from college student to speaking at conferences w/ dev agrawal dev advocate

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So Deb, let's give the people what they want, man. Who are you and what do you do? Sure. You can probably tell from my name. Yes, that is my real name. I am a developer. I've been building full stack JavaScript applications for the last six or seven years in every capacity. That's my cat Lulu. You might see her around for a bit more anytime. I love it. Yeah, I've done freelance projects, part time, volunteer research full time. And as of like about a year ago, I got into developer relations and DevTools, making content, all that. I have a YouTube channel where I sometimes make videos about software development, software architecture, things like that.

There you go. Yeah. I love it. I love it. So, Deb, how did we meet? Do you remember at all? Yeah, it was the very first react Miami in 2022. It was after the first day, it was like kind of a dinner. It was you, Ken C. Dodd's, pages, Kathleen, a couple other people who I don't remember. Yes, that was a good day. This was advertised in the Discord and I showed up. Yeah, I love it. I love it. So, Dave, man, let's stop into your journey a little bit. So I graduated, where'd you graduate from? I graduated from University of Cincinnati, studied here for information technology, five years.

I graduated about a year ago in April. Okay, awesome. So, man, again, you've been the constant when it comes to networking and putting yourself out there. Where did this all originate from, right? Cause like in college, like, you don't know what teaches this stuff in college. I mean, maybe they did a Cincinnati, but like, Where did your mindset come from this networking and just from the networking side and just putting yourself out there? Yeah, this show. Okay, that was not a similar record. I wanted you to say with somebody else not, so I just like an asshole. Well, all right, so talk about it. I am curious, because I am curious.

Yeah, I mean, they did teach a bit in college like at University of Cincinnati. This was kind of my high pick because there's a co-op program, which means we get to work full time for one semester and then study for a semester and then work again for a full time. So we alternate between working and studying. And because of that, there's a decent bit of culture around how to get into the industry, how to network with people, and there's career fairs and all things like that. There's also student organizations that try to bring people from the industry to talk to them to connect with them There's events going on all the time.

That's all so so yeah, there's a decent bit of that culture here at the University It's just that a lot of people don't end up taking advantage of that. I like to say that it's University or college life is kind of like build your own adventure You can either like build fraternities and parties into your adventure or you can build like networking and like actually taking use of making use of college resources. Yeah. But it really kind of like, uh, like kicked into high gear when I, when I met you, when I started watching the show and when I started learning about like, from real people in the industry and recruiters and devrels and the people who are doing this, doing this stuff like every day and not just like, I would eat our college professors.

Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, man, that, that really means a lot. Dominic goes, I'll definitely say to my network in order to store. Yeah, I know. Which is, which is flatter in a core. So, you know, I think I really missed the mark in college when it came to networking. I didn't know how to network. I didn't know really what to do. Do you think you maximize your time in college? And if so, what do you think is, was maybe your, your, your few secrets that you'd be willing to share for folks who maybe see us in the future? Sure. Yeah. Um, I mean, I don't know If every college, every university has the same thing, but really the student organization, like everything around what the university gives you as resources, how they fund you, how they let you do things like host events, that has been like the biggest kind of gold bind for me.

So I got involved in student organizations like really early around 2019. I joined in 2018, like about a year or so I started attending the events and then I started being on like executive boards. I started like planning events, volunteering at them for student orgs. And it took me a bit of time, but I tried to figure out like, how does university provide funding to these organizations? Because once I, when you kind of unlock that, then you can start your own thing, you can do your own events. And that's, yeah, and that's how I ended up at React Miami, because I kind of figured out the funding process and then I was part of our organization or that one that I started and we were like, hey, we really want to send students to these conferences.

We want students to have access to like these like very high profile networking events or educational events and the university was like, cool, here's a bunch of money. Go buy tickets. Now, compared to like buying conference tickets, hotels and flights is not a lot. So like we you're only able to buy like maybe three or four tickets, but it was still like, like imagine three students who otherwise would not have been, would not have been able to be at that conference. Like if I wasn't at React Miami, I wouldn't have met you. So like crazy how that works, man. It's just crazy how that works.

So, so again, I mean, amazing job for you to track down this stuff. But, and so, and so again, just to reiterate, So if it wasn't for me, would you have done this still? Like would you have sought out the college for funding? Or is that something that you just did on your own? Yeah, the college funding stuff, that was like much before. Okay, cool, good. Like the college funding led to React Miami, which led to me watching this show. So that was like way before that. Okay, fantastic. Like it basically what happened after I started watching this show and I started like actually doing, like practicing these on like social media, making content, is it just kind of like kicked it into high gear.

But like it was kind of like what I started at college. Yeah. Organizing events and trying to get to these conferences with university funding, which kind of started it all. So let's talk about kind of, you know, putting, you know, gasoline on the fire when it comes to networking on social media. Can you talk about your journey? What doors opened up for you? some cool stuff that happens. Because again, I think, and really just how you got started. Because I think a lot of people were like, oh, this sounds great. Taylor brings on all these guests who talked about post-to-social media. But I don't know how to do it.

So can you walk me through your journey a little bit on how you started and what started to happen? Yeah. So initially, I had a, obviously everyone talked about that networking is kind of the secret to the industry and all that. But there weren't really any tactical or these are some things you can do. React Miami was pretty much like my first, like big conference or web dev related conference that I attended. I did attend Momentum for a couple of years before that, but Momentum isn't really like, yeah, Momentum isn't really like that Twitter hyped. React Miami is like, it's all over Twitter, even the first year it was on.

So I started tweeting a bunch about React Miami when I was there. After that, I started following the people who were there, I started following these Twitter accounts, seeing what they were doing, trying to do some of those similar things, like make it mean sometimes. And eventually, once I started to get a better hang of it, I believe I went to another conference that year. Yeah, I went to a couple more conferences. After that, I also got involved with Youtubers and Twitch streamers, I started getting involved in their community, Discord community, and I started doing the same things, where posting memes or posting whatever I could figure out to try to grab some attention and try to make connections in those communities and online in those communities.

And I think similar to what happened with you, where once I started posting, you took notice. Once I started posting in those communities, I don't know if you know Theo at all, D3.gg, he's a Twitch streamer. He also took notice. And around that time, I was starting to think about like making content, making YouTube videos, another thing that I've been thinking about for a while, but I never really just had the like, okay, let's sit down, let's record a video, let's put it out there. And that was another kind of like, it kicked it to high care, because once I started making videos, once I started putting that out, then like there was something to show.

And so like when Theo came around, he happened to watch one of those videos and he shared it on his Twitter. And that got me a bunch more people. And so it was basically like trying to like just post whatever I can on Twitter on YouTube. It's almost like shoveling coal in the fire. So this is like what I say. So like what I say is like you kind of have, I'm trying to do this like opposite here. But so like your content journey is kind of like this, right? It's like really, really slow. And but what I mean by this going up is getting people in your network, right?

And so what happens is is that what you don't see is you don't see the bumps, right? So like the, the climb feels very slow and long. But what happens is you have these bumps, right? You know, you get in my community, there's a bump of people, then you get Theo to recreate you. Then there's a bump. And what happens is you kind of start pulling all of these people with you, Yeah. Which kind of creates, there's different ways you can view this in your head. I call it like the Whirlpool effect. Like, like, you know, I don't know if you were, I think you've seen me say this.

Like when you were a kid, I mean, I still do it as an adult. You run around the pool, like in the water. Yeah. Like create a Whirlpool. Yeah. It's the same thing with the content and networking is that if you keep doing it, you're gonna start collecting people in your Whirlpool and then everything's gonna start kind of like moving with you. Would you agree or disagree with that? Yeah, pretty much. Yeah, like the more content you put out there, the more possibilities that are to like engage people and get them closer to your network and connect with them better. And along similar lines, that was also the year that I first volunteered at Momentum.

And like I reached out to, at some point I reached out to Michael Richardson and was like, hey, I'm interested in volunteering, helping out whatever I can do. I even have like three years of organizing hackathon experience that I can bring. I love it. So I was volunteering. He also let me run the social media for a bit. And along with that, he brought me to the speaker dinner that year that I think we also met there. So a speaker dinner, I got to meet a bunch of great people there. And obviously at the conference itself, I would agree that volunteering at conferences is almost a cheat code to networking.

It really is. I mean, really. Yeah, talk about that for a second. Talk about why it's such a cheat code. Sure. I mean, conferences are like, like, you're gonna find like the cream of the crop people in terms of like industry, leadership, talent, or their own like connections. Like Michael Richardson is a guy that you you meet and then you have access to like this like an entire like spider web of industry that he has built over 10 years, right? Yeah. These are the kind of people that you meet at conferences. So and volunteering is something like conferences are awesome for everyone involved, but it requires so much work and effort to like make a good conference that every little bit of help is somehow going to contribute there and is going to leave a good impression.

So even when people attend, they're going to see someone volunteering or they're going to see you volunteering or whoever's in the chat or if they're interested. Oh, you're doing great work. Thanks a lot. And then along with that, there's sites to a conference that, as an attendee, you don't get to see. There's going to be parties, there's going to be speaker dinners, there's going to be other hangouts that have you hours with the speaker. Exactly. Yeah. And that's like one of the best things out of it because if a conference is the cream of the crop, the speakers is like the cream of the crop of the cream.

Like it's like two layers above the top cream. Exactly. Yeah. I don't know how to put that. So as a volunteer, you get access to like a lot more of the conference than just as a regular attendee. So volunteering and also speaking, like if you also if you're a speaker at a conference, a lot of people just go to speak at conference just to hang out with their other speaker friends. So again, as a volunteer, you get access to that, but it's the barriers but lower you don't have to be a speaker, you just volunteer. So yeah, it's so much on PAC on this conversation.

So all right, so to recap, so college, you got super invested, you asked the, you know, kind of the board or the the college to get funds for meetups and hackathons that gave it to you, they gave you funds for React Miami, went down there to tell me no. How did you land that first job out of college? Cause I think that's the- Yeah. I feel like, I mean, again, just on the outside, I feel like it was not easy, but like you're kind of like, but it didn't surprise me. Like with how involved you are, it didn't surprise me. So talk about how you landed that first job, where did it came from?

I think I know the answer to this, But sure, yeah. So I am like a four out of four for jobs that I've landed through networking, which is another reason why I keep like, when I say networking, like the person that I know, like I know someone who knows someone who knows someone something like that, or sometimes it's more direct. So the job that I landed after college at Clerke, I did have like a couple jobs while I was at college. But the one that I got as developed relations, So what happened was I was another one of these conferences in November, 2022. Yeah, 22.

It was in San Francisco. It was Jamstack Con and at that conference, there was a 10 minute demo of clerk. And I was at that demo. I went into that demo in the way thinking that, yeah, this is something I've seen. Like nothing new is going to be here, right? Uh, and at the end of the 10 minutes, I was like, holy shit, this is, this is something I needed all my projects. I needed this five years ago. I needed this two years ago. Where has this product been my entire life? And I tweeted that out. And by that time, I had gathered a decent bit of Twitter following because of those YouTube videos and because of Theo shout out.

I also had a few YouTube videos. And also at that conference, I met the guy who was doing DevRel for Cleric. And apparently he had watched a couple of my videos. So he was was kind of familiar with me with like my content, my like content style, speaking style and all that. So we chatted with him. And after obviously I tweeted out about Clark, I chatted with the CEO who was there about we chatted for quite a while about like features that I would like to see about what I'm building, how I would be using clerk. And then after that I started using it. So basically I like at that conference, I made a good relationship with both the CEO and the current devil and that kind of carried on.

So in December, when I, when I resigned the job that I was working on at that time, I tweeted it out. And then the devil guy, he showed up in my replies and like, Hey, we might be hiding a trick. If you're interested, let me know. And so I took that after a few weeks. I sent him a message that, Hey, I'm down for that. And he's like, Okay, let's jump on a 15 minute chat. So, so your last job was conference connection, content, social media, job. Yeah. Yeah. And also like just a lot of it was just like genuine interest in what they're building.

Yeah. Yeah. Genuine interest. We talked about, I've talked about that a lot lately, I feel like, especially Dominic, in the chat right now getting a job, you know, we were chatting about his passion for the environment and hiking and being outside like in Dominic and I were going up against the job together. Like they're going to pick Dominic because I don't like outside. Like I just don't like I just don't. So like again, it's one of these things where like companies want passion and because dev was passionate about Clark. He had thoughts about Clark. He wish he wished he used it again. Like that's that's the way it's done.

That's the way it's done. And I want to go back to content and social media because I feel like people like, I got to create all this content from the get go. It's correct me if I'm wrong. It sounds like you just kind of like lurked in the shadows a little bit like just join communities, made some comments when necessary. Like I feel like you just like weren't like, I'm just going to start creating a bunch of content off the get go, right? Yeah, I mean, if you just start creating content and never tell anyone about it, it like it's if if a tree fell in the woods and no one noticed like did it actually fall That that's kind of the idea So like you have to kind of put yourself out there not just in terms of like making content But also like sharing it with the world that hey, this is something I build something I made What do you think about it?

Let me know like feedback or just like give it a watch and let me know what you think I posted on reddit. I posted on like a few like initially like I was also okay let me just like spray and pray everywhere. And if I get some engagement from like some subreddits or some discord servers, nice. If I get banned from some of them, no worries. Yeah, absolutely. I'm just saying, what do you think? And I probably did get banned from some of them. That's funny. Let me get some few comments. I've already thrown them up, I'll throw them again. Dominic goes to Kank from Odessa.

The comments are huge level up for networking. Yeah, I mean, literally, it's kind of a shot to the arm is like what I say. I mean, I think, in my opinion, I think every developer should at least go to one conference a year. It exhausts me, but man, I come back feeling energized. And so, I mean, I think one or two conferences a year, I think is a good clip, I think for the average. I think at least one, ask your company if they have funds, conferences like that, conference and render, they actually have like word tracks on their website that you can download to ask your boss and like actual specific reason on why you should go.

So take a look at that. Most companies most should or be open to at least helping you cover a little bit that comes out of like the education budget. And I think I wanted about that specific comment is that, like that specific comment, that was exactly what happened like last year, but instead of Bill Gates, it was Corey House. So like I was at KCDC, I was just at lunch and like I happened to sit next to Corey House and I talked to him. I had known him for like on Twitter for a little bit and like I just got to connect with him that I would have never been able to.

Yep, absolutely. It's 100% Brandon comes in here, never thought about networking. I mean, volunteering. Yeah, I mean, Brandon, again, I'll hit you up and I'm in Austin here in a few weeks for South By, but yeah, I mean, again, like I think people really bond and connect through shared experiences, right? So like, you know, like if you went to South Carolina, right, or you went to Cincinnati, right? You're like, we're probably gonna talk to you because that's a shared experience, right? Setting up at conferences and like, you know, it'll suck. You got to get their early setup chairs and stuff. But like the act of doing that with other people endears you to each other immediately.

That's just kind of how the human psyche works. And so locking arms and being at these conferences and helping volunteer and set up is just a great way to make yourself what we call sticky when it comes to relationships. And beyond just that, it's also that you get to contribute to something bigger. And oftentimes like you get to make, like add your own flair to it. Like one of the conferences I was volunteering at, like we were setting up the launch, like the couches and everything. And like we had this entire discussion off. What would be the ideal placement? Should we set it up like this?

Should we add some space here? What would be like the ideal setup so people can come in and network? So you also get to like contribute your own and show your own like what, how you think about things. Um, absolutely. So I do want to get as we wrap up here again, Tom Flaz, we're having fun with friends. I do want to get to the public speaking aspect. So you just kind of delved into conference speaking. Talk to me about, you know, has there been any specifics about what is done for your career? Is it still early? Why did you want to speak? Talk about that for a second.

For people who may be terrified to speak. Yeah, for sure. The conference speaking is another one, like that goes in the category of, I have been overthinking it for a while And it just took like, for me to just sit down, fill out some CFPs or like figure out something. And it was like just one conversation with one person that kind of changed my course on that. I was having a conversation with Matt Eland who I think he was an instructor at Tech Elevator or something. And he was like, hey, look, when you submit a CFP, you don't have to have the entire thing prepared at that time.

I can take of it as a learning opportunity that this is something I'm interested in learning more about. Let me submit a CFP in case I get accepted. I'm going to prepare that before the actual conference. So that was a lot of, he gave me a lot of encouragement with this and a couple of other things that he said. So yeah, that's kind of what it took me and what it does unlock. Again, like I said, like volunteering at conferences, it's a cheat code because it gets you in those places that like a speaker would usually that a normal attendee wouldn't. But obviously when you are a speaker, you get to go there like you get to be at those places and get to connect with people as a legitimate speaker.

So you go to the you go to these places obviously a lot of times you get free tickets or you get free travel free like living like whenever these conferences are. So that's a big plus. But then also like, we get to go to speaker events, you get to talk to people about what they're talking about or what their talks are. You get to give each other feedback, you get to say, Hey, I'm talking about this, you want to come to my talk and give me feedback. You also see like a lot of the same people at a lot of the conferences, which means like you're connecting with the same people over and over again.

And those are like some of the best people in the industry. Absolutely. And obviously, like you get to take a photo and post it on Twitter posted on your LinkedIn profile thing that, Hey, I do get this conference. Yeah, and that also like in a way that will like also like kind of solidify your brand as kind of like, you know, how people say that you should write a book that will really solidify your kind of like, what is it? Authority? Yeah, Authority yeah over like a specific topic. So giving talks is I see it kind of like that Like if you've given a talk on a topic at a conference, you're probably Like decent authority on that topic.

Yep, absolutely Steven comes in here. What are some things that dev does to help other people connect or level up? What do you do dev? That's a great question So far like really I think for other people you have to give them like a space and some resources So when I was at university, I tried to do that with Zwintorgs. So obviously I wasn't the only one getting the ticket from the university funding. I was getting that with other people as well. And last year at 2023, when we went to React Miami, I had two or three more people with us, more students. And one of them ended up getting an internship at, at a company that she met, or like the people that she met at React Miami.

So that was a great, like for me, that was great to see because like, this is like, I worked on this, I worked on for these students to get to react to me. And the outcome of that is that this person gets an internship at this amazing company. So that's one way that I tried to do things. Obviously after like, I graduated, I didn't have, I couldn't do as much because the university resources were kind of like really helping me out there. but now I could like maybe just start Twitter spaces or start a Discord community. I haven't done that yet, but I know like once I, if once I get like a little more maybe YouTube following once I get maybe more content out, I can start my own Discord server and I can do things there.

If not, I can use other Discord servers. Yeah, everyone's got Discord. Hell, I got, I mean, yeah, I mean, and a lot of these Discord, even myself, is looking for people to almost take over and be the face of it. Like I mean, I'm looking for somebody to kind of help organize and kind of be the face of my Discord as well. So I feel very interested. Let me know. But so no, I love that. I love that. Everybody's fascinated with what's being microwaved behind you. Your boy is hungry. My hot pockets are dumb. Drew, it's good to see you, Muhammad. It's good to see you.

All right. So as you wrap up here, Dev, again, thank you for coming on my friend. Obviously, folks follow Dev. His Twitter handle is obviously his picture. Dev, four questions for you real quick. Yeah, it's like backwards. Yeah. First question, what do you like to do outside of coding? Sure. I like to play strategy games. I specifically play a lot of Age of Empires. I like to play drums, guitars. In fact, I was at Code Mash last month, and I didn't know that they had a jam session. So they literally brought in an entire three guitars, like a drum kit, a keyboard, everything. I was set up on stage and we were like jamming out for like three hours or something.

So I do, I do quite a bit of that. I obviously like, I have six, I, six pairs of crocs that went for every occasion working out, walking out in the snow, everything. I love it. I love you have six pairs of crocs for all different special occasions. I love that. Um, what if that was Jason in the chat? Say what? That was for Jason in the chat. I love it. I love it. If you could do anything outside of tech and money is not the issue, what would it be? I'll start my own rock band or metal band. Easy. I love it. That's awesome.

Third question. Any tools, technologies, frameworks, your researching or retinkering with right now that you're pretty stoked about? Yeah. I'm actually, I recently got more familiar with this concept called local first, which is kind of an idea that most of the data that kind of is controlled by the user, it should just live on the device, which, which makes it for like pretty fast apps because all the data is there. And there are some like tools around this like replicash and reflect. There's some like a lot of reflect and replicash. That's kind of primarily what I'm playing around with. but just this entire concept of, the data just lives there and the cloud is just for syncing and backups if you need it.

It not only makes it a much better user experience because it's very fast, it's not dependent on a network, but it turns out it's also much easier to build these kind of apps once you have the, kind of like the correct infrastructure in place. So that's something that I've gotten, I'm trying to do it well deep into and trying to implement on a couple of side projects. I love that, I love that. Last question. You're still young in your career. So this question's usually like, you know, if there's one piece of advice you could tell younger dad, you're still young. I guess, I guess just one piece of career advice to folks that are getting into tech or early in their tech career.

What would your advice be so far for them? Yeah. Yeah. Really just like build stuff and build stuff in public. I feel like a lot of people are really scared of putting themselves out there. Like I had like an old friend hit me up and say like, hey, I participated in this hackathon. I built a project, but I didn't even submit it because like kind of it didn't meet all the criteria. I wouldn't even be on the leaderboard. So I didn't even submit it. So I feel like a lot of people are just for some reason, like to not for some reason, obviously there's legitimate reason, but like a little too scared to put themselves out there.

I would say like just if possible, like try to do a complete 180 on that because most people really don't care. Like there's if anything, like only positive things can come, uh, can come out of like putting yourself out there. Obviously there's some negatives associated with it, but a lot of it's just psychological. It's not. Yeah. I mean, I want to give a shout out to Amy. Um, uh, she started vlogging, um, on, on Twitter recently and, and she, you know, she told me that she was like, you know, I've, I've, I've, I've really been second guessing myself and not wanting to do it. And her vlogs are already better than mine.

And she just started. So like, again, like, just start, it'll be good. I promise. Even if it sucks, nobody cares. Like, just nobody, nobody cares. Like content creation is, I've tried to figure out a saying for this, but like, content creation for me is like, it's not a zero sum game. That doesn't make sense. But like, like it's a win win for everybody. Like the only time people start bashing you is when you start getting like, when you start getting somewhere to start, no one's gone bash you. Yeah, I started this show in 2020. And I was like six months of like no one paying attention to me.

And now look at us like we got a whole thriving community here. We got dev on the show almost four years later, right? So again, like just just start just start you're still early, you know, everybody probably looks at Dev, probably you. They look at me like, oh my gosh, they do so much. I started doing very little. I just grew over time. So just I still have to tell myself that sometimes like earlier we are facing some camera issues. And oftentimes like I record videos like this is not really right. There's like focus issues or the videos lagging a bit. The music is a little bit off.

I get into that loop sometimes and then I have to break out of it. Hey, who cares. Just put it out there. Once you have a better setup, just redo it and post another one. Yeah, absolutely. Cool. All right, y'all. Well, again, thank you so much for tuning in today. We appreciate Dave's day on backstage. I can say bye to you. But you all have a good one. Who have tomorrow? Oh, tomorrow I'm taking off. It's a tradition. I take off about times they to be with my wife and daughter. So I'm taking off tomorrow to be with the fam. and then Thursday we're back out with unicorn finders talking with a VC portfolio company specifically around the low code so it's going to be kind of a good conversation just general about low code no code whereas that's heading if that's still around what are they doing and Friday we have my guy Lawrence Lockhart back on the show for round two he's a great creator and a dev advocate at Voden so that'd be a great conversation.

Thank you my friend it was wonderful to chat with you again I'm always rooting you one from afar. So appreciate it. And then I hope your roommate enjoys the hot pocket. So y'all be a good one. We'll see y'all Thursday. Peace. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode and I am very grateful. Cause you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes and I myself rarely finish 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 at Tdastin on all social media handles, and I hope you have a fantastic day.