grab bag episode w/tessa kriesel

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to, to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. And so that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me, Taylor at vaco, VACO.com is how to get in touch with me old-fashioned email social media at tdssy and finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. Alrighty. Hello everybody. When I say everybody, I mean nobody, because it's got to hit the interwebs. So good to see you. Tess is good to see you. It's good to see you again. It's good. It's good to see you. I like your little candle in the background.

Thank you. Trying to get some vibes. Trying to get some vibes. Also, I'm obsessed with candles. I think I read somewhere that like candle sales went up like a good gazillion percent once COVID hit because everybody wanted their house to smell good. So I will tell you this. I'm looking for a candle sponsorship. So I'm gonna say that. So so so so I got the coffee sponsorship. So that conference. Right. Our friend our car. Of course. I have coffee. That's what I'm drinking right now. My drinking sassy sassy syntax. Yeah, I'm drinking sassy syntax. That's their light roast. Love it. Drinking that but nice. And those sponsorship because I will pimp out your candles nonstop.

I will pick up. So if anybody's a candle maker and and you're willing to hook me up with some free sense, I will make sure that this is lit every day and I will pimp out your product every single day. So it's good to see you. I should make candles. You should. I got my cows now. Well, I got two cows now. Gonna add some more cows to them. Do you have cows now? Hell yeah? No, I didn't have them yet. I had chickens, remember the chickens came and bugged me on the patio. Anyways, I have cows now and I have bees. So maybe I could like make some candles and we can do like, I don't know, some nerd candles or something.

I love it. I love it. Or you can just send me like fresh milk. Oh, that's someone else has asked for that too. And I was like, how would I even make that happen? And they're like, you can do same day delivery. Way out of my realm. If anybody is familiar with transporting cow milk, please let us know on the show. Anyways, all right. So there are people here. So it's good to see all comments. Say, Hey, we'd love to hear from you. Test. We love to hear from you. I would love to hear from you. And also, too, again, this is a networking platform, right?

I mean, I'm kind of coined this and people are like, people are like, how is this a networking platform? Listen, all networking is having something in common, showing up continually for it and making friends. And that's what this is. And so please say, hey, I have a lot of people that have found mentor mentees, jobs, internships on the show. And so even if you watch it in the future, please comment. Because I'm telling you, there are people that mind the connections on the show. And that's why I tell people, I want to kind of be like this catalyst to allow you to network. So like if I were you, I would literally log on every day, say, hey, drop your comments in the show.

I would try to DM every single person that comments. I would also connect with the speakers every time because every single day I have somebody for the most part. I've been doing this for three years. So if you do the quick math, that's a lot of people, right? So if you do that, then you hop on over to Unicorn Finders and you connect with all the founders and CEOs that I have on the show from Series A, Series B, Pre-Reve startups. You're gonna have a pretty incredible list of founders on your show. Then if you go over recruiters anonymous and you connect with every single recruiter I brought on the show.

You shouldn't have any problems finding the job. I'll just say that much right now. So please connect with people. Second off, ask questions. Tessa is a wealth of knowledge. And I'm very blessed where she doesn't build me for this time. So take advantage of it. And so you can learn something from her. All right. Cool. Want to give a shout out to people Mark, Alex, Kevin. It's great. See y'all Sam from Brooklyn. I love it. Dev is good to see you at this point. Also get a plane. Ooh, now we're talking. Easy plant. Yes, you fill them up once a month like legit. Look at how beautiful that plant is.

Oh, that's great. Is that real? It is real. And I just have to water it once a month. Yeah, mine's like legit, real. My dog tries to eat the dirt. I also love that light over there in the corner too. That's sensey. That's completely different. Yeah. I love that. Brad, the fritts in, let's see here Ricardo. Louis, how have I missed this? Hey, we just started. We just started. So, so, so you're good. Ritu is good to see you. Eugene, it's great to see you. John, my man. Fresh milk is easy. Travel close to wherever Tessa is at Passroads. Yeah. Well, you're, Tessa, you're in Texas, right?

Yeah. Yeah. A little far away. Not quite a drive course. I'm coming to Florida in December. Maybe I can bring you some milk. I don't know what the airport does with all that. I'm still here far away. Type away. It's good to see you, Michelle. Oh, wait, you're not. Rock, come on. I'm Florida, right? Where are you located again? Asheville, I'm using it. Nashville, why was I thinking Florida? Probably because of the excessive Hawaiian shirts that work consistently. Maybe you just give off that great pod. I appreciate that. Brady's good to see you. Yeah, bleach blonde hair and earring and floral shirts. That's like screams Florida.

All right, cool. So, Tessa, quick, quick buy about yourself. Who are you? What do you do? Yeah, my name is Tessa Cresel. I am the head of platform developer relations over at Snap. You all know it as Snapchat. I am a developer by trade, moved into developer relations probably six or seven years ago. I have some strange hobbies like riding motorcycle, shooting your tree and playing with cows. There you go. I love that. I love that. Paul, it's good to see you buddy. Eric's good to see you as well. I love it. All right. So Tess and I, when we caught up a few weeks ago, we were talking about like, hey, let her two recruiters, right?

Cause Tess, hi, I'm path over here. Wanted to just say, hey, we get it. We understand why recruiters are the way they are. And, you know, we kind of talk about that. And we were talking about just a bunch of other things. And then we finished. And I was like, let's get another show on the book. She goes, yeah, yeah, sounds good. And here's what we're going to talk about. We just logged on backstage and we were like, what are we going to talk about? And literally, Tess and I were like, I don't know. So I'm just going to throw a bunch of tops to Tess.

So we're going to do a lightning round for the next 30 minutes and get Tess's thoughts on some things. If you have questions, please ask them. Job search, hiring, culture, whatever. We'll answer them as well. So please load up the question in the chat. But in the meantime, Tess, let's talk about just, because you're in DevRel. Can you talk about what you're responsible for? Because I'm actually, I just want to learn too, like what is your role within Snapchat? You know, I didn't even know Snapchat. How did DevRel team, until I connected with you? So talk about what your job is, and then we can go into why it's important for companies to have something like this.

Yeah, definitely. Well, I think my job in DevRel at Snapchat is very different than other DevRel jobs I've had, but honestly, that's kind of the consensus with DevRel, is that they're always interchanging and kind of shifting based on what the company needs. So at Snapchat, what I am responsible for is essentially the success of the developers on our platform that are leveraging the products that I serve. And in this case, it's the products that I am serving, a crate of kit and camera kit, and they're two different products. One is kind of on that crate of like login, how do we use Snapchat features and leverage that in your business and your own apps?

Then the other side is camera kit, which I know that y'all have seen some really exciting things from AR, like trying on clothes, putting couches in your living room to see if they're going to be what you're looking for. And so, CameraKit is a developer tool that is currently actually not openly available yet. So, I'm like working through that early process, which is really cool, on the AR side of the world. So, when you think about kind of day and the life of DevRel, I've got these two different products that developers are leveraging to build inside of their apps. They're usually working for businesses, they're working on their own apps because they're building something, whatever it might be, right?

or maybe they've got a scrappy new startup or something that they're building. And so they come in and they integrate these tools. And so my day to day is like so vastly different and it's such a fun job. And I really enjoy it for this reason, but essentially working with these developers, they have this different sentiment, right? They don't want marketing jargon, they don't want sales jargon, they just want the facts, they want it straight, they want information and they want to be enabled and inspired. And so I do anything from marketing and outreach to try to bring those developers into our pipeline. And I do that through inspirational content, through social media, through actually attending community events and being there with them and building relationships.

Developers are a four to five touchpoint at a minimum. That's what I say. You have to really get them to re-engage with you, reintroduce with you. Say that one more time. Four to five touch points. You need at least that many touch points with a developer. So like example, right? I'm going to a conference later this month and I'm planning a couple social activities. It's AWE US. So it's an AR, XR, really cool, really fun conference. Yeah, so I'm going there, but I'm planning social events in the early part of the conference so that when I see someone on day three or even the latter part of day two, right?

They've already seen me three or four times at this point in time and then they're like, Click, I know Tessa, Tessa's my friend. I've got a relationship with her. Well, I'm so sure, I'm gonna come back to that, right? It's like, it's all about that relationship building with developers. And so there's this marketing side. Then we kind of dive into like, hey, we've got them into this pipeline, but now we're they gonna do, right? And so they're gonna evaluate our product. Do they wanna use their product? We're gonna fill them with inspiration. We're gonna give them documentation. We're gonna give them frequently asked questions, to tutorials, things to get them to evaluate and see what they can build with their product.

And then they're gonna move into that, hey, we're ready to use it stage. And inside of that, it's learning. So we're going to do educational resources. We're going to do office hours. We're going to do community forum, like just a variety of things. And then obviously kind of move them through the rest of that path. And the next stage is like building. So they're going to be building something. So it's going to be reference guides. Everything that developers need technically and tactfully to actually build and to be able to work through that. And so a lot of times that can be support, right? Sometimes I'm planning a customer support role.

But I'm building that relationship the whole way that we're going through because it's relations, right? And then that scale side, we're at the end, we're looking for feedback, we're looking to advocate, we're looking to turn them into ambassadors, we're looking to just make and improve whatever it is that they need. And so just constantly getting them through that journey really is like what developer relations is. Have you, have you, and then again, we got a few questions Eugene, I'll get yours in a second. Also my guy James Quiggoz, he'll test the fall of you for a while. Hopefully we'll get to meeting person someday. James is awesome.

Yes, I agree, I hope so too. I'm actually thinking about doing a guidance counselor 2.0 conference to be totally honest with you, all virtual, just like the entire day, people can stop in. Anyways, I'll fill you more with that. So let me ask you this. How do you, have you ever gotten a situation where snaps like, hey, we really need to try to convert these people, you know, we're struggling with conversions. Can you sell more? Has there because again, I mean, because I think all this sounds great, but then I'm like, how do you, have you battled with a higher ups, a higher ups, you know, anywhere you've been, and it's like, listen, like, if we push too much, we're going to lose them.

Like, has that conversation ever happened? Yes, that conversation hasn't happened at Snap because I'm in kind of a different situation. So it's Snap, normally DevRel, just kind of give people the legal land developers, obviously don't want to be sold to, right? So then and this is kind of why this conversation is coming up. And so at SNAP, I'm actually on the partnerships org. So technically I'm in the sales function or revenue function in general. So it's very different than any other dev role. I have been in a situation somewhat where it's somewhere like this, but the thing about it is that that is the one thing that I advocate and that I will continue to echo from the rooftops is like how we need to treat developers when I'm inside of a role.

And so I've got a thing called a playbook and the playbook really breaks down, like what is DevRel functionally? How are we leveraging DevRel? Why does it exist? Why do developers need to be interacted with differently? And I've surely had to do a lot of presentations about like how they engage, get the psychology into it. It's weird cause sometimes I felt like in the beginning it was like I was being a psychologist. How do developers think? And let me teach you how they think so that we can work through this process. But yeah, I mean, there are times when it's like, hey, we need to bring them into that pipeline.

This has not happened at SNAP of course, but I am responsible for building that pipeline. But it is from a reserved place of like, I am essentially their partner manager. Like I lead, I am report to the partnerships org, I'm in charge of all developers. And so I get to control for the most part, how their support operates, how they're engaged with what that looks like for building that sales and for making sure that that is the process. So thankfully I haven't had to do that a lot, but it is definitely something that happens a lot of like, hey, sell sell sell to these developers developers don't want to be sold to, you have to do these events, you have to do these community things, you've got to do this authentic outreach, you have to send really well curated messages, it's not just, boom, let me try to sell you.

People try to do a lot of the time and I'm like, it's going to take you five messages, try again. And we're definitely getting some comments here, so I'm going to get to these here in a second, y'all, I see them coming in. I want to continue on a stop for a second. I feel like, Like, like it makes sense to me. Like it makes sense in a sense like, cause I don't listen, I'm sure you get all the time tested. Like literally the amount of spamming DMs I get in LinkedIn are terrible. And it's like I'm never gonna buy from you if you do this.

And in my perspective, I think upper leadership is very much, and again, I am grossly generalizing here, right? I am grossly generalizing. So please don't come with me with your pitchforks. But at the end of the day, upper leadership is like, we need conversion, we need conversion, we need conversion. And it's like, I understand you need conversion, but if I press, I'm like every other person out there that way. Yeah. Yeah. I think the needing conversion thing, right? There's ways to get around that. And I think it's, I like to work with, like, what does my company need and what are the company goals, right?

And so like, for example, one of the company goals right now is to prepare for this product to be fully open. Anyone can sign up, and that's going to really kind of help happen anytime. And so in one of those processes, it was like, I was more focused on developer experience. And so I'm like, you can come at me with the conversions and want something like that, right? But I'm going to tell you what I did do and why I did that because I'm aligning to the company goals. I'm making sure that I'm accomplishing those goals. I'm making sure that I'm ensuring that my objectives and my goals are really clear and that I am driving impact to the things I say that I'm going to do.

And so I think that kind of comes back to, and I get it at the end of the day, it's conversions, conversions, conversions. But when it comes to DevRel, I look at it more of like revenue impacted. And so I try to any single touch point, and we talked about this in the last call, I've got this whole tooling stack that I use to track every single engagement so that with that, each of those touch points, I can say, hey, you know what, I understand, but look at this relationship. This sale came in, right? Whatever the sale is, huge sale. Maybe they came from Nike or Disney.

We've got a lot of really big clients, obviously that Snamp works with. And here's how they got there, right? I was impacted that revenue. It may not have been, hey, I brought that exact lead in, but here's my place in this conversion so that I can report it in a different way than just, hey, I have X number of conversions. I love that. I wanna get to some of the people, some of the content. Can you just throw me over here? Let's see here. Do you wanna tell DR my playbook? Yeah, no, someone will get there. Hold on, love that idea. Tessa, around doing social events, early in conference, not only to have more touch points.

Yeah, actually, that's brilliant. I didn't even think about that. That's brilliant. So can you give me an example? Like is it like a meetup? Is it a happy hour? Is it food and bev? Is it what do you guys typically do? Yeah, so in any time I can, I want to host something. And I want to host something ideally, if I can, for conference attendees to just come and hang. So I want to sponsor a host and after party. I want to sponsor a host, some kind of social event. If it's too big of an event where it can't be like, hey, anyone can come, then I want to make sure that those folks who I am closely connected with already, who are currently partners, currently developers that are leveraging platforms, that they get to come and spend time with us.

And so sometimes it can be like a really intricate social dinner. If I've got an advocacy or ambassador or kind of super fans program going, always an event for them, always. And that event is secret. It's like, speak easy, you need to know password, invite only, fancy invites like presence when they get to the door, all the nice treatment, fancy cocktails or whatever their forte is. But that's a whole nother ball game. We can talk about super fans at another time. But kind of social events, it's really about get them together and have fun. They need to have something memorable. So do something fun or quirky or dorky or just nerdy whatever it is that your people like.

Know your personas and know what they enjoy and do something that they're going to enjoy from that capacity. And then it can be a little bit more low-key. So EWE, for example, they already had kind of started planning this, but I came back from eternity leave just a few weeks ago. So I'm like diving into like, what am I going to do now? But it's going to be a social event, right? And so they're going to come to dinner. And it's going to be, you know, the night before the conference starts is a great dinner. It's with our partners. And so it's more kind of close ties.

And then I'm going to do a birds of a feather session, right? So birds of a feather is if no one's ever heard of it, it's really kind of like you pull together a session, like right then and there, and you just invite conference folks to come talk to you about it. So I'm going to do a couple of birds of a feather sessions where I'll just be out like either tweeting about it, some conferences have this already set up so you can create these. That conference is great about doing Birds of a Feather. They've got all the little tables in the back that they do at the end and you can talk about whatever or actually they do it all day.

It's pretty great. Yeah. Anyways, do that where I can get to know like, hey, who's in AR but that I don't know yet. And so that's my angle is trying to figure out how do I know who my prospects are and how do I start to build relations with them. And then all attend some sessions, right? so I can get some high key and high level speakers inside of my network, go back, compliment them afterwards, ask them questions, whatever, make sure I ask really great questions during their session, right? Because at the end of the day, we all just want to talk about what we know and we want to be able to show that.

So like figure out what they seem to be great at and ask them that. Cause then they're going to be like, ah, great question, I want to know that person. And so the social stuff can really look like anything from a dinner to a natural party to a bird's of a feather to come hang out at the booth to a social takeover, which is something I'm also gonna do. And that social takeover can be like, come find me here and do like a fun scavenger hunt. It's just really kind of getting creative and like, how do you make that memorable moment that people won't forget?

I love this so much. Few of you all talked about in for the conference. I'll definitely get Michelle Deva up on that. James, come in. Let's see here, what else? James goes, any other upcoming conferences this year, maybe where we can all be on the lookout for to, just maybe we can all check out too. Yeah, I assume he's talking about for me. And honestly, I don't know yet. AWE is at the end of the month. I am speaking at Deborah experience in December. That is gonna be in Clearwater, Florida. Like hello, take me to the beach. I submitted to All Things Open. I have been wanting to speak there for years.

Got accepted this last year, but my babe was doing it a couple days. So I was like, that's not gonna work. Hoping for that one, but we'll see. They obviously get lots of submissions. I really have not been submitting too much. And so now I'm starting to dive in. So like, shout out here for y'all. If anyone's pulling together a conference and you're looking for my kind of level or content, would love to speak. I actually have a goal to go out and do it too. So I need to start actually doing some more logistics on it. So I accomplished that OKR. Yeah, and Tessa, I have a Twitter list that I'll share with you.

That's all the FPs that I follow both internationally and domestically. So I'll send that to you. Yeah, Paul's out here telling me more about your playbook. I'm intrigued. Yeah. Love you. I will. I can play book. Do you share that through the org or is it more of a personal tool? I share it through the org. So here's the reason why I created a playbook is that DevRel is so misunderstood and people don't really understand what it is, right? Like it is a kind of a newer niche inside of companies and just oftentimes it's just not something that folks kind of understand why do we have to engage with developers in this way, right?

They just don't understand that. And so the playbook is very much public. I am actually planning on sharing my playbook in a couple of blog posts. I did share it in one of my blog posts, but it's you have to be a paid member to only get it. However, I'm going to share kind of a briefer example in a future blog post. So definitely watch my platforms. But in that playbook, it basically is very much org wide. It is like, who's on my team? What do they do? What are they good at? I'll even link to like, what is their preferences for working, right? What are their working hours?

how do they like to work? What gets them fired up? What gets them to calm down? I like to do kind of that, like how do you really engage with my team sort of stuff? Yeah. Then it goes into like where's my roadmap for my strategy? What is my budget? Anything you need strategically to understand what I'm working on, what my OKRs are, what my priorities are, kind of all that stuff, right? And then I've got this whole big section about like what is my function, what do we do, why does developer relations exist? How do we think about marketing? How do we think about et cetera?

So yeah, and then I've got like my objectives for my team, which I've got like kind of four main objectives. And I break those down of like, you can expect to see me doing things like A, B and C because these are my objectives. We might not need me to go to a conference yet, right? But that's gonna happen one day when we're in marketing and like go to market mode, right? So we have a lot of questions. I knew this would be a good episode. And like I said, just in the head to know idea what we're gonna talk about and of course this is going swimmingly well.

Why do you think it's important to go to conferences, especially as speakers, DevRel, just like, why do you, I think the thing is like, well, you can just tweet at home, or you could just like video stream at home. Like why do you need to go to a conference? What would you say to that? Yeah, I would say to that in that, sure you can be successful, right? We all did it during COVID. we can be successful at home and we can make those things happen. We can have virtual events. We can have things like this, where we can kind of network and chat like James, right?

Like him and I've never met in person, but like, you know, connected on social. I'm definitely like, hey, Taylor show. Right, right. But like never connected per se in person. But I think that going to an event is just that like last little trust builder, if that makes sense. Yes, if you're like, I'm trying to think of the analogy, right? house and I'm trying to get these developers to kind of come and hang out with me or come and look at my products, come to my event, whatever I'm trying to do. I'm putting my doors on and doing all this stuff, right? And my house is there and it's looking great, but right now all the rain can get in there because I don't have a roof on there.

So it's just like not the finished touch that going to that event is like the roof. You put the roof on and you're like, Oh, now it's a house. Look at this beauty right now. It's a house. It's a lead because now that person trusts me. And so now we can have that conversation. Now I understand their problems and their use cases. I can pitch them the right way. I can drive them to the right inspiration, content piece, whatever it is that we're all doing, right? Now I've got that trust and I've been able to just have that in person and it doesn't have to happen, right?

But it's so strong when it does. I cannot tell you how many times I've had all these great conversations, engagements, relationships. People who I call friends, I have many people who I call dear friends. I would invite them to my wedding if I was getting married today. Haven't met them in person. And then when I do meet them in person, then it's just like, boom, sorry. Then they become that wedding invite, right? It's like so close. And then hanging out with them in person just kind of solidifies that relationship and that, you know, everything you've been working on, right? It's just, boom. I agree. Um, want to get to Alex's question.

What's your favorite thing about working with developers on the DevRel side? Oh, well, they're my people. So I am, even though I'm wildly extroverted, I'm very much a developer mindset. Like I have ADHD, which is like a general thing, right? Not always the case, but it is very generalized and very common in technical capacities. I love learning to do new things. I love diving into new tech, but I want to self-learn. I don't want to just like have someone teach me. I'm like, how do I just figure this out? Yeah. And so they're me, right? And so I want to hang out with me. It's like hanging out with my own community people.

But I will tell you, like, my parents ask me what I do because they don't get it. And they're like, you're so successful. Like you're just constantly like, you know, getting these different opportunities and like they just don't understand. And I'm like, what do you do? And I'm like, I just make friends with people. Like I make friends with people like me. Literally, my wife's like, I don't know how all this streaming works, but she goes, it's working. And I was like, yeah, I'm just making friends with people. That's really all I say. Yeah, because at the end of the day, that's all it is, right?

And so, favorite part is like hanging out with my peers, but I do really feel like my job is making friends. And I do that in a very logistical, strategic way. And definitely it's not easy because I've got a lot of that kind of business side to make sure that I can keep doing things in the way that developers need me to do the right. But by far that's hanging with my peeps. I love it, I love it. Let's see here. So Eugene comes in here, he goes spot on, I'm a career coach. One thing I learned really, this is going back to the selling side.

I learned really quickly that you have to build from year to year before you build your bank account. Love that, that'll preach. No one likes to be sold, especially developers, especially after investing all that money in our education, yeah, 100%. I love that so much, James. This conversation is so pally. I knew you'd like it, James. Tay, it's great to see you. Taylor, make sure you just schedule your engagements early. Yes, I can be in bed by it. It's nine, James, not seven, but we're close. Let's see here. Yeah, so if everyone's like, I'm asking for the secret password. Love to speak easy. Yes. Very intrigued by the birds of the feather session.

It's just like an open space or an actual event at the conference or something separate. Yeah, so Paul helps run Little Rock Tech Fest down in Arkansas. It's a great event. I've been two years. It's really, really cool. Beautiful conference center. It's wonderful. Not too far from Texas either. There you go. Well, Texas is huge. So I drove through Tex Arcana, Ercana once. That was wild. It was like just, it was like a bad dream. It never ended. Yeah, can you explain this a little bit more? Yeah, absolutely. So that conference actually does this all day throughout their conference. And the way that they have it set it up is they have it in the back, currently in the way that they've got their events going, which I just love.

They had a separate room where you kind of go in and seek out your people in the birds of a father place in a couple years ago is how they have it set up too. So all different ways you can do it, right? Love when conferences do it because they're constantly pushing people to go do it. So Clark is really great when he jumps on that mic. He's like, hey, go ahead up those sessions in the back. They're talking about A, B, and C, right? And so two that conference as I go, I was able to meet someone who was using spectacles from SNAP and dive into like any art conversation.

Didn't think that I'd actually get to meet someone super cool because I didn't think I'd meet someone who's already engaging with SNAP AR because it's so new within a few years, but like having to find someone or finding someone was great. Anyway, so it can be something that the conference pulls together like Paul strongly recommend it because you're really letting people find their people. And so like you can say, hey, let's talk about archery. It doesn't even have to be tech. It could be like at that conference in Austin. They, they, I don't think it props to them. They were teach people how to drive a stick shift.

That was one of the sessions. You're the parking lot. Oh my gosh, I love that. I would have loved that too. I drive motorcycles. So like you have to drive a stick shift. And my first car was a stick. So I've been like, yes, this is a great conversation. Anyways, it's to find your people, right? And so for me, I'm going to use it to find other folks who are engaging in DevRel, because selfishly, I don't know a lot or sorry, not in DevRel, in AR, because I actually don't know a lot in AR and got myself a job in AR, and so now I have to figure it all out.

And so it can be very much structured with your conference, love it, you can push people towards it, you can have it at various times, call them down to have a conversation if you wanna talk about what that could look like for yours. Otherwise, it's something you need to do, right? So like find social space, get on the Twitter, find the event hashtag, set up a social area, or like come to the booth, right? and do it from your company platform. Like it's something that you can for sure create and build all on your own. And so if it doesn't exist, then I make it happen.

One of the things I've started to do at conferences is I just open up, I go to the local coffee shop right near the, wherever we're speaking and I just open up a tab. And I've had some of the coolest conversations over coffee. One of the biggest relationships I've built over this session is Jeff Strauss. So it was actually at Little Rock Tech Fest when I first got accepted to speak there three years ago. I tweeted, I did the hashtag, I said, hey, I'm at the coffee shop across street from the coffee center, coffee's on me. And this guy, Jeff Strauss, who's very active in the dev community, came over and we chatted for three and a half hours.

Oh my gosh, that's really cool. Also Jeff Strauss talked like nonstop, I love that guy to death, but yeah, it was three and a half hours of conversation, it was great, I loved it. But again, small stuff like that goes a long way. What else, let's see here, a lot of comments just about trust and kind of showing up. Oh, John comes up with a good question, because we'll wrap up here. What do you like the least about working with developers on the dev roll site? Oh, interesting. What can dev do better? Yeah. I think that what I like the least is probably how, I don't know, because I love being detailed.

Gosh, this is hard. I was gonna say, in general, it is a little frustrating that I have to be as, what is the right word? I don't know. Diligent as I have to be because we are so picky. And I say we because I'm one of them, right? I don't wanna be sold to, I don't wanna be sales pitch. I don't wanna be marketed. I want someone to have an authentic conversation with me. And I know how difficult that is. It's incredibly difficult. Like I get messages all the time. They're like, hey, can you check out my product? I just got one this morning. And I was just like, normally I say no to them, but I'm like, wait a minute, your product looks cool.

I'm, yes, this time I'll look at it. But it's because they're just trying to very quickly send a message and get as many folks to respond as they can. But you can't do that with those, right? You have to do the research, take the time, provide the value, then make the ask, right? Coming back to my three step. And so it's exhausting sometimes. So maybe like we could just cut some dev real people a break. I love that cut. Cut people's a cut dev real some break. I love it. All right. Well, that was great. Thank you all for the comments. Last question for you.

Is there any, well, that really last question, but is there any general thoughts about the market, any words of encouragement that you want to leave the people with today? Yeah, I think right now we're all kind of in this weird place in tech and in the market with the economy, which we can get started on this and I'm no economist, but honestly, I feel like everyone's just following a stupid trend. A couple companies decided that laying people off was what their company needed, and then everyone's like, boom, let's just do it. So can we stop, please? Those are my, those are my followers. You need to lay people off, don't do it.

I read Shopify was literally up before they did their layoffs. What and why? Shopify is like, they're doing amazing. And they just lay people off because it's like, oh my gosh, something happened. And so let's just do something about it. And it's just, long story short, the companies are actually going to be in a worse place for this. I'm not even gonna start on this because like, no, I'm gonna start. I'm gonna start. Another episode. Another episode. Anyways, all I wanna say is the same tactics that I have to use for Debra L. building relationships, building that community, getting out there, really doing that, it's gonna be all the same skills that are gonna land you a role back in the tech community if that's what you're looking for or whatever, wherever you fall into, so follow some of those team tactics.

Your audience is so wide and range, like why do we range this? That I don't even know the persona of who I'm talking to, so I'm very big with this. But I think in general, build that network, be take advantage of the things that Taylor shared. And if y'all need anything that is something that I can help with. Tweet me, blue sky me. Exciting new blue sky, right? I know, I'm following you. I am. Yeah, blue sky me or find me in LinkedIn. And I'd love if you did it publicly because then everyone else can learn. But ask me questions. Just send me a tweet that's like, hey, what does your playbook include?

Or can I get a blah, blah, blah? I don't know, right? Whatever your questions are. Because then everyone can learn from it. And if I can answer questions in public, I will always do it to help other people. So say, yeah. Yeah, another episode. All right. I don't think I'm out there. Oh, this can't come back like everybody on three times, but I think I think Tesla may be that person. So all right, y'all, I want to be respectful of Tesla's time. You all have a great one. Thanks for hanging out tomorrow. I'll be live just me myself and I to kind of just mid midweek check in with everybody.

So y'all have a great one. I'll see you all tomorrow. Peace. Bye y'all. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode. And I am very grateful. Because you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. a lot of episodes and I myself rarely finished an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the app store. I want this to be discoverable to others. And the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it, please, like right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it.

So thank you again. If you need to reach out to me, Taylor at vaco.com or at T. on all social media handles, and I hope you have a fantastic day.