Talk transcript

OK, Kia ora everyone. So my name's Greg Ng. And yep, by day, I am a business analyst at Transpower, helping with the electrification of New Zealand. And by passion, I am the co-founder of BA Career. And today, I'm going to be sharing with you a little bit about some of the journeys and learnings of founding your own grassroots community. So that's why today's talk is going to be: you don't need permission to lead a grassroots community blueprint. So first of all, I didn't actually know how to start these talks. It's my first time. But I did hear that asking a question to the audience is a good way. So here is a question. Raise your hands if you have changed career paths at least once in your life. Now, I'm seeing a lot of hands — that checks out, being in the tech community. People do change careers. You might have been doing one thing and moved to another. Or you may have come from a completely different field already. Second question. Who thought it was easy? That was expected. It's a little more difficult. It's a little more tricky. And there's definitely a lot more things to figure out. So I should probably share then a little bit actually as to how I became a BA myself. Because my journey, like many BAs', is unique and my own. And it all starts back with my high school dream. Now, I grew up in Upper Hutt in a migrant family from China. My family comes from Canton. So that's in Guangzhou and Toishan. And we've been in New Zealand for close to — well, since 1908. So you do the maths from there. Quite a long time. So I'm pretty well localised — pretty much a boy from Upper Hutt. And during my time at Heretaunga College, I had a chance to go to a magical country called Japan. And I thought, one day, I'm going to work in Japan as a Japanese salaryman. Because with my Upper Hutt logic, they wear cool suits. So in the 2010s, after studying international relations and Japanese, I went off to study in Japan to my parents' dismay. And lo and behold, hey, that dream came true. And I made it into the world of executive recruitment. There's me in my suit with my boss, Fu, who is actually funnily enough from small town Australia. And his best friend in New Zealand is from Upper Hutt. So that's me and another buddy of mine, Tim Bunting, who had the same dream as me at university. Now he's from Lower Hutt. That's me and my cousin, April, and some of my friends, Yuki and Anna. She's also from Lower Hutt. And finally, my parents, who still call Upper Hutt their abode today. Now this picture of me taking my parents around Central Tokyo — I thought it was really nice, because at the time, my parents were like, Greg's found his place, he's going to be in Japan forever. So what they did was decide he can be the tour guide for all their friends now. So they started to send me all their friends from their run groups, community groups, and family members I didn't know existed. And I became their tour guide. And I remember in 2019, I was talking to my mum about, hey, I've got a new apartment. You can just stay with me, and I'll take you around to the Olympics in 2020. Now the winds of change arrived. And yes, it was meant to be an Olympics in 2020, but something else happened. Does anyone remember what that was? I think that was definitely a time of change for a lot of us. And nevertheless, after a lot of deliberation and a few loop-the-loops and back and forth again, I ended up back in New Zealand and not knowing exactly what I wanted to do. I decided to do what a lot of people do. I went back to university. And I had three options at that time, because at the very minimum, I knew I wanted to get into technology, because I heard that Zoom and Teams was really important during the pandemic. So I had three choices — software development, which, to be honest, I would rather be talking to you right now than sitting behind the screen — UI/UX design. And as you can see, my design skills are not cut out for that kind of work. And lastly, business analysis. And whenever I asked, what does a business analyst do, someone said, it depends. All right, I'll make that work. So at the time when I came back to New Zealand, I had one friend, and he's now my flatmate. And he told me, Greg, you need to network, network, network. And you need to network with Summer of Tech. So in my first year back in New Zealand, I signed up to — I don't know how many Summer of Tech events that was at the time. It was a lot. And I learned all about these wonderful opportunities in the tech space that we have. At the same time, I got involved in the local tech community. So I was attending events from Cogo, who were running this cool series about tech for good. And also things like Wellington Leadership Group. And then at the same time, I was trying to connect up with different BAs and also spending lots of time at career services at Vic Uni as well. Now, even though I was networking, I was learning, I was trying to start a new pathway, something was still off. Now, when I reflect on this, what was off was that, yes, I was connecting with BAs, but sometimes the experiences and life journeys we had were very different. Talking to a 20-year-plus veteran of the BA world about your initial questions about how those requirement documents work sometimes doesn't go down well as a first intro conversation. Or sometimes I'd talk to BAs, and the first BA I rang said, oh, you'll figure it out. And then some BAs were just trying to sell me some framework that they found on the internet. So yeah, I was a little bit off there, and I was still trying to find my way until I started to look closer to where I was. And where was I at the time? I was in the classroom. And in the classroom, I started to realise, using my analytical skills, there were people also trying to study to be BAs as well, coming from very diverse pathways. So I thought, I should talk to these people. So what I did, I used to come to class about 30 to 45 minutes early, grab a textbook, and sit down with a coffee. And then look like I didn't understand what I was reading. And this was a good strategy, because people would come out of class, or they'd come early, and they'd be like, oh, what are you doing? Well, I don't understand what BPMN is. And lo and behold, we started having a conversation, and we got to know each other. And through this strategy, that's how I met Sophie Chen, who was the founder of BA Career. And after doing a GPA check — understanding each other's goals, purpose, and ambitions — we found out we actually aligned a lot in terms of our career journey. And lo and behold, Sophie Chen was also a big fan of the coffee chat. So Sophie shared with me at the time that, hey, I'm going to run this talk about asking good questions, because BAs need to ask good questions. And I was like, that sounds smart. How can I help you? And she said, oh, do you want to be my assistant? I said, cool. So I asked her a good question. So what do I do? And she said, oh, we'll figure it out. So community started where we were. This is Sophie giving a talk about asking good questions, back in June 2021. And that's me sort of hiding in the background, because I'm not normally the person at the front here. So from here, this started to help me realise that actually, the people around me are the people that are most likely to help me out. We were on the same journey. We were in the same waka. And most importantly, we understood the troubles that we were going through. So from here, we started to be a lot more active in sharing notes, sharing information, sharing our understanding of the job market, and, hey, presto, we started to move into the workforce after that. So this is where there was a little bit of a pivot in our directions. Sophie ended up at NZX. And all my Summer of Tech networking paid off. And I actually got an internship at Curious. And after that period, we ended up coming back together with a company called RedVespa, where we started to work together. And during this time, Sophie created a new position for herself called a BA influencer. Now, what does that mean? It means that she would post up a lot about her experiences as a BA on LinkedIn. And she actually became very good and very popular in that there. She also did it on a platform called Xiaohongshu, which is a Chinese platform, also known as Red Note. And she thought, you know what my audience needs? Greg. So there I am. And we're actually doing something called a mock coffee chat, where she would actually interview me. Funny enough, this was actually at the Transpower office too. So I was being interviewed at the Transpower office before I even worked at Transpower. And yeah, we started to continue on things from there. So we took the opportunity to continue our community energy. We built an online community without the university's permission. And we started organising events as a little alumni group to connect up alumni with new students, some of whom had even just arrived in New Zealand. And the guy to my right, Anka, is actually now one of my best friends here. Sophie also continued the journey in talking about the challenges for aspiring BAs and how they get into industry. She gave a talk at the IABA Festival for Business Analysis. I ended up getting involved with Nextwork, because I took a cloud computing certification with them. So I shared about my very recent experiences as a recent transitioner from a completely different background to the tech space. And then — well, actually, funny enough, Sophie didn't ask me for permission for this one. But she then asked me to do a talk with her. And hey, we ended up doing that asking good questions talk again at a big BA conference. Now, a lot of momentum was happening, and a lot of things were going on. And the meetup was born. Now, what's interesting is that Sophie ended up connecting with someone called Linda Field, who was a very famous BA influencer in Australia. IABA-associated — all these amazing things. And somehow, through the magic of LinkedIn, they connected. And they had this really good chat. She invited her to talk on her platform. And in this picture, there's nothing mentioning anything about BA Career. That's because in two days, Sophie messages me. Hey, Greg, I have an idea. How about we open a BA meetup and organise regular events? We can start from this Wednesday. So at this time, I was like, BA meetup sounds like a lot of work. And we did have some naysayers around us, too, saying that, oh, it's really difficult. Event organising and community building is hard. And what do you guys know about being a BA? Which I was like, oh, well, 20 minutes later, done. Grassroots movements ahead. And so from that there, we put up a meetup page. I found the picture, which is still in use to this day, that we're using. Didn't have a logo. Didn't have much going on. And BA Career number one was hosted very successfully, with a good 50 people attending online and learning all about business analysis from someone who was once a travel agent and then became a BA hiring manager. Sharing all these lessons and knowledge, exactly what people wanted to know about. So over the last 3.5 years, BA Career, we've aimed to create a space where — and I'm going to get a bit BA. So I call it the four Bs. So it would be very easy to remember. Four Bs. Firstly, belonging, where people feel safe and learn to grow. So our platform is for aspiring BAs and new and career BAs to ask some of the questions that are a little bit more out of reach sometimes or just feel a little bit more difficult. And the way we do that is that we connect them up with industry experts, BAs, or people who are just a little bit ahead on their journey. So here's an example with our good friend, Matthew Nauschutz, who's a very successful recruiter in recruitment. He's also Sophie's Kung Fu coach. And he's giving a talk not as a recruiter to get people to get jobs, but more what a recruiter is looking for when recruiting for new and career BAs. And what you'll see is that a lot of our audience too, we are a very inclusive group. We invite everyone, no matter what your journey is. But we do lean very heavily to support underrepresented groups, which includes a lot of migrants, a lot of international students, and a lot of females as well, which has been a really cool outcome of this. And this is Sophie working with a bunch of students talking about interview techniques and strategies as a BA — a cool event that we had in collaboration with AUT, CTAN, which is Chinese IT Association, and also TechEd. All right, I'll just quickly go through the next B. Becoming, by empowering others to take the lead. So one thing that me and Sophie have learned is that we can't do these things alone. So we actually encourage our volunteers to take the lead as much as possible. In fact, a large majority of our events are actually volunteer led, run, and delivered. So here's an example of our Auckland Uni team. They wanted to run an event up in Auckland. So one of the guys reached out to the student engagement director. They talked to the professor and, hey, they had a little alumni event with people who had just been a few more steps after them talking about their career journey and so on. And there's Nino here, from studying at Vic Uni and is a lead mentor at Tuhūra Tech. And she asked me, LinkedIn's really hard to understand. I know someone who can help us out. Her name's Dr. Sherry Lee. Can we run an event with her? So I'm like, sure, why not? Next morning, I wake up. There's an email from Dr. Sherry Lee saying, hey, I want to help out. Let's make this happen. And then the next thing is believing, seeing what's possible and starting to see it in themselves. So this here is Mayan. He's also up in Auckland. And he is someone who was actually attending the previous event at Auckland Uni. And then he became the host for the event that we have here. So he's already starting to see the opportunities that are coming out when you put yourself out there. And this is Theora. She was hosting an event with Summer of Tech. This was a beautiful event that we ran. 170 people joined. And we're talking about the international students of Kate He from China, and Viti Wadi from India, with the lovely Summer of Tech, who has been an awesome champion for many of us. And the reason why I have shown this picture, too, is because two weeks prior to the event, the host actually pulled out. I had to find a new one. I knew there were going to be a lot of people. First thing Theora did was say, give me the script. I'll handle it like that there. So seeing people believe in themselves and who they could become is instrumental. And lastly, building. When people start giving back to others. So this photo here is of Maddie. She is a Day Zero volunteer. She's the lady in the middle, in the black there. And she has been with us ever since the foundations of BA Career. She started out at AUT. She went into a student support admin role. She became a BA. And now she's hosting and running events up in Auckland. And that's her with Ben Yu, who was actually a speaker here at Tech Rally last year. And not to embarrass someone — that is Theora giving back to Vic Uni as a speaker now. Sharing about her career experiences. No more than about two or three weeks ago, actually. Which is a real full circle moment from someone coming into our community, finding a sense of belonging, becoming, and so on and so forth. So in short, Sophie's and my community journey wasn't planned. It just grew. We just tried to create a platform where aspiring BAs — aspiring, new, and career BAs could belong. And connect. Support them in becoming who they wanted to be. Give them the confidence to believe in themselves. And eventually contribute to building something supportive and meaningful together. And being a data person myself, we'll put on a few numbers that we've been able to achieve just through the grassroots momentum that we have done. So since January 2023, we've gained over 2,700 — probably close to 2,800 — meetup members, 1,800 LinkedIn followers, 100 speakers. So a very big thank you to all the speakers out there who've contributed. Over 80 events, 50 official volunteers and alumni, 30 collaboration partners, including many people in this room today, nine event styles. So the point is that yes, we have grown a lot, but it's not without the benefit of the community around us. And we're just very thankful that we've been able to collaborate so openly with people. Because to be honest, Sophie and I, we just ask people we know when things have started skyrocketing from there. And to that point, of course, it wasn't always easy. Because we did spend a lot of time, a lot of late nights messaging each other, getting people involved and engaged to kind of get these things going and happening. And it's never easy in the foundational stages. We've had life changes too. Sophie's been promoted. She's changed jobs, moved cities, got married. And I've tried to just stay out of trouble. So Sophie doesn't find out. And also in my own journey too, it's always been interesting factoring in the fact that I've kind of come back to New Zealand myself quite recently, and just trying to figure things out too as I went along. However, hearing the stories of growth makes it all worth it. So hearing the stories of our volunteers and our people, the journeys that they have, hearing the successes, big or small, seeing people being reunited with their families, or seeing the success of our day one volunteers. Some of them now have children. Some of them have grown. And some of them, they've gone off to do different things. But it's all part of this beautiful journey and community that we've created. And what I always feel is really important too is that when you're a part of the community that we're trying to build, you're always welcome to come back. So sometimes people will actually come back and life gets busy. But hey, they're always there to help out in a small way. So to finish up, I do actually want to bring up Sophie, Nino, and Theora to the stage, because this isn't about me. It's about us. Like I said, this is just my perspective. But a lot of the work comes from people like themselves putting themselves out there, moving countries, and taking on new challenges and dreams. So for those of you who are interested in chasing your own dream or community goals or whatever that may be, to summarise our journey, permission to lead isn't always about titles, authority, or experience. Sometimes it's simply having a reason to step forward. You don't need permission to step forward. And becoming the reason someone else can also believe they can, too. I'm Greg Ng. Thank you very much!

Talk references:

BA Career

Sophie Chen

Summer of Tech

Transpower