Gotta give to get back

What’s up THAT Conference?

Good afternoon. Welcome to THAT Conference main stage.

Main stage, with Danny Thompson.

What’s up, Danny?

What’s up? How are you?

Excellent.

There you go.

Have you ever podcasted on a stage before?

No.

This is a first for you?

This is definitely a different set of circumstances that I’m not necessarily used to.

How do you handle it [unintelligible 00:04:07.27]

Do you podcast often?

Podcast, yes. We’ve done quite a few podcasts. I think the latest one that I did was the freeCodeCamp Podcast. That was a good one.

Nice. Quincy Larson.

Yeah. Amazing Quincy.

He’s a good friend of ours.

I like him.

Gotta get him on the pod. It’s been a while.

It’s always good to have Quincy on the pod.

Speaking of community - I mean freeCodeCamp is just massive. Can you top that, really?

paidCodeCamp, maybe? [laughter]

But you’re here to talk about international community building. Your story, a little bit…

Yeah.

Community-building a lot… We’d love to hear your story. The title says “From gas stations to international community-building.” So I’m sure gas stations have something to do with it… Tell us the story.

You know, before I entered the field of tech or learn how to code, I spent almost 11 years of my, over 10 years, frying chicken at gas stations. That’s my entire history. That’s all I ever knew.

Really?

Learning how to code honestly changed everything. To be honest, even part of my talk, freeCodeCamp was the first place that I started on.

Nice.

And I’m a firm believer that motivation and inspiration have expiration dates, and if you don’t act on the inspiration in that moment, it expires. And freeCodeCamp made it to where within 90 seconds I wrote my first line of code. It’s really hard to break a habit that you start and then act on. So for me, that’s why I’m always recommending that site. I don’t necessarily think frontend may be the way, the truth, and the light when it comes to development, but I do think those early exciting wins keep people addicted to the process. For me, that’s definitely what kept me addicted in the beginning, so I essentially started there.

I started learning how to code, I started making some projects and all the good stuff, and it went well, but I never really started learning how to code with the idea that “Oh, I’m getting a job.” I didn’t really know that path even existed at that time. I just thought “I’m going to make a website, and it’s going to be the coolest website in the world, and everybody’s going to go to it and buy stuff. I don’t even know what I’m going to sell, but they’re going to buy something.”

And they’re going to love it.

And then you learn about SEO and you’re like “This is way harder than I thought it was going to be.” And so I just kind of kept iterating on that. And over time, I started building this amazing skillset that was very in demand… And one big thing that changed everything for me was honestly meetups. And I remember to this day, I heard about meetups in a forum, and I looked online… And I lived in Memphis, Tennessee. I’m like “Do we have meetups here? Is this a thing?” And lo and behold, we did have a meetup, and I went there. And at this time, I had just been learning HTML, CSS. I felt like I knew everything about programming. Spoiler, I literally knew nothing. I didn’t know a dang thing. And I remember –

What year was this?

2018. I was 30 years old.

This is recent.

Yeah. I learned how to code at 30. I’m about to be 36. So I would go to this meetup and I instantly realized that I don’t know anything. And people are like speaking a foreign language to me. They’ll talking about Java, C#, and C… I don’t know any of the stuff in that, but I kind of felt like I was excluded from the overall conversation happening, because I didn’t have anything I could contribute, I didn’t know what they were talking about… But in that moment, I basically said to myself that I’m never going to be excluded from a conversation again. And I just went home and I just started studying, I started building, I started getting further, further in depth with the subjects… And that’s when my technical breadth started growing.

And over time, people in those communities James Q. Quick, one prime example - they started seeing how I was progressing. And so a lot of the peers started becoming recommenders. And over time - and this is kind of why I say communities are so great… You have the same people kind of returning. And so when they see you progress over month one, month six, month nine, and they start seeing you grow and your technical skillset growing, they’re going to be more excited to recommend you for stuff.

[00:07:55.04] And so that was like my pivotal moment to start getting more connections, and conversations… And then from there, I started building my own group, and I built a group that was tremendous in the Memphis area called GDG Memphis… From there, I was helping groups in North Carolina, I was helping groups in California, and I was even helping groups in the Florida area, trying to build up events… Because a lot of them kept saying “We can’t really tap into the community.” You make a few adjustments here and there and next thing they’re starting to not just get people coming to an event, but returning to an event. And to me, I think that’s the biggest tell. It’s already a battle to get them to come there. But if you’re not getting them to come back and have a good time, there’s a big disconnect.

And so from there, I started helping people, I helped out a group in Saudi Arabia, I helped out groups in Ireland… I literally helped out a Mongo group in Ireland, so that was pretty cool… And then over time it just kind of grew to where – I think I’ve helped groups in like nine countries. And so they’ve all just kind of blossomed and grown.

That’s crazy, man. So how did you get connected with those foreign groups to like travel and do that? How did you pay for it? How did it all work out?

Well, I didn’t have to pay for it, because the whole world went silent, and during the pandemic, nobody was really doing anything.

So these were virtual then? Okay.

So for a lot of it, it was virtual. And then after the pandemic, one of the most common things I heard was “People just aren’t coming back to meetups”, and meetup groups were dying. So what I started doing – I had just moved to Texas at that time, and I saw all these groups all over Austin, and even San Antonio, and Houston, these groups that were dead. And so I started reaching out and saying “Let’s do a joint meetup. I’ll do that legwork, and let’s see if we can revive the community. Because you’re saying you’ve tried everything. Let’s just try that.” Next thing you know, their community is getting activated again, and again, and again. And now those groups are doing well.

Why did you care about those groups, though? Were you connected to them? What made you want to revive them and help them?

For me, I don’t think I would be where I am now, I wouldn’t be on the stage if it wasn’t for great meetup groups. So we don’t monetize it, we don’t earn anything from it. It’s just a way to help other developers. And I’ve literally met lifelong friends at this point through meetup groups, I’ve gotten career opportunities through meetup groups, and I don’t know necessarily who else needs that help. And so to let that kind of like die off and not provide that resource to people, I think it’s just not worth it. And so for me, that’s basically where it comes down to. “How many people are we helping within that process?” And my ultimate hope is if we help enough people, they’ll perpetuate that good and help somebody else along the way.

Helping people helping people, basically. That’s from Wedding Crashers.

There you go.

Gotta bring some movie trivia there.

Good reference, good reference. So you said “tweak this, change that”, all of a sudden people are coming back, they’re coming the first time, now we’re growing, now we’re building… What’s the tweaks? What are the changes? How do you actually affect change in these situations?

There’s a couple things that I notice… These common denominators with groups. One of the biggest ones I feel is that meetups traditionally, they try to have the subject matter of the meetup be the core reason why someone is coming to that event. And so if they do another meetup and that subject matter doesn’t necessarily apply to that person, what ends up happening? They don’t go. For me, I feel like that’s the opposite of the approach that we should be utilizing and taking. The purpose should be “I’m going to where my community is.” Simple as that. My community’s meeting this Thursday, I’m gonna go hang out in my community. Oh, we’re also talking about a tech topic? That’s cool, too. And so for me, my meetups never start with us talking about a tech topic. That’s the thing that we’re doing together. It’s not the reason why I’m showing up. So I’ll do tech topics on Java, and I’ll have JavaScript developers show up. I’ll have a topic on Android development. I’ll have non-mobile developers show up because they feel like “Well, my community’s coming there.”

[00:12:00.06] The other day I gave a meetup with two days notice. We still had 70 people show up. Why? We’re not a tech town, but they know their community’s coming there. So they realize that a tech topic will be talked about, but they’re more so there for everyone else that they’re going to be interacting with. And so that’s the forefront of the message that I try to go with.

The other thing I’ll say is a lot of meetup organizers, whether they realize it or not, they’re really great at punishing their guests.

How so?

“Hey, we’re going to get started in five minutes. Just sit right there, we’re going to get started in five minutes. If you want to just sit there, or get your laptops on and get started… Five minutes, five minutes. Three minutes, three minutes. We’re going to get started in three minutes.”

I love the reenactment here. It’s awesome.

But that’s what they do. So I’m punished for coming on time. Why is my time not valued? Why is the person who’s late valued more in this scenario than me, that showed up on time? And so what ends up happening? Well, I’m not going to show up to there at 6:30; they’re not going to get started at 6:30. I’ll be there at seven. And then finally it gets to the point where it’s like “Am I really going to go there for the 45 minutes? I’ll just stay home. Netflix is better. I don’t have to deal with traffic.” So if you punish your guests, they’re less likely to return.

Break: [00:12:52.18]

Is there a structure or a format you use then to make it not about the topic that evening? Because I mean, obviously you’re probably there to talk about specific frontend things, potentially, as a community. There’s an underlying fabric that makes the reason to go there. But ultimately you’re “Well, I like Danny, so I’m going to go back and see Danny. I like Sue” or “I like…” whomever else is going to go there. So you go because of the people, but how do you structure the night? What’s the way you do it?

So it varies. I observe over time what’s working, what’s not working. Let’s tweak it for this market, tweak it for that. The things that I’ve kind of noticed is, number one, when my meetup starts, it’s immediately into networking. We’re networking, people are there… I try to be what I call the extrovert for the introvert. So if someone is very reserved and quiet, they’re nervous, their default is to just hide at a table, and then they leave and they don’t come back because they’re like “Well, I didn’t really get anything out of that that I couldn’t get from like a YouTube video. A lot of these speakers that come here, they’ve recorded their talks anyway. Let me just catch one of those.”

But now - and I’m a firm believer in this - if you make a friend at a meetup, that’s a meetup that you’re going to return to. So I try to introduce myself right away, find out what everyone does, and I start finding common denominators. “Oh, you’re a mobile developer? Well, he’s also a mobile developer at XYZ organization. Let’s pair you two together real fast.”

But the other thing is I’ll do interactive things. We have what I call a pair-programming jam. It’s like a mini hackathon with the goal of - everyone’s assigned randomly on a team, and you have two hours to make an MVP of XYZ. And so now you don’t have a design, you don’t have an idea, you don’t have nothing to go off of except the theme. Everyone’s trying to hack something together, so you’ve now kind of in a situation where you have to interact. You’re talking, you’re trying to solve this problem… And at the end of the two hours, there’s one common phrase. “If I had more time, it would look better, it would operate like this, or it wouldn’t be broken.” And that’s the whole purpose. No one’s having a finished app that works perfectly after two hours. But because of that almost struggle –

Come back next time. You’ll have some more time next time.

I want to share something, because you made me think about the history of this podcast. I met Wynn Netherland at the Ruby meetup in Houston. Houston RB, right? And it was funny, because he and I really were in the same place at the same time in terms of curiosity, and exploration of content, and what’s different, what’s new, because we were both in transition… And the early days of this podcast began because I met the original co-founder, Wynn, at a meetup. And we were friends. I met him and I liked him. He spoke well. It was instant friendship. It was too easy. And I didn’t really consider that until this moment, that the beginnings of this thing we’re doing right now began at a meetup.

Y’all, if you go to a meetup, you can start a podcast. [laughter]

There it is, man. There it is.

That’s awesome.

Well, it’s also interesting – not to make this too self-reflective, but thinking about… We have similar things with the communities around shows, or around content you create online, whether it’s a meetup, whether it’s a YouTube channel… Whatever community you’re trying to create. And we often have the problem – and the nice, the happy result of sometimes people say… We have a show called Go Time, and there’s a lot of people that listen to it. They’re not Go programmers, but they’re like “These are good conversations by people that I like. And yeah, Go’s involved, whatever, whatever. I like the show.” And that’s awesome. But a lot of people don’t know that, because the show is called Go Time. And so if the topic isn’t first, sometimes it’s the packaging, the name, the way you talk about the meetup; it really matters to help understand “I can belong here, even if I’m not in this particular tech stack, or I’m not frontend, or whatever it is.” Do you help with those kinds of things as well? Are the meetups very generic? Like, “This is the software meetup for this area.” How do you think about those things?

So my meetup groups - I’m not against a group that is language-specific. I want our groups to be language agnostic, meaning we can do any technology, any language, any framework, any tech talk. If we can help a certain part of the community on one night, let’s do it. If we help another one, another night, let’s do that as well. We want to – for me, at least my focus is we should just be a place where people feel comfortable and safe, regardless of technical stack. And so that’s what we’ve sort of become, in a sense.

Okay.

For example, I’m big on doing – let’s be real, conferences are expensive; especially if maybe you’re at the beginning stages of your career, or you’re trying to break in…

Sure.

[00:19:44.20] Maybe even if you’re establishing, you’re just not having like a high-paying job, it’s still hard to go to conferences regularly. So what I’ve done is this thing that I call A Night Of. And we’ll have seven or eight speakers, and it’s just completely free, no one spends a dollar, and we just have people come learn. So a night of JavaScript, a night of React, a night of Java, a night of mobile development. And it’s just eight speakers speaking on that theme. And so now, of course, obviously, it’s interactive, and you’re getting a lot of value out of it, but I’m also very big believer in value for time, and your reward for said time.

So if you’re coming and it’s one talk, you’re probably gonna get a lot out of it. But if you have eight speakers, and two of them talk about something you didn’t even think about, that’s a brand new peak in interest; you’ve got a lot of reward for your time.

That’s awesome. So how many of these are you actively involved in, man?

So in Dallas, right now, we do meetups every two weeks. So at least every two weeks, if not more sometimes.

Okay.

But depending on –

Is that one group, then?

Yeah. So in Dallas, we have one group that’s called Dallas Software Developers. DSD. And we have a bunch of volunteers, we do a lot of stuff… We do a cohort, which is completely free, where we have junior developers that are trying to break in. We essentially put them on teams over the course of six weeks, and we get professional programmers that guide them through a project. And so they’re building something, and not just like something generic, but something that they could actually talk about tangibly within an interview process. They’re solving a problem, delivering a solution, and being able to talk about said technical solution. So that way now when they’re in an interview, they actually have something to combat a lot of those objections with. And that’s 100% all volunteer-ran and free. Everything we do is volunteer-ran and free, we don’t make any money off of this. But essentially, the idea is people are getting a lot of value.

We literally just had a bunch of our last cohort graduates, they’ve just got jobs. One of them particularly got a job – I mean, pretty large organizations. I don’t want to say any names. Well, one of them, like NBC, for example; they got a job there. One of them is like in the banking industry. So really great opportunities, and they’re just thriving.

And so for some of them, there’s that disconnect of the idea and the implementation. So sometimes they would build projects that are like the average movie database. But what are you going to do with that? It’s really hard to get an interviewer asking you follow-up questions on said things. And so we implemented that framework, and it’s done really well. And so we’re just constantly evolving that from there.

I help out on occasion with a group in California, I help out on occasion with a group in Florida still… The North Carolina one is hit or miss, because they’re inconsistent with their meetups… But whenever they need help, I’m just literally an email away. And I still help out with the one in Memphis.

How key is consistency?

It’s everything. I mean, not even just meetups. That’s everything in life. It’s really hard to get long-lasting and high-producing results without some form of consistency there. Even podcasting - you might miss an episode here and there, but if you miss a lot over time, it’s really hard to keep the audience engaged. And so that’s like a very, very, very large item, as far as I’m concerned. You have to be consistent.

And have you found that every other week is sustainable? Weekly is better? Monthly? I know there’s a lot of monthly meetups…

Monthly is definitely easier to maintain from the organizing perspective. For me, when I came to Dallas, I didn’t really see a lot happening at that moment, and so I was like “I want to revive the community and get people excited again.” So every two weeks is kind of the cadence that we’re trying to saturate the market with. But I will say that if you know that there’s a meetup every two weeks, maybe you miss one, you’ll be at the next one. That means you’re going to be there at least every month. But we’ve seen – I’d say 70% of them come back every two weeks. So we have a really strong community that just keeps returning. I like keeping them engaged in that, and so it works.

How big is that community?

I mean, we’ve done some pretty sizable events. I wish I had a picture of the [unintelligible 00:23:27.02] I could show you on my phone… [laughter] But I mean, we’ve had some meetups with like 300 people, we’ve had some meetups with 50 people…

Sure.

Yeah. We’ll do some meetups that we call Code Togethers, which is no topic, 100% casual. You come in, you can show projects that you’ve been working on or whatever, or talk about what you’ve been doing at work… Just talking with other devs. And then we have meetups that have a talk that we’re going to do, a workshop, something along those lines.

[00:23:55.12] I like that, because it’s like “Well, I can go this time and it’s just me pairing up with a couple people.” Or “I’m learning, because I’m looking over so and so’s, Nick’s shoulder. He’s vimming with NeoVim, and TypeScripting. I want to learn”, you know?

You know, I didn’t even think about this… But THAT Conference, the thing that I found interesting here was this whole open spaces concept. But at our Code Togethers, that’s what’s happening. People get in these little silos and they’re talking about what they are interested in. And so it’s almost like that, now that I think – I’ve never even put that together, but that’s kind of what that code-together is. You have people just form up at tables and they’re talking about stuff that they’re learning and doing, and they get to share.

Or the other thing too is you’ll sometimes have someone share something that they’re working on, and another dev is like “I’ve actually worked on something similar to this, and I’ve found a better practice”, and here, boom, boom, boom.

Now it’s just knowledge sharing.

It seems like what you’re doing is a lot of giving of yourself and of your time… I mean, all I’ve seen or heard is giving, giving, giving.

A lot of give. Yeah.

What do you get back? Intrinsic value? Are there intangibles? Are there tangibles? Because giving for giving’s sake is amazing. It’s better to give than to receive, 100%. But also it’s nice to receive. And so that helps sustain an ongoing give sometimes. Is there things that you’ve received, just in terms of putting all this effort in for free, all this value? You’ve just given value, constantly. What do you get back?

You want the real answer, this is real?

Yeah.

The real answer.

Literally nothing.

Okay…

I’m not sugarcoating it… I used to really be obsessed with this idea. My whole life – I grew up broke, we were poor…

I remember working at a gas, literally 80+ hours a week. I was making just enough money to be dead broke. I swear, I was killing myself. And when I started making the transition and I landed my first job, and it was more money than I was making at that time, and it just kept going up, I realized none of this would have happened if it wasn’t for really great people around me.

And so honestly, I’m at this point where money isn’t really attractive. If I’m being completely honest, it really isn’t. I’ve turned down some ridiculous offers for money. Prime example, I’ve just released a brand new course five days ago. We have almost 2,000 students in that course. It is 100% free. It is not monetized in any way, shape or form, and it’s on a platform that is notorious for having everything behind the paywall. And they had to put it out 100% for free.

I’m more focused now. Truth be told, I know that there’s going to be a day that I expire. I don’t know if it’s going to be in a week, in a month, in a year, in a decade. I don’t know when it’s going to be. But I’m just trying, in whatever way, shape or form… If I can help one person, fantastic. If I can help 1,000, cool as well. But I just want to leave it in a little bit better shape… Because no one’s going to remember the flavor of the month of the internet in 50 years from now or 100 years from now. So I might as well help someone in the process, because at least you can make generational changes at that point.

I feel that, because one thing we say often is we came for the tech and we stayed for the people. And anytime people ask us for our secret sauce, or anything like that whatsoever, it’s like, you really have to come and be here for the people, not just for the tech we create… Because that’s just the means to the end. It’s just a means of connection. It’s a means – I said it before on a podcast, I’m a humanist. I love humans. I can’t help it. It’s just how I am. But yeah, came for the tech, stayed for the people.

I mean, honestly, I lost money coming here. I spent money on a rental, spent money on – I spent money coming here, but I’m here because there are people that could potentially get help from this… And the other thing too, honestly, if people aren’t already coming to this conference, this should be on their radar. The amount of value here - amazing. Right now as we speak, there’s literally talks happening on the side, on many stages. The value that I’ve gotten personally today - incredible. I’ve gotten probably 14 pages of notes that I’ve taken over this time. And so that by itself I think is incredible. And so when you add then the open spaces, I think that’s phenomenal as well. But yeah, I lost money coming here, but the hope is someone’s going to get benefit out of it.

This might backtrack a little bit, but somebody asked “What’s the group in North Carolina? I can’t see the name.”

[00:28:08.10] If you tweet at me, I’ll go ahead – because I know who this person is. If you tweet at me, I’ll go ahead and give you all the link details and whatnot for that group. I think they’re local in that area, that’s why.

Break: [00:28:19.14]

Let’s go back to the beginning, because you wanted to create this awesome website, right? …and you went to freeCodeCamp and you got started. What was slightly before that? Was there – how did you know? Did you just google how to code? How did you know about freeCodeCamp? Why’d you want to build this website? Like, what was a spark for you and the starting point?

The reason why I got into tech was because of a rapper. I’ve said this line a million times, and it’s very true. To give you like the short version of the story, I was 30 years old, working in a gas station, and I kind of came to the realization that I’m almost at a fork in a road at this point. And I spent days staring at this fork, to where I realized “If I go right, I’m literally going to be in this gas station until the day I die. But if I go right, this is me coming to terms with it, I accept it, I know what’s going to happen. I’m just going to die in this gas station. And that’s cool. If I go left, I’ve got to make a change, it’s got to be now, and I don’t have a clue what that change is going to be.” And so I’m sitting there, and – and you know, my wife, my kid, my son was young at that time… And I’m telling my – I’m doing everything I physically can to improve our circumstances. But the truth of the matter was, honestly, I really wasn’t, without realizing it. I was bone tired. My feet would ache, I was working all these hours… I was just exhausted.

And one day I’m at the hot box, the deli box, where we put the chicken in, I got some out the fryer and I’m stacking it in… And next to the register was a TV. Basically, if there’s a line of customers, they can watch the TV for a few minutes, so they don’t feel, I guess, the pressure of the line. And I hear this interview going on. And this interview – this rapper invested several million dollars into a tech company. And I was like “This is kind of weird…” So I walked around the hot box, I’m staring at this interview… And obviously, the interviewer asked him “Why did you invest this money?” and he said “I’m learning how to code.” This literally melted my mind in that moment, because I’m like staring at the TV… My perception at that time was if you knew how to code, it was because you were literally a rocket scientist. You were a PhD holder. You were on that level of accolade. I couldn’t fathom someone from my kind of background ever writing code.

[00:32:12.22] And so I’m just staring and I’m looking at this, and I walk back behind that box, and I don’t even know what’s upside down anymore… I’m just so confused. I’m just thinking about this, I’m thinking about this. “If he can learn how to code, so can I, right?” But then I’m like “I need reasoning.” I started coming up with reasoning. Like, why don’t I know more about my laptop? Why is the extent of my knowledge opening up youtube.com and watching cat videos? Because that’s literally what I was doing. [laughter]

At least you had good taste.

For sure. [laughter]

I was like “Why is that the extent of my knowledge?” And then I’m like “Why don’t I even know why my smartphone costs $1,300? Why don’t I know why my laptop costs $2,000? Why don’t I know– I’m just paying it, but I don’t understand any of it.”

And so he started learning how to code, and so did I. And so I started going online, I’m like “How do I learn how to code?” I google it. freeCodeCamp was the first thing that popped up. I started it, and I didn’t know what any of this was, and I just started learning. And the thing that hit me right away is what made me so angry at myself. I spent like six hours on that website the first time, and I was like “When is the last time I read anything with the purpose of becoming better at something? I can’t even remember. I’m so great at making my boss money and killing myself in the process… When’s the last time –” And this was the first time ever in my life where the phrase “Invest in yourself” ever clicked for me. I never knew what that even meant.

And so now I’m like – anytime you see these TikToks of these rich investors, like “If you only got a grand investing in yourself…” Like, what the hell does that even mean? But that’s the moment it clicked for me. I’m finally making myself a priority and I’m investing in myself. And that’s where the addiction came.

I heard – I think it was on TikTok, actually, mentioning that… Somebody said “Everything is find-outable.” The unlock of the world is – like for you, everything’s learnable. Everything is find-outable. And she was like “This was the moment when I realized that I could build this business I built, because I had no idea how to do any of this stuff beforehand. And then my mom said “Everything is find-outable”, so I’m going to find out how that works. Then I’m going to find out how this works. And then how that works.” And next thing you know, you’ve skill stacked to the point where you can build this business and do your thing. It’s unlocked.

Absolutely.

And it helps if you can unlock that for other people, which I’m sure has happened probably since then for you, through the meetups and through your courses, and through the stuff that you’re doing online as well.

Yeah. And Memphis, before the pandemic – because I didn’t use social media before then. And so everything started right when the pandemic hit. And so before then I had helped 44 people land their first jobs in tech. I was geeked out, loved everything about that. And once I started realizing “I can just take the same information that I’m giving people locally, and we just apply it globally.” But then all this new information started coming in. I started learning what doesn’t work in different markets. I’ve started adjusting my approach. Now, for the most part - we’re talking thousands at this point. I can’t believe – it’s very hard to go a few days without somebody messaging me, “I finally got my first job. I implemented this strategy that you talked about in this webinar, or whatever it may be, and it ended up working in the interview.” And it ended up working so well to where they were recommending me for the next stage, and next stage, and next thing you know, someone… Prime example – what was it, last Saturday? Someone literally messaged me, “I went from working in restaurants as a line cook, to now I just got my first job in tech.” Or Noah, who I met over here, literally fried chicken in a chicken restaurant, and now he got his first job in tech. Or even Sam Sycamore; he was a construction worker, heard me on one of the podcasts… I’m forgetting the name now. JavaScript Jabber. He heard me on JavaScript Jabber, decided to start learning how to code. Boom. He’s no longer living in his van.

The thing for me - I never knew this path was allowed. Once I figured it out, I’m like “Oh, this is it.” But now I start running my mouth because I don’t know who needs to hear this. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that tech has to be the thing for you, but it would be amazing for you to find out what that thing can be, and start putting that effort in that right situation.

[00:36:14.29] And what’s next for you? Where are you going from here?

So we’ve just released one course. The course was testing a theory as far as an educational method of teaching. And so now, my idea is I have a similar method that I want to utilize for technical content in courses. And so that’s going to be the forefront. A lot more technical courses are going to be coming out using said theory. I have an idea for a technical course that, I’ll be honest, I’ve never seen done. And I think this is going to help more junior developers than ever be job-ready, with actual job-ready skills, instead of maybe trying to manufacture confidence in an area where they may be lacking it. And so I think that’s going to go a long way. Really, really excited about that one.

We’re working on – honestly, one of my big goals is I want to do… Kind of how I mentioned the whole theme with “A night of…”, with the meetups being like mini conferences… I want to do a big conference, but 100% free for the community. So that’s in the works as well. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to achieve it this year. It’s my goal this year, but more likely it’s probably going to be beginning of next year.

I have a name for you. freeConfCamp.

[laughs]

You know what? It’s so original. I think it might work.

It might just work.

It might just work.

That’s amazing.

It might be IP issues there, but yeah.

I like it. We’ll call it FCC for short.

There you go. Dot org.

Dot org. [laughter]

We’re coming for you, Quincy. [laughter] Unrelated, but related question… Social media strategy for developers. You have a very large social following, right?

Some would say.

How do you do that?

So the reality is I’ve helped God knows how many developers at the point to finally build up their followings, right? The biggest mistake that I see a majority of developers make when it comes to social media - they take for granted the idea that people are going to automatically know what they’re talking about. My timeline has 1000 different accounts competing for five seconds worth of my time. I don’t owe you the time to stop scrolling, and read, and then ponder what you’re talking about, and try to find the background context. You need to provide all that in the forefront. And if you provide that in a compelling way, people are going to like, engage, share, comment.

People oftentimes – I believe every post should have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Simple as that. It must have a beginning. The reason why I’m supposed to be reading this; your hook should be in the first line. You should have the meat of your post, and there has to be a conclusion there. Why did I read this, and what should I take away from this? A lot of people miss that.

And so oftentimes I’ll see people where they’ll have a post where it’s like “I wrote a blog article. Look at this.” They post a link… It doesn’t get an engagement. Why? That’s what I call a redirecting post. I can’t even know if that post is good until I go to your blog article and read the thing. And so when I go to that other platform, maybe I drop a like on the blog article because this is the best blog article I’ve read all day. What are the chances of me going back to the original post to drop another like on it? Almost none. So if you’re not giving me something to engage with before redirection, that post dies. The algorithm kills it. So a lot of developers miss that. They don’t give a reason to engage before redirection.

The other thing a lot of developers make the mistake on, honestly, is lack of consistency within that niche. Going back to the overall theme of consistency - how many developers do you know will talk about development topics, and next thing you know they’re talking about cars, they’re talking about sports, they’re talking about other interests. And the problem is, for me following you, I didn’t sign up for that. I signed up because I saw that great tweet on TypeScript implementation. Well, when I see this other stuff, I may give you the benefit of the doubt for a little while, but it was super-easy for me to find that Follow button, and it’s super-easy to find that Unfollow button as well. So if you incentivize them to go find it, they will.

[00:40:07.24] Mm-hm. Give the people what they came for.

I mean, simple as that. If I signed up for tech stuff from you because you have great tech stuff, don’t dilute it with the other things, especially if you’re in the building stage… Because they don’t know who you are yet. You need that relationship built over time for them to be like “I know what Adam’s about. I know his quirkiness. I know his tongue in cheek humor. Boom. When he hits me with that, I’m ready for it.” But if it’s my first interaction with you and you hit me with that right away, it’s very low on the likelihood that I’ll stick around for it.

Right. What’s your favorite online platform or community, or favorite place to build community online?

It depends. So Twitter has been great at – it’s my largest following, but the reality is LinkedIn has probably been my most fruitful of followings. The people on there are very serious. I get to talk to decision-makers of businesses directly. And so whenever we’re talking about big initiatives, I’ve got keyholders for that business that are willing to make those moves.

And prime example as well with LinkedIn - if I do a meetup and I have a hundred people that RSVP’d from LinkedIn, 95 are showing up. If I do that from Twitter, maybe 40. So LinkedIn –

More serious.

Well, I mean, there’s stats to prove it, right? I believe the last time I saw the stats, 75% of users on LinkedIn make over $80,000 a year. These are people that are well-established within their niche and career. They’re not people that are trying to break in, or they’re not people that are deciding whether they’re going to stick with someone… They’re in there. So they’ve already established their professional – they’re going to be committed.

Twitter, you don’t know who’s seeing your stuff. It could be someone that’s a student, you can have a CEO, you could have a sales rep… It may not even be people-specific within your niche. LinkedIn for the most part is pretty good about pushing it to people that follow you for said topic.

I agree. I’ve got great success on there, too. I’ve posted recently on there, the one on the silent sacking. I mean, that was a good topic too, but it’s gotten 10,000 or more visibility, if not more than that. And that’s 10,000 more than that show and topic would have had if I didn’t post one thing on LinkedIn. But I’ve been building my network there for years, I just haven’t been giving anything. So I’ve been more encouraged with that feedback loop to give more there, because it’s sort of like a captive audience, you know what I mean? Versus Twitter, which is not so much a non-captive audience, it’s just more scattered. Whereas LinkedIn seems a bit more narrow-focused, people who are there for that reason, and they’re there to engage in and be a part of that kind of stuff.

Well, I’d say one other thing, too. This is me being honest. I hate social media, to a certain degree. Like, there’s stuff about it I just don’t like about social media. But I think people lose track of one thing. These are tools. And I would like to utilize the tool for what it is, and produce great fruitful relationships that I can continue even off of that platform.

Some of the best relationships I’ve made on any of these platforms - TikTok, Instagram, YouTube… The YouTube channel is still growing. I need to put more content out. I know that. But I’ve made friends, I’ve made lifelong friends that I’ve – literally, I’ve met four people here today that I’ve been talking to for the last four years, first time we met in person. But we’ve talked off of those platforms. We’ve talked in multitudes of different ways.

So the platform doesn’t necessarily matter as much as the communication and the relationship that you’re having, on and off of that platform. And for me, any social media platform is simply a tool. And if you use it the right way, you can make some great relationships.

Yeah. It’s great for introducing yourself and others to new ideas and to new people, but it’s not great for actually establishing real relationships with those people. I’ve followed people and talked to people online for years, and never really felt like I knew them very well… And then you meet them once in real life and it’s kind of like 100% –

Instant friendship. Brett Cannon.

Yeah. Lifelong friendship. There you go. So that 100% resonates.