Betatalks the podcast

In deze aflevering spreken we met Sarah Lean. Zij heeft onlangs Microsoft verlaten om te gaan werken voor Octopus Deploy, in sommige opzichten een concurrent van Microsoft op het gebied van software deployment. We bespreken hoe je, je DevOps en CI/CD pipeline kunt verbeteren door integraties van beide bedrijven te gebruiken. We hebben het ook over hoe bijna alles neerkomt op software, van het gebruik van Azure FarmBeats voor tuinieren tot het maken van whisky, zoals Sarah zelf heeft ervaren. Er is zelfs een door AI ontwikkelde whisky. Verder hebben we het over haar rol in de gemeenschap als oprichter van de Glasgow Azure User Group (hoe het begon, de doelen, uitdagingen en voordelen), als STEM (Science Tech Engineering Math) ambassadeur, en als Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP). Anderen helpen en zelfs je toekomstige zelf.

Over deze aflevering, en Sarah in het bijzonder: Je vindt @TechieLass op Twitter, bekijk haar blog Techielass of haar video's Talking tech with Techielass.

Over Betatalks: bekijk onze video's en praat mee op ons Betatalks Discord kanaal

00:00 - Introduction
02:01 - Friend of the day
04:50 - Explaining Octopus Deploy
07:07 - Working at a whiskey distillery
10:54 - Why Sarah creates content
17:01 - What was it like to become a Microsoft MVP
20:01 - What is the most enjoyable form of content to create
22:24 - Totally random question
24:27 - Sarah’s love for farming, and FarmBeats
26:42 - Advice for the coming generations
29:21 - Closing

Introduction - 00:00

Oscar 
Hey there. Welcome to Betatalks the podcast in which we talk to friends from the development community.

Rick 
Hi, I'm Rick.

Oscar 
And I am Oscar.

Rick 
Oscar, what have you been up to lately?

Oscar 
Yeah, all kinds of things working hard. But what I just did is registered to build. Yeah, looking forward.

Rick 
Build is on the way. And normally, that means a lot of added features, new services, new versions of services or frameworks coming out. Are you expecting anything?

Oscar 
Yeah, I'm looking forward to maybe some details and especially the container service, which is growing up as it seems. Yeah, maybe some fun stuff and messaging.

Rick
It's, it's really horrible. I have this bot that automatically checks and updates for Azure. But now I updated it. So it actually sends me a ping to see if I want to tweet something out yes or no. And I last week, and here I go. Again, there's been a lot of changes around static web, of course, you know, if I say, here I go again, it's about static web apps

Oscar 
I can see it in your eyes that you're gonna talk about static web apps.

Rick 
They actually they added now, if I'm not mistaking Bitbucket and GitLab as DevOps solutions as well, and also the option to skip the API bill. And there's some improvements coming there as well. So it is actually a service that I've seen change a lot, right before or during stuff like build. And then it goes silent for some time, and then build comes around again. And new features started.

Oscar 
Really fun to see indeed, a bit of noise and then always the silent period. Yep. Also getting some guests. Sometimes it's harder during this time. Yes. They cannot speak about anything yet. But cannot wait for after because maybe, can we organize a party, your viewing party or an after party or something?

Rick
Oh, yeah, there's these official after parties that they're supporting from Microsoft so we could fix one of those. Let's dive into...

Oscar 
We'll find a sponsor.

Friend of the day - 02:01

Rick 
Let's see if we can do that. But for now, who's our friend of the day?

Oscar 
Our friend of the day is Sarah Lean.

Rick 
Sarah is an IT professional based in Scotland. Her IT career spans over 18 years. Sarah is the founder of the Glasgow Azure user group, and was recently recognized as a Microsoft most valuable professional. Welcome, Sarah.

Oscar 
Welcome.

Sarah 
Hello. Thank you for having me.

Rick 
Well, it's so good to have you on. Let's dive right in, shall we? So you worked at Microsoft, and you openly express the fact that your work there? I mean, I think even on your Instagram, it says ex Microsoft. And now you work for octopus, right?

Sarah 
Yes, I left Microsoft about six months ago now and been over octopus deploying No. So yeah, exciting journey, mixing it up and trying something new.

Rick 
So what's your day to day at over at octopus.

Sarah 
So I work in the community team, which means that I am kind of still in the same role as I was at Microsoft interacting with the community and speaking at user groups, trying to create content fill the gaps product, suggestions, feedback, all that good stuff that helps link or customers potential customers back to us as a company and engineering teams and things like that. So, yeah, really enjoying it, to be honest.

Rick 
Okay, and then octopus is a competitor of Microsoft. Yet still, you are a Microsoft MVP, and also working with Azure services a lot. How do you bring those two together?

Sarah 
So Octopus Deploy helps when you're in that DevOps methodology. So we focus on the CD part, that continuous delivery of your CareConnect pipeline. So in a way, we are a competitor to Microsoft, and specifically Azure DevOps and things like GitHub actions. However, there's lots of integrations where you can pull together different parts and make your CI CD pipeline the best by using different tools. I recently did a collaboration with Damien Brady over at GitHub, and showed how you can use GitHub and Octopus Deploy together. And I've done demos around Azure DevOps, and Octopus Deploy. So there’s lots of synergy there. And lots of things that you can do together. Again, like I said, to make the best when you're trying to create a CI CD pipeline for your infrastructure or your software delivery. So yeah, lots of lots of collaborations, hopefully in the future.

Rick 
Yeah. So while I'm listening to this, I can I can fit all of those terms and terminology. However, maybe some of our listeners might not exactly know what Octopus Deploy, essentially is. So could you maybe explain in a few sentences

Explaining Octopus Deploy - 04:50

Sarah 
I'll try. And so when you're when you're looking at deploying your software, like I'm sure we've all done this where we take the code from potentially a developer We then you know, package it up and push it out to, you know, our infrastructure, whether that's a web app or server database. But doing that manually is not fun. So that's where you look towards DevOps and doing what we call a CI CD pipeline, or continuous integration and continuous delivery pipeline that basically does those manual processes that you would have to undertake, whether it's packaging up a dotnet application, and zipping it up installing it on your so your server, all of that kind of stuff. So we're octopus shines is the second half of that pipeline, that continuous delivery, taking, whatever you have that software package and delivering it out to your servers or services. And we focus on trying to do that in a repeatable manner. Does that make sense?

Rick 
Yeah, yeah, it does. And then I think I worked with Octopus Deploy quite some time ago. And then we had tentacles, if I'm not mistaking that would we know in Azure, DevOps as agents are called tentacles in the past, or is that still the case?

Sarah 
Yeah, that's right. So the things that you can deploy your application out to we call tentacles. Our Yeah, yeah. I mean, you can connect to them. So that's just the servers or at the past services or container services, or wherever it is. Yeah, we try to keep with that fun naming around octopus and, and use those kind of ocean terminologies.

Rick 
Okay, cool. Now, looking at the rest of your bio, it says that your IT career spans over 18 years. But then, if we dive just one level deeper, I saw that you worked for stuff like service providers and local authority industries. But it also says scotch whisky.

Sarah 
Yes. Well spotted.

Oscar 
Yeah, well, that stands out. I think.

Rick 
That and the fact that I tend to drink some whiskey now and again. So but that's also those companies are also relying on their IT, just like any other company does.

Working at a whiskey distillery - 07:07

Sarah 
Yeah. So when I worked for that whiskey distillery, I was part of the IT department there. And, yeah, a lot of lot of services are so heavily reliant on IT, we had software that was mission critical in terms of planning out the whiskey stock. So keeping a track of where the bottles were, what age they were. And if you didn't know much about Scottish whiskey you, you do have to age it potentially for like 18 years or something to get the good stuff. So we had lots of software that was mission critical, keeping track of where all those battles were, what age, they were the flavoring sow the distillers could figure out how to blend it together and make maker whiskey 18 years down the line, and things like that. So yeah, there's some cool stories around that.

Rick 
I actually think that this is a very, very good example of the fact that more and more companies more and more types of industries are relying on their software more and more to be able to do their job. And I mean, that's one of the discussions that is in our field, always that if you're not based on software, you might be overtaken by a company that does the same thing as you do but has software to support them. Well, if even a company and I'm not meaning this in a negative way, but if even something as crafty, as generating whiskies or making whiskies relies this heavily on software that are that is mission critical, I think that actually says it all right. I mean, companies are relying on software more and more.

Sarah 
Yeah, absolutely. There's, there's always an element of improving something. So years gone by that whiskey company probably used notebook in a pain or someone's head to keep a calculation of all that things. But as we as we move on, and try to be more competitive and more agile for our customers, IT can help with a lot of that. Obviously, there's an element in the whiskey industry where you have to have a person or a bunch of humans tasting it and making sure it's the right and it's the you know, the right flavor profile. So I don't think IT will ever take over that. Although we did have an Azure AI developed Whiskey a few years ago. But yeah,

Rick 
Was it any good?

Sarah 
I did buy a bottle it was it was okay. I Yeah, it wasn't my favorite. I wouldn't rush it buy tons more bottles of it. But it was an interesting experiment. I don't know if you guys have heard of it. But what they did was the it was a whiskey company, I think in Sweden who took all the profile and all the information they had on their customers and what would be the most palatable whiskey for a large portion of the population, the world and fed all that information into the Azure AI service, I think it was and it basically came out with a profile and they made that whiskey and so yeah, interesting take on it and a different way to produce whiskey but I've not seen anybody else do it. So I don't know if it's been a success or not.

Rick 
Well, I need to make sure that this entire episode doesn't revolve around whiskey. But, but I would say that I can imagine that certain parts of the world have certain preferences. And then if you mix all of those into one flavor, then I think you might get something that just doesn't hit anything. Specifically.

Sarah 
Yep, potentially. Yeah, absolutely. So. But yeah, an interesting way of using technology and trying to grow I suppose.

Why Sarah creates content - 10:54

Rick 
It is. Now, if we look at your online profile, you are, let's say, a visible you are, you make a lot of content on your YouTube channel, but also on Twitter? Is there a reason why you are so outspoken? Is that purely your job? Or is that something else, maybe

Sarah 
A bit of both to be quite honest with you. So probably about, trying to do the math in my head, about five years ago or so I started up the Glasgow Azure user group, because I was trying to learn Azure, and meet more communities and an opportunities as well. So that's when I really became active properly in social media, trying to share my knowledge and learn other things. And Twitter seemed to be the best platform for it. And so I've just evolved that. And eventually, it did become a job when I was working at Microsoft. So being active on social media and things was, was a part of my job still is today, even an octopus. So yeah, it's a bit of both. It's a bit of doing it for fun, trying to grow my own knowledge and community and network and also part of my job.

Oscar 
How did the user group survive the past two years? You do a lot of things online, or?

Sarah 
We did, we ran a few events online, I think we all reached online fatigue, to be honest. So there, there was a period where we kind of stopped doing the online meetings, we actually just had our first in person meet up again. And we managed to get a few people in a room, ran a quiz shared a few beers, had a few chats and stuff. So it was really nice. So we're, we're hoping fingers crossed that things are going to be I want to say normal, but what is normal, but yeah, we should be back in person for the rest of the year all being well, which will be nice to see everybody again and get some cool stickers and stuff like that, again.

Rick 
It's always about the stickers, right?

Sarah 
Absolutely.

Rick 
So then talking about the Glasgow Azure user group, because that's the user group we're talking about. What does it what does it bring you personally, because you do a lot of technical content on services in Azure. Does the user group also give you extra incentive to go and look at specific services?

Sarah 
Yeah, it's been great to see other people come and present. And give us some ideas about what other folks are doing and potentially backup what I'm thinking about, you know, if I'm doing something the same way, as other people that I know, I'm hopefully in the right direction, or we're all collectively belong, but it's great to hear everybody else's take on that. And various different services. We've had talks ranging from, you know, containers to backups to, we've had people talking about like Microsoft 365 and Intune, and SQL servers and stuff. So we have a variety of content. So we try and keep it mixed, and mix it up a bit and make sure that, like there's covering things that are topical, covering things that people want to share as well. Because that's half the battle, getting speakers to come along and volunteer their time and knowledge, these user groups, but yeah, it's been really valuable learning about things and spotting those things that you might be missed yourself. Because we can't, can't be online and keeping up to date with everything all the time. So yeah, surely, it's really been a great journey over the last few years with the user group.

Rick 
Yeah. And it might also be the case, like with Oscar and myself, if we ever have to do a talk on something, then most of the time will first decide what the talk is about, then we'll go and subscribe. And then if they pick us up, Oh, crap, no, we need to dive into this. But that's probably the best way to force yourself to learn something new, right?

Sarah 
Yep, absolutely. I am. I recently did that actually here at Octopus and believe it or not, I was learning, AWS CloudFormation templates. So I had to dive into that world. Because I volunteered to do a talk here about that. And it's been great to do that and learn something new and just expand yourself and, and try something new and challenge yourself. So yeah, yeah, the best way to do it, I think.

Rick 
And then, another thing that stands out really big on your, on your online profiles, at least is the fact that you're a STEM ambassador, right?

Sarah 
Yes, I'm really passionate about helping the next generation and for anybody that doesn't know what STEM is. It's science technology and In engineering and math’s, so it's helping the next generation go into these fields. And it's, it's good from our female point of view, because I think in the IT industry, we often are under representative. So me being out there and showing the next generation that isn't just a guys only environment or a male only environment, I think it's hopefully good and hopefully will resonate. Even if I get one person, one extra person to come along and join the IT world, because of something I do for my STEM activities, then I think it's worthwhile.

Oscar 
And wherever you do you reach your audience for those topics.

Sarah 
So there's a couple of organizations here in Scotland that run, so I keep an eye on them. And pre pandemic, I was visiting some schools and some high schools and just doing Career Day talks, where I stand up in front of the classroom and let them ask me questions. And stuff like that. Although, I think a lot of the questions I got when I was working for Microsoft and standing up in the class was, when's the next X Box game coming out? And can I get it for free? But yeah, certainly before the pandemic, it was going into the schools and like speaking to this, the kids and things like that, during the pandemic, what I actually tried to do was create some YouTube videos, so that the classrooms could maybe play them or the teachers could share them out to their students, and they could watch them at home, so that they weren't completely missing out, because I appreciate that. It was a lot harder for everybody to try and keep up her normal activities. So it'll be interesting to see for what we're going back to in terms of the STEM activities of going back in person or not, although, I think certainly over here in Scotland, or maybe about six or eight weeks away from the summer holidays happening. So maybe later on, I'll be able to go back into the schools again,

Rick 
We saw on your website that you were, I'm going to say only awarded an MVP two months ago.

Sarah 
Yes.

What was it like to become a Microsoft MVP - 17:01

Rick 
However, you've been actively passionately sharing content for way longer. How was it to actually receive that recognition from Microsoft?

Sarah 
It was lovely. Actually, to be honest, it was just a nice warming feeling. I don't do it for the award. So the allocations. But yeah, it was just nice to be recognized for what I do in the community. Because like you say, there's a lot of work that I do for my job. But there's an awful lot of times when I give up my spare time to work in the community and help share and grow and, and mentor people. So yeah, it was really nice to receive that award. And fingers crossed for more collaborations in the MPP. Community.

Rick 
Yeah, because I can imagine that all of these things in the end, tie in, right? I mean, the fact that you share so much content online, is probably also from the educational part. And maybe even from being a STEM AMBASSADOR, where you think, hey, if I share this, if I show people how this can work, I might trigger somebody to think about joining that industry. And then again, all of the information that you're sharing online, probably helped you in getting that MVP status. And of course, you don't do it for the award. But in the end, it is a form of recognition that that feels great, right?

Sarah 
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think a lot of the time I've sometimes document technical things or things I've learned for my own sanity, as well, because I'm sure you both have done it, where you've maybe written a blog post or created a video on how to do something. And then six months later, you go to do that again. And guess what happens when you search for it? It's your content.

Rick 
It's your own external memory.

Sarah 
Yeah, so it's good to be able to share and just for my own sanity, and for the community as well.

Rick 
So yeah, it's so good to hear that I'm not the only one that uses my blog as external memory for myself.

Oscar 
No, definitely. The best way right, you feel good about yourself, and you help yourself actually in the end? Yep. Yeah. Yeah, I think it is a great way to just share your thoughts like and can be on some topic started discussion on Twitter or indeed, blog post Stack Overflow, or a YouTube video, because I actually, last time I scrolled through YouTube video of you Rick, that I needed to know something specific and it was in there somewhere. Yeah, yeah. That was both of us. But you are speaking about something I don't know. But it is so cool to be able to use all these different technologies to share knowledge because also other people will consume in a different way and want to want to some people want to read some people like to watch a video some people like to listen to podcast, and here we are.

Rick 
Hello, you.

What is the most enjoyable form of content to create - 20:01

Oscar 
What is for you? Or what is for you the most enjoyable form of content to create?

Sarah 
I think it depends on my mood to be quite honest. I think I can write blog posts in my pajamas sitting at the back garden with a coffee and be quite productive. Whereas obviously, if you're creating a YouTube chances are you need to be presentable and have that energy to be in front of a camera. And so yeah, it will really depend on my mood, what I enjoy creating, although sometimes it depends on what I'm creating as well. Some things lend themselves to blog posts a lot better than other things. And whereas, again, explaining something in video can take, you know, two minutes, whereas to write a blog post, you probably be like two hours to show everybody what you're doing and explain it all properly. So yeah, I like, I like mixing it up. And I think that's key to keeping that flowing. Because I'm sure you're both the same. Some days, I'll be able to write like four or five blog posts easily, like, I'll be on that straight, I'll be on that creative major. And they'll just come out of the flow, it won't even be work. But then other times, you'll be like, staring at a blank page for eight hours and not know what you're doing. So yeah, just going with the flow and whatever mood I'm in, I came to just go with it. If I'm in the mood to write blog posts, I'll knock them out. Other times, I love to create videos, because it's yeah, it's a challenging medium, I think creating videos versus creating blog posts or whatever. And being able to have that creative element and tweak things. And yeah, I use like Adobe Premiere Pro to edit my video. So I love finding little things I can do whether it's a transition to switch between scenes, or how to put any music in the background or Yeah, I love doing that stuff. So as well. So

Oscar 
You can also get very distracted doing those things.

Sarah 
Well. Yes. You can.

Oscar 
Like I need a slide deck, like I'm fiddling with an animation now for two hours.

Rick 
Where did my weekend go?

Sarah 
Yes, I have gone down that that route of watching like a YouTube tutorial and suddenly opening up like Illustrator, or what's the animation one and creating weird things from YouTube video and realizing I have no actually created what I'm supposed to be doing. So.

Totally random question - 22:24

Rick 
Again, I'm so happy. I'm not the only one. So that's a good thing. Oscar? Do you know what time it is?

Oscar 
Is it time for a totally random question.

Rick 
It is time for a totally random question.

Oscar 
Sarah, whose advice do you value the most?

Sarah 
Oh, that's a tricky one. Probably my mom, to be honest, is I think your mom's very good. I think figuring out both you and like what's genuine and what's getting to the nub of what's annoying you sometimes if you go to her for advice, so yeah, she steers me in the right direction when I'm not sure. A lot of the time. So yeah.

Oscar 
Also, when it comes to your career, for instance, did you? Did she help you find your path?

Sarah 
And yeah, she, she often listens to my moans and, you know, excitement about things and stuff and helps me figure out the best way forward, if I'm struggling as well. So yeah, she's really, usually quite good to go to.

Sarah’s love for farming, and FarmBeats - 24:27

Rick 
There's this one thing that we also need to discuss, because wherever I look at your content, I see that you love either gardening or farming. So where did it come from? Is that because you grew up in a rural environment? Or?

Sarah 
Yeah, I grew up on a dairy farm until I was about 17. So yeah, I love farming. I think, if I probably hadn't been female, I probably would still be on the farm, just because traditionally farms, at least here in the UK get passed down to sons, not daughters. Very, not, not inclusive, in that terms. So yeah, I think because, yeah, I've definitely been farming if I probably wasn't a female. And if there hadn't been that stereotype still around, it is getting better. Now. There's a lot more female farmers out there and things like that. So I think it's getting better. But yeah, IT was the option other than farming.

Rick 
So now you so with the fact that you're an Azure MVP, and that you like farming, I mean, putting the two together, you would go Azure farmbeats, and you could go into farming from the Azure perspective, right?

Sarah 
Yeah. Someone actually sent me there's a little project you can do and it's actually aimed at doing with schools and I think I might try it, where you can get like a Raspberry Pi In a lot of bunch of sensors, and then you can take that sensor data and then put it into farmbeats, and do all that I've been hovering over buying that kit, I think it's about 200 pounds to get all of that. So I'm just trying to make sure I can sneak it by the husband. And before doing that as a side project.

Oscar 
I think I'm completely missing the point what is Azure Farmbeat?

Sarah 
It takes data and helps you predict things like soil moisture, and the kind of pH level whether your soil is like us acidic key or alkaline. And all that data can help you be better and more efficient at growing crops or looking after your land in terms of farming, I suppose the same principles can be applied when gardening as well, looking after the soil and just using technology to be better at what's happening. I know lots of farmers use like GPS nowadays and even drone footage to try and figure out what your fields look like. So you don't have to like walk through them all the time and things like that. So enhancing what you do as a farmer, basically is what farmbeats does. In essence.

Oscar 
In the end, everything is over. Right? Like it's

Rick 
As we started out with everything in the end boils down to software. Absolutely. Yeah. What you said that farmers use GPS, I think I even saw a tractor doing a field. I think it was plowing a field. And it was there was no driver in the tractor. So that this large antenna on top, that actually was steered using GPS coordinates and lasers along the field and the tractor did it did its own job. Yep, that's awesome stuff.

Sarah 
Yep, that's pretty cool.

Advice for the coming generations - 26:42

Rick 
And then you talk about the fact that you would like to inspire our next generation. What would you say to if anybody from the next generation is listening to this podcast? What would you say to try and inspire them to at least have a look at what tech can do for you.

Sarah 
I think I always trying to tell the next generation is that there's so many things in IT that you can do. You can be, you know, a technical person getting hands in building PCs, I think we still do that nowadays. Or you could be a coder, or you could be a project manager, or you can be like a program manager where you're taking needs of your customer, and then interfacing with your engineering teams. There's a whole host of jobs out there that you can do that you don't need to, you know, be technical, and it's also a universal job you can do throughout the world, I've had the pleasure of traveling all over the world with IT. So it's one of those jobs that translates all over the world. So if you want to travel, it's definitely something that you can do.

Rick 
I was just thinking, I think it's actually somewhat exceptional, that you were talking about growing up in a in a form that the IT industry was more welcoming, more inclusive than the farming industry. So trying to not go into too much detail. But have you experienced issues, trying to move into the IT industry, the fact that you're being a woman?

Sarah 
Ironically, no, the very first job I had out of college, I actually worked on an IT Helpdesk, and there were six of us, and only one of them, or one of that team was male. So I never experienced that early on in my career. I've unfortunately experienced it as I've moved through my career a little bit, but certainly, it's my experiences aren't as bad as some people I know. And I have friends who work in the IT industry. And they have they have horrific stories that they could share about the kind of, you know, un inclusivity of the IT world and the horror stories if unfortunately had to experience through it. But my experience has always been mostly positive, for the most part. And so definitely, it's something that we need to be better at, I think as an industry, but it's not the most. Yeah, it's just it's a weird one. My experiences haven't been all the time negative, to be honest with you.

Rick 
It's actually good to hear.

Oscar 
Yeah it's good to hear.

Sarah 
Yeah

Closing - 29:21

Rick 
I mean, we've had in the start of these podcasts here, we've we had a few female techies who had the horrific stories that you that you mentioned, but it's also good to hear that there are people out there who have not so negative experiences. So that's great. Looking at what we talked about, is there anything that you would like to get back to or anything that you would like to maybe have share a final thought

Oscar 
Or something you look forward to in tech.

Sarah 
And I think to be honest, I'm just looking forward to getting back and meeting everybody again. I've really, really missed that. I didn't realize how much I've missed being a part of the community physically and in person until I did the meetup in Glasgow, and how much fun and energy and just Yeah, I think hopefully fingers crossed, we can get back to doing that. And I can travel the world again and meet you all in person and stuff like that.

Rick 
That will be great. Oh, that's actually it's something that's that I've experienced over the last couple of months as well. That by default, it's, it's relatively simple to fall back into being in your own room, concentrating on that one thing, or maybe discussing with somebody over Teams. And then as soon as you're in a crowd, again, it takes some getting used to. And then in the end, you're happy that you're back. But right at the beginning, if you go, Oh, yeah, well, this is what we did. We were in a room with 50 or 100 people, and then discussing and then we actually I run a user group myself. And then the first in person meeting that we had. I was afraid that everybody would leave right after the content, because we always have drinks afterwards. And I was afraid people were going to go there. And then while this was enough, I'm going home. But that was the longest we ever stayed after an in person event ever. That was the first time after lock down.

Sarah 
Yeah, fingers crossed. That's what we can get back to in a safe way. For everybody.

Oscar 
Yeah, yeah, nine out of 10 times, it's not the thing you remember, it's not even the one talk or whatever, on those evenings. But for me, it's always like chatting an hour after the building closed on the parking lot about something. Going home and starting my computer again,

Rick 
I recognize that. And I think that's something that you've, you've missed, Sarah, that you've been an MVP now for two months, which means that you did probably see the summit. And then of course, that was also an all digital experience. And then this was my third Summit, which means I only attended digital ones. But just like Oscar said, it's the it's the hallway discussions that are most valuable, right? Where you just pass somebody by you say, Hey, I would like to ask you this, or hey, that there's that guy or girl that made a this and that let's have a discussion.

Sarah 
Yeah, that's, yeah, those kind of chats are the funnest, I think remembering back to conferences, pre pandemic and just bumping into people walk in between rooms and stuff. Yeah, those are those are the nice ones. Those are the conversations I definitely missed.

Oscar 
Now, I certainly hope we will bump into somewhere at some point, and have another nice chat.

Sarah 
Be good.

Rick 
Thank you so much for being here.

Sarah 
Well thank you for having me

Rick 
Thank you for listening to Betatalks the podcast, we publish a new episode every two weeks.

Oscar 
You can find us on all the major streaming platforms like Spotify and iTunes.

Rick 
See you next time.

Oscar 
Bye.