speaker-0: Heather, welcome to Don't Forget the Pizza. How are you today?
speaker-1: Hey, thanks for having me. I'm doing really well. It's Friday. you know, looking forward to the weekend and the holidays coming up. So I'm doing really well. How are you?
speaker-0: Yeah, all good. Yeah, thank you so much for yeah, just taking the time today to actually chat. And yeah, I was actually looking at your experience and I I have to say that I find that it's quite brilliant the way you frame kitchen disasters. Like you could you were telling the audience about if a chocolate cake doesn't rise, it could just turn into a brownie, or this tailed bread can actually become glutons. So I think To me, that's probably the most liberal thing that I have heard. So, like if a talk doesn't land, for example, well, you can go to QA and just try to gain back the audience that way. Or if a demo fails as well, you can actually just try to turn it into a debugging session or something along those lines. So do you find that events or talk moments that don't rise end up and end up being like brownies? What do you think actually people will remember from such a thing?
speaker-1: It's a really good question and a nice topic to start on. I think that within this sort of field, it's important to always kind of stay present as much as possible and go with the flow with how things unfold because the community, the audience, they'll tell you what they're they're needing and what they're looking for. And it's important to always be listening instead of being fixated on an agenda or some goals. sometimes you don't even know what is gonna happen or what's in store until you're in that room on stage at the event. So I think having that ability to know what your backup plan is or know what you know you could get to the audience could be a little more advanced than what you're prepared for. They could also be a lot more a beginner and and so you have to always, you know, really see what the audience is looking for, what they're asking for. and meet them where they are. I think that's true for any disasters with baking, especially, you know, you can't force stillbred to suddenly become raw dough. you know, I I I guess it depend you could turn stillbred into you know you could feed it into something that turns into dough. So there there's always a path. I think when you're able to approach these things with creativity and with the sense of curiosity and cater to, you know, what the environment is telling you, then often it it works out really well.
speaker-0: Pull people underestimates from death rail, like if there's something that people get wrong as well.
speaker-1: underestimate or get wrong. It's hard to say because I've been in DevRel for four to five years at this point. I often, depending on who I'm talking to, they may not know what the role is. Often within tech, people see it as like content creation, technical content creation. Some people just, you know, think it's like influencing or something along those lines or marketing or more sales oriented. So I think the depth of what DevRel is, which is essentially education and enablements and community building. that can be really missed depending on who you're talking to and their own sort of experience with the field because it it varies so greatly from company to company, event to event. so my my tasks with my current job don't necessarily align with the sort of responsibilities I had at a previous job doing DevRel or advocacy. So it's really kind of understanding the the needs of whichever role and whichever phase of life we're in as as a company and also within the role. often when I'm talking to someone who's not in tech, I will just say I do technical content creation because that kind of makes sense to them and it in explaining what developer advocacy is or developer relations can it take a really long time sometimes to really do justice to the role.
speaker-0: It's like you wear many hats, you do many things within the same role. And as you were mentioning as well, it depends which team will or which department will you actually sit on. Maybe going back to your to the professional baking backgrounds, if you were to treat debrel community strategy like a sourdough recipe, and for what I hear, for what I have been reading, that you can just bake the bread. You have to maintain the starter. So between the content, the events and the GitHub repos, what is the living culture that you think the real folks neglect perhaps when they are trying to hit their KPIs?
speaker-1: Good question. I think often we fixate a lot on those numbers, the metrics, the output, the KPIs. And we kind of forget what the heart is of either baking sourdough or the community, which is focusing on on the fervor, the nurturing the community and the growth that is very specific to the environment. So if we start to ignore the variables of the environment, then we could end up with a disaster. The results may not hit the way that we were expecting. And that's true, I think, with community and Devral. If we focus too much on a specific outcome, then often we can miss the opportunities that are right in front of us. That's the, you know, if if we're really just focused on that recipe and it says, let it proof for one hour, you could be in a climate that's completely humid and warm and it could be ready in 30 minutes. And if you're missing those signs, you're not looking for them, then you're probably gonna have a loaf that's overproofed or overripened. and fall flat, you've missed the peak mark and same with with, you know, community and cultures and events. So with DevRel, I think paying attention to the the group and the livelihood and the the liveliness of you know, whatever you're focusing on, whatever you're trying to nurture and cultivate, that's always the heart of of the the process of doing the work. So it's not about me and my goals. It's more about the community and what they need. It's you know, trying to see what as the person curating and cultivating the dough and the bread and the community and the content. It's a matter of of kind of seeing what maybe I could add or give to it to help it grow, to help it nurture, to help it evolve and expand the flavor, if that's the goal. So, you know, for a sourdough starter, often it's white flour and water. But for example, you may want to introduce a little more flavor, a little more life, a little more complexity and nuance. In which case you could add a little bit of rhido and it has just a microbiome biome that really enriches the flavor profile and the liveliness, the bubbles to make a bread that is slightly different, but has all these layers of complexity. And I think that to be applied to DevRel and community growth as well, if if you introduce a concept or an idea or something that is slightly different than the norm, that can really set off this whole reaction. Of that's almost infectious in a way that creates fervor, which is the heart of fermentation, growing and feeding off of one another, and having the idea and excitement be contagious is something really special when you see it happening. but if you're too focused on the metrics or you're too focused on a specific outcome, often we can miss the opportunities that can lead us to that enriched, complex, lively sort of result that we all really want, how that translates to sales leads and other important KPIs, there's I think a lot of, you know, specifics there that are at play. But I think really as long as we're centered on the users, the developers, the community and what they need at any given time, then we're able to have results that we're happy with, even if it looks a little different than what we were expecting at the start.
speaker-0: It like things, especially in the community with developer advocacy, you it you cannot rush them. Like I think I have talked to quite a few several folks where perhaps people that are not within their org, they might want to speed up things. What you were mentioning as well. bread is not going it's going to rise when it's going when it's meant to rise. You cannot rush that. So I think even just handling that or taking that experience to the community work, you have to even just you have to build trust with your with your members and that takes time and it cannot be rushed.
speaker-1: True. I think the more skilled devil folks and bakers, we know which environmental factors do change sort of the rate of of growth or change and and maturity and and ripeness. And if we're able to skillfully edit those environmental variables to make the dough rise faster by adding some warmth, adding humidity, it can work out well, but we also have to be careful there. I think the best way is to let things grow organically. But I understand that businesses often want disease result this quarter, this week, this month. And so getting a little bit creative and seeing what other factors we can edit and change in order to hit those goals is part of the job as well.
speaker-0: looking at a few of your previous talks, I think there was one. I just love the names and my I might be paraphrasing, but I think there was one about what chickens can teach us about performance testing. And there were three lessons from the chicken coop. So if you were to give someone advice or those three lessons to someone that is trying to put together their first CFP, what would you tell them?
speaker-1: gosh. yeah, that was a fun little talk to put together. I wish I had a little more time to focus on that one. I think that was when I was really starting to get into performance testing. So honestly, I would love to rewrite that topic and see what I've learned just within the the year or so of being in performance testing. So for me, my goals with any talk is one, to enjoy it, to have some fun. I love when I can make the audience laugh. Doesn't always happen, but usually I can throw in a joke there. Sometimes it's self-defurcating, but sometimes it it's just a clever little pun or something that that gets a reaction. The other goal is education. I want the audience, everyone in there to walk away with something that they didn't know or think about before, whether it's a different perspective, a certain way of framing or positioning two unrelated things together, or an aspect of a best practice or a methodology that goes a little further, adds a little more nuance or color to what they already know. And that can be hard if the audience ranges everywhere from like not even in tech to the most expert you know, person who has seven books and thirty years of experience sitting at like director level of of some massive company. So it can be hard to reshugle, but you know, it's never about like getting a hundred percent. It's really about really at the end of the day, it's about how I feel about what I deliver. I think at first I was catering too much to what I think the audience wants to hear. And then I would the delivery would be a little scattered. I would be very nervous. I would be looking to the audience to give me feedback too much. And now I craft something that I enjoy hearing and delivering, something that I find useful and meaningful to me. And while still covering, you know, those goals with education. offering something to every level and having fun. Honestly, curiosity and playfulness is super important for me. because I know that people able to learn better, they are paying attention more if they see that I am having a good time doing it and delivering it. So that's specific to how I like to do talks. I know that it's not true for everyone. I think being honest with who you are and knowing yourself and then having that kind of shine through in. the CFP and the abstracts and the talk ideas is important. I don't think everyone could deliver a talk that ties together two unrelated things like raising chickens and performance testing. I don't think that everyone should either. You know, I I appreciate both the very technical, dry, advanced sort of talks as well. But sometimes we like to see variety too. So offering that in talk. is is one way to do it. So just looking at what you're interested in, what your hobbies are, what you can relate to another discipline. That can be an interesting way to examine one craft versus another. Because with software development and coding, there's there's a craft to it. There's some systems that we have to learn. There's rules that we have to follow. And then once you kind of get the basics down, you can you have room to be creative, to explore, to try different things to be messy, to just come up with some crazy ideas, go for it, see what happens. Sometimes it lands, sometimes it doesn't. And I think you can also apply that to the way that you do talk. You know, when I go to submit for any conference, I try to offer a few different varieties, something that's maybe more silly, out there, playful, while still rooted in the topic and the education that is important. And also something that is a little more beginner friendly. traditional and without any of the nonsense because you're gonna find people who in who want one over the other. And I'm sure with my chicken talk people, there are some people who didn't like that at all and hate the idea of chickens as pets while and that's okay. They don't need to, you know, not everyone needs to love the idea of owning seven different varieties of chickens in your backyard in an urban environment to learn about performance testing. So for me, the goal is always to deliver what what can be helpful for them, especially now with my current job. I want to make sure that I can simplify things and and discuss things and present things in a way that makes for assessing not only approachable, but also relatable and lower the barrier so that the the practices that people have in this industry, especially around testing, stress testing, load testing, it can it can no longer feel like a daunting task. And sometimes it just You know, the the activation energy that it takes to for someone to just write spend the five minutes to write their first low test. The mental barrier is the hardest part. It's not the actual, you know, writing the test part that people need to do. It's like learning and understanding that this can be done in a few minutes.
speaker-0: Is there a significant shift, you think, between your communication strategy when you were when you have been in a structured teaching environment versus your audience at events like WebDEFCO and trying to obviously make as w you were mentioning as well, trying to make these topics a little bit more approachable to people? Is there any shift that you notice yourself between that background of teaching and how you approach it now?
speaker-1: Yeah, I think that's because, you know, when you're on stage giving a talk, you often can't spend the time to talk to every single person and get to know what sort of experience, perspective, and understanding they have. That part you, you know, you kind of have to make some guesses as to who the audience is and what they represent and what kind of backgrounds they're coming with. Whereas with more traditional teaching settings or workshops. you have the time to have those conversations with each individual person or the group and approach it with more of a questions-based methodology where ideally I would start with asking everyone what they know about performance testing, if they've done performance testing or whatever topic, you know, I'm trying to work on and teach, so that I can understand not only their experience, but also the way that they think and the way that they explain things. Because understanding how people learn. And how people integrate growth within their own, you know, skill set is super important, I think, to really fast track how I can help them. I still kind of practice that now with anyone that I meet within the industry. I want to know everything about them so that I know what I can offer that could be relevant to them, that can paint the picture a little brighter, a little wider, offer them something that that is a slightly different perspective. And it's hard to do that if I don't know who they are or what they know, what they think. I try to incorporate that with writing talk, but because it's more one sided when you're delivering talks, I have to be a little creative and do some imagining to to think like, okay, what demographics am I serving? What experience levels are are they looking for? And even across cultures, because I I've done a lot of international speaking too. I I now know to kind of understand how does the culture express themselves? What do they value in these kind of thing? Are they looking for more of the philosophical, theoretical, softer side of topics? Or do they just want the facts, the details, the demos, the technical sides, or somewhere in between? And not every audience is gonna laugh at my jokes, and that's okay too. So, you know, really just Understanding who I'm talking to is universal, but also the way that I do it really depends on on the formats, whether it's a classroom, a workshop, an online webinar, some content piece that's in person or virtual, it always comes down to trying to understand who I'm talking to.
speaker-0: You mentioned as well earlier about play and creativity and I did notice this in one of the talks where you mentioned about you not being a bot. And you were making the arguments, I believe, in in terms of creativity and playfulness, and that's our edge over AI and not speed or scale. So with that in mind, do you think it like between you know, different events, a hackathon, a meetup, or a booth on a conference floor, obviously that's where you will see people being playful and creative together. So where do you think automation is an advantage in DebRL and when do you think its play is our competitive advantage?
speaker-1: That's a question. And I think this could quickly change as innovation and advancements come out. And yes, you can probably train LLMs to be playful and curious, or at least sound that way and fake it. but I think that with automation, it's a really great tool to do a lot of the tedious tasks, the manual lifting, the scaffolding, structuring, organizing. Outlining, you know, those areas, but the parts that are the essence of this kind of work becomes the creativity, having really a a good idea of what the big picture is, really integrating what you know to be true from your lived experience. So currently LLMs don't have this true lived experience to refer back to, and that can fall. maybe in the future, yeah. But you know, having the expertise that comes with just being in this type of role in any role for for any amount of time, that's hard to really mimic with LLMs in automation. So staying in the cognitive loop and being in control and really driving the creativity, the messaging, the shape, the style, the topics, the the focal points, all that I think is better done by The individuals and then the rest, you can kind of mess around with the automation. And I think this is rapidly changing in and myself. I would love to write some skills that can mimic my tone, the way that I think about things creatively, the way that turns turn my process more into systems that can be offloaded to AI. But I think I will never, you know, get to the point where I'm just publishing things blindly that was created by AI without first understanding. Does this make sense to me? Is it the way that I want to deliver this talk, this blog post, this video? And where can I add more value? What kind of context is missing? Who could be reading this and what would they think? so AI can help with a lot of that, but always I think it needs to go through the cognitive filter of a human for now.
speaker-0: We'll see what happens in the future. So if it's okay with you, I would like to do a lightning round. So these are just few few questions that I have for you. So Heather, what's your favorite yoga pose?
speaker-1: I like Camel a lot. The really deep act heart opener.
speaker-0: And Slack or Discord for hackathon communications.
speaker-1: gosh.
speaker-0: I can't.
speaker-1: I like both. I use both daily.
speaker-0: Sure. And what do you think is the superior community strategy? Sneakers or t shirts?
speaker-1: Depends on the goal. I think people are more willing to take stickers because it takes up less less real estate in their luggage, in their pockets, in their bags. People, you know, shirt can be can be polarizing. A lot of people don't want another shirt to add to their pile. I'm constantly having to thin out my pile of tech shirts. I care a lot about what the quality of the shirt is. I'm only gonna go for cent cotton. Whereas the stickers, you know, if it's cool and I like it. I'm gonna take it and I'm gonna put it in my sticker bag and I'm never gonna put it anywhere on. So, you know, I think yeah, both are good strategies. Stickers are a lower sort of barrier to entry.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's very true. And speaking of controversies, pineapple on developer pizza. Yes or no?
speaker-1: Depends. So I love some fresh pineapple that's been grilled on on a pizza, but pineapple for my can, I tend to stay away from that. Okay.
speaker-0: And what do you think about live demo or pre recorded video for a keynote?
speaker-1: I think going doing anything live is always preferred because then you're able to actually connect with the human and interact with them and feed off with one another, but doing ri pre recorded is such a save is more efficient with timing and stuff. So if it's a online conference, doing everything ri pre recorded is really nice.
speaker-0: That's true. So well Heather, thank you so much. And it was lovely chatting to you. Okay.
speaker-1: Yeah, thank you so much. And we'll keep in touch for sure.
speaker-1: Hey, thanks for having me. I'm doing really well. It's Friday. you know, looking forward to the weekend and the holidays coming up. So I'm doing really well. How are you?
speaker-0: Yeah, all good. Yeah, thank you so much for yeah, just taking the time today to actually chat. And yeah, I was actually looking at your experience and I I have to say that I find that it's quite brilliant the way you frame kitchen disasters. Like you could you were telling the audience about if a chocolate cake doesn't rise, it could just turn into a brownie, or this tailed bread can actually become glutons. So I think To me, that's probably the most liberal thing that I have heard. So, like if a talk doesn't land, for example, well, you can go to QA and just try to gain back the audience that way. Or if a demo fails as well, you can actually just try to turn it into a debugging session or something along those lines. So do you find that events or talk moments that don't rise end up and end up being like brownies? What do you think actually people will remember from such a thing?
speaker-1: It's a really good question and a nice topic to start on. I think that within this sort of field, it's important to always kind of stay present as much as possible and go with the flow with how things unfold because the community, the audience, they'll tell you what they're they're needing and what they're looking for. And it's important to always be listening instead of being fixated on an agenda or some goals. sometimes you don't even know what is gonna happen or what's in store until you're in that room on stage at the event. So I think having that ability to know what your backup plan is or know what you know you could get to the audience could be a little more advanced than what you're prepared for. They could also be a lot more a beginner and and so you have to always, you know, really see what the audience is looking for, what they're asking for. and meet them where they are. I think that's true for any disasters with baking, especially, you know, you can't force stillbred to suddenly become raw dough. you know, I I I guess it depend you could turn stillbred into you know you could feed it into something that turns into dough. So there there's always a path. I think when you're able to approach these things with creativity and with the sense of curiosity and cater to, you know, what the environment is telling you, then often it it works out really well.
speaker-0: Pull people underestimates from death rail, like if there's something that people get wrong as well.
speaker-1: underestimate or get wrong. It's hard to say because I've been in DevRel for four to five years at this point. I often, depending on who I'm talking to, they may not know what the role is. Often within tech, people see it as like content creation, technical content creation. Some people just, you know, think it's like influencing or something along those lines or marketing or more sales oriented. So I think the depth of what DevRel is, which is essentially education and enablements and community building. that can be really missed depending on who you're talking to and their own sort of experience with the field because it it varies so greatly from company to company, event to event. so my my tasks with my current job don't necessarily align with the sort of responsibilities I had at a previous job doing DevRel or advocacy. So it's really kind of understanding the the needs of whichever role and whichever phase of life we're in as as a company and also within the role. often when I'm talking to someone who's not in tech, I will just say I do technical content creation because that kind of makes sense to them and it in explaining what developer advocacy is or developer relations can it take a really long time sometimes to really do justice to the role.
speaker-0: It's like you wear many hats, you do many things within the same role. And as you were mentioning as well, it depends which team will or which department will you actually sit on. Maybe going back to your to the professional baking backgrounds, if you were to treat debrel community strategy like a sourdough recipe, and for what I hear, for what I have been reading, that you can just bake the bread. You have to maintain the starter. So between the content, the events and the GitHub repos, what is the living culture that you think the real folks neglect perhaps when they are trying to hit their KPIs?
speaker-1: Good question. I think often we fixate a lot on those numbers, the metrics, the output, the KPIs. And we kind of forget what the heart is of either baking sourdough or the community, which is focusing on on the fervor, the nurturing the community and the growth that is very specific to the environment. So if we start to ignore the variables of the environment, then we could end up with a disaster. The results may not hit the way that we were expecting. And that's true, I think, with community and Devral. If we focus too much on a specific outcome, then often we can miss the opportunities that are right in front of us. That's the, you know, if if we're really just focused on that recipe and it says, let it proof for one hour, you could be in a climate that's completely humid and warm and it could be ready in 30 minutes. And if you're missing those signs, you're not looking for them, then you're probably gonna have a loaf that's overproofed or overripened. and fall flat, you've missed the peak mark and same with with, you know, community and cultures and events. So with DevRel, I think paying attention to the the group and the livelihood and the the liveliness of you know, whatever you're focusing on, whatever you're trying to nurture and cultivate, that's always the heart of of the the process of doing the work. So it's not about me and my goals. It's more about the community and what they need. It's you know, trying to see what as the person curating and cultivating the dough and the bread and the community and the content. It's a matter of of kind of seeing what maybe I could add or give to it to help it grow, to help it nurture, to help it evolve and expand the flavor, if that's the goal. So, you know, for a sourdough starter, often it's white flour and water. But for example, you may want to introduce a little more flavor, a little more life, a little more complexity and nuance. In which case you could add a little bit of rhido and it has just a microbiome biome that really enriches the flavor profile and the liveliness, the bubbles to make a bread that is slightly different, but has all these layers of complexity. And I think that to be applied to DevRel and community growth as well, if if you introduce a concept or an idea or something that is slightly different than the norm, that can really set off this whole reaction. Of that's almost infectious in a way that creates fervor, which is the heart of fermentation, growing and feeding off of one another, and having the idea and excitement be contagious is something really special when you see it happening. but if you're too focused on the metrics or you're too focused on a specific outcome, often we can miss the opportunities that can lead us to that enriched, complex, lively sort of result that we all really want, how that translates to sales leads and other important KPIs, there's I think a lot of, you know, specifics there that are at play. But I think really as long as we're centered on the users, the developers, the community and what they need at any given time, then we're able to have results that we're happy with, even if it looks a little different than what we were expecting at the start.
speaker-0: It like things, especially in the community with developer advocacy, you it you cannot rush them. Like I think I have talked to quite a few several folks where perhaps people that are not within their org, they might want to speed up things. What you were mentioning as well. bread is not going it's going to rise when it's going when it's meant to rise. You cannot rush that. So I think even just handling that or taking that experience to the community work, you have to even just you have to build trust with your with your members and that takes time and it cannot be rushed.
speaker-1: True. I think the more skilled devil folks and bakers, we know which environmental factors do change sort of the rate of of growth or change and and maturity and and ripeness. And if we're able to skillfully edit those environmental variables to make the dough rise faster by adding some warmth, adding humidity, it can work out well, but we also have to be careful there. I think the best way is to let things grow organically. But I understand that businesses often want disease result this quarter, this week, this month. And so getting a little bit creative and seeing what other factors we can edit and change in order to hit those goals is part of the job as well.
speaker-0: looking at a few of your previous talks, I think there was one. I just love the names and my I might be paraphrasing, but I think there was one about what chickens can teach us about performance testing. And there were three lessons from the chicken coop. So if you were to give someone advice or those three lessons to someone that is trying to put together their first CFP, what would you tell them?
speaker-1: gosh. yeah, that was a fun little talk to put together. I wish I had a little more time to focus on that one. I think that was when I was really starting to get into performance testing. So honestly, I would love to rewrite that topic and see what I've learned just within the the year or so of being in performance testing. So for me, my goals with any talk is one, to enjoy it, to have some fun. I love when I can make the audience laugh. Doesn't always happen, but usually I can throw in a joke there. Sometimes it's self-defurcating, but sometimes it it's just a clever little pun or something that that gets a reaction. The other goal is education. I want the audience, everyone in there to walk away with something that they didn't know or think about before, whether it's a different perspective, a certain way of framing or positioning two unrelated things together, or an aspect of a best practice or a methodology that goes a little further, adds a little more nuance or color to what they already know. And that can be hard if the audience ranges everywhere from like not even in tech to the most expert you know, person who has seven books and thirty years of experience sitting at like director level of of some massive company. So it can be hard to reshugle, but you know, it's never about like getting a hundred percent. It's really about really at the end of the day, it's about how I feel about what I deliver. I think at first I was catering too much to what I think the audience wants to hear. And then I would the delivery would be a little scattered. I would be very nervous. I would be looking to the audience to give me feedback too much. And now I craft something that I enjoy hearing and delivering, something that I find useful and meaningful to me. And while still covering, you know, those goals with education. offering something to every level and having fun. Honestly, curiosity and playfulness is super important for me. because I know that people able to learn better, they are paying attention more if they see that I am having a good time doing it and delivering it. So that's specific to how I like to do talks. I know that it's not true for everyone. I think being honest with who you are and knowing yourself and then having that kind of shine through in. the CFP and the abstracts and the talk ideas is important. I don't think everyone could deliver a talk that ties together two unrelated things like raising chickens and performance testing. I don't think that everyone should either. You know, I I appreciate both the very technical, dry, advanced sort of talks as well. But sometimes we like to see variety too. So offering that in talk. is is one way to do it. So just looking at what you're interested in, what your hobbies are, what you can relate to another discipline. That can be an interesting way to examine one craft versus another. Because with software development and coding, there's there's a craft to it. There's some systems that we have to learn. There's rules that we have to follow. And then once you kind of get the basics down, you can you have room to be creative, to explore, to try different things to be messy, to just come up with some crazy ideas, go for it, see what happens. Sometimes it lands, sometimes it doesn't. And I think you can also apply that to the way that you do talk. You know, when I go to submit for any conference, I try to offer a few different varieties, something that's maybe more silly, out there, playful, while still rooted in the topic and the education that is important. And also something that is a little more beginner friendly. traditional and without any of the nonsense because you're gonna find people who in who want one over the other. And I'm sure with my chicken talk people, there are some people who didn't like that at all and hate the idea of chickens as pets while and that's okay. They don't need to, you know, not everyone needs to love the idea of owning seven different varieties of chickens in your backyard in an urban environment to learn about performance testing. So for me, the goal is always to deliver what what can be helpful for them, especially now with my current job. I want to make sure that I can simplify things and and discuss things and present things in a way that makes for assessing not only approachable, but also relatable and lower the barrier so that the the practices that people have in this industry, especially around testing, stress testing, load testing, it can it can no longer feel like a daunting task. And sometimes it just You know, the the activation energy that it takes to for someone to just write spend the five minutes to write their first low test. The mental barrier is the hardest part. It's not the actual, you know, writing the test part that people need to do. It's like learning and understanding that this can be done in a few minutes.
speaker-0: Is there a significant shift, you think, between your communication strategy when you were when you have been in a structured teaching environment versus your audience at events like WebDEFCO and trying to obviously make as w you were mentioning as well, trying to make these topics a little bit more approachable to people? Is there any shift that you notice yourself between that background of teaching and how you approach it now?
speaker-1: Yeah, I think that's because, you know, when you're on stage giving a talk, you often can't spend the time to talk to every single person and get to know what sort of experience, perspective, and understanding they have. That part you, you know, you kind of have to make some guesses as to who the audience is and what they represent and what kind of backgrounds they're coming with. Whereas with more traditional teaching settings or workshops. you have the time to have those conversations with each individual person or the group and approach it with more of a questions-based methodology where ideally I would start with asking everyone what they know about performance testing, if they've done performance testing or whatever topic, you know, I'm trying to work on and teach, so that I can understand not only their experience, but also the way that they think and the way that they explain things. Because understanding how people learn. And how people integrate growth within their own, you know, skill set is super important, I think, to really fast track how I can help them. I still kind of practice that now with anyone that I meet within the industry. I want to know everything about them so that I know what I can offer that could be relevant to them, that can paint the picture a little brighter, a little wider, offer them something that that is a slightly different perspective. And it's hard to do that if I don't know who they are or what they know, what they think. I try to incorporate that with writing talk, but because it's more one sided when you're delivering talks, I have to be a little creative and do some imagining to to think like, okay, what demographics am I serving? What experience levels are are they looking for? And even across cultures, because I I've done a lot of international speaking too. I I now know to kind of understand how does the culture express themselves? What do they value in these kind of thing? Are they looking for more of the philosophical, theoretical, softer side of topics? Or do they just want the facts, the details, the demos, the technical sides, or somewhere in between? And not every audience is gonna laugh at my jokes, and that's okay too. So, you know, really just Understanding who I'm talking to is universal, but also the way that I do it really depends on on the formats, whether it's a classroom, a workshop, an online webinar, some content piece that's in person or virtual, it always comes down to trying to understand who I'm talking to.
speaker-0: You mentioned as well earlier about play and creativity and I did notice this in one of the talks where you mentioned about you not being a bot. And you were making the arguments, I believe, in in terms of creativity and playfulness, and that's our edge over AI and not speed or scale. So with that in mind, do you think it like between you know, different events, a hackathon, a meetup, or a booth on a conference floor, obviously that's where you will see people being playful and creative together. So where do you think automation is an advantage in DebRL and when do you think its play is our competitive advantage?
speaker-1: That's a question. And I think this could quickly change as innovation and advancements come out. And yes, you can probably train LLMs to be playful and curious, or at least sound that way and fake it. but I think that with automation, it's a really great tool to do a lot of the tedious tasks, the manual lifting, the scaffolding, structuring, organizing. Outlining, you know, those areas, but the parts that are the essence of this kind of work becomes the creativity, having really a a good idea of what the big picture is, really integrating what you know to be true from your lived experience. So currently LLMs don't have this true lived experience to refer back to, and that can fall. maybe in the future, yeah. But you know, having the expertise that comes with just being in this type of role in any role for for any amount of time, that's hard to really mimic with LLMs in automation. So staying in the cognitive loop and being in control and really driving the creativity, the messaging, the shape, the style, the topics, the the focal points, all that I think is better done by The individuals and then the rest, you can kind of mess around with the automation. And I think this is rapidly changing in and myself. I would love to write some skills that can mimic my tone, the way that I think about things creatively, the way that turns turn my process more into systems that can be offloaded to AI. But I think I will never, you know, get to the point where I'm just publishing things blindly that was created by AI without first understanding. Does this make sense to me? Is it the way that I want to deliver this talk, this blog post, this video? And where can I add more value? What kind of context is missing? Who could be reading this and what would they think? so AI can help with a lot of that, but always I think it needs to go through the cognitive filter of a human for now.
speaker-0: We'll see what happens in the future. So if it's okay with you, I would like to do a lightning round. So these are just few few questions that I have for you. So Heather, what's your favorite yoga pose?
speaker-1: I like Camel a lot. The really deep act heart opener.
speaker-0: And Slack or Discord for hackathon communications.
speaker-1: gosh.
speaker-0: I can't.
speaker-1: I like both. I use both daily.
speaker-0: Sure. And what do you think is the superior community strategy? Sneakers or t shirts?
speaker-1: Depends on the goal. I think people are more willing to take stickers because it takes up less less real estate in their luggage, in their pockets, in their bags. People, you know, shirt can be can be polarizing. A lot of people don't want another shirt to add to their pile. I'm constantly having to thin out my pile of tech shirts. I care a lot about what the quality of the shirt is. I'm only gonna go for cent cotton. Whereas the stickers, you know, if it's cool and I like it. I'm gonna take it and I'm gonna put it in my sticker bag and I'm never gonna put it anywhere on. So, you know, I think yeah, both are good strategies. Stickers are a lower sort of barrier to entry.
speaker-0: Yeah, that's very true. And speaking of controversies, pineapple on developer pizza. Yes or no?
speaker-1: Depends. So I love some fresh pineapple that's been grilled on on a pizza, but pineapple for my can, I tend to stay away from that. Okay.
speaker-0: And what do you think about live demo or pre recorded video for a keynote?
speaker-1: I think going doing anything live is always preferred because then you're able to actually connect with the human and interact with them and feed off with one another, but doing ri pre recorded is such a save is more efficient with timing and stuff. So if it's a online conference, doing everything ri pre recorded is really nice.
speaker-0: That's true. So well Heather, thank you so much. And it was lovely chatting to you. Okay.
speaker-1: Yeah, thank you so much. And we'll keep in touch for sure.
