speaker-0: Hi Mario, welcome to Don't Forget the Pizza. How are you today?
speaker-1: Hey Isabel, I'm good. Like it's it's eleven o'clock over here in Berlin. I've just breakfasted. Happy to chat.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's great. And yeah, I I was actually like very fortunate to come across your profile and I saw that as a GDG organizer for ⁓ Berlin Androids and running the Berlin Android ⁓ meetup, which I understand is one of the oldest Android developer meetups in Berlin. What do you think it takes to actually keep ⁓ meetup alive for so many years?
speaker-1: I have to start with a disclaimer. I'm technically not an organizer anymore. Okay. I have been organizing for eleven years and I think last month I decided I need to pivot and do something different. but I'm still happy to like just share information because that's what we're here for, right? ⁓ we are here usually to like learn something and you learn something by doing it and I do the best. And in order to come back to your question, how do I keep how do We as organizers keep the group alive. It's it's a mixture of things. As an organizing team, it's always good to have one more than one organizer. So this also means I have not been organizing Dolandroid by myself. We always have a team around three up to seven people who were actually organizing it over the 11 years. Just imagine something happens to one of the organizers. You want somebody else to be able to take. ⁓ so th that that's the more organizator boring part. But I think a lot of meetups are striving because of the passion of the organizers. ⁓ you you know, when you're just doing it because you have to, it doesn't feel as good for either, right? It doesn't feel good for you, it doesn't feel good for the people coming to your events. But if you are there because you want to, I feel that's the best ⁓ recipe for actually actually making Great event. And therefore great meetups.
speaker-0: I think the learnings you can have from other people and I think that in a way I have found also that energizes you as well, in a way, just you know, to being in that environment as well.
speaker-1: see the inspirational eyes from somebody who hasn't heard about what you were talking about for the first time is just it's one of the event things I really, really enjoy about.
speaker-0: I remember seeing from your profile that you actually it was this was like for me it was absolutely genius that you actually repurposed or you turned a DroidCon booth backdrop into a messenger bag. What was the inspiration there? Because I think that was absolutely brilliant.
speaker-1: So Okay, you don't see it through the ⁓ blurring. But yes, so this is the messenger bag. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's great.
speaker-1: We had sponsorship from Google at the time for the booth. ⁓ and we decided to use it to also design the backdrop ⁓ and get it printed customized. Otherwise we would have just a one colored one. So this is from the droid con. I added pictures from the meetup group actually, so that we have a bit of a mosaic going. I talked to the organizers and the organizers is like, Yeah, we are getting rid of it and I just thought, This is great material. And since I'm a builder by heart, I build things out of software, yes, but I also build things out of hardware. I have a sewing machine. Obviously, I can sew things ish. And don't ask me too much about razors and how to actually make a zipper, right? But you know, we are getting there over time. We are learning together. But the I initial idea was like I don't want to waste. Like it looks so nice, it has a pattern, it has a use. So I asked him if I can take it. I could take it. I took it. And I made some random things with it. And actually, same goes for ⁓ the lanyards. I don't have it in grasp area right now, but I was taking the lanyards and putting them into a weaving pattern so that you get like another bag out of it. ⁓ so if you are done with a conference and you don't know what to do with the name tags and the lanyards connected to the name tag. Put them next to g each other, maybe saw over it once or twice, and you have a back. ⁓ super nice.
speaker-0: Yeah, no it yeah, as when I saw that, that's definitely a a brilliant idea for sure. And like in terms of obviously organizing meetups or setting up a booth or just even running a hackathon, what do you think it's especially for non devrail people, what do you think it's the thing that might get underestimated when you're running all of these events?
speaker-1: It's the whole organizatorical part. I mean that's probably where the name of our podcast is coming from. Like, have you thought about food? Have you thought about the pizza? ⁓ like ⁓ everything that needs to be there and nobody really sees, right? So it starts from the venue, like okay, ⁓ what g got into selecting this specific venue? How many others have you tried? what's the price associated? ⁓ and I really like to also say the things that don't surface for an audience, those are the best things, right? So like they never know what kind of discussions was led, what kind of ideas we needed to like actually say no to in order to make this happen.
speaker-0: Also looking at your experience in different different places. That was there something that you had to trade off when you were, I don't know, I think as always as organizers, you have to fight for budget at times. Sometimes you have it and that's great. Sometimes you don't have any budget. So I guess was there any time that you had to like, ⁓ I cannot have this because of budget? Or was, yeah, any trade-offs that you can think of?
speaker-1: Yeah. We had the d ⁓ example with the backdrop from before. ⁓ we were lucky this one time that we were able to customize this and get the sponsorship ready there. And then you just have to say, like, hey, we have a great idea. ⁓ sometimes those ideas hit reality and sometimes they don't. And then it's just important to realize, okay, whom are you doing this for? What is the actual purpose? And can you find a way to make it as best as possible for the attendees to get the purpose out? And teaching them something. ⁓ I also feel that here the ⁓ ability to improvise is not to underestimate. Like to just say, like, hey, okay, we don't have that one. How can we do something else? Like if we still want it, that's already a great thing because you have the inspiration behind. But like, well, what are the means we are having? Pivot and do the right thing. I mean, obviously, sometimes you have to draw. If you don't have enough money for pizza, well then you can just say you have a meetup, you get free information. Maybe it is okay if you just don't have
speaker-0: putting yourself as an attendee going to an event or going to a meetup, what do you think makes it memorable?
speaker-1: That's so nice. This reminds me of the first meetup I actually was participating in. I was very shy. I saw that on meetup.com there's this Android group in Berlin. ⁓ I like I was working as an Android developer at the time, but I had a problem and they were actually just talking about this one. So I thought, like, okay, I'm gonna go there and I'll leave early if I don't like. So the the then the motivation was there to actually learn. Right. ⁓ so I got in there, I got into the C Base, our hackerspace here in Berlin, ⁓ or at least one of them. And I was just staring on my phone during the times that were not the actual talk times. So super shy, super like awkward to everybody. Like, don't approach me was essentially the message I was sending. ⁓ but then I came back the next month and I already knew some of the people because they were speaking before, so I put away my phone and slowly it started shifting over from hey I learn more information that I need at work over to this is where my people are. so like also the motivation changed from like I want to learn things over to the I just want to see what the people are to this month. Then I started speaking in front of them. Yeah.
speaker-0: Crazy too. Exactly. No. That was quite the shift. And I'm I'm thinking as well, like now, what will like Mario today, if you will see someone like Mario back then, what will be your approach? Will you go over or will you leave that person? What would you do?
speaker-1: So as an organizer, I would already be happy that they are there, right? and then stepping into their area and saying, hey, but you have to listen or interact with others is probably not the right way. Except it's a as an organizer, you have those different hats sometimes, right? So when you're moderating through the meetup, you also have something that I call the moderator's power. ⁓ at the last meetup I was organizing, I was actually asking everybody to get up and do a group exercise with them. ⁓ so we ended up sorting each other by age. I should have thought this a bit longer through because age might not have been the best criteria to sort a whole group, but it was just like nice to actually like encourage them to step up, go around, talk to each other and find out their age and sort this way themselves. Like doing it like picking out a specific person saying, like, hey, I see you only watching your phone and then addressing them, that that that feels awkward, you know? Like maybe they have something going on in their lives that you don't know, you don't understand. So probably it's okay to leave them alone. They come back if they want to and they come out of their shell if they want.
speaker-0: Which of the following do you think is harder? So getting people to show up, getting them to stay, or getting them to care after they leave an event?
speaker-1: That's a good one. I like this one. Like looking over the also the the progression over time. ⁓ I I think getting them to care is the most complicated one. Right? So like you can get them I'm sorry, that's a pretty reductive list of myself now. You can probably get them into the meetup rather easily, either by having good talks, ⁓ important or famous people speaking there. Or offering pizza. This way you can get them into the meetup. You make them stay by potentially having the interesting talks again, or the people are interesting. But then afterwards, like how do you make sure that they come back? ⁓ my answer is by having the constant quality, right? So the next time they join, they see the same thing again, they see the same quality of speakers, they see the same care from the organizers. So they know also for the next time that this is something I can rely on, ⁓ and can just join easier. But since we also have, for instance, a Slack group in Berlin droid, ⁓ and I feel over time there is less and less speaking happening inside this group, at least externally. And I haven't found a way to encourage this one. Like obviously we can post things on a regular basis there, but it didn't mean that we got an answer and a response as we wanted. Well at least as I personally wanted, you know. Like I wanted to have like an engaged community who are also engaging with the themselves outside of the meetups. And I still feel there's a way to.
speaker-0: Hmm. Yeah. And do you think as well, Matt, you're talking about Slack? I think for maybe putting on my community manager hat. Like, do you see if you post, let's say, about an upcoming meetup, maybe that's a type of post that obviously people they will react, but of course you want that to translate to people attending the meetup. Do you want people to network there, get to know each other there? Or and or go to the meetup and maybe do that there. So it's yeah, it's a channel, it's a platform, it's not the community, but do you think?
speaker-1: I like the meme porquino lost. Why not porkin, you know? If you are able to join on a physical meetup after your eight hour eight hours of work in a normal company, perfect, I tell you. Because you also get a bit more out of it out of the human connection. But if you are able to join online in the sense of you are interacting with the Slack group, why say no to this one? And like sometimes they feed each other. ⁓ but Th th this also relies on your being able to offer something inside the Slack group that the attendee needs. ⁓ and what are the needs of the attendees? That that's also defining what your meetup is about, right? ⁓ as an organizer, I always put my foot down that we're trying as much as we can to get speakers from Berlin, from the local area we are in. So that we are communicating, hey, this is the people you will be meeting at work or outside of the community. ⁓ where this ⁓ we could have also ⁓ emphasized more just international speakers and have them calling in. But then I always felt what is the differentiation between ⁓ the Berlin one and the one who is like in a different city. They can call in speakers nevertheless. So like I feel the the more value you can offer as in They are being local, they are sitting maybe next to you around the corner or something, the better it is for the community and the easier it is to also get into contact with them online.
speaker-0: you have Slack or maybe other people ⁓ watching this now, they have other type of platform where they communic they communicate with their members, with their audience. So I think it's for me I always see it as if you have clear what do you want them to do in the platform or in Slack or Discord, etc. And then that will feed into well your either virtual meetups or in person meetups, etc. One fits the other in a way that's ideally, as you mentioned in as you mentioned earlier about that you sew, that you like to, you know, create things, you're a builder. ⁓ you if you were to have unlimited budget, I know you design mascots and t shirts. So let's say there is no limit there is no limitations for you in terms of budget. What would be the most outlandish thing that you will design for an event, what will you bring to life?
speaker-1: So my ⁓ favorite pet peeve ⁓ something I think that can be kind of amazing is one of those LED backpacks. I don't know if you've seen them before, but this is you have a backpack and the side that is facing outside is full of LEDs. So you can show random images there, you can make it blink whenever you're getting close. This is kind of flashy and attention drawing. But it's also nerdy, you know? Like it's something where you can program your backpack. I I think that's like I I want to make this happen at some point in my life, but you know. There's a bunch of constraints, you know, like getting con ⁓ marketing convinced to pay for those things.
speaker-0: Yeah. I think that's a right amount of, you know, geekiness and it's still quite fashionable. Definitely I would like to have something like that for myself.
speaker-1: And then there's the other question coming in, right? So like if it's not a swag, right? If it's just for me, I mean like it's not that complicated, and this is where my brain goes off and just does random things and in the end, ⁓ we might have another canvas back.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely.
speaker-1: You also target one of my favorite topics that is actually swag, right? How do you produce something that you can hand over ⁓ to an attendee that is meaningful to them and for you? So my favorite example is hey, we want to bring as many emails into our system as we want. So we just put in a coffee booth next to us. We give out coffee for free, we get so many signups, it's great, but what does it mean? It means we are able to sell coffee to people, great, but it does not mean anything that they're connected to my offering, that they're connected to the community, or that they're connected to through DevShrell to my company. ⁓ so for instance, for the droid con we're talking about, I always had like some interactive ⁓ thing happening for the community there. We were programming apps together. So there was a big screen. ⁓ and the screen showed always the current attendee who is just writing code. We merged it together, and then we either had an Android app coming out of it, or one of those e-paper name tag displays that they can program themselves, or something embroidered, which was the craziest one last year, ⁓ where we had an embroidery machine that they were programming with Kotlin code. So they've wrote Kotlin the way they are knowing it. Through several magical steps, it ended up printed on fabric with thread. So like you had one of those patches that felt very nice. And they were saying, I programmed this one. And you immediately have a discussion point. Like, okay, you are part of the community because obviously you needed to program it. And somebody is seeing this one and they're wondering, What is this patch? This looks interesting. And that's my kind of take on swag. How how do we make this
speaker-0: It's definitely outside of the box because, you know, I think it's very common to see, you know, the notebooks or the chargers. They're very fancy or you know, or something simple. You mentioned the keyword there in terms of memorable. And yeah, okay, getting signups, but what happens next? I remember seeing the video, I think there is there's a video on YouTube for that droid con that when people were programming. So would that have been like Something that you will recommend people to do at their booth, but like something dynamic as well.
speaker-1: Yes. It has obviously its ⁓ positives and negatives. The positives from an outside point of view is you have most of the times a crowd of people standing surrounding the screen and doing mob programming, saying, Hey, you should write it this way or that way. Which is amazing. It puts more stress on the attendee, which is a bit of like, okay, some people might like this, some people might not. But then you also take away the attendees' time at the conference. You you know, they they might want to go to talks. Instead, that you are encouraging them on underhanded means to actually write code for you. So my recommendation for people thinking about what to do at their booth is put yourselves A, obviously, into the shoes of your user. You are a confidence walker. What would you like to do? And then think about how you can make this motivation connected to whatever your product is. Can't be more concrete with an abstract question, right? But for me as the community dude organizer, it was like, okay, we want to show a bit about the community and we are knowing that there are mostly engineers writing code. So why not have the community write code and show it to the community? So that that that was the thinking behind. Yeah. Plus then also what ⁓ currently Mario was into was then like either it was embroidery or an e ink paper or whatever else.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, I mean if you can combine both, why not?
speaker-1: Also over the years ⁓ afterwards I had still people coming forward and saying, like, hey, you did this thing last year, right? Can you help me with my ⁓ electronics? Or how did you embroider this one? It's like it's a nice thing. You know, that's exactly what I want. That's also for me a criteria whether it's successful. Like ⁓ did it influence people? Did it change a bit about their outlook? Did they remember it?
speaker-0: And now I think what you mentioned there about measuring the success of an event, like is there and I think we also touched on that in terms of what's making people coming back. So if let's say for any of the companies that maybe you work for, were there any metrics that perhaps it's more difficult to actually like Sentiments. Okay, yeah, everyone's happy.
speaker-1: Discussion is also here always about developer relations or community management. What is the value you can bring to the company? Is it selling hardware security tokens or is it feedback gathered? Or is it ⁓ qualified leads or or or so? My answer is qualified leads is not what we can offer. ⁓ Usually as community or developer relations, we are so far away from actually starting the sales process that we'd rather be in the area of like brand awareness, reach, ⁓ and those kind of things as a marketing measure, right? So like we just talk about what we are offering. More people know about what we are doing. So there is the potential that more people will actually buy what we are having. But it's not a one to one direction, not a one to one connection that makes it a bit difficult. What makes it easier is my personal measurement. So like for me personally, whether I want to know ⁓ whether a talk is successful or not, it's always how many questions did I get afterwards? I gave my talk, I had a good feeling about the talk, but if I get no questions, then this means something is off. It can be the connection between the talk or the presentation. I did to the audience level, like I was underwhelming them or overwhelming them. Or it just was not the right topic. So that's why they didn't understand what I was talking about. But the times I got like six to seven topical questions, that means for me that is an important talk. For me, this is a good talk for me and therefore for the audience, hopefully. But it's also not translating into company metrics, right? So instead, I'm looking forward for actual engineering metrics, right? So like what kind of feedback did we gather? Again, this does not go too much into the community area, but it goes through the product and developer relations. Did we get feedback on our SDKs, on our product, on our hardware from the attendant? And are we able to translate those feedback into something tangible to the product team? Like, hey, what about a new language in our SDKs? What if we are removing a specific part of it to make it easier and less composite? This is for me qualified feedback. That is something valuable I can take out of a conference or or wherever I'm speaking at. And that's also something usually.
speaker-0: I think with employee branding, talent acquisition, like of course, like what you are saying about your talk and either questions or not questions afterwards, ideally questions, but let's say that people will come up to you and the question will be like, Is your team hiring? Or like they want to be part of your company, of your team. So I think it's always not only you already sparked the curiosity in someone. And they see like, ⁓ I I want to be like this guy, Mario, that, you know, talks and is representing not only the company, but also you're representing yourself and delivering a talk and and all of that. So I think that's always at least for me from in the background seeing that as well happening, I think that's also another measure of success.
speaker-1: I I hear you. But it's also one of the hardest measures for me because I personally think it's like I know that the character I'm having and the character I'm portraying is helpful, you know. If I would not be myself, probably the measures I'm delivering would be different. But I just like I I personally don't want it that way, you know? Like it's not about about what I'm presenting. And therefore it is also about me. But like The the the connection should always be the value I'm bringing and not the person who I am. That that's also like from what I've heard from other people, they are actually coming to conferences and meetups because they want to hear what I have to say. Like, okay, cool.
speaker-0: No pressure. As you were saying now, it's a value. And that's why that's how as as well you are presenting that. And I think there's also a level of you're presenting your skills. You're it's a topic I think at the end of the day you always need to have an interest. It's not like, ⁓ here I go again and I'm going to talk about something that I don't care about. I think that's very hard to do. And I think you will reflect that anyway. So yeah, so I think it's yeah, as long as you're passionate and you see and it is valuable at the end of the day. So
speaker-1: Yeah, the authenticity, you know, like you notice when I'm talking about something I'm not behind. Delivering a talk about it does not make sense for me.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. And like with your like previous roles as well, like from Android engine engineer, senior developer advocates, and now as well, you're teaching software engineering at ⁓ SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences. What like from these roles, what do you think it's something you're taking back into depth row, into your day to day?
speaker-1: So all of them have obviously influence on myself, you know, me as a person. So the the influence is there, I'll take back. But ⁓ s so I'm working at Yubico for software security. we're doing also USB sticks ⁓ to make pass keys happen and you forget your passwords about. sorry for the plug here, ⁓ but just for completeness sake.
speaker-0: And I think it's as you were saying, like you bring your past experiences, either professional or personal, I think it's at some point it just intertwines that. ⁓ so yeah. I actually one guest that I had previously, he's based in Barcelona, so I asked him about his favorite venue to host. a meetup in Barcelona. What would be one venue that you will recommend for people to actually host their meetups in Berlin?
speaker-1: That's a very good one. That's also a very deep one. Because it's depending and I'm sorry for doing it this way, on the style I would say, of meetup I want to have. If it's a free spirited, open source hacker like event, I would go to the ⁓ the C Base representative C Base I was mentioning before, ⁓ a space station crashed into Berlin. Please look it up afterwards in the reading notes. But ⁓ it's one of the very nice hack spaces here in Berlin, which also had the Kerris Communication Congress, people living in there, starting from there. So there is a great hacker connection there. ⁓ but if it's and I I I hate to use this term, but if it's a bit more corporate. I was working at Deutsche Telekom before and I'm still having connections to the beautiful people working there. and sometimes I'm just asking them whether I can get into the hoop round meetup space they have. And sometimes they say yes. ⁓ and this space has like it's very colorful, it's very dynamic, it has different arrangements. ⁓ I really enjoy working with them still and working over there. organizing meetups, hackathons, and things with them. So depending on the level of corporate, ⁓ those those two venues I would prefer. But it's also hard for somebody who is not me. Right? So C Base, you need to find a member. And for Hoopram at Deutsche Telekom, you would need to know the organizers.
speaker-0: Someone.
speaker-1: And ⁓ now the next question is okay, if you don't like I think still some kind of connections are always helpful. but then you ask yourself where you're working currently. Are you a student at a university? Well, maybe the university has rooms where you can hold con ⁓ where you can hold speeches. ⁓ so maybe they can ⁓ work out something with you. or maybe you are at a bigger conference, ⁓ sorry, at a bigger company. They also have conference rooms where you can organize meetups. So the the the answer here on a meta level is whatever is closest to you could be the best. Right? I I happen to know the Who Pong guys. I happen to know some people at the C base. You might happen to know someone else who has a room that start talking to them.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's good advice. And maybe just to wrap up, if ⁓ we could go into a lightning round set of questions. So okay. ⁓ Slack or Discord for hackathon communication?
speaker-1: I'd go for Slack because my status is that you still can connect to Slack without using your private email address. There was like something like a shared user account you have to share in Discord. You can't create a workspace just with one email address.
speaker-0: Okay. Sluck. Okay. So what is a superior community strategy? Sneakers or t shirts?
speaker-1: I mean, I'm I'm sorry, neither. Like you have to tailor it, you know. If it's a t shirt, how many t shirts do you have? If it's a sticker, what does the sticker say about you? And how much space do we have left on your laptops? I mean I have none on mine, so ⁓ that's another criteria. Maybe you'd have people who don't want stickers.
speaker-0: Okay. And pineapple on developer pizza, yes or no? No.
speaker-1: Th there shouldn't be any p ⁓ pineapple on pizza. Obviously that's just my opinion. If you're fine with pineapple on pizza, that's great, but no.
speaker-0: Yeah. That's where the controversy will start in the comment section. And and what will you say it's one word that will describe the burling developer scene right now?
speaker-1: P. One word I I I can't. I need to be extra here again. Because it's also changing, you know, like it's going from the at least from what I'm surveying, is from the hacker independent spirit real technology to more corporate engineering. ⁓ so we are in the middle phase in between, between like I'm curious about the communities, the society attached to it, towards I just want to get my job done. And and and both are fine. Both have their reasons to exist and we are somewhere in the middle. Sorry.
speaker-0: No, that makes sense. No, thank you so much Mario. It was a great conversation. It is
speaker-1: Cool. Thank you so much for inviting me.
speaker-1: Hey Isabel, I'm good. Like it's it's eleven o'clock over here in Berlin. I've just breakfasted. Happy to chat.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's great. And yeah, I I was actually like very fortunate to come across your profile and I saw that as a GDG organizer for ⁓ Berlin Androids and running the Berlin Android ⁓ meetup, which I understand is one of the oldest Android developer meetups in Berlin. What do you think it takes to actually keep ⁓ meetup alive for so many years?
speaker-1: I have to start with a disclaimer. I'm technically not an organizer anymore. Okay. I have been organizing for eleven years and I think last month I decided I need to pivot and do something different. but I'm still happy to like just share information because that's what we're here for, right? ⁓ we are here usually to like learn something and you learn something by doing it and I do the best. And in order to come back to your question, how do I keep how do We as organizers keep the group alive. It's it's a mixture of things. As an organizing team, it's always good to have one more than one organizer. So this also means I have not been organizing Dolandroid by myself. We always have a team around three up to seven people who were actually organizing it over the 11 years. Just imagine something happens to one of the organizers. You want somebody else to be able to take. ⁓ so th that that's the more organizator boring part. But I think a lot of meetups are striving because of the passion of the organizers. ⁓ you you know, when you're just doing it because you have to, it doesn't feel as good for either, right? It doesn't feel good for you, it doesn't feel good for the people coming to your events. But if you are there because you want to, I feel that's the best ⁓ recipe for actually actually making Great event. And therefore great meetups.
speaker-0: I think the learnings you can have from other people and I think that in a way I have found also that energizes you as well, in a way, just you know, to being in that environment as well.
speaker-1: see the inspirational eyes from somebody who hasn't heard about what you were talking about for the first time is just it's one of the event things I really, really enjoy about.
speaker-0: I remember seeing from your profile that you actually it was this was like for me it was absolutely genius that you actually repurposed or you turned a DroidCon booth backdrop into a messenger bag. What was the inspiration there? Because I think that was absolutely brilliant.
speaker-1: So Okay, you don't see it through the ⁓ blurring. But yes, so this is the messenger bag. Yeah.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's great.
speaker-1: We had sponsorship from Google at the time for the booth. ⁓ and we decided to use it to also design the backdrop ⁓ and get it printed customized. Otherwise we would have just a one colored one. So this is from the droid con. I added pictures from the meetup group actually, so that we have a bit of a mosaic going. I talked to the organizers and the organizers is like, Yeah, we are getting rid of it and I just thought, This is great material. And since I'm a builder by heart, I build things out of software, yes, but I also build things out of hardware. I have a sewing machine. Obviously, I can sew things ish. And don't ask me too much about razors and how to actually make a zipper, right? But you know, we are getting there over time. We are learning together. But the I initial idea was like I don't want to waste. Like it looks so nice, it has a pattern, it has a use. So I asked him if I can take it. I could take it. I took it. And I made some random things with it. And actually, same goes for ⁓ the lanyards. I don't have it in grasp area right now, but I was taking the lanyards and putting them into a weaving pattern so that you get like another bag out of it. ⁓ so if you are done with a conference and you don't know what to do with the name tags and the lanyards connected to the name tag. Put them next to g each other, maybe saw over it once or twice, and you have a back. ⁓ super nice.
speaker-0: Yeah, no it yeah, as when I saw that, that's definitely a a brilliant idea for sure. And like in terms of obviously organizing meetups or setting up a booth or just even running a hackathon, what do you think it's especially for non devrail people, what do you think it's the thing that might get underestimated when you're running all of these events?
speaker-1: It's the whole organizatorical part. I mean that's probably where the name of our podcast is coming from. Like, have you thought about food? Have you thought about the pizza? ⁓ like ⁓ everything that needs to be there and nobody really sees, right? So it starts from the venue, like okay, ⁓ what g got into selecting this specific venue? How many others have you tried? what's the price associated? ⁓ and I really like to also say the things that don't surface for an audience, those are the best things, right? So like they never know what kind of discussions was led, what kind of ideas we needed to like actually say no to in order to make this happen.
speaker-0: Also looking at your experience in different different places. That was there something that you had to trade off when you were, I don't know, I think as always as organizers, you have to fight for budget at times. Sometimes you have it and that's great. Sometimes you don't have any budget. So I guess was there any time that you had to like, ⁓ I cannot have this because of budget? Or was, yeah, any trade-offs that you can think of?
speaker-1: Yeah. We had the d ⁓ example with the backdrop from before. ⁓ we were lucky this one time that we were able to customize this and get the sponsorship ready there. And then you just have to say, like, hey, we have a great idea. ⁓ sometimes those ideas hit reality and sometimes they don't. And then it's just important to realize, okay, whom are you doing this for? What is the actual purpose? And can you find a way to make it as best as possible for the attendees to get the purpose out? And teaching them something. ⁓ I also feel that here the ⁓ ability to improvise is not to underestimate. Like to just say, like, hey, okay, we don't have that one. How can we do something else? Like if we still want it, that's already a great thing because you have the inspiration behind. But like, well, what are the means we are having? Pivot and do the right thing. I mean, obviously, sometimes you have to draw. If you don't have enough money for pizza, well then you can just say you have a meetup, you get free information. Maybe it is okay if you just don't have
speaker-0: putting yourself as an attendee going to an event or going to a meetup, what do you think makes it memorable?
speaker-1: That's so nice. This reminds me of the first meetup I actually was participating in. I was very shy. I saw that on meetup.com there's this Android group in Berlin. ⁓ I like I was working as an Android developer at the time, but I had a problem and they were actually just talking about this one. So I thought, like, okay, I'm gonna go there and I'll leave early if I don't like. So the the then the motivation was there to actually learn. Right. ⁓ so I got in there, I got into the C Base, our hackerspace here in Berlin, ⁓ or at least one of them. And I was just staring on my phone during the times that were not the actual talk times. So super shy, super like awkward to everybody. Like, don't approach me was essentially the message I was sending. ⁓ but then I came back the next month and I already knew some of the people because they were speaking before, so I put away my phone and slowly it started shifting over from hey I learn more information that I need at work over to this is where my people are. so like also the motivation changed from like I want to learn things over to the I just want to see what the people are to this month. Then I started speaking in front of them. Yeah.
speaker-0: Crazy too. Exactly. No. That was quite the shift. And I'm I'm thinking as well, like now, what will like Mario today, if you will see someone like Mario back then, what will be your approach? Will you go over or will you leave that person? What would you do?
speaker-1: So as an organizer, I would already be happy that they are there, right? and then stepping into their area and saying, hey, but you have to listen or interact with others is probably not the right way. Except it's a as an organizer, you have those different hats sometimes, right? So when you're moderating through the meetup, you also have something that I call the moderator's power. ⁓ at the last meetup I was organizing, I was actually asking everybody to get up and do a group exercise with them. ⁓ so we ended up sorting each other by age. I should have thought this a bit longer through because age might not have been the best criteria to sort a whole group, but it was just like nice to actually like encourage them to step up, go around, talk to each other and find out their age and sort this way themselves. Like doing it like picking out a specific person saying, like, hey, I see you only watching your phone and then addressing them, that that that feels awkward, you know? Like maybe they have something going on in their lives that you don't know, you don't understand. So probably it's okay to leave them alone. They come back if they want to and they come out of their shell if they want.
speaker-0: Which of the following do you think is harder? So getting people to show up, getting them to stay, or getting them to care after they leave an event?
speaker-1: That's a good one. I like this one. Like looking over the also the the progression over time. ⁓ I I think getting them to care is the most complicated one. Right? So like you can get them I'm sorry, that's a pretty reductive list of myself now. You can probably get them into the meetup rather easily, either by having good talks, ⁓ important or famous people speaking there. Or offering pizza. This way you can get them into the meetup. You make them stay by potentially having the interesting talks again, or the people are interesting. But then afterwards, like how do you make sure that they come back? ⁓ my answer is by having the constant quality, right? So the next time they join, they see the same thing again, they see the same quality of speakers, they see the same care from the organizers. So they know also for the next time that this is something I can rely on, ⁓ and can just join easier. But since we also have, for instance, a Slack group in Berlin droid, ⁓ and I feel over time there is less and less speaking happening inside this group, at least externally. And I haven't found a way to encourage this one. Like obviously we can post things on a regular basis there, but it didn't mean that we got an answer and a response as we wanted. Well at least as I personally wanted, you know. Like I wanted to have like an engaged community who are also engaging with the themselves outside of the meetups. And I still feel there's a way to.
speaker-0: Hmm. Yeah. And do you think as well, Matt, you're talking about Slack? I think for maybe putting on my community manager hat. Like, do you see if you post, let's say, about an upcoming meetup, maybe that's a type of post that obviously people they will react, but of course you want that to translate to people attending the meetup. Do you want people to network there, get to know each other there? Or and or go to the meetup and maybe do that there. So it's yeah, it's a channel, it's a platform, it's not the community, but do you think?
speaker-1: I like the meme porquino lost. Why not porkin, you know? If you are able to join on a physical meetup after your eight hour eight hours of work in a normal company, perfect, I tell you. Because you also get a bit more out of it out of the human connection. But if you are able to join online in the sense of you are interacting with the Slack group, why say no to this one? And like sometimes they feed each other. ⁓ but Th th this also relies on your being able to offer something inside the Slack group that the attendee needs. ⁓ and what are the needs of the attendees? That that's also defining what your meetup is about, right? ⁓ as an organizer, I always put my foot down that we're trying as much as we can to get speakers from Berlin, from the local area we are in. So that we are communicating, hey, this is the people you will be meeting at work or outside of the community. ⁓ where this ⁓ we could have also ⁓ emphasized more just international speakers and have them calling in. But then I always felt what is the differentiation between ⁓ the Berlin one and the one who is like in a different city. They can call in speakers nevertheless. So like I feel the the more value you can offer as in They are being local, they are sitting maybe next to you around the corner or something, the better it is for the community and the easier it is to also get into contact with them online.
speaker-0: you have Slack or maybe other people ⁓ watching this now, they have other type of platform where they communic they communicate with their members, with their audience. So I think it's for me I always see it as if you have clear what do you want them to do in the platform or in Slack or Discord, etc. And then that will feed into well your either virtual meetups or in person meetups, etc. One fits the other in a way that's ideally, as you mentioned in as you mentioned earlier about that you sew, that you like to, you know, create things, you're a builder. ⁓ you if you were to have unlimited budget, I know you design mascots and t shirts. So let's say there is no limit there is no limitations for you in terms of budget. What would be the most outlandish thing that you will design for an event, what will you bring to life?
speaker-1: So my ⁓ favorite pet peeve ⁓ something I think that can be kind of amazing is one of those LED backpacks. I don't know if you've seen them before, but this is you have a backpack and the side that is facing outside is full of LEDs. So you can show random images there, you can make it blink whenever you're getting close. This is kind of flashy and attention drawing. But it's also nerdy, you know? Like it's something where you can program your backpack. I I think that's like I I want to make this happen at some point in my life, but you know. There's a bunch of constraints, you know, like getting con ⁓ marketing convinced to pay for those things.
speaker-0: Yeah. I think that's a right amount of, you know, geekiness and it's still quite fashionable. Definitely I would like to have something like that for myself.
speaker-1: And then there's the other question coming in, right? So like if it's not a swag, right? If it's just for me, I mean like it's not that complicated, and this is where my brain goes off and just does random things and in the end, ⁓ we might have another canvas back.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, no, absolutely.
speaker-1: You also target one of my favorite topics that is actually swag, right? How do you produce something that you can hand over ⁓ to an attendee that is meaningful to them and for you? So my favorite example is hey, we want to bring as many emails into our system as we want. So we just put in a coffee booth next to us. We give out coffee for free, we get so many signups, it's great, but what does it mean? It means we are able to sell coffee to people, great, but it does not mean anything that they're connected to my offering, that they're connected to the community, or that they're connected to through DevShrell to my company. ⁓ so for instance, for the droid con we're talking about, I always had like some interactive ⁓ thing happening for the community there. We were programming apps together. So there was a big screen. ⁓ and the screen showed always the current attendee who is just writing code. We merged it together, and then we either had an Android app coming out of it, or one of those e-paper name tag displays that they can program themselves, or something embroidered, which was the craziest one last year, ⁓ where we had an embroidery machine that they were programming with Kotlin code. So they've wrote Kotlin the way they are knowing it. Through several magical steps, it ended up printed on fabric with thread. So like you had one of those patches that felt very nice. And they were saying, I programmed this one. And you immediately have a discussion point. Like, okay, you are part of the community because obviously you needed to program it. And somebody is seeing this one and they're wondering, What is this patch? This looks interesting. And that's my kind of take on swag. How how do we make this
speaker-0: It's definitely outside of the box because, you know, I think it's very common to see, you know, the notebooks or the chargers. They're very fancy or you know, or something simple. You mentioned the keyword there in terms of memorable. And yeah, okay, getting signups, but what happens next? I remember seeing the video, I think there is there's a video on YouTube for that droid con that when people were programming. So would that have been like Something that you will recommend people to do at their booth, but like something dynamic as well.
speaker-1: Yes. It has obviously its ⁓ positives and negatives. The positives from an outside point of view is you have most of the times a crowd of people standing surrounding the screen and doing mob programming, saying, Hey, you should write it this way or that way. Which is amazing. It puts more stress on the attendee, which is a bit of like, okay, some people might like this, some people might not. But then you also take away the attendees' time at the conference. You you know, they they might want to go to talks. Instead, that you are encouraging them on underhanded means to actually write code for you. So my recommendation for people thinking about what to do at their booth is put yourselves A, obviously, into the shoes of your user. You are a confidence walker. What would you like to do? And then think about how you can make this motivation connected to whatever your product is. Can't be more concrete with an abstract question, right? But for me as the community dude organizer, it was like, okay, we want to show a bit about the community and we are knowing that there are mostly engineers writing code. So why not have the community write code and show it to the community? So that that that was the thinking behind. Yeah. Plus then also what ⁓ currently Mario was into was then like either it was embroidery or an e ink paper or whatever else.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yeah, I mean if you can combine both, why not?
speaker-1: Also over the years ⁓ afterwards I had still people coming forward and saying, like, hey, you did this thing last year, right? Can you help me with my ⁓ electronics? Or how did you embroider this one? It's like it's a nice thing. You know, that's exactly what I want. That's also for me a criteria whether it's successful. Like ⁓ did it influence people? Did it change a bit about their outlook? Did they remember it?
speaker-0: And now I think what you mentioned there about measuring the success of an event, like is there and I think we also touched on that in terms of what's making people coming back. So if let's say for any of the companies that maybe you work for, were there any metrics that perhaps it's more difficult to actually like Sentiments. Okay, yeah, everyone's happy.
speaker-1: Discussion is also here always about developer relations or community management. What is the value you can bring to the company? Is it selling hardware security tokens or is it feedback gathered? Or is it ⁓ qualified leads or or or so? My answer is qualified leads is not what we can offer. ⁓ Usually as community or developer relations, we are so far away from actually starting the sales process that we'd rather be in the area of like brand awareness, reach, ⁓ and those kind of things as a marketing measure, right? So like we just talk about what we are offering. More people know about what we are doing. So there is the potential that more people will actually buy what we are having. But it's not a one to one direction, not a one to one connection that makes it a bit difficult. What makes it easier is my personal measurement. So like for me personally, whether I want to know ⁓ whether a talk is successful or not, it's always how many questions did I get afterwards? I gave my talk, I had a good feeling about the talk, but if I get no questions, then this means something is off. It can be the connection between the talk or the presentation. I did to the audience level, like I was underwhelming them or overwhelming them. Or it just was not the right topic. So that's why they didn't understand what I was talking about. But the times I got like six to seven topical questions, that means for me that is an important talk. For me, this is a good talk for me and therefore for the audience, hopefully. But it's also not translating into company metrics, right? So instead, I'm looking forward for actual engineering metrics, right? So like what kind of feedback did we gather? Again, this does not go too much into the community area, but it goes through the product and developer relations. Did we get feedback on our SDKs, on our product, on our hardware from the attendant? And are we able to translate those feedback into something tangible to the product team? Like, hey, what about a new language in our SDKs? What if we are removing a specific part of it to make it easier and less composite? This is for me qualified feedback. That is something valuable I can take out of a conference or or wherever I'm speaking at. And that's also something usually.
speaker-0: I think with employee branding, talent acquisition, like of course, like what you are saying about your talk and either questions or not questions afterwards, ideally questions, but let's say that people will come up to you and the question will be like, Is your team hiring? Or like they want to be part of your company, of your team. So I think it's always not only you already sparked the curiosity in someone. And they see like, ⁓ I I want to be like this guy, Mario, that, you know, talks and is representing not only the company, but also you're representing yourself and delivering a talk and and all of that. So I think that's always at least for me from in the background seeing that as well happening, I think that's also another measure of success.
speaker-1: I I hear you. But it's also one of the hardest measures for me because I personally think it's like I know that the character I'm having and the character I'm portraying is helpful, you know. If I would not be myself, probably the measures I'm delivering would be different. But I just like I I personally don't want it that way, you know? Like it's not about about what I'm presenting. And therefore it is also about me. But like The the the connection should always be the value I'm bringing and not the person who I am. That that's also like from what I've heard from other people, they are actually coming to conferences and meetups because they want to hear what I have to say. Like, okay, cool.
speaker-0: No pressure. As you were saying now, it's a value. And that's why that's how as as well you are presenting that. And I think there's also a level of you're presenting your skills. You're it's a topic I think at the end of the day you always need to have an interest. It's not like, ⁓ here I go again and I'm going to talk about something that I don't care about. I think that's very hard to do. And I think you will reflect that anyway. So yeah, so I think it's yeah, as long as you're passionate and you see and it is valuable at the end of the day. So
speaker-1: Yeah, the authenticity, you know, like you notice when I'm talking about something I'm not behind. Delivering a talk about it does not make sense for me.
speaker-0: Yeah. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. And like with your like previous roles as well, like from Android engine engineer, senior developer advocates, and now as well, you're teaching software engineering at ⁓ SRH Berlin University of Applied Sciences. What like from these roles, what do you think it's something you're taking back into depth row, into your day to day?
speaker-1: So all of them have obviously influence on myself, you know, me as a person. So the the influence is there, I'll take back. But ⁓ s so I'm working at Yubico for software security. we're doing also USB sticks ⁓ to make pass keys happen and you forget your passwords about. sorry for the plug here, ⁓ but just for completeness sake.
speaker-0: And I think it's as you were saying, like you bring your past experiences, either professional or personal, I think it's at some point it just intertwines that. ⁓ so yeah. I actually one guest that I had previously, he's based in Barcelona, so I asked him about his favorite venue to host. a meetup in Barcelona. What would be one venue that you will recommend for people to actually host their meetups in Berlin?
speaker-1: That's a very good one. That's also a very deep one. Because it's depending and I'm sorry for doing it this way, on the style I would say, of meetup I want to have. If it's a free spirited, open source hacker like event, I would go to the ⁓ the C Base representative C Base I was mentioning before, ⁓ a space station crashed into Berlin. Please look it up afterwards in the reading notes. But ⁓ it's one of the very nice hack spaces here in Berlin, which also had the Kerris Communication Congress, people living in there, starting from there. So there is a great hacker connection there. ⁓ but if it's and I I I hate to use this term, but if it's a bit more corporate. I was working at Deutsche Telekom before and I'm still having connections to the beautiful people working there. and sometimes I'm just asking them whether I can get into the hoop round meetup space they have. And sometimes they say yes. ⁓ and this space has like it's very colorful, it's very dynamic, it has different arrangements. ⁓ I really enjoy working with them still and working over there. organizing meetups, hackathons, and things with them. So depending on the level of corporate, ⁓ those those two venues I would prefer. But it's also hard for somebody who is not me. Right? So C Base, you need to find a member. And for Hoopram at Deutsche Telekom, you would need to know the organizers.
speaker-0: Someone.
speaker-1: And ⁓ now the next question is okay, if you don't like I think still some kind of connections are always helpful. but then you ask yourself where you're working currently. Are you a student at a university? Well, maybe the university has rooms where you can hold con ⁓ where you can hold speeches. ⁓ so maybe they can ⁓ work out something with you. or maybe you are at a bigger conference, ⁓ sorry, at a bigger company. They also have conference rooms where you can organize meetups. So the the the answer here on a meta level is whatever is closest to you could be the best. Right? I I happen to know the Who Pong guys. I happen to know some people at the C base. You might happen to know someone else who has a room that start talking to them.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's good advice. And maybe just to wrap up, if ⁓ we could go into a lightning round set of questions. So okay. ⁓ Slack or Discord for hackathon communication?
speaker-1: I'd go for Slack because my status is that you still can connect to Slack without using your private email address. There was like something like a shared user account you have to share in Discord. You can't create a workspace just with one email address.
speaker-0: Okay. Sluck. Okay. So what is a superior community strategy? Sneakers or t shirts?
speaker-1: I mean, I'm I'm sorry, neither. Like you have to tailor it, you know. If it's a t shirt, how many t shirts do you have? If it's a sticker, what does the sticker say about you? And how much space do we have left on your laptops? I mean I have none on mine, so ⁓ that's another criteria. Maybe you'd have people who don't want stickers.
speaker-0: Okay. And pineapple on developer pizza, yes or no? No.
speaker-1: Th there shouldn't be any p ⁓ pineapple on pizza. Obviously that's just my opinion. If you're fine with pineapple on pizza, that's great, but no.
speaker-0: Yeah. That's where the controversy will start in the comment section. And and what will you say it's one word that will describe the burling developer scene right now?
speaker-1: P. One word I I I can't. I need to be extra here again. Because it's also changing, you know, like it's going from the at least from what I'm surveying, is from the hacker independent spirit real technology to more corporate engineering. ⁓ so we are in the middle phase in between, between like I'm curious about the communities, the society attached to it, towards I just want to get my job done. And and and both are fine. Both have their reasons to exist and we are somewhere in the middle. Sorry.
speaker-0: No, that makes sense. No, thank you so much Mario. It was a great conversation. It is
speaker-1: Cool. Thank you so much for inviting me.
