Hi everyone, my name is Patrick you.
And for today's episode, I had Priyanka Regatta on as a guest.
She's a staff developer Advocate over at Google and she really,
leverages the power of visualization when it comes to
explaining the content and the complexity that have really
cool. I'll put the links to our social
in the description below. And with that being said, enjoy
the episode. That big of a reader.
So I haven't read a lot of books.
I'm a more visually oriented really?
Yeah, I do. I never thought I would write a
book. Okay.
This has been a total surprise to even me but it happened in
such a natural way of they because I'm a visual learner.
Yeah, visual thinker. Like I started doing some of
these sketches as just passion for like I like to draw this was
covid, had just started. The pandemic was was here.
And it's in 2020, right? And I was just like, not
traveling. Okay?
How how am I just keeping myself saying was the point at the time
and I started drawing some of these sketches and and and it
and it just shared casually with some folks internally and then
shared casually on social media and people were like, this is
great can we do more of these and just the feedback that at
that started coming in and say we want to see more of these and
internal teams got excited. So I started investing more time
into it. Did a few more blogs in a few
more sketches with them started. A GitHub repo and the kid have
people that like 3,000. So there's some star, that's
crazy. Yeah, sick.
Okay, I've got something here. I'm sure.
And and and people had started asking me, are you going to
convert these into like a PDF or something?
Yeah. It's like huh?
Maybe I can do a book that is more like my kind, which I would
potentially pick up because it's colorful and it has, it doesn't
have that much text. Yeah, I don't, I don't honestly
just do books unless I have to like, you have to kind of read
this book because in order to order like read this particular
like 200 pages of documentation. Yeah.
To kind of make this thing work, sure, I'll read that but but at
the same time it's like it's not a choice that I would make Ever.
So, I was, I got into the whole book thing with the patented
like, the other way around. Like, I already had half of my
sketches done when I decided I'm going to.
No, wait, yeah, I yeah, move the natural progression there,
right? And I think always energy
creates energy. If people are excited about what
you're doing, you're like I'm gonna do more.
Let's let's keep it going. Exactly, that's what it is and I
just would like more and more. They were feeding that energy at
the same time. I was Also, like if I thought
about it from the very beginning to be like, I'm going to write a
book, yeah, that that can be intimidating, right?
Absolutely. Because I was halfway there
because I knew what people are thinking about it and it's
helpful to people like certification folks who are
trying to get certifications. We're reaching out and saying,
hey I went through this as a review process to before I got
Vinton took the exam and and you know, I'm just Was very helpful
that way. And I was just like, you know,
getting all this feedback, which if I didn't have that, and I sat
down and started to write a book, it would have been so hard
because anyways, writing a book is hard, however, you slice it.
It's a hard thing, exactly, right.
So having this enthusiasm of like, okay, you know what most
people want this, so whatever energy are putting into it is
well worth it. Knowing that is Good for return
on investment. Absolutely, you're going to put
in so much time. I spent about a year doing the
whole thing from, from the start to finish and like, was weekends
and nights and, you know, outside of whatever you, but
there was a point when I was like, okay, what did I get
myself into? But they were, but it was
points. Those were the points that I
would think about the people who would send me messages and be
like, hey, I got a job, your book.
It was your your blogs are working great and I could review
the whole things like okay like it keeps hazing.
Yeah, yeah I know, I love the people give you that feedback,
right? Because that is, I think that is
fuel for whatever you're doing feedback from actual people that
of what you're doing. I think that's one of the best
feelings you can get, especially when you're creating content in
that way. Yeah, no, so the totally like I
give credit for it. This book to exist to the
community because it would have not happened.
If people didn't give me that feedback.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, it's insane, I never
think about, okay, let me write a book because it is such a
humongous task. But to be like, okay, I actually
already have quite a lot of stuff.
People are very much interested, so then I think doing this was
kind of Professionalizing, what you were already doing, anyway,
right. There's a book is kind of book.
Sounds kind of legit compared to a GitHub repo with the sketches
and all that stuff. Yeah, for sure.
Yeah. And yes, there were like things
that are hard to do, like, basically program managing the
whole process, making sure you're meeting deadlines and
working with the publisher to make sure like they their edits
and then reviewing those edits and then Going back and editing
more, it is a little bit more than more than just publishing a
Blog, right? But all worth it.
If you know that the result is helpful to people, it's like
there's no point writing a book if nobody's going to read it,
that was my point. Exactly.
That would be a shame. I I see so much comparison to
kind of product development, right?
Because writing a book or creating the book is a huge kind
of step on a horizon. But the way you get there is
Starting small incrementing, getting feedback of people
actually going to use this or read this.
It is so similar. And yet still in organizations,
we say, okay, this is where we're going to go.
We're going to plan everything around it before validating even
if people actually gonna actually gonna use this thing.
Yeah, and that's kind of why I like the developer relations
role because it's a great segue into what would from what you
just said, just like In developer relations you can
experiment like you have the room to do that.
You can create demos that that you feel.
Passionate about using the technology that you are
advocating or other pieces of technology that kind of augment
together to bring something to life.
And this, this book is a great example of that.
I started a project few months ago, you might have seen this
like the architecture diagramming tool that I Which
was also kind of sort of like this, like it started as a as a
thought process of like, you know what?
We need, a visualization make an ism for architectures and then
the other big thing is like, what if they were reference
architectures like that. And the third big thing is what
if I could take some of these reference architectures and
actually deployed them right from the architecture
diagramming tool. So, it was just like me thinking
about this would visually be Really appealing and you're
seeing a theme here like from my visual thought process.
Like well the things have to be visual, can I reduce the number
of words on this page? I mean I mean I love it.
I'm gonna be honest I love that. So yeah that's kind of how that
that that whole like product started which with just an idea
of like, let's do a proof of concept.
Let's see how many people click on that button to to deploy and
pre-canned. To texture.
Yeah, and it was a great analysis were that's how you
like going back into product development being in developer
advocacy, you can kind of create a demo, but you can also polish
it and and even take it towards the direction of like polishing
it. And it kind of becomes something
that you know, more than a few people want to use and then that
can be pitched as as an idea somewhere else.
Else internally or you show value of what what has been done
and then and then, you know, like, like any product that you
asked for Investments and funding and whatever else that
needs to happen to ya. To get it to the next level.
Yeah, I can imagine what I've noticed with with myself and
kind of the, I mean, I'm creating this podcast, but what
I had to let go was the concept of perfection because whatever
you put out there is never going to be perfect.
So I really had to be like okay I know in this episode we could
have done better I could have done better as a host.
We kind of went on this segment of for too long stuff like that
and I can edit it down. I can really drill it down but
then it's going to lose some of the essence.
They're So I guess that I had on my body.
He actually said progress over Perfection.
Like even as a software engineer, it's never going to be
perfect. No one's going to tell you your
software, Patrick. Oh, that is perfection.
Oh no, because someone else is going to swing by and in the
gonna be like, well, actually, I would have done it like X, Y and
Z. So it's never going to be
perfect. I we read a have to let go of
that. Kind of notion of perfection.
Yeah, and it kind of like that concept of like of not worrying
about perfection and just continuing to move forward is
just it applies everywhere, right?
In the yeah career building in content building in product
building. They just iterate on what you've
got. The the tomorrow should be
better than yesterday is is the entire like thought process that
that I build content with like one.
The things that that we internally think about as a team
of the content producers. Yeah, Google cloud.
Is this idea of your first Pancake?
And your first Pancake is always not going to be perfect, right?
Yeah, it's going to be, it's going to be a pancake.
Let's just say that, right? But then the whole point is that
the next one's going to be better and the next one's going
to be better. So it's like the whole idea of
improvising on top of whatever you've been doing the previous
day. Yeah, I love the pancake
example. My girlfriend makes the most
beautiful pancakes. I tried my cake making her.
Some it wasn't the shape of a circle is just a blob, but it's
my first bank, exactly. And I did like as, as like, you
know, in the last I think last year or year and a half ago,
I'll send you the link to this. I created a A video just a funny
video off of this concept trying to build a pancake.
Like create a pancake, like a real pancake and recorded myself
doing that. I put it on my YouTube, know,
nobody really watched it, but that was the idea behind it.
Like, you know what, I'm going to do it for the first time it's
not going to be perfect but I'm trying it is, I love that it's
lead by example, right? If people can see that, it's
actually everyone makes mistakes and that Kind of idea, I have of
a person or they're just human as well.
We have the same, thought processes people do different
things but how you internalize it if you can accept that, not
everyone's perfect. I think that's going to give you
a head-start in whatever you're doing, so firmly.
Believe that. Yeah, back to the kind of
visualization, I'm very visual oriented as well.
I went to a talk, we do kind of knowledge sharings with Xavier
so people whenever they have a cool topic, we have nights that
we can actually Our that. And one of the guys said, I went
to a conference and I made visual skirt sketch notes of a
lot of talks. And then here's what they look
like and I was like, man, that was some impressive impressive
stuff because I could see through his notes.
Visually what the talk was about and I was like this is so easy
to join digest and also in my head I was like I could never do
that because I suck at drawing, but I would I would there be
consumed stuff like that? What do you think that
visualization is so? Powerful and kind of the tech
space. I think just because in Tech
space we we don't really see a lot of visualization.
That's that's one of the reasons right now because we are used to
seeing a lot of documentation we are used to assuming that these
things are hard. And so we're just going to have
to read a bunch of pages to figure this out.
Most I got really good at it. The customer engineer.
So in front of customers and I just basically explored this
about myself being in being in some of these it you know
customer-facing roles we're in front of the customer.
You've got really like usually 30 minutes or so with somebody
and you need to explain the idea why they should buy.
They should adopt a certain technology and how it would help
them. Things like that.
A presentation could do the job but in most cases I was used to
just doing a whiteboard, so, I, if given a choice, if, if I'm
eating a customer in person, which in most cases was, I would
use the Whiteboard to draw out how the, how the request blow
would look like. Yeah, how your how, you know,
you're going to implement this in your current scenario and I
would ask them questions on the fly, like, okay.
What is the CDN you're using that sits here?
It is the backend made of right and what's the language you're
using and I'll just start like, writing all of that down make
start making boxes, connect things and and, and I would
challenge their approach in some cases and those those things
visually go much better than if you were to present in a
presentation, right? Because there's no way you can
capture and keep the the audience engaged because you
need to have them in the mindset of Okay, this is something
that's being solved right now in front of my eyes, where says
she's planned all of this. This is a good thing.
Yeah, they could cookie kind of thing, right?
So that's kind of where I've learned it and I horned that art
over time of like, you have to still plan like you have to
still plan who you're talking to and what they currently already
have. But then once you have all of
that, just you build that confidence, that guy.
Hear from people all the time that they're not confident to
just walk up to a whiteboard and, and start drawing.
Because what if they, you know, didn't know what to ask or
didn't know where the arrows, go, or anything like that,
right? But that confidence does come
with time and fit like repeating repetetive like get yourself in
situations where you are drawing drawing plans on on the
Whiteboard if you If you're not using a whiteboard just like pen
and paper, right? Get yourself in those situations
and you don't have to be an artist for that.
You can just draw flowcharts, right?
And then, just have words in the boxes, it doesn't matter.
It doesn't have to have a character in it or those types
of things. So, that's kind of where my, my
entire Lake analysis of looking at what people interact with
better came from the working directly that the customers and
committing to the fact that I'm not going to use a presentation.
Let's just do this together on a whiteboard and in, from there
like that, that that whole thought process of like,
getting, how do you make anything?
I think we have to get is to the fact that just a lot of
documentation doesn't cut it anymore.
VR we have we have everybody as humans have very little
attention spans and that's reducing with the every single
day, right? Exactly.
The amount of scroll. Like, it's so hard for somebody
to stop scrolling and look at the thing that you've shared.
And if it is not attractive, it's something in our brains,
right? I don't know the exact science
of it, but it's in our Veins in the eyes that attract colors and
and movements and you know, not just squares.
Yeah or like words, right? So that that's the thing and
then I keep it. I kept experimenting for the
last two years or so, in Devereaux with different types
of content and seeing what works and what doesn't.
And and I really think the whole content spaces is a continuous.
Action of like, what? Because it keeps changing to.
Like, what works today will not work tomorrow.
Exactly. Yeah.
What I like, is that like the visualization is an easier way
for kind of shared understanding, right?
If I'd send you a text and I have an a certain intention with
that, it can so easily be misinterpreted, right?
And a conversation is way better and a conversation with some
sort of visualization. We can collaborate, we can
challenge each other and we can actually be like ha.
This image, alright, this fits in both of our heads.
This is actually what we think reality is if it actually is
that we can we can figure that out later but for now we are
aligned, right? So we can talk about the same
stuff at this thing here. Does it make sense?
Yes or no. And have that dialogue directly.
I so agree. Yeah, and that was the whole
like what? I Lost You video, really?
Yeah, I think I'm still here. Okay, now I see you.
Okay, it might have been just an internet hiccup.
Okay, yeah, it was just basically agreeing with what you
were saying. So yeah, and no worries.
Let me see you said, deferral and developer advocacy.
All those kind of the same things is should I interpret
those the same way? Oh yeah.
So jebril is sort of like the short form of developer
relations oh case developer advocate.
Yeah, I think they're used these terms are used interchangeably.
So yeah, yeah, this is kind of evolve, right?
Because I think and this was probably before my time you had
like product evangelist or like stuff like that.
I still see them out there. Then it's kind of developer
Advocate but I think the role if I read it on LinkedIn every time
it's different it's like okay. You do XY and z in this company
do x y and a I guess a b and c mon yeah.
But a better analogy. But it's whatever you interpret
and how you want to create, if I, if I would explain it, I
guess that's kind of, that's exactly what it is.
It's different D. Defined in different companies,
and it also sits in different organizations and different
companies. So, like sometimes you find
developer relations and marketing, sometimes you find
them in their product, sometimes you find them in engineering.
So it just kind of depends on which Company or at and what is
the expectation from a developer Advocate?
And, and that differs from like, if you're Moore, if but kind of
like the core part of the job, kind of stays the same, which is
your learning about a product, or a technology, and you are
kind of like this first interface, like, first person
who are like working with the product testing it out.
Like after it's gone out of the engineering and product ization
phase, you're the customer zero. Basically you're the person
you're responsible for coming up with friction logs and how this
is, how this can cause friction in the community, to, in terms
of like, how can we make it faster easier, better?
That you are the person who are working with the engineering and
the product teams to kind of give them that feedback as the
first user of the product. And then you're also Person
responsible to help like documentation team and and the
end creating content for it to help developers who are going to
be using this product for the first time because you've gone
through using it yourself. The first time value can, now,
you can help the documentation team, put together the
documentation that way, you can create content that would help
expedite the other developers Journey or adopting the product.
So you're kind of like this This liaison between the external
consumers developers, whoever, those those people are with
your, with your engineering and product teams, that's the image
General cross covid. Now, depending on which teams
you're on, which company you're in, there might be a little bit
more Nuance to that. Yeah, that's that stays.
I think common across most companies.
Yeah, I think that alone. Kind of the image I have in my
head as well. Do you do that in kind of a team
setting? Like is there a team of devrel
or developer Advocates and and how do you share knowledge?
Kind of and collaborate within that team.
Yeah, so yes, there's team and then there's there.
So the way we are organized, it's a few different teams.
So there are Specialists for their specialist for like
databases and then and then you know, of all the Different areas
like networking and machine learning and sort of like that
like data analysis to find Specialists who want to be a
specialist in those areas. And then there we also have
generalists who can who know about who covered the breath
which kind of is me and my team, we kind of like to cover the
breadth from just our interest perspective as well.
Some people just choose to be choose the breton's.
People choose the depth, and so that's kind of how the teams are
usually have seen organized as well, really cool.
And yeah, and it's like great for me.
I do get that question a lot like, generalist versus
specialist. Why?
Or how you decide, which from the career perspective, like,
which direction you go in? Yeah, for me, like, it was very
easy because I get bored of any fast.
So it It's like it's actually yeah if I picked a certain thing
and we're deep in it, it's not that I cannot it's more like I
think I lose interest in energy as I start going to too deep
into one particular topic and I can maybe come back to it like 4
months after and then maybe go deeper into it.
But like if I keep going into one direction for too long, I
just need Ange like every few days every few every few months
or so. Which is why I think General
this works out great. There was this last year when I
created like Vortex AI videos because I was like, you know
what, I want to learn a little bit of machine learning and get
myself into that for a few months.
And then I did that one series to 10 videos with a lot of
learning, lot of demos to in order to create those videos.
And then I As like, you know what, I'll take the break from
machine learning. I'll do this other thing here.
Yeah, I like that February, right?
Yeah, I love that. You can actually do that, right?
Because especially this is a generalist, right?
Everyone has their preference. But to be able to do that in,
what you do on a day-to-day is really cool that you can be like
this thing. Actually.
Don't really know anything about that.
It's interesting. Let's let's figure it out.
And then you can, you can continue that cycle because I
think it's for me. I also I like the As though I
come from an operations background.
So I needed to know a little bit about everything and if I didn't
know it was interesting and then if I did know if I was adequate
not a specialist. I hope you like let's move on
because I'm comfortable now right?
I think it's easy. If you're like if this side is
0% and this side is 100%, it's easier to get like 50, 60, 70 %
of the way that last 30 is really hard and that's where I'm
like, okay, I know that, I know that the 30% is hard, it's going
to To take me probably twice as long.
So let's move on to the next thing, right?
And I think within a team especially in software
development you're like okay that guy knows the last 30%.
All right, I have a question. Let's figure it out together and
then you can be effective in whatever you're doing.
Yeah, so I totally agree. Yeah I can imagine do people
have that consciously? You think also within your team
do they know if their aptitude is more towards generalist or
specialist? Yeah, most of most of my team is
like that, with an intentional desire to stay generalist.
Yeah. Really cool.
Yeah. And I'm guessing I know this
probably because I also have this.
You don't know everything, right?
Do you also get the room to just try things out and learn and
learn from people? Yeah, that is, that is the best
part about, especially the team I am and the culture in Google
in general, and also Ella / advocacy.
So all of these things combined, like it gives you the room to to
try different ideas. So the content experimentation
that, I think I touched on earlier, in our chat was was all
about that. Like I created a few Instagram,
real slow like with or Google Cloud team of a few months ago,
that was a part of an experimentation.
We were just like, let's see how this goes.
Well, You know we'll see if it doesn't go well we want to do it
or don't warned invest in it now and stuff like that.
So getting the room to try that stuff and and and having the the
not not having the pressure of like because not everything
would perform the way sometimes. Either you expected it to
perform or just you know, things change, reading the audience,
it's all about learning like what.
They what, what? The audience expects and and
what they don't and also on which platform do they expect
work? So you have to continuously, try
and the team is set up to to allow that space to do that.
Which is, which is nice. And there are lots of things
that, that lots of content ideas that have not seen the there.
Have not, you know, gone out just because they just didn't
they, we tried them and they just didn't work out the way we
thought they would. And, but You know that's that it
having that space is amazing to try.
Yeah I think that is also what keeps us going right?
Kind of the unknown and being able to experiment.
We don't know if this is actually gonna work let's let's
try it out and let's figure it out right?
Having the room and kind of the playground to do to do kind of
whatever you want. I think is really cool to have.
Have you have you ever tried something and in your, in the
back of your mind was like, okay, this is probably not going
to work or this is actually not going to.
Work and then it just blew up or it actually got a lot of about
reaching that way. Yeah, okay, so architecting with
Google Cloud. This is a video series that I
started. I think a little bit like last
year, I think 20 21, and, you know, usually interviews, like
interview setup type things, haven't performed that.
Well, traditionally, and I keep seeing that that sounded like
Not podcast, but like the actual interviews on posted YouTube
videos. So I wasn't very like, I did the
research looked at a bunch of different interview.
Style shows on YouTube to see, like, to talk myself into not,
doing it basically. I know that feeling.
Yeah. And then And then I was like,
you know what, I will give it a try, that's really cool.
And, and the first few, sorry, no worries.
Like I said, first few videos. We did, they did exceptionally
better than what we thought they would ghost like that.
You often. Yeah, I literally thought I
would be like maybe two. Two twos on a video, I would
have been happy with that because based on my research,
that would have been around the ballpark of what pollution we
could go see ya. But we ended up seeing the first
video was at like 12K or something in the first week and
I was like really good. Great.
Okay. And then the next few we did, I
did one with Pokemon go that blew up and then I and then I
kept doing them because, you know, was doing really well and
it's no good. Continue.
Yeah. And now and then, we did one
with Uber that I think got that close to 100 K now which is
amazing. So given given that every other
episode is catching on, it's also like when you do these
architecture type things. It's like how how relevant or
how, how relevant is it to a broader set of audience, right.
Yeah. It's also dependent on that.
So some some episodes to really well, and some are in the air.
Average Mark. But that has been a series that
has surprised me just because I had very low expectations with
it. Yeah, I can imagine, I mean,
it's what you do with it right. Pokemon go is a great example, A
lot of people know what it is, when it came out, it blew up, I
was walking around with my phone, so then to take that and
to make a technical kind of architecture video about that.
I'd I haven't seen the video so I'm assuming you kind of did
this. Yeah, I think is very good
because People have already that kind of notion and relation,
they kind of know in their head. What it is.
So then a lot of questions pop up which hopefully you would
answer in that video. Yeah, exactly.
That's kind of what what happened?
Like, how does let's take a peek into the architecture of Pokemon
go and then similarly, we did like let's take a peek into how
you bir migrated they're humongous database to spanner.
Right now. Those are like curiosity
questions. So yeah, taking an angle that
kind of, you know, appeals to a broader set of technical folks
has has been the key to that one.
Yeah, that makes sense. I mean it it kind of aligns with
what you were saying earlier that at our brains, we don't
have re storage brains like we don't really, we can we can't
really memorize a lot of capacity, right?
The internet has various amounts of information that would never
fit in the brain that I have. Let alone like that.
Names of the people in this building, for example, what we
do have is Smarts, I guess maybe Innovation is a better way.
We have a way of kind of digesting that information and
turning it into gonna bite sized things and creating the essence
of what the information is there.
And conveying that to other people for them is easier
because you have this huge document, you create it into
this little tiny bite-size thing and then you're like half this.
Is it? And that's it.
Yeah, I personally love Yeah, I know, thank you for saying that
and that's exactly what, what how the book has has been as
well. And that's the feedback that
I've gotten. It's like, I read thousands and
thousands of documentation pages to come up with these sketches,
right? And and when people say that,
this one sketch was enough for me to understand what big query
does. Yeah, that's like Thumbs up.
Do you got? Because hey, I saved somebody
else. From Reading 200 pages and they
can read the other 400 now, which which are more detailed
and deeper and they can skip through that.
The basic parts, which is, yeah, yeah, I think the thing you just
said, you don't give someone kind of the end result and
expect them to go through every little detail and be like, okay,
now I understand it. No, right.
It's step-by-step is gradually. You start with the start the
basics, and then you go to the more advanced stuff.
But a lot of software documentation is This is the
advanced stuff. This is all of it.
Get it started mistake. Okay with.
But that doesn't seem like that's where I need to start or
should start. Yeah, exactly.
I mean, you mentioned earlier you did more, was it?
I think the term was customer engineer but yeah, it was I
think before more of the Deverell developer advocacy
role. Yeah.
How did you actually transition like how did you figure out?
This is what I want to do in. This is what actually excites
me. yeah, okay, so that's a really good question, so I I was
a customer engineer working with customers directly and I was
building demos. Like I said, I was also doing
You froze? Yeah, I think the screen froze.
I can still hear you audience. Okay?
Yeah. It's the zoom gone.
I think we're reconnecting. Yeah.
Yeah, is connected. Okay great.
So yeah, customer engineer to developer relations, it was it
was a natural transition and here's how right I was already
doing customer presentations demos.
Of I being visual. Like I said, I was doing these
on whiteboards and was very passionate about just, you know,
the the art of presenting information in the in the way
that people whoever and presenting it to can consume it
better, right? And as I was doing that, I was
realizing that I can. I can maybe convert some of
these things. I built a demo explicit.
Do you remember I built a demo on for Dialogue flow using
dialogue flow, a conversational experience for one of the one of
the customers as a demo and in everybody internally in the
team's was like, asking me for access to the demo, how to demo
it to other people. And I was like, you know what,
let me just create a video because because because I don't
want to have to go to all these meetings and present this thing
myself, that's very smart, and let me just share the video.
So, I approached like I could have just done the video myself,
just recorded it in this crappy way, but I approached a
developer relations team and I said, hey I want to create this
video and because I want to do it for internal folks, I might
as well just just created so that external people can also
utilize it so awesome so that it can go on Google Cloud Tech
YouTube channel and that was it. I just asked and I said I am
They said my manager at the time.
He was like great. Yeah, you should create a series
of videos on this topic and I started creating a few videos
and I was like can I do a twenty percent with your team because I
was enjoying the process. So it was like me realizing and
understanding that this video creation is and creating content
in the video format was That I was enjoying.
I didn't I would have never figured that out if I did come
across this situation of like, okay, let's share this with so
many people, or how do I make this process efficient and then
coming to realization that video, could be great for it.
Yeah, yeah. So that's kind of how it
started. I did it 20% with the team and
then I said, you know what, this is looking good for at least a
few years. I think I can do this, and I'm
enjoying it. I would like to transition.
And then I yeah, it gave internal interviews to kind of
transition into developer advocacy, but that was sort of a
natural progression, but it again, like came comes down to
it. When people ask me like, how do
my previous transition from? Like I was the first job worked
for me was software engineer in test.
And then I transitioned good customer engineering.
And in the same way, like I all the transitions in career have
just been Open to trying something new and and just
welcoming of the opportunities that come your way, and then
realizing what what do you like as well?
And what you're doing? What what's working for you to?
Like, yeah, just create at that time.
If I just created the video and moved on that could have been
one output, right? One outcome of that but I
created the video and then I analyzed that I think I really
like Like this, right, nice and and that's like that realization
is important that I kind of stress.
This a lot to today, early career mid-career.
I think it's important to to keep trying different things to
to understand, what can, what you're passionate about, because
you might not know what you're passionate about until you've
encountered something that you felt like.
Ah, this is the thing I was missing, right?
Exactly. That's kind of I stumbled on
developer advocacy honestly and it's been, it's been great since
then. Yeah.
I love it.
And it doesn't like you if to be open to like it.
The fact that what you love today, you might not love
tomorrow and that's okay. That's, it's just like part of
growing yourself and yeah, enjoying your career in.
It's like one step at a time. Yeah, I absolutely agree with
that. I like having a go or
Organically right? I love the way that you said I
could have just made that one video and that was it or even,
you could have just gone to all the meetings and explain it in
person and never create that video, right?
But I think throughout your career, you will have several
opportunities. First of all, you need to be
able to see if it is an opportunity or you need to be
able to create the opportunity yourself, right?
Actually, Reach Out Network. Be like, is this an option?
Or if it's not an option and you really want it really create
that option. I hear lots of people Say in our
organization. In my organization, doesn't work
like that. Okay?
We don't have that. It's never going to be there.
And I'm like, I think if you can and if you actually put in the
effort, you can create a lot of stuff in here.
Whichever organization in whatever you want to do.
You have always, you have options.
Always have options. That's exactly.
We're aligning. So much on this stuff.
Yes, hundred percent. It's like if you want to
actually do something, you always have options.
You can either create them on your team.
You can create opportunities like the one that I mentioned
like 20% with another team, offered to help somebody like
yeah, that doesn't take anything if you love to help somebody.
Yeah. And and get get yourself
experience of whatever it is that you're interested in by
just saying, hey, I'm going to do this for you.
Yeah, let's do it together. I love doing that.
Yeah, yeah, but I mean for me it was the same right?
I didn't know. Wanted to be a software
engineer. I didn't know what I wanted to
do at all, so I chose kind of a really broad kind of start.
And then in there, I was like this.
This is what I want to do and that I went there, I made it
happen and then the same for kind of the, the podcasting,
think it was an idea. I started out really small and
now it has snowballed and I love having conversations because
what they do is they allow me to reflect right in my career.
Sometimes I've had conversations and they really made me reflect
and after that, That if you have like a growth curve I grew more
than I would have had otherwise without that conversation,
right? I'm sorry in.
This is gonna sound cheesy but the developer advocacy role
sounds really interesting to me like I could I could so see
myself do that in a few years or like as a next career step
because it does align with my personal interest.
I just haven't actually tried it out.
I mean, this is a variant of it but this is like 5% of what I
actually do. All right?
Yeah, it's small steps. Right?
And then it snowballed. I love that we have the room to
do that. I love that we have the playing
field and there's so many options.
It's actually quite quite a lot that you can actually do.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, treat the space to create
the room for yourself to do it and you can yeah exactly.
Is it some wondering about Google itself?
Is it easy to transition from Kono team to team?
Yeah, it's not it's it's designed so you can easily
transition. And there are like if you're
moving from a certain role to a certain role, there might be
interviews that you have to take, which is what I had to do,
from transitioning from customer engineer to, to developer
advocacy, like, for interviews of doing that.
But, it depends on like, where you're transitioning from and
where your transition into sometimes.
You can, sometimes you can bypass the interview by the
showing the evidence of flake, the work that you might have.
In already doing that aligns with that team.
So it kind of depends on where you're transitioning from which
wall, and to which Roland, but, but all of that is encouraged to
a get you into a spot where the, you enjoy doing what you're
doing. Yeah, that's really cool.
I think the biggest driver for me has always been, is
curiosity, right? Really a drive-thru curiosity.
People ask me. Okay.
How do you stay motivated? It's a hard question.
Ian because I don't really think of motivation intrinsic and tip
doesn't really make sense for me.
It's so that thing looks interesting.
It's like a diamond. It's nice and shiny.
Let me go. See what's what that is about
and then I go that direction, it's always been like that.
And I think it's what allowed me to thrive a lot as a software
developer myself. What do you think a lot of other
aspects could because I think curiosity is the biggest one
that you can have. That is definitely one of the
biggest ones that I have like Sam the same way I can motivate
it through curiosity. Yeah, like just get motivated.
It's like okay today. Oh, everybody's talking about
this. Like when been with three Kim
came about I everybody on the internet was like, just talking
about that three and I was like, okay I'm not getting interested
just yet like it's just not pulling me in, right?
And and when that happens when I get pulled Into it like that,
that Curiosity. That is the day.
When I'm like, okay, now getting inside out understanding what
this means and maybe create a demo.
Learn it as much as however I can that yeah.
That is what motivates me. Like it's not even about like
because people are talking about it, I'm going to get interested.
It's like it has to happen. One day.
It's like I'm going to wake up one day and be like Want to know
more about web 3, but that doesn't come yet.
You can't. You can't plan for it either.
It just needs to happen plan for it either.
Yeah, exactly. So yeah it's like it has Has
been as well and I don't think I can put anything on above
curiosity for my motivation. Yeah, same here.
What does happen with me and I'm still, I'm still figuring this
one out is, when I go down the rabbit hole, I'm not cool.
What about this? What about that?
And I sometimes I go all over the place.
And I'm like, wait, Waverly, we were here with a goal when we
started out and I have to have to go back because there's a lot
of light and you can go from from one end to the other.
But I think especially if you I have that developer advocacy
role. I've never had it but you go
into it with a certain goal, right?
Explore for X y&z. So then if you if you spend too
much time on other aspects, I think that that would be one of
my flaws is you actually never actually get to that goal.
You get it. You go at it slower I guess you
do learn a lot. Probably you do learn a lot but
it's like yeah, fit this role particularly like you have the
intention of leg okay. I I want to create two blogs
that are one at this level. And the other one at say, 300
level one. The first one is y, 1, S 2 and
1/3 at 301 level, you know, like how deep you got to get into the
topic to be able to talk intelligently at the 301 level,
right? And and so there's like there is
the Curiosity aspect of like you're learning something new
and you can go in different directions.
I would create demos and And play with the project and then
then decide. Okay, this is what I want to see
in blog to, or this is what I want to say in the third blog.
And this is more advanced so maybe just leave it out.
And like those decisions are made while I'm wandering around
with, like, either demo or documentation, or reading more
about it or playing the thing more than it.
But but you're right like you the there is still a definition
of like what the output is going.
Going to be and what I am working towards.
So all that investigation and all that learning is like in a
certain direction and if you are deterring from that direction,
you know, that you should come back because you have this goal
in mind of like writing a few things at the end of this.
So I think that that definitely helps.
So if we, if you're doing this in software engineering, maybe
like set yourself up with A little bit of a soft gold ball
sort of thing and that might be that might be helpful.
But yeah it's very it's very tempting to just wander off and
try and they do tangential things and figure out those ten
engines and then maybe come back and converge.
Yeah, I think the the more you do it, right?
The more you do it with a goal in mind, probably the better you
get at it because at some point, you're right.
You get out of it. Yeah, you can step out of
yourself and be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, this is actually not
what we're here for. And then you can even with the
book. Yeah, I agree even with the book
like that's the exact same thing that happened like the initial
sketches. I took a lot longer even though
I was reading the same amount of documentation and trying this
same experimenting with the products, the same way it was
much longer to create the sketches and then as I was
creating more and more of these good getting further like after
after like 20 of these, the guy had a Process.
And I could create the sketches and in like, like reading
everything digesting the content in like a day and then creating
the sketch the next day with like a plan of how it would all
look at look and everything. So it's it does get better as
you just do more of it. Yeah, yeah that makes yeah but
since this is one, something I've been wondering if you and I
are very visual oriented I guess.
Yeah and over way of consuming content, But I'm really curious.
How do you consume content? Like how do you either learn or
keep up today or gain that knowledge to be able to convey
it to other people? I have to engage with the
content. So even if it is text, I usually
don't start with the documentation that good like I
just start just playing around. Yeah, yeah I just go in blind
and like whatever product whatever new thing, it is.
I just experiment with it. I try it, I click on buttons.
I see what happens, and and I have no fear of breaking stuff.
So exactly. So that's kind of how that
that's how I does again. Like it goes back to the
visualization aspect. Yeah I can see it.
If I can even with the code like if I even if it's like an SDK, I
would still play with it first before I read the documentation
for it and then if I get stuck I go into the documentation and
figure out. Why am I stuck?
Same way if it's a UI product or even better, right?
Because I love visual so I can just use the UI stuff.
Well, to get my stomach. Myself familiar with it.
And if I get stuck or if I'm like, oh I don't know what that
exactly means. Yeah, then I would go to the
documentation be like, okay, that's what they want me to put
here and, you know, they start making sense from there.
So I do things a little bit backwards.
I read the documentation on an as-needed basis.
And yeah, and just try things out by myself.
And then obviously, once once I've done like God, And so, tell
us to a certain level with that experimentation.
I'm going to naturally, get curious about all the different
things. So then I would believe
documentation, even further, but, but I need the push to go.
Read the documentation. If I started off with the
documentation, I would never finish the thing.
That's, that's my process. Yeah, I know, I keep saying
this, but I do recognize myself in it, right?
I don't even know. Even on a software level, we got
like a closet we needed to build.
And I was like, let's look at all the parts and let's look at
how it would fit together and my girlfriend's there with the man.
You like that. That's not what I'm supposed to
do. And I'm like, um, I'm already
working on step three and she's like, but we supposed to start
at Step 1. Yeah, exactly.
Yeah. Like, I don't need a book if it
doesn't work, we'll come back to the book.
Exactly, exactly. I mean, for software, it's
exactly the same, right? If it's a new Software as a
service tool. I'm like, let's let's click
around, let's see what actually is there.
And then once I'm like, why isn't this there?
Then I'm I go to the documentation and either.
There's a reason for it I'm like oh this is actually there and
then it corporate it. Let's go funny actually.
Yeah, so true I think more and more I started going to YouTube
which is weird because I'm already on YouTube.
I already consume content, they're just not for technical
stuff but more and more since I've realized visually I'm
better at it. I go to YouTube because then
people draw me diagrams. They condense the content real
quick. I love looking at programming
language explained in like 100 seconds.
I'm like exactly this. That's what I want.
Give me the give me the gist of it and this is the gist.
Yeah, and then if I'm more interested in it, there's
obviously a lot of documentation.
But yeah, give me the gist to begin with.
Exactly, I love how this conversation flowed kind.
From the, the power of visualization to more of the
developer relationships aspect, is there anything that's missing
that you still wanted to share? No, I think we covered a lot of
good stuff and it just flowed on its own, which was perfect.
Yeah. That's that's usually what we,
what we try and do and hopefully, hopefully it succeeds
in the end as well. So, yeah.
Bianca regardie everyone. I'm gonna put the links to our
socials in the description below, so, check her out.
Also, check out the book. I actually have it under the
table. Here, we talked about that in
the pre-show and thank you for listening.
Yeah, he's like is there as well?
And thank you for listening. We'll see you on the next one.