MOps-Apalooza 2023 Recap with Michael Hartmann, Naomi Liu & Mike Rizzo

Hi, I'm Michael Hartman.

I'm Naomi Liu.

And I'm Mike Rizzo. And this is OpsCast, a podcast for marketing ops pros and rev ops pros created by the MoPros, the number one community for marketing operations professionals.

Tune in to each episode as we chat with real professionals to help elevate you in your marketing operations career.

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of OpsCast. Brought to you by marketingops.com and powered by the MoPros. I am your host, Michael Hartman, joined today just by our co-hosts, by the co-hosts, Naomi Liu, Mike Rizzo. Please, it's been a while, so let's like, it's like really like say hello.

It's been a long time.

Woohoo.

Yeah, it's, I mean, somebody was being really lazy. I'm just kidding.

That would be me.

I'm just kidding. No, Michael has been super busy, and I'm thrilled that we all get to chat again, even though I sound like this.

I was just gonna say, sounds like you had a wild weekend or something like that.

Yeah.

Wild week.

Definitely a wild week. It's odd that it's caught up to me a full week later.

Yeah. So for those listening maybe at a different time, a week later, this is a week We are recording this literally a week from the last, in fact, it may be almost exactly at the time when we sort of wrapped up MAFSApalooza 2023. Does that seem about right? Yeah.

Yeah, it was right about, yeah, it was like roughly like an hour, hour or so.

Yeah.

One week ago.

Crazy.

It was a crazy event and my voice has all of the things to say for it.

That's, this is your hangover.

This is my hangover.

What happens in Anaheim stays in Anaheim. Is that—

That is exactly why we don't host it in Las Vegas.

Oh, I can't even imagine what it would have been like in Las Vegas. So anyway, well, so we thought we'd just get the 3 of us together just to do a recap, like, you know, the inaugural Mopsepalooza. I don't know, I think, I think why don't we just like maybe go around, right? First impressions, like general impressions. about the event? Who wants to go first?

I can go. I mean, I, I, I mean, I think I feel like I knew what to expect because, you know, Mike and I and all, all 3 of us really have spent quite a bit of time over the last little bit talking about the event and preparing for it and reviewing speakers and preparing for our own sessions and whatnot. But I think it wasn't until you get there that you're like, wow. Like, one of the things that really struck out, stuck out to me was You know, the fact that you could mention something that you were going through on a career or work level, and you didn't have to explain any type of context or what you meant by XYZ because everybody either had been through it, going through it, or expecting it to happen. And it was just really great to be able to talk to people that just got it, you know. And also just connecting with people that. I had talked to you over our Slack channel or just on LinkedIn and seen or engaged with on other social platforms and had just never met in real life. And it was just great to kind of put a face to a name or put a face to a handle, I guess. And that was just something that I found even more so than sometimes just even attending conferences. It was just like that one-to-one direct personal conversation with folks, like either in the hallways or at the networking events or afterwards at dinner. That was just Something that I really, really enjoyed.

Totally. Well, why don't I go and then Mike, I'd love to get yours because you've got this very different perspective, right? This has been a full year of, you know, work for you. But I think Mike coming in, I'd like you, Naomi, I'm not sure I knew what to expect. I was super excited, you know, same, like the same thing. Your last thing was one of my things I was really looking forward to, which was getting to meet people in real life. I hadn't met or only met a couple of times. And it just— what I walked away from it with is it was great to meet all those people I hadn't yet in person, and yet I still miss some of the people that I really wanted to connect with in person, which tells me, you know, I think, A, like, people were in those sessions, which meant they were really, I think, really engaged with the content and the speakers and all that stuff. So I think that's, I great indication. And it also means there was enough people there that it was just hard to be able to get to everybody. So I think, I think that was huge, which to me says a lot about where the profession is too. I mean, I think the evolution of where, where things have been, I mean, like, I think back to where the idea of community and what these things do started with me, you know, um, at an email provider. conference and then Mark, you know, Eloqua conference and the Marketo conference. And this had some elements of that, right? The connection. But it wasn't because it was sort of across, it was independent of the technologies. And we had a lot of vendor vendors that were, were sponsors and things like that, which was great. But I mean, it just felt like, like you said, Naomi, like there was just this really common experience that we could all share. And get and help each other out. So that, that was huge for me. I came, came away super hyped, um, and, you know, looking forward to seeing what, what could happen with that.

Yeah, no, thanks for, thanks for sharing that. Um, you know, for those that don't know, uh, despite our ability to stay connected on Slack all the time, Naomi and Michael and I don't actually get to talk that much. Uh, so this is, this is the first time that I've actually heard that. feedback from them as well. So just responding to it, like, and sharing a little bit about what I, what I heard from people while I was at the show. It was a lot, a lot of very similar sentiments, right? Like people walking up and just saying how connected they felt instantly to everybody. And, and in general, the, the sense that like there was— the pressure was off there. There just— it didn't feel like a high-pressure environment, um, which I, I'd never actually stopped to think about. Like, that word came up a couple times, pressure, um, and I never really stopped to think about the— that feeling when you go to these, uh, bigger conferences that are led by, by vendors, right? Some of it, of course, is pressure because, like, you know, yeah, there's vendors that are trying to sell you things or reps that you want to meet with or partners, or you're trying to earn business yourself. And, and while some people may have been at the conference to earn relationships and find leads and potentially clients, I think in large part the event itself felt more like a, hey, we're coming together to like learn and talk and communicate and elevate in in this profession, in this vocation. And I don't know that we tried to like set that tone necessarily, like, like, yes, it was a community-led event. Yes, it's vendor agnostic, right? But maybe it was, that's all it took to try to help set that tone. Because I certainly, I don't think any of us on the marketingops.com team, nor in any of our messaging, did we try to like push that messaging out into the market. Right. But I think once you were there standing amongst peers who, to your point, like, I didn't have to explain myself and I didn't have to figure out if they were going to try to pitch me something. I just instantly felt like, oh, now I can just talk to you and I know who you are, I know what you do, and it's fine. I think that was just such a big win. You know, the last piece I'll share on this is Many folks got to meet Dan Mott, who's my co-founder, largely for the first time because we used to refer to him as the secret co-founder because he's been sort of hiding in the wings, helping build all this stuff with me amongst all of our other leaders in the community to help shape what we're doing. But he and I have talked a lot about, does the intimacy or that feeling of connection break. When we did 50-person summer camps, you know, we were— we all walked away from those events feeling really, really special.

Mm-hmm.

And, you know, so far it seems like it doesn't really matter as long as you put a whole bunch of people who practice the same area together and like maintain that integrity of like this is for you and not for anybody else, it seems like that doesn't break at all. And in fact, it's amplified. To your point, Michael, there were enough people there that it was actually hard to find everybody, right?

Yeah.

Which I will tell you was not the expectation we had 2 and a half weeks before the event.

Well, I know you and I talked about how, because I've worked for, for a few years in the event industry, especially coming out of COVID right, that there was this pattern of late registration. So I'm super— I think it's fantastic that you got all that sort of last-minute rush and got people there. So for all those people who made last-minute, you know, plans to get out there, awesome. Thank you so much.

Yeah, yeah, we appreciate it. But please try to, try to get that ticket a little earlier.

Register earlier next year.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Save us all a little stress. Yeah, save us all a little stress.

It's all good. Oh man, that was like freaking out. Yeah, for context, folks that are listening to this, um, the, you know, our goal, our super stretch goal would have been 500 people in person, bodies in the room. Um, we, the sort of like the target was about 350. I will tell you all, 2 and a half weeks before the event, I sent an email out to the team who was producing it and setting up all the chairs, preparing the hotel for what our food order might need to be, all of the things that go into trying to prepare to house or host a number of folks. And we had 175 people on the list.

Wow.

And, and the result was, well, this is our event, so let's make the most of it. We'll tighten up the room a little bit. We'll put up some pipe and drape. We'll make it feel a little cozier, which is fine because we've done 50 people. We know what that's like. It's no big deal. But let's go. You know, this is going to be our event. Well, you all blew my socks off and showed up and we ended up almost doubling. We were at 330 people. Which is mind-blowing to me that that much happens in the last couple of weeks. And everybody said that it would happen that way. But if you can't hear it in my voice, and I think you can.

Fair.

Holy cow, that's a really stressful journey to go on. I don't recommend it for anybody.

Yeah, putting on an event is not for the faint of heart these days.

But yeah, but ton of fun and we've learned a lot. The feedback is coming in from our survey right now. We're learning even more, and I think next year will be—

You need better food and drinks, Mike. That's all you need.

Basically, I need to have a lot better food and drinks. I also need to get more bathrooms, apparently. So we'll figure that out too.

I don't really know what to say about that.

It's okay. I mean, look, you pick these venues for the best that they are, right? And I love that it was next to Disneyland and people got to go. I was getting text messages from people that were at Disneyland before the conference started, so thrilled that they got to come to Southern California where the weather was beautiful and—

That was fantastic.

Hang out at Disney.

That's great. So that was sort of big picture impressions. Any more significant takeaways from all that? I can go first. I mean, I thought, to me, the bookends, right? So Scott Brinker and then Juan Mendoza, kind of at the beginning and end. I think if you think about what they both talked about, right? One was talking about, you know, what's going on in the martech industry and the other one was talking about some of these innovators that are out there, many of whom like I had never ever heard of, right? I mean, there were a few on that, those lists and the shortlist that were there, but I was like blown away at, at some of the really creative stuff, especially outside of the US, right? I mean, I love that it was international. But to me, that, like, that, like, that part of it, the AI martech, where it's going, what's happening kind of outside of the kind of core stuff of marketing automation or CRM, where I think there's really not been in general, right? Not a huge amount of innovation happening directly in those, those organizations. And from my perspective, there might be a few outliers here and there. So I think that was a big takeaway is like, what all is going on there? Because I've been truth be told, like sort of skeptical or, you know, kind of not totally wild about what's going on with AI or generative AI or machine learning and all that, like work and play. But I'm, I think I'm more intrigued now by where that is. And then also I think it goes back to this, like the, I think so much of what people think about marketing ops has to do with martech, but knowing how many sessions there were that were not about martech, really even at all, right? They might— there's privacy stuff. There was stuff about leadership, how to communicate with CMOs, you know, how to navigate your career, like all those things. I don't think that's maybe one of the big things, right, that you didn't necessarily get at some of these vendor-hosted events. So to me, like the opportunity there to really help the profession again become, you know, elevate it in terms of where it stands, I think is a huge, huge win.

Yeah, I definitely agree. Naomi, do you want to tack on to anything else there?

Yeah, I mean, speaking of Juan, this is a bit of a sidebar, but he came up to me at the event and was like, hey Naomi, nice to meet you. I'm the reason you're here, or you're the reason I'm here. And I was like, I'm sorry, what? And he's like, yeah, don't you remember? You responded to my DM on Twitter. And I'm like, I did? And I don't really use Twitter. I'll, I'll be responsive if someone sends me something, but it's not a—

What is, what is Twitter?

Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. X, X, right?

Ah, nice.

So I respond, you know, and, uh, I, I had to actually go back and dig through, but he was like, yeah, uh, you followed me on, on Twitter and I sent you a DM and normally nobody replies to me, but you did. And, and, and you said, hey, I'm gonna connect you with Mike Rizzo. And so you started a thread with us. And I actually went back and looked at it and I actually, I did, I completely forgot this was in June of 2021. And he's like, yeah. And then Mike and I connected and we developed a relationship. And then I'm here. I am, I'm here because you introduced me to Mike. So you're welcome, Mike.

Yeah. And everybody else, thank Naomi. Exactly.

That's huge.

That's pretty funny. I, yeah, I remember you'd shared that with me briefly, like towards the end of the conference or whatever, like. I totally forgot that too.

I forgot too. I actually went back. I just sent a screenshot of the conversation into our Slack thread. But yeah.

Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, Juan's a great guy, um, very passionate about just like, like being a journalist in our space, but like, um, you know, trying to avoid a bias as much as he can. Like, everybody ends up with their own opinion, right? And so he's naturally gonna skew one way or the other most of the You know, like any writer will. But I think he's done a tremendous job.

I do have to say that one thing that I did really notice at this event was how much everybody wanted to elevate each other, right? There was not a sense of competition or, oh, you did this and how did you get that? And like, if it was ever asked in that way, it was more like, how can you help me? How do you, how do I have that? Right. And just the free knowledge share, the free elevation of your peers and not having that underlying tone of like competitiveness and everybody just wanting to elevate the entire industry and having that support. I just felt it was such a great vibe because you can sometimes get that at some conferences where people can be protective of their knowledge and of their circle and of their network.

Of their status. Yeah.

Exactly. And that just really was not the case I felt here. It was like, let me introduce you to this person. Oh, you should totally meet this person. I'll make you this introduction. Like, it was just, I thought that that was such a great feeling in the community as well.

Yeah. My, my, I would, I would, I would echo that because my personal one was, you know, I got an opportunity to spend 30 minutes one-on-one with Scott Brinker, right?

Mm-hmm.

Which, you know, I mean, he, if you, if there's, if there's such a thing as sort of the, the, the founding father of the whole space, right? He maybe, he'd probably be on the shortlist of people who get get some credit for that. And he was extraordinarily gracious and wasn't, you know, humble. We were actually talking because the company I was with when I was there, no longer with, but was considering a move to HubSpot. But even with that, I think he's like, what really struck me is just how he was like, yeah, I'm probably not the right person to ask all these questions you're asking that were very detailed, right? And he, but There are other people. And I thought that was huge.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's nice. Scott clearly— first of all, he's just a tremendous supporter of everything we're doing. And I can't thank him enough for being involved with our community over the years. And for him to be able to do that with us was just really an extra special thing. But I love, I love that he, he sits at this level of the ecosystem. And, you know, yeah, he works for HubSpot, but like, you know, just like everybody else there, even, even Michael, who did a presentation about how to leverage some of the latest technology for their go-to-market motion at Workato. Yeah, he talked about using Workato to drive it, but like, everybody understood like, no, that was some really cool stuff that you just showed me. And I get that I can go do this in Trey or Zapier or Workato. You just happen to work at Workato and this is what you're doing as a marketing ops professional there. Like, I think it's that same sentiment. Like, nobody's there to like just sit there and hawk services and product at you. They're like, no, like, let's actually push this stuff forward. I want to go back, Hartmann, to what you were talking about a little bit ago around sort of like the landscape of what Brinker was talking about from an AI perspective, and then sort of bookending it on the final— the second long day, I should say, with Juan and sort of the innovation in the space. I think You know, if you, if for those that are listening to this episode now, and if you haven't checked out the content, you know, the virtual content will be available for the next 6 months in our virtual portal, and then available on marketingops.com moving forward. But there's, there's some really good stuff coming up from Paul Wilson about just sort of like our vocational, almost like responsibility to like usher in the era of AI and martech together.

Yeah.

And you sit at this just sort of like beautiful intersection of these solutions where if you're aware of the unique nature of go-to-market motion and business process and how technology can and should sort of connect together, now if you've got an AI sort of partner in crime to I don't know, put you up at super status, right? You can leverage a lot of this stuff in a way that many individuals in the field will not ever even start scratching at, right? You sit at a very powerful intersection of business process technology and a component of AI to usher in the future of what this profession can actually do for businesses. So I would encourage you to follow Paul, um, check out those sessions, and then reach out to him because he has a lot to say on the matter. And I, I'm paraphrasing terribly, um, but he's— it's a really special time. Uh, and then the last thing is, you know, Darryl Alfonso, um, came in towards the end of our conference. He was our closing keynote on the final day.

Like, I totally— like, that— like, there's been so much. Like, how did I miss it?

I know, I know. There was like some— there were some like just awesome speakers, um, you know. And, and we learned Wednesday, like, doing a half day on Wednesday is a great model for 50 people in a room but not a great model for 300 people in a room. Um, and so, you know, we'll change our pattern next year probably, but But Darryl introduced the new pillars of marketing operations. And I think it actually, when you think about the narrative that you were just talking about, Hartman, right? Like, hey, there's this intersection that Breaker brings up around AI and martech and the next 10 years being super interesting. You've got all these fascinating innovators that are coming into the space still and doing some really cool stuff globally. And then you've got Darryl, who's sitting there as a practitioner rounding us out and saying, all of that's great, but where we think about our career going and how we get there needs some sort of framework. And he worked really hard on that. And I think what he produced was absolutely a step in the right direction. And I'm sure we're all going to iterate on it together with him. But I'm really excited about sort of centering a lot of our conversations around— I envision many of our conversations being around sort of that career path, the intersection of all of those things, and largely around the pillars that he's introducing now.

I tend to agree with you. I think that's a next major step in the evolution. So I'm just curious, I mean, have you Mike, maybe you're probably the best person to do this, but have you heard of anything that people have taken away from the conference and are already starting to apply some lessons learned to their, you know, their organization or what they're doing already, or are planning on it in the very near future?

I've heard people drop comments about that. Like, they didn't— I've just been reading. I shouldn't say I heard it. I've been reading that there's been commentary around, I actually learned something that I'm going to try to put into practice. I didn't, I didn't prod or try to dig in on what that thing might have been at this point. And then I think in large part, people are sort of leaving me alone. They're like, I keep getting messages from people like, have you recovered? Are you sleeping? Why aren't you sleeping? So I think that's part of the reason why I haven't picked up on some of it too, is that people are just like, get out of here.

Well, I have a feeling we're going to start to hear some of that in the near future.

I agree. I totally agree.

So I'm curious. I know you're getting feedback right now, Mike, but I'll give you— I think you and I have already talked, right? I don't think I've heard many negative— in fact, I don't think I've heard any negative things about the event. I've heard lots of different ideas of things, but maybe we can talk about What, what, what you see are like feedback on things you might do differently, and you talked about some of them already. I, I, for one, would like to see more tracks on what we talked about, right? Professional, like the, the kind of the career path stuff, learning, you know, these different skills that are required as you, you know, if you move up to be a people leader, or even if you— maybe there's multiple tracks that we have more of a kind of like the developer track, right? There's you get, you stay in the engineering versus people leadership and so on. Like, I would love to see more of that. And then in general, right, just sort of tracks. So if you're interested in sort of a set, more of a general topic area, right, you can be geared towards the sessions that apply to that rather than spending a lot of time kind of go like one by one to try to choose those. But really, I think that's, that's the one thing I would like to see. And then Yeah, I think, I think, you know, just better food, Mike.

Just better food. I'm gonna work on that. I'm gonna call the hotel. If we, if we go back to the hotel, it's gonna happen.

Yeah. And Amy, what, what, what's, what's your thoughts?

Yeah, I mean, I, I feel like, I mean, aside from better food, of course, I feel like what something that I would have also liked to see is A better way to connect with people aside from potentially just like walking into a group of people who are talking and then trying to introduce yourself. I thought, I think it would be interesting to be almost like a matchmaking session. That might be an interesting thing, right? So like maybe in the app you can sign up. I know I've been at events where at the app you can like sign up for a matchmaking, professional matchmaking thing where you basically will put, be put into a group or cohort of folks and you try to have lunch or during lunch, for example, there are tables.

Mm-hmm.

where they're industry-specific. So you sit here if you're in higher ed tech, you sit here if you're in med tech, you sit here if, you know, you're small business, you sit, you know, things like that. I think the event is small enough that you're still able to talk to people pretty directly and generally get a sense and know who's going and who everyone is. But as the event grows, and, you know, I know you have some growth plans, Mike.

Mm-hmm.

That will get harder and harder, right? Imagine next year you do get to your 500, that will become harder to do.

Yeah, absolutely.

And then that kind of intimate feeling where it's kind of like a big summer camp where you can't walk down the hallway without seeing somebody and stopping and having a chat with them becomes a little bit more difficult, which is not a bad challenge to have. But I think that if we are there to network with like-minded people and learn from them. A lot of the things that— a lot of the great takeaways that I had too was even just in passing conversations with somebody in front of a door as I'm walking into another session, right?

Yeah, I like the idea of doing it based— having those like topic area tables. I think that provides an opportunity. I mean, I guess I've never really— I guess that all 3 of us are lean more towards extroverts than introverts. Maybe I'm misinterpreting, which is easy to do, but I think people who are introverts, right, it's a lot harder. So if there's ways to make that happen that make it less intimidating, then I think that's a great idea for that.

Yeah, yeah, I totally agree. So just riffing publicly with the two of you and for those that'll listen to this now and in the future, You know, I think a couple of things. One will be trying to facilitate the networking aspect of it all. There's a thing called Brain Dates that you can put into your events. So that'll probably be like one of the few times I call out like a vendor specifically, but we will likely try to find a sponsor to support that. It's a really unique way to like go source someone that is looking to have a conversation on a similar topic as you or what have you. But I've experienced them at SaaStr before and a few other places. And in large part, people find that a very rewarding experience and a very seamless one to try to find other folks that are sort of Uh, you know, in their space. Um, uh, to the idea of tracks, um, you know, the funny thing is like on our speaker intake form, we proposed about like, you know, like essentially like submit to speak, right? Uh, we proposed roughly like 4 categories or themes that things could fall into. Um, and, and like regardless of that effort We still got like a slew of tons of different things. And by the end, the committee, Naomi included, selected all of the sessions that we thought would be the most interesting and most impactful. And my team, Dan and everybody else who was trying to promote the event, said like, how do we group these so that we can like, you know, say like, hey, here's this like track of stuff you could go learn about? And I was like, have at it, good luck, because I have no idea. they're all so good. And, like, yeah, there were a couple of themes, right? Like, career development might have shown up once or twice, AI might have shown up once or twice.

Yes.

But then it was like, there was every topic under the sun, which I think is illustrative of, like, the function and the breadth and, like, the things that we need to talk about. Now, that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to facilitate tracks and try to make it easier to navigate as an attendee, but it was very difficult to try to lump If I gave you the breakdown of their descriptions and their titles—

No, I remember. Now that I—

I was like, man, how do I do this?

Not a crit— my feedback was not a criticism. It was just more—

Oh, no, no. I took it very constructively.

But yeah, as I think back about the topics that I saw, like, I actually had a hard time choosing, you know, competing things, because there were multiple things I'd want to go to. I had a—

like, the whole committee had a hard time choosing. There were so many good submissions.

Yeah.

I mean, we had 120 people submit to speak and we divvied those out across the 4 of us to try to figure out what we wanted people to sort of potentially learn or walk away with, right? And so I think it's a good learning though in general, 'cause you're not alone, right? The feedback that's coming in, there's a desire to have a little bit more of a theme, even like how do we, Right-size, like, junior sort of content versus mid or senior-level content, because the challenges we're experiencing as, you know, director on up feel pretty different than the ones that we're experiencing maybe when we're entering the role, right? And so, trying to figure out how to, like, work with our speakers to say, well, who are you intending this message to reach, right? And then we could tag those tracks appropriately. I think that'll help with the experience, just adding more value to the experience overall. And so those are things that, you know, brain dates, figuring out how to improve sort of the networking and tracks piece. I think those 2 will really help continue to elevate the whole experience as an attendee and hopefully help us keep that, you know, summer campy vibe, right? to allow for that connectivity to happen.

Yeah.

So those are things. And then we'll likely— I think right now where my head's at, just based on early feedback, is I want to do Monday is a day for learning. So I think like courses or workshops and people can go learn from Carrie Pickelsimer or Tyron or whoever decides that they actually want to teach a course for a handful of hours. And it'll be smaller cohorts, sort of bring in some of that summer campy vibe to those particular activations. But then we would probably only do like 2 days of content after that. So it'd be like Tuesday and Wednesday would be like, you know, the actual sessions.

Hmm.

And we'd be done. And so I think if we can bring in some of that deep learning time ahead of the event and then still have 2 full days of great sessions, sort of curated the way that we're talking about, I think that pattern might work better. But anybody that's listening to this before the next MOPSA '24, if you've got better ideas, we're all ears, right? But that's sort of where my head's at right now. Yeah, absolutely.

That's good. Yeah. Well, and I, I mean, I think I told you too, like, I, I, we could, we could do a live OpsCast, right? Or I want to do that either at the end or maybe each day or something of it. And I don't know, we could figure that out.

Amanda, my wife, for those of you listening, uh, who's been involved, you'll probably see her name show up in the community and on emails.

Oh yeah.

Just remind, she reminded me again today. She's like, you all 3 need to do an OpsCast. Live. And I was like, what are we gonna talk about? She's like, bring a guest on. And I was like, that's true. I guess we could just bring some people up. We'll do it like the old radio show style.

That's for sure.

Just do it like literally could just do it at the registration desk as people are registering and ask them, have some commentary, you know, what are you most excited about learning here?

You know, and that would actually be pretty fun.

Yeah, right. That would be, I think, really fun just stopping people randomly and the first thing that comes to their mind.

Yeah, yeah. Jeff Covini was like asking people Mickey or Minnie Mouse.

I saw that.

His recap. Yeah.

And then he spelled Mickey wrong.

Did he really?

He also, after his first one, he, you know, he tagged the wrong Michael Hartman.

Oh yeah, that's right.

Some other Michael Hartman in like Boston is wondering who, who Jeff is.

Yeah, that's okay. I mean, there's another—

No, no, I gave him margin. Oh yeah, I'm sure. We know that. We know the other Mike Rizzo, right?

Yeah, he's a legend. We love him.

Cool. Well, all right. Well, so when are we going to know when 2024 Mopsepalooza is going to happen? Sometime soon?

Yeah, pretty soon. We've got bids in from a few locations, one of them being Vegas. And, and for the— yeah, most of us, most of us throw our hands up at that one. Like, I don't really want to do that. Um, the— I would— the only reason I would do it in Vegas is, one, it would be an off-strip location, so, um, it's not like a total Party City type of thing.

Sure.

Um, but 2, the— if the rates were just that much better across the board, not just to host the, the food and the, and the rental space and all that stuff, but Also the guest rooms. You know, I'm looking to host an event that is accessible for everybody, right? And, and that's really like the decision. That's, that's what weighs into my decision on where we go with these things. But we'll see. Anaheim's fighting pretty hard for us to come back. So it might happen there.

I guess we all behaved ourselves well enough. To get them to want us to come back.

Yeah, they were thrilled with the outcome of our event, and they gave us kudos on the ability to host something in a first year the way that we did. And I just like, before we end this broadcast, like, the production team, if anybody's thinking about putting on an event, As long as it's not at the same time as this one, because I need my production team.

Sure.

But if you need a production team, I— there's nothing I can do to talk more highly or whatever, right? Like, the, the team we have is unbelievable. Um, Becca and Euning and their whole entire crew, I can't sing their praises like high enough. So if you need a referral, you reach out to me and I'll gladly introduce you. to them because we would not have been able to do it without their help.

Yeah. Well, and I'll just say like kudos to you. You mentioned Dan and Amanda. I know there are many other people from the marketingops.com team and a bunch of volunteers who stepped up to really kind of help get it across the finish line. So congratulations on a great event. I think it really was a game changer and I think everybody I've talked to is looking forward to next year already.

Yep. Yeah, thank you very much. And that's actually a call out to the wild for those listening. Like, if you want to volunteer a little bit of your time, we will need help next year. Again, we didn't know we needed that help until about a week before. So lesson learned there. But if you want to learn a little bit about what it takes to do this stuff, and you want to volunteer some time, please reach out. There's ways that we can make that happen. But yeah, and Naomi and Michael, thank you for everything as usual, being involved and supporting this whole thing. Naomi speaking at the event, I really appreciate that.

Of course, happy to.

Well, I think people saw my name up on a slide that I missed because I got there late, and they thought I did a whole lot more than I did for the event.

I specifically asked them to go thank if they saw any of those faces in the room. To make sure that they thanked them for helping us build what we've built here in this community. Because this is— it's all of us doing it, right? So like, absolutely, like you and Jess and AJ and MH and Naomi. There's a few folks in there. So yeah, we couldn't fit all of them.

No, I mean, there's like— it is definitely a community thing. Well, as always, this is It's always so much fun just to riff together with the two of you, so I'm glad we got to do it again.

Totally.

We need to try doing that more often.

I agree. And I apologize to all the listeners that my voice sounds like it does. I hope it'll be back soon.

All good. Naomi, are you getting rested up too?

I am. I'm looking forward to American Thanksgiving next week. American Thanksgiving is my favorite Canadian holiday. Everything gets super quiet. I always can look forward to catching up on work and, uh, yeah, no calls. It's great.

That's awesome.

Even better.

See, it's perfect. You can go to a conference and then, you know, have a week of work and then take a week to catch up.

Exactly. There you go.

Sounds good. All right, y'all. Uh, I think we will wrap that up right there. Thanks to all our listeners for, uh, allowing us to continue to to share our, our wacky and crazy world with you and for supporting us, even through sort of these lean times for episodes. We're trying to get back on a, on a rotation there. But until next time, we'll talk to you soon. Bye.