LIU006: Stay Technical While Expanding Your Influence

Kevin

Welcome to Life in Uptime, the podcast where we talk with the people behind the technology that keeps our world connected. I'm Kevin, joined by my co-host Alexis. In every episode, we sit down with engineers, leaders, and builders in tech to uncover the stories behind their careers, how they started, what they've learned, and where they're headed next.

Our goal is simple, to help you see how far tech can take you no matter where you start from.

Alexis

Alrighty, guys. Well, today we're joined by Matt Starling. He is a senior director of product marketing at a company called Ekahau, where he leads their university program, and he's also a CWNE, an ECSE instructor, and the co-founder of the Wi-Fi Ninjas podcast.

You may have seen him online. He does post frequently on LinkedIn. Welcome to the show.

How are you?

Matt

I am very good. Thank you, Alexis and Kevin. And what a pleasure and honor to be on a podcast with my two favorite social media influencers.

Alexis

So fun.

Matt

Yeah, we've had the pleasure of working together for a few years now and doing lots of really cool things together, whether it be coming to some of our events, bumping into each other at events, and you guys doing some amazing posts for us in the past. Sometimes you may have noticed that Alexis does make me do things that I'm probably not too comfortable with.

Kevin

You don't like the dancing? Come on.

Matt

The very first time me and Kevin met, I was then dancing by our booth. And then the last time I saw Alexis, I was having to pop confetti in an office at a specific time, which is more difficult than it seemed, and then had to clean it all up after.

Alexis

Yeah, we keep it interesting around here. I don't know. I'm not apologizing.

I think it's fun.

Matt

Neither am I. I love it. And I've really enjoyed working with you guys over the past couple of years.

So when you said you'd put a podcast together, I was like, damn, it's really going to be my favorite podcast.

Alexis

Matt, you're one of the most passionate people about Wi-Fi I know. So why Wi-Fi? Where did you start in the industry?

How did you pick your niche? I get a lot of questions. When I'm first starting out, should I be a specialist?

Should I be a generalist? It seems kind of strange to just pick a technology out of a hat. So could you tell us what's so special about Wi-Fi?

Matt

Oh, okay. Let me try and unpack that. Why Wi-Fi?

I mean, I just found it super interesting. And it's something that everybody uses. So it doesn't have to be technical people.

You could be speaking to your family members or to colleagues or customers or whoever. Everyone uses Wi-Fi. So it's something that everyone can relate to.

It's a critical part of everybody's lives these days. Everywhere you go, Wi-Fi is almost seen as a utility now. It's expected like water, electricity.

You need to have Wi-Fi. How are you going to connect your devices, work, communicate, keep up to date with Alexis and Kevin on TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn?

Alexis

So you were 18 years old coming out of university and you were like, man, Wi-Fi is just the coolest thing. I want to be a senior director of product marketing at Gehau for the rest of my life.

Matt

Yeah. So I didn't go to university and I was pretty sure once I started working in Wi-Fi, this was going to be the career path for me. I found it super interesting.

And you're probably going to think that I'm saying this because I work at Gehau. It was actually really when I first started to use Gehau products, which is what made me really fall in love with Wi-Fi. Being able to take a problem for a customer that were having issues with their business or connectivity or whatever it was, and solve that problem with the tools and the knowledge that I'd obtained from working in Wi-Fi.

And also seeing something that the satisfaction that I used to get from engaging with a customer, finding out their requirements, turning their requirements into a design that you build in Akahau. You figure out where to put the access points, you build out your simulation, you go on site, you do your survey, you work out if you can put those APs in those locations or if you need to tweak them. And then seeing your design come to life, get deployed.

And then the satisfaction of seeing people actually use the Wi-Fi and how much improvement it makes on their day to day lives. And they can just get on with whatever work they're doing. I've worked in so many different verticals, whether it be typical office spaces.

I did so many hospitals when I was working in professional services. So I think I've probably been, I feel like I've been to like every NHS hospital in the UK and I know it by the back of my hand now, surveying all of the hospitals. But it's really critical Wi-Fi in these environments because the way that the nurses and doctors will communicate, you have a Wi-Fi, they'll be using Wi-Fi enabled phones.

They have patient connected devices that are sending critical information over the Wi-Fi. So the Wi-Fi goes from like a nice to have to a must have to make work. And there's so much like in between that and little finite details and nuances that make Wi-Fi work.

And Kevin, when we was talking about this podcast the other week, he said, you know, you're getting into learning a bit more about Wi-Fi and learning out some of the different weird quirks and rules and things about Wi-Fi. People probably just assume Wi-Fi is such an easy, simple thing to get working. I take my phone out, I connect it to my Wi-Fi at home or my Wi-Fi in the office.

And, you know, most of the time it just works. When you dive deeper into the different calculations that you can do, the different modulations, signal processing, all the other bits and pieces, you're like, wow, this is how Wi-Fi really works. And I just found it really interesting.

Kevin

What I find interesting is that it's really, really complicated. It can get like you can get down to turning every little dial and power and like it gets really. But at the same time, you could just throw an AP up in the middle of a room and be like, OK, everyone's got Wi-Fi, we're good to go.

How do you how do you navigate that where Wi-Fi is such an easy thing to deploy? Anyone can do it. You get an ISP, your ISP gives you a router, you plug it into your living room next to your TV, and now your whole house has Wi-Fi.

It might be crappy, it might not be perfect, but it works. How do you like make that transition between, no, it's working is not just good enough. You need to actually have good Wi-Fi.

How do you convince people that they have to have that?

Matt

Yeah, I mean, I think you said it there, pretty much most people, they can buy an access point or Wi-Fi ISP router you get at home, plug it in and make it work. On a small scale, it's quite easy and simple to do. But when you ramp that up to when you need four or five access points, then turn that into tens of access points or hundreds of access points or thousands of access points, then getting it to work well is very difficult.

And I think probably everybody that is listening to this podcast at some point in your life has experienced going somewhere where the Wi-Fi has not worked. And then the knock on implications that then has to the rest of your day, whether you can't join calls, whether you can't communicate with family or loved ones, whether you can't check things that you need to do, it has a real knock on effect to your day to day life. So being able to manage large, even like mid to large size Wi-Fi networks and keep them, not just design and deploy them and make them work well initially, but keeping them working throughout their lifespan over the four, five, six, seven years that you are having those access points until you upgrade again is really, really important.

So having the knowledge really helps, but also having access to the tools that's going to help you understand this, because Wi-Fi isn't something that we can see, smell or sense with our human, uh, tools. You can. We need to rely on tools like our, like our hardware device, the Echo House IQ2 that can scan and measure everything in Wi-Fi and then show you your heat map, show you the way that your network's configured, show if you have any interferers that are out there causing you problems on your network, and then leverage that to be able to design and maintain a great Wi-Fi network.

Alexis

So Matt, I want to back up just a little bit, because I think we glossed over it. You said you didn't go to university, but you still got into technology. How did, was that then a pivot out of high school, high school Matt, or what do you, do you call it?

You call it high school in the UK?

Matt

We, um, secondary. I don't know how we align terminology for what you call different times in life at school in the US to the UK, but in the UK, how we would refer to it is that if the first school you go to, very, very first school when you're a tiny baby is that you go to that nursery and that's when you were very, very young. And you go from nursery to primary school, which is probably from like four to, I don't know, like 11, 12.

I want to say maybe like 10, been a while since I was there. So I don't know. I don't have any kids.

So I don't know the ages that you're supposed to be there. Then you go from primary school to secondary school and you're there until 15, 16. Then you can go to college for a year or two.

And then you go from college to university.

Alexis

Oh, so college and university are separate.

Matt

Yeah. Well, the how we, yeah. Yeah.

So how we refer to it in the UK might be slightly different to how other parts of the world are referring to this here. But, you know, I went to nursery, primary school, secondary school, and then after secondary school, I decided that I wanted to go and start working. So my very first job was not in tech.

I started working in, I think my very first proper job was working in like a juice bar. So you wanted a nice smoothie, you wanted a nice, I don't know, protein shake or something. I used to work and, you know, put all that together.

And then I did those kinds of jobs for a little while. And I did some other bits and pieces. And then eventually I got a job.

Um, I went on a training course that would teach you about technology, but the kind of like intro basics about how networking worked. And then from that, they would then recruit you into some of the companies that they had on their kind of like database, where if you pass them their training and from there, I went in and become like a field service technician for a couple of years. So I used to drive around to some, what kind of stores would you have?

So I don't know, like a Walmart, for example, in the US would have those handheld scanners that would scan inventory and then send it to a printer to print a label and things like that. So, and, uh, and tills were the point of sale tills. So I used to drive around and fix a lot of these kinds of devices all around the UK for a couple of years.

And then the position came up for basically one of the largest ISPs in the UK, or telcos, however you want to refer to it. They're called, uh, they were called Sky. So they provide a TV and internet for, I don't know how many households in the UK.

A job came available to go and work for them in the support team because they had. I could dedicate a branch called the cloud at the time that was putting in a wifi solutions for high street coffee shops and other places like that. And they needed people in the support team to go in, provide support for the different venues across the UK.

And that was my very first role in wifi. And at the time, uh, I knew very little about wifi to the point where I tell, tell this story to some people that I'm a little bit embarrassed. But when I was like going through the process of learning and wifi, I had a few people in the team that was a little bit more experienced than me.

And I remember overhearing the conversation that a more senior member in the team had with a customer and the way that they was able to fix the issue that they were having on site with the wifi was that they changed the channel that the access point was using. So the customer was having some problems. They called up, spoke to someone, the guy sitting next to me in the support team changed the channel of the access point he was using.

And then the issues went away. I was like, Oh, I was like, I'm going to remember that one. That's a good one.

Just change the channel. Yeah. And then Alexis calls me up and I speak to Alexis on the phone and Alexis is like, Oh Matt, I'm in the coffee shop.

The wifi is not working. I said, don't worry, Alexis. I got you.

I'm going to change your channel. And at this time I was, it was, uh, access points going back a little while ago now where predominantly 2.4 is a little bit more popular than five gigahertz. I changed the channel of the access point on 2.4 from channel one, the channel two. And I went, there you go, Alexis. That's going to solve all your problems.

Kevin

Here's your overlapping channel.

Matt

And, uh, funny enough, like a few minutes later, Alexis calls me back up and goes, Oh Matt, wifi has got worse. What have you done? I said, Oh, every channel two is a little bit busy.

Let me, uh, change it from channel two to channel three. And I'll fix everything. Little did I know that I was actually causing worse interference than just co-channel interference and creating a JSON channel interference on 2.4 gigahertz. I had very limited knowledge when it came to wifi. And over time I, um, went from, went through some different trainings and learned a little bit more about wifi and gained some more skills. And I then learned that, you know, doing that on 2.4 gigahertz probably wasn't a good idea.

Alexis

So for someone who it's funny, I was just talking to someone yesterday. Um, I was renting a car and we ended up talking about what I do for work and the podcast and all the other stuff. But for someone who maybe isn't in technology yet, that first field service job that you got, do you think that's a good jumping off point?

Matt

It definitely, it definitely helped me. And I, um, I very much liked going in and around to different places and seeing and meeting like different people and working in the field. Um, but it was quite, I'm not supposed to say like a lonely job, but it wasn't really something that, because I was typically on my own, it wasn't really something that I could get to a level.

And then it wasn't really that much of an opportunity to then learn more because you didn't really have someone that you could shadow or learn from or ask, you know, you know, just like someone in, like, I didn't have the same situation where I could overhear someone helping fix a problem and ask them to find out more information about that. Cause I was on my own. It did give me some, some good skills for sure.

But I definitely found, you know, working as part of a team and having some, some mentors and having people that you could bounce and ask things to them to get their opinion on and share their experience with you really helped me. So I definitely found that being in that, I would say that the pivotal point really was going into that, that support career, cutting my teeth in support for, I think I did it for probably around three, four years before I then moved from the support team to a wifi engineer where I was actually going out, surveying, designing, installing the wifi networks for the company I was working for at the time.

Alexis

We get a lot of questions of what certification should I take? Can I take my CCNA? If I get my, if I get this cert, then can I do this job?

And sometimes just getting into the industry point blank, right? Can you work with technology in any capacity as your first role and then grow from there? I guess that's the reason that I'm asking, because I feel like sometimes the certifications are great for base knowledge, but just getting a little bit of hands-on experience like you had and kind of figuring out what you like.

Matt

Yeah, for sure. I mean, sometimes it's a little bit of a chicken and egg situation. Like, do I try and get the knowledge first?

So I try and go for a job that I can then obtain the experience. Ultimately you want to have both because that's where you're going to really learn. If you have one without the other, it's probably going to, you're probably going to find it very difficult to grow.

And I was lucky because the company that I worked for, they were willing to put me on some training. So you mentioned like Cisco CCNA, uh, the, I did that training for getting like good generalist knowledge around networking. I found that to be pretty helpful because wifi access points, they have to connect to cables that go to switches that go through firewalls and yada, yada, yada.

So having like a basic understanding of how all of that works is really important. And then there was two other training courses that really helped me. And that was the ECSC design training course, where it was not only just great theoretical stuff that you learn, but really practical hands-on ways to use EchoHow in real world solutions was really beneficial to me.

And then I took the CWNA training from CWNP, which is vendor agnostic, how wifi works. And I think Kevin, you mentioned you've been reading some of that book recently.

Kevin

It's really nice. It's, it's a really awesome certification because same with EchoHow really, that's something I've told you guys before. I appreciate in this, this episode is not sponsored, but I do have to puff up EchoHow a little bit because they do a really good job of staying vendor neutral, talking about the technology itself and how wifi works.

And they don't commit to, you know, this way with the vendors, the right way versus ways, the better way. They're just very vendor agnostic and all of their webinars and trainings are, are fabulous.

Alexis

I think one of, I think one of the coolest things about, uh, AI pro is you can put your, your whole wifi design up and then just switch the APs to different vendors. It's like one button and you just go through and click them all to see what the difference is. I thought that was pretty cool.

Kevin

It was very cool.

Matt

One of the nicest things is working for EchoHow is that we really listen to the feedback we get from our users and the community. And one of the like biggest pain points that some of our users were telling us is that a question that, and I would come across this all the time as well, is going into a conversation with a customer and the customer would be like, Oh, my wifi is so bad. I use vendor X, vendor Y have come in and told me if I just swap out all my access points to the new vendor, all my problems are going to go away.

And that's not necessarily true. So, um, having a tool that can show you, you know, swap, swapping out all your access points from one vendor to another one. If you have problems, if you had a bad design with problems with coverage and roaming paths and interference and et cetera, et cetera, just swapping out to a different vendor access points, it might fix some of the issues going to a newer technology and make some slight improvements.

But the foundational fundamentals of why you're having problems with wifi are still going to be there. So the fact that you can just show that in a nice visual way to people and they can then understand the story a bit more and then know, Oh, you know what? Maybe I should take a step back using my actual requirements, design it properly in the first place, make sure it's configured optimally.

And then it stays optimal. It's kind of like getting a car and keeping your car MOT and service. Like once you've got a car and you're driving it for a long time, things start to, you know, get some wear and tear, some changes happen and you want to fix it and then make sure it's going to be able to be nicely driven on the roads for a long period of time.

Alexis

So I'm, I'm curious talking, talking about vendor technologies. I've seen a lot lately come out around AI channel planning and AI wifi design. And I feel like, especially in the wireless space around, uh, channel planning, channel interference, um, all of those things, there's been a lot of talk from certain vendors about almost like a self-healing wifi design.

It'll optimize, self-optimize. How do you feel about that, Matt?

Matt

I feel great about it. I think the more that the vendors can integrate AI and channel planning to be dynamic, to avoid things in the environment. And what I mean by that is that you might design an office.

You might get called it. Kevin might call me up and say, Hey Matt, I need you to come and do my office wifi for me. But Kevin may only occupy floors seven and eight out of a 50 story building.

And if you go in and put the APs on the floor seven and eight and configure the channels in a way that they don't overlap or interfere with each other. However, in like a 50 story building and you've got, you know, 48 of the floors that have all of their own wifi, there's a strong chance that's going to bleed through and come into your space for wifi is as well. And depending on how these other networks are configured, they're going to be changing their channels.

Sometimes, sometimes they change once a day. Sometimes they could change 10 times a day. So what you do really want in a, in an environment like that is a vendor's algorithms be smart enough to understand when there is a lot of.

Co-channel interference, other interference out there happening on the channels that you're working on to try and like scan and find like non-busy or best busy channels to make the connection as good for the client devices as possible. I don't get me wrong. There may be some specific scenarios where you may want to go with a fixed static channel plan where you've got, maybe it's a very large public venue and there isn't that much outside, uh, wifi around you.

And you know that if you go with these specific channels in these specific locations, it's going to minimize the amount of interference. And you don't want anything to come in and tweak and change that. It could even be in a warehouse environment where you want to use specific channels and you've done your design, you've done your validation, you know, that's not going to cause any problems and there's no other wifi networks around you that should be causing you any kind of issues.

So the smarter the systems get to avoid this, they make the connectivity better for the client devices. Ultimately is, is better for everybody.

Kevin

Do you, do you feel like you're. So with echo, how, and a lot of these vendors, how AI is really, you can just upload the map, hit a button and your APS just populate and everything's done. Do you feel like AI is going to be taking people's wifi jobs?

I get, do you feel like it's going to be so easy that you don't, you don't need a wifi engineer. You don't need to know RF. You don't need to know all these minute details.

You can just upload the map and boom, you're good to go.

Matt

So from my personal perspective, I would say, no, the way that we're using AI in our platform and tools is to speed up the workflow for our users. So what you said there about just uploading a floor plan and then being able to see the access point populated on a map, there's a whole bunch of steps that need to happen before that to show you the heat maps accurately, like scaling your floor plan, drawing all of the walls of your floor plan, drawing in your areas, et cetera, et cetera. So the way that we're using AI is to try and leverage that power to make what would take our users a really long time, manual work to do, to speed it up so you can get to the fun part, like designing where the access points are supposed to go and we get users at Ekahau that could be anyone that has never designed a wifi network before, their very first wifi project, just starting off in wifi to complete experts that have been doing it from Twitter for the last 20 years. And anything and everything in between.

So we do have a AI auto planner that can, once you pick the vendor, the access point you want to use and the specific types of antennas, we can place them on the map for you, or we can make suggested locations on where to put them. Ultimately, the person doing a design should always check to make sure, can I actually put these APs in the place? Have I got the materials accurate?

So you should still always go on site, validate, measure, look around at your ceilings, see if you can put the AP or antenna there and then come back and update the design, what way that we're using AI is to speed up the workflows and help users maybe like with a starting point, maybe sometimes what I call it, like writer's block. When you're looking at a blank page and you think, Oh, what, how do I have started this very first podcast? Like what do is the open, right?

If you have, if you have like an AI that can, you know, just put something down on a page for you, even if it's just a few APs in a few locations, you go, okay, some of these make sense, but you know what, maybe I need to move this here or add one there or move this over here. And it's a nice way to kind of like get you started. And, um, you know, even if it's helping you with calculating things like capacity to make sure that you are going to have enough radios in your access point to support the amount of devices you're going to have in your environment, then you tweak the locations based on that.

Kevin

Okay. So our jobs are still safe, you're saying?

Matt

I think so, but, um, yes, uh, time will tell.

Alexis

And all of that to someone, I'm, I'm, I was just thinking like, man, if I knew nothing about wifi, nothing, I wasn't technical at all. And I was listening to this episode. I'd be like, whoa, that's a lot.

That's a lot. There's a lot there. How long have you been working in the industry and how long did it take you to feel like you knew what you were doing?

Right. There's always a certain level of ramp up from beginner to even just understanding the jargon, right? I've been in situations.

Um, I remember it's funny. I was about to, uh, record this video for TikTok, but it was when I learned what a colo was. So I took my CCNP.

I was a CCNP. I knew what a data center was. I'd done data center training at Cisco and I walked into a customer meeting with my AM and they're talking about Equinix this and you know, whatever, DC, DC three.

And, and I'm like, man, why, what are you talking about? And Brian's like, oh, Equinix is just a colo. And I'm like, what's a colo?

Don't talk about colos in your CCNP. They talk about data centers. They don't talk about like the data center industry or the fact like there's 15 different levels you can like buy, rent and use data center space from all the way from like a colo to the cloud.

There's so many different ways you can run a server. Right. And I had no idea.

And so I feel like if you're brand new, even just becoming familiar with some of the terms that people are using is really intimidating. And I was just thinking about like, we're throwing out a lot of terminology here, everything from channels to interference to, you know, antenna design and all that stuff. How long did it take you to feel like you really had a grasp on what was going on?

Matt

So I feel like Alexis is always trying to age me. Last time we spoke from the phone, she was like, your hair's got more salty than it is peppery for me. And I was like, wow, okay.

So how long have I been working in the industry? Now I would say that properly, properly in the industry since like 2010, I would say is that when I was really, really, really focused on wifi and then it ramped up a lot when I left working for that ISP Sky that I was talking about. And I went to a, a Cisco gold partner based in London.

And I was, I went from being like one of few people in the team doing the wifi. And then I moved from there being the main person doing the wifi. And I was, like I said, I was going around all of the, the big hospitals and stuff like that.

So I had to take, you know, push myself outside my comfort zone, go into this role. And I was there for a couple of years and then I moved to another Cisco gold partner based in, in central London. And that's where I met Mac.

Uh, actually he, um, yeah, yeah. So, um, that's where I met Mac and he was just as excited and passionate about wifi as what I was. And then when we joined that company together, we, um, we really pushed each other on to go and get to the highest level of certification that we could in the wireless industry.

So CWNE is the top level expert on that you can get from CWNP and we, we pushed each other along to go and get those certifications. So one of the, one of the things to get become like a CWNE level, it was, you had to have some form of publication. So we had to be talking publicly about wifi.

And I still remember that there's still a video out there to the day, our very first video that we ever made. And it is so bad. We're going to link it.

Alexis

We're going to link it in the comments.

Matt

Absolutely. Not swearing now here anyway, it's out there on YouTube still with like 21 views. So I'm glad that not many people have seen it yet.

We were so nervous. And I was, I remember watching it back and I was, I was like swaying side to side and I was terrible in front of the, in front of the camera. But from that, it really kind of pushed us on.

And that's why we started the podcast that we did all those years ago. The Wifi Ninjas podcast is so we, it would force us to really learn more about the technology we're talking about. Because if you're talking about technology and trying to educate people online, you can't be wrong about what you're talking about.

You don't want to get that. I feel personally responsible. I didn't want to give out any misinformation.

I didn't want to, I didn't want to tell people, Oh yeah, go and change your 2.4 channel from channel one to channel two. You know, I wanted to make sure the information we was giving out was accurate. So pushing yourself, I would say sometimes you did learn and grow more.

You have to push yourselves outside of your comfort zone. And there's a few, there's a few pivotal moments in my career. I look back on where I did that.

I'm putting yourself out there in front of all of these people for the podcast. We didn't actually think anyone was going to really listen to it. We thought it was just going to be like a checkbox for the application for the, for it.

And then we started getting invited to speak at different conferences, different events. So we spent a lot of time researching, studying, and really getting to like home in on our kind of like craft and learn about the industry and the things that we'd want to speak about. And then we would then talk about it publicly, which if you're going to be doing that, you want to make sure the stuff that you're talking about is accurate.

So that is probably when I, I would say that I felt the most like going from, Oh, yeah, I know a little bit about wifi and I feel pretty confident about it doing all of these like projects and stuff like that. But when I was really putting myself out there publicly to talk about it and I got to the, the level of CW and E that is probably where I felt the most comfortable talking about wifi and sharing it with other people.

Kevin

That's just a testament to like, we, we talk about all the time where if you want to teach something or if you want to learn something, the best way of doing is teaching it because that is the one surefire way of making sure that you will make sure that every, you know, T is crossed and dot is period. What's that saying? I don't know.

Alexis

I don't know. The dots period. T's crossed and I's dotted.

Matt

Put your T's in your eyes.

Kevin

Hold on, I need more caffeine. Hold on. But you know what I mean?

Like it's, it's, we, we, Alexis and I talk about it all the time where a lot of the videos that I make will be from things that I'm still learning and I'm just wanting to like, I learned the topic and then I will put it in my own words and my own way of thinking and put it out there. And it's the best way of, of learning something.

Matt

You guys do a fantastic job. I see so many people when I'm in and around other places, I've been walking somewhere and then someone would get out their phone. I'd be like, Oh, that's Kevin.

I'd be like, Oh, I'm like, Oh, okay. Um, but people see that we've done a few things together in the past. They love to come up to me and talk about to you guys as well.

So kudos to the great job that you guys are doing as well.

Alexis

So I did want to, uh, talk about Matt. Seems like you've gone to the dark side a little bit. You had all this operations experience.

You were a very hands-on engineer and now you're working in marketing. How did that happen?

Matt

That's a, that's a good question. So my, my usual response to that is I tell people, I kind of like tripped, fell, and then now I've landed in marketing somehow.

Alexis

You woke up five years later and you were like, Oh my God. What happened?

Matt

I'll be completely transparent. It was never a part of that, the plan. Um, it was just something that kind of naturally happened, which I feel is a real like nice, it's kind of a nice thing.

It's quite organic how it all materialized. So back when we was working at the professional services company, we started the podcast, um, we was presenting at different wifi conferences around the world, it was hosting events and stuff. And then we actually started teaching ECSC classes.

We, we, we became ECSC instructors. So we were still working for that company before we was doing professional services work, we're doing the podcast, we were teaching classes and then going to different events, talking about wifi. And probably like the kind of like perfect storm happened at Eckerhau and there was an opportunity where they wanted us to come on board to work at Eckerhau full time.

So we, uh, made a decision to transition from being professional service engineers and instructors to coming on board as a doing product marketing and then looking after the ECSC and the training program over here at Eckerhau. And it's been a great journey ever since then, really, I feel very, uh, lucky to be in the position that I am to talk about. Uh, wifi to so many people.

I, I still kind of feel like I am that wifi techie nerd. That's just about wifi and love Eckerhau tools. And that's just what I do really.

I just, uh, come here, look pretty and talk about Eckerhau.

Kevin

Did you know anything about marketing ahead of time? Or like, or did you have to do a crash course of like marketing one-on-one for dummies or something?

Alexis

I feel like a lot of people don't know what product marketing is.

Matt

I'll be, I'll be honest. I still don't know anything about marketing. I, um, I, uh, I just, I just talk about Eckerhau and wifi is how I am.

I look at this and if I, uh, if you ask my wife who went to university, studied marketing, has a degree in marketing and has worked in marketing her whole career. And now somehow we both work in marketing. It doesn't feel like it's kind of, I don't, I don't know a little bit.

Kevin

Yeah.

Matt

You get the, yeah, I'm not, I'm not too sure really how, how it will happen, but it did somehow, but no, for me. I don't, I don't even, I don't really necessarily, I probably just don't even really think about it from, from my perspective. I I'm very passionate about wifi and I love using Eckerhau and now I get to speak with our product team on the daily basis, talking about ways to improve our products, the real ways that our users are actually using our tools and applications and ways to make it better and more efficient for people and also get to work with them on new things that are coming out.

So, um, people might've heard recently as well, that Eckerhau is actually a part of Ookla and Ookla announced just recently their speed test certified a program that is going to be launching very soon. So I've been fortunate enough to be a part of that conversation from where it's pretty much just like an idea on a whiteboard, uh, months and months and months, months, months to coming out is when it got announced a couple of weeks ago. So I feel very fortunate to be able to be, you know, having those kinds of conversations and speaking and working with the team to kind of launch these new things as well, which is very, uh, very exciting.

Kevin

Yeah. It sounds almost like you're a tech, uh, a wifi Eckerhau, evangelical, evangelist.

Alexis

My God, I still can't say the word evangelicalist, evangelist.

Kevin

So yeah, I did it.

Alexis

Thank you, Kevin.

Matt

I would, I would say I am an evangelicalist for sure. Yeah. Uh, no, definitely.

I feel probably more of an evangelist than, than officially working in marketing, because like I said, I, I still make sure I stay hands-on with the tools. Every time I get the opportunity, I'm taking Eckerhau with me. I'm doing surveys.

I'm still working on, you know, like designs and projects and things like that. So I keep myself sharp, you know, like every time we go to one of our offices, I was just in New York recently. I was taking, taking the stuff there and doing, uh, surveys and analysis and working with the team.

And we do case studies with, you know, different types of verticals. So I still get to be hands-on and keep myself technical. And there's so many.

One of the questions you asked earlier, Alexis, is that how do people that maybe that just getting into this, into wifi or into technology, like where do they stop? There's so many free, so much free content out there now you can join. There's so many webinars.

There's usually a lot of like low cost events that you can attend. You can find videos on YouTube. There's like dedicated training stuff that you can go and find.

Even some, some places will have like some portion of it that is free. I think that's such a great resource to be able to get yourself started and kind of like learn about the features or something that doesn't have to be wifi. And because I know everyone, I know there's gonna be a big portion of the people listening to this that are not really excited about wifi as what I am.

They might be a cybersecurity that really gets you interested or excited, or it could be the wired side of things. You really enjoy the routing and switching side of things. I think the main thing is finding something that you find interesting and you're passionate about, because I'm not gonna BS you or anything.

If you want to learn about technology and, and really home in on your craft and. Uh, find out more about how it really works. You're going to have to give up so much of your spare time, especially I did anyway, like early, you're probably going to have a nine to five job, but you might not even be in, you may be in tech at this point.

You may not be, but on your way to work, you might have to be listening to technical podcasts in the evenings. You might have to be doing some labs or watching some videos. You might have to give up some of your time on the weekends to learn about these things because technology, uh, you don't just learn it and you know it.

Even me now, I'm still learning constantly. The technology is always evolving and there's new things coming out and you've got to constantly stay on top of what the technology or whatever it is that you're, uh, interested in, whether it be wifi security, routing, switching data center, uh, you have to constantly be keeping up to date with what is going on. So you are going to have to put in the time.

Probably give up some of your own personal time to find out about these things in more detail.

Kevin

Matt, I have a personal question for you. Um, my personal, I mean, like, I personally want to want to know the answer, your, your opinion on this. Not like I'm going to dig into your trauma or something.

Um, that sounded like a weird tier to you. Uh, so wifi seven is the newest rage, right? Do you, do you feel like it's mostly marketing or do you feel like it's actually going to change the game where it's going to improve wifi that much?

Matt

Hmm. No, good. That's a, that's a really good question.

I think that the game changer in wifi in more recent years is getting access to the six gigahertz frequency band. So for the longest time, we only had access to 2.4 and five gigahertz, 2.4, very small amount of spectrum. We can use congested lots of other things work there.

Five gigahertz became the go-to de facto for corporate connectivity. However, again, limited availability there now. And with so many wifi devices out there that was even getting congested.

So the jump to now being able to support six gigahertz frequency band with our wifi client devices, that is the biggest game changer in most recent times for me. Wifi seven is going to be a great thing to drive. It's optional six gigahertz as well.

And there are some really nice features that come with wifi seven that wouldn't be available to you with previous generations that you can, in theory, if you have a wifi seven client device connected to a wifi seven access point, what you can actually have happen automatically is if the device is supported, if you're connected on, let's say the five gigahertz frequency band, and that starts to get a bit congested, they can steer you over to the six gigahertz, or you can combine five and six gigahertz to transfer data. So that isn't something that we've ever had to be able to have access to before in the past. The other really interesting thing about wifi seven, I think it's something called spectrum puncturing.

So if you've got, let's say you're using a wide channel on wide wifi seven channel, and if there, and there's a, let's say that part of their channel starts to detect a little bit of interference with wifi seven, the communication can then just actually avoid that chunk of interference and then continue the communication. Whereas with previous generations of wifi, as soon as there was like a detection of interference, the devices would have to back off and stop talking or find another way to transmit on a different, different channel. So there are definitely improvements that wifi seven brings to us compared to that previous generations.

But to answer your question, like what is the biggest game changer for me personally, more recent times is definitely access to the six gigahertz frequency band.

Kevin

Yeah. That makes sense. Especially with the congestion that we currently have in offices and apartments and everything else.

Like I just, even in my own neighborhood, I live in the suburbs and I get wifi from five houses down that's interfering. So definitely I could see that.

Matt

Yeah. Well, you've got, you've got a house psychic, so you can see what's going on.

Kevin

I've already, I've started tracking downs. I'm like, I want to go to my neighbor's house five times down and be like, Hey, can you turn down your power a little bit? I'm getting this much reading from me, like showing them the graph and everything, but I haven't, I haven't done it yet.

I'm not thinking about it.

Alexis

It's like, do you know, do you know who I am? What I have.

Matt

The power of pizza becomes very popular. You sign up with a, uh, some pizza and say, Hey, you know, if you, if you want to have a better experience on wifi, we need to, we need to communicate better. Maybe you stop using such wide channels and we use over here and use over there.

And then you can fire a pizza and figure out what's best for both of you. I'll I guarantee you.

Alexis

Who are you? Are you trying to hack me? What is that thing?

I don't understand what those numbers mean.

Kevin

Go away. Strange. The words you're saying don't make sense to me.

Um, I'm just going to close the door now. So Matt, you mentioned earlier that you had a partner in crime that was pushing you towards the certifications and making you dig deeper into technology. Now that you're the senior director of echo, how you're this big wig, how does community play a role in your current role?

Matt

So, um, yeah, well, I guess you two can kind of relate to having someone to push you on and egg you guys on a bit because you two seem to balance each other really well. So having that person that will push you is, is, is fantastic, but not everybody will be as lucky to maybe have that kind of situation scenario. And what also really helped me, even before I met Mac and stuff like that, um, echo, how would hope on these things in person in the UK called wifi design day.

And it exists. You have to use that last year, uh, this year in London. And, uh, it's, it's an event where it's dedicated just for wifi.

You get however many hundreds of passionate, enthusiastic wifi people in the room. It's a great way to meet new people that are interested in the same thing as you are. Sometimes it's very difficult to pop out to your local pub or club or whatever.

And then you want to talk to people about interference or FDMA and other wifi technology stuff, and they're like, who is this guy? And why are you not talking to me about football or other things? Being able to, to meet up with like-minded peers who are just as passionate or excited as you are about the same thing is really helpful because then you get these connections and there's people that I can remember that I met at the very first echo how wifi design day that I still speak to near enough on a daily basis.

So they weren't just people that I just met and then never spoke to again. The people that I actually classed as like good friends now. So I've kind of like grown with these people too.

And echo how I think personally does a really good job of engaging with the community. So we do webinars biweekly. We do virtual events or wifi day and we do in-person events like wifi design day.

We also have a public slack channel, which I think has 1500 people in there now. So Kevin, Alexis, I know you've been on our webinars before. The chat can get a little bit crazy sometimes.

There's a lot of when, when someone's talking about a point and that kind of really hits the spot, then the chat just goes and you're like, Oh, I think sometimes I think people join the webinar just to interact with the chat instead of actually watching the webinar.

Alexis

I'm not going to lie.

Matt

I, um, I don't disagree with you. I think it, I think what the, um, the webinars it become was a, um, a really nice place for people, the people in the community to just hang out virtually together because sometimes you'll see people at a big industry event, maybe once a year, let's say in America, for example, you might go to Vegas or one of those kinds of places and see people from all around the world, but then trying to stay in touch with them outside of that can be a little bit difficult. So what the webinars and the events that we put on enables people to do is be able to come to the event. They can, yeah, they can learn some stuff, but yeah, they want to hang out with their peers.

They want to, they want to chat. They want to, uh, find out what's going on and the latest and greatest. And just, uh, you know, like I get to hang out, have a good time and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

And we love the, um, engagement in the chat and we have the chat for people just to talk amongst themselves, but we also have like a dedicated Q and A. So if there is specific questions, people want to know about what we're presenting about or one of our amazing guests are talking about, then we can make sure we get to that and answer them as well.

Alexis

I think what's really cool. I mean, even as I've been traveling, I've been traveling frequently, um, but having a community or going to a NOG or something in a local area where you can actually meet people. And it's not that you're just only going to meet people in that area.

Um, you meet people from all over the world. And as I've been going to different events and, um, NOGs and groups and things, you kind of start to see the same people over and over again, even if you're in different countries, which is really cool. Um, because like you said, it, it makes you feel like you, like you have friends.

Yeah. They're in the industry and you can talk about, I don't know, technical things instead of like you said, football.

Matt

But you guys have put on your own meetup and events and stuff before as well. Right. So you probably have the same kind of fitting from the community that you guys have built up.

And Kevin, you have your own discord now as well, right?

Kevin

Yep. Yep. And it's, it's cool having, I don't know, like you said, like, I don't have anyone in my life, my personal life that talks technology.

Like I try to talk to my wife about it and you can see like the eyes going back of the head and just everything glazes over, you know, when the closest I have is my son.

Alexis

Smile and nod boys.

Kevin

Yeah, exactly. My son will try a little bit, but in general, my friends aren't techie and my wife's not techie. So having a place where you can like share your passion with people is amazing.

And it re like reignites that fire. Um, you're like, oh, I can share my passion and someone else's passion and that just recharges your battery. So having a community, having someone like actually getting you is, is priceless.

Alexis

You can say, oh my God, did you see that the new iPhone supports wifi seven and someone knows what it means. And they're not just worried about the camera. I know Matt, I saw your tech talk this morning.

Alexis

That's why I brought it up.

Matt

Genuinely, my mom messaged me, um, responded to that. I put it on my Instagram story as well. She's like, oh, wow.

That looks really cool. I think about upgrading, like, why did you, why did you get it? And I just responded, oh, wifi seven.

And she was like, what is that? And I was like, yeah, mom. That's the reason why I upgraded to the, to the latest iPhone.

That's, that's the biggest benefit for me. Uh, or how it has a nicer camera, Matt. Yeah.

Then I saw, then I sent her a selfie and I was like, look how good I look on this camera. And she was like, oh gosh, I need to get it then.

Kevin

Um, that's my baby.

Matt

Um, one of the things I was thinking about when you was talking then some, sometimes I would get asked about, uh, public, like, how did I go from when I did that very first video with Mac public speaking or video talking on camera, because it can feel very unnatural for people or speaking in front of an audience of 10 people or a hundred people or thousands of people, especially technically can be very daunting.

And one of the ways that I used to practice is I would sometimes present my present, my wifi technical presentations to my wife and she would, she would very kindly listen to them and give me some feedback on some ways to improve my presenting skills. But, um, she's also a wifi expert. Now, the amount of times I've presented, anyone needs some help with that, you can ask her, I'm sure.

But no, um, I definitely think practice makes kind of like perfect and getting more comfortable and confident with things. I would even just record myself sometimes and try and not forget it was there. And then I watched myself back and then.

I didn't really like how I said this, or I didn't like that I was doing that. And then try and cut that out of my presentations. So if anyone does want to start talking about whatever topic or subject that they're passionate about, I would highly recommend, even if they just do it to themselves in a mirror or record themselves with their phone, or if they have got a friend, partner, loved one that they can practice in front of, it will really make a difference to where you then go and do it in front of a bunch of other people. I don't know if, uh, you guys have gone through similar things because Alexis, I know that you've spoken recently a few times with some big events. What did, uh, what did you do to get comfortable with presenting in front of X amount of people?

Alexis

I think, well, number one, speaking live is still very intimidating for me. I just want to put that out there. I'm not the world's best public speaker.

Um, and I think that recording videos makes you a better speaker or a better presenter because it gives you that feedback loop where you're able to see, oh, I should cut out that filler. Weird. That thing I did with my hands is weird.

Maybe I shouldn't make that facial expression, right? Like there's all sorts of things that you pick up on when you're watching yourself back. And I think that's a great feedback loop, but making the jump from presenting on a Zoom or recording a video in your bedroom by yourself or even doing something like this to actually speaking in public in front of people is still very different.

I think, um, the keynote that I gave at Apricot back in February was my first time presenting live since Cisco live. And it was this huge stage. I mean, like it had to be, I don't know, maybe 50 meters long.

I'm just, I ran track. So that's like in high school.

Kevin

That's the only distance I had. So I don't know.

Alexis

You never saw like a hundred meters stretch on a track like a football game. Anyways. So like, it was, it was, it was a big stage.

And in my head I was like, oh, I'll like do a little walk around where speakers kind of like stroll to one side and they pivot and then they walk to the other and then they go to the middle. And I got there when I tell you I was anchored. It was like my feet were glued to the floor and I made motions with my hands, which was nice.

But my entire game plan gone. Same thing at Wi-Fi day. It was like, wow, there's this stage.

I shouldn't use it anchored to one spot. I did not move. So I forget the original question.

I think we were talking about how to become better. I think it's, it's really just practice acceptance that you were going to suck the first few times and pushing through it.

Matt

Well, Alexis, you definitely didn't suck. So people loved your present presentation at Wi-Fi.

Alexis

It was the content. It was the content. I could have, I could have been a terrible speaker and the content was good and they still would have liked it.

Matt

I don't believe that for a second.

Kevin

I guess it's kind of the part of the nice thing about being in tech is that a lot of the people, you know, we're all kind of anti people. Like you get into tech, not because you love talking to people, but because you love the technology itself. So that's the part we care about is the, the actual, the tech, you know, you can be a terrible speaker, like, like in your head, you're doing terrible.

But as long as your content's good, like the technology, that's the part we actually care about. That's the part we all, we're all there for, you know, so it, you're always going to be harder on yourself than other people who just, who just like you in general and just want to hear you talk about the stuff they're, they're passionate about.

Alexis

Yeah, for sure. I'm curious, Matt, and this is just me spitballing and brainstorming live. Um, I wonder if there's, we could start like a, what do they call it?

Um, Toastmasters, but for people that, but for engineers, like we should start like a segment of Toastmasters where it's only for other engineers who need to practice giving technical presentations. And then it could be cool because you could join and learn different things, but also get better at public speaking.

Matt

So with all transparency, I have no idea what Toastmasters is, but from the web, I kind of got what you kind of meant by that. And, uh, yeah, that'd be really cool. I actually have helped quite a lot of people in the, like people have reached out to me to ask if I would review their presentations or, um, if I would help them with presenting and stuff like that.

And I always more than happy to help if I have the time. So I've actually worked with quite a lot of people on some of the things that they've done and other bits and pieces like that. So it's nice to, it's nice to then see when people ask for that, reach out, ask for that kind of help, and then you give them some advice, then they actually go and do it is a really nice kind of, like you said, and that's still a feedback loop and stuff like that.

So I mean, that's a really nice idea.

Alexis

Kevin, maybe we start that in your public discord. I guess we'll actually have to join it now. I don't have discord downloaded on my computer.

I've been resisting.

Kevin

What's been kind of cool is that on the discord, we have a CCNA study group. And so, um, we have different people present on different topics. So like if you, if you really know spanning tree or something like that, then you present on a, on a study night, what you know about spanning tree and help people.

So it kind of gives you that low pressure intro into, into speaking in front of other people or virtually speaking in front of other people. Um, so shout out to my discord.

Alexis

Well, Matt, I've got one more question for you. We've talked a lot about wifi today, but if someone who is listening to this feels like wifi is maybe too complex or too intimidating or there's too much jargon, um, is there any mindset shifts that you would give them to take away from this episode? If you were speaking to yourself when you were in the operations role and you knew nothing about wifi, what would you tell them?

Matt

I would say everyone's got to start somewhere. And even if it's a small step that you can then build upon. So maybe even if it's just committing, you know what, I'm going to set up a routine where, I don't know, maybe you drive to work.

Maybe you get a train to work, maybe a bus to work. Even if it's just something as small as not every day, but every other day, I'm going to listen to the, uh, to a podcast dedicated about the technology that I'm interested in. Or maybe I'm going to go in, sign up and watch a few webinars on something specific that, you know, really has got my attention.

Or, you know, if it's wifi that people are interested in, excited about, we have free training. You can go and watch on our Eckerhal website. We've got lots of webinars and blogs that you can just go and sign up and read.

I'm sure there's lots of other different vendors out there in different technologies that have similar access that you can get easily available to you. And also I find I've did, I did personally find when I was getting into the kind of nooks and crannies of configuration side of things, having a lab was very helpful. But back when I was doing it, most of the time you need is have a physical lab.

Whereas Kevin, I know that you shared recently on some of your videos that actually you can go and do the same things, but with a virtual lab, and there's a lot of places that you can get free access to try these things out or at a very low cost. So that would be kind of my recommendation for people listening is that everyone's got to start somewhere. And sometimes just taking that first step is the hardest, but once you've taken it and then you've got that routine and momentum building, it's very easy to then continue whatever it is that you decide to go down from the path that you're passionate about.

And that would be my recommendation. If it's wifi that you're interested in, if it's brewing and switching security, etc, etc, after this, after you listen to this podcast, go and find, there's going to be a podcast in that industry or niche that you're interested in, like go and find a podcast and listen to some of that other stuff in there. I'm sure they probably, a lot of the podcasts will have like beginner versions of podcasts that they've watched.

You can go and start with them ones, and then they might even have recommendations on that next steps that you can do.

Kevin

Yeah. It's almost like learning a language, you know, like when you're first learning a new language, the advice is to get completely engrossed in it. Like watch some TV shows in that language, listen to that music in that language, talk to someone in that language.

It's almost the same thing where the more you are engrossed by whatever you're trying to learn. So podcasts and joining discord and communities and watching webinars and that kind of stuff, it will slowly seep in. Even if you don't, it doesn't feel like it always, it slowly seeps in.

You'll start learning the stuff pretty quickly. So great advice.

Matt

If it's Wi-Fi you're interested in, come and sign up for one of our next webinars. And then you can say in the chat, Hey, you know what? I listened to your podcast with Alexis and Kevin, and now I'm here on the Echo How webinar to learn more about Wi-Fi.

And I will call you up and say, Hey, that's great. I'm glad that you took the time to do that.

Alexis

Well, that's it for this episode of Life in Uptime. Huge thanks to our guest, Matt, for sharing his journey and thank you for listening. If you enjoyed this conversation, be sure to follow our show so you never miss another episode.

And if Matt's story today gave you something to think about, feel free to share it with a friend or colleague who might need it. And until next time, keep learning, keep building and keep your uptime high.