot of people, I feel, default to New York, LA, but Denver is such a cool city. So you get to see a nice part of it. OWEN 04:39 Yeah, my impression of it's been great so far. And just on that note of Community handles and things like that, it's been interesting meeting a lot of the people that-- I think with the community, you get to know people very quickly. There's oftentimes that I'd jump on a call with people who are on the community, trying to help them and things like that. And it's really exciting to meet them in person because it's almost weird that you know so much about these people but you've never actually met them. You have no face to the name. It's really interesting to actually meet those people. MADDIE 05:03 Yeah, face to the name, it's so funny, but. Yeah. Well, and speaking of the community, I looked up some stats that you've done in the community earlier, so-- OWEN 05:11 Okay, this makes me nervous. MADDIE 05:12 Yeah. [laughter] It's really good, so-- OWEN 05:14 The leaderboard. MADDIE 05:15 Yeah. Oh, for sure, you're on the leaderboard. Okay. So you joined Community in summer of 2020. And then since then, you've posted almost a thousand times, have had almost a thousand likes, and you've authored 122 solutions, which is absolutely insane. OWEN 05:29 It sounds a lot when you put it like that. Yeah. MADDIE 05:30 Oh, for sure. Yeah. Well, I mean, you're all over the community, as you said. You clearly like spending time there. And so I think maybe for people who aren't on the community, how would you describe the entire vibe of the community? OWEN 05:42 Yeah, it's a really good question. I really like the community. Again, I come from a programming background, and the only thing to compare to there is Stack Overflow. And if you go on Stack Overflow and ask a stupid question, you're going to get verbally attacked. MADDIE 05:53 Oh, no. OWEN 05:53 And it's just not the same with the Alteryx Community. You go on and you ask a question that may be simplistic, and you'll get 10 responses within the next 10 minutes. And that's incredible to me. And I think that's one thing that I found really valuable is when I first started, there was a few things I was stuck on because that translation from programming to, "Okay, well, how do I do this in Alteryx?" And having that accessibility to actually ask things on the community and get that instant help is fantastic. And I believe I've heard AJ, one of the ACEs-- I won't try and pronounce his full name. MADDIE 06:22 I want to say Guisande, but I could be wrong. OWEN 06:24 I think that's right. MADDIE 06:25 We'll edit it out if that was wrong. [laughter] OWEN 06:26 Yeah. [laughter] He put it best when-- and I've heard him say before that sharing knowledge in something like the Alteryx Community isn't like sharing a chocolate bar, where it's I give you half and then we have half each; I have less than I started with. When it comes to sharing knowledge, you end up sharing back and forth, and you both end up with double that you started with. So I think that philosophy has kind of stuck with me is that as Alteryx users get better, the platform grows, and then I grow with that. So it's always best to share knowledge in the community, and I've really found that exciting. MADDIE 06:55 I could see that as a point of motivation for you, giving back to the community because you had not as positive of an experience before, and so coming here, you get that positive experience. I could see that as being motivating for authoring those 122 solutions for other people. What else motivates you to be so enabling towards other people? OWEN 07:15 I suppose going back to not having a life outside. We've had kind of a very quiet couple of years. So the first thing that I find really exciting, let's invest so much time into it, and I got [inaudible]. I find that excitement from it. There's plenty of analogies of what Alteryx feels like, like Lego and jigsaw. And it's that we know where we're starting up. We know where we want to get to. And it's that building blocks in the middle that just feels so exciting. Again, comparing it to programming, it's you don't have to build the whole script at once. It's, "Okay, how do I get from where I'm at the minute one step closer to the edge?" And it's so much funner to develop. I think just on that note, I find it so fun. But you're welcome to call me a nerd for that. [laughter] MADDIE 07:54 I love it. I mean, you're speaking to the right audience, so-- OWEN 07:57 Probably. MADDIE 07:57 --you're in good company, for sure. You said you went to school to be a programmer? OWEN 08:01 Yeah. So I did computer science at university. MADDIE 08:03 Okay, cool. So did you always want to be a programmer, or did you know that you wanted to maybe get into analytics? OWEN 08:09 I suppose it's an interesting one. So I did AI as part of my degree. And I think that was where I wanted to go down. And obviously, I haven't gone far from that. Definitely touch base with AI on a weekly basis, especially through Alteryx and the numerous tools. But as far as going into data analytics, I think it was a happy accident. It was how do I transfer my AI knowledge and programming language knowledge into something that I can get tangible results in? And I think this just fell into place perfectly. It's an exciting way to turn that around. MADDIE 08:37 Yeah. Going into that a little bit further. What makes you excited about analytics? OWEN 08:43 Yeah, good question. I think it is that level of it being so fun and so exciting. But I think also not to simplify it, but I think a lot of the use cases are quite similar. So I think as we start developing in this area, I think it's actually just going to skyrocket because I find typically, that's 60% of use cases with data, everyone's got the same problem. And if we can start automating things and getting things as optimal as possible, that 40% is where things are really exciting. They're the edge cases and they're, "We need this complex model," and things like that, and you really get wings to the projects. And it becomes really exciting at that point. MADDIE 09:17 Yeah, awesome. So as a consultant now, can you tell me a day in the life? What do you do? How often are you in Alteryx? Are you in Alteryx every day? OWEN 09:27 Yeah, that's a good question. I mean, obviously, Bulien, we do have other products that we support, but it's typically, I would say, 90, 95 per cent Alteryx. So a day in the life is again 90, 95 per cent Alteryx. So if I'm not on with kind of a client, helping build things or delivering training or anything like that, or more recently, setting up Alteryx servers, I class myself as a server specialist. I've gone down every route you can go down as far as learning server because that to me is something really exciting, especially going back to the idea of automating things. If I'm not doing that, then I'm trying to find something to break the mould on the Alteryx Community. I'm trying to come up with a next blog post or helping out with the solutions and spending longer than I've potentially should on there, I think, but it's what I find fun. So that's how I justify it. MADDIE 10:12 For sure. Do you have any other hobbies? OWEN 10:14 I do. Yeah, I venture into video games. It was quite a good way of keeping up with friends when it came to lockdown, especially. Everyone obviously moved into, "Okay, we need to have these Zoom calls," and things like that. And then we quickly became, "Okay, well, let's play video games and do that together." And I think that's been quite a good way of touching base with friends, and I've quite enjoyed that. And as you'll see from blog posts, my snake game, it's something that's always been with me, video games. And my brothers got me into that when I was pretty young. Also, kind of a level of fitness although I probably don't look like someone who's into fitness. I do enjoy running, again, less than I probably should. MADDIE 10:49 Totally. Yeah, I know. I don't know if I've said this on the podcast before, but I feel like I tell a lot of people I really want to be a runner, but I'm not. It's definitely a process, for sure. OWEN 10:59 Yeah. It's hard to get into it. It's a battle against yourself, I think. MADDIE 11:02 It really is. Yeah, I would much rather just go to a 60-minute class and where somebody's just making me do it, rather than a run by myself and I have to stay self-motivated. But yeah, and it goes back to you being self-motivated. I think just to tie it back together, you said spending your free time doing pretty much a work-related thing like this is related to your work. And I just find that unique because a lot of people-- nothing wrong with this either of clocking out, you're done, you walk away for the day. I think that's totally fine. But this really kind of turned into a hobby for you. I just find that interesting. OWEN 11:35 Yeah. And don't get me wrong, that's not a Bulien work culture. They tell me to go and spend my free time watching TV at 5 o'clock. It's not based on the work culture there. But yeah, you're totally right. For me as well, I think I'm very lucky in that it doesn't feel like work. When you enjoy what you do, you don't work. You just have fun. I am, and I think that's really exciting for me. It just self-perpetuates my learning because if I'm enjoying it and progressing, it's just, yeah, continuous movement. MADDIE 12:01 Yeah, good. For sure. So you've authored a lot of solutions, done a lot of discussion stuff on the community. But you also wrote, you mentioned earlier, that snake game blog. I wrote down something too that you put in there because one of your opening lines, you said the first rule of the blog is you don't talk about the blog. And then in parenthesis, you wrote, "Nope, I really need the gratification. Please do talk about it." So let's talk about it. Let's give you some gratification. OWEN 12:25 No, it's appreciated-- MADDIE 12:26 It's-- OWEN 12:26 --that someone picked up on that. MADDIE 12:28 Yeah. [laughter] It's a great blog. I loved reading it. And yeah, so let's talk about it. I'd love for you to tell our audience what that's about. And we'll, of course, link to it in the show notes, but yeah, just give us kind of an overview. OWEN 12:39 Yeah, so it's really interesting. I believe a similar line of work has been spoken about at the Alteryx Obscura event later on today. And so we were messing around with a-- I can't remember the name of it, but there's a website that you can go to and access the API. And effectively, you tell it to make something for you. So you say, "Build me a Tetris game in Python." And based on AI and open GitHub libraries and things like that, it will effectively build that for you. It doesn't get you 100% of the way. It gets you 70% of the way, but I think it was on kind of a-- I think it was the Alteryx & Beer chat or meeting that they were going through that. And I just find it really exciting. I was thinking the power of this is quite exciting, and so I told it to make me a snake game. The version it spit out was kind of horrible. So it took a Python knowledge to be able to fix that by getting that to work instead and plugging it into Alteryx. To be honest, when I first run it, I thought, "This isn't going to pop off or anything. This isn't going to work," because I thought there'd be some kind of limitation of Alteryx there, but it just worked first time. OWEN 13:37 And after a few tweaks, I've got something else I was quite proud of because I think what we're going to try and do with that blog series of Alteryx because I can, a Alteryx For Fun as it's been coined as well, just try and break the mould with some of the things with Alteryx. Yes, you shouldn't play a snake in Alteryx. That's not what it was built for. But proving that you can do things like that, I think opened people's mind to the other things you can do with-- Alteryx isn't just transpose tools and select tools. It's anything you can put your mind to. But it's about that mental limit of what can I bring and what can I do. MADDIE 14:06 That's really cool. And in your blog, too, you included a quote from the Everest climber. I can't remember what that was. OWEN 14:13 Yeah, so the Everest climber, his name leaves me, but he effectively said he climbed Everest because it was there. There was no real reason. It was just because it was there. And I think I quite liked that. It really stuck with me because a lot of the things you can do, just do them. Just see what happens. That's part of life. That's part of experimenting. It's trying things out and seeing what works, seeing what sticks. And I think it was quite motivational because you don't need a direct reason to do something. You don't need to be told me to do something. You can have fun with the elements on that side. MADDIE 14:46 Totally. Yeah, that's super cool. And also, speaking to trying things out, doing new things, as a consultant, you mentioned that you give trainings and things like that. And talking to you now, you're very well spoken. OWEN 14:59 Thank you. I thought the accent would be terrible. [laughter] MADDIE 15:02 I-- OWEN 15:03 Hopefully, the listeners can decipher or put the subtitles on, I suppose. MADDIE 15:06 For sure. No, yeah, it's coming through clearly, you'll be happy to know. But yeah, no, I think that it's definitely another great skill, and so I'm just curious if you had to do public speaking classes or if you've always had an interest in that, or if that's just part of your personality. OWEN 15:23 I think it's always something I've struggled with a little bit, and I identified that as an early age. But I think it's something that especially through friends and family kind of support, I've always pushed myself out as much as I can to try and fix that. I think it's one of those things that you get better as you do it. I think there was occasions where, for instance, I was head boy at my school, and that was obviously involved a bunch of public speaking and things like that. And my reason for doing that was self-development. As far as getting the head boy role, that was less exciting to me than becoming a better person and becoming better at those public speaking side of things, which my school is probably cursing me for if they hear this now, but. [laughter] MADDIE 16:01 That's funny. Okay, so in the US, we don't have a head boy, head girl-type thing. Can you explain what that is? Yeah. OWEN 16:08 Oh, yeah, sorry. So that's kind of a-- MADDIE 16:10 I only know it from Harry Potter, so. OWEN 16:11 Yes, it's similar then. It's kind of one person that gets elected in their final year in the school, and they basically represent the school. So for instance, I did things like meeting people who came to the school like visitors and things like that. And it's kind of just a public figure of a student side of thing. The main use of it is to help communication between students and teachers and help with things like that. MADDIE 16:33 Cool. Awesome. Yeah. Do you guys have student council? OWEN 16:37 Yes. MADDIE 16:37 Okay, got it. OWEN 16:37 Yeah. So this would effectively be the head of student council, but yeah. MADDIE 16:41 Got it. Okay, that makes sense. Yeah, we do student council. Yeah. We have president, vice president kind of thing, so yeah, similar. OWEN 16:45 Yes, so it's probably on the same-- yeah. MADDIE 16:47 Very cool. OWEN 16:48 Yeah, it's really interesting. Coming up, I didn't realise how ignorant I was to all of that. So even asking for the bill at the restaurant instead of the cheque. There's always a line there of I need to correct myself and think about what I'm saying. MADDIE 16:59 Totally. Yeah, I went to London for Inspire twice. The first time I went over, I got a blister from my shoes. And I wanted a bandaid, and so I went to the front desk. I was like, "Hey, can I have a bandaid?" And they had no idea what I was saying. And then eventually, somebody was like, "Oh, she means a plaster." I was like, "What's a plaster?" I would never know to ask for that. OWEN 17:20 It's so surreal, isn't it? MADDIE 17:21 Yeah, yeah. It's so fun, though. I love it. But did we talk about your breakfast? Did we circle back to that? OWEN 17:27 I don't think we did. Yeah, but kind of-- MADDIE 17:28 Okay. Can you tell everybody what you had for breakfast yesterday again? OWEN 17:31 Yeah. So we went up for breakfast yesterday. And it's been my-- obviously, with America, the food is where a lot of the excitement is. We have a lot of TV shows in the UK that are fully based around American foods. It's amazing. So we went to a lovely cafe nearby, actually. And I went full out and went the chicken and waffles, full American style. MADDIE 17:52 Nice. OWEN 17:52 It was pretty good. But I did have a level of regret the rest of the day. It was way too much food. MADDIE 17:58 Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah, chicken and waffles is definitely a staple. What else are you looking forward to doing or eating here? OWEN 18:06 Yeah. It was interesting. I told a lot of friends that I was coming here, and it was obviously my first time in the US. And the amount of kind of fast food places I've been told to go to, they're really good. I think my list is longer than I can eat. So I intend to take some of them off the list and see what I can try. But to be honest, I think most of my time and most of my excitement is with the conference, so the food is actually less important than I thought it would be. MADDIE 18:29 Very cool. That's funny, I didn't know that there was a lot of British cooking shows about American food. OWEN 18:35 Yeah, there's plenty. I think they might be American-made, but it's very big in the UK to see-- it's things like Man v. Food and stuff like that. There's food challenges and things like that, I think because it's surreal towards the portion sizes and things like that. Yeah. MADDIE 18:48 No, totally. Okay, so circling back to analytics stuff. Can you share with us just a fun analytics moment that blew your mind or something that happened on the community that you're like, "Oh, my God, I didn't know I could do that"? OWEN 19:03 Yeah, good question. I think I can shout out a lot of people here, I think Danilang being one of them. A lot of his solutions I've looked at and went, "I don't know how you've done that, but I'm stealing it. That's beautiful." And then you've also got people like Thomas Larsen who's made his own SDK. And I just think the amount of work that it's got to go behind that, it blows my mind. So I did manage to see him yesterday, and fanboy a little bit. Again, I'm a big fan of a lot of the people in the community. So a lot of the solutions that come up, I go, "Yeah, I definitely wouldn't have done it that way." And it's really exciting to see someone going that route. But yeah, there's way too many to name. There's so many people coming up with really cool things. I recently saw a blog post that was around creating NFTs in Alteryx. And the application of Alteryx with that all made sense, but the actual-- again, going back to that breaking the mould and breaking the idea of what you should do with it, I thought was beautiful. It fit that agenda perfectly. MADDIE 20:01 And then you told me-- when we were planning this, you said that you and Chris are working on something, but you didn't want to tell me at the time. Could you share that now or is it still secret? OWEN 20:12 So I still have to keep some redacted, but I think I can explain a little bit. We have an exciting project. It's completely along the lines of things you probably shouldn't do in Alteryx. But we've effectively created our own event. It's going to be really exciting. We've already pestered a lot of the ACEs to take part and a few of the kind of figureheads in the community. And it's effectively going to be this event that we've-- monthly or however it's going to work. We have kind of a leaderboard and things like that. I think it's going to be really exciting. I am at the point where I think we've caused a lot of excitement for this, so if it comes out and nobody likes it, I'm going to be disappointed. But I think by the sound of things, it's going to interest a lot of people. And I think it will also capture a lot of the nerdiness in people. Again, I wish I could say a little bit more and-- MADDIE 20:56 No, the teaser is perfect. Yeah, people will have to stay tuned in. Where can they find more information? Or how are you guys going to [crosstalk]? OWEN 21:03 Good question. So our plan at the minute-- and again, it's subject to change based on how much hurdles present themselves, but our plan at the minute is to attend, obviously, the Inspire in Amsterdam. And we're hoping to do a kind of full release there. So whether that's just talking about it and kind of setting up the scenes for the event, or actually hosting the event there and having audience participation and things like that. That's the plan for now, so-- MADDIE 21:27 It sounds fun. OWEN 21:28 The CEO's Inspire Amsterdam. MADDIE 21:29 Yeah, for sure. Very cool. Yeah. And for our listeners, an easy way to get updates, you can subscribe to the Alter Everything podcast on the community. And we can comment on this episode with any links to announcements or something like that, but-- OWEN 21:47 Yeah, of course. Yeah. MADDIE 21:48 --it could just be an easy way to tie it back, so check back there. OWEN 21:51 Yeah, I'll definitely drop a link however we're going to sort this out. MADDIE 21:54 Totally. And I'm sure you'll post on social media, and we'll link to your LinkedIn, so make sure you go follow the OC. OWEN 21:59 It'll be hard to miss out on the community. We're going to make-- I'm going to try and make as much noise as possible. MADDIE 22:04 Cool. Awesome. Very cool. And I had another question pop into my head. You kind of touched on this a little bit earlier about just your programming background and why you switched to analytics and kind of more data focus with the AI piece. But what else was it about programming? Do you still like programming? Do you still like working with Python? Those kinds of things, I'd love to know. OWEN 22:28 Yeah, I definitely do. I think it sounds ridiculous, but again, the nerds will relate with me. But being able to sit in front of a computer for a couple of hours and come out with something that does something is so exciting. You've not picked up a saw and started cutting some wood. It's all within the machine. I find that really exciting, especially when you get a solution that works for something that you want, where it can bring you actual value. You can do that a lot with programming and, well, Alteryx as well. So I find that really exciting. And I think it's quite easy to wow people with programming, I think. People that don't understand it, I think are blown away by some things. I remember for a university project, we built this green alarm system. And it was kind of detecting people [inaudible] and things like that, and showing that to kind of people who don't understand programming and things like that. And so explaining it, it blows people away. And obviously, that's true in most industries, but I find that's really satisfying, the getting something working. You've also got plenty of online resource, so I quite like that. I don't like that it's a every man for themselves and you're completely reinventing the wheel every time you're doing something in industry. It's very much let's share information and share best books. So I really like that side of things as well. MADDIE 23:39 Awesome. Very cool. Okay, and then last question. We'll end on a fun one. I'm curious to hear more about Stockton. What's life like there? What's the town like? OWEN 23:49 It's a good question. So the town isn't too great on paper. It's not. Yeah, we have a joke internally that the crime rate and stuff is terrible, but it's not really that bad. I quite like it. It's a small town. It's quite quaint. For a small town, there's quite a lot going on. So it is quite a nice place to live. And then I made the jump to Newcastle when I went to university, and that was kind of just Stockton but a lot bigger. It was so much going on in such a compact, quite dense city. And I really enjoy that side of things. It's not quite the Geordie Shore you might know from TV, but it's also not that far off either. MADDIE 24:24 Okay, interesting. So yeah, is that close by? OWEN 24:26 Yeah, so Geordie Shore is filmed in Newcastle. Yeah. MADDIE 24:28 Oh, it is. Okay. Yeah, see, I've never seen it but I've heard about it. I feel like I totally missed out on this cultural phenomenon with the Jersey Shore and Geordie Shore because I didn't watch either, but yeah, everybody's heard the stereotypes. But yeah, no, it sounds like a cool place. Everywhere that I hear of all the little towns and everything in England, they all just sound cool. OWEN 24:47 I'd definitely recommend visiting the UK. There's so much. You'll hear Chris talking about-- again, McEleavey talking about Durham a lot because that's the city that he's from, but it's also-- if you've seen Harry Potter, you'll know Durham and you'll know York, which are just beautiful places that you tend not to see most other places. It's something to see. MADDIE 25:11 Thanks for listening. To check out the blogs that Owen has written and to connect with him on the Alteryx Community, check out our show notes at community.alteryx.com/podcast. Also, registration for Inspire Amsterdam is open. Hope to see you there. [music]

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

mceleavey · ‎08-23-2022

Amazing. He didn't sound like he'd had a severe head injury. Well done, @TheOC !

TheOC · ‎08-23-2022

@mceleavey It really is fantastic what @MaddieJ can do with editing 😂

mceleavey · ‎08-23-2022

😁

IraWatt · ‎08-23-2022

Very cool 😄 !

mceleavey · ‎08-23-2022

Also, shoutouts in there to @Aguisande , @danilang , @tlarsen7572

patrick_digan · ‎08-23-2022

@TheOC I'm also a big fan of @danilang, he's had some cool solves for advent of code. My favorite was day 6 this year which we all solved with an iterative macro, and he found a way to do it with a clever multi-row formula tool: https://community.alteryx.com/t5/General-Discussions/Advent-of-Code-2021-Day-6-BaseA-Style/m-p/85329....

Jean-Balteryx · ‎08-25-2022

For once, I won't make any joke and just say that I really enjoyed to listen your story @TheOC !

TheOC · ‎08-25-2022

I appreciate it @Jean-Balteryx 😁

Jean-Balteryx · ‎08-25-2022

@TheOC, I'm wondering ... what's @mceleavey nickname ?

mceleavey · ‎08-25-2022

"Sir".

Jean-Balteryx · ‎08-25-2022

I might start to call you "McSir" !

TheOC · ‎08-25-2022

@Jean-Balteryx my nickname for him is NSFAC (Not Safe For Alteryx Community) 😁

Jean-Balteryx · ‎08-25-2022

Because he is safe for something else ? 🤔

TheOC · ‎08-25-2022

Ah, I meant more that I would be blocked by a profanity filter for typing my nickname for him.
However, maybe you're right @Jean-Balteryx, lets go with 'NS' (Not Safe) 😂

Jean-Balteryx · ‎08-25-2022

Good call !

That nickname looks more suitable ! 😁

severhart · ‎09-06-2022

I actually listened to this the other night while I waited in the excessively long drive through line for Taco Bell. Really enjoyed this episode and I've added the podcast to my favorites to hear more great content!

TheOC · ‎09-09-2022

hey @severhart
Thanks for the kind words, I'm glad you enjoyed it 😁

Shifty · ‎04-25-2023

I listened to this for the second time today. 🤠

The_Rad_Valentina · ‎10-17-2023

Great job @TheOC Does Chris really tell you to go home and watch TV?

TheOC · ‎10-18-2023

@The_Rad_Valentina he does! Although he only ever recommends black and white TV series and movies...

Alter Everything

Episode Guide

113: Playing Snake Game in Alteryx, because I can!

Panelists

Topics

Transcript

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