Catherine Sbeglia Nin, Managing Editor, RCR Wireless News Artwork

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Pressing Matters

Catherine Sbeglia Nin, Managing Editor, RCR Wireless News

February 18, 2025 • Big Valley Marketing • Season 3 • Episode 5

Unlike most of our previous guests, Catherine Sbeglia Nin didn't set out to be a reporter. She was a doctoral candidate in film theory. When realizing she was miserable, she figured she'd find other ways to tell stories after dipping her toes in the journalism waters. RCR Wireless, one of the magazines of record for Telco Wireless and networking, offered her a reporter job in 2019. Within three years, she was managing editor. And if you know anything about the often arcane three letter acronym filled world of Telco and wireless, you know that rising that quickly could not have been easy.

Now, among the most influential journalists in the space, Kat joined us to discuss her Italian upbringing in Brooklyn, and life as a new working mom, as well as to preview next month's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona for this episode of Pressing Matters from Big Valley Marketing, the podcast that brings you conversations with the top media and influencers in B2B Tech. I'm Dave Reddy, head of Big Valley Marketing's Media and Influencers Practice, and I'm your host. Through research and good old fashioned relationship building, we've identified B2B tech's, top 200 media and influencers, including Kat. Here's our chat with Kat. Enjoy.

Dave Reddy (00:00):

(01:24):

Kat, thanks so much for your time today. Really appreciate having you on the podcast and getting ready for mobile word Congress. It, believe it or not, just around the corner once again, and certainly Telco is one of your specialty. So happy to have you on.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (01:38):

Yeah, thank you so much. I'm excited to be here.

Dave Reddy (01:41):

So we'll get to Mobile World Congress soon enough. I wanted to talk a little bit about your background first. So I noticed that you live in Madison, you went to school in Rochester. Are you from one of those cities or where were you born?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (01:54):

I am not. I was born in Brooklyn, New York, and I grew up there. I spent a little bit of time in LA between the ages of 10 and 14, but then moved back to New York to finish out high school. So kind of all over the place. But the Midwest was definitely different for me from the two coasts for sure.

Dave Reddy (02:15):

Brooklyn, so the home of the Dodgers in both cases?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (02:18):

Yes. Followed the Dodgers. Yeah.

Dave Reddy (02:20):

Yeah, no, even, I'm not that old. So what was it like growing up in Brooklyn? I'm from a tiny town in Massachusetts and I can't even imagine living in a city of 8 million people. What was that like?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (02:33):

Yeah, especially now that I live in Madison, which is a smaller city, people tend to have a very specific idea of what they think my childhood was. But I grew up in a neighborhood in Brooklyn. I had a backyard, I had trees up and down my street. I knew all my neighbors, I knew everyone in my neighborhood. It was a small community. I mean, Brooklyn in the nineties is not where Brooklyn is now. So I had seltzer delivered from Eli, the seltzer man in these old fashioned bottles that rattled in his truck as he went down the street. So it was kind of a quieter childhood than I think people think it was. We played in the street, so probably not as different as you think, but I definitely feel like I have a lot of perspective on the world and I got a lot of perspective early, which was nice.

Dave Reddy (03:26):

Maybe everybody who doesn't live in New York has a sense that everything's Manhattan or Midtown Manhattan even.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (03:31):

Yeah, more specifically, like Times Square, right,

Dave Reddy (03:35):

Right. There's always billions of people standing around.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (03:39):

I wasn't there. I did not live there.

Dave Reddy (03:43):

Yeah. What did mom and dad do and how did you end up in LA for a few years?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (03:47):

Yeah, so my mom's actually from California and my dad's from New York, so spent a lot of time kind of going back and forth between the two. My dad was a lawyer and then kind of became an interior designer. He's had an interesting career

Dave Reddy (04:02):

Revolution. That's interest. Okay.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (04:05):

And my mom owned a Floris shop in Brooklyn for a few years, but then by the time she had three kids, she was staying home and then went back to work as I got older. But, and we ended up in la. I moved in with my grandmother just for a few years when I was a kid.

Dave Reddy (04:24):

Sounds like the setting for a movie. Right. Running a floor shop in Brooklyn. I'm not sure if that would be Scorsese or somebody else, but

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (04:35):

That's pretty cool. That's good instincts. That's good instincts. I am pretty sure. So my neighborhood was very Italian and I, as you can probably tell by at least my first last name am Italian. So I think one story mom always tells is her trash at the Flora Shop got picked up in a Rolls Royce by teenagers.

Dave Reddy (04:58):

Interesting.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (04:59):

Yeah, but we're Italian, so we got a discount on the trash pickup. I dunno, you don't ask a lot of questions.

Dave Reddy (05:09):

How far back are the immigrants in your family from Italy?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (05:13):

It's different on my mom and my dad's side, but I'm third generation, so kind of far back. But my parents' family is, both sides of my family are from the same town.

Dave Reddy (05:23):

Really?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (05:24):

Yeah. I took a 23 and Me test, and I'm 87% Sicilian or Southern Italian. I thought it'd be interesting because Cecily is an island, and I was like, oh, I'm going to have so many different, and it was like, no, you're just incredibly from here.

Dave Reddy (05:40):

What's the other 13%?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (05:41):

Right. So I'm only three things. I am Iranian, Egyptian, and southern Italian.

Dave Reddy (05:48):

Oh, wow.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (05:49):

That's it.

Dave Reddy (05:49):

That's a combo. Is that on your dad's side of your mom's side then?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (05:53):

Well, I don't know. It's more probably like it's Egypt because of where Sicily is located is my back.

Dave Reddy (06:02):

Right, of course. Well, the Romans did run it for a while. Okay. Wow.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (06:06):

So yeah, kind of weird.

Dave Reddy (06:08):

Okay, so now that we've done the Henry Lewis Gates part of the show, so you end up at the University of Rochester's, just study English lit film and media. Had you been to Rochester? I haven't been to Rochester, but my best friend lives there and doesn't speak very well of it. Had you been to Rochester before you decided to go to school there?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (06:27):

I had had gotten into Rochester. I didn't want to go there. It's known for engineering. I stopped by it on the way to see another school, but then I saw its library, which is beautiful

Dave Reddy (06:40):

Rochester,

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (06:41):

And I was like, okay, well I want to be studying in this library. And so ultimately I went there. It was great. There

Dave Reddy (06:48):

Were worse reasons to choose a school. So the English and the lit part, I see the through line film and media sort of. So did you want to be a director? Did you want to act? I mean, what was going on there?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (07:00):

Certainly didn't want to act. I never wanted to be in front of a camera in my life. I think if you were to ask me what my dream job would've been, I would've loved to have written movies that would've been great to be a screenwriter, which I did a little bit of in college. But

Dave Reddy (07:13):

Your life's not over. You could still pull this off.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (07:16):

Yeah, it turns out it's really hard.

Dave Reddy (07:18):

Yeah, no, I figure.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (07:21):

Yeah, but really the truth is I've always been into, I love reading. I've always been into literature and I love research. For me, film was another medium in addition to books and literature to kind of think about topics I thought were interesting and to write about topics I thought were interesting. So that was more how I use it and why I ultimately thought I was going to go into academia

Dave Reddy (07:48):

With

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (07:49):

It.

Dave Reddy (07:50):

I too am a film freak and I do a lot of reading, but I watch a lot of movies. So we're recording this on the day the Oscar nominations finally came out after being delayed a couple of times. Do you have a favorite movie that you've seen thus far this year?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (08:03):

Well, I am a new mom this year, and I realize has come along with being a new mom is I don't think I've read a book since she was born. I've seen movies, certainly I've watched movies in the past 13 months of her life. But do I remember them? I'm not sure. Do I pick easy ones to watch? Definitely. So I don't know. I don't know. Well, tell me, what did you see this year? I don't even know what year it's or what came out this year. So if you give me a reference point, maybe

Dave Reddy (08:40):

The ones I've seen that are up for best picture are conclave Nora.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (08:44):

Oh yeah. I have not

Dave Reddy (08:45):

A couple others that I can't think of.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (08:47):

Yeah, back

Dave Reddy (08:48):

In Substance is Out. I haven't seen that yet. Brutalist is out. I haven't seen that yet. Those are some of the big pictures right now. Amelia Perez, which I did say,

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (08:56):

Well, this is the other thing. I can't go to a movie theater easily right now. You can stream, but obviously there was a couple years there when everything would come out for streaming at the same time. That's no longer happening. That's not thing.

Dave Reddy (08:58):

Yeah, I hear you. I remember when my kids who are now in their early twenties and I've got one 18-year-old when they were being born, I would sneak off to movies by myself and take the first one when we only had one with me and just pray to God that she wouldn't start screaming in the middle of the movie. I actually got to see a few movies that way. I also had to leave movies at Anyway. So let's talk about that. So that was 13 months ago. Your daughter's name is Rio, which is a beautiful name. What's life as a working mom other than the fact that books and movies are no longer part of your life?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (09:49):

I mean, it's good. It definitely got harder going back to work in most ways in terms of the whole having to do more and more different things and every day feeling kind of like a marathon. But it also kind of gave me some of my sense of self back. So that was nice. So I like being a working mom. I like having both parts of my life. But yeah, I think I was saying before to you, it's shocking to me the number of different things I do by the time it's 8:00 AM every morning, both to get prepped for work and to get her prepped for daycare. I'm exhausted by 9:00 AM but it's working.

Dave Reddy (10:39):

Yeah, no, it's like the old Army ad. We do more before breakfast than most people do all day.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (10:45):

Yeah, that's really for parents, that's a parent's mantra.

Dave Reddy (10:48):

Absolutely. I'd say I miss it, but I don't. Speaking of work, getting into your career, you did a couple of things in comms after school, you taught public speaking to students. I dunno if that was during or after school, but I found that fascinating. How did you end up in Madison? I think at that point you were in Madison.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (11:11):

Yeah, so full disclosure, journalism was never on my radar, not because I didn't think it would be super cool to be a journalist. I think everyone thinks it would be super cool to be a journalist. I just didn't think I had the personality for it. I definitely wanted to just sit in a library and research and read books and then maybe teach a class about that stuff. So I just got very fortunate to sort of land where I landed. But yes, the public speaking was in Madison. I moved here to get a PhD to my previous point, a PhD in film theory. And while doing that, I taught public speaking at UW Madison, kind of in exchange for free tuition, which I guess they also paid me, but it wasn't very much. But that's sort of how it all worked, how I was able to come here.

Dave Reddy (12:01):

You were almost Dr. Kat.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (12:03):

Yes, almost

Dave Reddy (12:05):

What happened?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (12:06):

I was miserable. I don't know. Sometimes I think it wasn't the best fit for me. I didn't feel like I was having the conversations about film that I wanted to have. And so I think it was pretty quick that I realized maybe this wasn't the right thing for me. But my then boyfriend, now husband followed me, got a very good job. So it wasn't as simple as leaving and we liked it. And now it's been almost like 10 years. So obviously we're obviously happy here. He's from Oregon, so very different from where we both grew up, but it's kind of nice in between.

Dave Reddy (12:48):

Rob was going to say right in the middle at least so easier to get to both sides of the family. So the journalism bug does eventually bite or we wouldn't be talking. So when did it bite and was that by happenstance or were you like, Hey, you know what, I kind of like this journalism thing.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (13:02):

So it was a little bit by happenstance. I left grad school and I only really had one skill if I'm being honest, which was writing and arguably reading or critically reading. But writing was my skill. So I was trying to figure out how to break into that and how to move forward with that. And I got an assistant editorial role at more of a marketing media company, but they did have a wireless and telecom sort of brand as well as a manufacturing brand, industrial brand. And I worked on those. And then that company suddenly went under one day out of nowhere and I was jobless and RCR or Ardent Media that owns RCR, got word of it, called me up, basically offered me a job, which was, I mean, super life-changing for me. I didn't know anything about telecom, barely knew anything about tech beyond what a consumer knows.

(14:08):

I hardly knew anything about even journalism. They were obviously looking for someone to work with and to train. And that was almost six years ago. And I've just been trying to learn as much as I can both about the telecom and the content, but also what does it mean to be a journalist. And I've been doing those at the same time and it's been really cool. I do feel like I've been very lucky. Like I said, journalism, it's one of those things that's always a journalist in a movie. It's one of those cool jobs to be, and it's kind of fun being able to tell people like, oh, what do you do? I'm like, yeah, I'm a journalist. It's kind of nice. Never saw that coming.

Dave Reddy (14:49):

I spent seven years as a sports writer. Even now when I tell people I used to be a sports writer, they're like, really?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (14:55):

What

Dave Reddy (14:55):

Was that like? And I'm like, nowhere near as fun as I thought it was going to be.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (14:59):

You know what? So I always am saying to my husband, because all these movies, so he's like being a writer, being a journalist, are always these glamorous jobs. And I'm like, everyone thinks they're so glamorous. And he was like, no, Kat, that's because all of this stuff is written by writers. And I was

Dave Reddy (15:14):

Like,

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (15:14):

Oh, right,

Dave Reddy (15:19):

Because Julia Roberts and Denzel Washington are totally believable as journalists. At any rate, I can't remember what the name of it was it Pelican Brief. Wow, that is really digging memory. Alright, so you need to learn the craft and you've got some background having studied what you studied. I mean, I studied a lot of lit myself,

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (15:40):

But

Dave Reddy (15:40):

I did study journalism too. You need to learn the craft and you need to learn the tech and telco world. And let's face it, there is no world more filled with acronyms, including the one that begins your publication than Telco. It's acronym city. So how the heck did you pull that off? Doing a great job.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (16:04):

I appreciate it. A lot of faking it till you make it, certainly in the beginning. Yeah, the acronyms are a lot. The nice thing about coming into an industry, first of all, it's a small industry.

(16:18):

Everyone knows everyone. So everyone kind of knew I was, they know RCR, so it was a strong name to be associated with. They were understanding that I was new. That all helped. But also they all know the acronyms are ridiculous and that there's too many and that it's always changing. So it wasn't hard for me to ask those follow up questions like, oh wait, what does that mean? Because I think even people in the industry who know it well, know it can be difficult to keep up with. And I know I brought this up before, but just being able to take time to look this stuff up on my own and read about this stuff on my own, I'll have a conversation. I recorded every conversation I had at the beginning and I would record these conversations and then I would listen back to them and I'd be like, wait, now I need to, if I'm going to write about this, I need to really know what this is. And so I would take the time outside of the conversation to learn more about the acronym or the tech or whatever. And my colleagues are so knowledgeable, so I would tap into them. It's been, but every time I feel like I'm starting to grasp something, it changes such a fast paced, well, maybe not telecom specifically, but the technology around it is so fast paced.

Dave Reddy (17:38):

Yeah, I was going to say that Telco is sort of this odd mix, and we'll get into this in a second of a fast and slow moving piece of technology. I think all the companies in it want it to stay the same, but they have no choice. They've got to change every day.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (17:52):

Yes, yes. They're a little bit resistant to change, but they want to incorporate or at least be saying that they're incorporating these ancillary technologies like ai, for example. So yeah,

Dave Reddy (18:13):

You're obviously doing a good job. You've been promoted twice and you're now managing editor. That's a title you've held for three and a half years, so you managed to get to that gig within two and a half years. So congratulations. That's a heck of a thing. So how is that different? Are you managing staff? Are you setting editorial policy?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (18:29):

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I basically make sure we're hitting our editorial goals and targets. And I kind of keep track of everyone's workload as it relates to reports and custom content. I mean, we're a smallish team, so ultimately that's really on everyone else to make sure they're getting their own work done. But it can sometimes be a lot and there can be a lot going on. So it's not my job to hound them to get it done. It's more my job to check in or have them check in with me if they're like, wait, how many things do I have on my plate? That kind of deal. I have to make sure that is documented somewhere. And so that would of a

Dave Reddy (19:06):

Traffic cop role. Yeah.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (19:08):

Yeah. And in terms of setting editorial policy, I mean, for the most part, a lot of that was established before I came on board, but as things change, I'm part of those conversations.

Dave Reddy (19:23):

So speaking of setting policy and how things are changing, let's talk about Mobile World Congress 2025 and what you're expecting to see. First of all, just in general before we get into the show itself, what are the main changes you have seen in your six years in the business? We talked a moment ago about how it moves fast and slow at the same time. So what are you saying other than including of course, ai?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (19:47):

Yeah, so yeah, I mean talk about AI and automation has obviously increased. That's not to say that telcos haven't been using AI for years. They have been. But once AI became all anybody was talking about, they of course had to make sure everyone understood they were already using ai, so they had to be talking about it, but also they're looking into advanced ways to use AI and automation to improve network efficiency, all that kind of stuff. Which is another thing that is definitely changing is the focus on energy efficiency is becoming a bigger and bigger topic. And let me see, oh yeah, the idea that telcos have to become tech companies more akin to how Google is a tech company and that they're competing, especially if we're talking about ai, they're competing now at the same talent pool as those tech companies.

Dave Reddy (20:49):

And

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (20:50):

That's not particularly easy for them to do because it's a small industry because it's not often considered a cool industry, even though it is. I'm not saying it's not cool, it's just you talk to young people who want to go into tech. I don't think they think telecom,

Dave Reddy (21:08):

Think AI if they're thinking telecom.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (21:10):

And the reality is those roles absolutely exist at telecom. So there's a little bit of rebranding they've had to do to make sure they can try to get this talent that they need. And something else that I cover Wi-Fi extensively at RCR. And for me, I've just noticed that this WI-FI cellular convergence conversation has picked back up again and differently. When I was first covering WI-FI and 5G, it was this very much WI-FI versus 5G thing. Which one do you use? Which one is better? And now the conversation has fully come back around to their complimentary, they need to coexist. And that's a much more interesting conversation. And now with Wi-Fi seven, I think people are kind of revisiting how to use both of these technologies together.

Dave Reddy (22:05):

I was representing Qualcomm at the beginning of the 5G conversation, so I'm probably to blame for some of what I'm about to complain about. But man would've thought 5G was ai, right? 10 years ago,

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (22:16):

Yeah,

Dave Reddy (22:17):

It was like 5G, it's going to change the world. What happened?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (22:20):

Well, I think, well there's two things that maybe this one isn't really answering your question, but certainly the disappointment for 5G from the telco perspective is they haven't made money off of it yet still. So that happened and it wasn't supposed to happen. I mean, fixed wireless access certainly is emerging as a powerful monetization use case, but otherwise it's been tough there. I think it was just harder to do than they thought. I think that the transition to the cloud native infrastructure, I think it was all just harder to do. I think the build out was harder. I think the densification was harder, took longer. Yeah, I'm certainly not an expert in that realm.

Dave Reddy (23:10):

I would tend to disagree. But you've been to Barcelona now several times. How has the 5G conversation changed there and will it still be in big bold letters at everybody's booth this year?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (23:23):

That's a good question. So I was not at last year's unfortunately, and last year's I think would've been an interesting one to be at in this 5G journey because I am suspicious that this one might be a lot about six G or maybe 5G advance, 5G advance. And last year I would've been curious to see was it still fully 5G or were we starting to do that last year? I'm not really sure. I was on maternity leave, so I was not even paying attention to Good

Dave Reddy (23:54):

For you

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (23:55):

On there. So this year, I mean ai, I think AI is going to be the thing that's just the thing and definitely 5G, but I think in the sense of 5G advanced and 5G standalone, I think that's, and maybe that's also kind of going back to your last question. What the hangup has been is the slower than expected transition to 5G standalone, and that is also a necessity to take full advantage of 5G advanced capabilities. So we do need to get there first, but I do think we might gloss over that a little bit and then just be focusing on 5G advanced and six GA lot at Barcelona. And to the monetization side of things, it's still the enterprise play for the telcos. They still need to figure out how to do that. So I'm sure we're going to hear a lot about that. And I think the idea is that what 5G Advance will introduce capability wise will finally maybe help them deliver on what they were hoping to do with 5G for enterprises. And I think that is yet, we'll see. I hope so. I'm optimistic.

Dave Reddy (25:14):

And are the companies you're talking to talking about how or if AI and automation is actually aiding that, get in the way of that changing that, how do AI and 5G advanced combine?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (25:28):

To be honest, right now, the conversations that I have with telcos about AI are how they're using them right now in their internal operations,

(25:41):

Got to reduce costs, reduce energy, improve network performance through anomaly detection, predictive, that kind of stuff. But I think the longer term goal is to be able to not, lemme see if I can pull this out of my head and try to explain it, is to be able to simultaneously run network workloads and AI workloads on the RAN and then have a lot of those AI workloads like be services that they can make money off of. I do think they are hoping to make money off of ai. That is I think some future stuff. And there are still a few sort of key network transitions and transformations that need to happen along the way, but it's in the pipeline

Dave Reddy (26:28):

And there's even what the adoption of AI is, what that means for the network itself is a massive topic in that it's gumming up the works, although I won't name clients here. We've got a client who and many who are putting out chips that will hopefully help AI using ai, I should say, to help the network move faster and handle that load faster. Yeah,

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (26:58):

And the networks just become more and more complicated and will just continue to be more complicated when you look at 5G Advance and six G, because now we're talking about non-terrestrial networks being incorporated into the terrestrial networks and now you're putting autonomous vehicles on these networks and humans can't, we can't maintain these networks ourselves. We need AI to do it. So it's a matter of training that AI appropriately, which is true for any ai, not just the AI telcos, they're going to use it

Dave Reddy (27:33):

For one welcome our robot network overlords. Talk to me about AI in journalism. Is it good, is it bad? How are you using it as a managing editor? How are you using it as a company in a publication?

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (27:45):

Yeah. I personally, so not as a journalist, not as anyone who covers any of this, my instinct is always to not like these things or to think of the, maybe I'm just a cynical person, but

Dave Reddy (28:00):

You're a journalist, of course you are.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (28:02):

I definitely jump to the this is dangerous side of things pretty quickly. I think a lot of that stems from being worried about how bias a lot, that is a huge concern for me, the ethical stuff. But that being said, I recognize it's good and bad and that it's a tool and it's about the way you use it. It's not about the tech itself. So I'm not personally using it at work, not really because I've decided it can't be useful or helpful, but more just like I'm just continuing to work business as usual and haven't yet really considered how to effectively use a new tool like ai. Some of my colleagues have certainly used it kind of in an experimental way to have AI write a story to see, and then we put a little bit like a blurb like this was written by ai and I think we've also fed some sort of, you're talking about acronyms, telecom has a lot of complicated terminology. We've definitely fed some of that to chat GBT explain this to me and see sort of what it spits out and if it's usable, if that's helpful. But I haven't really incorporated it much. Certainly we're not using it in any day-to-day

Dave Reddy (29:23):

Way

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (29:24):

At this point. A lot of it has just been kind of like, oh, this is interesting and new. And

Dave Reddy (29:30):

Yeah, everybody's in a different place on that journey and it'll be really fascinating to see where that goes both in journalism and in telco. So I always finish with the lightest question of the interview, Madison or Brooklyn,

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (29:45):

How is that a light question?

Dave Reddy (29:49):

Well, it's so funny how often I get that reaction. So you got to choose.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (29:57):

Yeah. So I mean, Brooklyn, in my opinion, it's the greatest place in the world. There you go. But I don't have millions of dollars to live there anymore. And I have a husband who loves New York City, but when you're not from there, it can be a hard sell because it's a harder lifestyle. It's just a bit more demanding. Yeah, I mean, we love Madison. I like that it's bite size. I like that someone comes to town and they want a recommendation for a good restaurant, and it's easy for me to come up with one. People are like, oh, I'm heading to New York, where should I go? And my brain just melts. I can only think of places to tell you not to go. I dunno. So it's weird raising my child in Wisconsin. It can be very different upbringing than I had. So that's kind of tough. And it depends who's asking the question. I don't know. It's really cold here right now, so I'm also not, but they're both great. They're both great cities. I miss the grit of Brooklyn. I guess how I would summarize

Dave Reddy (31:17):

Madison is kind, kinder and gentler is what I'm hearing you say. And quieter.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (31:22):

Yeah. I mean it's nice. It's beautiful. The people are wonderful. It's a college town. The food's great. There's so much to love here. So it's not that, it's just, yeah, I don't know. I just figure out how to make Rio tough with the absence of a Brooklyn childhood

Dave Reddy (31:39):

Based on this conversation. I don't think that's going to be an issue for Rio. I think you're going to instill that wonderfully Kat,

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (31:46):

And that's okay. She doesn't have to be tough. There are many things. To be tough is just one of them. She

Dave Reddy (31:51):

Just has to be Rio Kat, thanks so much for your time. This is great. Best of luck in Barcelona, and thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate it.

Catherine Sbeglia Nin (32:00):

Yeah, thank you so much for having me.

Dave Reddy (32:02):

I'd like to thank you all for listening today, and once again, a big thank you to our guest, Catherine z Bigley and Nin of RCR Wireless, Jon us next month when we interview yet another member of the B two B2B Tech Top 200. In the meantime, if you've got feedback on today's podcast or if you'd like to learn more about Big Valley Marketing and how we identified the B2B tech top 200, be sure to drop me an email at d ready@bigvalley.co. That's DRE double D at Big Valley, all one word Co no M. You can also email the whole team at pressing matters@bigvalley.co. Once again, thanks for listening and as always, think big.

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Dave Reddy

Host