30. Wisdom in Salesforce Play-by-Play(1) | Don Robins

Don Robins, Pluralsight Salesforce Play-by-play Producer, Salesforce MVP 7x, Technical Educator, Certified Instructor, PD2, Author, Training Partner, Team Lead – mentoring worldwide in the cloud.

Main Points

• Why does Don create the famous play-by-play video series in PluralSight?
• Where does the play-by-play idea come from?
• What is the behind-the-scene story for Don’s play-by-play?
• Don explains What is the play-by-play model for topic preparation
• What value does Don’s play-by-play bring to the Ohana?
• What did Don do in the Ohana before? Why did he shift to focus on the play-by-play?

Links

• Don’s twitter
• 30-day PluralSight free trial offered by Don
• Don’s PluralSight course list
• Don’s PluralSight course video teasers

Video Teaser on Salesforce Play-by-Play

The YouTube Video URL

Transcript

AI-generated, unedited.

[00:14] In this and the following episodes, the guest Don Robins shares the story around his famous Salesforce play-by-play series on Pluralsight. Where does the idea come from? How much time does Dan spend on preparing for one topic, and what value does it really create for the whole ecosystem? We also discussed many other interesting points as well. If you haven't watched Don's play-by-play, I'd highly recommend you to check it out. The link is attached on the show notes. If you don't have a Pluralsight subscription and you have no plans to purchase one yet, Don also offers a thirty-day trial. So if you go to bitly slash DonRobins, which is b i t dot l y slash d o n r o b i n s, which is bitly slash DonRobins, fill in the form over there, and you will get a Pluralsight activation code for free. Now, let's start the show for today.

[01:30] Let's start. Let's start. Let's start. I think you just roll with it. You know, you know what I do. You know. No. Yes, Don. I I prepared some stuff. I really need to to do this. I prepared for a long time. Okay. Let's let's start. Hi. I'm Don Robins, a Salesforce MVP, a Salesforce Certified Platform Two Developer, and a Salesforce Certified Instructor. Today I'm sitting with Xi Xiao. Xi, why would you introduce yourself? I

[02:02] love this. You know, I've practiced this for a long time. That's that's your personal branding. You know, that's everybody knows. That's your your opening, each time when we watch the the video series. That that isn't that that isn't that is indeed. I I I learned long ago the power of drilling things into, drilling things into people's heads, and it's it's it's why I like sort of a repetitive format, because it it sort of it sort of hooks it sort of hooks you in hearing the familiar. Yes. And and it's it's been used it's been used for for decades in in broadcasting and and the entertainment world which I have which I have a background in and I find it very effective and so it's nice to know that it works. I do very well. Yes. Hello, hello, Don. It's really great to have you. So we. We had the idea to to really bring you into the podcast, but we just didn't have time to to sit together. And today, finally, I'm so excited. You're one of my idol, you know, in the ecosystem. So I really admire the things that you have done for people here. And you know these things are not everybody can do that. We just had a chat about like those technical things. A lot of people can do that, especially the young generations. They have a lot of energy, a lot of you know time. They can spend the time to learn those technical details. But

[03:32] what you are doing, this educational thinking. Those things are only people with the experience can do. I really appreciate that. Your appreciation is appreciated. So, the good stuff we have already done. So let's start with the bad stuff. Bad stuff. Bad stuff. Get it out of the way. No, no. There's no bad stuff. I just wanted actually. No, no. I wanted to talk about some. Actually, we don't have a main topic today. Let's start with your play-by-play courses. So. You mentioned that you were doing educations, but play by play in Pluralsight, it was already existing for other technology stack, right? There were people doing the play by play for for long time already. Yeah, the play-by-play model. Yeah, play-by-play model, which actually wasn't even Pluralsight. I believe it was a model that was used by one of the other companies that Pluralsight. Purchased. I mean, the first Salesforce courses were done very early on, probably around 2011, 2012. I think Richard Sirota did the first major Salesforce course. It was like eight hours, a walkthrough of the Force.com platform. Salesforce for Developers, I think, was the name of the course. But they'd been around for many years before that. And as they started to grow in the second decade of the 2000s, they started to acquire. Other training, other

[05:03] online e-learning training companies. One of them had this model called play-by-play, which they continued. And the original play-by-play model was more for. Taking an existing author that was a popular author, developer, highly technical, and the idea was for their followers who wanted not just to hear them teach something, you know, sort of the talking head standard e-learning course, but wanted to to to see their thought process. Wanted to the the the issue, you know, this person would be sat down. With no rehearsal, not even really knowing what was going to be presented to them, and the presenter would say, "Here's your challenge. You know, we want to see how how would you choose to." Write an Angular application to build a little mobile scheduling app for, you know, making plane reservations, airplane reservations, and then they would have to think it out and talk about. Well, I'd start here and I would use this framework. And well, let's talk about the data model. And I, I guess I'd have this. And they would just do it live. For an hour and a half, and they would just work work through it, and in sometimes it would you know sometimes they would fail, sometimes they would succeed, sometimes they would get stuck on a bug, but that was the whole point. It was sort of warts and all. And talking about what they were doing along the way, so that somebody who could observe

[06:33] how they think and why they do what they do and how they make the decisions and what are the trade-offs and talking it out and basically it's conversational learning. Conversational learning, I always felt was very powerful for Salesforce. This is what we do in the Trailhead Academy classes. It's not just somebody standing up lecturing you for five days. We have conversation. We have discussions. We have exercises. We talk about the exercise. We work through it, and that's how somebody. That immersive experience is really powerful for people to learn technology. It's not just you know do this, do this, do. It's not Simon says do this, Simon says do that. You can see it, but that's not. You always have the question. Well, why? Why did I do this? And unless you actually have the conversation with someone who understands the reasoning behind the action or the exercise, the learning is not as effective. So this conversational back and forth. Well, I said this, yeah, but I don't really quite understand what you said. Oh, well, let me say it a different way. That's where. That's where I believe. Deep learning really, really occurs. It's asking the question that you really learn, but you got to be able to have somebody answer it. So anyway, I took that play-by-play model and we tried it in 2017 with a couple of MVPs: David Liu, Dan Appleman, Bonnie Hinters. We all flew to Salt Lake City, and we just, we just did it. And and when I came out of those sessions, I said, you know, this. This this

[08:03] this will work. This really will work well with Salesforce. It's different. It's different than the other play by plays, but I think it would really work well for Salesforce. And that was the that was the seed. I want to hear a little bit behind the scene. Was it behind the the scene? Behind the scene, behind the scene. How much do you and the the guests prepare for the sessions? You said you want to do it kind of live, but you you definitely have prepared something, right? Oh, we we definitely have prepared. Basically, when when I have conversations with potential guest authors, or I'll call them author author candidates, either because they've approached me or I've approached them, the first step is. Well, the first step is really qualifying the candidate, and it's not that I that I I do go out and I I do target certain individuals, but the key point is that the whole purpose behind the the catalog, the play by play topic list, it was a collection of things that as an instructor, as a Technologist and a developer, I feel are areas where there's a need that there that that this particular topic or concept or depth of the topic you can't find. Concise expertise and perspective anywhere. I mean, there might be Trailhead content on it, absolutely, and there there likely is because Trailhead has just exploded

[09:34] everywhere. Yeah, every everywhere. It's fantastic what what has been built into the catalog, but but very often the Trailhead content doesn't go very deep. You might find a Dreamforce presentation on a topic, but you know Dreamforce presentations are limited to maybe 40 minutes. The first five or 10 minutes are going to typically be spent introducing it. The last 10 minutes is going to be Q and A. So maybe there's going to be 20 minutes to get into any particular topic, and to me, that's not deep enough. So the idea is, I really want to be able to go deep into a topic that isn't covered somewhere else. Second is, I want someone. Who is both experienced in the topic and extremely passionate about it because they've been there. They've they've been in the situation in the shoes of needing. This information, or needing the information to solve a particular problem that they've been facing, so they've been there. And not only have they been there, but what they discovered about it, they're really passionate about. They really think it's a very important thing that they have something and they want to share it. So those two have to align. The third is the person has to be able to effectively communicate. Their knowledge. I mean, very often we can have somebody who really is truly an expert on a particular topic, but the reality is, is that. They're not usually in the position of explaining it to somebody else. Explanation and presentation, communication skills are their soft skills. Yeah.

[11:04] And the reality is, is that not everybody has them. What I try to do, if I find someone who does does have the expertise, and I really want them to present. I will help coach them to to better be able to perhaps better communicate it. You know, sometimes there's a language barrier or a dialect barrier. We can get we can get over it. We usually try to do it, and we'll often we'll focus on that. Do you mean all of all of the ducks have to line up, and that's always that can be a challenge? Do you mean you usually run the audition with the candidates to see? I'll do an assessment. Yeah. Well, well, it's a conversation. The you know when it comes to the level of expertise about a topic, I'll come to a conclusion that this person could sit down with me right now. And off the top of their head, talk you know talk with me for two hours about this topic because that's how well they know it. That that's the checkbox for how deep is their level of experience perspective, and and is it interesting, and can they convey their their information? So that it's not really an audition. It's it's an assessment that happens in conversation. Okay. But but then there's the other side, which is does the topic fit? Does the topic allow for you know it's a show and tell format? We have to have at least fifty percent show because we can't just be talking on camera. It's this is not a video podcast.

[12:35] Play by plays really are not just two people talking and the cameras focused on their faces. There are sections of any play by play and some play by plays where we actually do get into deep conversation for 10 minutes or more, and that's a little dangerous because we can easily lose the viewer. We really want to be sure that we engage. The viewers and we know that showing something it's no different than user group meetings. You ever go to a developer user group meeting? Somebody gets up in front of a bunch of slides and just starts to give them PowerPoint. You know what do we call it? Death by PowerPoint. It's the same problem in in instruction led training. Death by PowerPoint is the fastest way to turn somebody off because the human brain is not capable of just absorbing. Some people can do it, but most people can't. So we have to engage. We have to show stuff. We have to walk through stuff. So we have to make sure that the topic fits the model. There are there are some great topics I would love to have a play by play on, but the problem is, how do you show it? How do you engage in visuals and not just visuals? How do you get into the org? How do you get into the The metadata. How do you get into the code? These are mostly technical in nature, and that's one of the reasons why. I see. I see. When you were talking, there were questions pop up in my head. Now I forgot most of them. Okay,

[13:56] yeah, happens all the time. Yeah, yeah. You know, I I I focus on listening to what you were saying. Um, let me. Well, you wanted you you wanted to know about whether that you know how do how do I sort of how do I sort of set up the so once once we have an author once we have a topic. The whole one of the whole ideas of the play-by-play model is to ensure that we will actually. Produce it; that it will go live, and the reason I point this out is that I I produced my first Pluralsight course in 2013, and it was a bear. To get it out the door, it producing a course for Plural Sight as a as a standard author, a what we call a standard course, which is the majority of their courseware. The author is responsible for creating the content, creating the slideware, creating their script or whatever it is they're going to do, practicing it. Recording it, recording the audio, recording the demos, building the demos, capturing it in you know Camtasia or whatever equivalent screen capture software. Dividing it into clips, sequencing it, organizing it, building the metadata that they have to deliver with the content files, building assessments that go along—it's an enormous amount of work. And very often, even though there are people who will hear about Pluralsight or meet them at maybe Dreamforce or the and they will talk with the you know the

[15:26] Adam Muma, who's the current curriculum, the author sourcing gentleman. Gung ho! I'm gonna build this course. Damn it! I've wanted to build a course on this forever, and I know this stuff really, really well. I am so in, and then reality sinks in, and life unfortunately gets in the way, and months go out because it's up to them. I mean, there's an editor to help them, and there's a lot more resources. And there were about five years ago, six years ago, when I I built my first course. It took me it was at least 120 hours to build an hour long course. That's a hundred to one. That's right. Think about it. Right, one one, what one hour, a hundred. But you get the idea. Yeah, and I got it done. As okay, now I'm going to go build the second. I never got to it. My second one was going to be on mobile. This was before Salesforce Touch even. Just and and I never, never built the course. Probably a good thing because it would have been obsolete a year later. Shelf life is a really important factor. So back to my point. The purpose of the play-by-plays was ah. Here's a way to help someone who has the deep expertise, who wants to share the knowledge, who's capable of sharing the knowledge. It's really valuable. We need it, but they don't have the time. They do not have the time or skill set, and they don't want to. They don't want to learn how to do production. That's not their goal. Their goal is to to share their knowledge. How can I plug them into a scaffold

[16:57] that will minimize, absolutely minimize, the amount of time that they have to spend preparing their knowledge to be relayed? In Studio in a block of three to four hours to come out with a course that is anywhere from an hour an hour we've had like an hour to three hours worth of content. Yeah, that's my goal. My goal is to succeed. My goal is to make sure that the individual actually gets their knowledge published. Yeah, but they don't have to spend 100 hours, or 200 hours, which is what it can definitely take. And so, anyway, over the course of five weeks, we've worked it through. When I'm confident, we don't rehearse it. I don't see the demos. I don't want to know the demos. I don't even want to hear you, the author, tell me what they're. It's it's the outline. What I want to know that they know what it is they're going to present in what order. Because what we're going to do is when they're ready. We fly them into Salt Lake City, and we go into the studio—a morning or an afternoon session. There's always two at a time, and we follow the outline. The outline is what we're going to do, and I've already crafted the scenario and challenge that emerges from their outline. Sometimes we talk about it a little. Well, who is this? What is the problem? Who is the persona? So we have a sense, but we don't necessarily craft that until about halfway through. And then we go into the studio, and we record. We've got three cameras,

[18:28] and the cameras roll, and we start. Hi, I'm Don Robins, a Salesforce MVP, a certified Platform Two developer, and a Salesforce certified instructor. I'm here with Xi Xiao. Yeah, thanks. And I always make sure. And sometimes we have to do it a couple of times because very often, an author has never been in a studio before. And they're a little, they're a little nervous. You know, it's nervous to walk in front of cameras for the first. So, you know, I'll warm them up. Maybe I'll have them do that a couple of times. I'll have them introduce themselves a few times. But something magical happens, even to the person who is the most nervous. As soon as they turned, and I'll tell them, I said, you know, after you introduce yourself to the camera, the camera's not there. You're not going to look at that camera again. In the early days, couple of couple of authors, maybe if you've watched enough play by plays, you might have noticed it. Some authors will keep turning back to the camera. I learned to tell them, don't look at the camera. Camera's not there. In the theater, we have something called a fourth wall. You don't see the audience. Camera's the audience. They're not there. Just talk to me. And what happens is, usually within a few minutes, it just turns into a conversation. And that's what you're seeing. Good, good. Let me ask you: the play-by-play is your strongest, the person brand, in my opinion. Before that, I'm sure

[19:58] maybe in the ecosystem you're you're already a superstar. A lot of people know you, and you're quite active. But I personally know you from play-by-play. If you didn't have the play-by-play, maybe I don't still don't know who you are today. So. Well, that's interesting. I've I've begun to notice, but you know, for a while there.

[20:23] I was mostly active. I've been an MVP since 2013, and most of my activity before I started recording the play-by-plays in 2017, I would present at Dreamforce or. Deliver for Trailhead Academy in their hands-on training sessions at Dreamforce, which are large, like 200 people in the room. We go through sort of a snippet of our educational content that is produced by. The Trailhead Academy—they used to be called hands-on training, different than hands-on workshops, which is something that would be little ones done in inside the the main developer areas at the at the conferences. And I would write, you know, once upon a time before Trailhead really sort of became the the focus, the Developer Relations Group—it's there's still content there. There's the blog content, but. It was more difficult for them to find deep article articles, so I would write articles, and I helped write a book. I helped edit and write a book called Visualforce in Practice. With the, they used to have an editor in chief before before Trailhead really took off, and the last editor in chief, Michael Floyd, we put together a book for I guess it was 20. I may have been 2015. For Dreamforce 2015, maybe 2014, I'm not sure. I can't remember. But but we we

[21:53] but it was similar. We crowdsourced. They wanted they wanted to put out a book, an intermediate level book on Visualforce, but they had four months to do it. You don't write a book in four months, and they didn't have anybody to do it. So the suggestion I made to to Michael was, well, why don't we crowdsource it? Let's go out into community and find people who've done advanced things in Visualforce and have them each write a chapter. And it worked great, and we were able to pull the book together in about four months. It's still out there as a PDF. You can download it for free. I think you can even find it on Amazon if you want to pay for it, but it's out there. Just search for Visualforce in practice. So anyway, I would write. I would write. I would present. I would be at Dreamforce. I would present at local community when I was traveling for training. I would try to stop in if a training week coordinated in a city that had a developer user group meeting. I would try to arrange to be at that meeting either to present or answer questions. But it doesn't scale very very well. I would tweet, but yeah, what can you do in one hundred and forty, hundred and eighty characters? Yeah. The play by plays have really allowed me to, and again, I'm really not selling me. My my whole objective is. It was a realization. It started with that Visualforce in Practice book. I have a really strong belief that the greatest expertise around the technical expertise around this platform lives in the community. It's in the community, and

[23:23] that's the key.

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