Hi everyone, my name is Patrick McHugh and if you've ever
thought of going freelancing, this episode is for you.
We cover why and when to go freelancing and when not to, as
well as the dark side of freelancing.
Joining me today is Andrea Jardini, cloud native,
consultant, trainer and big, big community enthusiast.
So enjoy it. I forgot who I asked this, but
since you're very involved in communities when you travel, do
you already kind of know people of the city you're travelling
to? Like when we're talking about
Amsterdam, I know the people you know here, but also the city.
That's a good question. Not always, you know, like I had
the chance to do my career to, to move a lot around.
So I'm originally from Italy. I worked in Switzerland, in
Berlin for years, in Amsterdam three years, and now I'm based
in Paris. So I know I know people around a
little bit, but being part of this community is also about
reaching out and being spontaneous.
Like, right. I mean, let's say that I go to a
new city where I don't know anyone or, you know, not, I
don't don't have any, you know, any, any close friend, for
example. I can just, you know, ask around
and yeah, you know, somebody at this based in Madrid, let's say.
And you know, when I go to Madrid, maybe we can just hang
out for a coffee or something like this.
It's, it's part of being, being part of a, of a wide, of a wider
and bigger community, right? I'm, I'm based right now in
Paris, so I'm part of the Parisian community.
But it's always nice to have this feeling of being part of
something bigger. Yeah.
And whenever you need it, whenever you, you know, whenever
you want to experience something different, when you, whenever
you get to know somebody in a different region, it's very easy
to reach out. People are very are very chilled
from a point of view. In fact, some of my friends are
very surprised at every now and then.
And they're, they're like, so you just go on LinkedIn and
write to people like, yeah, yeah, sure.
That's what I do a. Lot I do a lot.
That's funny. What What community specifically
do you feel part of the most? Because I think there's a lot of
communities within this tech landscape.
Or do you see it as kind of tech, as an umbrella?
Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I would say that I'm the
closest to the to the cloud native community.
So all the community surrounding everything, infrastructure,
cloud native, Kubernetes, this kind of thing.
Yeah, I would say that's the one I've I've been the closest,
let's put it this way, both when I was here in Amsterdam,
previously in Berlin, but also, yeah, now in Paris pretty much.
So it's, it has been just, you know, I'm trying to yeah, to
give some continuum. Let's put it this way, even
though you know, I don't dislike going to meet ups that are like
unrelated to to tech or unrelated to cloud native
specifically. And what came first, because I
know you've been freelancing for a good and long time, Was the
community in this feeling of, let's say in building those
relationships first before then you ventured in freelancing or
did freelancing come first and then you found kind of this
community and bonded with? It no, community definitely came
first. I'm, I'm preparing a talk for
next week for a, for a conference I'm going to about
community and that I got involved in community and, and I
tried, you know, to get back to the first time I got in touch
with a community and it was back in 2013.
That's the first time I gave a public talk and it was more of
a, it was more of a challenge for me.
I used to be like, you know, 10-15 years ago, like a pretty
shy person, introverted, pretty shy.
Now I'm not the most extrovert one, but I've definitely
improved. They fail and they're getting
involved in community giving, you know, conference talks.
Going to meet ups was a way for me to just fight that aspect of
myself. Like I didn't, nobody really
likes being introverted and being shy, right?
So it was more of a way for me to get out there and face
something that I, you know, I was not sure how to handle.
Let's put it this way. And and yeah, basically, like
year by year, I found out that this was useful for me.
It was useful for. Yeah, to get a little bit out of
the shell, to put myself in a more in a challenging situation.
I didn't really know how to handle it this way.
Yeah, and then at some point you decided to actually venture out
on your own and start freelancing.
What were some of the decisions and and why did you end up going
freelancing instead? In my case it was a very gradual
process. Let's put it this way.
So I've been here. I started as an employee first
when I was living in in Berlin. I worked there for a company for
a start up over there for four years.
And back then I started doing some things on the side, some
little freelancing things, in particular workshops I was
doing. So you know, I would work during
the day and then sometimes in the evening I had a workshop for
the US. So it was working pretty well
with times difference, for example.
Then as I moved to the Netherlands that I found out
that in, you know, in the Netherlands is very common.
Also today I have like a four day work week.
I got employed again in the Netherlands for a company for
four days and one day a week. I was dedicating it to
freelancing. And then, you know, as you know,
the the amount of project came up, the as I was feeling more
and more confidence also about the bureaucracy and everything
that is behind freelancing, like the non romantic part.
Nobody talks about that, that that's when I decided venturing,
you know, and go full on freelancing pretty much.
But it was a very gradual transition over over several
years this way. I want to zoom into that non
romantic part but before we do, you said you started out
gradually and even with workshops.
How? How did you get those gigs in
the 1st place? Like did you just reach out to
companies or did they find you? That's a very good question.
So the start up I was working for in Berlin was a small start
up with like 3540 people and they wanted to develop a new
product that was cloud native first much so running in the
cloud and so on. The problem is that our
engineers didn't have any, didn't have much expertise with
cloud. And so they asked me if I could
develop a small workshop to run internally to our engineers to,
you know, give them the basic of what it means to have a software
trans on cloud native, what it means cloud native, what means
the cloud and Kubernetes. I gave that workshop internally
and it went really well. Like I like the process of like
building the material, the exercise, delivering the
workshop. And since then, you know, like
at the end of this workshop, I basically found myself with all
this work I've done, I'm like, OK, I should reuse it somehow.
So I gave it to a couple of conferences before and then
through a friend, like really for a friend, like they were a,
my company's looking for another trainer, somebody that knows
Kubernetes and wants to deliver some, some workshops.
Would you be up for it? And yeah, the time was working
well and I just started doing it and I say let's see, let's see
how it goes, let's see if it works out or not.
That's very nice. Yeah, it was, you know, you need
somebody to give you like the the initial kick very often.
And I think it's part, it's part of the game.
It's part of the also the freelance community, like
helping each other out because at the end freelancing, you also
get a little bit more, you know, if you don't build yourself,
your network, it's not like you go to an office and you meet
people or you know, just projects or gigs are not coming
out of the sky, right? You need to actively build a
build a network, actively build like, you know, a group of
people that you trust and with whom you you work well and with
whom you can exchange tips and these kind of things.
Is that also then part of the kind of non romantic slide that
you touched on or what do you mean with that?
I mean, I feel like in the past couple of years, I have the
feeling, especially since COVID, there has been a lot of, you
know, this asshole culture. You always need to, to do more,
you know, with you don't want to have a boss, you need to be your
own boss and so on. And a lot of those talks are
very, you know, like they say all the positive things about
being independent, but they like, they completely ignore all
the, you know, boring part. You need to deal with
bureaucracy sometimes. You're going to make mistakes
and you're going to fix them yourself.
There are you need to activate. I mean, you're basically your
own CFOCMOCEO and you know, the whole C-Suite is just one
person. And this is a bit the part that
not a lot of people talk about. It's, it's a little bit, you
know, it's more difficult. It's all the things to learn as
well. If you're willing to learn them,
you're going to love, you're going to love freelancing.
But there are people that, you know, like, I struggle a lot
with bureaucracy, bureaucracy, like it's my worst nightmare.
Oh, yeah. It's, it's horrible.
Like, I just want to work, you know?
But, you know, there are people, for example, don't like to to
market themselves as much and so on.
So this is a little bit the part that not a lot of people talk
about, or at least not not as often, Right.
It's. Yeah.
It's a part of freelancing. It is important.
But yeah, that has been a little bit left out whenever we are
about this. Talk about be your own boss.
You can walk from the beach. Yeah, it doesn't.
Work, I mean, those, those things really like seem
attractive to me and I've thought of freelancing and next
to like the, the insecurities and maybe a bit of impostor
syndrome in my skills and what I can deliver.
It's also the feeling of I like the company, this company here
at CBI, like the community. I like some of the values and
principles. We come together every Tuesday,
we share knowledge and I would lose that.
I would lose, let's say, the colleagues that I work with more
so on a day-to-day basis or this feeling of community than within
the company. Is that also something that
happened to you because you already were part of a lot of
communities when you went freelancing?
Is it not lonely? A little bit is natural, right?
As you're, as you're saying right now, we are a team.
We work together on a project. So we meet regularly, we work
together through we work together to achieve a certain
object, a certain target, right? When you have freelance, it's a
lot different. And this is where you know, also
freelance community. They are that they're important.
Like surround yourself with other people that do the same
thing that you do. So for example, in my case,
somebody else doing also cloud native, but also for example,
freelancer that do something completely unrelated is always
very interesting. Having goes to different
perspective of, you know, how things are going.
You don't want to be closed in your own bubble.
You don't want to be completely isolated from everybody else.
It's important that you yeah, always keep your eyes open a
little bit. And again, it's about it's you
need to put effort in order not to make it happen, right?
If you don't want to be isolated, if you don't want to
feel lonely, you are the one that will have to go out there,
find other people, go to a Co working space, whatever works
for you. But it's on you, right?
And. No one else is going to fix it
for you. Yeah, yeah, nobody else is going
to fix. It for you?
Interesting. And then I'm thinking of, OK,
when would I go freelancing because especially early on,
early on in my career, I was like that technical kind of
insecurity was bigger, but it doesn't really go away, not I've
noticed. It never goes away.
Can you start freelancing early
on in your career or would you still advise to go through let's
say the corporate ladder a bit and then learn and go
freelancing after? I would but but again, it's my
opinion. Sure it's not.
There is not a manual about freelancing, right?
I would still advise to work for a company for some years.
I think it's in, it's important not only to get, you know, to
get the, you know, a little bit more structure.
I mean, I think it's important to get a little bit more
structure in your work to see how a real company works.
I've learned a lot in the company I worked for, like every
time. It is though, it is very
important to work for a company where you're learning something.
This is the important thing. But, you know, I worked mainly
with start-ups when during my career as an employee and, you
know, seeing them grow from like 30 people to like 200 and see
how all the procedure or the internal procedure are changing.
It's, I think it's important, you know, you need to be able
when you're a freelancer also to organize yourself, to organize
your work in a, in a structured way, to make transparent what
you're doing to your client, for example.
And these are skills that maybe, you know, when you're like,
younger or when you're right out of university, they're not
obvious to have, right? Sometimes, yeah.
At least I didn't have them when I got out of university this
way. Yeah, me neither.
I mean, I've, I've learned a lot in companies and I also think
it's interesting like company dynamics and organizational
structure and being part of that.
I have not been like say from a, an outside perspective, I have
been in it from a consultancy perspective.
But then I don't have the feeling of, let's say risk or
what if I lose this assignment or I get to choose which
assignments I like and I get to switch as well.
Like I, I've been with QIBA for five years, always as a software
engineer. And then this January, it was
like there was an opportunity for a product management role.
And I always kind of also romanticized the idea.
And now I could just be like, can I try this?
Because I really want to try this.
And that was enough for me. And I actually land this
position. I'm having a lot of fun with it.
So then the the flexibility of consultancy, I'm not sure how it
is for freelancing. For example, if you go from
assignment to assignment and the the gap between assignments is
too big, would you then go for an assignment for example, like
early on in career where you can learn and grow and etcetera,
etcetera? Because those are more hard to
find, I think the more you grow. They are hard to find.
Very often companies where they look for, when they look for
freelancers, they look for somebody that's already has the
skill, right. They have a problem they want to
solve. They don't have the skills
internally. So they are somebody external
that has the skills that comes and fixes the problem.
So it's true as well that when you're a freelancer, you need to
spend time actively also learning your stuff, You know,
that it be in your own, you know, in your own time.
Some of the time, if you find the perfect gig that you know,
is where you know, you like the people you work with and you
also have the opportunity to learn something new, it's, it's
fantastic. I mean, at the end, you always
end up learning something, right?
But like on a topic that maybe you were curious about that you
have haven't had the chance to, to touch.
If that's, that's, that's the best deal ever.
But at times you also need to just take a step back, you know,
maybe when you have like a more like quiet time or like a period
where you don't have any contract going on.
It's also about, yeah, keeping yourself up to date.
Let it be with podcast, with some conferences or just, you
know, like hacking things out on on your laptop pretty much.
Yeah, I'm curious what what works for you in educating
yourself. Let's say you're in a gap
between assignments. Do you go to conferences,
workshops, or what do you do to educate yourself and keep up to
date? I mostly tend to to hack things
around. So I have like I have like a
mental list of like projects like in the cloud native space
that I never had the chance to use, that I never had the chance
to experiment with. And whenever like I have a
little bit of time, I have a little bit of, you know, a
little bit of a gap between one project and another or I take a
break because it's also important.
Yeah, maybe I spend like a couple of days like trying to
understand how the project works and you know how we can we can
bring value, for example in my next assignment.
You mentioned a freelance community and it wasn't
something like before speaking to you, I didn't know that
existed. And it makes a lot of sense
because there's a lot of communities in different aspects
of life nowadays in any case. But what does a freelance
community do? For example, what does it offer
you specifically? Yeah.
I mean, when you talk about the freelance community, you can
mean them as just a group of freelancers that meet that meet
together. One thing I'm part of is a, is a
collective, like a freelance collective, OK, it's called,
it's called FICA works like FICA have written like the, the
Swedish FICA, like the afternoon break.
It pretty much is a collective of lands, like a group of
friends that end up, you know, working more or less within the
same field. Let's put it this way.
And what we do is just helping each other out, you know, the
beef bureaucracy with projects. Sometimes there are projects
that's, you know, come my way that are really interesting.
But maybe I'm already busy for the next six months.
And, you know, if I if I don't take the project, it would go to
somebody else. And maybe I know somebody within
this community that I trust, somebody that I know, and then I
can say, hey, if you want, I can put you in in contact with this
person. They're looking for a project.
I think. I think they're a good fit from
the point, from the skills point of view.
And you know, we try to make something together.
This is the idea of a cooperative really try to, you
know, basically look like a company, but but when where
everybody's independent. So each one of us is independent
within this cooperative. Each one of us is a freelancer,
but whenever we go to to like a bigger company for, you know, a
project, for example, we present ourself as a as a company this
way. So let's say that we have a
project with four freelancers. If one of them needs to leave
because, you know, family situation or whatever, we can
find somebody else to replace him.
This. This is the idea.
And also very often whenever you work, especially with bigger
companies, it's a little bit more difficult to get project
with bigger companies whenever you are an individual, whenever
you are a single freelancer. And instead, in this way, we
create sort of a, yeah, a structure we put in place a
structure that makes them, that makes us, yeah, a real company.
Interesting. And we try to treat it a little
bit as a, as an open source project to put it this way.
So we try to take decisions together, but we also try, yeah,
to basically push the push the cooperative in the direction we
want. And yeah, we have like some
members, we have some members that are internal to cooperative
and then we have a wider community around and you know,
sometimes organize events for the smaller community, sometimes
they're open to the wider community as well.
It's just it's, it's very fluid. Let's put it this way.
So it's a, it's a very self organized.
Yeah, that's very nice. I mean, I, I've always been part
of consultancy and I can compare it with what I think it would be
like freelancing. And then you have like nowadays
more so Midlands constructions where you have a bit of bit more
stability, a little bit more risk and reward also because of
that. And then this, let's say
freelance community or collective.
And it's like the third aspect then of it.
And it doesn't have to be a Lone Ranger type of style.
I think that's very interesting. Exactly.
Yeah, it also helps a lot with with solitude, as we were saying
before, right. Having a community of people
that shares the same problem that you have does more or less
the same thing that you have. And, you know, keep in mind that
with many of those people, I never had a project together.
So we do the same things, but for different client.
We try, you know, not to compete with each other with our we, we
try to help each other out. Whenever there is somebody that
is, you know, like their project gets gets cut short, for
example, we try to find, you know, a new contract for them
and this kind of thing. It's just about, you know,
helping each other out. That's these these the main idea
of the. One of my friends is working on
his own startup. It's more of a code automation
tool and he really always talks about he's never going back to
the corporate ladder. He loves doing what he's doing
now. Have you ever thought of going
back as well? Or would you see are you using
the same camp that you're like, I'm never going back.
No, I don't exclude it to be honest.
This is another misconception that, you know, comes a little
bit from the I, I feel like comes a bit from the asshole
culture a little bit. But you know, if you, if you go,
you need to go be your own boss. And if you don't do that,
you're, you're basically a failure.
I know many, I have many friends, I have many people they
know that went back to a full time job and they're super,
super, super happy. And you know, like even within
our community, even within our, our cooperative and it's
fantastic. Like it's, you know, people are
very positive about it. Other freelancers are like,
well, I mean, conditions in your life changed, you know, maybe,
you know, maybe you need to move, maybe you'll get a new
kid, maybe you want just to be a little bit more, you know, not
always on the hook for the next project, not always on the on on
the lookout. I don't think it's, I don't
think it's a bad thing. I don't think it's a bad thing.
And also, again, like when you work for a company, when you
work as an employee, you basically also get paid to
learn. When you're a freelancer, you
don't get paid to learn, you get paid to deliver.
That's it. You just, you just need to
deliver. And, and yeah, if you don't
manage really to cut your, to cut your little place to learn
new things. Also going back to the
traditional company for a while, being an employee for a while
or, you know, for the rest of for the rest of your career.
It's it's totally fine. I don't see the, I don't see it
as a failure. I feel like if in the future I
ever, I ever have a time where I feel like, OK, freelancing is
not for me anymore. I want to go back to like an
employee. I I will not be disappointed by
that. I will not feel bad about it or
anything like that. Yeah, I really like that
perspective that the career journey is fluid, right?
And you didn't just take a right and then you're on that path.
You can still circle back, or there's other paths, and you can
make decisions based on your own context in that way.
Freelance is about making like doing what is best for you,
right? I switched to freelancing
because I realized that the job that I wanted didn't exist
pretty much. I, I like doing workshops,
right? Doing technical training.
I like to do like technical work every now and then organized to
do events. And there is just no job in this
way. And so if at a certain point,
the best thing for you and the best thing for your your
situation is going back to a full time job, that that be it.
Yeah, why not? It's.
Totally fine. Like it's.
There is no shame in that. No, exactly.
Yeah. I mean, you already touched on
that when you're an employee, you also get paid to learn.
And when you're a freelancer, you more so get paid to execute,
right? You have a certain expertise,
company needs that more so now than later and you get paid to
execute. Have you also been on an
assignment where you're like and this is just not the assignment
for me? And how did it affect you?
It happens. It happens.
Unfortunately, it's yeah, there is no, there is never like it's
never somebody's fault. It's always a little bit in the
middle, like it's up to you to scope a project and to
understand really what is going on.
Sometimes, you know, yeah, you just, you just end up in a
project or in a team and you just, it just doesn't click
right. And this can be for a variety of
reasons, like the expertise that I was supposed to bring.
Maybe it's not what they were expecting or the team dynamics
don't work out there. There are many things.
What happens most of the time is that I tend, I tend basically to
stick with it for a while to see if things change or see if I can
influence thing in a certain way, in a positive way.
But you know, after a while, if things don't work out for you
and don't work out for your client, you just say, hey, I
mean, it was nice working with you and we show the best, but
you know, things are not working out and most of the time you
just like it's, it's on both side, right?
It doesn't happen very often, to be honest.
But but yeah, it's on both sides.
So it's like the kind of you part ways in a, in a, yeah, in a
very cordial way, like with without any, yeah, without any
anger, without any, any issue, it's fine.
I think you have to. I mean, I'm only part of this,
let's say company's fair in NL, but throughout this journey, and
I don't have the longest career journey, I see people going from
company to company and all of a sudden you circle back around
and you're like, hey, I know you have worked, we've worked
together or we were in the same company, but we never actually
worked together. But I know your name.
Do you feel that as well? I mean, and, and you've
travelled kind of across a lot of countries.
Do you still come across a lot of the same people?
Yeah, it happens. Like, you know, the community at
the end is it, it feels big, but at the end it's always the same
people. Let's put it this way.
Every now and then there is somebody new, but it's yeah,
it's I've met recently like a colleague of mine I was working
with for this start up back in Berlin.
I've met her again because now she works for a start up in the
Netherlands. And so, you know, it was like,
yeah, like back in Berlin, we never, we were never like
talking to each other that much. We were in two completely
different teams. So, you know, we were working in
the same company. And when you're 30 people, you
sort of like know everybody. But now she's more, she's
getting like closer and closer to like the cloud native space,
working for a company that does cloud native tools and so on.
And so, yeah, like you just, you just meet again and it's, it's
always interesting, it's always fun.
That's really nice. I'm curious to hear your opinion
on how, let's say the community aspect of the tech landscape has
changed Because I've had many people on the table and they
say, and they told me that kind of this meet up culture that we
had before COVID ish is kind of trickling off and there's not
really that much that many people going to meet ups
nowadays. There's more content online and
people self educate and if people self educate this like
attachment to community, it's harder to find or you only find
it in conferences or you only find it if you do more.
So outreach rather than going to meet ups is something, is that
something you recognize as well? So and so so COVID definitely
didn't help. So COVID was a big hit for
community and and for meet ups in particular, like the whole
meet up scene was basically, you know, frozen for like 3-2, three
years, like gone. Like nothing was happening
anymore. I saw.
I also feel that people got really fed up with online
conferences. Like people like, yeah, if I
have to watch an online conference, I'd rather watch a
YouTube video at my own time and at my own pace.
At least that's also my feeling. I think.
I think meet ups are coming, are coming up.
The problem is that a lot of organizers, especially they get
a little bit discouraged because let's say that you have a meet
up that that was very successful before COVID, during COVID 2
years, no meet up, right? So the community doesn't grow
and actually shrinks because you know, many of the people may
move away or whatever it is. And then you go back, you do
your first meet up after COVID and you used to have like 70
people show up and now you have eight.
You're like, OK, so you might feel like you've lost it all.
I believe that if you bring like back a certain cadence, a
certain regular cadence, I think that's one of the most important
things about meet ups in general.
Things come back, things come back.
I've seen that in Paris where I moved right now.
As I moved to Paris around a year ago, I started getting
involved with the local meet up community and it was a little
bit again, frozen due to COVID times.
And the first meet up, there were not that many people.
But then I, I tried to insist like, OK, let's do one meet up
per month, more or less. It was helping me to get
integrated into the local community to get to know local
companies as well. So there was this nice mix of
like community and also networking with like the French
ecosystem, you know, and a little by little it's, you know,
the first meet up, like not that many people.
Second meet up a little bit more and then you start seeing like
the regulars, how I call them the regulars, like people have
come to the meet up every time and that's, and that's amazing,
you know, because these people like the, yeah, after, after
COVID, they're still there. They show up all the time.
They come to you and they say, hey, thank you for organising.
It was really interesting. We appreciate all the effort
that you're putting into this. And yeah, for me, it's just a
great feeling. So just circling back, I, I've
been rambling a lot, you know, but but yeah, COVID definitely
didn't help. I still feel like people look
for social interactions. It's it's a little bit more
tricky right now because, you know, if you work remotely the
whole day, then in the evening, just getting out of the house to
go on to a meet up. Yeah, I, I, I can understand
some people don't just don't feel like going, but I feel like
people need more and more like to meet with other to other,
yeah, to meet in this kind of settings.
Let's put it this way, especially after COVID, but it
has been, yeah. I feel like it's also, it's also
about insisting creating a certain regularity in meet ups
and these kind of community events.
I think that helps a lot. Like not not having like, OK, we
do a meet up now and then the next one is in four months, then
we have another one in one year. Trying to be regular rather less
but regular then more but spread all over the place.
Have you experimented with digital communities as well?
Because I, I know a few people that host meetups here and I
don't know if they have experimented with it, but it's
definitely been a thought with regards to, let's say, the
Beyond Coding podcast to interact with people more and
more. The only interaction I have, and
that's more so on LinkedIn is the Q&A aspect of these
episodes. Because every, every now and
then I ask, OK, let's do another Q&A episode.
Do you have any questions? And based on that, that little
interaction actually gives me a lot of fulfilment.
I'm wondering if I can do more because I've seen Slack
communities, I've seen Discord groups, and have you
experimented with any of those? That's a good question.
I'm I'm in a couple of Slack communities and also Discord
communities. I feel like they're interesting
and I get a lot of value out of some of them, but but they lack
the human touch, right? They lack the human touch.
We are social animals at the end of all right, So it's I feel
like this human touch is important.
I see them more as, yeah, place where I go and there are other
people that have the same ideas and the same problem they might
have. But you know, it's it's tricky
to create an actual friendship there.
It's tricky to create an actual a deep, you know, a friendship
pretty much. And and yeah, This is why I tend
to prefer like a non digital community.
In your case, it's a little bit different because, you know, you
have an audience in a meet up or in a community, like everyone is
on the same. How can you say that Like
everybody's on the same? It's not we, we don't build a
community around the podcast, right?
Everybody that is in a, in a meet up can just come and give
their own presentation and expose their own topic, which is
something that you know, for a podcast is a bit more one way.
Let's put it like this, even though your audience can ask you
Q&A questions and so on, it's your the mic pretty much every
time. So it's a little bit different.
I get that. But yeah, it's, I think it's,
it's interesting, like digital communities are, are definitely
growing up, but I still feel like there is a lot of value in
having a community that meets regularly and, you know, just
looks at each other in the face around there.
Yeah, I like that. That's something I definitely
miss. That's why maybe I was thinking
of either than these digital communities or maybe I should
just do something in person and see if that's actually.
I think if you would organize, I mean, now I don't know the
demographic of you know. There's a lot of US, you have to
go there. Yeah, yeah.
I don't know where your if your listeners are, mostly from the
Netherlands or from Europe in general, but I think you could
think about organizing like an event or.
Something like this. Maybe I'll try that out.
That could be interesting. Yeah, very interesting.
I, I never really reflected on that, but this concept of
community and also in combination with personal
branding has gotten a lot more attention.
Like within companies. I know know companies, but I
also know specific people working at those companies and I
know who they are. And if they move from company to
company, then all of a sudden I know the next company they work
at because they have such a personal brand.
And all of a sudden it just speaks to me.
Or I followed them on LinkedIn or that content always kind of
hits with me. Do you actively or did you
actively also work around your personal branding consciously,
or is that kind of a byproduct of the things that you're always
interested in? A mix of the two.
I've, I've always been interesting in community and
bringing people together. Yeah, this has always been part
of my of my character a little bit, but there is definitely a
side of it that came especially when I turned into freelancing.
100% right. You need to build your own
personal branding in a way or another.
And I'm not I'm really not good at like sharing things on
Twitter and this kind of stuff like I, I'm not good at it.
I've tried several times. I go like on a, you know, one
month strike. Oh, that's good.
I post every day and then just one day I forget and it's gone.
It's. Gone.
I have the same, Honestly, yeah. I tried so hard, there's so many
ways and it just never worked out.
But yeah, it's a mix of the two. I like just getting to know
people in general. I think it's, it's obviously
especially, you know, as they move from one culture to
another, see how people do things differently and also how
companies do things differently. I think it's very interesting.
But yeah, part of it is also building my own personal brand,
which when you're when you're a freelancer is particularly, it's
particularly interesting and it's very important.
I feel like it's part of the, it's part of the game that
you're playing. Yeah.
Can you be a freelancer at the end of the day nowadays without
having, let's say, a good personal brand?
Because I wonder how that would work if people can't really find
you. But then I've also worked with
people that are really, really good and you have zero social
media and just people know them just by how do you say that?
Mouth to mouth marketing, basically.
I think you can do that if you want.
It might be a maybe a little bit more tricky to find out new
projects and so on. But you know, right now the same
way you have recruiters for like full time position, you also
have recruiters for freelancing. It's just that when you yeah,
when you don't have your own personal brand, when you don't
have your own, yeah, when you don't show what you're doing
outside, you might have to rely on them a little bit more,
right. So you might have to, you know,
rely on them for your next project or for your next gig a
little bit more. Instead, when you build your own
personal branding, which again takes a lot of effort, you need
to like doing it as well. Yeah, these kind of things come
a little bit more natural then, you know, it's freelancing is
really like this, right? There are, you have times where
you get like 4 projects at the same time and you're like, oh, I
don't know how to handle this. And then your project finishes
and for the next two months, yeah, no, it looks like nobody
is. Nobody is looking for
freelancers anymore. Interesting.
I'm wondering also what your opinion is on this because now
that I've I'm trying to start to go to more meet ups and also
speak and trying to see on conferences and maybe apply here
and there. I don't really know what my
topics would be like. I have a trouble finding my
voice even though I have a lot of interests.
I find it hard to be like, OK, do I really want to give a talk
on that? Am I really an expert in this
Ave. And then prepare a conference
talk. For example, how did you find,
let's say this, this set of topics that you'd like to cover
or talk about? Because I know it's in the cloud
native space, but I also know you love the people aspect and a
community aspect. I generally don't think you need
to be an expert like, you know, I don't think you need to be
like people go to a conference, like they go to speak at a
conference and they think I need to be able to answer any
possible questions I'm getting for the audience.
And that's just impossible. It's just not true.
So very often what I do, and this also goes back to how I
learn, sometimes I even submit like talks to a conference to
software that may be of, you know, like a software I maybe
don't really know perfectly. And this forces me to learn to
test it and to spend some time on it before the conference.
And, and I think this has worked out pretty well a couple of
times because, you know, it forces you to say, OK, now I
have this conference talk about this topic, which is like a
proof of concept of a certain, you know, like a data pipeline
or whatever that may be. And I said that I would do it
using this tool that I know so and so, but I would like to know
more about it. And so, you know, during my
conference talk and during the preparation, I need to actively
spend time and, and learn this tool and understand all the
intricacies of it and so on. And at the end of the
conference, there are all kind of talks, right?
You go like from like the beginner talks, but just like
more of these kind of talks, like an intro to a certain topic
into a certain tool and more like advanced talk where you
really instead go, OK, let's go deep into like the Linux kernel
and whatever. I don't feel comfortable in this
second part. If I feel good in the in the
beginner talk, like showcasing a new a new software that I think
it's interesting, I bring some value, I would just submit a
beginner talk and that's it. And I feel like it's always nice
to start from like smaller realities, right?
So doing giving a talk in front of a meet up is a lot less
intimidating that giving a talk in front of 400 people at a
conference that are paying, you know, like a ticket to go there,
right? In a meet up, people come
without too many expectations, right?
They see the list of the talk, they see that something is
interesting. They go there if they like it,
amazing. If they don't like it.
Yeah, I'm, I'm sorry. We did our best kind of thing.
You got to please everyone. In a conference, expectation are
higher, right? People go there because they
expect to get something out of it.
They pay a ticket price. And so, you know, you need to be
a little bit more. This is why there is a whole CFP
process. This is why there are multiple
people reviewing the CFP, because you need to at least
match those expectations with the meet ups.
The expectations are not, you know, they're not super high.
So you need to provide some quality talks.
You need to provide some value to your audience.
But yeah, I mean, we are definitely open to like first
time speakers for example, because it's, you know, it's,
it's a nice stage to just get started into public speaking.
I like that a lot. Then you kind of build an anchor
and then once you get approved either at a meet up or at a
conference, then you start kind of exploring this topic and it's
less of a, let's say, advanced expert view, more of an
introductory. This is what I think or this is
what I found in kind of X looking into this tool.
I don't really, I didn't really think that those talks, I mean,
I, I've seen them in the past and I've been a bit out of the
scene lately. I didn't know those talks still
existed because there's a lot of content online nowadays that
would give you exactly that for people's own time.
So I didn't know those, can they still compete, let's say with
online content? Because usually online content
nowadays is actually qualitatively really gone up.
It, it is, it is There are people that simply don't consume
it, right? I'm sure there are people that
listen to this podcast just in the audio format.
And I'm sure there are other people that consume this podcast
only in the video format. So it's also about the delivery,
right, The way you deliver it. And this is the important part.
Like people say, OK, I don't have, you know, I need to give
a, a conference talk only about topics no one knows about.
And, and it's just not true because there, first of all,
there is always somebody that doesn't know what you, what you
already know. And there are people who just
want to hear it in a different way.
Maybe they start experimenting with a tool, but they just, you
know, follow the first three or four steps of the quick start
guide. Let's put it this way.
And instead you go there, you show them, yeah, all the steps
of this quick start guide and those like a more complex use
case or how it interacts with other software.
For example, there's also very common practice for a, for a
conference talk, you focus on one-on-one on one specific
software, but also on the interaction that it has with,
you know, the rest of the infrastructure desk to their
ecosystem. And those old talks are always
very interesting. But yeah, in terms of like the
media, I, I don't worry too much about that, to be honest.
And again, like, it's when I submit a talk, I always think
it's not my job to judge if this talk is good for this
conference. It will be the conference
organizer telling me, a we think your talk doesn't fit, a we
think your talk is great, then you should do it.
So I just submit it. I and and I see what happens
this way. That's a great perspective
because honestly, that's what withholds me, that I try to be
the judge and there are other people that should be the judge.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Other people do it.
It's you. You would be surprised
sometimes. Sometimes I submitted talks.
They fought where, you know, so and so maybe not that valuable.
And at the end it just worked out.
My first talk is that's I will not tell the whole story, but
it's pretty long. But like my the first talk I
gave the one in back in October 2013, it was basically the the
report of my summer internship, a three month summer internship.
And on the stage with me, there were two people very well, it
was a conference back in Italy, two people that are very well
known in the Italian open source community.
OK, so pretty much on stage, there was me like a 23 year old
student out of Bachelor presenting the result of his
three months internship. And two people that have their
own Wikipedia page. Like one of them was like has
been a Debian project leader for like several years.
The other one has been involved with like the Wikimedia
Wikipedia's page forever. And you know, there you feel the
imposter syndrome. But still, there were people at
the conference that came to me and they were like, hey, I, I
feel what you did was cool. I think it was very interesting.
I liked your talk very much. But you know, like when you're
on a stage like this, it's yeah, you, you should not think about
this thing too much. Just submit it.
And yeah, it's, it's not your job to judge your to judge your
talk. There is, there is a committee
for that. There is a call for paper
exactly for that. I can really see how that
experience helped with that perspective when you have giants
next to you. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That's really cool. It was.
Yeah, it was a, it was a crazy experience, but it was, it was
fun. It was fun and definitely helped
me out to, you know, get out there a little bit more.
Nice, I've really enjoyed this conversation, kind of going over
why freelancing in the 1st place.
Also the non romantic part. I really appreciate you sharing
that as well. When it's probably the right
time or when it's not the right time also for you as a person.
And then you're bonding with community and personal branding
in your journey there. Is there anything still you want
to share before we round off? I didn't expect this.
No one does. I always do it but you.
Tricked me. I would say in general, let it
be freelancing, let it be public speaking, let it be your career.
You should just give it a shot. And we are lucky enough, like,
you know, your, your podcast is targeted through to people that
work mainly around tech to work in an industry that is very
lucky, you know, in an industry that is very, you know, there
is, there is a lot of work, there is a lot of jobs out
there. There is a lot of opportunities
out there. And so getting, you know,
rolling back to what you had before, it's most of the time
not difficult. So my idea, the message to want
to get out is just give it a shot, give it a try and don't be
afraid of failure. Don't be afraid of failing
because like failure is subjective, right?
It's a, it's a failure only if you think it's a failure.
And sometimes, yeah, we we beat ourselves up a little bit too
much. I love that it's a failure only
if you think it's a failure. Yeah, that's great.
Then I'm going to round it off here.
Thank you so much for listening. If you're still with us, leave
some love in the comment section below.
Check out Andrea. I'll put all his socials in the
description as well. And with that being said, thanks
again for listening. We'll see you on the next one.