Volunteering

[00:00:00]
>> Second one volunteering however it is done improperly in a lot of places right so volunteering at Tech conferences is a great way to expand your network and gain valuable industry insights right? Also offers unique opportunities to hang out with the speakers and the movers and shakers in the Tech industry.

[00:00:28]
However, it can be done in a right and wrong way. I have seen people who volunteer and they're so busy being hanging out with the cool kids and not making sure they hang out with the right kids. My first rule of volunteering is I don't want to volunteer at a cool kids conference.

[00:00:48]
Like that's just something I don't do if I'm trying to get a job. I don't go to cool kids conferences, because cool kid conferences are usually cool kid confidence because they're not heavy on the hard stuff. And so because they're not heavy on the hard stuff. The people that have the jobs, they're usually not there.

[00:01:05]
So that's been my experience. Like the party conferences, the people with the jobs, they're not going there. They're going to the boring ones that are talking about the hard stuff this tightly coupled with the business logic that's gonna focus how their company is gonna make revenue in the next two to five years.

[00:01:26]
So technology, right? Those are the conferences you wanna be at. Those are the ones you wanna be volunteering for. Those are the ones that you want to have these have those conversations are like, The one is talking about how great if I go to a conference and I don't think people are telling us how great the food is.

[00:01:42]
I'm not gonna be at that conference. Like I need a conference where people want to talk about the tech, talk about how great the technical talks are. All I hear about is the music is the food is how cool. How many cool people are there? I'm like, yeah, that's cool.

[00:01:59]
How many people there that could they could hire you on site though like wasn't that no one get hired on site okay you got a DJ and no one else that alright cool that's fine I'm gonna go home and no no shave my dog or something. I don't know.

[00:02:20]
So like that's how I view it, right? So when you're thinking about volun- because this is your time, right? And time is money. And time is capacity to make money. You could be spending your time doing something better like interviewing, practicing interviewing skills, building more substantial projects, anything like that versus being in a conference is nothing but a waste of your time.

[00:02:38]
Right? So when you're thinking about volunteering, focus on those conferences that are going to be boring. The only exception to that are if the companies or if it's a company ran conference. Usually company ran conferences are both fun. And also very insightful because they only make it fun.

[00:03:03]
So people will stay but they want you to spend money on their products so they're talking about you know really good products right like Google IO that's a fun conference and if you get in. You're gonna be happy volunteering like getting those places are super fun so that's the only exception to tech conferences when they're fun is like fun day conferences that are ran by the companies like AWS Microsoft, Google, if you get on any of those conference, get opportunity to go to any of those go you're definitely gonna learn something and you're definitely gonna have fun and they don't even need alcohol to do it.

[00:03:39]
So like that's what I recommend.Make sure if you are going to volunteer at a tech conference. You know what experts you're trying to reach out to. Or you know what this tech conference is about for you. For instance, he wants to go to cloud computing probably shouldn't be at Reactify to thought, right harsh reality.

[00:03:58]
Cloud computing, edge computing, he should probably be looking at Cloud players tech conference. Views are looking and see what the Cloudflare dev developer advocates where are these people talking at right you're back in you talked about we talked about authentication, right? So you should be talking and looking at where's the off guys gonna be yet?

[00:04:19]
Because those guys mean they might know more about where's the good conferences are anyway, like Corey? I'm forgetting his his name Cory Weathers okay look up Cory weathers he's in hit of a dead advocacy it auth I believe and he will help you he does a lot of backend stuff he definitely does a lot of talks all over the globe.

[00:04:49]
He can definitely point you to the right, like tech conferences if you're like for back end and stuff like that. He's a he's a C sharp guy, so nobody's perfect. He's cool, but-
>> Java than Microsoft, Java.
>> [LAUGH] I learned one reason I learned Python is because I don't like C sharp so bad I told them that for like, because of machine learning and like API's and stuff in Python is becoming big and Microsoft, I will write Python until my fingers like fall off before I write C sharp.

[00:05:26]
That's like I'll write Python all day. Y'all don't have to ask me no questions. You want to write Python Jerome? Yes. Like I'll do anything right. I was like, please don't make me write C-sharp. Please, I'm like a kid. Like, don't, please don't ground me and make me write C-sharp.

[00:05:39]
Like JavaScript, Python, I'll write YAML, it won't matter, like just, don't make me do .NET. I'm sorry. [LAUGH] Whatever I did wrong, I apologize.