importance of public speaking w/ staff ui eng, homer gaines

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

oh uh can you hear my squeaky chair in the background [Music] it's good to see y'all we're live but no one's here yet so it don't matter um welcome Happy Hump Day made it bro it is Wednesday I straight up thought it was Tuesday yeah yeah sometimes on my Vlog when I do my Vlog every morning I gotta like check the date again because I get really really confused because I think the older we get the weirder the days get which I don't like I don't like um for those of you welcome say hey would love to hear from you this is a good conversation

today I'm excited I don't I'm still in Homer before we went live I don't I I don't think we've had a public speaking uh episode specifically it's just gonna be a good one um again say hey would love to hear from you for those of you tuning in across all platforms or you see this in the future like what the heck is this like two dudes with a pink background what is it this thing has morphed over time I will tell you that much right now and basically I started this back in covid when everyone got laid off right before the markets ripped when everyone

got laid off I was like I was having conversations every single day with Engineers across country there's got to be a better way to scale Taylor and talking to all these Engineers than just one after one after one after one so I started this podcast every morning it started with like a five eight minute thing just me running my mouth for a second helping you all and now three years later it's kind of morphed into this uh this uh really it's a Tech podcast focused on community building and helping people live up their careers and hiring leaders um provide a playbook for them so but

this is also a networking event I've also realized this in the last six months so for those of you who lurk in the shadows please don't just say hey throw up an emoji or something because uh that will have a lot of people that connect with each other on the show um I've I've kind of decided I want to be uh I kin d of want to pave the way for a lot of people when it comes to networking um if you network off the back of this show um and all my speakers all the people commenting hop on over to unicorn finders connect with

all the founders we interview you'll have a pretty vast Network and so I want to do that for you so please comment say hey second of all second of all ask questions Homer is the goat I love this dude to death he has appreciate it he's acknowledged in a lot of different areas um and this is a one time where he doesn't bill you for it so questions uh second off I want to give a shout out to that conference um both Homer and I were there two two three weeks ago um uh Clark he just commented does an amazing job with this the awesome

One's Gonna be pretty cool not gonna lie uh the Keynotes are Kelly Vaughn Danny Thompson shanday Pearson and you're probably like there's no those names sound familiar exactly they've all been on my show [Music] um they're great so I I really would buy ticket listen Austin is fantastic the Kalahari is like 30 minutes from Austin um get you a car uh go eat some tacos go learn about a good Tech it's fantastic and that facility to Kalahari in Austin is real nice it's amazing and don't forget family friendly too family friendly yes thank you yes bring the kids bring the fam um also want to

give a shout out uh and the coffee too I'm drinking it right now so Clark thank you for Brewing good coffee I want to give a shout out to the people tuning in this morning we'll dive in uh Ian it's good to see you um Noah Eric Clark oh it's Homer Ricardo Scott Braden what's going on from Chicago I tell you this watching the bear or have you watched the bear Homer yeah not yet everybody's been talking about this I so I I love Chicago I didn't either bear to convince me to love Chicago I went up for the very first time ever last August

uh I want to go back because the Bears make me want to go back Matt it's good to see you Chris great to see you Todd our guy it's great to see you buddy himself um I've gained a super solid handful connection see told y'all please comment uh let's see here uh exactly it must be uh an extra good morning not sure why I posted twice and me me neither have no idea Richie my guy good morning uh Kevin Mark Roberto fun fact Roberto and I both LED the.net User Group years ago in Nashville um he he's a good dude Brighton it's good to see

you Andrew what's going on um but what's Homer's background that's maybe that's what he's wondering we're about to dive into that yeah we get into it yeah uh RJ it's good to see you Noah the bear gives me anxiety it does but good good uh morning morning been mooching off of Taylor since 22.

I love it that's what I'm here for uh Joe from Knoxville um and then John it's always a great day to kick off these yeah again it's just a time to come together for about 30 minutes and chop it up all right Homer enough of me talking who are you what do you do and we'll go from there I am nobody and no real talk though um good morning everybody what's good uh like Taylor said I'm Homer Homer gain Circle Box on all of the socials um and I am a front-end engineer more specifically I specialize in UI ux and accessibility um for the question

about what was my background whether that was about my educational background how this all came to be or what's my literal background behind me that is my wife's art desk along with her canvases that she's been painting on and things like that her desk is off to the side where she's the creative director for an agency so all of her computer work is done over there and all the creative painting and drawing and sketching happens behind us um as far as me the actual background education wise um I come from a background of architectural engineering and then went to school and became a psychologist did

that for a number of years until I leaned in the tech and when I say a number of years I actually started building websites in 94.

so I've been a round since since the beginning of it oh did you just say old fam really weren't we just talking about you and your body pop lock and sounded like a Transformer getting out of bed anyway Autobox roll out but um so yeah and like I said I've been in Tech you know ever since 94 back when everybody had to be full stacked because nobody knew what this stuff was yeah and then built my career building flash applications and so forth and then in 2021 um really started to focus on accessibility in the front end side of it and that kind of just

became my thing so yeah that's my background so a lot of a lot of ways to unpack this or a lot of places to go a lot of things to unpack that that that's what I was trying to say the first thing I want to talk about man what is accessibility right is it is it UI is it different than UI for those of you who do not know accessibility um I you know I've interviewed Chris to Mars on the show and Todd Libby who I know has been in the comments shout out these these these guys are the goats when it comes to accessibility

can you describe what accessibility is and and where it falls usually within an engineering organization oh wow accessibility is a really broad term but basically what we need to focus on is making sure that we're building applications and products that are inclusive for everyone it's not just a particular subset you're not just blind you are not just deaf you know there is a range of people in between there that have a variety of different different disabilities but at the end of the day it's all about us being human and treating everyone as equals regardless of their disability or their impairment so that's what it is

we're building applications that enable Independence you and I we're able to get up jump on our machines without any help from anyone else to be able to use the software right right everybody should be able to do that so you know that's the driving force behind you know making sure that we're building uh acces sible products and so forth man I feel like that's just a a total mental shift in how to build an application how how does somebody get into accessibility are you hired on as a UI because I know your title is a staff UI engineer um do you do you go the

UI route as something that you should try to work in because I just don't see many accessibility focused jobs so like I'm just trying to figure out like how does if someone's password how does one get into it so with me it started because of my front end chops um me right just like Todd said accessibility is a right not a privilege exactly um for me like I said started with me being on the front end I am dealing with how the user interacts with this interface so this interface has to be perceivable you know uh the person has to be able to use it

in a correct manner right um also the user has to be able to understand what is going on UI has to be predictable you don't want to click on say for instance a button and have it do completely the opposite of what you think a button should do you know so that's how the UI aspect falls into there but when you think about the UI it ties directly into ux because now it's the user experience and what a lot of people don't realize is that for individuals who have to use assistive Tech to navigate around the user experience can be completely different so there was

a time where I used to separate the two where you had ux yeah and then you had aux which was the accessible user experience okay I've stopped using aux because again if we're going back to the mindset of everybody should be able to do this it's ux regardless of how you come into it okay it is the user experience it's not just the accessible user experience because you are still a user regardless of your disability so yeah starts with on my side it starts with UI ux my background in Psychology plays with this because I look at human behavior patterns um even from a neurological

perspective of like how we build mental models about the information that we glean as we look at websites you know from day to day you know um Jacob Nielsen had this had this quote or made this comment where you said you know contrary to popular belief on paraphrasing contrary to popular belief people don't spend all day on your site they're on other sites and when they come back to your site they've already built these mental models on how things should work so therefore your site should work in similar manners you know and that goes the same for all of our users yeah all of our

users you know so getting started with it for me it was it was tying those together um I used to work for a a rather large company um and this was back in early 2000s and I sat down with their legal team and I learned about accessibility first from a legal perspective ah so awesome yeah I was in charge of managing um 47 web properties all of South America basically I had and I had a team of designers that lived in Sao Paulo okay so they were based out and I used to go back and forth from here to Brazil so with them I could

not launch any of my projects without them meeting the legal requirements first and we use this scoring capability and so it didn't matter if they spent two million five million whatever on marketing initiative if that project did not meet that scoring it didn't go live crazy you know so that really helped me hone those skills and back then we all know flash was it so here it is I was building a flash application but at the same time I had to turn around and build one in HTML and so that really helped me sharpen up uh my HTML chops we had CSS them we got

JavaScript now so tying all of that together to build a sensible front end that everyone would be able to access did I get it right out the gate nah man nah yeah nope there's some stuff I still get wrong you know it's not like I am above asking for help or asking questions yeah I've been doing this for a minute but at the same time it is there is so much still to lea rn and do that you know there are some people who who do deep dives into you know how screen readers work personally I don't have time to do that I'm like give

me the cliff notes yeah even though I'm a screen reader user I use my screen reader how I use it sure you know and if you were a screen reader user chances are you would use it in a completely different way sure you know and you know that's one of the other aspects of it is making sure we have to meet our users where they are we can't dictate anything for them I love that and govern how you know they're supposed to interact with our application just doesn't work that way I love that I love that um all right so jumping into public speaking so

I actually with the fir one of the first times I've met Homer was at Atlanta developer day that's what's called now yeah um uh a few years back and basically there we go we got the famine here yeah wifey's on now I love it I love it wait you're live babe you're live Miss Tammy from Miami I love it I love it um so basically so public speaking I mean obviously I I met you a few years back and you loved your presentation still I think the font you choose the colors you choose it still stands out in my mind I'm not kidding thank you

but but you've you've gotten really busy from a speaking perspective you know I I've you're you're at a ton of events I'm seeing you everywhere talk about what maybe that's done for you um if anything for your career why should people consider getting up and speaking um you know I didn't even know conferences were a thing until like a few years back so a lot of ways to unpack this so I'm just gonna like dump that all on you and then you just start talking wherever you want to start talking oh God Lee why why even start speaking um I would say I got into

it when I was living down in Florida I was actually in Fort Myers um met up with this uh young woman down there her name was Michelle ghost executive it's what she uses on on the socials she was an event planner and we really started talking about tech and things like that and this was back when bar camps was popping off okay she said how about we do a bar Camp it was like you know what was a bar Camp bar Camp is pretty much like um a really it's like a pop-up conference wow literally you get up there and you do lightning talks they

started off in bars you know folks was just sitting there chilling and just started delivering these lightning talks in the bars and then it started spread it's like and so poetry but for nerds I like that I like that I don't know where I pulled that from you know what I need that was a good one we need to put that one on a shirt but that was good so you know we started doing these talks man and they were popping up all over Florida you know we were going over to Miami traveling up to Sarasota um we were in Orlando we were all over

the place and started you know just educating people about web design and web dev and and what it takes you know we have people from all over the place and we were one of the we were actually the first one Michelle had this great idea to do a junior bar Camp because again typically bar camps took place someplace where you couldn't have kids because it was in a bar but we ended up doing one doing ours at Edison College um which allowed us to all get together in this school and we did a junior bar Camp alongside with the uh with the regular bar camp

and we had a high school there these kids were phenomenal they came in and started talking there was some there were some kids that came in talking about security network security in cyber security that had some of the cyber security Specialists standing on their heads so it was a it was a huge hit and then from there it just took off yeah you know um and I've kind of I was going around speaking and then I kind of fell off the circuit for a bit you know life life be life and seriously and it wasn't until I got up here and um got hired on

a new company up here in Atlanta the whole team was like yo we're going to connect Tech I was like what's connect Tech they were like yeah say less you're going with us back got over there and I saw Crystal Mars that's the first time I ever met him and he was up there speaking about the same stuff that I'm passionate about I was like you know what and I straight up went to him I said yo mark my words I'll be speaking at connect Tech next year let's go and he was just like all right bet son it's been a wrap ever since that's

awesome it's been a rap ever since and so you know what that was 2000 2017.

I believe when I met him so I've been speaking you know full time uh uh well at least going hard at it ever you know we were talking about this earlier um it does start to wear on you yeah because going to the conferences and things like that while it is great to see the people that you have built these relationships with uh the networking and everything it is still work yeah people peop people think like I'm just out here like drink coffee all day yeah it's exotic I will tell you this it is easier being at home and working than going to a conference

facts facts it really is especially when you have family yeah you know because now it takes time away from you know time that you could be spending with family because you know you're trying to get this stuff together um got to get the packages together got to get the you know everything written make sure that it's edited correctly all that takes time and then you're jumping on a plane or you in the car and you're going to wherever you need to be you know for weeks on end so yeah Todd said It's a Grind it can be a grind it definitely can be and it's

also not for the faint of heart you got to be ready for that you have to you have to accept that because you have to be ready to be able to to make that sacrifice you know I'm blessed to have a wife that understands that you know this is something that I do because I know people who are in situations w here they catch straight heat because you know they're gone a lot because this is what they do yeah um it's not just you doing it it's everyone that is directly impacted by your absence that is also in this with you yeah yeah you know

and you know being an accessibility specialist it seems like even though we know that accessibility is a really important topic it really seemed to be just like a buzzword that folks was throwing around for a hot second especially during the pandemic you know when everybody was at home and accessibility really took off because now they're companies are starting to realize old people with disabilities do use our applications oh we gotta start fixing this and lawsuits starting to Skyrocket and everything like that um so when it comes time to submit for these talks you know there were a lot of times where my talks were rejected

because a whole lot of people aren't interested in accessibility you know there was one conference that I went to they had over a thousand folks easily maybe pushing close to two I have four people show up for the talk you know enough of that happens and you start the question is it even worth doing this anymore because you start to think about what it is that you put into it what it's taking away from and you're like is the juice worth the squeeze and it was earlier this year that I actually was thinking about just cutting it really yeah oh yeah and I was talking

with uh with JD yep and um we were in London in fact we were in London and we are we're not even going to rehash that but we all know about how London was the the fire Fest of tech conferences it was hilarious but um you know I was having this conversation with him I told him I said yeah I think I'm getting burned on this uh thinking about stepping back or even just stopping all together yeah and then he told me about the impact that my talk had on him the first time yeah it was it was like that you know because yeah when

I give my talks and whatnot peopl e come up to me afterwards and they have a ton of questions which is great because their questions have actually spawned other talks I love that yeah how that works yeah I mean it's just like cool this is a thing let's get it popping but again that weight over time you know your shoulders start to get heavy your legs are getting weak and you're just thinking about Mom's spaghetti the grunt it's my spaghetti right and you're just thinking about you know everything you got to put into it and do people even appreciate the work that you're doing is

it even reaching the folks that you need to reach or is it just going through one ear and out the other right you know we can show the statistics that accessibility still is bad sure sure stats show it and it all goes back to the fundamentals you know people that I've mentored have come out of four-year CS degrees or boot camps and the overarching theme is we either had accessibility mentioned as a bullet point on the slide the first day of class or throughout a semester we covered it week but then the fundamentals are just basically glossed over now granted I'm old school with it

I've been around since html1 I understand the fundamentals I had to do the fundamentals because that's all we had I was from there that aspect is missing and that's one reason why I go to these conferences and speak about accessibility because it's not it's I'm trying to get people to understand that you actually have to get back to the fundamentals and once you get there you will actually start to build a more inclusive web that's really not that difficult yeah we already have the tools we already know what to actually use but getting back to the burnout side of it it's like I know the

material left and right others do not trying to get it out there the other side of it too is getting the organizers to understand the importance of accessibility yep you know um there are tons of conference websites out there that are not accessible yeah but yet you have people speaking about accessibility at the conference yeah cool I get it we have to pick a poison and whatnot but you know why aren't we building accessible platforms out the gate that way or even considering it um and then I you know I had conversations with some other some of our other accessibility professionals about like when we

are invited to speak we are all lumped together the same day which is usually the last day in the last hour and we know how conferences go when you start to wind down people have already started to dip Jets so attendance is somewhat low which goes back to priority I just all the money and time and effort put in you know how does this how does this actually pan out is it really worth it a hundred percent so let me let me ask you this so for the people we we kind of jump two steps but it's okay though um talk about why people should

get involved at least to start speaking because to start speaking Yeah like because I know burnout's real and it obviously struck a chord there's definitely comments coming in but but for people who are on the fence about man you know you know I see you guys traveling and it looks fun like like what are some good things that's come out of speaking and why should people at least oh my man well shoot the fact that I'm even on here with you if I were not speaking I would not have met you if I had not met you we wouldn't have a friendship this friendship would

not have led to us yeah last I checked hell yeah maybe not you know how about I just bounce out right now deuce but you know it's like these connections you know there there's a team of us there's a group of us that where whether we're at the conferences or not we always have each other's backs you know it's it's that connection that we all have yet now it may have been born out of the conferences but we actually have real relationships that were born out of these conferences you know so one the networking aspect it's amazing you get to meet some amazin g people

you get to meet some of your Heroes yeah yeah I look up to a lot of y'all in Tech and being in the same room with y'all is pretty tight facts facts like um Gina do you know who runs Clarity bro I've been a fan of hers for ever and the first time I got a chance to to meet her I like fanboyed out yeah and you talking about I mean listen like I was in the music business B that ain't but I saw Gina was like oh my gosh she's actually like said what's up to me are you serious and then I got invited

to speak of clarity say less I'm there you know it's it's those opportunities like that you never know when they're gonna sneak up on you uh especially one of one of the main things though is you know there are a lot of there are a lot of folks that go around and they think they have to put on some type of air when their conferences nah just be you yeah be you all of us are there we're not competing with one another um we are there for the attendees we all have something valuable to speak on yeah whether you think is valuable or not I

strong anyone who's thinking about getting into it I strongly ask you to reconsider um one thing I like to ask is like if you're thinking about getting started with speaking think of a topic that you can that you can speak at least 15 minutes about without any preparation no no PowerPoint slides no PowerPoint slots what can you talk about yep just go yep and whatever that topic is that is a topic that you can share at conferences whether it be a Tech conference or whatever it does it's not there's tons of conferences for every type of Industry that's out there but that's one of the

things and then you start to take that and and build on it um you can see the keyboard back there yes I still do music and things like that um and I had to find my voice originally with with speaking because I used to think that no one wanted to hear what I had to say after a while and the same thing was with my music I was producing beats and Engineering for o ther artists doing all that work and coming up with my own stuff and I was doing that for 17 years Never released any of my own personal projects until my entire Studio

was stolen in 17 years of music gone the only thing left in my studio was my desk and so here is a lot of music that never even got to see the light of day because I was too critical about it or thinking people did not want to hear it hmm the same thing with my speaking at first I was on the fence with it because I was thinking no one wants to hear it again not a whole lot of people were interested inaccessibility so I was a little shy to but I just decided to take the step forward and and go with it and

just see what happens and you know this is where it's led me yeah yeah and in the comments yeah I mean obviously Todd Christina um Eric coming in so that's how you obtain friends pulling up to local conferences yeah yeah pretty much pretty much Brian I've never felt I fit more of a group of time at y'all exactly the attendees make speaking rewarding um Val comes in talks yeah lightning talks talk about lightning talks real quick because because I think that's a great way and we'll wrap up here in a minute or two but talk lightning talks real fast because I think that's a great

way to kind of get into speaking lightning yeah lightning talks are super effective for getting getting in now like I said what can you speak on for 15 minutes without any preparation that takes a lot of the stress off of it because you already know this material you know what it is that you can already do get up there in front of a smaller group deliver it and be out you don't have to worry about the pre you know putting together presentation slides designs or anything like that it's just you giving that talk now if you can nail that and you understand that yes you

will have the nerves once you get up there because what I've been doing this for I'm 10 years and I still get nervous before I go on stage it happens yeah but it at least gives you that step in it allows you to find your voice it allows you to find your Cadence it allows you to pinpoint your audience and it allows you to build that confidence so that you can turn that lightning talk into a 30-minute talk into a 45 minute talk into a keynote you know it is the initial step get up there and lightning talks don't have to be 15 minutes you

can do it in 10 minutes yeah just you're just smart just yeah just start and again I want to stress this to everybody like I nobody has like nobody has DM me and goes I regret putting out content I regret speaking nobody has messaged me like that was a terrible idea where did you hear me do that for no nobody has nobody has messaged me so put yourself out there yeah that's exactly wrapped up here homework again thanks for coming on three kind of Rapid Fire questions that I like to do all right first question what brings you Joy outside of work oh Family Man

the kids that it's yeah like our little dude he's a miracle baby because I I need him to meet Ari because I think the world you sure you want that problem or something when he gets older I'm because I'm gonna put a tracker on my daughter I'll take that much right now hey well if you can uh bring her bring her to that conference because we'll be here yeah yeah yep um second question what tools Technologies trends that's kind of popped up in your radar that you're either tinkering with at work or at home AI you know eight defense though yeah okay so how does

it how can AI help benefit people with disabilities ooh have you found anything that you've could be possibly implemented yet working on some stuff at at the gig that is going to help and um especially with writing like assistive tools for writing getting content out there for I love that uh for our users but I want to look start looking into other avenues I'm literally at this surface of this I haven't even done the Deep Dives yet into it but yeah I want to see how we can start to use AI t o help improve accessibility but here's the caveat AI is not the end-all

to be off for the solution because you still have to include humans in yourself I have a human in it right you have to you cannot do it just from robots alone because robots follow this path humans we choose our own yep yep last question as we wrap up here and again thanks y'all for hanging out with us this morning um so the show is called guidance counselor 2.0 because we have guidance counselors in middle school high school college but really now as adults we don't really have someone to turn to just for career Focus advice um what would be your biggest piece of career

advice for younger Homer stick to it and I say that because with so many different things that get thrown at you in this industry it is easy to really get overwhelmed um there were some things early on in this text field that I just dropped not because it was difficult or anything I just didn't stick with it and those things Tech always comes back around it always comes back around regardless of you you know I just had a conversation the other day about everything moving back to monolith architecture yep we back exactly so you just take queries back okay now for the past three years

just to piss people off it is it is literally stick with it this is not a Sprint it's a marathon so good it takes time to build these skills but at the same time get ready for a lifetime of learning because as fast as this Tech changes we have to be able to change and adapt and move with it yep you know I love that alrighty y'all well that is it for today we appreciate y'all go connect with Homer on uh if I say Facebook Twitter wow okay with Homer he's great um for those of you uh tomorrow no unicorn finders had rescheduled the boys

are actually um they're actually in meetings together tomorrow um so no unicorn finders and then Friday I'll be going live Just Me Myself and I um so y'all have a great rest of your Wednesday again go connect with people on the show if this show resonated with you please share it also check out gun we're doing some pretty cool stuff when it comes to hiring um we'd love to obviously help you all scale up your engineering teams and also if you're a senior engineer would love to have you on the platform um Homer thank you so much my friend appreciate it thank you sir all

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