Authentic Connection Exercise

[00:00:00]
>> Francesca Sadikin: Let's move into our Authentic Connection Exercise. The goal is to use active listening and these other quick connection principles to extract each other's full journey into tech. Ideally, by the end of it, we start to feel a sense of authentic connection with each other. That's how we know that we did this right.

[00:00:23]
[LAUGH] So there are two roles here. There is going to be a story share, so this is one person. They're going to start the exercise by giving a 10 to 15 second short summary of their journey into tech. Then they'll only be answering the questions that are being asked.

[00:00:42]
So if someone ask a yes and no question, they will answer yes and no. Now the rest of us, as many as those who wants to volunteer, are going to be questioners. Our goal is to extract the what, why, and most importantly, the feelings about their journey. And so all of these techniques are used to help understand their experience and then make sure that they felt that they were heard, okay?

[00:01:18]
Just a small conduct rule, when we go into feelings and we going into our journeys into tech, sometimes it's a little delicate, and so we want to ask for consent or give them a way out before touching upon really deeply personal life details. There should be no pressure to share something that for folks are uncomfortable with.

[00:01:42]
Okay, so with that, we can actually start this exercise. Who wants to be the story sharer first?
>> Tech-guy 1: I was in real estate, I did a bunch of remodels. I heard about a boot camp to get into tech, and I took that opportunity to learn how to build something new using tech, and that's where I'm at now.

[00:02:05]
>> Francesca Sadikin: So the rest of us are questioners, and I'll also be jumping in, but I'm gonna give the floor to you guys first. Some questions here.
>> Tech-guy 2: Was it just interest, or was there something motivating you to getting to tech?
>> Tech-guy 1: There was both. There was an interest in the sense that I really enjoy remodeling and working with just creating things.

[00:02:40]
And I was really very focused in real estate. And I saw an opportunity to continue that without excessively putting wear on my body through building with software. Combine that with seeing how slow the ship of Real estate is, I saw there were a lot of opportunities in tech to build tools for clients and for people within the real estate industry.

[00:03:15]
>> Tech-guy 2: How did that make you feel?
>> Tech-guy 1: Excited and overwhelmed. And then really getting into it, once I dove into tech,
>> Tech-guy 1: How much harder it is to actually do that, [LAUGH] then just think about it.
>> Francesca Sadikin: Are there other folks who have questions?
>> Female Speaker: How did you balance those two feelings of being really excited and overwhelmed at the same time.

[00:03:46]
>> Tech-guy 1: I think time really balanced them for me.
>> Female Speaker: Mm-hm.
>> Tech-guy 1: Especially once you start building things. And I really enjoy networking. So speaking with others who have attempted to build products similar to what I had in mind, and also enterprise level products that and companies who are already profitable.

[00:04:18]
It's not that my excitement died, it became realistic and I thought of it in more realistic terms instead of just like a grandiose idea.
>> Francesca Sadikin: Any other questions? There's like two things there that someone could further dig into. Well, I noticed and the thing that you said previously you said it's actually a little harder than you were expecting.

[00:04:52]
And then also like you just mentioned just now about something being more realistic for it's like grandiose ideals. What's that mean?
>> Tech-guy 1: I know we're getting a little bit away from where I'm at in my tech journey now, but this is more like product development conversation.
>> Tech-guy 1: Having an idea, you can only self-fund for so long and there's only so much time in the day to accomplish things.

[00:05:34]
And paralleling my intro into getting into tech was also, seeing how to build a product and the nuances in that planning of doing that.
>> Francesca Sadikin: So is that your goal is to, still somehow build this tool that you have in your head, but still also try to find, like a job, or you're like, no, I'm focusing on I want this, this idea that I have.

[00:06:10]
>> Tech-guy 1: No I've backed away from the idea, I had started building something, and then my awareness of large language models came out around the same time, and like switch cases for like things that I was building. The product that I was building, got turned on its head when I was exposed to the possibilities with machine learning.

[00:06:40]
And it kind of became irrelevant. And so I was like, I would need to start over to keep up with what is currently possible.
>> Francesca Sadikin: So I'm just gonna pause a little bit and just like, I'm not sure if I fully extracted everything, but did it feel like we kind of heard you and understood your journey?

[00:07:06]
>> Tech-guy 1: Yeah, I think so it felt.
>> Francesca Sadikin: A little bit.
>> Tech-guy 1: Yeah.
>> Francesca Sadikin: Okay, so we're gonna just change roles again.