1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,800 Hey, hey everyone, hanging out with one of the coolest guests I've ever had on the 99 2 00:00:07,800 --> 00:00:09,200 Dev Problems show. 3 00:00:09,200 --> 00:00:13,200 Kevin, I would love for you to introduce yourself. 4 00:00:13,200 --> 00:00:15,000 Yeah, totally. 5 00:00:15,000 --> 00:00:17,520 So well, thank you so much, Thisa, for having me. 6 00:00:17,520 --> 00:00:23,720 It's always a pleasure to talk about development and technology in general. 7 00:00:23,720 --> 00:00:25,200 And I enjoy learning from you. 8 00:00:25,200 --> 00:00:30,320 I'm actually one of your fans in terms of these live streams you have been doing. 9 00:00:30,320 --> 00:00:32,160 I've been watching all of them. 10 00:00:32,160 --> 00:00:38,600 So thank you for making this happen and having such amazing people in this show. 11 00:00:38,600 --> 00:00:41,360 So the first thing is I'm Kevin Blanco. 12 00:00:41,360 --> 00:00:44,480 I am based in San Jose, Costa Rica. 13 00:00:44,480 --> 00:00:46,520 That's what I was born. 14 00:00:46,520 --> 00:00:54,560 And I am a 15 years tech engineer who loved doing technology and then transitioned to 15 00:00:54,560 --> 00:01:00,320 a developer relations advocate job almost two years ago full time. 16 00:01:00,320 --> 00:01:06,320 But I've been doing technology and community work alongside in parallel all my life. 17 00:01:06,320 --> 00:01:12,040 Because I have to admit that the community was a big part of my success in my early 18 00:01:12,040 --> 00:01:13,400 career. 19 00:01:13,400 --> 00:01:18,200 And one thing I said at the beginning when I started to go to certain meetups and events 20 00:01:18,200 --> 00:01:22,800 and getting so much support from the community, I said, I'm going to get back to these people 21 00:01:22,800 --> 00:01:28,160 because I've been learning so much from them and they're doing it for free. 22 00:01:28,160 --> 00:01:31,080 There's no way this can be that easy for them. 23 00:01:31,080 --> 00:01:35,440 And for me, it's no way that I can get all of this knowledge for free. 24 00:01:35,440 --> 00:01:36,440 I have to get back. 25 00:01:36,440 --> 00:01:41,640 So every time that I had the capability to go back to the community, whatever that community 26 00:01:41,640 --> 00:01:47,720 is and retrieve it with giving my own time for free and giving my own knowledge for free, 27 00:01:47,720 --> 00:01:48,720 I do it. 28 00:01:48,720 --> 00:01:50,120 So that's who I am. 29 00:01:50,120 --> 00:01:56,240 And there's also a huge parallel career in my life, which is film. 30 00:01:56,240 --> 00:02:01,000 Ever since I was a kid, I loved to watch films and I always said that I wanted to do some 31 00:02:01,000 --> 00:02:02,680 films my own. 32 00:02:02,680 --> 00:02:08,720 So when I was settled in my tech career, had my good job and my good salary, I started 33 00:02:08,720 --> 00:02:10,920 to learn at film school. 34 00:02:10,920 --> 00:02:12,960 I graduated from film school. 35 00:02:12,960 --> 00:02:18,720 And now all of a sudden, I find myself creating films for educating developers and working 36 00:02:18,720 --> 00:02:21,680 as a full-time real advocate. 37 00:02:21,680 --> 00:02:25,600 So I'm just in the best time of my life, I can say. 38 00:02:25,600 --> 00:02:29,760 I'm doing the things that I love working with developers, doing technology, but also doing 39 00:02:29,760 --> 00:02:32,120 films and doing videos every day. 40 00:02:32,120 --> 00:02:37,800 So I just feel that I'm getting paid to be happy and that's amazing. 41 00:02:37,800 --> 00:02:40,080 I love so much of what you said. 42 00:02:40,080 --> 00:02:43,240 Gosh, I want to reply to so many different aspects. 43 00:02:43,240 --> 00:02:46,160 First off, thank you for the incredibly kind words. 44 00:02:46,160 --> 00:02:51,080 Fair enough, agree, your video editing skills are top notch. 45 00:02:51,080 --> 00:02:56,040 You've actually got to support some of my clients, which has been amazing. 46 00:02:56,040 --> 00:03:00,280 I would love to tap into some of the like AI video stuff, but let's save that for a 47 00:03:00,280 --> 00:03:01,280 different live stream. 48 00:03:01,280 --> 00:03:02,880 Maybe we can do something fun and talk about that. 49 00:03:02,880 --> 00:03:08,240 Because someone posted a video on LinkedIn where it was a cat making food and it was all 50 00:03:08,240 --> 00:03:13,040 like AI created and it was adorable and sure there was little points that you could nitpick, 51 00:03:13,040 --> 00:03:15,640 but at the end of the day, it's a cat making food. 52 00:03:15,640 --> 00:03:20,040 pure entertainment. So I'm really intrigued to kind of hear what you think about film and AI. 53 00:03:21,800 --> 00:03:28,600 But the biggest thing that I wanted to tap into what you said was the community. I have had the 54 00:03:28,600 --> 00:03:33,720 same thing happen for me. I was self taught or taught myself how to code many years ago. 55 00:03:34,920 --> 00:03:39,640 And just really felt that the community around me and the people that supported me and sort of 56 00:03:39,640 --> 00:03:44,840 gave me the different opportunities and then helped me grow really was what forged that career. 57 00:03:44,840 --> 00:03:49,640 And I didn't have free code camp. I didn't have these really awesome curriculums that are around 58 00:03:49,640 --> 00:03:52,440 now. Like it sounds like you and I have been in tech for around the same amount of time. So you 59 00:03:52,440 --> 00:03:56,760 know what I'm talking about. We had W3 schools, right? Like that's it. That was what we had in 60 00:03:56,760 --> 00:04:02,280 books that you could get from the library or buy, you know. And so, yeah, it was hard. And so I 61 00:04:02,280 --> 00:04:07,720 invested heavily in teaching women to code because of that. I was like, I don't want people to have 62 00:04:07,720 --> 00:04:14,520 to go through the same gruesome process I went to. And then that just flourished my career beyond 63 00:04:14,520 --> 00:04:18,840 belief. And so I love that you said that. And I think that just wanted to really double tap into 64 00:04:18,840 --> 00:04:22,200 that because I think it is something that developers should really take to heart and that 65 00:04:22,200 --> 00:04:25,880 if you are looking for work or if you have found yourself looking for work in the past, 66 00:04:25,880 --> 00:04:30,040 if you never want to look for work again, give back because the work will come to you. 67 00:04:30,680 --> 00:04:38,280 Exactly. That's true. I mean, just to give a sense of where I come from. I come from a very 68 00:04:38,280 --> 00:04:43,640 poor and humble family, like to be honest, my father is a plumber. He had no formal education 69 00:04:43,640 --> 00:04:50,600 at all. My mother was just a mother. She was just dedicated to me and my brothers. And they always 70 00:04:50,600 --> 00:04:56,280 told me, I saw that from my father, you have to work your ass off. Like there's no way you can 71 00:04:56,280 --> 00:05:01,000 achieve something in your life, you don't work your ass off. But my father had something that my 72 00:05:01,000 --> 00:05:05,240 mother, sorry, my mother had something that my father didn't have, which is it's my mother had a 73 00:05:05,240 --> 00:05:10,760 strong belief in that you can be whatever you want in the future. My father, unfortunately, 74 00:05:10,760 --> 00:05:16,520 he worked really hard, but he never trust himself. But my mother had a huge trust on the things you 75 00:05:16,520 --> 00:05:22,440 can achieve. So I think I got the best from both worlds. Like even when I was a kid, I remember 76 00:05:22,440 --> 00:05:28,760 that after school, I have to go back with my father and go work with his clients. He was also an 77 00:05:28,760 --> 00:05:34,440 entrepreneur, let's say. And I remember working with my father after school and I see him working 78 00:05:34,440 --> 00:05:41,560 weekends. No matter the time he got a call from a client, we have an issue with our prompts. He was 79 00:05:41,560 --> 00:05:46,440 putting his work, his clothes and going to work. And he told me or my brother, let's do this job. 80 00:05:47,080 --> 00:05:52,040 So I understand the importance of hard work, but also understand from again, my mother, like you 81 00:05:52,040 --> 00:05:58,120 can be whatever you want. So I remember that in school, I never had access to a computer in my 82 00:05:58,120 --> 00:06:04,280 house. We never had a computer. And like to give context, I'm in Central America. I'm kind of far 83 00:06:04,280 --> 00:06:09,880 away from the big cities and everything. I was close to like more to the farm life that to the 84 00:06:09,880 --> 00:06:18,360 city. And so when I go to high school, that's the first time I touch a computer. And for me, it was 85 00:06:18,360 --> 00:06:24,360 like, mind blowing, like, what the heck is this thing? It's so amazing. And I remember that the 86 00:06:24,360 --> 00:06:30,440 first thing I had the chance to play with was a piece of software that I don't think they never 87 00:06:30,440 --> 00:06:35,400 used that in the United States, or maybe they did, but it was called micro mundo, something like 88 00:06:35,400 --> 00:06:41,480 micro world. And what it means is we had this little horse that you could program the horse to work, 89 00:06:41,480 --> 00:06:49,080 to walk five steps and then walk five steps up and then walk five steps left. So that was like my 90 00:06:49,080 --> 00:06:54,120 first programming experience where I had the chance to move the horse in a direction that I 91 00:06:54,120 --> 00:06:59,320 wanted. And so I was mind blown. But and I said, like, I want to work with computers. That's all 92 00:06:59,320 --> 00:07:05,240 that I said, I don't know how I didn't know what was programming or our Cisco or whatever, all of 93 00:07:05,240 --> 00:07:09,640 the different branches that you can work technology, all I said is I want to work with computers. 94 00:07:10,280 --> 00:07:15,480 Yeah. So here in Costa Rica, there's something called, so we have a good education system here, 95 00:07:15,480 --> 00:07:19,640 a good public education systems. And there's something called technical high schools and a 96 00:07:19,640 --> 00:07:26,360 technical high school is, it's a combination of a standard high school plus a technical 97 00:07:26,360 --> 00:07:33,800 education. So at the end, you ended up with your standard education diploma. And also an engine in 98 00:07:33,800 --> 00:07:39,640 the standard engineering is a bachelor degree level of a certain career that you have. Wow. 99 00:07:40,600 --> 00:07:46,840 Wow. Really good. It's all day, like you have to be from eight a.m. to seven p.m. It's really strong. 100 00:07:46,840 --> 00:07:51,880 And they don't choose anyone, you have to take a test and they will only allow people 101 00:07:51,880 --> 00:07:57,400 with certain skills to access this education level. So I had the chance to achieve it. 102 00:07:58,360 --> 00:08:02,360 It was the public education system. So my parents did have the money, but they said, 103 00:08:02,360 --> 00:08:06,440 if you achieve that, that's going to be your diploma that you can go out and search for your 104 00:08:06,440 --> 00:08:11,720 first job and then finish up your engineering career with your own salary, because we don't have 105 00:08:11,720 --> 00:08:18,920 money to pay for university or anything like that. So thankfully, I got it. Thankfully, I finished 106 00:08:18,920 --> 00:08:25,480 all of that. And at the end of that, those three years of studying in parallel with the standard 107 00:08:25,480 --> 00:08:31,880 high education diploma, I was able to learn everything about computer science, programming, 108 00:08:31,880 --> 00:08:37,640 Cisco. I had a bunch of, like it was, it is amazing. Now when I go back and I see everything 109 00:08:37,640 --> 00:08:43,880 that they teach me at that time, I was like, that was amazing. So long story. I go out to the market 110 00:08:43,880 --> 00:08:49,480 and I get my first job. Thankfully, it was a very small agency. Like it was actually three friends 111 00:08:49,480 --> 00:08:55,080 who founded their own agency and they were doing just websites at that moment. We're talking about 112 00:08:55,080 --> 00:09:01,160 Flash. We're talking about jQuery, Glowwishing, Spaghetti Code. I remember I wrote a lot of 113 00:09:01,160 --> 00:09:06,680 Spaghetti Code in jQuery. And that's the same on my GitHub repo. I have to go back and maybe 114 00:09:06,680 --> 00:09:12,920 delete that, but that's part of it. Now you have to leave it. I have the same in my GitHub background 115 00:09:12,920 --> 00:09:22,200 too. Yeah. And so I was their first hire. They were a small agency. They had their first customers. 116 00:09:22,200 --> 00:09:27,400 They were doing good and they said, we want to hire someone, but we cannot pay an actual 117 00:09:27,400 --> 00:09:32,840 engineer to come to this shop because we don't have that amount of money. So I applied. They 118 00:09:32,840 --> 00:09:38,200 paid me like the minimal wage, but it was great because I learned all of the ins and outs of 119 00:09:38,200 --> 00:09:45,000 what it means to work on a company. And I appreciate that opportunity so bad because it wasn't my first 120 00:09:45,000 --> 00:09:53,160 job as just a person who was writing code on a large enterprise. I was somebody who was actually 121 00:09:53,160 --> 00:09:59,880 part of the client coming in the office, understanding their needs. I saw those guys taking notes on how 122 00:09:59,880 --> 00:10:09,560 to understand their requirements. I saw how they, an SOP is wrote, an SOD, a scope of work is wrote 123 00:10:09,560 --> 00:10:15,960 or is written. And that was so much learning for me because I was not only part of writing the code 124 00:10:15,960 --> 00:10:21,880 for these websites. I was also part of the whole process on how is the designer taking all of that 125 00:10:21,880 --> 00:10:27,240 and building the user experience, their first diagrams, et cetera. I was so much blessed about 126 00:10:27,240 --> 00:10:33,240 that opportunity. And I remember that when I was interviewing for them, they told me, you know, 127 00:10:33,240 --> 00:10:38,280 if we hired you, we would like you to be part of the community because it turns out that we used 128 00:10:38,280 --> 00:10:46,280 Drupal for all of our websites. I didn't even know that. I love that. Yeah. I mean, I have so much, 129 00:10:47,640 --> 00:10:52,760 like I really, I always tell this to my friends and everything, like I have so much value for my 130 00:10:52,760 --> 00:11:00,840 first boss because he taught me what the community was. And so he said, since we do a lot of Drupal, 131 00:11:00,840 --> 00:11:06,600 we like to get back to the community. If we hired you, will you be open to go to the meetups and 132 00:11:06,600 --> 00:11:11,960 start learning and at some point give back to the community? Obviously, I said yes because I needed 133 00:11:11,960 --> 00:11:16,760 the job, but I didn't even know what the community was. I never went to a meetup. I never went to 134 00:11:16,760 --> 00:11:23,640 any type of event like that. And so I said yes. And when they hired me, that person teach me 135 00:11:23,640 --> 00:11:29,640 everything about Drupal. I only knew like HTML, PHP and everything. And I remember he said, like, 136 00:11:29,640 --> 00:11:35,400 if you want to, you're not obligated. Like we work from Monday to Friday, but I always come to the 137 00:11:35,400 --> 00:11:40,600 office on Saturday because like I'm the owner. We have to keep working. We have to make this happen. 138 00:11:40,600 --> 00:11:44,840 So if you want to come in on Saturday, we're not going to pay you, but I'm going to teach you even 139 00:11:44,840 --> 00:11:50,920 more about Drupal. So I said yes to community. Obviously, I was hungry for learning. And that's 140 00:11:50,920 --> 00:11:55,720 one of the things about when you're a junior, I mean, I think at every level you have to be 141 00:11:55,720 --> 00:12:02,680 hungry for learning even more. It doesn't matter what your level is. And so I said yes. He taught 142 00:12:02,680 --> 00:12:08,600 me everything I knew about Drupal at that moment. And then we started to go to the Drupal meetups. 143 00:12:08,600 --> 00:12:15,480 It was called Drupal. And I remember my first presentation. I remember my first. It was so bad. 144 00:12:16,040 --> 00:12:22,600 I was so nervous. I couldn't go through the topics that I had. But that's how you grow. If you don't 145 00:12:22,600 --> 00:12:26,920 fail, you don't grow. You don't do shitty work at the beginning. You're not going to do great work 146 00:12:26,920 --> 00:12:32,600 at the end. Like when I go back and see my first videos, I cringe about it. They're so bad. I would 147 00:12:32,600 --> 00:12:38,360 like to delete them, but I keep them in YouTube so I can see my progress because I learned so much 148 00:12:38,360 --> 00:12:42,920 about communicating, about technology, about everything that I have learned so far. And it's 149 00:12:42,920 --> 00:12:51,720 good to see where you go. But anyway, that's how I entered the tech area. That's how I got my first 150 00:12:51,720 --> 00:12:58,360 job. And then after working for about two years with them and learning a lot about technology 151 00:12:58,360 --> 00:13:09,160 in Drupal, I got my second job working directly with a United States company. It was a company 152 00:13:09,160 --> 00:13:16,520 located in Texas. And I remember my interview because the person who interviewed me, he loved my 153 00:13:16,520 --> 00:13:22,840 profile. But he wanted to see how good I was speaking in English because everything was in 154 00:13:22,840 --> 00:13:29,160 English, obviously. And I remember I couldn't understand a single thing that he said. He had such 155 00:13:29,160 --> 00:13:39,720 a hard and complicated Texas classic. The southern draw. Yeah. Hey, that's fine buddy. I was thinking, 156 00:13:39,720 --> 00:13:44,360 yeah, maybe I couldn't understand a single thing that he said. And I said, like, can you send that 157 00:13:44,360 --> 00:13:50,360 over chat or something like that? I don't know how, but he hired me. He liked my profile. And I had 158 00:13:50,360 --> 00:13:55,240 to really pay attention to what he said. I remember that every meeting that I was with him, 159 00:13:56,120 --> 00:14:01,880 I had to close my eyes and put my headphones, noise canceling and try to at least understand 160 00:14:01,880 --> 00:14:06,600 a little bit of what he said. And just ask for a follow up email. But that was good because I 161 00:14:06,600 --> 00:14:13,960 trained my ear when it comes to English with him. And again, I take every challenge that I have in 162 00:14:13,960 --> 00:14:20,600 life as an opportunity to grow. And everything that I had as a challenge, I get so excited because 163 00:14:20,600 --> 00:14:24,520 it means that I'm going to learn something new. I never take challenge as something that scares 164 00:14:24,520 --> 00:14:29,240 me or as a pushback. I always take it as this means that I'm going to learn something new. And I 165 00:14:29,240 --> 00:14:35,800 take challenge like, oh man, I love it. I'm going to do it. So yeah, I don't know how much can we 166 00:14:35,800 --> 00:14:41,800 continue to delve into that area. But that was how I started in tech. Oh my gosh, I love that story 167 00:14:41,800 --> 00:14:48,440 so much. Okay, so have you been to a Drupalcon? Oh yeah, I speak at Drupalcon New Orleans 2016. 168 00:14:49,880 --> 00:14:55,640 We like, I bet we just missed each other in my investment in the Drupal space because it started 169 00:14:55,640 --> 00:15:02,200 around 2017. Previous to that, I was in Jumla in WordPress. So Jumla is like where I cut my teeth 170 00:15:02,200 --> 00:15:08,360 similar to you on Drupal. Love Drupal. I love the Drupal community. They are honestly, 171 00:15:08,360 --> 00:15:13,160 oh, I don't know if I can say this with everyone who can publicly hear me, but I think they might be 172 00:15:13,160 --> 00:15:19,000 my favorite developer community of all time, honestly. They're just the open source vibe that 173 00:15:19,000 --> 00:15:26,120 is in that community is just so real and so, I don't even, I can't even explain it. You get it. 174 00:15:26,120 --> 00:15:33,000 It's true. Like what I was saying at the beginning, remember, I went to my first Drupal meetup, 175 00:15:33,000 --> 00:15:39,320 this one that I'm telling you, and I asked a guy who did this presentation on a topic called AHA. 176 00:15:39,320 --> 00:15:46,600 So AHA was something to use Ajax in Drupal so you could update the page without refreshing the page. 177 00:15:47,880 --> 00:15:53,560 And I couldn't understand a thing about the AHA API in Drupal. So I get close to this guy and I 178 00:15:53,560 --> 00:15:58,760 said, can you explain a little bit further? And he said, yeah, sure, let's go outside. Let's take 179 00:15:58,760 --> 00:16:05,240 the computer and I'll explain to you. We spent like two hours and I learned a lot about, you know, 180 00:16:05,240 --> 00:16:09,800 AHA at that moment. And I remember that the end I asked him like, hey, what do you do? And he said, 181 00:16:09,800 --> 00:16:15,720 oh, I'm the owner of this company and you probably don't know the name, but it is a company was very 182 00:16:15,720 --> 00:16:21,880 well-established in Costa Rica. And he was the actual CTO. And one of the founders of that company, 183 00:16:21,880 --> 00:16:27,320 I was like, so you're telling me that you are the founder and CTO of this company. You come to this 184 00:16:27,320 --> 00:16:33,800 meetup and you took two hours to explain to a junior guy who's just starting his career without no 185 00:16:33,800 --> 00:16:38,280 constraints at all. Like you're not billing me or asking me about anything. And he said, yes, 186 00:16:38,280 --> 00:16:44,280 that's the power of the Drupal community. So I've always had the Drupal community in my heart and 187 00:16:44,280 --> 00:16:49,320 that's why I always try to get back so much to them. But at the end, that's the power of the 188 00:16:49,320 --> 00:16:53,080 communities and the open source communities. I think in general, open source communities are 189 00:16:53,080 --> 00:16:59,960 like that. I'm not saying anything about closed source, like companies of software, but in general 190 00:16:59,960 --> 00:17:09,080 terms, open sources is that way. Yep. I would agree not to bring up any major drama, but WordPress 191 00:17:09,080 --> 00:17:13,880 isn't that way. But we're just going to walk away from that conversation because that's a loaded 192 00:17:13,880 --> 00:17:21,800 conversation. It is packed. Yeah. It is, it is. Okay, so moving on from that, lots of good, there's 193 00:17:21,800 --> 00:17:25,560 a lot, there's lots of good chat. So Arvin thinks that we need to build a front end application using 194 00:17:25,560 --> 00:17:30,040 jQuery in the live stream. I think that's a glorious idea. This is where my dev chops can shine 195 00:17:30,040 --> 00:17:37,320 again, right? Bring back jQuery. But no, it would actually be kind of fun, honestly, to like retro 196 00:17:37,320 --> 00:17:42,360 build a site in a live stream with someone like, I think the older techniques and honestly, like, 197 00:17:43,080 --> 00:17:45,800 I don't know what I think is really interesting. And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this and we 198 00:17:45,800 --> 00:17:50,680 can kind of dive into like how you're, how you do some of your work and some of the challenges 199 00:17:50,680 --> 00:17:54,680 you face because you're doing some really cool stuff today. It's like, I think it's really 200 00:17:54,680 --> 00:17:59,400 interesting that everybody runs for like cloud and Kubernetes. It's like, it's just the way, and I'm 201 00:17:59,400 --> 00:18:05,800 like, but this wasn't the way years ago, I've built like really, really high-scaled websites without 202 00:18:05,800 --> 00:18:12,520 Kubernetes, without this infrastructure. Like, why can we not start to build on an infrastructure 203 00:18:12,520 --> 00:18:15,960 that makes sense, you know, and not that I'm not saying it's not the right decision, but that's a 204 00:18:15,960 --> 00:18:20,760 whole loaded conversation. But I feel like you definitely have a lot of similar opinions, but 205 00:18:20,760 --> 00:18:24,600 I would love to hear sort of, if you want to shed light on that opinion, but also just the things 206 00:18:24,600 --> 00:18:30,680 that you're working on in your day-to-day today, as you've shifted away from the beautiful world of, 207 00:18:30,680 --> 00:18:34,040 you know, Drupal day-to-day and writing jQuery. 208 00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:42,280 Yeah, totally. So at some point in my career, I moved a lot away from writing code to more 209 00:18:42,280 --> 00:18:50,040 like cloud architecture, and I started to do a lot of Kubernetes and, you know, dev operations, 210 00:18:50,040 --> 00:18:56,920 SRA scaling. And then at some point, I moved away from that, and I moved to a technical 211 00:18:56,920 --> 00:19:02,920 director position. So actually, before joining AppSmith as a dev rel advocate, I was working on a 212 00:19:02,920 --> 00:19:08,280 digital agency. I spent four years there working as their technical director, and I was managing 213 00:19:08,280 --> 00:19:13,320 software developers. I was managing customers. I was making sure that all of these products and 214 00:19:13,320 --> 00:19:19,720 software that we were writing were actually doing great. We're under DS code. We're running 215 00:19:19,720 --> 00:19:27,240 correctly. So I got the chance to understand how things works very early in my career. And I think 216 00:19:27,240 --> 00:19:32,360 that was my blessing. I wasn't just focused on what little portion of writing this code. I understood 217 00:19:32,360 --> 00:19:37,320 the bigger scope, like, how is this going to run? Where is it going to run? How much money is going 218 00:19:37,320 --> 00:19:42,760 to spend? So I think I saw a post from you. I think it was from you about Ruby on Rails, and I 219 00:19:42,760 --> 00:19:48,440 worked with Ruby on Rails at some point in my life. I loved it. But it was so goddamn expensive to 220 00:19:48,440 --> 00:19:53,720 run it. And I think that was one of the problems with Ruby on Rails. We spent so much money. I'm 221 00:19:53,720 --> 00:19:59,640 talking about a startup that I worked with. They were running on Ruby on Rails. And I remember 222 00:19:59,640 --> 00:20:05,080 we had to migrate from Ruby on Rails because just the amount of money we were spending on executing 223 00:20:05,080 --> 00:20:13,080 that software, hosting it, it was amazing. We had so much great developers. It wasn't that we 224 00:20:13,080 --> 00:20:19,160 wrote bad code. It was a chose run in Ruby on Rails. It was expensive. But anyway, I'm sorry 225 00:20:19,160 --> 00:20:25,000 for going back to your question. When I started working as a cloud architect, I remember that I 226 00:20:25,000 --> 00:20:34,840 enjoyed doing all of these complicated diagrams and complicated topography. Because I thought that 227 00:20:34,840 --> 00:20:41,240 when you get over complicated things, you're going to be like, you're very professional. You have 228 00:20:41,240 --> 00:20:46,840 all of these clusters. You have this API get way. And how do you route things? And you have a bunch 229 00:20:46,840 --> 00:20:54,600 of balancers. And you think that when you are over engineering things, it's because you're a better 230 00:20:54,600 --> 00:21:02,040 engineer. And I remember one of the leaders that I had at some point, he told me, you probably have 231 00:21:02,040 --> 00:21:07,720 heard about the keep it simple principle. And you're not keeping it simple. Let's go back and see 232 00:21:07,720 --> 00:21:16,760 if we actually need microservices. And I remember we changed one of the architects that I proposed 233 00:21:16,760 --> 00:21:26,360 to something very simple. It was just a single Google Cloud run serverless application. And it 234 00:21:26,360 --> 00:21:33,160 was for an event. One of our customers had to run an event with millions of people joining the event 235 00:21:34,040 --> 00:21:40,760 from one moment to another. They were a makeup company. And I remember that everything run 236 00:21:40,760 --> 00:21:47,720 perfectly on that Cloud run instance. It could be a Lambda in AWS. It doesn't matter what the 237 00:21:48,440 --> 00:21:53,960 provider is. It was just a Cloud function managing all of those requests. And it scaled up correctly. 238 00:21:53,960 --> 00:22:00,920 And so I'm not saying that you shouldn't try to focus on the best solution for your problem. But 239 00:22:00,920 --> 00:22:07,240 sometimes we're over engineering things. Because unfortunately, and I'm going to put myself in 240 00:22:07,240 --> 00:22:14,760 that position, at some point, I had a high ego. And when we are developers, we have high egos. And 241 00:22:14,760 --> 00:22:20,120 I can say that a lot of people I work with, they have high egos. And you think that coming in with 242 00:22:20,120 --> 00:22:25,640 the biggest solution or with the largest amount of frameworks to your project, and now you have a 243 00:22:25,640 --> 00:22:31,080 node modules folder that takes two gigabytes, that's going to be the best because you are like the 244 00:22:31,080 --> 00:22:35,720 best developers because you know all of these frameworks. Keep it simple. Keep it simple, 245 00:22:35,720 --> 00:22:41,880 stupid. Sometimes the best way to solve a problem is by the simplest solution that you can find. 246 00:22:41,880 --> 00:22:47,320 And we have always heard about Steve Jobs who said that, oh, I think it was Bill Gates. I don't 247 00:22:47,320 --> 00:22:54,840 remember. He said, I will hire a lazy developer to do the job because he will find the easiest way 248 00:22:54,840 --> 00:23:01,080 to achieve it. And that's true. So I think that I will say, yes, keep it simple, stupid because 249 00:23:01,080 --> 00:23:07,160 you know what? Customers don't care about your cloud architecture diagrams. Customers, they 250 00:23:07,160 --> 00:23:12,680 don't care about your framework. What they care is that when you deploy that website or that platform, 251 00:23:12,680 --> 00:23:17,160 it has to work. It has to achieve their goals. Normally, customers, they don't care about that. 252 00:23:17,160 --> 00:23:25,080 So that's when, again, going back to my first experience in the job market, I had the chance 253 00:23:25,080 --> 00:23:30,520 to be in this very small agency where I had the chance to be in customers' meetings. I understood 254 00:23:30,520 --> 00:23:36,520 that very early in my career. I never heard them say, are you going to manage like five servers 255 00:23:36,520 --> 00:23:40,520 with a cloud balancer? And what type of balancer are you going to use? Are you going to use 256 00:23:40,520 --> 00:23:45,720 Route 53 to manage it? They don't care about that. They just care like, can you give me the best 257 00:23:45,720 --> 00:23:50,440 piece of software you can to solve my problems with the least amount of money you can spend? 258 00:23:50,440 --> 00:23:56,360 That's what I care. And when I understood that, I understood something that we take for granted 259 00:23:56,360 --> 00:24:01,560 when we are developers and it's called value. Normally, I don't hear developers talking about 260 00:24:01,560 --> 00:24:07,000 value. That's higher leadership conversations that you, when you hear about what value proposition 261 00:24:07,000 --> 00:24:12,120 is. And again, I understood that very early in my career because every time that I have to 262 00:24:12,120 --> 00:24:18,760 build a proposal for a project, whatever that was, I understand like, is this bringing value to my 263 00:24:18,760 --> 00:24:24,680 customer? Or is this just me satisfying my ego and building the biggest cloud infrastructure that I 264 00:24:24,680 --> 00:24:30,840 can? And that's always something that brings me back to earth. Are you actually bringing value? 265 00:24:30,840 --> 00:24:35,640 And that's something that helped me in my career. Like I have been able to grow in my career, 266 00:24:35,640 --> 00:24:41,000 always going to the next ladder on the, to the next step in the ladder because I've always 267 00:24:41,000 --> 00:24:46,360 thought about value proposition. And I didn't focus just in the technology piece. So I think 268 00:24:46,360 --> 00:24:51,320 that's very important when it comes to building software, like just go back to the basics, 269 00:24:52,120 --> 00:24:57,960 or feel intimidated by all our coworkers building incredible dev operations, pipelines, 270 00:24:57,960 --> 00:25:03,000 and automations. And dude, if you're solving the customer's problem by bringing value and not 271 00:25:03,000 --> 00:25:09,240 spending too much money, you're doing the job. You're a good asset. I fully agree. And to even 272 00:25:09,240 --> 00:25:13,800 take it back to like, so when you were talking about your first role, and you were in that agency, 273 00:25:13,800 --> 00:25:17,160 you, you know, you spoke to the fact that you talked to clients and you did some of these other 274 00:25:17,160 --> 00:25:22,360 things. And you looked at SOWs. And I think that that was also my experience as well. And one of 275 00:25:22,360 --> 00:25:27,800 like my first sort of agency type of a roles where I was building multiple projects, I was also tasked 276 00:25:27,800 --> 00:25:31,800 with that as well. And I think that it's honestly a beautiful blessing. And I think that some 277 00:25:31,800 --> 00:25:36,600 developers tend to shy away from those client conversations, those hard business conversations, 278 00:25:36,600 --> 00:25:40,440 because they're like, meh, don't care. Tell me what I need to code. Tell me what I need to program. 279 00:25:40,440 --> 00:25:44,920 But I think at the end of the day, and if anyone has listened to any of my interviews, I swear, 280 00:25:44,920 --> 00:25:49,320 I'm not plugging this in there, but it has happened with every interview, I think almost 281 00:25:49,320 --> 00:25:54,440 everyone, where we've talked about how important it is as a developer to understand the business 282 00:25:54,440 --> 00:25:58,440 value of what they're doing. Because when you understand that, like Kevin gave us all these 283 00:25:58,440 --> 00:26:02,760 great examples, but it's like when you understand that, then you can go into that technological 284 00:26:02,760 --> 00:26:08,760 solution with the right resources, with the kiss methodology that you said, right? Keep it simple, 285 00:26:08,760 --> 00:26:14,040 stupid. But also, I've been able to go into some of those conversations and talk to a client and 286 00:26:14,040 --> 00:26:19,880 then they are explaining something super complicated, super crazy. And I'm like, but why? Tell me why 287 00:26:19,880 --> 00:26:24,200 you want this? What is the root functionality that you need? What do you need at the end results? 288 00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:29,400 Right? What's the, what's the thing you need for your customers or your clients at your end result? 289 00:26:29,400 --> 00:26:35,320 And I've been able to rule out unnecessary infrastructure, unnecessary features, unnecessary 290 00:26:35,320 --> 00:26:41,320 building to be able to simplify and not only save money for the client, but also save us time on the 291 00:26:41,320 --> 00:26:45,320 agency side, right? How can we be more efficient? How can we still deliver something amazing for 292 00:26:45,320 --> 00:26:53,000 this client while doing that in a way that is keep it simple, stupid? Exactly. And so I think 293 00:26:53,000 --> 00:26:57,000 that a lot of people will go back and say, oh, so you're saying microservices are bad? No, I'm 294 00:26:57,000 --> 00:27:03,800 saying that people overused microservices and hard containerized architecture. It's just because 295 00:27:04,920 --> 00:27:10,680 and maybe that's even a bad fame to that particular type of infrastructure topology. 296 00:27:10,680 --> 00:27:15,960 But all I'm saying is you can go into YouTube and find a lot of videos of companies who drove away 297 00:27:15,960 --> 00:27:21,080 from microservices. Not because microservices were bad, but it's because they just didn't need it. 298 00:27:21,080 --> 00:27:27,880 It wasn't what they needed for their solution. They maybe just needed any standalone, monolithic 299 00:27:27,880 --> 00:27:33,240 applications. And that's fine. Like if you feel bad about using a monolithic, like, oh my god, 300 00:27:33,240 --> 00:27:40,040 this is so old. Go back to check. It's an ego check. Like if it's solving the problem, 301 00:27:40,680 --> 00:27:45,880 and it's code that is well written, it's well, it's correctly deployed, it's under all of the 302 00:27:45,880 --> 00:27:51,960 correctly parameters of security and et cetera, like feel good about yourself. You're solving the 303 00:27:51,960 --> 00:27:57,320 problem with the best way. And if microservices is the best solution for it, then go ahead. 304 00:27:57,320 --> 00:28:04,200 But you have to just, you have to really understand the requirements to make sure that you need that. 305 00:28:04,200 --> 00:28:11,800 Just don't go with that path. Yep, you should. Yeah, I fully agree. Okay, so we've talked about 306 00:28:11,800 --> 00:28:18,280 a lot of really cool things. We're sort of getting near the end of time, but I would love to hear 307 00:28:18,280 --> 00:28:23,240 what does a day to day look like for you? I know you do. You've got your full-time work. You do a 308 00:28:23,240 --> 00:28:27,560 little bit of some side stuff here and there. What does that look like for you? What are you working 309 00:28:27,560 --> 00:28:34,280 on on a day to day basis? So my day to day is beautiful, as I said at the beginning. I love that. 310 00:28:34,280 --> 00:28:42,920 So I work at AppSmith. AppSmith is a local platform. It's completely open source under the, 311 00:28:42,920 --> 00:28:50,520 I will say, the most open license, which is Apache 2.0. And AppSmith, it's a low-code 312 00:28:50,520 --> 00:28:55,960 platform focused on enterprise internal tools. That's their niche. It doesn't mean that you 313 00:28:55,960 --> 00:29:03,640 cannot build a public website, but that's what they do. So my goal is mainly three important 314 00:29:03,640 --> 00:29:09,720 goals. The first one is developer advocacy and video production. So I'm in charge of the video 315 00:29:09,720 --> 00:29:16,600 production and making sure that we're creating content tailored for the developer journey, 316 00:29:16,600 --> 00:29:23,240 basically, from awareness all the way to getting our developers to actually be advocates of our 317 00:29:23,240 --> 00:29:30,120 product. I'm not alone in this team. I have my good friend Joseph, and he's very focused on the, 318 00:29:30,120 --> 00:29:36,920 let's say, second portion of the developer journey, which is growth. And I'm more focused on the first 319 00:29:36,920 --> 00:29:43,400 one, which is awareness and evaluation. You're more on that content, sort of like telling that story. 320 00:29:44,360 --> 00:29:50,120 Exactly. So why is beautiful for me is because I'm able to use all of the storytelling techniques 321 00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:56,920 that I learned in film school to generate awareness, to maintain tension, to build stories that 322 00:29:56,920 --> 00:30:01,880 generate empathy with people. And I bring that into DevRel, and I blend that when I'm creating all 323 00:30:01,880 --> 00:30:09,320 of these awareness videos. So the whole thing is I'm trying to generate empathy with our ideal 324 00:30:09,320 --> 00:30:15,320 customer profile and make them understand that I understand their problems, that I understand 325 00:30:15,320 --> 00:30:20,840 what they're facing, and that maybe have a solution for them. A lot of people say that 326 00:30:20,840 --> 00:30:26,360 DevRel is not sales. A lot of people say that DevRel is not support. A lot of people say that 327 00:30:26,360 --> 00:30:34,840 DevRel is not a product, but we are all of that. I have at some point, we're the head of somebody 328 00:30:34,840 --> 00:30:39,880 who's trying to sell something. I have to wear sometimes the hat of somebody who is doing customer 329 00:30:39,880 --> 00:30:45,480 support and maybe join a customer of, I've joined customer calls in AppsMe with somebody who's trying 330 00:30:45,480 --> 00:30:53,000 to deploy AppsMe to their Google Cloud infrastructure. And since I'm a Google Cloud certified engineer, 331 00:30:53,000 --> 00:30:57,560 I do that. And that doesn't mean that I'm not a DevRel person. That sometimes you have to wear 332 00:30:57,560 --> 00:31:03,640 all of those hats. I also participate on the go-to-market strategy. I work very closely with 333 00:31:03,640 --> 00:31:10,120 their marketing team to define all of these strategies for our launch events, about all 334 00:31:10,120 --> 00:31:17,160 of the upcoming features that we're launching, also on focus on developer programs. So right now, 335 00:31:17,160 --> 00:31:24,520 we're working on a developer program to make our developer advocates more officially heroes. 336 00:31:25,720 --> 00:31:31,000 Probably a lot of companies use the hero's names anyways. But at the end, it's just making it more 337 00:31:31,000 --> 00:31:37,000 official because I want them to be able to create their own events in their own cities. 338 00:31:37,000 --> 00:31:44,040 AppsMe has a global community and I'm not able to go to Middle Asia and Japan. I wish 339 00:31:44,040 --> 00:31:50,200 to create events, but they can. We have advocates in all of these cities. We have people in Abu Dhabi, 340 00:31:50,200 --> 00:31:55,480 we have people in Africa, we have people in Australia loving AppsMe. And I want them to 341 00:31:55,480 --> 00:31:59,560 run their own events and we want to support them to run their own events in their own cities. So 342 00:31:59,560 --> 00:32:05,960 that's one of the things that I'm also working on for next year. And the other thing is partnerships. 343 00:32:05,960 --> 00:32:12,040 So since AppsMe is a, let's say, front and focus platform because you can connect to any data source, 344 00:32:12,040 --> 00:32:19,400 I go out and search for all of the different data sources that our customers are using and that we 345 00:32:19,400 --> 00:32:24,840 support. And I tell them, for example, last year, MongoDB, hey, we have a lot of customers who use 346 00:32:24,840 --> 00:32:31,560 MongoDB, we support MongoDB, let's do a joint collaboration together. That means maybe official 347 00:32:31,560 --> 00:32:37,240 documentations in both websites about integrating each another. That means maybe a joint live stream 348 00:32:37,240 --> 00:32:43,480 where we showcase how to make maybe a rack solution using AppsMe in MongoDB, just an example of there. 349 00:32:44,680 --> 00:32:48,040 And so on and so forth. I'm just trying to build valuable and a strength 350 00:32:48,920 --> 00:32:53,400 joint collaborations and partnerships with all of those companies that we support integrations with 351 00:32:54,120 --> 00:32:59,160 and allow our developers to have more formal integration documentations with all of these 352 00:32:59,160 --> 00:33:05,080 different vendors that they're trying to use. So that's how my day-to-day looks like. A lot of 353 00:33:05,080 --> 00:33:12,200 creativeness, writing scripts, shooting in different locations, editing, color grading, 354 00:33:12,200 --> 00:33:18,840 talking to people, doing community support, being on this court sometimes. It's all over the place, 355 00:33:18,840 --> 00:33:23,640 but I love it. That's basically what my day-to-day looks like and building a lot of demos. I build 356 00:33:23,640 --> 00:33:27,880 maybe two demos per week to showcase the different AppsMe capabilities. 357 00:33:27,880 --> 00:33:37,640 Wow. So for someone who's spent a great deal of time in DevRel myself as well, 358 00:33:37,640 --> 00:33:45,640 you're killing it. You're taking all the growth tactics, although you don't necessarily focus 359 00:33:45,640 --> 00:33:51,960 on growth, but I call it all growth of really elevating those happy users. Honestly, that's 360 00:33:51,960 --> 00:33:55,480 the money. That's where you're going to get the biggest bang for your buck. That's where you're 361 00:33:55,480 --> 00:34:00,680 going to get the biggest impact is when you can empower and elevate those users that love your 362 00:34:00,680 --> 00:34:04,920 products because they're going to speak far better about your product than you can because they're 363 00:34:04,920 --> 00:34:08,760 going to talk about how they're using it in their day-to-day, what problems they're solving, and 364 00:34:08,760 --> 00:34:13,800 that's going to convince someone like you or I as developers ourselves to be like, wait, what are 365 00:34:13,800 --> 00:34:20,440 you using? How did you build that? You did what in that little of time? So that's amazing. And 366 00:34:20,440 --> 00:34:25,400 then partnerships, that's the other really, really impactful thing when you can 367 00:34:25,400 --> 00:34:29,240 get some of these bigger brands to partner with you, like you said, integrated into the docs, 368 00:34:29,240 --> 00:34:34,600 the co-marketing opportunities. Maybe you sponsor a booth together at a conference, 369 00:34:34,600 --> 00:34:39,800 right? And you really double dip into something beautiful. Wow, that's awesome. I wanted to call 370 00:34:39,800 --> 00:34:44,520 that out just so other folks listening, if you're interested in DevRel or interested in what Kevin 371 00:34:44,520 --> 00:34:49,560 does in his day-to-day, I think he's doing some really, really awesome stuff that is likely driving 372 00:34:49,560 --> 00:34:55,000 some major impact over at AppSmith. And I'm sure they love it. Yeah. And coming back to, 373 00:34:55,000 --> 00:35:01,240 from that community sharing experience, I do the same with DevRel. Like I have my personal 374 00:35:02,040 --> 00:35:08,200 video channel on YouTube where I go out and explain everything I know about storytelling for DevRel. 375 00:35:09,560 --> 00:35:16,680 Next month, sorry, next Monday, I'm starting a monthly newsletter called DevRel, which is me 376 00:35:16,680 --> 00:35:21,960 just going over everything that I've done during that week. I'm going to explain very raw, like 377 00:35:21,960 --> 00:35:26,360 this is how I write my scripts. I'm going to showcase the video of the week, which is a video 378 00:35:26,360 --> 00:35:30,200 that inspired me to do the work that I'm doing. I'm going to share the resource of the week, 379 00:35:30,200 --> 00:35:35,560 which is maybe some piece of tool that I use. So for example, maybe this life, you know, 380 00:35:35,560 --> 00:35:39,800 changing camera switcher that I use here and there to do in my live streams. I'm going to showcase 381 00:35:39,800 --> 00:35:45,320 how I use that and how can you use it for your day-to-day. So next Monday is a weekly newsletter. 382 00:35:45,320 --> 00:35:49,240 I'm going to put a lot of effort on that. So if you want to just, it's going to be on LinkedIn or 383 00:35:49,240 --> 00:35:56,360 my website, Kevin Blanco.dev. And yeah, it's just the spirit of sharing. I've learned that you, 384 00:35:57,640 --> 00:36:04,040 when you teach, you learn double than when you just learn yourself. And it's beautiful. 385 00:36:04,040 --> 00:36:09,240 Teaching is beautiful because people might say, well, you're explaining your values, 386 00:36:09,240 --> 00:36:14,520 so aren't you afraid of people like maybe taking your job or your opportunities? And I'm not now, 387 00:36:14,520 --> 00:36:20,920 because when I explain what I know, and I get more people to be involved in what I'm doing, 388 00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:26,120 it means that we have more value and more resources as a team. I don't see other DevRels as 389 00:36:26,760 --> 00:36:32,200 competitors. I see DevRel as a community and I've met so many great people, so many great people 390 00:36:32,200 --> 00:36:36,840 in these two years that I've been a full-time DevRel, that I'm just in love with the DevRel 391 00:36:36,840 --> 00:36:41,320 community as I was with the Drupal community. It's beautiful, it's supportive. I had the chance 392 00:36:41,320 --> 00:36:48,280 to go to DevRelCon in July in New York. Beautiful. I enjoyed it so much. I learned so much from 393 00:36:48,280 --> 00:36:53,480 many people and they're just so open again to share their knowledge and see. They're very raw 394 00:36:53,480 --> 00:36:57,880 about their learnings on their own companies about this is how we're failing, this is how we're 395 00:36:57,880 --> 00:37:03,560 winning. So open to see all of these DevRel teams talking about their strategies in their own 396 00:37:03,560 --> 00:37:09,160 companies and how they are killing it or how they are failing it bad so we don't fail the same way 397 00:37:09,160 --> 00:37:15,480 others. That's beautiful. That to me is just so much value. But yeah, anyway, long story short, 398 00:37:15,480 --> 00:37:21,480 that's what I do. And next year, I mean, this year it's going to be more traveling probably, 399 00:37:21,480 --> 00:37:26,600 to more events, more physical events, which I also love. So I'm already looking at the 400 00:37:26,600 --> 00:37:32,680 HKDL. It's very busy traveling, but again, that's opportunity for me to create more video content, 401 00:37:32,680 --> 00:37:37,320 to talk to people, to get their stories because at the end, the story is what drives people 402 00:37:37,320 --> 00:37:44,920 emotions. And that's probably sometimes what can take the decision from using our product or not. 403 00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:51,960 And it's not because they saw a feature they love, it's because they saw other people's stories 404 00:37:51,960 --> 00:37:57,640 that they felt empathy with and say, oh my God, I'm facing the same problem that this company had, 405 00:37:57,640 --> 00:38:03,240 and maybe they can help me solving it. And I believe that storytelling is probably the key 406 00:38:03,240 --> 00:38:08,040 and the strongest value when it comes to talking to people, not just for dev rel or for video. 407 00:38:08,040 --> 00:38:12,600 Like if you're in a meeting and you understand how to drive a story, telling in that meeting, 408 00:38:12,600 --> 00:38:18,360 you're going to have a better communication skill and more chances to maybe close a deal with that 409 00:38:18,360 --> 00:38:24,600 particular client or customer. So it's a very valuable skill set to have in your umbrella, 410 00:38:24,600 --> 00:38:28,200 you know, storytelling. So yeah, that's what I'm sharing every week, basically. 411 00:38:28,200 --> 00:38:33,960 Oh my gosh, I love that. Well, I will definitely be subscribing and I recommend that others do the 412 00:38:33,960 --> 00:38:38,760 same. I'll make sure I put the links in the show notes for anyone who is either listening now and 413 00:38:38,760 --> 00:38:43,240 can't write that down or comes back to the actual podcast version of it because that sounds super 414 00:38:43,240 --> 00:38:51,160 great. This isn't so like such a good conversation. Okay, so there's one question I like to ask at 415 00:38:51,160 --> 00:38:55,240 the end because we all work through problems in different ways. And I think the biggest thing, 416 00:38:55,240 --> 00:38:59,400 the whole focus of the show is talking through sort of challenges and removing that imposter 417 00:38:59,400 --> 00:39:05,160 syndrome of developers at every level and in every role and just making things more approachable. 418 00:39:05,160 --> 00:39:11,800 Right. So in your day to day, if you are either stuck technically or you're stuck with a strategic 419 00:39:11,800 --> 00:39:17,080 decision or stuck with trying to figure out how to solve a pain pointer problem, what do you go 420 00:39:17,080 --> 00:39:23,320 to and how do you work through getting unstuck? Yeah, that's a great question. So now we live in 421 00:39:23,320 --> 00:39:28,120 the AI modern days when you can ask chat to chat with you. We didn't have that back then, right? 422 00:39:28,120 --> 00:39:33,640 That's what you said. And that's so true. We have to go back to books or just cross our fingers that 423 00:39:33,640 --> 00:39:39,320 somebody had the same problems on Stack Overflow and try a response from four years ago and see 424 00:39:39,320 --> 00:39:45,800 if it still fits it. But now we have all these AI tools in our tool chain, which is great. But I 425 00:39:45,800 --> 00:39:51,080 will say that the first thing is, yeah, try to use all of these tools at your disposal to solve 426 00:39:51,080 --> 00:39:59,880 your problems. The other thing is ask for help. Myself, I am a very, it might sound weird because 427 00:39:59,880 --> 00:40:05,400 I go to conference and I speak to hundreds and thousands of people. I am an introvert. I don't 428 00:40:05,400 --> 00:40:12,120 enjoy that much, a lot of huge groups, but you know, I love teaching people. So it's kind of weird 429 00:40:12,120 --> 00:40:16,360 that I'm an introvert, but I enjoy teaching people and talking to people. But anyway, 430 00:40:16,360 --> 00:40:22,120 I'm an introvert. And so in my day-to-day job, I used to really spend a lot of time trying to 431 00:40:22,120 --> 00:40:30,600 solve something without asking for help. And that's bad because you end up at the end asking people 432 00:40:30,600 --> 00:40:35,480 because you couldn't solve it. And they're going to say, like, why do you spend so much time not 433 00:40:35,480 --> 00:40:41,240 asking for help? And that happened to me a couple of times. And so one of the frameworks that I got 434 00:40:41,240 --> 00:40:47,160 from one of the leaders or bosses that I've had in my life said, come to me and ask me a question 435 00:40:47,160 --> 00:40:50,600 when you already tried two things that didn't work. So you're going to come to me like say, 436 00:40:50,600 --> 00:40:55,800 hey, this is not working. I tried this, didn't work. I tried all of this other thing and didn't 437 00:40:55,800 --> 00:41:01,960 work. So he already has a couple of things that I tried and didn't work. So we can go in another 438 00:41:01,960 --> 00:41:06,760 direction. But don't just ask for help like this doesn't work. And what have you tried? I haven't 439 00:41:06,760 --> 00:41:11,480 tried anything yet. No, give it a couple of chats and it still doesn't work. Now is your moment to 440 00:41:11,480 --> 00:41:19,080 go out and ask for help because that's, you know, that at the end is teamwork. And now in my day-to-day, 441 00:41:19,080 --> 00:41:28,600 when I feel stuck and when I feel overwhelmed, coming from a technical career, when writing code 442 00:41:28,600 --> 00:41:35,960 is a procedural type of work, coming to a creative position, it has been completely mind blowing. 443 00:41:35,960 --> 00:41:41,080 Because there's multiple ways to tell a story. There's multiple ways to create a video and none 444 00:41:41,080 --> 00:41:46,600 of that is bad. None of them are bad. Like when you write a piece of code, like you get requirements 445 00:41:46,600 --> 00:41:51,960 like this is how it should work. And if it doesn't work that way, then it's bad. It's wrong. So what 446 00:41:51,960 --> 00:41:58,440 I'm saying is that writing code or building software is more procedural and it's more analytical than 447 00:41:58,440 --> 00:42:04,680 creative. And so what happened to me when I'm feeling stuck from a creative standpoint is 448 00:42:05,640 --> 00:42:15,160 I heard this from Brian Cranston, probably have heard him. He was in Breaking Bad. He was the 449 00:42:15,160 --> 00:42:21,880 main character in Breaking Bad. He's a great actor. He has done multiple amazing shows. And one of the 450 00:42:21,880 --> 00:42:28,920 advice he had is forget about your career. Forget about what you do. I mean, whatever you do in your 451 00:42:28,920 --> 00:42:35,800 career is cumulative. Go travel, talk to people, walk on a different street every day, watch a 452 00:42:35,800 --> 00:42:42,680 different movie, go to an art gallery, listen to different music, develop your taste and judgment. 453 00:42:42,680 --> 00:42:48,840 Because whenever you are put in front of an opportunity, your personality that you nurtured 454 00:42:48,840 --> 00:42:54,120 has something to bounce off because you are unique. And to me, that was beautiful because 455 00:42:55,080 --> 00:43:02,280 in the AI days where anyone can just ask AI to write code, what is going to be more valuable in 456 00:43:02,280 --> 00:43:08,520 the future for us as engineers and developers? If AI can write code, it's going to be your 457 00:43:08,520 --> 00:43:13,880 personality. It's going to be your ability and your own taste. And that's going to bring value. 458 00:43:13,880 --> 00:43:19,880 So to me, that was a beautiful advice from Brian Cranston. The other one he said he has four steps 459 00:43:19,880 --> 00:43:25,320 for creativity. And he always goes through those four steps whenever he's going to act or he's going 460 00:43:25,320 --> 00:43:30,440 to do a performing. And he said, the first thing is relaxation. Nothing good is going to come if 461 00:43:30,440 --> 00:43:35,960 you're stressful. Try to relax, whether it's meditating, praying, whatever you do, that's fine. 462 00:43:35,960 --> 00:43:42,120 Doesn't matter the medium. Stay relaxed. After relaxation, concentration. Try to focus 463 00:43:42,120 --> 00:43:47,960 on whatever that is that you're trying to build. And from there, it's going to come imagination 464 00:43:47,960 --> 00:43:52,840 and inspiration. But the first two steps is really important. Relaxation and concentration. 465 00:43:54,440 --> 00:43:59,800 And the other advice that I got that I remember was really good for me. It was from William Defoe. 466 00:43:59,800 --> 00:44:05,560 He's another good actor. He has been in multiple movies. And he's a great actor and I love him. 467 00:44:05,560 --> 00:44:14,920 And he said, try to fail next time. The next video, the next painting, the next piece of 468 00:44:14,920 --> 00:44:22,120 thing you do, try to fail really bad rather than striving for perfection. You've got to find ways 469 00:44:22,120 --> 00:44:28,600 to not worry and be free and just do. And I take that very seriously because every video that I do, 470 00:44:28,600 --> 00:44:32,600 the next video that I do, I try to fail really bad. I'm going to do another character. I've been 471 00:44:32,600 --> 00:44:36,520 doing characters for my videos. Today, I'm going to play a role of a front-end developer in an 472 00:44:36,520 --> 00:44:43,400 agency who pushed back local platform because we are men's. We write code. We don't use no code. 473 00:44:43,400 --> 00:44:46,680 And that's the character I developed for that video. And for the next video, I develop another 474 00:44:46,680 --> 00:44:52,840 character. I try to fail really bad. And I found that whenever I try to fail, it's where the most 475 00:44:52,840 --> 00:44:58,200 creative and what people enjoy the most when it comes to videos. And that's why I wear the glasses 476 00:44:58,200 --> 00:45:03,960 because the glasses for me is like, whenever I put the glasses, I'm not Kevin anymore. I'm somebody 477 00:45:03,960 --> 00:45:09,880 else. I'm another character. And I can be free. And I cannot have the tides of I'm Kevin, the 478 00:45:09,880 --> 00:45:15,800 developer who writes code and he's an engineer. No, when I put this, I'm at the creative guy who 479 00:45:15,800 --> 00:45:21,960 can play any character and try to fail and never fails because whatever I do is something different 480 00:45:21,960 --> 00:45:28,040 and so unique that has its own nature. And it's so pure that cannot be destroyed because it's very 481 00:45:28,040 --> 00:45:33,240 unique. It's a blend of everything that I have in my life, all of the places that I've been, all of 482 00:45:33,240 --> 00:45:40,120 the movies that I've seen, it's very unique. And when I tell people that, they feel inspired because 483 00:45:40,920 --> 00:45:47,480 we're still developers who have the sponsor syndrome. You are unique. Nobody has the same 484 00:45:48,040 --> 00:45:55,240 experience, the same life choices you have taken, and everything you know, you are unique. Nobody 485 00:45:55,240 --> 00:46:01,000 has that beautiful blend. Now, go out and find what that uniqueness and that blend of experiences 486 00:46:01,000 --> 00:46:06,520 and things you have lived and use that to continue your career ladder. Don't think that that's going 487 00:46:06,520 --> 00:46:12,680 to be your bad thing. It's actually your good thing, whatever you sometimes feel the most ashamed. 488 00:46:13,800 --> 00:46:18,120 It's actually what makes you unique and it's going to help you to be different in a world 489 00:46:18,120 --> 00:46:24,440 where everyone is normal. Why be normal when you can be unique? That's also one of my slogans. But 490 00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:28,520 anyway, I hope I inspire some people with all of the rambling that I've said. 491 00:46:31,480 --> 00:46:35,960 That was so good. Why be normal when you can be weird? That's my theory. 492 00:46:37,480 --> 00:46:45,640 I like to be weird. I love what you said. We hosted a panel on Monday about writing production 493 00:46:45,640 --> 00:46:50,120 level code, leveraging AI. And David, who is one of the speakers that was in there, 494 00:46:50,120 --> 00:46:54,840 he spoke really strongly about being more creative, being close to your hobbies, 495 00:46:54,840 --> 00:46:59,560 being close to music, being close to creativity, and how that's going to set you apart. And then 496 00:46:59,560 --> 00:47:04,040 you come in here and say the same exact thing. So I think really good sentiment here. And I 497 00:47:04,040 --> 00:47:08,600 think it makes a lot of sense too. And I know that you yourself have seen the opportunities due to 498 00:47:08,600 --> 00:47:13,640 who you are and your uniqueness. I have seen opportunities due to who I am and my uniqueness. 499 00:47:13,640 --> 00:47:19,240 And so I think that is just beautiful advice for anyone that, you know, AI might try to take 500 00:47:19,240 --> 00:47:23,800 some of our jobs and take some of the really annoying tasks off of our plate, actually, 501 00:47:23,800 --> 00:47:27,720 but they can't take who we are, right? And I think that that's what's going to shine bright. 502 00:47:27,720 --> 00:47:33,880 Kevin, this has been such an amazing conversation. You are so cool. I already knew that, but you are 503 00:47:33,880 --> 00:47:38,920 just really awesome. And I'm glad that I got to chat with you and the rest of the world got to 504 00:47:38,920 --> 00:47:42,920 hear how awesome you are too, although they get to see it in all of your awesome videos too. So 505 00:47:43,880 --> 00:47:47,560 where can folks find you? They can find me on LinkedIn, Kevin Blanco. They can find me on 506 00:47:47,560 --> 00:47:55,160 my website, KevinBlanco.dev on YouTube, Kevin Blanco as well. You can find, if you don't find me, 507 00:47:55,160 --> 00:47:59,320 just put Kevin Blanco. There's going to be a bunch of videos about me wearing sunglasses and 508 00:47:59,320 --> 00:48:05,800 doing weird stuff. And yeah, I'm on Twitter. I'm everywhere. Just find me any place, shoot me a 509 00:48:05,800 --> 00:48:11,160 message. And that's another thing. Every time I get a message from somebody asking for help, 510 00:48:11,160 --> 00:48:16,120 I take it seriously. I go all the way and help you. So if you need help with whatever you're 511 00:48:16,120 --> 00:48:21,240 trying to do, don't hesitate. Ask me for help and I'll help you for sure. And I don't care about 512 00:48:21,240 --> 00:48:26,440 the money. The money is never the result. The money is just a medium. The result is doing what 513 00:48:26,440 --> 00:48:31,000 you love. So yeah, thank you so much, Tisa, for having me. I've been enjoying these shows. I've 514 00:48:31,000 --> 00:48:35,960 been seeing all of them. And honestly, you're having great people here and they all have great 515 00:48:35,960 --> 00:48:40,200 thoughts. So thank you so much for doing this because we all learn a lot from this. 516 00:48:40,200 --> 00:48:47,640 Tisa, thank you for that. Well, on that note, I'm going to go cry because this has been so sweet 517 00:48:47,640 --> 00:48:53,000 and so kind and so great. No, not really, but this has been awesome. Thank you for joining the show. 518 00:48:53,000 --> 00:48:58,760 I really appreciate it. I hope that everyone has a fabulous rest of their day. Kevin has been a 519 00:48:58,760 --> 00:49:03,400 really great supporter of my business and our work. And so definitely the really annoying ticker that's 520 00:49:03,400 --> 00:49:08,520 going across the live stream, join hub.builtfor.dev. I really strongly recommend that you do go and 521 00:49:08,520 --> 00:49:13,320 join the platform because he is in there doing awesome stuff alongside of some really other 522 00:49:13,320 --> 00:49:17,560 great developers as well. So you can hang out with him there. Join us now. I love it. 523 00:49:17,560 --> 00:49:37,800 Please. Join us now. All right. Bye, friends. Take care, everyone. Have a great one.