Unlock the secrets of data visualization with Tableau's own maestro, Adam Mico, who joins Vanessa Grant and me to share his inspiring journey from a late bloomer in data analysis to a Tableau Visionary and Ambassador. Prepare to have your mind opened to the possibilities of no-code and low-code features in Tableau, the power of AI integrations, and the multifaceted tool that is Tableau, as we push the boundaries of connecting with diverse data sets.
Ever wondered what it takes to become a guru in data visualization? Adam divulges the serendipitous route that led him to data analysis, and we dissect the essential skills budding data enthusiasts need to master, from a deep-seated passion for learning to grasping the science behind striking visualizations. The conversation also navigates the importance of creating accessible content for all, including colorblind individuals, and ponders the future of Tableau careers, suggesting adaptability is key in the ever-evolving data analysis landscape.
Concluding with heartwarming personal anecdotes and community engagement tales, Adam reflects on the demanding yet rewarding process of penning a Tableau certification guide and gearing up for the upcoming Tableau Conference. We also shed light on seizing those career-defining moments, and the immense value of community participation. Filled with networking nuggets and opportunities to connect with leading pioneers like Adam, this episode is a trove for anyone looking to explore the vibrant world of data visualization and analysis.
Unlock the secrets of data visualization with Tableau's own maestro, Adam Mico, who joins Vanessa Grant and me to share his inspiring journey from a late bloomer in data analysis to a Tableau Visionary and Ambassador. Prepare to have your mind opened to the possibilities of no-code and low-code features in Tableau, the power of AI integrations, and the multifaceted tool that is Tableau, as we push the boundaries of connecting with diverse data sets.
Ever wondered what it takes to become a guru in data visualization? Adam divulges the serendipitous route that led him to data analysis, and we dissect the essential skills budding data enthusiasts need to master, from a deep-seated passion for learning to grasping the science behind striking visualizations. The conversation also navigates the importance of creating accessible content for all, including colorblind individuals, and ponders the future of Tableau careers, suggesting adaptability is key in the ever-evolving data analysis landscape.
Concluding with heartwarming personal anecdotes and community engagement tales, Adam reflects on the demanding yet rewarding process of penning a Tableau certification guide and gearing up for the upcoming Tableau Conference. We also shed light on seizing those career-defining moments, and the immense value of community participation. Filled with networking nuggets and opportunities to connect with leading pioneers like Adam, this episode is a trove for anyone looking to explore the vibrant world of data visualization and analysis.
And now the number one audio program that helps you to hire, get hired and soar higher in the Salesforce ecosystem. It's the Salesforce career show with Josh Matthews and Vanessa Grant.
Josh Matthews:Welcome back to the show, everybody. It's been two weeks since we've been on, but if you're listening on the podcast, it's very possible that it's been almost a month since we've been on. Super sorry about that. So super short quick announcement. See, it's short and it's quick. We had some challenges with the download last week or two weeks ago, so that show is probably going to have to be redone and we'll get that out to you as soon as possible, so apologies for that. Okay, moving forward, today's a special day. Vanessa Grant, my beautiful co-host, why don't you introduce yourself? And you can also introduce our key guest today.
Vanessa Grant:Hi everybody. I'm Vanessa Grant. I'm a product owner at FinTech and also co-host this wonderful show. I feel like it's been a long time Maybe it's for the holidays and whatnot but excited to be back and super excited to introduce our guest, adam Miko. Adam, thank you so much for joining us today. I'll let you do your own intro, because you've got a whole, you've got quite the journey.
Adam Mico:Yeah, a little bit, but I'll save some for the actual podcast. So currently-.
Josh Matthews:This is the actual podcast. What are you talking about?
Adam Mico:I'll do the actual podcast question, but just a brief introduction Principal Data Visualization Enablement and Fluency at a biotech firm, let's say, and I'm also a Tableau Visionary and Ambassador and an advisory board member for the Data Leadership Collaborative and just excited to be part of this and extend the community.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, and you're also a Golden Hoodie recipient, right Adam.
Adam Mico:Yes, I was fortunate enough to be the first DataFam member to receive that, so obviously that came as quite a shock during the Tableau keynote. So, yeah, that was a pretty exciting moment, and that was at Dreamforce in 2022.
Josh Matthews:I love it. Well, congratulations. I am curious just about Golden Hoodies in general. Do you always wear the hoodie when you go to events?
Adam Mico:Well, it depends on the event. If it's a Salesforce audience, definitely. But if I'm going out to the grocery store, I normally don't wear the Golden Hoodie. But the best thing, and maybe not everybody knows this it's completely reversible. So it's a black hoodie on the other side with a little gold flare in the hood portion of it.
Josh Matthews:Hey, that's not bad. I was watching the Tennessee Kid I can never remember his name. He's a comedian, he's hysterical and he was talking about how he found these two coats at a store and he liked them so much so he bought them both, took them home, realized it was two of the same coat and they were reversible. So at least you only have one right, Right, Exactly. I don't think you're allowed to get two Golden Hoodies. Is that the case?
Vanessa Grant:I think if they get damaged, you can, you know, request another one, or if your size changes, I have heard of people getting updated ones, so it's not like.
Josh Matthews:I think I meant a ward, but okay, that's cool.
Vanessa Grant:Oh, you meant a ward, not like a second one from Salesforce. Sorry, I'm talking. I'm too practical. It's like the mom in me, sorry, that's okay.
Adam Mico:Pretty shocking For somebody to receive two. I'm just very fortunate to receive that one. And again.
Adam Mico:it was quite a surprise and it was a fun part of the event. At the keynote that I was participating in, I thought I was going to get a T-shirt or something. No idea that a Golden Hoodie would be being grabbed for me. So very happy about that. And yeah, washing it is an issue. I believe it. It's all gold a may or gold whatever. Yeah, golden material all over it. So it's not really a machine washable, so I utilize dry cleaning if I ever need to?
Josh Matthews:Yeah, that's right.
Adam Mico:So that's one of the big things people ask. And the other thing is it's hard to wear at events too, because it is so warm. That shield of gold makes the temperature of the Golden Hoodie about 20 degrees, feels 20 degrees warmer than what it actually is. So I applaud all those people that wear them all the time at conferences. I couldn't do it because I would just be sweating the entire time.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, you're like me, man, I'm not. I just, yeah, too much, too many layers isn't a good thing. Look, let's dive right in, adam, about Tableau. Okay, of course, I would think that the majority of our listeners have some cursory general understanding of what Tableau is, but it would probably mean a lot to a number of our listeners to really describe what it is and what it's capable of doing today. Because, I can, I'll be honest. My understanding of Tableau is probably four years old, right, and a lot has changed, and I know that for yourself at your organization. You do a fair amount with AI as well, and I'm sure Tableau ties into that. So talk, if you can just briefly give us an overview of what it does.
Adam Mico:Sure, tableau is a data visualization tool top of class for business users and business so and it's a no code or low code solution to data viz. Many of the data viz tools out there require coding Like, if you're going to create data visualizations on Python or R, you would have to code for that, and other tools require quite a bit of coding, whereas Tableau is pretty easy for a lot of people to use and there's multiple portions of Tableau that people focus on. Well, generally hear about data visualizations utilizing Tableau desktop, but they have a cloud enterprise like not too dissimilar to Salesforce does. It connects to a whole wide range of data. There's an incorporated preparation tool that's called Tableau Prep, and even so much more so it's an entire platform intended for enterprise solutions and even also small businesses as well can utilize it, but it's great for both. It's a very flexible tool and it's something I've been using for over a decade Over a decade.
Josh Matthews:Go for it, Vanessa.
Vanessa Grant:Yeah. So, Adam, can you talk a little bit more about what is data visualization and why that's important?
Adam Mico:Yes, because there's a lot of data out there and it's very difficult for people to. Visualization really streamlines the effort as far as to gain insight and actionable insight. People can transform their data into nice bite-sized portions. I'm a fan of simplicity. I like elegant and simple dashboards that do a lot more, so a lot of interactivity and access to different parts of it, so it could be utilized by an executive but also have value for an analyst.
Vanessa Grant:So, adam, I'm going to bring up a story that and I would love it if you could share it with the audience too. I had heard you on a podcast once talking about your data visualizations and then when you got more involved in the DataFam community, which is very similar in a lot of ways, and I know we've even written about that as far as the similarities between the Trailblazer community and the DataFam community. But once you got more involved in the community it really improved your data visualizations. You started kind of sharing them publicly. Can you talk a little bit about that and how your data visualization journey Of course.
Adam Mico:So for the first six or so years I was using the tool I was working on at Silo. I wasn't part of the community. I was just trying to get reports out to stakeholders. I wasn't really thinking about best practice or anything like that. People liked a lot of color, so I just made virtually XL versions of Tableau, if you will, with a lot of color and a lot of other stuff, without an idea of what was actually good. But the stakeholders liked it so I was fine with that.
Adam Mico:So when I joined the community I was quote-unquote already sort of an expert practitioner tool, but my design was awful and I didn't realize that until I received feedback from a number of members in the community kind feedback in design and improving my thoughts about the science behind data visualization to make something really effective for end users but make it look like it didn't take a lot of effort.
Adam Mico:So there's nothing worse than looking at a dashboard and there's 40 charts on it. You can't make heads or tails of anything on a dashboard. So it's not only making better color, creating additional white space and other stuff. You design for the user and you design to make it very approachable and something that they would actually want to go back to. So working on that for a few years, even while I was still with the same employer I was a public sector employee at the time it really helped me improve quite rapidly and involving the community and getting that feedback and collaborating with people really helped me understand their thought processes with it and helped me scale up really quickly, much more quickly than one could do on their own.
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, I love that and I will say I think it's something that we also do in the trailblazer community as well, but probably not as robustly, I would say, as the data fam community. I'm a big fan of kind of learning publicly, just so people can give feedback, but I think it's not frowned upon, but people are less inclined to share their work as they seem to be in the data fam community. I've been following lots of folks on Twitter and it's beautiful the visualizations that they come up with and the different types of data sets that they play with and actually, if you could kind of talk about some of the kind of things like the vis of the day and things like that, which our concepts, it's not like we have the flow of the day and the trailblazer community.
Adam Mico:Yeah, Visit-A-Day is really an excellent way to onboard new users, to get excited about data visualization and see the possibilities that exist with data visualization. Usually it's not only an infographic design, but it's a design using new features or covering an important initiative that a lot of people are part of. That's the other part of it is the Tableau. Datafam has a ton of initiatives, Pretty much something for everyone. Makeover Monday, which is the gold standard initiative for data visualization enthusiasts using Tableau, is back. What they do is offer a clean dataset which you generally wouldn't get in the real world, but you have the opportunity to see what many people are doing at the same time with the same dataset. That really gives you new ideas and ways to approach it. Without those types of initiatives and without that type of feedback, it's really difficult to upskill. So with Tableau Visit-A-Day going back to that original question is a Tableau Visit-A-Day is?
Adam Mico:Tableau selects one vis from the community of millions of profiles and many visualizations being published a day to be featured as their Visit-A-Day, and it's done each weekday in most cases. I was fortunate enough to get three of them, so it really does provide some recognition. Even you don't necessarily need to be an ambassador or a visionary, you could have no community title and end up getting a Visit-A-Day. Getting that nod really helps people realize that they're making real good strides in their data visualization. It's super a boost of energy when the software company that you love selects your visualization and say, hey, this is the best. In Tableau Public, in the Discover section, you could find all of the Visit-A-Days in reverse chronological order. That's a great way to look up to get really quick inspiration of new styles and new approaches of data visualization that you have not considered.
Vanessa Grant:You mentioned Tableau visionaries and ambassadors. Can you talk a little bit more about those programs, because I think those are also similar, like the Trailblazer community where we have MVPs, and I know there's Mealsoft ambassadors and I'm assuming it's similar on the Tableau side. But we'd love to hear your perspective.
Adam Mico:Sure. Back in 2020, I became an ambassador and there's a number of different cohorts, ranging from social cohorts, Tableau Public, and those are the people that publish data visualizations. There's DataDev, so people that tend to work, maybe on server with APIs and creating new tools and extensions that are associated with Tableau. There's the Academic Ambassador, so those could be students or teachers and academics that can be part of the Tableau Ambassador program. There's Forum Ambassadors, so Tableau has an extensive forum that's curated, where you could select the best answer based on questions that are had and some people that are very active in it and help out tons of people. They get recognized as ambassadors too. Finally, there's the User Group Ambassador, so people that host and co-lead impactful user groups featuring Tableau and data visualization get recognized as well.
Adam Mico:There's specific cohorts with specific intentions. A lot of people overlap a little bit of each. Generally, one person is not in one slot, but Tableau just applies the best fit for the Ambassador program, for the visionary program. It's a real fortunate thing to be part of, because that's where Tableau recognizes you as a global leader of data visualization. It incorporates mastery, it incorporates collaboration and it incorporates teaching all the things that somebody strives to be when they take a lot of value in a platform and share it publicly. If you're recognizing that manner, tableau is saying that you pretty much mastered the tool or some great aspect of that tool. It's a different type of recognition than Ambassador. I'm not saying one's better than the other, but it's good that they have both, because not all visionaries are ambassadors, but a lot of visionaries are ambassadors and visionaries.
Vanessa Grant:Awesome.
Josh Matthews:I got a quick question.
Vanessa Grant:It's been quite the journey, coming all the way through Golden Hoodie to Tableau Visionary. How did you get into data analysis?
Adam Mico:It was a happy accident. When I was working in the public sector I was training unemployment insurance law Sounds so much fun. But prior to that I was a project business analyst for a couple of years. When I came back as that project business analyst, I was known as the guy that was good with Excel in my department. Years later, they looked for a data visualization tool. It was between one product and Tableau. Tableau was the easy selection. They're like okay, let's start you out as an SME and working with data visualization developers, then we'll hand it off to you. Unfortunately, I got the reins of Tableau pretty early on in my journey. That's how I got involved with that and it helped me change my career after 40.
Josh Matthews:That's awesome. I hope it's not a silly question, but when you're creating the data visualization, how much, if any thought is being put into people who are colorblind?
Adam Mico:No, that's an incredible question. This brings up a funny story. A lot of people like stoplight metrics so red, green and yellow and obviously that doesn't appeal to the colorblind people. One stakeholder was colorblind but swore he could see the difference between the red and green, which he didn't, but he just didn't want to stick out. I wasn't really thinking about that until I joined the community, but when you're looking at pre-attentive attributes and making your data visualizations accessible, those are things you really think of right away. I like to go with different color scales for metrics that are better friendly to those that may have colorblindness. One way that you could utilize it and make it stand out as a positive or a negative is to have color keys there. You can introduce your users to that color and maybe have that as part of your brand for the entire office. If you have that capability to work with a team that provides those guidelines. Instead of red green, I tend to go with a dark salmon and blue.
Josh Matthews:There you go. Okay, yeah, interesting. Thanks, vanessa. You're doing a killer job talking to Adam, so I'm just going to let you keep going.
Vanessa Grant:I actually was curious to hear what are the skill sets that you think are most important for folks that are interested in this type of a career.
Adam Mico:That's a great question. So many people come from so many different backgrounds. There's not one background that's outside of maybe data science or a business degree background that would be helpful as a background for Tableau. It's more of a desire to learn. Especially, the floor isn't too high because of the drag and drop capabilities of the tool. People can learn the basics pretty quickly. There's a great community with a lot of wonderful content and tutorials and so forth that really help people upskill super quickly. Basically, you just need to have a desire to visualize data and have a mindset for that. So understanding what is good and what is bad and working with your stakeholders and doing your research on the science behind data visualization really helps lower that threshold as far as whether you'll be a decent data visualizer quickly, rather than having difficulties presenting your data to an audience that maybe isn't so familiar with data visualization.
Josh Matthews:That makes sense. I'm kind of curious, just because it's a career show, right, and I'm trying to think like when someone's thinking about making a decision, right, maybe they've got some exposure to Salesforce, some exposure to Tableau. What are some of the common traits that you have encountered with counterparts and peers and people in the Tableau community? What are some of the traits and characteristics of these folks? And also, sorry to double up the question, it seems to me like there are only so many, there are only going to be so many, for instance, tableau developer roles or Tableau data scientist or Tableau visualization expert roles, where that's all they're doing. Do you think in general in business, people who are focused on Tableau are generally doing Tableau plus something else as a tool, right? Or are the majority of people working with Tableau really dedicated? That's where they live?
Adam Mico:So I believe that it's going to be a combination of those. I think the majority of business users and developers. They're not doing Tableau full time. Okay, they're part of a business team and part of their function is to present data visualizations to stakeholders or maybe executives and so forth.
Adam Mico:Generally, when you have a larger company with a lot of different teams and limited resources, oftentimes they're going to be doing a little bit of both and I really think that's the future. You're going to have to have some flexibility and adaptability if you plan on developing in Tableau. There will be plenty of options to be a Tableau developer and exclusively a Tableau developer, especially with a lot of consulting firms. But in the age of AI, in the age of different capabilities that people are wanting for people that are in data visualization, it's going to be a little bit more difficult in the future to just be a Tableau developer. You're probably going to need some data skills at least some data wrangling skills and maybe business analytics skills as well and working with business teams and stakeholders and be part of that entire pipeline, not just a data visualization layer.
Josh Matthews:That makes sense and doing just a cursory look on LinkedIn jobs to see how many of these opportunities and I just did Tableau developer how many of these opportunities are actually at consulting firms versus, say, where you work, where you're dedicated, full time, versus going through an agency or going through a large employer like a tech systems or a Deloitte or a Tata or something like that, when they know that they just need to get this person in, get a setup and then get out. Do you see a lot of that in the industry? I mean, we see a lot of it, of course, in Salesforce. I'm curious if it's really similar.
Adam Mico:It is pretty similar. Larger firms are going to have dedicated Tableau developers. Consulting firms in particular. Larger companies, may have a dedicated team, especially if they're a center of excellence that's in charge of developing all the dashboards. They'll have some dedicated Tableau developers. But the majority of people have a percentage of their time utilizing Tableau and that may be and even when I was doing it for about six years before I even joined the community the percentage of the time I was doing it as a business analyst because my career changed from an adjudication trainer to a data analyst and a business automation specialist I would say Tableau even at that point was about 20 to 40% of that time. So you'll have the best opportunities to do Tableau full time if you're in consulting Sure.
Josh Matthews:And is it? I mean, you know, vanessa, you tell us you did business analysis for a long time. Did you get opportunities to work on Tableau?
Vanessa Grant:I haven't worked with Tableau Too much. I think for me it's been really important at least in my consulting career and also when I've worked internally, when we've had a Tableau team mostly to kind of figure out how to Almost triage the requests from the business so that we understand when it makes sense to build in Salesforce, when it makes sense to have the Tableau team Take care of it, what is the information that we're trying to? You know what's the story that we're trying to tell and and what's the best way to tell it and how often do they need to access it? How do they need to access it? And, adam, if you have any, I'm sure you're probably even you know way more about that than I do. Even so, if, if, if, you have any thoughts on on that as well, that'd be great.
Adam Mico:So the other part of it that I didn't really get to before was that there's gonna be more roles that's gonna require Tableau to be part of it.
Adam Mico:So maybe five, six years ago, when you're working with this, vanessa, it may have been more of a nice to have.
Adam Mico:But as business teams do more with less it and are Required to be more flexible with what they're doing in their day to day, tableau is gonna be part of it. So I could see, for example, data scientists that normally, when Would code, or often code their data visualizations may have to, instead of doing that, create Visualizations and share with a broader audience, like business stakeholders, executives and so forth, whereas they're not just sharing in amongst their team. Other roles will have Tableau thrown into it because they're the one that's probably a best with any Related type of software. So I just think that's gonna be a function of so many different people's MO at work, where a little bit is gonna go to a lot of people, as opposed to a lot of people having full-time roles there. But I think a Tableau or data visualization in general is gonna be a large part of what people are gonna be doing in the future, and Regardless of your role, because there's gonna be so many slices of dices of your job description as we go on in the age of.
Peter Ganza:AI.
Adam Mico:That it's gonna be important to be able to understand and produce data visualizations.
Josh Matthews:That makes sense to me. I'm. I've got a kind of another silly. Quite well, maybe it's not silly, I don't know, but I'm curious. You, you have this unique, this unique position of Getting to see really the specific Information that companies want the most of right. What are the dumbest KPIs or metrics that you've done Visualization for? Where you're like I, they want to see it. I don't know why, but okay, here we go. You know any, any stories around that?
Adam Mico:Well, more so of having too many. So Some, some people basically wanted dashboard full of KPI Kurds and your eyes go cross-eyed. So and they, there's no like filters, far as you know, what do we want to see as a KPI? It's like, which metrics do you want? And the person says, yes, they're all over the board here. Yeah, so I Don't really see, because usually businesses I don't produce stuff that would be like a what? What would be a Poor, poor KPI. They make sense in their own way. I'll put it that way. Okay, but I think having too many KPIs make it very difficult for people understand what's going on and people won't actually use the dashboard, that for the data Visualization, because it's just too crowded, there's too much going on and they have no idea on what to focus on.
Josh Matthews:And is there a golden rule to that UI? I mean, is it, you know, no more than six or so there's no, it depends on the stakeholder.
Adam Mico:I'll put it that way, sure, but generally, what I would like to see with KPIs Would be what what they call big aggregated numbers, on top, where you have the Big aggregated number and maybe a sparkline or something, maybe no more than four, I think. After four it gets really crowded. And then for charting, I generally don't like more than three or four of the actual charts beneath that big aggregated number section, sure. So Beyond that it gets a little bit crowded. And I would talk to a stakeholder about making multiple dashboards and utilizing the navigation buttons and tablet. It easily go between them.
Vanessa Grant:There you go, so I wanted to ask I know you mentioned Tableau developers, but what are some of the other roles in general that folks can Could look for if they're interested in a in a career like this, and what does the career paths Look?
Adam Mico:like oh interesting. So my career is very different. There there are a number of companies with Center of enablement and so forth, but it's a few and far between and it's not the easiest thing to find. So my progression was something completely unrelated to Tableau, to something that was Tengentially related to Tableau, to something as having Tableau as part of my job, and then I became a Tableau evangelist, which meant Tableau was a hundred percent of my job when I was working for a consultancy Before I left for my current employer. However, that led me into helping lead a center of enablement for data visualization, which has really been a career path.
Adam Mico:That is kind of a dream career path.
Adam Mico:I had no idea what have existed five years ago, let alone now, so that's still going to be a thing, but that's not like a reasonable career path for a lot of people. So usually what I would see, at least in the private sector and non consulting sector, would be more along the lines of the business analysts or data analysts Doing Tableau for a pretty extensive amount of their job anywhere from it could be anywhere from 10 to 50 percent, where they're working with data teams, getting the data prepared correctly and then worrying about and then applying the data visualization and iterating on those data Visualizations for their stakeholders. So that's one of those things where I'm like, wow, that's a career path. That's probably the most logical for most people. But if somebody really wants to do Tableau and just focus on Tableau as a Primary job function, you may utilize that portion of Tableau that you're working on as a data analyst or a business analyst and look at a consulting gig that applies the Tableau or related data visualization efforts more of a focus of your job role.
Josh Matthews:There you go. Now you, you are also An author, right? You've written two books. Is that? Am I getting this right?
Adam Mico:I wrote one in the in a Ford to another one. So but, one. I'm, yeah, one of my own, and that was for the Tableau desktop Specialist certification.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, tell us about that. January this year or last year, last year? Yeah, it's been out for a year now. You can find it on Amazon. If you just type in Adam, mike, miko, mico or type in Tableau desktop certification or desktop specialist Certification will come right up. It looks like you went through packed publishing, which our last guests also went through when they were creating a book about AI for Salesforce. So definitely a really good publishing company that is focused on the community that we serve here on the show. What was that like Authoring this? I mean, was it daunting or did you feel like, how much did you lean into AI? I asked this question a couple weeks ago. You know how much could you lean into AI to help you out with this? How much of it just sort of flowed because you knew it.
Adam Mico:You know what was the experience like for you so, um, the funny story with that is that, uh, I took this test by accident. So when I was consulting I Was supposed to take the Tableau consultant certification but the Tableau testing company changed sites to a different site that was only for that consultant certification. So I just blunt, blindly click the certification button and went to the Tableau certification, took the test and and passed it. But it was a long process because I just started working for my current company in a brand new job, in a brand new role, and I didn't realize how much effort that was going to be to write the book and do that. There's absolutely no gen AI that was available for me at that time To assisted writing the book. So those words are my words, yeah okay but.
Adam Mico:But my words and I spent nine months on writing and iterating on the book Around my actual Demanding job. So it was a lot of weekends spent writing and it was a process. It's probably I joke about this to friends, but it's probably the closest thing a guy could experience a having a giving birth is because I spent nine months writing this. It was a lot of a lot of effort, a lot of pressure, a lot of Energy expended and a lot of times telling me I'm not going to get through it. But once it came out, it was. It was such a relief and I was just happy to have something to show for all that effort and I really applaud PAC Publishing for pushing me along, because sometimes I just like I don't want to do this anymore. It's too much work and I was already tired from not only my day-to-day job but my community activities with Tableau as well and sales force at the time.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, you know, you know slouch Adam. I mean, clearly you're, you know you're, you're no slouch, which is awesome. But yeah, I like the comparison to to, uh, you know, being pregnant. I think you'd have to throw in, you know, for a guy, maybe throwing some, uh, kidney stones in there right to make it really fair. Remember that okay, so throw that in there, and then then you, then you got it for sure. No epidural for writing a book is there.
Adam Mico:I know and there's a lot of check-ins and a lot of people remind you of deadlines yeah, you know a lot of that, but, um, without that and it was a very aggressive deadline I had nine months to write. You know, nine months to write the book and I had a number of breaks in between because of travel or COVID or whatnot. So, uh, it was, um, I was happy to complete it and most a lot of the work was done Is, fortunately, in my job. We had a winter shut, shutdown for like uh, nine days. So I went to Cape Cod and it was in the middle of winter, nobody goes there during that time and um Knocked out 70 pages in that uh, eight or nine days I was there, okay, so that was really helpful to get um Most the the final portion of it. Uh, done, uh, done uh. And it was fun to kind of take a writer's retreat, uh, to get the great separation from work that I need, but also kind of refresh and and get through that process of writing the book.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, where on the cape did you go? South um yarmouth south yarmouth, right right, a lot of my family's got since, so okay. Yeah, a lot of a lot of my family grew up in in yarmouth and, uh, oh nice. For many years I lived in east orleans uh, eighth grade just for one year, but we used to go there all the time. So, yeah, great place, very great place for a retreat for, for sure. So I'm kind of curious. You got all this stuff going on. What's coming next for you?
Adam Mico:So I'm involved with a number of things. Tableau Conference is coming up in April, so that will be a lot of fun. Speaking of, next, I'm going to be releasing our Tableau Next cohort. So one of the initiatives I'm part of with the Tableau community is representing those people that are not ambassadors and not visionaries, but deserve some accolades and recognition. So in December, late November, in December I have a nomination for people to nominate others that are not Tableau employees, tableau ambassadors or Tableau visionaries, so they can get recognized and hopefully propel them to do more and greater things and get the recognition that will hopefully inspire other peoples to do the same. So this year we had our biggest one yet, where there were over 100 people that will likely qualify for being on the Tableau Next cohort. So I'll put together a blog and their information so people could follow them and get inspired by their work and hopefully get their names out there. So there's a potential for them to become an ambassador or a visionary.
Josh Matthews:Good job, man. Way to go, and there's a bunch of stuff going on. Vanessa, I'm just going to pick on you for a minute and just to say we're sort of like a little bit more than half an hour in, a little bit more than that. But this is usually a good time to share events, what's going on before people click off and go make dinner or whatever. But you've got some stuff coming up. Tell us about that.
Vanessa Grant:Oh me, oh yeah my stuff.
Josh Matthews:Your stuff, vanessa, your stuff.
Vanessa Grant:I've got stuff going on. Tomorrow I'm doing a, and by the time this podcast is up you should be able to see the recording on SalesforceBenz YouTube. But I'm doing a crash course in business analysis in collaboration with SalesforceBenz, which I'm only kind of freaking out about. It's a topic I can talk about in my sleep, but I think over 700 people are asleep and I'm like, oh my God, I wasn't expecting it to be like conference level attendance, but people are really into business analysis and hey, as we heard Adam talking about, business analysis is often a great foundation for all sorts of careers. So doing that. And then next week I'm actually going to be speaking on a panel for the Ohonability Trailhead Community Group talking about my experience raising my two beautiful neurodiverse children. So a little bit more of a personal side of things, but also how to. Part of that is how do I manage my career with also a lot of the responsibilities that I have in that regard.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I don't know how you, I really don't know how you do it Like I don't. You're always doing something and for me I just get burnt out. Man, I just like I don't know if it's because I'm just a little bit older or I'm just as busy as you, except it's not necessarily in the ecosystem. I'm playing drums or piano or going on the boat. So I don't really know. I don't know how you have that much energy.
Vanessa Grant:I don't, I don't either. You know, maybe I'll be one of those like cautionary tales, so if I can get you over back in the theater, I don't know, but it's. I think it's all just kind of driven by, like am I too tired or do I want to keep helping people, and I think that just kind of. I think what drives me and a lot of people in the communities that we're a part of and you know, supporting other parents and other people, you know, raising your diverse kids If I'm getting asked that's, you know that's a topic that's important to me, just like Salesforce is important to me, just like business analysis is important to me, just like helping people in their careers is important to me. You know it's, it's, it's a blessing that I get to do this stuff, and I think I'm also speaking on user stories at a trailhead user group in in Cotswold, I think it's in the UK next week.
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, cotswold, sorry, thank you.
Josh Matthews:So you're going back to the UK.
Vanessa Grant:No, no, no, no. I'm just doing that one virtually. That one's a hybrid event, but that one, I believe, will also be recorded.
Josh Matthews:And I'm going to say we're going to have to get you dual citizenship here soon.
Vanessa Grant:Oh man, that'd be nice. Yeah, I think those are the, the, the kind of the, the big ticket items I have going on on lately, other than trying to get my own trailhead community group off the ground. Hopefully I'll be able to announce my first meetup for that in the in the coming, in the coming weeks.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I'm stoked about that for you.
Vanessa Grant:Me too. I just need the time to like it's it's. I think I still need to get my organization together, but but it's it's. It's lovely, you know it's it's, it's a great time in my life, as busy as it is. You know. I keep going on large parts because the opportunities keep coming and I it's, I don't. I sometimes I want to say no and I still need to sometimes push stuff off, but like it's still on a day to day basis. So so lucky to do what I do.
Vanessa Grant:Yeah, I'm also going to throw out for folks that are listening live or listen before the deadline of dreaming in color call for speakers is is out if folks are interested in speaking in New Orleans. And I'm going to be actually putting in a couple of submissions for the Latina track and kind of leaning into I don't know folks not, not not something I publicize too too often, but is really important. Another important aspect of my life is, you know, my mother's Colombian and and I, I know I don't necessarily present as a typical Latina woman, but you know I am and it's a huge part of my life. So I'm going to kind of lean into that a bit as well and do some more sessions as a sales force professional. That's also Latina.
Josh Matthews:I love it. Good for you. Good for you, vanessa. That's awesome and that'll be a that'll be a fun place to go. I've never been to New Orleans, but I bet you're going to have a heck of a good time down there.
Vanessa Grant:Thank you, yeah, thanks, thanks for asking, josh.
Josh Matthews:Yeah Well, I keep seeing all this stuff that you've got going on. I figured we should probably tell a couple of people about it, why not?
Vanessa Grant:I'm busy, but you know I'm also, I'm, I'm, I'm busy. I'm also here fangirling over Adam. Like, for some reason, adam, like your content, even though you know the sales force and Tableau, I would consider like tangential, like, of course, there's so many opportunities for synergies between the, the, the two ecosystems you look at. The dream force theme was basically AI plus data plus CRM. I've always really enjoyed, you know, listening to you speak.
Vanessa Grant:Your blog and and your personality in general is, is really always resonated with me. I love the. I see cues on the session that you did with Q, like you're really good at explaining kind of these concepts that are always been a little bit scary to me as a. I love data, but data does intimidate me a bit and making that a little bit more palatable. So so, so, thank you, adam, and actually I would actually love to dig in a little more on on, since it is AI plus data plus CRM. Adam, you have a lot that you've been doing in on the AI side of things. Would love to hear you kind of talk more about that.
Adam Mico:Thank you so much for the kind words, vanessa. And being neurodiverse myself, I appreciate you having a parent you being a parent to neurodiverse children as well, so I do appreciate that, and the career part has always been a bit foggy for me until I learned about community. And back to the AI track. I'll be perfectly honest when, when Salesforce puts AI in front of data, that makes me cringe a little bit, because the primary thought is that you have data that feeds into the AI.
Adam Mico:Yes, and I do work quite a bit on AI, primarily on the generative AI side. I do a lot of work with that with my current company. I've built several GPTs and chat GPT and really worked with the tool quite a bit and I've seen so much potential and what it can do. And the thing that really excites me about generative AI is not the tool chat GPT for generalized use, it's how software is going to implement those that generative AI to make their software much easier to use and less scary for those people that are trying to use it. So pretty much every software tool is looking for an angle and how to do that and how to incorporate that and the results that I've seen from a number of demonstrations and actually working with generative AI with associated software is really encouraging and it's going to make it so much easier to use tools like Tableau or any other, and even Salesforce in the future.
Vanessa Grant:Absolutely so I have a couple of questions from the audience as well. And I also have one last question for Adam, If you don't mind me going ahead. Josh, I don't know why I keep asking for permission. I think I've been like three years and be like done.
Josh Matthews:No, you're good, something weird keeps happening with my system where I hit mute on my podcast box and then it mutes it on the thing and then I don't know if the data is going into the recording. It's just being really weird. But yeah, definitely.
Vanessa Grant:Everything's glad and clear for me now.
Josh Matthews:Okay, the only thing I was going to say just about the. You know, what Adam was just describing is, I'm noticing recently all of these little plugins on GPT that are making my life a lot easier. Right, you can go to explore it. Like, if you're on chat GPT, for you can go and click explore. There's a little button on the left column. This is just a general general knowledge thing. You can click on that and it's like yeah, here's the GPT for academics, this is the stuff. If you're in college, this is the stuff If you just need general, you know, improved writing or what have you. So if you're not on any of the generative AI platforms right now, get on them. And if you're on GPT and I'm sure it's for the others there's a bunch of plugins. Just the same way, there's a bunch of plugins for WordPress and so on right or app exchange stuff. So there's new stuff coming out every single week and some of it's pretty exciting. Okay, Back to you.
Vanessa Grant:Cool. So, adam, a couple of questions from our audience. For companies using Microsoft 365, how do you position Tableau so the investment makes sense?
Adam Mico:Well, I think of Power BI as kind of an add-on to an existing platform, where Tableau is its own top of market tool. A lot of companies that I've consulted with and worked with are primarily a Microsoft platform, but they don't use Power BI, and the reason is that there's a lot less flexibility with data and a lot less things that you could do. The great thing about Tableau is generally, you're just limited by your creativity, whereas there's a lot of rigidity in tools like Power BI or Looker and so forth. So that's why I love part of the reason why I love Tableau, and I think it's the premium business tool because you're not limited by your use cases. You're limited by your creativity.
Vanessa Grant:Awesome. I see Damien in the crowd giving the thumbs up. He had the question and then his other question and hopefully this is enough information. But how do you deal with stakeholders needing data that requires manual input?
Adam Mico:Yeah, that's kind of the bane of my existence in some cases.
Adam Mico:Generally, the best way to look at it is you have to explain the importance of working parallel.
Adam Mico:So maybe for a POC or an MVP project you may just want to say, hey, you could utilize this data that utilizes manual inputs, but for a long-term solution, you want to get it into a data warehouse where the data is structured and it's going to be dependable.
Adam Mico:Because when you have data that is manually input, there are so many potential errors that impact the front end and not just Tableau, pretty much any data visualization tool. It's really easy to make a date field a string field and that could impact everything or a measure field into a string field just based on a bad user input, and those things have a significant impact, not just for data visualization but if you're just pulling data out. So you want to have a solution that's structured and dependable and it's going to be something that you could utilize and not have to worry about it. So with an engineered product, you could kind of set it and forget it and not have to really worry about the data and its structure ever again. When you have those manual inputs, those headaches occur daily, if not more, or maybe weekly if you're lucky.
Vanessa Grant:And I know you obviously wrote a book on the certification. What are the certifications that you would recommend for folks that are interested in a career in Tableau, and how important are they for landing a job? So primarily.
Adam Mico:The first one, I would say, is the desktop specialist. The reason why I'm saying that it's not just because I wrote a book on it. Part of the reason why I wrote the book on it is you have a license that is never expiring. That license doesn't expire. All the other licenses are two-year licenses, which is really good for reeducation. But if you want to commit time and effort and make sure that you have a certification that lasts forever to help you get jobs, and you have to worry about recertifying, desktop specialist is a way to go.
Adam Mico:Recruiters are looking for anyone with certification, because oftentimes the recruiters don't know Tableau, so they want to look at people with at least a baseline certification if a Tableau is a primary aspect of the role that they're recruiting for. They have other ones that are for consultants that are publicly available too. So there's the consultant desktop, which is developing data visualizations in Tableau, and there's a consultant for servers, so understanding the administration part of the data visualization enterprise environment, whether it be cloud or server. Those are important too, but they expire in two years. And there's also a data analyst, one that utilizes not only the cloud server and desktop but it also looks at Tableau, prep 2 and some other bits, and that's another two-year certification. So it depends on what role you're looking for, but I would say, for an entry-level role related to Tableau, I would suggest to get the desktop specialist, especially if you don't have a lot of money or time to retake test, and that's the cheapest one as well. So that one is $100, and I believe the others are a couple hundred.
Josh Matthews:And let's hope, Adam, that it doesn't take people nine months to study what took you nine months to write.
Adam Mico:So my intent when I wrote the book was trying to get people skilled up enough so they could pass that certification and really get to work with the examples that are provided in the book for hands-on I'll work so they can open it and know what they're doing, at least at a good intermediate level, before they actually have a career in it. So hopefully the intent is, in two weeks, at least close to an intermediate level with building visualizations with the tool but also understanding what's needed to start out in Tableau. Thank you.
Vanessa Grant:Awesome. I noticed at one point you also had the Salesforce Serum Analytics certification. Can you talk a little bit about the difference between Tableau versus Serum Analytics and why people might focus on one or the other, or if they should be focusing on?
Adam Mico:both. So that was interesting. So when I was a Tableau evangelist, one of the things that was being looked at is how do you incorporate anything from the Salesforce ecosystem in a Tableau? One of the things was at the time it was called Tableau Serum and I signed analytics. It was important for me to be able to find ways to include different types of data utilizing predictive analytics as part of the Salesforce ecosystem. So that includes Tableau and Salesforce. So my role was understanding it well enough so I could incorporate those models into Tableau.
Vanessa Grant:Okay, and do you find that people tend to choose one or the other?
Adam Mico:They're very different and I don't think from for a period of time there I think I was the only one certified in both. Oh, wow, at least anybody put their source ecosystem, because it's part of that actual cloud and it's a completely separate product from Tableau. Most people utilizing Tableau would not use CRM or Einstein Analytics, but it does have some value and the best use case I could think of when I was working with it quite a bit is that Einstein Analytics is really good for showing the potential. What's the outcome for an isolated record? So I need to make a sale. What's the percentage of chance that this sale would be made if I contact this customer?
Adam Mico:Whereas with Tableau you could utilize more data points and look at aggregations a little bit differently. That you couldn't do on the Salesforce side, or it doesn't do, and it's intended to work that way. Salesforce are for people, that's, working with specific people and not looking at aggregated records. But in Tableau you could do that and that would be the best use case for Tableau and I see a lot of value there, but people aren't really incorporated in that at this point.
Vanessa Grant:Interesting. We have one last question from the audience. As part of the community, how do you find organization looking for support? Do you volunteer?
Adam Mico:Looking for support in relation. To what do you mean by that?
Vanessa Grant:I think it means how do you find a company that's looking? I don't know. Maybe it's kind of like in Salesforce, when a lot of times, when people are looking to break into the ecosystem, they say you should volunteer or do internships to try and break in. Is there something similar on the Tableau side where folks do internships or there's volunteer opportunities for nonprofits? Yeah, I think I got a thumbs up there. Okay, sounds good.
Adam Mico:Tableau used to have the Tableau Foundation, but that's been rolled up in Salesforce. The best way to get involved in quote-unquote volunteer is to participate in the community initiatives that Tableau has and the data famine. Tableau is very active in social media. So, supporting others, working with others, there's many opportunities for mentorship, for example, or people that provide informal mentorship. So you have a lot of opportunities for support and if you're really part of the community and you're active in the community, you'll have a lot more opportunities to get noticed and recognized by potential employers and have fun doing what you're doing, not to mention the upskilling part of it.
Adam Mico:So very much like the Trailblazer community, where you share your wins, share your losses and work with others, looking to elevate others and not just yourself. That's kind of the mindset of the community. But, utilizing that mindset, we support so many people in the community that people that aren't necessarily ambassadors or visionaries. Many people are just brand new as well. So we do offer community support to people. That's more, that's very family-like and we call ourselves a data family because we mean it. It's really. It's really a thing to be part of, and I was the person that didn't want to be part of any community. Ever being autistic and I was just like I love this tool. You know, I guess I'll give this community a chance and I'm still here and it's. It'll be five years in August.
Josh Matthews:Adam, I got to say something here. First of all, I think it's incredible what you've been able to accomplish being neurodiverse not that that's some sentence right. In many ways it can be a gift. So I congratulate you on all of your success. So that's fantastic and I'm also with you.
Josh Matthews:I'm not Mr Community, I mean I am now for Salesforce. Sure, I love it, I love this community so much. But if you had caught up with me for my first 45 years, you know I'd be like I don't want to do that. No thanks. You know I'll go do a speech here and there, but it's, it's such a different community. I mean this isn't like joining a frat or knitting circle or anything like that, not that it couldn't be like that, but it's. It's so different, so much richer, so much more fulfilling and so much broader than I think anyone could have. Well, certainly I could have ever imagined or guessed. So it's pretty awesome stuff, man, really awesome.
Josh Matthews:Can I ask you about career stuff for a second? And then we'll probably give some announcements now, some jobs that we've got over at the salesforcerecruitercom and some things like that. But I'm kind of curious, like was there a moment? Like so many people, so many Salesforce admins are the accidental admins and I imagine it is not dissimilar for people who are involved at least partially with Tableau, would you agree? It's sort of like oh, you better go learn this business system because you're going to need it and we just added it. That kind of thing. Do you see that a lot?
Adam Mico:Yes, most of the people that are working at my workplace are more or less accidental Tableau developers, and that happens. But the thing is, sometimes, even if those types of accidents happen, you may fall in love with that particular accident, and that kind of happened to me as well, as part of a job that I would think would be interesting for a couple minutes and I would get bored of, but it was something that really drugged me in and made me want to do more and just ride or die with a particular tool and platform.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, baby, I love it. And then, when you think about some of the hoops you've had to jump through to advance your career and to join new companies I think you've been where you are now for a little more than two years, I can't recall, but somewhere around there Was there a moment in your career between jobs or not necessarily between jobs, but while actively pursuing jobs that you felt like this is a moment where that was the difference maker. A thing you said, a thing that you shared, a connection that you made A great question.
Josh Matthews:It's sort of this fabric of your career. Where's the golden thread in here? Well, the first, the golden hoodie guy Right.
Adam Mico:Right. So the first part of it is when I had access to the tool and started working with Table itself. I knew it was something that could potentially change my career trajectory, because I was at a dead end. Where I was, I was probably going to retire as an adjudication trainer and that would have been all well and good, but it wouldn't have been fulfilling. So it gave me hope that I could do something different and have a different pathway, even though I didn't go to school for that.
Adam Mico:I went to school for political science. But as long as I do it, maintain ownership of it, things could happen. And more happened when I was part of the community and became myself and more outgoing and grew by network with the community. So on LinkedIn and in X now X Twitter, I call it it gave me more opportunities where people would reach out to me because I was known in the community for doing that thing that they're recruiting for.
Adam Mico:So there are a lot more opportunities that came my way, and every once in a while you get the opportunities that you can't pass up, and that was the opportunity I had to leave the public sector after 22 years and become a Table of Angeles for a global consultancy and the other one was lending the role in a brand new department at that time with my current company. So those opportunities don't come up too often. I consider myself super fortunate. But if you're out there and you're genuine and you're really looking to not only help yourself but help others, oftentimes good things happen. So I'm proud to say that that was part of it is because of the efforts made, not looking to find a new career, but sometimes when you do things for the love of it, a new career or a new opportunities find you.
Josh Matthews:They really do. I mean, I only have to look at Vanessa's career in the last four years three years. Anybody can look at her as an example of that. What happens when? How do you go from whatever 1500, 2000 connections on LinkedIn to 15,000, 13,000 right now? Speeches all over the place? I mean, it happens, it really does. It happens and it's like our little version of becoming a rock star in our community, isn't it? Yeah, 100%.
Josh Matthews:And I was thinking about what you just said here, adam, about you only get a handful of these moments in your life. And that reminds me of a conversation I had with a fellow named Dr Jim Baker. Jim is just a really interesting guy. He's the head coach for the senior tennis championship national team of Slovakia. He was the head tennis coach for Florida State. He's written two books the most popular books on marijuana investments. He's got a thriving company that he's had for over 50 years and he's just one of the neatest guys I know. He just like, whatever he's doing, he's doing something and he doesn't quit. He's got a lot of focus, a lot of attention and a lot of energy, and we were saying a lot at his doc about a month ago and he was telling me a story about someone, a young man, that he's mentoring and he was trying to explain to this young man how important it is to pay careful attention to those four or five moments in your life that require an important decision around your career. And so now I'm thinking about that all the time, like what happened here? I got laid off there and what happened then? It wasn't a decision, but what did I do with that result and how much of an impact that made on my future in a positive, in a really positive way.
Josh Matthews:So I think it's not a bad thing to just request our audience or suggest to the audience listening go back, see if you can find two. Are there two moments in your career, even if you're only 30, right. Are there two moments in your career, three moments in your career, where you're like, wow, that's the thing that made the difference. And what can we do to pay attention to those moments when they do arise? Because they do arise and we generally aren't always looking for them, but there they are, right and we've got to take action. Do you cower? Do you shun it? Do you feel overwhelmed? Is it not the right thing? Is it not the right time, just like you choosing to write, author a book right when you're taking on a brand new job. That's pretty ballsy, man. That's pretty ballsy because everyone listening has worked at a new job and they all know what the first few months looks like the hardest, it's the hardest stuff.
Vanessa Grant:I'm living that right now.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, I know you are. You're living in a serious way. You're having to make up for four or five other people. It's a busy life you've got right now Just something I wanted to put out there for people to think about, based on what you just shared, adam. It's really good input.
Josh Matthews:Everyone you've been listening to the Salesforce Career Show and it's brought to you by the salesforcerecruitercom. I want to highlight a couple interesting opportunities to you right now. One is for a nonprofit consultant. This would be a nonprofit sales force consultant. You'd be working at a fairly small like around 30 people in this organization.
Josh Matthews:We love this company. We've actually been responsible for placing about one third of their personnel there. They care about family. They care about life balance work life balance. You won't be overloaded with seven, eight projects at a time. It's generally one or two Some of the nicest, sweetest, kindest, most helpful people that you could imagine sharing your work life with. If you're interested in that, be sure you reach out to Steven Greger that's Steven with a V at thesalesforcerecruitercom. We also have a really interesting opportunity coming up here, which is for a CRO. It's a CRO for a well-established Salesforce SI practice. If I said the name and I'm not going to you would be like, oh yeah them, you could expect OTE somewhere in the 350 to 450, maybe 500K range of compensation. Got to come with some real expertise in leading sales teams to sell consulting service, salesforce consulting services, and be relatively connected in the ecosystem as well. If you're interested in any of those, definitely check it out. That's all I wanted to share on this side, vanessa. Any final questions for Adam as we wrap things up here.
Vanessa Grant:I think mostly just to piggyback off of what you guys were talking about a little earlier being a part of the community and also talking about opportunities that that presents. I think us all being here together today is a part of that. Adam's work in the community caught my eye. I fangirled a little when I ran into him in his shiny golden hoodie Hopefully he wasn't overheated when I ran into him at Dreamforce 23. From there we kept in touch and met up and collaborated on a blog post of his. Then he ended up on Q's Trailhead Community Group for Women in Tech in Pakistan. Now he's here. I think it is part of that. Reaching out to other folks that inspire you and being out there and sharing your knowledge can keep bringing on additional opportunities and connections. I think that's what makes these communities special on the Trailblazer side and on the DataFam side. It's lovely.
Josh Matthews:It really is. Thanks for sharing that, Adam. Can we expect to see you at Dreamforce this year?
Adam Mico:I definitely will be at the Table Conference this year. I do the resources that work. I'm unsure whether I'll be able to go to Dreamforce, but that's something I hope to be able to get to, but also looking for the participating in other Dreamforce related events that a couple of people in here know about. That we'll share later. We'll keep you posted on that. Something exciting I'm working on that will transpire later this year.
Josh Matthews:Very good, peter Gans has got his—I almost said it wrong, peter.
Adam Mico:You've got your hands up. You've got to give me a high five.
Josh Matthews:Go ahead and pipe up, Peter.
Peter Ganza:It's okay. Thanks, Josh, Great stuff. This was a really good podcast, Speaking of community and what Vanessa just discussed. The weirdest thing happened. I think it was about a week ago. This gentleman who's on the podcast reached out and it turns out he was talking to Vanessa. I don't know what the woman's thinking about, jobs and whatnot. I'll actually let him pipe up in a second. Anyway, long story short. His name is Petar. It's a very common Croatian name. Actually, my legal name is spelled Petar like P-E-T-A-R. Sorry, Josh, if you had problems with my last name.
Josh Matthews:I've got it, man. I got it, petar, okay.
Peter Ganza:Anyway, yeah, no, we ended up just connecting. I was through Vanessa. He's watching the podcast or listening to the podcast. I invited him to the show here. If he can, maybe just give him a second to pipe up and thank Vanessa.
Josh Matthews:Of course, petar, let's make sure that you're added as a speaker here. I'm sending the invite out. It should pop up any second now. Let's see if that worked. We really are going to have to figure out something about this X thing. Okay, there we go, petar. Welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. Of course Peter shared that. Well, maybe just tell us what do you do and where do you live and what's going on.
Speaker 6:I'm here from Gilbert, arizona, part of the talent starter program. That's where I saw Vanessa Grant and then heard that she does this podcast. I always try to listen in and get little gems from you guys that are veterans of the ecosystem because I'm trying to break in myself. Good for you. I'm trying to get into being a Salesforce admin. I saw that Peter was one of the guests on the show. I was like that's interesting, because I looked them up and I'm like okay, wait a second.
Speaker 6:He spells it this way, but I think that's probably just more of the English equivalent for his name. He tries to keep it easy for folks that don't speak Croatian and scroll down on his profile. Maybe I'm wrong. I'm looking through it and then I see, okay, native, I see languages spoken in Croatian. I'm like, okay, there it is. That's where the connection is. I knew there was something there. There you go. I reached out to him and said, hey, I thought I was only the pet that here in the ecosystem, but I guess that makes two of us. That's where that special connection is, because there's not very many Croatians that I see at least in the ecosystem?
Josh Matthews:Yeah, there aren't. I'm close friends with a good friend of mine. I've known him for a long time. He's from Croatia. He played basketball in Connecticut through college. He's six foot eight. Like a lot of you guys, he's a big boy. He's a big boy and he's a lot of fun, a lot of fun. Welcome to the show, welcome to the community and anything that we can do to help support you and your journey. That's what we're here for, so don't be shy and feel free to reach out. Speaking of which, adam, it might be a good time now to share with everybody how they can follow you and stay connected with you. I'll just share your LinkedIn real quick. It's linkedincom forward slash. I N forward slash. By the way, that's the convention for the domains, no matter what, and it's Adam Miko A-D-A-M-M-I-C-O. So go ahead and follow Adam here on LinkedIn. And how else can they best stay in touch with you or follow some of your blogs and what you've got going on, adam?
Adam Mico:Sounds good. And before I share that, I just want to thank both you and Vanessa for having me on the show, and Vanessa knows full well that I fanboyed as much as she may have fangirled over me, over her, so it was a match made in Dreamforce Heaven. But you could follow me on X as well, and it's at Adam Miko one A-D-A-M-M-I-C-O one, and my blog is on Medium and it's simply Adam Miko. So it's pretty easy enough to find and generally most of my content goes out to LinkedIn related to what I do. So it would be more along the lines of generative AI. I built a couple of GPTs. The funniest one was Janet. If you ever watched the Good Place and you wanted to get Janet Personas to respond to your request, I built one that kind of captures the main four personas.
Josh Matthews:Not a girl.
Adam Mico:You could request a specific Janet to respond, but it defaults with Good Janet.
Josh Matthews:Oh man, I want some of that. I'm definitely hitting you up on that, and you can assure that it's not a robot, not a Janet, whatever it was.
Adam Mico:Yeah, exactly.
Josh Matthews:That's great. That's a fun show. I love it. Man Yep, Terrific, Vanessa. Any final thoughts or any final queries or questions from our audience today?
Vanessa Grant:No, I think this has been a great show Again. So grateful that Adam's here.
Josh Matthews:Yeah, it's really been terrific. Adam, you're always welcome back. I'm not sure if you were able to listen to the last podcast we released, which was looking back on 23 and predictions for the future, so I hope you don't mind if I just kind of leave the show here with asking you a question about what are your predictions. I know it's the last day of the first month. You've still got a long way to go in 24, but what are your predictions for the Tableau community? Anything related to Salesforce, anything related to careers and anything related to AI?
Adam Mico:So I think Tableau is going to be quite enabled with a generative AI in the near future. It's exciting to see the process of what they're doing. Obviously, there's not a lot I could share on that, but there's a lot of good things happening with the Tableau ecosystem related to generative AI and also, obviously, with the Salesforce ecosystem too. I just worked on a Pulse pilot, which is a new generative AI and metrics feature for Tableau as a customer, and love what I saw and the potential there. So there are so many exciting things that will make our lives easier with generative AI. So don't look at it as a thread. Look at it as an opportunity to do stuff we actually like doing, rather than the mundane tasks that we generally do and want to avoid when working with specific tools. So the future part that makes me most excited is the possibility of doing things that I'm passionate about and having more of the generative AI stuff deal with stuff that I don't really care about.
Josh Matthews:Perfect and Vanessa. Any final words, final thoughts?
Vanessa Grant:No, I am good, she's good, thank you, okay, all right.
Josh Matthews:Fantastic, adam. Thank you so much. Listeners, thank you for joining us. Please go ahead and make sure that you're subscribed. If you're not, you might miss a really critical and amazing program. Also, give us a thumbs up, if you can, if you felt that this was a good program or you liked past episodes. That does a lot for the algorithm, so we appreciate that. Thank you for that, and we'll be back in two weeks, same bat time, same bat channel. This cast should release, we're hoping, next Tuesday or next Wednesday. So if you missed any of this, you can check it out. All you got to do is type in Salesforce Career in or Salesforce Career Show, if you want to type in three whole words on just about any platform that hosts podcasts.
Josh Matthews:Thanks, and we'll see you in a couple of weeks. Bye for now.