Hello, hello. Good morning, everyone. I am, yes, hello. Excited to have Kevin on the
99 Dev Problems show this morning. Kevin, could you introduce yourself?
Well, hi, everybody. I am Kevin Griffin. I'm a software consultant based out of Chesapeake,
Virginia, been in the business for way too long. I'm coming up on, let's see, 2006 is when I officially
got started. That was almost 20 years ago. So I've been doing this for a while. Yeah.
Mine's 2008. So you got a couple years on me. I love that. Yeah. I was in hospitality management
before shift into tech. So it sounds like that gap is where we were distant is because we're
very similar in age as we talked about in the pre-show. Very close. But yeah, I'm now one of
the old guys in tech. I never thought I'd get here, but I managed to persevere.
Yes. Such is life. It does happen. Sounds like you got someone in the chat over there saying,
hello, good morning. It's always hard when they're, yeah, go ahead. I know a lot of the folks. No,
I just say hi to everyone. Hi, everybody. Yeah. Yeah. I try to address by name, but sometimes
it's like usernames like Twitch and sometimes LinkedIn is blocked. I'm like, I don't know who
you are. I'd like to address you by name, but I don't know who you are. You shared, gosh, I'm
trying to think back. So, okay, let's see. Squirrel moment in the chat. You said something in your
introduction that I wanted to come back to. I'm trying to remember what it was. Okay. I don't
remember. So instead, let's keep moving. Geez, look at you. Just famous man bringing all the peeps in.
Anyways, so let's dive into your earlier career, right? Because we talked a lot
in the pre-show and so I'm kind of sort of blending that and I want to dive into some
things that we talked about, but where did you start? Like as you dove into your technological
career back in 2006, what that looked like for you? So I was, for lack of a word, I was kind of
blessed to be that elder millennial where I knew life before the internet and kind of like grew up
as the internet was becoming a thing. Like my prime years, so like nine, ages 9, 10, 11, I was
brought into like BBS culture and I was hacking around on computers. Like back then, when you had
actual books, like you didn't have the internet, you just learned as much as you needed to from
books. Like I just, that's the round on the computer all day. And it was really like this great thing
where, you know, going through middle school into high school, like no one knew how to like
cultivate a student interested in technology. Yeah, like they just didn't know what to do.
So I went to a program. Yeah, and they're like, we can't help you. High school was the first
time I took a like actual programming class, but like I already knew the entire like semester's
worth of material. So I just sat back and just kind of did my own thing a lot of times. So like
going into college, I knew exactly what I wanted to do. So I'm classically trained. Yeah, bachelor's
of science and computer science for the worst four years of my life. I like, and it's not, and it's
not that, that, you know, what I learned wasn't useful. There's a lot of useful stuff in there.
It's just that a lot of developers that go to college go to the computer science route. And
computer science is not necessarily geared towards software development. It's geared towards
a different, you know, aspect of the computer industry. So I got way more years out of my,
I have a minor in business systems. And that those four classes I took were way more useful than
everything else because it really taught how business and systems work, which I think are
more critical skills than knowing syntax and what, you know, what's a singleton or what's a
repository, like stuff like that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things. It matters,
but knowing how this connects to that, how that's something else, how business uses software, how to
map or model a business. That stuff was way more useful. So I got this piece of paper. It's over
there. It's actually behind my couch. Like, it should be up on the wall, but no, it's over there
gathering dust. I got out of college and I went to work for a little company called Symantec.
Nice. And so we're working for Symantec. Symantec builds security software. So
Nordic antivirus, Nordic security, it's the stuff you uninstall the moment you buy a new machine.
Like that's what Nordic is. And I worked on this team called decomposer and we built a system
that would uncompress container files. So files that contain other files. And would do that on
16 different architectures and platforms. Actually, probably more than that. But
yeah, long story short, I was there for three months and I walked in one day and they said,
all hands meeting. Hey, you're all fired. So they just leave off the entire building.
Yeah, I was just, that hurts a little. Learned very quickly that there's absolutely no such
thing as job security. So I'm really glad I learned that lesson early in my career and not
15, 20 years later. But after that, I went to work for a small consulting company. And at the time,
I started getting involved in community. So there was a user group that wasn't local. It was two
hours north of me. So I would drive up every month, two hours to this user group, and just try to learn
something new. And more importantly, I was just started meeting people. And fast forward a couple
years, I was helping run events up in that area. And I was getting to be well known as a event
organizer, as a speaker in the Virginia DC, Maryland, North Carolina region. That's a beautiful
place to do that. So I knew a lot of people. And then so I did that consulting gig. I was only
there for maybe three years. And someone I had met in the community said, Hey, would you be
interested in coming to work for us as a contractor doing some developer evangelism stuff? I'm like,
that sounds awesome. And I quit my job. So I quit my job, started my own business to go into consulting
contracting. And we had our first child at the same time. And all your life events happened within a
month of each other. Oh, I didn't know how long I was going to do that. But I have been doing that
since it's been almost 15 years now. Oh, my goodness. Congrats. Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah, that's
the history. So in so in your consulting, right, like you talked about how you did developer
evangelism, you know, early on, and that's how it started, I know that in your day to day today,
it doesn't always look like that. So what are some of the other things and sort of scopes of work that
you may have offered throughout your, your, your tenure, which is now 15 years. Yeah. So the evangelism
only lasted about a year or so. And then there was a change of management. Companies got acquired.
And my yeah, like my position wasn't justified because it was hard to show ROI. And so that's
fine. So I got into real consulting. And I had enough contacts through my network that I said,
all right, I'm looking for work, do X, Y and C. And I started at an extremely low rate just to get
work. And this is so that picked up, I did a lot of training as well as part of the consulting,
because I, I like speaking, I like teaching people stuff. So I was putting together courses.
I was going into different organizations and doing private training, custom training for
different organizations. A lot of that work I got from just conference talks I had done.
And someone said, Oh, you do training, our company's looking for, for someone to do custom
training on X, Y and Z. And I'm like, I can do that. And, you know, that was, that was a really
good way to pay the bills. And I would have kept doing that if it wasn't for COVID. COVID killed
a lot of in person training, a lot of corporate training, which is fine. So I really went all in
on just working with individual businesses. Right now, I'm just working with one, one,
we call them whale clients. So just one big client. And in the grand, if I was giving you
consulting advice, if I was giving me any consulting advice, I would say steer away from whale
clients. Yeah, yes, they're painful. But when you lose them, there's also a whale client I've been
with for 10 years. Like, I, exactly. Like I have, I've kind of grown up with this company where I
was the only technologist working on the product. And now I'm kind of leading a team of like six,
seven people. Yeah, that's incredible. So it's, it's, it's beautiful. Yeah. And in this time where
it's just the job market, the consulting market is down. So I'm not in a big hurry to, you know,
go out and find other work. I'm very comfortable with where I am. I love the company I'm working for.
So I'm just kind of staying in my lane. And yeah, that's most what I do is I'm leading the technology
direction for this, this company and just making sure everything's on track. I'm taking the
the goals of the owners, the management, and we turn those into technology decisions.
Yeah, that's awesome. So would you say that is similar to like a CTO role potentially?
It's yeah, they internally they call me the CTO. I mean, I'm like LinkedIn, I'll call myself the CTO
for for that. Yeah. But I'm a very technical CTO, like I'm still very much in the weeds every day,
which goes against what the CTO should do. But yes, it's just, it's part of the necessity of just
the job. There's just a lot of work to be done. And yeah, we just, like I can't just sit back
and wait for everyone else to do it. I need to keep my hands dirty as well. Yeah, it's funny,
because I was just writing a blog post literally right before we got on here. And I'm excited to
publish it hopefully this afternoon, if I can get back to it and finish it. But essentially, I wrote
a little section in there about how at the end of the day, CTOs are just developers. And if you
can give them the opportunity to write some code again to try out your product, like you're going
to literally put the biggest smile on their face because they don't get to hold code as often.
And arguably, they maybe should really when you think about it, because you should stay up to date
on your skills, right? And I think that's probably why you're so valuable and why that whale client
sticks around is like you have those skills of like leadership, while also being able to dive in
and like execute on code, which I think is is honestly just important for all of us to sort of
thrive and continue to be happy because like we love to build stuff, you know? Yeah, I put I
pretty much position myself on the team of I don't do any of the day to day just
upkeep reliability stuff on on the suite of products that we have. Oh, sure. I am more that
future thinking. Yeah, I'll take a big idea. I'll take a big idea that needs to touch multiple
products in our suite. And I'll iterate on that. And then once that's at a place where it's reliable,
it's doing what we need to do, I will gradually give that to someone else. And that becomes
their basic to kind of keep tabs on. But and then I move on to the thing. Yeah. Yeah, I think I mean,
that honestly really is like, when you think about it, I think that is harnessing the best of a great
CTO, right, is still the ability to be able to to do that while also like passing that along to
the team to allow them to like experiment and IDA. But you've you've validated and vetted that like
there is still something here. This is not a giant waste of time before you pass it over to them.
That's cool. Yeah, go ahead. No, I was gonna say, and I'm also the last line of support if there's
a fire. Yes, I have this superpower of just knowing the entire system so well that I can jump in and
usually fix a problem. In the amount of time it might take someone to identify what the problem is.
Now, I have a great team, but sometimes you just need another set of eyes on a problem.
And my benefit is I'm not in it. Yeah. I'm not in the product every day, but I can jump in and go,
Oh, well, I'm pretty sure the problem starts here. Let's work our way back. Okay. Yep. This is where
we messed up. Let's fix this. And let's get something pushed out. Yeah. That's, and thankfully,
I don't I have a really good team I work with. So yeah, I don't have to do that every day. That
happens once maybe every couple weeks. I love that. Well, good leadership, right? If you've been
with a client for a long time. Yeah. Okay. So you have some other titles as well. And so I was going
to kind of like probe into that and like talk about your technology stack. So what are the other
titles that you represent these days? Let's see. All right. So consultants, I'm a, I'm also a
Microsoft MVP, which just because I talk a lot. No, if you see anyone with the title MVP, do not
assume they're expert, they probably are not. They just talk a lot about the things that they love.
That's amazing. They're developer in your roots. Yeah. Yeah. So Microsoft MVP, I run, I'm a conference
organizer. I've run mold, I've run probably hundreds of events over the past 20 years throughout
the country. Or at least assisted on, assisted on different events. So trainer, I've written books,
I've done video courses. I try to, try to, you know, spread out the, the money making aspects of my
career as much as I can. So yeah, I've done a lot is, is the best way to say it. You're also,
you're also like, I had to go check your LinkedIn quick. Cause I was like, wait a minute, am I making
this up in my head? Like you're also the president of the dotnet foundation. Like, you know, it's a
no big deal or anything. Oh yeah. I forgot about that. Yeah. That's a big deal. So I, I have a very
vested interest in the dotnet platform. I've been working with it professionally since 2006. I, I've
made a lot of money off of dotnet and I foresee making a lot more money off of dotnet. I think in
terms of tech stacks that I've, I've just personally witnessed and been involved in over the past 20
years. Dotnet is the strongest. Bring those strong opinions. Oh, I will. Yeah. I love it.
So I'm not trying to throw, you know, fire at anyone, but I do think in the long run,
dotnet will be far more stable than anything out there for certain types of work. All right.
So a part of that is we have the dotnet foundation. One thing that net doesn't do well is we don't,
well, I really know, no platform does as well. We don't cultivate our, our open source ecosystem
as well as we should. Yeah. That's hard though. Always open source drama.
And so much for that. And the, the dotnet foundation is positioned to help dotnet open source
in the best way possible. We also help the dotnet community. So we help meetups. We help
individuals. We, we really tried to be a good steward of the dotnet community. And so I came on
to almost two years ago and I was the vice president and then became the president.
And my goal is, it was one of those cases where I wasn't able to really come in and start doing
good work. The foundation needed a lot of cleanup and just as most previous boards
boards, we weren't able to hit the ground running. We had to stop, like full stop, reassess everything
we were doing and clean, clean up. We had to cut the bleed. We were just spending money we didn't
have on things that we didn't need. And so I think, you know, anyone who's in the dotnet
community, you look at the dotnet foundation, there's a lot of drama in the dotnet foundation.
There's drama in every community. I think I've been able to really help rebuild some of that
persona. And just more importantly, the dotnet foundation is stronger now than it was when I
came on. So whoever comes in after me will be able to hopefully do some of that, that good work
moving forward. I love that. Yeah, you play a lot of roles. Hey, Nick, glad to have you in here.
You play a lot of roles. And one of, I mean, personally, I'm selfish here when I say this,
but one of my favorite roles is like, you know, conference organizer of Revolution Conf, which
is where we met for anyone who doesn't know about Revolution Conf. It was a conference in
Virginia Beach, and it was on the beach. And so for me, like, I think, it was just a beautiful
conference, like very developer curated. It was clear that I was hanging with my peers. I didn't
see these giant 100k sponsor Bruce that none of us really like to engage with, you know,
it was person to person, but still very, very valuable in the content, just incredibly valuable
content. And it was on the beach. And so for me, I love those events because when they are in that
type of an aspect like that conference or Revolution Conf, I'll bring one of my kids. And so
it's like they get to go on like a mini vacation with mom and there's no one else with none of
the other kids. And so I remember bringing my son to Revolution Conf and like he was able to like go
play on the beach and like mess around. Well, I was like being a nerd and being a developer. And
it's just like, not only was it a great event, but it just was in such a beautiful place that
really just allowed you to just like, you know, relax and just hang with your peers and just
enjoy the event. So anyways, that's my my little rant on Revolution Conf and how much I love it.
But that's one of my favorite titles personally. I love it too. I wish we'd love to bring Revolution
Conf back. It's just not the best economy right now to bring back a full scale conference.
For sure. Like our budget, I have this benefit of I've run businesses for a good portion of my life.
Like I look at it in the same way I look at the business. And the rule is that the the conference
has to pay for itself. And if it can't do that, there's no reason to do the conference. Like I
don't love this too risky. Yeah, there are cases where people have taken out loans or debt to support
conferences. And I will say this until your deaf in the years. I don't love you enough to go and
debt for you. Yeah, I don't love the community enough to go and debt for the community. Now,
I will I will sit there and I will hustle to get get more people to buy tickets to get more
sponsorship to do all those different things. But I won't even consider doing the conference unless
I'm sure that it can sustain itself. And yeah, for a revolution, I don't have that trust. I don't
have the trust in the community to show up to help support the thing that I love. So I'm not
going to take that risk right now. Yeah. So yeah, I was gonna say that's a really bitter way to like
take that conversation. But that's absolutely the truth. No, no, no, we would have done it two years
ago. I think the truth is good though, right? Because I think that, you know, Clark cell was on
yesterday. And Clark did start a conference and had it going for many, many years. So he did end up
in a space where he wanted to continue to fight that fight after COVID and like continue to have
that event and like, very admirable and respectable to be able to do that. But you're not wrong,
right? There is there is a whenever any of us decide to bring this stuff together, there's a
huge risk to that if you're not backed by a corporation. If you're backed by a corporation,
developers don't want to come. So it's like, it's this very like ebb and flow situation. And I think
that economically, I believe that businesses are being too tight, companies are being too tight.
And so I mean, maybe understandably, but also like, okay, we at least should go back to the way
things were like common education budgets, like just very rudimentary things that should be supplied
to your employees. But I think if we see those things come back, it could change. Yeah, go ahead,
jump in. There's also, I think a disconnect with conference organizers and understanding the needs
and wants of the sponsors. Because there's so many perspectives, so prospect, I don't know,
whatever the prospectus is. I know what you mean. The, but you look at a perspective and then go,
well, you get a six foot table. And your logo on the website, that'll be $50,000. And as a business
owner, I go, no, that's not $50,000 worth of ROI for me. Like I'm not going to get that ROI.
No, but not off that one single event, it's going to take you other work. And so why would you blow
it all in that one place? Yeah. Now, if I like, we did an event, we do a local event. And I love
local events, not really catering to anyone outside our region. Yeah. And we sold tables for,
we sold a table for $5,000. And $5,000 and you get access to the 200 people that show up for the
event. That turns out to be a really good ROI because every sponsor that we had there said,
you know, I got to speak to 200 people, I got a lot of good connections. Like that was, that was
money well spent. That's a 5k value. Yeah. As soon as you get up into those big numbers, and you don't
have the, the, the benefits to go along with it, it's really harder for these corporations to say,
yep, I want to go into that. I know one corporation that's pulling sponsorship from
one event to put into another event, because they can get more value out of the other events.
They can send their people to it. They, they get a table, they get all this stuff. So, and I know
conference organizers are just like, I just need money. Yeah. Yeah. And sometimes you're just limited
in your exhibition space. But I think a lot of times, sponsorships are just too high for what
businesses can realistically approve. Yeah. Danny just jumped into the chat, just want to shout out,
hey, Danny, you know, he just did this, right? Like, and Kevin and I were both there. Yeah.
Yeah. Like he just brought together commit your code. And like, I'm sure Danny could come on and
which Danny's actually slated at some point when he gets over to the scheduling link to come on the
show. And so I'm sure he'll have some great insights to share in this topic too. But, you know, he
did the same thing. He brought a group of developers together. It was local. It was focused on local.
Of course, people flew in, you know, he had some different speakers fly in and things, but it was
all for charity, right? That makes it even like so much harder because businesses don't take charity
seriously, which I really thought that they would. You know, we did a virtual charity event back in
April in the Built for Devs Hub. And I really thought that there'd be more investment around
the charity. That was my first time trying to pitch a charity sponsorship. Wow, gosh, are those hard?
Like, they're just like, nope, if it's for good, I don't want to give you my money. And I'm like,
well, what? It makes no sense. And I know Danny can very much relate to that. Yeah. Well, I don't
know, it doesn't work for some reason. It's hard. It's kind of like when you go to the grocery store
and you're you're checking out and they put the thing up on the the pad that goes, you want to
round up for for charity? Yeah. And it's like, well, no, I just want to pay my bill and get out.
Like, I want to pull. I want to pull people on that. I stopped doing it. I always say yes. I stopped
doing it because I'm like the multi billion dollar corporation can pay for the charity themselves.
Like, that's why why am I giving money for you to benefit from the charity? Oh, actually, that's
a good call out. Yeah. So I'm like, I now I have charities I give money to all the time. Like,
that's just part of what we do. And so I can understand why it's hard to sell the charity
aspect of it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So but but he did it. But they weren't bad. Yeah. All great.
Right. Right. Totally. But he like, he made it happen. So like, Danny, you're saying,
yeah, that's my bad. But honestly, like, you still made it happen. And you still had an event
that didn't cut into your personal funds. And that still, like, honestly, like, I can say this
right now, commit your code got me out of like a dark, deep depression that I didn't know I was in.
I like realized that I was like, holy crap, I need to be spending time with developers. I need to
be hanging out with them. I need to get back into this space. Like it is a it is a I need it. It's
like a lifeblood for me to like actually hang out with other developers. And so when I commit your
code, right, I got to see you. I got to see a lot of really awesome folks that are up in the chat
that I'm so thankful for. And I just had the revelation. I was like, Oh, my gosh, I've been
building my business in the dark and my business is not an in the dark business. It's a public
advocacy for developers and developer products business. Why am I in the dark?
Then I started the live stream. And look, now suddenly I'm happy. Funny thing, right? If we go
hang out with our peers a little bit and everyone's all kind of nerd and on the chat about that. I
love it. There's definitely something psychological about talking to someone that you you like respect,
but you don't get to talk to every day. Yes. Yes. That's you and me. Like we don't talk every day,
but when we do talk like I really enjoy our conversations and yet that goes for like the
majority of people in the chat that I know, like it's the same way. I I really look forward to the
20 minutes I get to sit down and talk to him or about whatever. Yes. That's why I do the stuff
that I do. Yeah, exactly. So for the folks that are, you know, listening in, we've been chatting
about a whole bunch of stuff from, you know, Kevin's consulting to like events and revolution
comp and how awesome it was. And then now we're talking about events and, and all the things.
I think my brain just dropped what I was going to say as I was recapping.
Well, I'm like thinking about so much this week, heavy, heavy in the goods.
Commit your code. So let's talk about commit your code. You spoke there. What topic did you speak on?
I'm just gonna talk on crap. What did I talk about? Oh, it was my my $8,000 serverless mistake.
Yes, that's what it was. That's what it was. Okay, you helped me. Folks, you should go find it,
by the way, because it was really, really good. And it's very enlightening to like your story
and how you told that story around like, okay, I'm going to kind of dive into this thing. And it
turned into like lucrative work for you because you dove into something. So if you want to speak to
that, feel free. I just, I wanted to bring it up as we were speaking about commit your code,
because it was a really good session. Yeah, I, I like doing talks that are
from the trenches. Yes. Nothing against the folks that get up that say, I learned this thing,
I'm going to talk about this thing. Like those are all very necessary talks. But I really like
talks that go, I did a thing. Here's what I learned from it. And this is, this is something that I
think you would benefit from. A lot of talks come in, like serverless is probably a good example.
Like every serverless talk I've ever seen has been like, it's all great. Here's all the things you
can do it so fast, it's perform it, it's really cheap, blah, blah, blah. And I want to come in
and do the talking that says they're not wrong. But here's a couple cases where this can bite you
in the ass. And here's things that you might not be thinking about. And it's, it's just the progression
of my journey. Like I was that kid 20 years ago that would just play with everything
without thinking about, you know, what's this look like in a system that's going to be around for
five, 10, 15 years. And I think it's really moving, that's how you move from junior to
to mid level to senior. Like when you get to those senior level positions, you don't think about
what's cool and new, you think about what's going to last for the next 10, 15 years. Also why I'm
pretty stringent on like.net as a platform, because that stays fairly stable over a five to
10, 15 year period. You're not wrong. So I mean, it's a great conversation to have over a beer
or a cup of coffee. Like with a bunch of developers who work in different languages, by the way,
because the opinions will come out and it will be such a beautiful lucrative conversation.
Yep. Yep. So serverless. So the talk was I really, I jumped on the serverless bandwagon.
I've started doing Azure functions. I got myself in this position where I had a hammer
and everything was a nail. I was just, I was just trying to do as much in Azure functions as I could.
And then we had made some subtle changes to just our configuration, but it bumped us up from
consumption level to premium consumption. And when you do that, you go from a system that costs you
$3 a month to a system that was costing $8,000 a month. And it was literally like a checkbox
in configuration to go from one to the other. And it doesn't warn you. And I mean, in the
defense of the platforms, like they don't, they don't have a way to tell you that the thing you're
doing could potentially cost $8,000. Yeah. Up is just up to the experience of whoever's clicking
that button. Right. And at the time, I didn't have the experience. The other guy on my team I was
working with didn't have that experience. And we didn't find out until later, it's like, oh,
that was a mistake. We should not have done that, at least in the way that we did. So
how do you pivot? How do you do this differently to save the business money and to do all this?
So those are the type of talks I like doing. And the type of talks I like attending because
you just learn so much from someone's mistake. And I also really try to
push the narrative. Like, even though I'm a fairly senior level guy, I still make mistakes.
Like, I learned from my mistakes and I don't try to make, I try not to make the mistakes again.
But just because someone's been doing this for 20 years, doesn't mean they know everything.
We're, we're still making mistakes all the time. I'm also a lot better at like just
going to this and saying, Hey, I made a mistake. It cost you $8,000. I'm sorry.
My bad. I'll do better. I've done that on more occasions than I like to admit, but, you know,
it's just, it's part of the job. You can't be a good consultant and not be able to save face when
you make a mistake. You can't be a good business person if you can't admit to your own mistakes.
Yeah, I think there's, there is like so much beauty in what you just shared. Like,
honestly, so many like little nuggets of lessons, right? I think the first thing is like,
actually telling your story around making mistakes is like so incredibly valuable because then
someone else can be like, Oh my gosh, I was going to do that, right? Like when I sat in your talk,
I was like, I don't know what Azure functions are, but now I do know what Azure functions are.
And if I ever have to use them, I know what mistake not to make, right? And so I think it's,
it's a beautiful way to learn through somebody else because you like emotionally tied, like you
brought me in, right? Like Danny said, one of the best talk titles is immediately I'm like, Whoa,
that's a lot of money. What did Kevin do? And it, it like intrigues me to want to understand
where, where that happened, how it happened, what that lesson was. And then I got to walk away with
like, you know, remembering and retaining information that I would never normally retain.
Honestly, I'd be like an Azure function is what it blue blue blue. It all goes out, right?
Unless you actually have to collectively use it. And so it really stuck. So I'm sure it sounds
like RJ also in the chat has another story of related. So it's, yeah, it's like, but I think
it's to speak to that just a little bit more is like, I am often afraid actually to admit some
of my mistakes because I'm worried that someone will say, Hey, she's not good enough at her job,
or Hey, she doesn't know what she's doing because she made a mistake. Even though in my heart,
every single mistake is like, Oh, don't do that. But I do do this, right? And so it's just more,
for me, it's education and experimentation. I learn how to do it right. But for whatever reason,
sharing it publicly feels like, Oh, I might look bad, you know, and so yeah,
I did a talk at Kansas City Developer Conference conference. I love KCDC. I hope they invite
me back this year. But I think I missed a cut on the submissions myself. It's still open until
February 21st for this year. Okay, I'm putting them on my list. I have all my conferences written
down on a pad of paper to remind me when to submit. You can tell me your list because then we can
just hang out all year. And that would be awesome. Anyway, so not to do what you were saying.
Yeah, you're fine. So the name of that talk was dumb things I've done with relational databases.
And I was, I'd gotten a lot of flack about the title from different people going,
you're, you're not stowing much like confidence in yourself and blah, blah, blah. I said,
yeah, but I've done some dumb stuff with relational databases and it's all good information.
That talk at Kansas City was, it was standing room only out the door.
Dang, not surprise. They had the doors open. People were out there. And I said, essentially,
at the beginning, this is a safe space. Like I'm going to tell you some silly things I've done.
I'm going to explain why they were dumb. And what I should have done differently,
what I learned from that experience. And then towards the end, I just kind of opened it up for,
for comments. And people were just telling me things that they've done.
Oh my gosh, that's beautiful. It just turned into this kumbaya moment with, with the audience.
And I, it's really hard to replicate that. And someone was saying earlier in the chat,
like everything's between moving virtual. You cannot replicate that experience in a virtual
setting. Not the safe, like, not the safety, right? I think you could do it if you had a very
tight knit group. Like we do some roundtables in the built for dev hub where it's like a 10 to
15 person maximum. Right. And if folks start to get to know each other, yes, you can eventually
unfold that. I learned some really beautiful techniques from snap shout out to council at
snapchat. Most amazing thing ever. Google it if you don't want to talk about. So you can, right?
But it's not the same when people are in person, they see you, they see your gestures, they see it
on your face that you're like open and authentic and transparent. And they're like, Oh, I can feel
it. Right. Kevin's alluding this safe space at which I can now talk about my dumb mistakes.
Yep. And I've done that talk in front of DBAs, which I was scared to death to do that.
Good for you. And what tell people what DBAs are database administrators.
Got it. Basically the most opinionated people you ever meet when it comes to database.
Generally, you do not have high opinions of developers from a professional standpoint.
I love working with a good DBA on database problems because you will learn a ton just how
stuff works internally. And like the essence of dumb mistakes with databases wasn't like, Oh,
I accidentally did a delete without a where clause. Like we understand that's a dumb mistake.
And it's really easy to do. But that's like, I want more sophisticated dumb mistakes.
Yeah. Things that they will accidentally fall into as they're building something important.
Yeah. And so I talked a lot about indexing. I talked about just how you I'm trying to remember
everything that was in that talk, but I went pretty in depth. And yeah, at the end, like I had a
database administrator come up and go, me a lot of really good points. Like, yeah, like no, no notes.
So I mean, that that's a win in my book. Because they would have been the first, the first ones to
tell me otherwise. Yeah, I have my this dot cup. Oh, it's in the house. I should have.
Dude, I use this every single day, Danny. This is the absolute best and it shows up on the
live stream daily. So if the logo wasn't so shiny, this dot labs would be a daily placement in my
live stream unintentionally. So you need the black logo, you need a black logo for contrast.
You would say there we go. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Danny, feel free to send me one that that
doesn't doesn't glare. Well, it'll be a daily appearance. I love that. So all this I'm going,
I'm basically I'm doing submissions for 2025 and I'm trying to build talks that are in the trenches.
And those are much harder talks to write. So all right, what technology am I using that's
extremely beneficial to the work I do every day? What makes what lets my system be a five to 10
year system? Not a six month system. You and I talked about that at commit your code to when I
was talking about caller devs as I call them, which basically that's just my nice name for your older.
I'm not old. I noticed but hey, but your your little sweatshirt thing still has a color though.
But like I mean, I don't always wear colors either. But I just it's like the nice way of saying we're
old, right? Because when we're a little bit older, we dress up a little bit differently. I don't
always because I'm trying to be young forever, right? Rock those con verses or whatever I've
got going on. But it's just my funny phrase for like, we're developers that that we think
differently, right? We understand the entire system because we've had to understand the entire
system versus developers today coming in and there's I'm not saying that you're not a good
developer by any means. I still really can't code myself. I've been too far away from it. So
we all have our spaces and places, right? But in comparison to developers today, coming in and
learning how to build with frameworks and react and some of these other things that are prebuilt,
you get into some of these issues, right? And you're like, holy crap, something is fundamentally
wrong in the base of your code that you don't understand. And so I think, you know, Kevin and
I like to nerd out about that. Or maybe I do and I pull you into it, but we very much have had some
great conversations about sort of the depths of understanding your entire system. Yeah.
So I will have a talk. I'll probably submit this to commit your code. So look out for it, Danny.
And it's basically just, it's how, you know, how do you go from that junior level to senior level?
And a lot of it is systems level thinking. It is, which I learned in college. So, and I'm,
at least the number of people I've talked to who have come out like bootcamp situations and stuff,
don't learn that skill. Yep. And it's a very important skill. It's what makes
senior level people very good at what they do. And it's, it's something you can learn. That's,
that's the important thing. I'd love to talk more about that in the future.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'd love to have you in the, in the built for devs hub. Like I'm trying
to just bring together random developer events, random conversations, then we can host roundtables
after the fact so we can get into more intimate conversations to ask sort of a Q and A and,
and unpack that, right? Talk about our problems. But good grief. What is wrong with me today?
I'm so forgetful. I will tell you, I've got this client project I'm working on that my head is
just like so into it. Cause it's like a, it's deep. It's, it's this, right? It's the understanding,
the stack and the framework and like showing devs that like, you know, Kubernetes and cloud,
right? This complicated infrastructure that's like sometimes overly complicated.
How do we as developers come back and actually think about systems? So long story short, my
head is, is in the weeds. I was going to, what was I just going to say? You were talking about
commit your code, submitting your talk systems, us going to the same events. Good grief. Kevin,
what was I going to talk to you about? I don't know. We don't have our, our, our predictability
here. Okay. Well, I guess that's gone. So that idea is gone. One thing I have been holding on to
and want to bring up is your multi-threaded income podcast. Are you still doing that
effective now? Are you on a hiatus? No, I guess hiatus might be the best word for it. I did
multi-threaded income as an experiment to see what would the appetite of developers be for
more business career oriented conversation. I mean, the first 15 minutes of our conversation was,
all right, I've done this, I've done that, I've done this, I've done training, I've done courses,
I've done books, I've done this, like I'm very much of the position. And I said it, there's no
such thing as job security. Like whoever you're working for now, they will drop you in a moment.
Like, and it's not like disrespect to anyone that's just business that you eventually end up
a line item. And if that line needs to be zero, I mean, you go away. So build your own job security.
Like I will never fire myself from my business because I own the business. But, you know,
there, you know, money can come from a lot of different things. I have a very good skill set,
and there's a lot of different ways to leverage that. The easiest way is always consulting. Like
consulting is the easiest way to make money. I mean, it's really hard to get started. Like,
if you have no clients, you have no network, like it's not easy to get started in consulting.
But it takes the least amount of time to get ramped up. Like you find that first client,
you can start on day one. Horses, teaching stuff, you know, like that's a good progression of
using your skill set. But you have, you have folks like me who put stuff on Udemy, and I make like
a car payment every month of that. Dang, dude, that's awesome. Well, not like a good car.
Well, I know, but it's still something. It's still supplementing your income, you know?
No, like a good car.
It's money. Yeah, it's like a, what, geometro car payment, right?
Okay, okay, I get it. But it's still something.
But then you have, like, I'm really good friends with Aaron Francis. Aaron Francis drops, of course,
you know, he buy a house. Like that's the difference in, you know, someone who's dedicated to it
versus someone like me who dabbles in it and doesn't do it constantly. I get what you're saying.
I've written books of, yeah, I don't talk about books. I don't recommend anyone write to book.
I've done training. Training is also really lucrative. Nice thing about training is you
could write material once and just deliver it over and over and over again. But in all these
cases, you have to be a good salesperson. Like you have to be able to sell the stuff that you,
that you're offering. A lot of developers are not suited for that.
Yeah. Yes.
There's also
So true.
Yeah.
Yeah. There's most of my clients are technical founders that can't do this. So that's why I'm
like, yes. Yep. Because it doesn't, you don't, you don't want to do it. You just want to dabble
in the code. You want to add a new feature. You want to do this, you want to do that. You don't
want to, you don't want to talk to anyone. Like you don't want to make a phone call or send an email.
We don't want to sell. They'll go out and like talk to other devs or they'll talk to their peers
or they'll talk to their network, but they don't want to go sell, you know, and like get into the
business side. They just want to build the cool tech.
Yep. So how do you know they're building the right thing? I mean, there's, that's a whole
another hour conversation we can have. And then there's like the Holy Grail. I've done my own
products and those are also a lot of work. You also have to be a good salesperson. You have to
figure out, is there a market for the thing you want to build? And yeah. So multi-threaded income
was an attempt to just expose people to all these different ways to build additional income.
And it didn't necessarily have to be your day job or and something else. It's a combination.
That's why it was multi-threaded. Like you could do one, but then go off and do these other things.
And as you build up those skill sets and those other streams of income, maybe eventually you
don't need the day job anymore. And now you have your own job security. And by job security, I
really mean you have your own financial security. Yeah. I think you've got revenue streams all over
the place, which is kind of the vein of it. Yeah. And anyone paying attention to the politics knows
we have no idea if the world's even going to exist tomorrow. Like, it's one of those cases.
Yep. So don't be reliant on a W2. Yeah. Yeah. All right. So this is US. I'm the telling story for this.
Don't be reliant on the page, the daily paycheck from big company. Be reliant on yourself and your
skills. Because like everyone, like everyone in chat can say, I'm working for a great company
right now. They would never let me go into the quarter. If the numbers don't line up.
Mm-hmm. They'll let you go. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Totally agree. So you should check out that
podcast. I was on Kevin's podcast and actually I'm like, I need to go back and listen to it because
I had like 12 revenue streams I was planning for my business. And I think I only like have really
actually capitalized on one and I'm like, what is wrong with me? Eager early Tessa had the had a
beautiful plan. But I yeah, go ahead. You did ask me. So that's in hiatus just because
I couldn't find a good avenue to make money from the podcast. And I'm at the stage in my life where
anything that I give my effort, effort to has to either drastically build my personal brand,
which in turn helps everything else in my network. Or it's got to put money in the bank. And
multi-threading income wasn't doing either. So it's on hiatus until I can rethink the
approach. Yep. So I love that. Yeah, totally. Totally. Okay. So I remember what I wanted to talk
about before I asked you about your podcast. So what I wanted to bring up is that you talked about
understanding systems and system admins and building them. And that came from college and your
official education. So I can relate to that, but also sort of speak to and I just wanted to add this
layer of like, you know, just understanding for any devs that might be like, Oh crap, I don't have an
official college degree. I'm never going to understand systems. I didn't either. I'm not going to
I dropped out of college three times. I was like, Nope, didn't it wasn't for me. All times criminal
justice, business management and software engineering just it wasn't happening. And so what I wanted
to say is I still had to understand systems because that's how things were back then. You didn't get
to have these all these beautiful tools. We were still making the original tools at which now have
tools and more tools and more tools today. But you can get to that place, right? But like getting
into the code base, like I literally dove into the code base of every single thing that I built.
So if I was learning how to like Jumla was one of the first things, right? I was like,
I learned my sequel through Jumla because I'm like, I want to build a website for Guitar Hero so we
can play video games with people that we like, right? I was at home and I had a little baby and he
was a great baby and I had time to blow on video games. So I learned my sequel because I wanted
to build a database or I wanted to build an app website, right? So I learned Jumla and then I
started learning all the source code for Jumla and understanding, you know, MVC and all the different
sort of ways that programming exists and how Jumla was created and how they changed it and shifted.
And so even though that's just one example, right, you can still start to understand the
fundamental systems below if you dig deep enough into the actual layers and into that like base
code that you're working with. And I think that's that's what I wanted to encourage is like, I think
that with AI and where AI is going, I think that understanding of the full system is going to be
where we can shine differently because we'll be able to speak to no, wait, don't let AI do it that
way because it should be done this way versus just having those traditional writing code skills that
a computer can unfortunately do. So yeah, that's actually a really good point. Like everyone out
there talking about AI taking the jobs of coders. They all pretty much say the same thing like AI is
as good if not better than a junior level dev. Like those jobs, those are up on the chopping block,
like that it's just sad, it would be really hard to be a junior level dev right now. What AI can't do
well is systems level thinking like it cannot think about this. So most of us using AI and coding
nowadays we're like, we're on a cog. Like if I bring in, I'm going to use a car analogy when I do
the talk, but it's like devs are used to working on the alternator. And the alternator is an important
part. But something's wrong with power steering. AI is not going to be able to figure out that the bug
is in power steering when you're looking at alternator. Now, alternator started vehicle by the
way for anyone who doesn't know. So that's like, you know, getting things going where like the
power steering is like a good driving experience, you know, like it all comes together.
So I am like, I'm very much a grease monkey. I love working on cars. I love
working on stuff around the house. And it's all systems. Like when your car breaks down,
it's because there's a fault in a system. So like 99% of the cars probably working just fine,
but like you throw a belt. So all right, something's wrong. And really all a combustion engine is,
and I have to specify now, because we have electric vehicles, but it's like a combustion engine,
you need three things you need, you need air fire and spark. Or so you need spark fuel. And I'm
getting my everything mixed up. But if you don't have one of those three, the engine won't run.
So like just understanding how these systems work, when it breaks down, you reverse engineers
like, All right, well, let's start here and start there. So that talk basically starts out with me,
how I debugged a car issue by working backwards in the system, understanding how the system works.
So like even if you're building an app, and it's, we use the joke box, box cylinder, you have,
you have a front end, you have a back end, you have a database, all right, that's still a system.
And, but they're bigger system, if it's my sequel, my sequel is a big system. So if some,
so what you're going to see is not that there's an error in the database, you're just, someone's
going to call you and say, I get an error when I click on this button on the front end. Okay,
yeah, right. Systems level thinking goes fuel air spark. Yeah, thanks RJ. I'm trying to remember
in my order. But so you have an error pressing the button. And a lot of folks will just concentrate
on the button. But the error might not be in the button, it might be in the database. So
system level thinking basically approaches it to, well, let's start at the button, and let's work
our way backwards. Let's work our way backwards. And let's get down to the play last place it
worked. Yeah. And then all right, what's the next step? All right, that's where the failure was.
Why is there a failure nine times out of 10? It's obvious what the error is. Not always, but most
of the time, but when you understand the system though, you know, that's the thing, you can't
debug a car if you don't open the hood, like it's, yeah, or even know what's under the hood, right?
Like if you open a hood and you have no idea what's connected together and all the little pieces are
like, you're just open in the hood to be like, it's something on fire. Can I fix something that's
clear to me, which is unlikely if you don't understand the system? Yeah. So that's what I
would love to teach. And I think that would be insanely useful for anyone who's never thought
about what we do in that way. Because that's like, that's like mini system. Let's go more. What if you
have box, box cylinder, but then you need two front ends, and or you need multiple databases,
or what if, you know, what if the databases do slow? How do you improve that? How do you build
that system out a little bit more? That's the stuff I'm nerding out on right now. So you go from box,
box cylinder to box, box, box, box, box, box, box cylinder, cylinder, cylinder, cylinder,
I know something else. And yeah, you have all the arrows pointing in different directions.
All right, something's broken. Where do you start? And yep, if you understand the fundamental
systems and how they all interact with each other, you can work your way backwards and usually fix
problem. So debugging becomes a superpower at that point. Yes, yes, yes. I think there are some,
you know, and so like, definitely skills that someone who's a junior dev can do, right? It's
just like, you have to dive into that instead of perfecting and learning all the new frameworks and
all the new shiny new stuff, right, like figure out how the fundamentals are operating in one of
these things, right, that that really is is most important. I think, holy cow, we've been talking
for 55 minutes already. I love hanging out with you. I know, I know this. Honestly, if you go back
and read the transcripts for my shows, I'm pretty sure that every single time I'm always excited to
meet with my guests, because I am, because it's always someone that I either like really, really
adore or it's someone that's newer interesting. And then at the end, we're always like, well,
we could talk for hours and hours. But I don't have hours and hours, unfortunately, and we both
have jobs, right? As we talked about, is it feeding into my brand or is it paying my bills?
This one does feed into our brands, but not if we go for hours and hours, we start to lose our
ROI. This is the silent like third third thing. It just gives me personal joy to do this. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Like, that's one of those. Yeah. Yeah, I agree with that. I agree with that. Okay, so a
couple of questions I like to ask folks before we end the call. So a kind of rapid fire with these,
because I didn't necessarily ask these, what is your technology stack? I think we have a general
idea, but maybe outside of your love for.NET, what else do you use tools, other things that are
you're just a big fan of? I love my.NET for back end. I am a JavaScript guy on the front end.
Oh, I love that. I'm a view guy. I use writer for all my.NET development from JetRainz.
Great tool. Cool. I use cursor for my front end development. Interesting. So I pay for cursor.
So it is AI driven coding. I think it's the best tool. It's the best tool I've seen.
Oh. It just keeps getting better. So I love that. I love cursor. Yeah, I mean, I got,
yeah, those are my big tools I use every single day. Got it. I love that. Okay.
How do you solve challenges when you're stuck? I take a break. I walk away. I never,
I never solve a big problem in front of the computer. I always solve a big problem while I'm
mucking around in the garage or taking a shower or drinking a cup of coffee. Yeah, step away from
the computer. That's the easiest way to solve a problem because your brain can't concentrate. Well,
think, like get a good night's sleep. Take a nap. Yeah. I'm at 41 is more important. When I was 20,
I could usually just plow through it and get something working. I can't do that anymore.
But if I go get some sleep and wake up and go, I have an idea. Yep. Yep. Yep. I love that. I think
I get a lot of different answers, right? Because, you know, there's some developers that will be like,
I walk away or, you know, I try it and whatever. And I think out of most of them, I hear just go
take a break the most. And I will say even from the most experienced folks, which I think is really
speaks true to how important it is to just like step away and actually go and take that break and
think about something else. Because sometimes our brains are just overworked, right? It's,
gosh, I was watching something the other day. And I can't remember exactly what it was, but basically,
they had opened something and they were like, it's right here. And they're like, I looked at this for
hours and I didn't see it. And that's the problem, right? As you look at something for too long,
you no longer see the mistakes that are in it. So I think that's incredibly valuable feedback.
Okay, Kevin, where can people find you? Hopefully you're speaking at commit your code,
which Danny just graciously was like, yep, you're in and I haven't submitted a talk. So we'll have
to figure that out. But hopefully you're there and I will see you there. Casey DC, obviously,
you're planning on hopefully being there and have submitted where can folks find you on the
internet and then, you know, for selfish people like me, what other events are you going to so I
can come hang out? So I'm on I'm still on the Twitter. I'm on blue sky. So on Twitter at one
Kev Griff blue sky. It's consult with griff.com. Because we can't just have regular handles.
I'm on LinkedIn. Yeah, those are the big places, conferences. So I'm not confirmed for anything
right now. It's all just kind of up in the air. I'm planning. I'm hoping to be a Orlando code camp
in April. That's a great event. It's it's free on a Saturday. We have a whole discussion about
how like code camps like change developer events in the early 2000s. Yeah, I agree. Orlando code
camp is a great event. It's free for anyone who wants to show up. And it's in Orlando. So I like
going places that have roller coasters. Me too. I'm a huge roller coaster guy. Oh my gosh, me too.
So we're going on coasters together the next time we're hanging. We should because I will be that
geek in there and say, Well, this was built by intimate and this features the blah, blah, blah,
unlike its sister coaster in this location. Yeah, I'm that guy with roller coasters.
Okay, but okay, this is a very important question before we go on to the rest of your events. Do
you go and then ride roller coaster multiple times if you really love it? Or do you have to like
circle the park and come back? Like what kind of ride are you? So what I will do, so if it's a
park I've never been to before, I will ride everything once at least and I will ride everything
once. I will take notes on what I like and what I don't like. And then I will only give my time
back to coasters that I liked. After you and I are so going to amusement parks together,
you're my new roller coaster buddy, because I'm the same way and I will because I want to try it
all right because you don't know what you like until you're on it and you try it. And then after
that I'm like ride or die for the ones that I love like I collect my credits. So if I ride,
I have to ride at least once and if I hate it, I never have to ride that ride again.
Right, but you try it. Why do you do something that is bring you joy? If you have a headache at
the end of the ride, don't ride the ride anymore. Fallon. Yep. Orlando Code Camp. It's a toss up
between KCDC, the DevUp conference and Beer City Code. They're all kind of within like two, three
weeks span of each other. I can only do one. So I'm not sure which one I'm going to be at yet.
I highly recommend KCDC. I love those guys. They run a great event. Kansas City is just a great
area for an event. I've never done DevUp and I've never done Beer City Code. So those are,
I might do those just because it's new. And you know, Commit Your Code. It's in November.
So I plan on being there if Danny will have me. There's also... Wait, did he move it to November?
Did he move it to September? I don't know. I don't remember. He'll try him in a minute.
I know it's later. Well, it's later in the year. Yep. I'm also planning on being a tech bash
in Hope Knows. I think they're, I don't know if they're September or October this year,
but their CFP is getting ready to open soon. Beautiful area at a beautiful time.
It's a great little conference. And I like smaller, I like smaller conferences because I like the
more one-on-one time with people. I also bring my son with me. He enjoys it. And yeah.
September for clarity. Roxanne has let us know that it is, it's in September. Update your calendar.
Update. Yeah, I will. So it's at the top of my list. I just haven't filled in the blanks. I know
he opened the CFP like the day after the last one, which threw me off because I wasn't ready for it.
I know. I was, I was, well, it was, there was a couple of days, because in those days, I was like,
I'm coming. I'll be there. And we had a range that he's like, yes, come and speak. And I was like,
great, but I did, I, it wasn't an open CFP. So yeah, I kind of snuck in in between there. So
I love that. So that's all I have at the moment. Yeah. Maybe one or two other things in between.
We'll see. I love that. Okay. So we'll have a couple opportunities. Maybe KCDC, commit your code.
I'm leaning in, well, I'm keynoting at PHP tech, which I'm so pumped about because I love PHP tech.
If anyone has never been and is in PHP, right? It's in Chicago this year. It used to be not
laying down. Yeah. So they took a break over COVID. Eli, you know, used to run it. And then they had
sold that event over to the PHP architect guys, which are amazing human beings. So I'm excited
for that. That's in May. I'm giving a keynote at Baylor. I'm so proud of this talk, like of all
the talks and tech things that I've done. I'm like most proud about talking about marketing at a
university, which is so not something I think I would be excited about. So I'm very pumped about
that. That one goes to the top of the resume. Like that's, that's how you wished. Yeah.
No, I spoke at random conference. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's just a guess. I think there's just a
little cloud with it, but it's really cool too, because it's a digital marketing competition
for all the students. And so it's 36 different colleges getting together for the competition.
And then I'm like, they're, you know, featured or keynote speaker, whatever they call it.
But anyways, yeah, so I'm excited about that one. Commit your code. I submitted to,
oh my gosh, render ATL. Not sure that I would get accepted. I've never been, but I, the developers
love it. And so I want to go mostly for camaraderie of spending time with developers.
I don't know what else is on my schedule. I think that's it, but we will, we will cross paths at
a couple of these. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay, this has been awesome. Thank you for your time.
Thank you for the very active chat per usual lately. I absolutely love the engagement.
Having these conversations are so meaningful and it's super great to catch up with you.
And hopefully see you soon. I would love to bring you in the hub for a couple of events. So
let's, let's work on that. Okay, perfect. All right. Well, I hope everyone has a fabulous
rest of their day. Kevin, any parting words before I end the stream? Nope, you're all awesome. I'm
proud of you. Enjoy the rest of your Wednesdays. Yay. Oh, beautiful parting words.