Sarah (00:09)
Welcome back to Undubbed, where we dive into unscripted, uncensored, and undeniably data stories. I'm Sarah, and joining me as always is my co-host, Fee.
Fiona (00:19)
Today, we're chatting with someone who's not just shaping the future of data products, but who's also known for bringing serious flair and heart to the data community, Matthew Miller, Senior Director of Product Management at Tableau. If you're part of the data fam, you've probably seen Matthew's work firsthand. He's been a driving force behind some of Tableau's most innovative features, helping data be more accessible, engaging, and really impactful
for millions of users around the world. But what really sets Matthew apart is his genuine passion for connecting with the community. Under his leadership, Tableau isn't just a product, it's a movement. He's made it his mission to ensure that Tableau listens to its users, evolves with them, and ultimately becomes part of how people live and lead with data.
Sarah (01:13)
And while we're on the subject of style, Matthew's got a bit of a reputation for his shoes. He's really seen without a standout pair, adding his own personal flair to the data scene. It's the attention to detail, sense of fun and expression that's just part of who he is, whether he's talking product strategy, storytelling or fashion. Welcome to unDUBBED Matthew.
Fiona (01:14)
Thanks
Matthew Miller (01:17)
Thank
Thank you so much. It's great to be here.
Fiona (01:45)
so excited to have you here. I was so lucky to catch you when you were in Sydney earlier this year for Salesforce World Tour. I've got to admit, I was just a little bit captivated by your stories. Not just by what you were saying, but actually how you were telling the stories. Even over a cheeky drink after the day had closed. It was one of those...
Meta moments where you were telling stories about storytelling and I knew straight away that we had to get you on the poddy to share your expertise with our listeners.
Sarah (02:18)
So we put it to the data fam on WhatsApp and LinkedIn. We gave them a few topics to vote on. AI debates were hot as always, but the overwhelming response was we want to hear Matthew talk about storytelling, specifically how he's used it to lead teams, shape product strategy, and inspire adoption in the data world. But before we dive into storytelling, I have to come back to the shoes.
What's your current go-to pair? And is there a story behind them?
Matthew Miller (02:51)
wow. Well, what's become my favorite brand is a brand called Mascalori, which I believe is Italian for more colors, but they are designed by a Dutch guy in Rotterdam and manufactured in Portugal. And he just has this eye for unique textures, unique colors. And probably my favorite pair I have of his are the gold pair that I wore to Data Night Out this year at TC. They're just really, really cool. And you got to understand, like I was raised
first of all, with no money and hand me down shoes from my dad. And I was taught like every man needs three pairs of shoes and three alone, brown pair, black pair and tennis shoes. And then I met my wife and she was like, you have enormous feet. They're like a canvas unexplored. And I remember I bought a pair of red snakeskin Italian shoes about 15 years ago and I wore them to a company holiday party and I felt so self-conscious. You may find this hard to believe. I was so nervous.
I thought people are making fun of me. What's on your feet. Everyone was like, those are amazing. I had people going, what size your feet? Can we swap shoes for the evening? And that began what may be an unhealthy fascination with collecting interesting shoes. I have more than I should have.
Sarah (04:03)
You're not going to tell us the number, are you?
Matthew Miller (04:05)
No, no, don't share. But I did ask Mascalori where I rank in their leaderboard. And he was like, well, the number one customer has 112 pairs. And I was like, OK. I might be in the top 10, but don't think I'll be chasing number one. That's too many.
Fiona (04:21)
It sounds like the owner of the brand owns that many shoes.
Should we get into some questions?
Sarah (04:30)
Let's do it.
Matthew Miller (04:30)
I love it.
Fiona (04:32)
Today we're exploring the intersection of storytelling and data and why it matters more than ever. Was there a moment in your life Matthew when you first discovered the power of storytelling?
Matthew Miller (04:45)
it's as early as I can remember our moments like sitting around the dining room table, my great grandfather tapping his fingers together and saying, Matthew, have you heard the one about the three legged pig? And you had, but you wanted to hear it again because it was awesome. The punchline isn't necessarily suitable for this day and age, but it was a very funny story. I grew up in a family of storytellers. My dad's the second of five brothers. I'm the oldest of five.
And my dad was a professor for quite a while. And when I asked him, like, what is your tip for being a great teacher? And he said, learn to tell a great anecdote I remember as a little kid going to visit him at the place where he was teaching this technical college and walking up to the classroom where he was teaching and had those like little thin glass windows with like the wire through it and like trying to stand up like this and watching him.
And even though he was teaching what was to me really boring stuff like manufacturing, engineering and geometric dimensioning and tolerancing. I couldn't see the class, but I could see him standing at the blackboard and drawing and turning and telling a story. And then it's pausing. And then the whole audience laughing. Like he's got students laughing about manufacturing, drafting. How's that possible? He said, learn to tell a great anecdote because people remember stories.
Sarah (06:05)
So I really liked that, Matthew. think, know, growing up, I remember my family also kind of sitting around telling stories. And when you tell it in a way that there's something to gravitate to and remember, then I think that really helps the story flow.
Fiona (06:20)
We could go down a massive rabbit hole on that one. What are the most interesting stories that you've heard from family members? β There's definitely some interesting ones. The one that pops in my mind just quickly taking a left turn. my granny's mother married two times. She married the first man and then unfortunately he passed away. Then she married his brother. So she married...
her kid's uncle. That one stuck out for me as a child. Like, how can you marry the uncle?
Matthew Miller (06:52)
So I have Italian ancestry and this story is right out of Goodfellas or The Godfather, my mom's side, Italian immigrant family living in New York. And one day this great, great, great, great, great grandfather's walking past a pub, fight happens, he gets shot, and that's terrible. But not long after his wife, my great, great, great, great grandmother, married the guy who shot him.
So that one's buried in my family tree somewhere. I want to point out I'm from the bloodline of the guy who got shot, not the shooter.
Sarah (07:20)
wow.
Matthew Miller (07:32)
Yeah, that's the most Italian American story you're going to hear today.
Fiona (07:35)
Yeah.
For sure.
Sarah (07:38)
I love it. love it. So Matthew, how did you get into data in the first place? Was it a planned path or more of a happy accident?
Matthew Miller (07:49)
Growing up in an engineer's family, I got made fun of as a kid because I didn't have a Nintendo, I didn't have an Atari. We had a computer, it plugged into the TV and I learned how to write programs on it. But like if my dad accidentally unplugged the computer, I lost the program because there was no way to save it. I didn't have any disk drive, we couldn't afford that. And then I learned basic coding when I was 10 and my grandmother helped us get a computer, like an actual DOS computer.
when I was 11. So I started learning C and C++, and then I learned Visual Basic when I was 13. And the first time I ever actually made money writing code was helping someone migrate their Lotus 123 macros into Excel Visual Basic. That was probably the first real data work. I wrote a CSV parser when I was 12 in Borland C++. And then I discovered Microsoft Access and Oracle and ODBC connections when I was 16 as an intern. And that just unlocked a whole career journey.
Everything I've done since then has been around data, either like process with data or unstructured data. I think what I liked about things like Microsoft Access, like I enjoyed the nerdy parts of data for sure, like figuring out joins and data types, but it let you sort of represent a problem and then capture a problem. Then there was a creative component. So it wasn't all just the engineering stuff. There was a creative and design component to building interfaces. And then there was all the reporting.
Like, now I can understand all this data that I've captured in these great interfaces that right into these tables I built. And it turns out there's a lot of people with data problems who also have money. And so it's turned out to be a good career.
Sarah (09:26)
Yeah, and I think an ever evolving one, right? When you think all the way back to Lotus Notes, one, two, three, and all the way into where we are now, what a journey
Matthew Miller (09:36)
Yeah, it turns out there's more data all the time. So that whole volume variety, velocity explosion of data. Yeah. And I don't think we're to run out of data anytime soon. And I don't think we're going to run out of data problems. And hopefully the people who have those problems won't run out of money. think, I think all of us are in a good career arc.
Fiona (09:52)
I hope so, although there is a bit of AI anxiety out there at the moment. Have you started to hear a few stories about that?
Matthew Miller (10:01)
Yeah, absolutely. I think that there are two paths in this and I have to credit Ben Thompson, who writes the Strotecary newsletter for this. If you haven't read his article on the two types of two tech philosophies for AI. One of my colleagues, Nate Nichols says there's like the Iron Man and the Terminator versions. And the people who are Iron Man are like, no, no, no, technology and AI, it's all about the beating heart of the human.
puts on the super suit of data and analytics and AI and now can do so much more. And then the Terminator is like the rise of the machines to wipe away mankind. And I think some of our competitors are definitely in that, like, if we can just crack the code on AI, we don't have to employ all these pesky humans. It's like that old joke, management would be so much easier without the people. But Tableau's never been that way. We have always philosophically been about, like, technology is a multiplier, sort of that Steve Jobs bicycle for the mind thing.
At its best, AI can be a multiplier for the creativity and capability of people and will hopefully help us do the work that's really high value. I mean, I've done a bunch of data warehouse projects. I remember sitting with a colleague when I was at Interworks working on a data warehouse project and he was like, I think a lot of this stuff could just be automated, like building, what is it, the slowly changing type two dimension tables. Ugh, like if you know the business problem you're trying to solve,
A lot of that can be automated. Let's leave that stuff, the grunt work, the repetitive stuff, so that we can do what we're uniquely capable of doing, which is creativity, leadership, and problem solving.
Sarah (11:36)
Yeah, and a lot around the soft skills as well. I'm seeing, you know, lot of move into that because some of the technical stuff is enabled by AI now, which is great.
Fiona (11:49)
So I think that's a great point, Matthew, to ask you, what version of Tableau did you start on?
Matthew Miller (11:57)
Oh man, version 6.1. And it's pretty rare. I run into people who started earlier than that, though you run into them in the wild. Customers were like, oh yeah, I started on version 4.0. One of my like back of the list, not important, not urgent things I want to do is to put together a demo of Tableau throughout the years. I have gone into our internal build systems and grabbed a copy of the installer.
for every version of Tableau that was either important to me personally or to the company. So like V1, 4.0 when we launched server, 6.1 was my first one, 8.2 I think was the first for the Mac, 8.0 had parallel loading, the big redesign in 9.3, Linux 2018.2 I think, and do a demo of like Tableau throughout the ages. And then like sort of the punchline is, hey, actually this workbook we built in V1, look, it still opens in 2025.2. So.
I have all the installers. I just don't have time, but that's one of my dreams anyway. So I started version 6.1 and downloaded a free trial, fired it up. A friend of mine, Ben Valsilli at Interworks was like, hey, you should check out this thing called Tableau. And I'd taken French so I could spell it, but that was about it. So I was working in a technical pre-sales role. So I had customers and partners. had data on them. I didn't look at a video. I didn't read a help file. I just...
opened it up and there's this canvas. Okay. And I took this Excel file and dragged and dropped it in and in a couple of clicks with show me I had a pretty ugly time series, but I saw an outlier in my data that one of the partners, there was a spike I had not noticed. And I was like, Hey, that's cool. And this software seems really fluid and easy and it's not buggy and it's creative. β which is a total contrast to the company I worked for at the time and the software I was selling, which was practically unusable.
I was like, this is really, really cool. So yeah, I started on version 6.1. I got hooked right away.
Fiona (13:57)
Early days, early days.
Sarah (13:58)
I'm in awe,
I'm in awe. think, Faye, you started on version eight, didn't you?
Fiona (14:02)
Yeah, just before version eight release, but I feel like eight was where I really started to cut my teeth.
Sarah (14:08)
Yeah, and I was 9.0.
Matthew Miller (14:11)
I mean, it makes sense. was just hockey stick growth then. I when I moved to Europe with Interworks as their first Tableau consultant, all of Tableau fit in a little office in Richmond where Ted Lasso is set, this little rented Regis office. And when people are like, well, how small was Tableau then? I go, well, all of mainland Europe was covered by one salesperson. So that's how tiny Tableau was then. Yeah, it's been incredible, incredible ride.
Fiona (14:38)
Amazing.
I think you've been involved in a lot of different products that have come to life. Can you just mention a few things that stand out in your mind and give us the reason why?
Matthew Miller (14:55)
Oh man. Well, the first, and if you don't like the user experience for this, I apologize because I designed it myself. It's the content migration tool. If you've used the content migration tool, it is a windows-based tool for moving content from point A to point B and doing some transformation in the process. And I actually designed it and led its building, its creation at Interworks. It began with a conversation at TC 12, my first Tableau conference in San Diego over pizza.
where one of my colleagues was like, Hey, we have a lot of customers need to move stuff from point A to point B and Tableau and make some changes. You're a programmer, right? I was like, well, kind of. he's like, well, can you make something that does that? And I was like, well, surely Tableau has something like that. And I met this, uh, young product manager named Francois who was Tableau's chief or soon to be chief product officer. And he was like, Nope, we're not building anything like that. That sounds like a great thing for partners to do.
I'm proud of it that we're still selling it and customers are getting value out of it years and years after I designed it. I'm of course embarrassed to look back. I'm not a gifted product designer. I love that I work with professional user experience people who really understand that stuff. So I'm sorry for its kind of clunky wizard driven user experience, but it does some really cool stuff and it's all the real customer need. It still does for moving stuff from here to there with governance. That's the first thing I worked on in the tableau world. I'm pretty proud of that. My first.
Sarah (16:14)
I'm going to say
I have used it. I've used the content migration tool actually recently and it works very well on cloud as well. So we were using it with a client to migrate between dev, test and production.
Matthew Miller (16:28)
I love that that dev test prod use case was the first one. Now it's used heavily for cloud migration, but it's still useful for like dev test prod content promotion. Shout out to some secret features you might not know about. It has a plugin architecture and it's still supported. uses the same libraries as the migration SDK. I wrote the first lines of code for the migration SDK. I think some of my code is still in it. And so yes, there's a little bit of ancient history there, but you can write plugins for it to do all kinds of really cool stuff.
I think of it like an assembly line for content from site to site, project to project, environment to environment. You can make any change you want, swap colors. Yeah, it does a lot more than even I think we position it for today. For what it's worth, I have lobbied repeatedly and we may get around to building a content migration service that will do that in kind of a more scalable, robust way.
So proud of that one. β You asked me for a couple. The Tableau Cloud Manager actually was my first big project at Tableau. I talk about this one a lot. actually want to talk about storytelling and influencing executive audiences too, because it was, when we think about innovation, it was the opposite of innovation. There was no innovation per se to be had. In Tableau's server, we had a way for managing sites that our biggest customers had gotten used to.
Fiona (17:18)
Would love that.
Matthew Miller (17:46)
Tableau Cloud did not have that capability. We want customers who are running either hybrid deployments or moving from server to cloud to have the same capability. So ideally it looks exactly the same. Like there's no friction to learning the new thing. So it's like the opposite of innovation. Make these screens work over here. That's it. Make them do the same stuff. There was very little innovation, but actually it turned out to be a really hard project because of all the gnarly challenges with multi-tenancy and cloud and so on.
So that was a very hard effort. And I cannot take credit for the finished product. I let it for the first year and a half or so and kind of got it off the ground and handed it off to actually competent PMs who can do detail oriented work. And we built something really cool. And also built the and drove the external workflow feature, which is the ability to put a button on a dashboard that calls us Salesforce flow. It's something I worked on specifically. And a few others.
Sarah (18:40)
Nice.
Fiona (18:43)
I've worked with a lot of tech people and I've worked with a lot of more sales people, I would say, who are great at storytelling. And it seems like you have the perfect storm of both. Can you tell me what role has storytelling played in unlocking opportunities for you throughout your career?
Matthew Miller (19:07)
A number of them, I think my first real job in enterprise software came from some storytelling. So I'll tell you two short stories. I was working for a healthcare company, a small business in Rhode Island where I was living. And my wife got into blogging about historical costuming. So I tell this story to illustrate, burn your networking books. You never know when the right moment's gonna hit.
So she's in a online community of people talking about historical costuming, you know, Downton Abbey, Pride and Prejudice era dresses, that sort of thing. So we lived in Rhode Island. We were going to be down in DC visiting her family. And she's like, Hey, I met this woman online in this community. We, I want to go out and visit her and talk about historical costuming in person. And I was like, well, have you seen this person in person? Have you had a Skype chat? Do you know this person is real?
because she shows me the address, not in middle of nowhere in Virginia. And I was like, I think I've seen too many movies, but I think I know how this movie ends and I don't want to go at night. We did. So like, I'm already like, this is horrible. And we go like off the main highway onto a side highway, onto a gravel road. was like, this is it. This is it. I know I've seen too many movies. You know, so I was already kind of on edge, but we pull up in front of this huge house and it's this lovely, lovely Irish family. And they were all into, all the kids are into historical costuming. Well, I walk in and I mean,
this woman's husband, Kevin. And I'm like, hi Kevin. And I'm thinking, I'm never going to see this guy again. I don't know this guy. He doesn't care about historical costuming. I don't care. We're going to have to just kill two hours in each other's presence while like the wives chat. So I go, what do you do? I sell software. β what kind of software? Workflow software. And then we got talking and it turns out he worked with .NET technology. I work with .NET and I started just telling him stories about stuff that I was doing and working on. I was not in interview mode at all.
I wasn't trying to represent myself. Well, I wasn't doing like my five year plan. What are my five, my weaknesses and how I mitigate them. would just chit chat with some Irish guy. was never going to see again over a beer, mind you talking about software, talking about our lives. And we finished. I don't think I did anything special, but I got in the car, said, I'll never see you again. Nice to meet you. And we went home and a few weeks later, they had a roll open up for a senior solutions engineer. And I was none of those things.
I was not senior. I'd never been an SE I was not qualified. didn't know the software that they worked on and he heavily recommended me. And it was on the basis of just that. I'll bet I can put you in front of a customer and you can answer their technical questions, but crucially, you can connect with them human to human, even if you've never seen them before. And in that I did not know there was a world that brought together those two things you mentioned, like being able to just be human and talk to people about stuff and talk about business and life.
and also write code. I thought you either wrote code in a cubicle or you were like a salesperson. And to find that there was this role that brought together the technical and the business and like conversation on storytelling was amazing. And that was a huge unlock. It was my first enterprise software job.
Sarah (22:12)
Yeah, wow. And I think it's so important, isn't it, to talk tech and talk business and meet in the middle. And I think that's a real great example of that, that, you know, the Irish guy that you met obviously knew that you could talk. didn't, you you weren't in an environment where you could show the technical and yeah, amazing.
Matthew Miller (22:31)
Yeah.
I'll tell you the story that though launched my Tableau career. I was at interworks and had created some of this stuff. mentioned like this, the, was called the EDT now the CMT and I'd created the what's now the migration SDK, which is this API underneath it. Again, I wrote a first version. It wasn't very good, but it was enough to start using it with customers and it got some attention and interworks started to invest a little more, some actual professional developers to make it actually good.
And with some customers who started hearing about it, started getting some buzz in the Tableau community because it could automate jobs that you have with Tableau. And of course, there's plenty of things we do in Tableau that are manual that could be automated. So that got the attention of some folks at Tableau. And I'd asked my boss at Interworks if I could go to TCC 13 in Washington, DC. And he said, no. I lived in Europe, so it was an expensive trip. And he's like, eh, you know, just go to TCC Europe. You'll be fine. And I was like, I really want to go to the big one. He's like, no.
but a guy named Russell Christopher, who was a legend at Tableau, said, hey, I think people at TC need to see this. And he got me a speaking slot at TC. So then I called my boss back and said, I gotta go, I got a speaking slot. And it was long after Call for Submissions was closed. They just found a way. And so I prepared and prepared and prepared and prepared. And I went, and there is actually video footage of this.
I'm doing an executive product engagement bootcamp in Tableau right now and taking a small cohort of up and coming product and engineering leaders through this to, to increase their skills at product engagement. And I found this clip of my first ever TC talk. I don't know if I want to share it publicly because it's really embarrassing, but what I'm proud of is I did not open with hi, my name is Matthew. I work here. I have kids and a cat and a fish. then I went to URI. I didn't talk to myself at all.
Sarah (24:20)
You
Matthew Miller (24:22)
I didn't talk about the topic that was advertised. I put up a picture of Jack Nicholson frozen to death at the end of the shining. And it said, this is my cold open. And, and so everyone's immediately like, what is this going to be? And I just launched into a story about a customer, true story, anonymized, but tell the story about the customer and their pain point. And I was like, that is what I'm here to talk to you about today. Well, now I them hooked. And then I was like, my name is Matthew. I'm at Interworks I have five kids and
couple of cats and okay. And then we do this thing. I did this demo that I'm still very proud of where I had a workbook and, it was showing how painful it was to do things manually. And I was like, what if I could just click a button and produce like a hundred of copies of this one tailored for each of my customers needs with their logo and font. As I'm saying that I double click this thing and they just start pouring into this folder and then open them up in desktop and they're all teach one tailored. was awesome. And in the back of that room were a bunch of very important people.
β Dave Spezia, who's at Data Cloud now, and a bunch of other Tableau leaders who were like, huh. And Andrew Beers, the founding chief development officer of Tableau invited me to fly out to Seattle that week and spend some time with the team. And that changed everything. visit. So storytelling can absolutely unlock career opportunities.
Fiona (25:36)
Bye.
Sarah (25:42)
Yeah, wow, that's an incredible story. Thank you for sharing that. love that you kind of got a no and you got a yes and then another yes and it led on to where you are today, which is incredible
Fiona (25:42)
β wow.
Sarah (25:55)
just on that, how do you ensure the product voice and the community's needs are heard at the executive table within Tableau and Salesforce? And what's your strategy for influencing up
Matthew Miller (26:11)
I'll say I don't think of myself as a big company person. I grew up in an entrepreneur's home. My dad, after his teaching career and engineering career, founded a company that was number one on the Inc. 5000 and failed spectacularly. It's a story from my memoir someday, Lessons Learned Growing Up in an Entrepreneur's Home. So I have a bit of that. In fact, my MBA is in entrepreneurship. I have a bit of that, like do it myself, small business, let's go. I mean, before I joined Tableau,
I co-owned and co-ran BizStory, which was a Tableau partner of 50 people. It was just a very different sort of leadership culture. And in a huge organization like this, it's really important to understand everyone's motivations and to figure out how decisions are made. And I didn't do it well at first. I made a bunch of mistakes. So I think the first thing is really critical to making sure that the community's voice, like doing the right things with the product.
is to understand everybody's motivations. And no one has bad motivations, mind you. They just all have different backgrounds and different contexts and different interests and different focuses. And we're this huge ship with so many people and all these information flows that are formal and informal. I find it like sociologically absolutely fascinating. So trying to figure out what people's motivations are, what their spoken ones and their unspoken ones are. Some people are really mission driven.
Some are, let's say, company driven. Some are revenue driven. Some are top line thinkers, some are bottom line thinkers. Some focus on growth. Some are focused on efficiency. And the making of decisions is absolutely fascinating. Power is rarely concentrated in one person. is usually making a decision requires bringing a whole lot of people along. And I'll just say for the record, the thing I learned most about this, I actually could tell this story if we have time, is my like,
Fiona (28:01)
Yes.
Matthew Miller (28:02)
My first rejection, so I joined Tableau and was given this project that I thought was just brain dead simple, which is to bring the multi-site capability of server to Tableau Cloud, what is now called the Tableau Cloud Manager. And I was like, yeah, that's a no brainer. That'll be like two weeks. What do want me to do after that? Because I came from the consulting world. You move fast, you make decisions. Here we go. You're on the clock. And so I joined.
February of 2020, the pandemic started in March of 2020. I was locked down at home. Nothing else to do with right strategy. I wrote my strategy document, got it ready for review. And it was like, duh, every customer on cloud wants this. It's the number one ask from prospects. It's the number one ask from customers. We already got screens that people like. We're just going to take those screens that work in server and we're going to make them work in cloud. That simple. Like this is no innovation. The feature set is already known because we know what people like about server. It's not, there's no new exploration.
No brainer. So I wrote a document that I was proud of. this is not relevant to the story, but its title was delivering data insights, which is a pun I'm still proud of delivering data 'in sites' Yes. The site management feature delivery data insights. write this doc called delivering data insights, and I very proudly bring it to the leadership team. And again, I was asking for a lot of money. You know, it was a big project, tons of engineers for several years, a big engineering effort, but the
The revenue opportunity was very clear. The need was very clear. And so I think a lot of that document was not written because it was like, of course you all know this, duh, just sign the check and I'll go get it done. So I present this document and it got destroyed. Like the leadership review was painful. It was so bad that at one point Francois messaged me during it and said, it's okay. I'll talk to you later. Like I was feeling the burn. I was embarrassed. it was awful.
I had a separate question.
Sarah (29:57)
And then was that
because you were taking something that was already built and replicating it and they couldn't, they were like anti the non innovation as you say.
Matthew Miller (30:07)
I think I did not understand the motivations in the room or the leadership context. And I think that individually, most people there were on board, but the CEO at the time was a sales and marketing centric leader who was not deep in the product. And so when I came in, it was like, so obviously lots of customers on the server of lots of sites, right? But like in cloud, you only buy one at a time and people on cloud want that thing in server. So we're just going to do that. Cool. And his first question was people have more than one site.
And I was like, well, yeah. And he's like, β and you know, fair call. Like his focus is on sales and marketing and, you know, fixing all those parts of the business. And he'd not been focused on the product and did not know there was a site feature and didn't know customers wanted it. And I came up with all these assumptions. So Francois spent some time with me and I call this the Frank six because he doesn't like being called Frank. So I call it the Frank six. And I've coached this to PM after PM. It's just my favorite thing to share because it was so good.
He said, look, in a meeting like this, first of all, you have to have the macro context. there's like picture, like a trivial pursuit wheel, the six things you have to have is three macro, three micro. And the macro ones are, have to have the market perspective and be very clear on that. Like here's the opportunity and quantify it. Don't be like, everybody wants this and we're going to sell more. Go, it will unlock $60 million in this year and 120 next year. Be concrete about what the market opportunity is. The second is the competitive perspective.
have like, what is this competitor doing? What's that competitor? How does this compare? Is this a baseline feature? Like every car just has air conditioning and you don't charge more for it. Or is it something fancy like, I don't know, premium audio that you can charge extra for. Then there's the strategic perspective, which I now realize means what does my boss care about? So like, what was the current economic climate and what did Salesforce really care about strategically? I didn't anchor to that at all. And then there's three other pieces that are called the micro.
And those are qualitative evidence, quantitative evidence, and anecdotal, and anecdotal piece. I didn't have any stories in here. Despite being a storyteller, I didn't put stories in here because this is a professional strategy document. I've been hired as a big shot strategy guy. I got to show my strategy chops and I write like an MBA. And that doc was boring. It didn't have my personality. It didn't have story. And so I licked my wounds and went and gathered all the, what are the qualitative? What are the themes customers are talking about?
I had hard data. The average enterprise customer has over 70 sites and I had customer names like you wouldn't believe with anecdotes. I rewrote the same document basically, but with all that detail, I just thought wasn't important. And I brought it back to that same group. Crucially, I did one more thing that Francois suggested I do. I went and met individually with every single person in that room except for the CEO to get their view. And that gave them a chance to be like, well, what about that? And asked the questions they didn't want to ask in the big room.
got them on board. And when we brought it up again, Adam was like, I mean, again, he didn't know what a site was. He didn't care. Okay, this is a lot of money. Do we need to do this? And everyone in the room goes, yup. And it sailed through. Huge lesson learned. So storytelling, super important. Yes, I have many more stories like that. Oh, you told them I can swear. I won't tell the whole story. I'll just say that my favorite strategy doc I ever wrote here, and this was approved immediately after executive review, it opened with, and I quote,
Fiona (33:23)
Yes.
Sarah (33:23)
you
Matthew Miller (33:33)
Holy shit. Yes. That is, and you know, I have earned the right here to be a little less formal. And now that I'm sort of a no, oh, that's Matthew. He's a little weird, but you know that even though I was like, I don't know if I can get away with this, but I did it because I was quoting a customer when I was talking to a customer about this thing we were considering building. I was like, so we're thinking of doing this. I think that would match what you talk. What do you need? And he's like, wait, so you made me do this. And then that will be able to click on that. It'll do this. And I was like, yeah.
Holy shit, that would be awesome, I said that's going in the document. So right at the top, in pull quotes, above any of that anecdotal data, all that stuff was, holy shit, customer name. And it got their attention, and it got approved.
Fiona (34:16)
There's a couple of things that really resonate with me that firstly that story is just that impact on impact and then it captures the attention. But the other thing that you did talk about was that greasing the wheels, the one-on-one interactions, the understanding people's problems when they feel comfortable enough to be able to share them.
in a position that they can share them. So then you can think about, how am I going to approach it? I don't need to think on the fly. I also find in those executive presentations, if people are asking questions then, because they haven't had the opportunity earlier, you start to end up a bit on the defensive because they're firing Well, what about this? Well, what about that? You know, and so you're like, well, this, but it still ends up being very much a defense of why we should be going ahead. So if you've had that opportunity to defend.
behind closed doors and resolve the issues so that they are on board, it makes it a lot easier for bringing it all together. You did mention one thing that I personally and selfishly want to drill in on, which was at your point of starting BizTory journey, you said you made a lot of mistakes. And Sarah and I are very early in our own journey of starting up our own company. What's the things that you would recommend that
we try to avoid.
Matthew Miller (35:38)
Oh, wow. Oh, that's a wonderful question. And I have to say, I am being a part of BizTory was one of the most amazing seasons of my life. It was a lot of hard work. Starting a business is so hard. and I was very fortunate to have a great co-founder with Geoffrey and he actually had gotten the ball rolling. I'm listed as a co-founder and he graciously credits me as a co-founder, though he had actually hired a few people when I started. So they already had some revenue, just gotten going a few months when I bought part of the company.
Mistakes that I made. I would love, I'm sure the BizTory team will hear this. I hadn't thought about this question in a while. One of them is, and they always say hire slowly, fire quickly. The people are so important and particularly in the early days, the early employees will have a huge impact. I always, always still try to follow that even though we're a huge company now. But if we make a hire.
who just doesn't work out, doesn't fit, doesn't execute, decides to move on from the Tableau team. The overall impact of the business is relatively minimal and because there's such scale. But if you're a five person company or a 10 person company, every single person matters so much. And everybody coached me, take your time, hire slowly. And I made a hire that I still get grief about. And I had this idea that if I just get the right,
really senior person, I called them an anchor hire. So I've justified their compensation and we pay them even more than the market rate. Like they would sort of go above and beyond because they'd be so happy with this like amazing role they had, they couldn't find anywhere else. And then in addition to doing a great job as a consultant, they would like spill over that knowledge to everybody else. So I went and found somebody with a ton of Tableau experience and analytical experience who came from industry and who I already knew and it didn't work out.
And I knew this when I had a chat with them. It was like, Hey, you know, you're doing a great job at your clients, but I'm not really seeing a lot of professional development. Like if you go do good work once that's great. But part of why this partnership started was because I said, I need you to be a trendsetter and like level everybody else up. And I don't see that happening. And they were like, well, you know, but when I get home at five 30, I'm just kind of tired. I want to watch TV. just don't really feel like.
you know, checking in on Slack or sending a message, mentoring message or how you do and are checking in on my team. And I was like, β and it was still a number of months later before I helped that individual find their next role. And that was a huge mistake. And they still give me grief for that. There are a number of other ones, but I think that's probably one I could go on if you want this. This is a topic we could spend a whole nother running service.
Fiona (38:16)
Okay.
You can just shoot us an email with all of the things
Sarah (38:24)
Hahaha
Fiona (38:25)
behind the scenes that we should be aware of, because obviously it is a selfish question.
Matthew Miller (38:28)
Well,
gosh, having great co-founders though is so important. Again, it would definitely be another podcast for another day to tell the story of my dad's failed business because it had a huge impact. mean, it started when I was eight and failed when I was 15. So was very formative years where I basically lost my dad to running this business. And then he got nothing, literally nothing. It failed and he got zero. All that lost.
family money that got into it, it was terrible. And so a big part of why it failed, in my view, and my memoir will cite this, was the relationship between him and his co-founder, which is not an uncommon failure story. So I, therefore, as an entrepreneur, was tremendously gun-shy about forming a partnership with somebody. It's one thing to join a company, but when you buy part of something with somebody, it's like a marriage.
So I did so much background work. if you're listening, Geoffrey Smolders, you know, I've said this to you before, but I was so lucky to find Geoffrey as a co-founder. And I did the homework I could and everyone I talked to said, he's fantastic. He's a man of character. He, know, the tableau salespeople would say, he under promises. He over delivers the people on the team are like, he's fantastic. He's great leader, great manager. And so we found just this really special dynamic and working with him is really, really special. So having a great co-founder and that's, that's the number one most important thing.
So you're very fortunate to have a great team. And that's already huge. Maybe one other thing I think I did well, I think, is I don't find it, for me personally, exciting any other differentiator than excellence. I've never wanted to be like the value leader. I wouldn't probably go work at a company whose mantra is like, we're the cheapest. Maybe. I'm not trying to any future employers. Don't quote me.
I get excited about being the best. want to, you know, I love like, I want to be the best, absolute most excellent. So at Biztory Story, I got up at a team, all hands when we were seven people, we fit in one little conference room in Maastricht in the Netherlands. And in my American way, know, to room full of Europeans, I said, we are the greatest analytics company in Europe. Then one person started laughing because Europeans don't do that, right? They're very, you know, they're much more.
Fiona (40:42)
Ha
Matthew Miller (40:48)
down to earth, but Americans can get away with that. And then she caught herself, and I've given her grief about this ever since, but she was like, he's serious. And I was like, listen, we're seven people. No one would say we're the greatest analytics company in Europe. But I'm not going to say by 2035, we aspire to be in the top 10%. No, I'm just going to keep saying we are the greatest analytics company in Europe until it's true. And then I'll just keep asking myself every day, why aren't we yet?
Sarah (40:55)
You
Fiona (41:06)
Okay. β
Matthew Miller (41:15)
and doing whatever it takes to make that true. So let's go hire visionaries. Let's go buy a company if we have to. Let's build people and train people and do whatever we have to do until everyone just goes, yeah, obviously, BizTory they're the best. that differentiation on excellence from the beginning, setting that tone was, I think, really pivotal to the success of those years. I mean, we 10x'd the company, more than 10x'd the company in four years. Actually, I it was 32. I've been 32x'd. It was enormous.
Fiona (41:40)
Wow.
Sarah (41:41)
amazing.
Fiona (41:45)
My breath's taken away a little bit and I think maybe we should have a second podcast. We've both come from failed fathers endeavors along the way as well, which was quite an interesting discovery point as the two of us were starting Dub-Dub because we'd come from this story in our childhood where
things had failed and they'd had quite a dramatic impact on us as well. So maybe we can pick that up some other time. β do.
Matthew Miller (42:20)
I would love
that. If we do that, I want to bring my questions for you because I want to hear your stories. That would be absolutely fascinating.
Fiona (42:26)
Yeah,
for sure. That sounds great. All right. So switching gears a little bit. Devs on stage is one of the most anticipated sessions at Tableau Conference. I think everyone just gets so hyped and frothy at the mouth about heading along to it. And, you know, it's part live demo and it's part sneak peek. We really hope for the sneak peeks.
and part celebration of those amazing engineers as well and what's coming next. But it's not just about the features, it's about really seeing those real people behind the product. And I know that you've had the opportunity to take the reins from a very special person over the past few years. What's your favorite behind the scenes moment from Devs On Stage that the audience wouldn't know about?
Matthew Miller (43:19)
β There are a bunch. There's a lot of things that go into Devs on Stage that make it really special. I I said this year from the stage that my first Devs on Stage that I watched was in San Diego in 2012. And it is something special. It's unlike anything. I have been in a past life before the Tableau world at other tech conferences. And I won't name names, but you know.
sweaty guys in polo shirts and boring demos and corporate sales pitches. And it's just, whoa, you know, I don't care how you integrate with SharePoint 2007. You know, it's just mind numbing stuff. And then I come to Tableau conference and it's like, this is incredible. It's this vibrant, inclusive community. It's, colorful. It's fun that you don't have to try to get us pumped up about your software.
Your software is transformative in and of itself. You just let the people be themselves. So TC already is something special. And I don't know if devs on stage would work in a different audience of people who don't actually care. mean, if you're, I can't name names, but you know, you're one of those like really boring, what would devs on stage? I don't know. Like no cheers. Like, β I don't understand this, but for the Tableau community who are people who are, it's largely a practitioner audience. So these are like direct users of the tool that they're seeing.
So they're coming there with their pain points in mind, with their excitements, with their personal features that they've put in the idea exchange and tweeted and asked people to vote for. And they're hoping to see this stuff and then have it presented not by executives, but by the developers and the builders themselves. It's so cool. The process is wild. I've had the honor of organizing it the last four years. And it's something else because we are a very academic.
very open kind of consensus oriented culture. so I actually start bottoms up. get all the features that all the PMs think should be in devs on stage and put them in a huge list. And I sift through them and try to figure out which ones are going to kind of pop and which are the big moments and which are the, meaty IT features. have to show like skim support on server and stuff like that sift through all that. And then meanwhile, I get all the dev managers and product manager leaders to nominate their folks and start putting them through that screening process.
So it's a fascinating experience. And I would say that the devs are incredible. They're all incredible people. Very few of them have big stage experience though, before this. So the thing that's fun and challenging and has led to some wild backstage moments is that you're trying to help them not sound like me or sound like Francois or Ryan Aytay or Rekha [Srivatsan] or Southard [Jones]. You want them to sound like themselves. So we're trying to draw out
their story. That's what makes this very unique. It's not a typical feature demo. this is about the person as much as about the feature. So drawing out their personality and getting that to show on stage is just tremendously fun, tremendously challenging. Some things you may not know because of the
visibility of this is a tier one event. It's a keynote at Tableau Conference. Because of the riskiness, we're showing brand new bleeding edge. In many cases, some of the builds are getting updated the day before. You know, this is early stuff. So it's not robust, ready to ship stuff like you see in the main keynote. It's more future. We show live code. Stuff can crash and break. And then because we have, inexperienced presenters.
We have backups all the way through the stack. So backstage, there is a whole village where there is an array of laptops. And so when someone is up there presenting, they have a backup dev, So if something goes wrong, the folks backstage can switch.
And what they're seeing on stage, they actually don't have a laptop on stage. They have a screen and a keyboard and a mouse that are linked to that whole excitement in the back. And the production team can switch between machines. So last year, everything's going great. And then all of a sudden, one of the demos just failed. We don't really know what happened. Something crashed early code. I don't know, but it was not the kind of you can reboot recovery. was like, this thing's done. So we failed to back up. And we coach the devs over and over like,
No one knows what you plan to say, and no one knows what you plan to do. So the only way they'll know if something's gone wrong or if you've messed up is if you go, sorry about that. That wasn't supposed to happen. If your mind goes blank, you forget the script, just start describing what's on screen. And here we are in Tableau Cloud Manager, and I've got a site picker. Who knows? Doesn't matter. You go, next. Just keep going. Don't worry about it. People might go, that was a weird demo. But that's fine.
trust us in the back to flip over. in rehearsals, do these. I hesitate to put this on a public recording We sometimes get to tears. We sometimes get to tears. There were definitely tears back this year before we started. We have had people the day before the week before say, I can't do this. I can't do it. It's too much. I'm overwhelmed. I'm out. Which is why we have backups who have their own story that they're ready.
and prepared to deliver with the same features. But in this case, the demo was fine and went out there, but the thing failed. And so in rehearsals, I will not tell them when it's going to happen. I will fail. I'll just shout fail. And now the switch over the screen glitches a little bit. And they have to keep on their talk track, unfazed, right? As if I swapped out microphones on them. And so we drill this over and over again until they're all comfortable. so β last year, it failed. And the demo, you can hear.
Fiona (48:50)
you
Matthew Miller (49:01)
because I'm listening backstage, can hear a little, they're like, whoops, something went wrong. That's not my screen anymore, that's okay. And the other demo kept their screen in lockstep, so they're okay. So they keep going. Meanwhile, backstage, hairs on fire, we're like, what happened? Did a pod go down, did the Wi-Fi, I don't know. And somebody had the presence of mind to say, why don't we bring that primary machine back up? Let's restart it and get back into that point in the demo. And I'm so glad they did because shortly thereafter, the backup machine failed.
Fiona (49:05)
You
Matthew Miller (49:30)
So we had to fail back on the primary. So that poor person on stage, you know, and they can tell because they're moving their mouse and all of sudden the mouse like jumps, you know, you can see it in the recording and you're really looking for it. But I'll bet you didn't catch it and you didn't catch it because, the tech team is so good. The Salesforce tech team is like professional grade. You didn't catch it because Matt Pimenta and the SE team, the Q branch team from Tableau is brilliant and they do a great job making sure everything's perfect along the environments. And you didn't catch it because that dev.
Fiona (49:37)
you
Yeah.
Matthew Miller (49:58)
had trained and trained and trained. So they saw it, they knew it. We even have a little light that switches on stage so they know you're in backup mode, but they didn't hitch. You didn't know it. Only a couple of us caught it. And it was flawless. So then we train and train and train, redundancy all the way throughout the stack. I mean, no single points of failure, different databases, different wifi networks, so that if anything fails, the show will go on.
Fiona (50:23)
Yeah, that's amazing. I love that because I can just imagine that the people who practice it when they start out, they're not used to doing all these presentations. And then you've taken them through all of this amazing coaching, where they've got to the point of saying, if something goes wrong, I know how to do it. When they walk off that stage after presenting in front of you know, whether it's 6000, 7000, 18,000 people, whatever it happens. So
that moment in their life or leading up to that and all of that practice is really going to change who they are as people.
Matthew Miller (51:00)
It's something I'm so proud of. My uncle is a good friend and mentor. He was a publishing executive. And he said, in the first phase of your career is about like what you can do and about the revenue you can generate and building. And then there's a point where you shift to what you can build into others. And I'm a little older now. Maybe I'm starting to get there where it's less about what math you can accomplish. The things I'm most proud of are no longer products I've shipped.
or projects I've completed. It's like when I was backstage and watching Lauren [Hampson] and Sophia [Daniels] co-host this year, like they were both devs in previous years. They'd come and pitch me on this idea to be the co-hosts. And they're like, you can still run the whole thing. You can do all the work. We just want to host it. I was like, hey, wait a minute. That's my, that's my, I mean, literally the story I didn't tell on stage. They were like, you get enough screen time. but, but.
But I like being on stage. I like being on stage. And they were like, yeah, meh. And they said this line was so good. They were like, it's the next generation showing up, the next generation of Tableau devs showing off the next generation of Tableau. And I was like, oh, well, that line will preach. That's good. I got to, oh boy. And then of course, because I'm a dad and I get these kinds of requests for my kids, I said, well, I'll think about it. But I knew as soon as we hung up, I was like, that's brilliant.
Sarah (51:58)
Hehehe
Matthew Miller (52:24)
You know, both of them, I mean, they're incredibly talented individuals, but they were like diamonds in the rough as public speakers. And I think Lauren would tell you that two years ago when she did that, it was hard getting to the point where she was ready to crush it the way she did in Devs on Stage two years ago. But we had a point in rehearsals, during dress rehearsals, where she just froze.
Just like that. And I was like, describe the screen. Just keep going. And there were nerves and butterflies. And yet on game day, she went out there and crushed it. And the same thing with Sophia. And so I'm so proud of that. Because every single one of those people, and again, it takes a whole village. In fact, I have a less and less role each year. I got a shout out, Esther [Schenau] on my team who did a ton of mentoring. She was in TC keynote last year.
Fiona (52:50)
you
Matthew Miller (53:15)
Liz Kuzma did a lot of mentoring. β Matt Pimenta does a ton of work on mentoring and many others. I have actually dev coaches who are all alumni of devs on stage. Tyler Beauchamp was huge this year who actually spent a bunch of time with them that I don't have to like sit down and like walk them through it kind of as a peer who's been there. And at the end, they're all, like this is a huge leap forward. Public speaking is people's biggest fear often. So you can take their brilliance and unlock their confidence in front of thousands.
Everything after Dev's on stage is easy. Everything is easy by comparison. So it's the thing I'm, yeah, I'm probably most proud of in, at Tableau and in a huge honor that I get to be a part of it. I'm very grateful that Francois trusted me with it.
Sarah (53:59)
Yeah, lovely. when you say you kind of go through the list of all the things that you're gonna potentially talk about each year at Devs on Stage, and is it kind of like the developers themselves are kind of attached to that? And that's how you choose who's gonna present or is
Is there a lot of people that want to present or lot of people that you have to co-host to get on?
Matthew Miller (54:22)
I know, have a long list. We do auditions actually. And we've gotten this down to something of a science. Yeah, there's a lot of people who want to do it. And I think some of them, once they get a little closer and realize just how scary it is, drop out. We definitely have had people drop out again. We've had someone quit every year. β So it's more than one, like quit the project β altogether and just go, I can't do it. Which is why we have backups who can step in. Like said, the worst was the day before. They had one the week before last year.
Sarah (54:45)
See ya.
Matthew Miller (54:51)
And we're built with resiliency for that reason. There's a lot of interest in doing this, yeah, for sure.
the devs on stage has, has become a way for us to bring the voice of the community into the product process in a different way. And I didn't, I don't think I expected this when I first started doing this. Uh, I thought we at Tableau have come up with these things to build. Then we will find the ones that will get the most applause and put that together into a show and.
And then to your question about how do you select the devs, you know, we, used to be that in the very early days, was like, I'm a dev who built this and I'm showing it to you. And now it's more like I'm a dev and here's a bunch of things that we've built. I try to align them with the stuff they've worked on. I can't always get it exactly right. but the thing that we get to do now is as one person put it, we sort of will things into existence.
So if there's a particular feature or product that is exciting, but maybe it might not get released, we built it, but it might be on the cut line. Everything you release, you'd have to support forever. So, you know, it is quite a bar there. And then also some of these internal ideas and research projects. So that's why that Devs on Stage Labs was so much fun this year, because we got to take three things that currently have no funding to actually be released, but they're just prototypes and put them to the community to go.
What do you think with our leadership all sitting there? And Ryan Aytay said later, he had his phone out the whole time. He thought it was awesome seeing people like reacting. I think it was Will Perkins who shouted, holy crap. one of the features he saw, he sounded like that customer of mine, the excitement. It's a, that is become, wow. This is not just a way for us to show you what we're building, but to get dynamic live feedback from you. That's super cool. So anyway, that's.
Another thing that's become a secondary benefit, but really fun part about Devs on Stage is it's not just a showcase of what's coming, It's also this dynamic bi-directional communication and interaction with the community. I think it's super duper fun. It's a ton of work. I sleep for days after, but I love it.
Sarah (56:51)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, I really liked that feature this year. So hope that one will stay around. I think with its popularity it will.
Fiona (57:01)
So we're heading into the last few moments of the poddy It's quick fire question time.
What are your top three tips for people looking to tell better stories with data?
Matthew Miller (57:16)
I would say the power of repetition. Mantras are memorable. I would say less is more. Think of the inverted U curve. More insights don't mean more. And I would say the power of repetition.
Sarah (57:29)
hahahaha
What is the biggest mistake people make when storytelling in product or data and how can they avoid it?
Matthew Miller (57:40)
Think this might be my pinned tweet still. It's that the realization no one cares about you or your topic or your story or your data by default. They care about themselves, their problems, what their boss is thinking about, what they're having for lunch. They think about themselves. They think about their worries, their fears, their concerns. They don't naturally just care about the thing you want to talk about. So no one cares about you. It sounds harsh, but if I remember that, I go, oh, then I better work really hard.
to establish some credibility, some trust, some reason for you to pay attention before I do anything else.
Fiona (58:15)
That's a great one. What's one piece of advice you give developers about connecting with users through storytelling?
Matthew Miller (58:25)
It's know your audience, know your audience and read your audience. Learn how to read your audience. If you lost an audience, why are you still talking? You're just like throw a seed onto concrete. Like nothing's going to grow and give up. Stop like reboot, pivot, try something different, do a dance, take your hat off. I don't know. Tell us, tell a joke, run around the room. If you've lost their audience, all this stuff.
All storytelling and all presentation is a quest for attention so that we can inform, educate, inspire. So if you've lost their attention, you lost everything. It doesn't matter how good your information is. yeah, learn to know your audience and read your audience. I bombed really badly. The worst I bombed in a while, not that long ago at a customer, some of whom will be listening to this because they're in the community. You may remember this. I keynoted an event and I did not.
do the right homework or didn't ask the right questions about who was in the room. And I did this talk track that chief data officers love. I did this whiteboard. I thought it was so inspiring and brilliant. And at some point, I looked around the room and I was like, nobody's interested. This is not working. And I pivoted, tried to change. I don't think I actually really fixed it. It's not a great outcome here. By the end, I was like, wow, that was bad. And what I realized was the people in that room are like business users. I should have talked about their problems.
Not about the theory of analytics and the future of agentic. No, they didn't care about that stuff. They want to hear about their problems and what we can do to fix it. yeah, read the room and know your audience.
Sarah (59:56)
Interesting. Yes, always know your audience.
Matthew Miller (1:00:01)
you were at that customer, you know who you are and I'm very sorry. It was my worst keynote in like 10 years.
Fiona (1:00:09)
Everyone makes mistakes. I love that. I think it's an important reflection. You get into the swing of things. We went into a presentation recently where we were presenting a glow up of a dashboard. So taking an old viz of the day and sprinkling some new fairy dust on it. So something from 2014 and bringing it into 2025. The dashboards look beautiful, but the storytelling was weak. We just didn't hit the points hard enough.
And we stepped away from it. Everyone's like, great presentation girls. We're like, yeah, we know we sucked. β
Matthew Miller (1:00:42)
Mmm.
Sarah (1:00:43)
think, I don't know if we sucked all the way through. I think we sucked in the first five minutes and we ramped it up after that. So maybe we went from like, from, you know, not so good to glow up. Maybe that was part of our presentation.
Fiona (1:00:47)
Probably.
From Luke Warm to Lit
Matthew Miller (1:00:55)
First of all, sorry,
what did you do to fix it? How did you turn that one around when you realized it was bombing?
Sarah (1:01:01)
think our energy
just came. That's how I feel.
Matthew Miller (1:01:06)
So slow burn, but you pull it off at the end.
Sarah (1:01:07)
Yeah.
Fiona (1:01:09)
when we started to take the piss out of each other on the... Well, we were talking. We just became naturally like us and we just slipped into it. So, instead of usually when I'm going in to present, like you say, like that first 30 seconds, really critical and I will have practiced it and practiced it and practiced it and I'll hit it hard. Because you want that attention straight away.
Matthew Miller (1:01:19)
Yes.
Fiona (1:01:33)
I think that we just did it through shock factor with one another.
Matthew Miller (1:01:39)
But I love that. Like Geoffrey and I used to talk about the Geoffrey and Matthew show, like letting our personality come out, riffing with each other. And I love that. I'm sure that although you said it wasn't great, it sounds like you ended on a high note and that's all that matters. That's all they're going to remember. So yes, first impressions matter, but in an hour long meeting, it is probably the last impression. So it sounds like you turned it around and you guys have great personality. I could totally hear that banter. And I think that must've been awesome. That's a great like...
Recovery and Pivot Story.
Fiona (1:02:11)
Yeah, we'll do better next time. We're going to present you at the analytics tug. So we're to give it another crack.
Matthew Miller (1:02:15)
Awesome.
Sarah (1:02:17)
Yeah, love it. Okay, Matthew, what's one book, podcast or resource you can recommend for anyone wanting to improve their storytelling?
Matthew Miller (1:02:27)
I really like Dave Nihill's Do You Talk Funny? He's an Irish business speaker and comedian. He was not really a comedian. He sort of got into comedy to try to expand the humorous side of his presentation skills, which I think is fascinating. It goes to my dad's guidance, like, learn how to tell a great anecdote. It doesn't have to be a joke, but learn how to tell a great and humorous anecdote. this is like a
Proven thing humor unlocks people's ability to remember things. So actually you guys start riffing with each other, like you described cracking jokes on each other. People start laughing that actually like makes them more likely to soak in the stuff you say makes them more likely to pay attention. That's awesome. I really like do you talk funny? He does a great, very self-deprecating job of describing his process of competing in the moth. So the moth is another really good resource. The moth is a
storytelling competition that happens around the world. And then, and this is something you'll not want to watch around your kids, but maybe put headphones on. There is a series that is on YouTube and it's called, Is Not Happening. And it's comedians, but telling true stories. So it's long form storytelling by comedians. It's not crack and joke. It's them telling real world stories. And they're often...
you know, quite crude. I have curated a playlist of my favorites, which I probably won't share publicly. could probably go through and pick a couple of clean ones, but it just examples of brilliant top tier, just gold storytelling. So absorb great storytellers, read books like, Do You Talk Funny? And then I'll have a link I can share as a, like a take home. It's a BBC article about the six types of plots of stories that might be interesting. Basically every story has one of these few arcs.
Fiona (1:04:14)
That sounds wonderful!
Sarah (1:04:17)
does.
Matthew Miller (1:04:17)
bonus.
Fiona (1:04:18)
Okay. well, we could just go on for hours, I'm sure on this, but we need to wrap it up. So Matthew, thank you so much for joining us. This episode has been packed with such amazing gold nuggets. There have been childhood tales, devs on stage, stories from Tableau, even your background with BizTory It's been absolutely amazing to hear how you lead, influence and inspire people through data.
Sarah (1:04:48)
And it's not just theory, you've lived it. Whether it's crafting product strategy, empowering developers, or just connecting over a cheeky drink. Your stories remind us that behind every dashboard is a human trying to make sense in the world.
Fiona (1:05:04)
If you loved this chat as much as we did, don't forget to hit follow, leave us review and share this episode with your fellow DataFan members. And hey, if you've got a storytelling one of your own, slide into our DMs or tag us on LinkedIn, we really want to hear it.
Matthew Miller (1:05:19)
Thank you both so much. This has been tremendously fun and a great honor. It's a delight to be on the podcast. And also I wish you great success. I have so much respect for what you're doing. I have lived it and I am your biggest fan and cheerleader. And if there's ever anything I can do to help or support, let me know.
Fiona (1:05:39)
You're the best. Thank you so much.
Sarah (1:05:40)
Thanks, Matthew. Thanks for
joining.
