Michael Hartmann: 0:25

Hello everyone. Welcome to another special edition episode of OpsCast brought to you by MarketingOps.com, powered by all the mode pros out there. I'm your host, Michael Hartman. Joined today by everyone. Mike Naomi. Always good to have you. But it is a little bit bittersweet this week. Yeah. So I say it's a little bittersweet this one because we're recapping. Is it still the last Matsapaliza 2025 one, Mike? Right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So final year. Yeah. So over the past few years, though, it's been kind of one of the heartbeats of the community, bringing everyone together, leaders, friends. Um, I didn't get to go this year, so I'm actually really excited to have this, like to hear all the behind-the-scenes stuff. But joining us to help is Audrey Harst, who, as you know, is the CMO of the marketingops.com community. And uh since I wasn't able to be there, I'm gonna probably be mostly just listening and it's like simmering in my FOMO. You know what I mean? But all right, so like we kind of dropped the whole thing. I don't know if Mike, if you there's probably some people who are new to the community or haven't heard the news, but like, or like the background, like what was the driver for Mopsapalooza and why is this year the last one, at least in this form?

Mike Rizzo: 1:48

That's jumping into it.

Michael Hartmann: 1:49

No, yeah, let's talk about we're not gonna we're not gonna dance around in my come on.

Mike Rizzo: 1:53

Yeah, yeah, totally. No, it's good. Um, we could talk a little bit about the history of where things started and sort of ended up. Um lot of us that were early adopters of the community, we were here doing um an event that we used to refer to as summer camp. Uh, this was about a day and a half of uh one person guiding the room in the discussion and um really meaningful experience to bring the community together. And uh we did that about three times. And while we were doing that, uh, as many well know, um the Marqueto sort of super user champion community had um started to lose a little bit of their opportunity to come together and talk shop at uh what used to be Marketo Summit and is now effectively Adobe Summit. And so they said, hey, is there an opportunity for us to try to get some of these champions together and still allow them to have their their time to share their knowledge and their expertise? Uh, to to which, of course, I said, you know, absolutely, but we we're agnostic of a specific platform. And so uh we would we would endeavor to do something that was a bit more um open-ended for for the entire industry, and uh regardless of what platform you're using, right? And so um what was created from that request was Mopsapalooza. Um yeah, I I I've learned a lot about starting a conference. Yeah.

Michael Hartmann: 3:31

Um I I sort of remember when you were floating different name ideas and asking a few of us for input.

Audrey Harze: 3:38

Yeah.

Michael Hartmann: 3:39

Like it seems like it was just the other day.

Mike Rizzo: 3:42

It does feel like yesterday. It went by really quickly. Um yeah, my one of my advisors was like, I think you're gonna get sued. And I was like, why? I feel like Appalooza's generic enough. You could attach it to whatever. Right. It doesn't matter. Who cares if it's a con I'm not throwing a festival of you know, music and stuff. Right. We're fine. So someone's gonna listen to this and be like, no, no, no, I'm totally suing them now.

Michael Hartmann: 4:11

I mean, our audience is growing. I don't think we're gonna have that much crossover might just say.

Mike Rizzo: 4:16

Yeah, probably not. Probably not. It's fair. Yeah, so it was born um, like many things in our community, it was born out of a request of our members asking uh something new. And we said, sure, let's figure that out. Um yeah.

Michael Hartmann: 4:32

So why what so like so why like why is this last year?

Mike Rizzo: 4:37

Audrey, why is it our last year?

Audrey Harze: 4:39

Oh, there's so many reasons.

Naomi Liu: 4:43

No dancing around the topic.

Audrey Harze: 4:45

I know aren't like a little bit, I guess. Um it's just evolved to be, you know, obviously Mopsapalooza is highly successful. We've gotten amazing feedback from everyone about you know, um, the conversations that happen there, community coming together, the sessions, how different it is from every other conference that they go to. So there's a lot of like great things about Mopsapalooza for sure. Um logistically, like if we were to strip down all that goodness and just kind of look at, you know, financially how the event's put on, um the logistics from our small team putting it on and the resources that it takes. Um, we've kind of hit a bit of a wall in terms of how we can still produce like an amazing event, but also not be like literally underwater with it as well. So it's been this, you know, a little bit of a balance over the years, and we've kind of come to a place right now where we need to make some choices about what it's gonna evolve to. Yeah.

Mike Rizzo: 5:45

Yeah. I mean, we haven't been terribly um secretive about uh what it what it takes. Uh, you know, for for those that ever want to know, like I'll unpack pretty much all of the learnings that I've had over the last few years. Um but you know, we wrote some blog posts if you're curious. Like uh the very first year, I think I titled it like how we hosted a million dollar event before we ever made a million dollar. Um yeah, you look back at your lack now and you're like, whoa, on earth. It's crazy. Like if you it's always that hindsight, you know, 2020 moment, right? Like if I knew that it was gonna be what it was, uh maybe I wouldn't have done it now. I I I think I think um what we've all endeavored to create together as a community is uh a space that is open to learning and sharing and collaborating and networking. And that's what is really the heart of what Popsapalooza is and represents. And I don't think that'll go away. Um, but yeah, the sustainability of it needs to be um prioritized now. So uh, you know, we were we were really trying hard, but it it costs to run it the way that we were running it, um, with the four stages and the all the things, right? And you know, we did it up. I I gotta say, we went big. It was like a go big or go home kind of moment. Um sidebar on that. I honestly I like I I envisioned the event the only way I've ever been to a conference, right? So like I've only ever been to Inbound and Dreamforce, right? So I'm like, oh well, therefore you must have many stages and a nice looking stage and an expo hall and uh this and a that. And and so um that's what that's what it was created to sort of feel a little bit like those, but uh without all the pitch slapping happening on the stages and trying to sell you software all the time. Yeah. Um and so yeah, that that costs like a million bucks.

Michael Hartmann: 7:49

We were like, oh yeah. Well, and I I I having having worked in and out of the the events industry in a couple of different places uh in my career, like and having married to someone who puts on even smallish kinds of events, um, and her like it is really hard, right? People have never like seen the behind the scenes. It is there's a lot of work, there's always shit that goes wrong, right? And you have to figure it out along the way. Not much you can prepare for other than just know what's gonna happen, right?

Mike Rizzo: 8:21

Just be prepared for the something is gonna go wrong.

Michael Hartmann: 8:25

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Like every single time like a speaker having to cancel at the last minute, right?

Mike Rizzo: 8:31

Yeah, yeah, that has happened.

Michael Hartmann: 8:33

Well, so all that said, like so I'm like again, like I like eagerly watched posts about it both like before, during and after. And um like it looked like it was like really a great event. So what like but what was it like like from the floor, like what was it like, Audrey, like energy-wise there?

Audrey Harze: 8:56

Yeah, it was um, and you know, to be fair, like all of our past events have kind of been like this in terms of the previous Mops of Palooza and even our summer camps. There's like this community energy vibe of just coming together, um, you know, always talking in Slack or, you know, communicating otherwise. But when you're just like in person, there's just this really great energy. And our community is so great. We're so supportive of each other, helping each other all the time. So that just really translates really well to in-person. But I think this last, like this event that we had recently in Limops Louisa was um, I think maybe because there was a layer of everybody kind of knowing might be the last time, you know, or it's gonna evolve or change. The energy was definitely like heightened. I felt like yeah, it was like way high. Everyone wanting to get those extra hugs in, wanting to like high five in the hall, you know, wanting to make sure they connected with everyone. So um yeah, it was really lovely. It was, it was, it was great. It was great to see everybody and get everyone in the same room and to get all that great feedback about wanting something else, like this can't be it, and what else can we do? And how can we support you guys? So we really appreciated hearing all of that. That's awesome.

Michael Hartmann: 10:04

Yeah, I think I remember the first one I went to, I was like so excited to meet people in person that I had had these L9 interactions with. And what struck me is I I there are a bunch of people I walked away not having met because the sessions were so good that everyone like normally at these events, right? There's like a lot of people lingering out. So I'm curious, like Naomi, you were you've been to all three. Like, so what was it like from your perspective?

Naomi Liu: 10:29

I think it was, I think the first one, people were just like so excited to be able to attend a conference, either their first one or the first one back since COVID, yeah. Right. And um, a lot of people were just excited to interface with people that they had only ever really talked to or engaged with on the community or on LinkedIn. And then just being able to mind share with them. And then it has it quickly became this, and while it has only been, I guess, the third year now, it quickly became the place that people would look forward to once a year to get together with folks that you know they really only engage with virtually, myself included, right? There's people that I would only see at this conference. Um, and so definitely when the the note the notice came out that this was the last one, you know, I would a lot of people come up to me like, Do you know why Mike and the Sasha are not doing this again? And as if it's like this like something like, what's the real reason? I'm like, oh well, like you should really talk to, you know, or we're draining a podcast, you should listen, we'll talk about it. Yeah. Um, but honestly, I I do feel like it's a place where people in our community can come together and it's almost like a safe space where we just all know what we a, what we all do, the pain points that we all have. We just we don't even have to really explain or say something, and we all just like kind of get it because we've all been there or are currently doing something like that or about to do something like that. And it's just nice to be around peers where you feel just a connection based on shared, I want to say shared trauma. Yeah, sure. Worked out.

Audrey Harze: 12:16

It's true.

Naomi Liu: 12:19

That's true.

Mike Rizzo: 12:20

Yeah, it's it's a traumatic thing to hit send on an email and have the right token in place. Right.

Naomi Liu: 12:26

Only marketing house people will know what it's like to like wake up in the middle of the night at 2 a.m. and be like, did I limit it to not send to the whole database and then crawl out of bed and double check and then go guard?

Mike Rizzo: 12:39

Did I attach the suppression list up there? Yeah. Still had done that import. Did I actually have the right field there or did I create a hundred thousand?

Naomi Liu: 12:51

Exactly. Is the first name field merge field correct? You know, yeah.

Mike Rizzo: 12:56

Shut this. That's that's exactly what um it is totally what happens at Moxapalooza. And and frankly, it um I think what carries in any event that we as a community bring together, it it just pulls through no matter what. Um which is like um really pleasant. Uh it doesn't break so far as we can tell. It doesn't break at that scale of you know, almost 500 people who were at Mopsa this year. Um, we were worried about that at first, like going from the summer camp where you had about 50, 60 people, or like, hey, does this intimate sort of um connective tissue of like how we all relate to each other, does that break? There's like hundreds and hundreds of people, and what we realize is it doesn't, it just gets harder to Michael's point to like see everybody and then also go enjoy the content because you got some of your experts and your favorite people sharing, and you're in the middle of a conversation, you're like, shoot, I wanted to go watch, you know, Scott or Daryl or Jess or whoever, right? Yeah. Um, yeah. So it's it's pretty special in that regard. Um, but I think there's ways, like I said uh just a moment ago, wherever the community sort of manifests itself physically, um we tend to see that you know, if it's an event that we're organizing and that we're in charge of, even a coffee meetup. Like uh Audrey and I had the chance to do the coffee meetup uh at inbound this year. And even that felt like really special, right? So there ended up being like, well, like 60 people or something came and and they lingered for forever and they realized they had to go get to their sessions at inbound um because they were they were finally getting a chance to just like meet people from the community and just talk shop. Yeah. And so I think we'll be able to carry that through in a new iteration of Mopsapalooza, uh, potentially like bringing back some of the summer camp things. Um, those are all we are we are active, Audrey and I are like literally in the throes of uh annual planning, like many of you are. Um, because we're recording this in November of 25. Um and so you know, we're trying to figure out well, what does that look like moving forward? Yeah. We keep bringing the people together.

Michael Hartmann: 15:32

So so uh what were the big highlights? Maybe go around. I'm gonna I can direct since uh like I've got you guys in different spots of my screen. Like I'll start with top left, that's Naomi on my screen. So what what what was your what was your big highlight from the from it last year?

Naomi Liu: 15:49

I think maybe this year I wanted to make more of a concerned effort when I attended a session, or if I was like even in the panel that I moderated to try to engage more with either the presenter or the people in the audience after the fact and talk about um, you know, the topic at hand. And I I wanted to make a concern to do that. And I feel like um I got a lot out of that because depending on the session itself, being able to deep dive or debrief with other people that were in attendance or even with the presenter themselves really helped me to give like depth context. So, you know, why are they choosing to present on this fact? Or why are you choosing to go to the session? Are you having a similar struggle? Are you trying to learn something? Are you trying to expand your knowledge as to like what are some issues that could potentially come down the horizon on a certain project you're working on? I think just like I tried to make more of an effort to ask questions. Um and I don't know, I personally just got a lot out of like the interaction and the conversations that happened even outside of the sessions themselves. I'm doing that. So the intentionality you had going in, but to like deeper the conversations, showing up and just listening, taking it, and then like compartmentalizing it into my day-to-day, but also like being, like you said, intentional about talking to others. Like, what did you get out of this? Oh, I didn't think about that. You know, that's a good spin tab. Okay, that makes sense. You know, like just I I thought that that was really that was a takeaway for me that I really valued this year. Cool. How about you, Audrey?

Audrey Harze: 17:23

Yeah, kind of similar to Naomi, um, where I tried to be more mindful of like stepping away from obviously the logistics of the event and just connecting with people and what, you know, um, just having those conversations. I think the two highlights though were well, the women's breakfast, Mopsa Melosa, which Naomi and I had hosted one.

Michael Hartmann: 17:42

I was I was wondering if that was gonna come up. I was so glad. I knew there was a struggle, like there was a there was a challenge challenge getting sponsorship for that. I was so glad to see that happen.

Audrey Harze: 17:50

Yeah, we ended up getting three sponsors, which was amazing. The room was full. We had like a wait list. Um, and it was just such a special moment because again, we did um similar to last year, we had everyone write a future letter to themselves. And um, in a year's time, we mail it back to them. And a lot of times they forget they even wrote what you know what they wrote or that they even wrote the letter. And so we did it last year, you know, to this year, and so many people commented and commented about how um wonderful it was to see how far they've come. Because, you know, a lot of times we forget about all of our accomplishments and all the things that we actually do, and we tend to like, you know, lean in on all the stuff we didn't do. So it was kind of a nice um thing to be able to do again with the women's breakfast. Everyone was really excited about it. So that was a highlight for me. And then I guess the other thing was I thought the food was fantastic. Really enjoyed the food at the event. I thought it was fantastic. So that was great.

Naomi Liu: 18:46

This always this year was can I say better than last year?

Audrey Harze: 18:51

You can was a better than last year.

Mike Rizzo: 18:52

You you can last year's food, yeah. Of course. Last year's food was we got lots of compliments on their food over at the Marriott, and we're still in the Marriott family just at the West End. Uh yeah. Uh this this past year. And uh I will say, like, I I totally noticed the quality was like even it felt like it was a notch above where we were before.

Michael Hartmann: 19:14

Yeah.

Mike Rizzo: 19:15

Um, and perhaps that's just the chef or the Weston brand or a mix of both, but yeah, really good. Yeah, it was definitely really good. I I have to agree. We did fall short on the food and beverage minimum, though, which was shocking.

Michael Hartmann: 19:28

Was shocking. Man, we could get that. Which part of the beverage part did you come under though? That's what I want to know.

Mike Rizzo: 19:38

Yeah, is literally, I I think it literally came down to not having spent enough on basically provided beverages. Um, but it's it's crazy because you know, for those of you who may not know, like hosting an event, you have these minimums you gotta hit. Um, and we did our best to dial it in this year for all of the reasons we've we've previously said, right? We really wanted to um have the right event experience, but make sure we could try to like sustain. Uh, and so we we really paired back and to create create the right um exposure. And it sounds like, you know, from from everyone I've spoken to so far, it didn't feel like we pulled anything away where like the the from the food and the hospitality side of things, it felt like it was still pretty good. Uh probably, you know, everybody's here and there on this idea of breakfast in the morning or pastries or whatever, but um so I guess because we fell short, the for those that really wanted that, they're like, see, I should have told you. I told you you should have had breakfast or whatever.

Michael Hartmann: 20:40

It's amazing. Again, like uh across events, right? The most common feedback, positive or negative, is about food beverage. Like, yeah, across every industry, every kind of event, there's always people who are not happy about it.

Mike Rizzo: 20:54

Oh, yeah, yeah. That's uh that was the thing I was gonna say at at the last little piece of the top of this uh session today is like you will always disappoint somebody. Yeah. Like yeah, it just doesn't matter. Yeah. Which is hard. Uh I was actually speaking to Pierce about this. He's the CEO of NAC, and he came came down to our event for the first time, and they've been a great sponsor of ours. So shout out to Knack for being a sponsor. Um, but he he and I were talking and he was just asking about you know feedback and and how this event stuff goes. And I explained that moment how like there's always somebody that's not happy about the thing. Yep. Um, and he's like, that would just eat at me. And I was like, oh, it it eats at me. Yeah, like so bad. Like, you know, I I actually, you know, I look at all of the survey data for those of you who take the surveys. Uh I I don't shy away from it, but there's time there's times where I don't want to open the tab. So I'm gonna read something and be like, I just I'm gonna stew.

Michael Hartmann: 22:56

Like, how could I have done that better? Well, it switched around then. So, what was your biggest positive sort of like moment from the from this year?

Mike Rizzo: 23:10

Okay, first of all, the venue for me. I I'm looking at this from the perspective of of being the host this year. Um, all the way around the the venue was a little bit more intimate. It was newer, it was nicer, it was really just awesome. Um, and we're very lucky to be able to host it there. Um, so I think I I was really pleased with the outcome of the staff and all that stuff that works there and the venue and all that.

Speaker 6: 23:33

Yeah.

Mike Rizzo: 23:34

Um, but from a from a run-of-show perspective, um I'm not exactly sure what I did differently. Um and I don't mean to take credit for anything, I just mean that in curating the show, there's a lot of work that goes into that.

Michael Hartmann: 23:56

Sure.

Mike Rizzo: 23:56

Um, our community gets to vote as ticket holders on all the sessions. And then what we do is we end up sort of like picking what bubbles to the surface. And I, as a as a curator, just to ensure that we don't see one speaker like five times. Uh, because unfortunately, like certain speakers get highly rated like for lots of different sessions they submit. Yep. Um, and the same is true for brands. We try to make sure that like we don't have a particular agency show up like five times, um, or you know, software company or something. But the event this year, I would say the content was just like it it really floored people. Um, it felt like every single piece, every time I turned around, someone was talking about the last session they went to and how good it was, which means the community really showed up. Yeah. You know, and they really they did a nice job as attendees, as ticket holders, rating for rating those sessions and curating the event that they wanted to see. And then those speakers really showed up and they did a nice job. Um that that was noticeably different this year, and I was really excited about that. And then selfishly, Audrey and I showed up. We we were, I don't know, we were vibing, man. Vibing, big time was great. Yeah, I have to like put this on record. Like that opening session for us felt so good. Yeah. And just like we knew what we were talking about. You know, for those of you who might watch us on stage in the prior two years, like we generally had a sense of what we wanted to talk about. And you know, it was good, it was fine, but never have we ever, I don't think, felt as confident and as good about that uh session as as we did that. Yeah.

Audrey Harze: 25:45

So absolutely on where to go.

Mike Rizzo: 25:50

Yeah. I was really excited about that.

Michael Hartmann: 25:54

So I I I know this is a like again, bittersweet, right? It's the end of uh one thing, but it's beginning of something else, you know, yet to be determined. Like, what do you think from a legacy standpoint? Like, where do you think this is gonna leave things? And feel free to suit your own horn, right? I mean, like I'm curious to hear where you think that like what's gonna be that output.

Audrey Harze: 26:16

That's a good question. I don't know. I don't know.

Mike Rizzo: 26:22

I don't know. I'm trying yeah, yeah. We're we're we're really ruminating on this. We are.

Audrey Harze: 26:28

Um yeah.

Mike Rizzo: 26:29

It is I I think just you know, again, lifting the veil a little, you know, try to understand what's going on here. Like we exist for the community, for the sake of the community, for the profession, for the vocation. We want to be a certification body that establishes what it means to be a professional in this field, how you earn the trust and respect from a board or a C-suite of executives to turn to you as the expert in the room that they need by their side as they go to launch any modern marketing operational sort of framework, right? Modern marketing doesn't help them without Martech and probably need somebody to run that technology. And so um when we think about that as our through line, um it really comes down to just us figuring out how do we focus on those values um and and still bring bring together you know aspects of of what has been fun and exciting and stuff. And effectively what that means is like we aren't an events company, right? Right. If we it was it and it's funny, Audrey and I like internally, we've had a number of these discussions. Uh we brought on a fractional CFO. Some of you actually met him. His name is Tony. He ran a session for the community. Um and we've really helped try to understand what all of this is that we're working on and how do we keep it alive. Yeah. Um, and we've repeatedly told ourselves that we're not an events company. And yeah, like we kept doing more and more events. Um and so you know, events are a part of the mix. Sure. Probably not gonna go away, virtual and physical, right? Um, but when it is as heavily resource constrained as it is, both time and money, um, we have to make some make some decisions on how to keep those in the mix in a in a way that matters.

Audrey Harze: 28:34

Right.

Michael Hartmann: 28:34

Well, I will like since you're hesitant to do it, I'm gonna like I'll say this. Like, I having not been to this one, right, just but knowing some of the behind the scenes stuff that I do. So first off, I think, yeah, I think Naomi really described it well about how like over the years, right, this this appetite for this kind of community to come together and and help each other out. And Audrey, you talked about it too. Like, I think it's really I've been around a lot of different kinds of functional teams and things like that, and I think it is unique to this space. Um I think part of it is like the it is the shared trauma, a shared understanding of what it like it's like to go there. But also I think this like the reactions you got from people about like, is this really the last one and what's coming next? Um, says a lot about the way that you guys have built this community for the people in the community. And um because I've again being part of other communities, this is this one stands out. Like I shed shedding a lot of my active involvement in other communities because this one just stood out, right? And it's I think it says a lot about the two of you and the rest of the organization, like all the people involved about like how this community has taken advantage, not taken advantage, but like it reinforced some of the innate characteristics of people who seem to gravitate to this kind of profession. So I say thank you, and I'm sure others would do as well. So Namien, do you want to like uh say anything about that too? I'm putting you on the spot.

Naomi Liu: 30:07

No, I think um there's a lot of people in the community that are wondering what's next, like if there's going to be smaller events or if MOPSA would ever come back, or you know, are they going to have to go to bigger events like Summit or Inbound to be able to see the people that they normally would like to see, but those are more platform uh specific as opposed to vendor agnostic. Um, and so I you know, I I think we don't have all the answers yet. Maybe we haven't like thought about everything. Um but just know that there is a huge appetite for that, and I think everybody would welcome some form of connection coming back if it's not next year or the year after. Um that that's a lot of the questions I've been getting anyways. Yeah.

Speaker 6: 31:05

Yeah.

Mike Rizzo: 31:05

Yeah. I think um version of uh MOPSA will live on. Um I think at a minimum this year in 2026 coming up, we're gonna move MOPSA online. Just purely for the sake of like everybody's got some incredible content. It's really hard to pick all the speakers every year. So like let's make sure we keep that content going. Uh, and then as we head into 2027, we're gonna try to understand how do we do basically MOPSA in a way that is a little bit more approachable. Um, and I think along the way, we'll we'll try a few other things um with our local chapters and see if it can sort of manifest itself uh alongside other events where people would love to go. You know, the reality is is they all have limited time and budget um to go to all these things. And so, you know, just putting it out there for those that listen to this, um, the original idea of Mopsapalooza, there's two things that I had said that I would kind of love to have seen come to fruition. And that doesn't mean that it won't. It just just sort of where the idea started from. And one of them was Mopsapalooza was meant to be sort of like a festival of micro-user conferences with real actual practitioner discussions uh throughout. Because suffice to say, we all use these tools and we love to go to whatever user conference, right? Um, because we're passionate about that. But again, my budget is limited. And so, well, what if we brought everybody together and we just had real learning and an opportunity to go check out a few of those things? Um, so that was kind of the Palooza festival of it all. Um, and then uh point number two was the idea that um Opsipalooza might it would have been bad to have done this in the first year for obvious reasons, but um, maybe it shows up every other year in person. And um again, it's to be respectful of the fact that there's a lot to learn and there's a lot of other things you want to go do. And so um I was just trying to recognize that I know as an employee, I would love to go to inbound or summit or wherever, right, and still get involved in those communities. Um, but my company's not able to pay for me to go to all of them, and I certainly can't get away from the family all that often. And so maybe our community can meet our members where they're at and just respect that we understand that you want to go to those other things. Um and so perhaps we could build a a system where we say, hey, go to that this year and then come to back the next year, and because we're just not even doing it. And now the decision's off the table. Um, but again, like had we have done that after a successful year one, it would be like I don't know how to describe it, but it'd be just like taking something in motion and just like stopping it immediately. Um so we had to do it at least for a second year, and then I was like, ah, we'll do it again.

Michael Hartmann: 34:22

So I've seen like I think um I'm I'm really excited about the local chapter stuff, and I I'm in Dallas, and I'm really grateful for the people who are trying to to make that happen here because it is it's hard in Dallas, probably is in other markets where people are really spread out and trying to connect, people have other things. So I try to get to as many as I can. I haven't been to as many as I'd like to, but I think that's another way of doing it. So if the people who are are part of this who either whether or not they made it to Mapsapalooza, right, if they're not engaging with their local market or local chapter, um, I would encourage them to do it because I think it's a way of carrying this forward through the rest of the year, right?

Speaker 6: 35:01

Absolutely.

Audrey Harze: 35:02

And it's one of the areas like that we, you know, Mike and I agree on for 2026. We're gonna put a lot more effort and resources into building those chapters out and supporting our chapter leaders because we agree that's a really great avenue for people to still come together in person. It's a little bit easier, obviously, because it's in their community and where they are. So yeah, it'll be great.

Mike Rizzo: 35:21

Yeah. Yeah. So this is the call out to the to the wild for for those that are uh interested in supporting the local chapters. We could use your help. They could use your help. Um, you know, we're they're just self-organizing, trying to people bring people together and learn about this vocation and talk shop. And, you know, literally like a thousand bucks can bring together a really cool, you know, meetup event. It's not expensive. Um, I know, you know, it's sounds like I'm begging for charity or something like that, but like the reality is that you know they want to get together more often and the more support that they can have, uh, the better. And so if you're interested in supporting our local chapters, we would love to have you. But um, gosh, we're we're in a lot of places right now. Um we have like 16 regional sort of chapters. So uh, and if you're interested in in hosting a chapter, we're here for it. Um, but yeah, we're we're global at the moment.

Michael Hartmann: 36:26

That's awesome. So like it kind of leads me to another one. So it sounds like you know, Mops Blue is a in it the form it was, at least for now, foreseeable future not gonna happen. You're working through other stuff. So if people want to either help or get involved with local chapters or want to um get give you ideas about things, knowing that like with this all this in context, do you are you guys looking for input right now? Do you want to like you want to like give us a minute to get through it ourselves? Like, how are you thinking about that? He's looking at me and I'm looking at him. I I I so I feel like I like this is a weird like I think I've stumped both of you like twice now, and I can't like I like the the having the either of you have anything to say right away, like I will say for me, I'm always looking for feedback, you know, DM me in Slack, email me, all the things.

Audrey Harze: 37:21

I'm always looking for feedback. I can I tend to appreciate hearing that insight. So yes.

Mike Rizzo: 37:27

Yeah. Uh I was uh uh Audrey and I are often on the same page and we don't talk about whether or not we're on the same page, uh, but we did not. And uh yeah, the answer is like the the feedback loop and um we'll refer to it as the the spout or the water faucet. It is on all the time, right? Um I am always getting it, and so don't feel like you're gonna bother me or Audrey with an idea. Um, I get a lot of that too, or someone's like, you probably don't want to hear this, but here's this thing, but sick and like, no, no, no, we want to hear like um the reason all this stuff exists, I mean, literally the reason the community has the channels that it has, the MOPSA, the summer camp, all of the things is because somebody at some point said, Hey, could we do that? And yeah, I said, Yeah, we'll figure it out.

Audrey Harze: 38:25

Yep.

Mike Rizzo: 38:25

So yeah, send your feedback. We're totally open to ways to bring the community together. Um, new activations too. It doesn't always have to be centered on some specific like attribution discussion or business related topic. Like it is totally okay if you're like, oh, I would love to organize a Dungeons and Dragons night, right? Like, great. I also know a guy for that. Um, you know, you want to do a poker night virtually, cool. Like, you know, it's fine. Like we want the community to come together and shared interests and meet each other because at the end of the day, we're all actual people that have other uh passions that aren't just marking apps.

Michael Hartmann: 39:07

So yeah, I mean, I just like I'm glad you say that because like even it's funny because I was thinking like that's your attitude of like always bring the feedback is kind of the one I take, even professional. Like I used to get really diff offensive, offended or uh defensive about feedback because I kind of took it personally, and then I like at some point the switch went over and I was like, no, bring it all. Like I want it all, and I think it there's a lot of value in that because it's you know, sometimes if you if you don't do that, right, great ideas don't come your way and then you miss out.

Mike Rizzo: 39:39

Yeah, yeah. I I have to say, um just like from a professional development standpoint, right? Um when feedback comes in one-offs, it does feel very personal. Yeah. But when you open it up and you and you open yourself up to just saying, hey, no, no, no, just like let it all come, you now get to start to objectively evaluate all of these new inputs.

Michael Hartmann: 40:07

Yeah. You look for patterns, right?

Mike Rizzo: 40:09

You look for patterns and similarities, and all of a sudden, that is the same thing. Patterns and similarities. Um, but you you definitely start to um not feel as like personally it's yeah, right. Um, and and and I think for anyone who's watching or listening to this and you're in a role, um, you know, doesn't matter if you're not hosting a conference, right? You could always get some feedback and just open yourself up to it. Um it'll it it definitely makes a difference. It took me a while as well, Michael, to get used to that.

Michael Hartmann: 40:44

Yeah. It's not easy. It's not easy.

Mike Rizzo: 40:48

Yeah, separating yourself from your work.

Michael Hartmann: 40:52

So maybe maybe we can kind of start to wrap up here a little bit and go like what like I know you guys are still in the midst of planning for 2026, but like what are like what are you most looking forward to in 2026 and through the end of this year and kind of where things are going with the community?

Audrey Harze: 41:14

Well, I I I'm actually there's a few things. I think um So because Mop Sapalooza is evolving and it's not gonna quite be what it was, it actually opens up a lot of our time and resources to focus on other things. So I'm actually really excited about that. Because I think Mike and I have had a lot of like great ideas that we wanted to execute and we think would be really great with the community and for the community. We just haven't had the time or the energy or the like mental capacity to like focus in on that. So I'm actually really excited that we like as we're going into planning, we're able to like think those things through a little bit more. Um, you know, one of the things we've talked about is maybe refreshing the website, you know, like I mentioned earlier, more of a chapter lean. Do we revive our ambassador program? Do we do a mentoring program? Like there's a lot of different areas that we want to put more energy into, especially certification. So I feel like now that we have the time to do that, I'm really excited about what's happening next in those spaces. So that's really exciting to me.

Mike Rizzo: 42:14

Yeah, I have to agree. Um I I'll I'll say things that may not actually come to fruition in 2026, but there's um there's a the the gist of it is or the overriding theme is that it's leaning back into the community programming itself. Um so you know, mentorship has been a request for the last five years. Yeah. Um it is just like an event. Um doing mentorship programs is not um overly scalable. And so it will take uh quite a bit of effort to you know make sure that that comes to fruition. But we we would love to see something happen there. Um the matcha program that we used to have is coming back. I saw that it ourselves, so we're excited about that. Great. Um, and and that allows you to, for those that don't know what that is, that allows you to automatically meet other members of the community uh without really much effort. We just automatically tear you up, which is great. Um, and then I would say I I would really love to come back into our chapter, or sorry, not our chapter, our um always ch words, chairperson program. So when we first got started quite quite a while ago now, it feels like, yeah, although it really wasn't that long ago. Um, we used to run a chairperson program where someone would represent uh a corner of technology, spot, or keto, part, whatever. Um, and though that was fun. Uh they got to sort of you know create discussions around that topic.

Michael Hartmann: 43:55

They got to be, they got to be we had we had a state of the union a couple times with those people, yeah.

Mike Rizzo: 44:00

Yeah, we're like, what's going on? What's the change log? And then you know the poor part person was like, nothing changed. Sorry, sorry, sales people. Um, but I would love to see that come back. And I and I think one of the ways I'd like to see it come back is to give it even more love, right? Like, let's get some people on like our video feeds, like showing us how to do something cool inside of these tools, right? Like, let's get a little bit more hands-on and not just you know, meeting and talking about the tool, but let's let's actually learn how to use it. Um, and so I kind of want to reinvigorate stuff like that to bring some of that community learning back um in ways that again are a lot more accessible because it's remote first and it's you know all that kind of stuff. So yeah, lots more focus on creating um net new sources of data and knowledge uh at the community level. That's that's kind of what I'm most excited about.

Michael Hartmann: 45:00

Naomi, any thoughts from you as we wrap up?

Naomi Liu: 45:06

Um I I feel like this is not the end of Mopsa Palooza. It's just uh pause for right now, right? I think that it's just a it's just a temporary pause to regroup, take some time to figure out, okay, what is the next iteration of community gathering look like and coming back bigger, stronger, more well-funded, resourced, you know, not spending a million dollars when we don't have a million made a million dollars, right? Um, I think it's just a pause right now. So I'm not really trying to say something that seems so final. Yeah. It's just that these are the things we learned in the last three years, and we're gonna take that and apply that for something better.

Mike Rizzo: 45:57

When TBD, but maybe the Europeans are begging me to go to Europe. I know that from year one, Euro Disney. No, mostly Europe.

Naomi Liu: 46:09

You know, your dollar will go farther in Canada or Texas.

Mike Rizzo: 46:14

Just just an hour ago, I was thinking that too, Daniel B. I was like, I get I think we get like 20 or 30 percent more or something. Like, I don't even know what this darn math is, but maybe maybe that's a thing.

Michael Hartmann: 46:26

Well, you de I mean, I love I was in New York last week and it was great, but man, everything's expensive there.

Mike Rizzo: 46:32

Yeah, that's crazy. That's crazy. Everybody's like, why do you keep doing events in California? I will tell you the reason why, folks. One is uh I live here. No, I'm just kidding.

Michael Hartmann: 46:42

It has nothing to that's a pretty good reason, though, actually.

Mike Rizzo: 46:46

No, the the the actual reason is I actually flew to Dallas. I flew there, and I I checked out like three events. We went to dinner, Michael. Yep, and uh checked out three venues, and they were they were double or two and a half X the cost of what ended up coming to fruition in California in Anaheim here, which is crazy. Trust me. Yeah, I know you think there might be cheaper locations, other places, but um, I did shop, I promise.

Michael Hartmann: 47:14

They're all expense, they're all expensive, I think. At the end of the day, they're all expensive is the answer. Yeah, yeah.

Mike Rizzo: 47:19

So Naomi, I think you're right. It's pause. Yeah.

Naomi Liu: 47:23

We'll bring last year for now, not see you yeah later.

Michael Hartmann: 47:28

It's it's it's a it's a not now, it's not a no, right? Yeah, yeah.

Mike Rizzo: 47:32

Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But um keep an eye on our channels. We have uh we're gonna do kind of a look back. Um thank goodness for AI. I am gonna synthesize a bunch of data over the last three years and share sort of what were the top trends that we saw, the top sessions, yeah. Um, celebrate some of those folks that had some of those top performing sessions. Um, so if you were a speaker at one of the last three years, you may end up in that mix. Um, and then it'll the the idea of that is one to celebrate the content and to to share some sort of trends is is the second part, right? And for all of us to try to observe what's been happening over the last three years as we see it through the lens of Mopsapalooza content. So um that'll come out pretty soon. And then uh uh I think by the time this episode airs, we'll be able to announce all of uh the winners of the no bullshit demo contest that we ran live. Uh nice at Mopsa Palooza this year. So um yeah, we're really excited to to shout that out too. So keep an eye on those channels.

Michael Hartmann: 48:40

Awesome. Awesome. Well, I still have FOMO. Uh I am glad that it was great. It I mean, it definitely has had a uh I've seen amazing feedback from afar. So glad it happened. I'm looking forward to what's next. So um I don't know where else to leave it. So with that, we'll wrap it up. But thanks to you all for doing doing this. Um it's always fun to get everyone together. It's I love this, but um you do it more. That's all I'm gonna say. Yeah, yeah. All right. Well, until next time, bye everybody. And uh, as always, if you have ideas for topics or guests or want to be a guest, reach out to any of us. We'd be happy to get this started. Bye, everyone. Bye.