S3:E4
[00:00:00] Todd Libby: Well, welcome to the Front End Nerdery Podcast, a podcast about front end stuff, programming, and all that goodness. Uh, I'm Todd Libby, your host, my co-host, Homer Gaines is at Stir Trek. So, he's, he's jet setting this month, uh, the month of May. He's got a lot of, uh, talks he's doing. So, he w unfortunately can't be with us, but maybe we'll talk a little bit about sound, uh, stuff, equipment and stuff.
Anyways, just so that he knows he is missing out. But, um, my guests today, two, plural are, Amy Dutton, she is the director of Design at Zeal and James Q. Quick, content creator, apparently Rubik's Cube Master, and I've seen this firsthand, and I know Amy, you did too, squirrel whisperer.
[00:01:07] James Q. Quick: Squirrel whisper. It's probably the most important of all the points.
[00:01:10] Todd: Pro. Yes, definitely. That's at the top of the cv, right?
[00:01:16] James: That's right.
[00:01:16] Todd: Yeah. So, uh, James, Amy, thank you for coming on. When doing a little mashup, we, you know, got together in London at our Hunger Games conference there and, uh, said, you know what, let's do a little, uh, what do they call it, mashup or whatcha you call it?
[00:01:36] James: Crossover
[00:01:36] Todd: Crossover. Yeah. So, uh, I'll let you both, um, add anything to introduce yourselves and then we'll get right into the questions.
[00:01:48] Amy Dutton: Yeah, well first, thanks for having us. I really appreciate being on. Always enjoy talking about lobsters to you with you.
[00:01:56] Todd: Uh,
[00:01:59] James: Amy, do you wanna do your additional personal details? Yeah.
[00:02:04] Amy: Hello.
[00:02:05] Todd: Yeah
[00:02:05] Amy: Uh, yeah, so, um, as Todd mentioned, I'm the director of Design at Zeal. I'm also a full stack developer and have been doing web design and development for over 20 years. So, I'm a grandmother when it comes to this stuff.
[00:02:19] James: And I am the grandchild when it comes to this stuff.
[00:02:22] Amy: No gross. No, you can't.
[00:02:24] James: Is that too far? I don't know how far
[00:02:26] Amy: you cannot be my grandchild.
[00:02:27] James: Hey, anyways, I, I've been in the web dev space since 2016. So not near as long, but it's been several years now and have about, uh, 10 plus years’ experience, software development and, um, developer advocacy is what I've spent the majority of my time, my career doing up until 8, 9, 10 months ago, however long it's been, and I've been doing content creation full-time since then.
And I was, I was just realizing like I don't really have a strong title, like Amy jokes that I don't have a real job, which is fine, but I also just don't, I don't feel like I have an amazing title on my resume right now cause it's just content creator. And I want something like cooler. So, if anybody has suggestions, let me know.
[00:03:05] Amy: I thought that was squirrel whisper.
[00:03:07] James: Squirrel whisperer. Yes. That's, that's like the, that's the tagline. Uh, like the sub header underneath the title. Yeah.
[00:03:15] Todd: The
[00:03:15] Amy: Now if you can just whisper to squirrels with your Rubik's cube then.
[00:03:21] James: While doing a Rubik’s cube, I could probably do that.
[00:03:24] Amy: or speak.
[00:03:25] James: Challenge accepted.
[00:03:25] Todd: video we, we need, we need video of that. So, um, again, thank you for coming on. Uh, let's talk first about I, I'm free styling today because I've been so busy. Um, this weekend I didn't get my, uh, myself organized in time. But, um, let's talk about community, cause you, James and Amy, you're a part of this as well. Well, you're a big part of this. It's, uh, Learn, Build, Teach. Can you, uh, now you are well known, but just in case anybody that listens to this podcast that doesn't know what is Learn, Build, Teach?
[00:04:14] James: Yeah, for me, it's been a philosophy of mine for several years. Uh, the idea is as developers, we spend a lot of time learning like that, any anyone can testify, like the learning journey never ends, cause technology moves so quickly, especially in the JavaScript web development ecosystem. So, we spent a lot of time learning.
We use what we learned to build stuff, which is like, what's the best way to learn, is to build stuff, is always the general advice that we give. And I think that's the epitome of being a developer is. Having the capability of like using your skills to build stuff, like you can solve most problems with some sort of application of some sort.
And then the last part of that is to teach. I, I never would've considered myself to like want to be a teacher growing up or anything like that, but that's really like the passion I think that Amy and I both share. But that's been like the inspiration for all of my content is I create content to teach people and help them.
And it's kind of twofold, like obviously the selfless part is being able to help the community, provide resources, help developers learn and grow in their careers, et cetera. The selfish part also is that I get better as I teach, cause it like you get good at, you get better by building and then you get even better by trying to explain to other people what you built and why and how.
And anyway, that has been a personal philosophy of mine. Learn, build, teach for several years and I kind of had this like month-long process of brand crisis, uh, is my brand Learn, Build, Teach? Is my brand, my name James Q. Quick and decided to kind of segment, like I have my personal brand, which is James Q. Quick.
All of my content and stuff goes under that. And then turned Learn, Build, Teach this philosophy into a Discord community. Uh, so it's like 5,000 members, which sounds like a lot of people. It's not near as active as you would think it would be for 5,000 people, but we started really trying to focus on events to provide value to the community, so like resume reviews.
We just did a show and tell hour where people just came and talked about the projects and stuff that they worked on. We have forum channels for people to ask questions to get help, and it's really just been a fun process to be a part of that and watch it grow over the past several years and see more and more people contribute to it, but also just people getting value out of it.
[00:06:11] Todd: Yeah, I
[00:06:11] Amy: I think,
[00:06:12] Todd: go ahead.
[00:06:13] Amy: Oh sorry. I think one of my favorite episodes that we ever recorded for the Compressed podcast like putting Learn, Build, Teach into practice was we had a React Hooks episode where James was breaking down all of the different types of hooks that React gives you out of the box. And while we were recording, it was like, hold on just a second.
We need to make sure that we understand what we're talking about in order to be able to teach it. And it really clarified a lot of things for us. In terms of edge case hooks that we had never used and we had to get to a point where we had, we could explain that to somebody else in a very succinct and understandable way.
And so, taking that extra step really solidified that knowledge.
[00:06:56] Todd: Yeah
[00:06:56] James: Yeah, I've said this many times, like you, you can use teaching as a way to reinforce things that you learn and or you can realize, or you can use it as a way to realize that you didn't know what you thought you understood.
Like as you go to explain something and you stumble, then you then it's like a call out like, hey, I should probably go do and go and do some additional research and spend some additional time with this topic, cause I really don't understand it the way I thought I did.
It's just totally different when you have to like spit it out and reverse the thought process to explain to someone else.
[00:07:24] Todd: Right. Yeah. And I have, uh, not been a good, um, community, uh, what the word I'm looking for? Um, I don't know what I'm, I don't know what the word is I'm looking for. Uh, member, I guess. Uh, I'm, I'm a part of it. I'm a part of Learn, Build, Teach, and I have not been in there for, I've, I've gone in and snooped around a little bit. Um, of course lurking. But, um, no, I definitely got to, you know, get back in there and, uh, where did I put, there you are. Right there. There. It's so, uh,
[00:08:10] James: Finding your real time. But that's kind of like, that's kinda the epitome of community stuff, right?
[00:08:15] Todd: Yeah
[00:08:15] James: Like I think we, I think we all do that. We all have too many slacks and discords like I, I'm active in mine because it's mine. And then anything after that, it's like I would, I love, there's so much value here.
I'd love to be more active, but you just only have so much time to do certain things, which is why the mentality for me has been getting back to helping fill those gaps for people. Like as they're looking for value. What, how can I match that value to make this a resource for people at different stages of their journey, more targeted at the things that they're looking for?
[00:08:44] Todd: Right
[00:08:44] James: And that's just, again, that's the epitome of community.
[00:08:47] Todd: Yeah
[00:08:47] James: Like you have a lot of people that have. A lot of interest. They would love to be involved in a lot of things, but we all have priorities. We only have so much time in the day, and it's never enough to do all the things that we wish we could.
[00:08:57] Todd: yeah, definitely.
[00:08:59] Amy: I think, I think a big thing for me is I absolutely loved Twitter, but it's kind of on the fritz. And so, finding a community replacement for that and Learn, Build, Teach is a great opportunity to have that. And in some ways, you have better communication with people in the community because it is a smaller group and because the people that are active really do wanna see the community succeed.
So, one of the things that James has instigated is he has started a content bootcamp for a select few in small groups, and I think the plan is to eventually roll that out to more small groups, but to keep that nice and tight for people that want accountability as they're creating content. And the group that's in there right now has had some amazing discussions about different types of content that they're exploring, things that they see online, asking people for help, getting feedback.
So, I would just encourage anybody that's trying to find a place online to really dig in, if not to the Learn, Build, Teach Discord community. Find another community that resonates with you.
[00:10:02] Todd: Mm, definitely. Yeah. I have way too many of 'em. I just looked now and it's like way too, ma, I, I, I must have at least 40, uh, discord. That's not even, that's not even counting the Slack stuff.
[00:10:18] Amy: Well, and I know that can get overwhelming and for me, I just. Okay, these are the channels even within a server that I'm gonna pay attention to, and just kinda let the rest of it go. Otherwise, you are gonna be overwhelmed and just feel like you're constantly behind in those conversations and trying to keep up.
[00:10:35] Todd: Yeah. Yeah, definitely. I'm, I'm looking here, and you know, you got a lot of good stuff. Uh, front end, backend design, React, Vue, Svelte, um, you know, a lot, lots of good stuff here. So, um, your 100 days of code, your advent of code for 2022. So yeah, a lot of good stuff. So definitely, um, gonna have to pop back in and it kind of wanna see an accessibility channel in there.
[00:11:09] James: We’ve consolidated everything too. Um, forum, well forum channel. So, it's just,
[00:11:14] Todd: Ok
[00:11:14] James: you can tag uh, so we archived all of the previous topic channels and just added a general forum, which is a little, like, worked out really, really well for us. Cause you can use tags to tag your question and then it has like a centralized place to, to follow the individual conversations or individual questions that people post, which it was getting hard to do inside of just like straight text channels.
So, forums have been really awesome. Um, and it's been really a great fill in the gap or fill in the missing pieces, I guess, of, of how we actually help people with questions that they have.
[00:11:50] Todd: Right. See that's goes to show what I know about Discord. Cause I haven't been on in so long. So, um, I had one, I ran one and I just never, it wasn't, it wasn't, there were people on there, but it wasn't to where the, it was busy enough that it warranted me maintaining it. So, I had, I just shut it down. Um, and, you know, um, but definitely, uh, we'll ch well, uh, we'll put the, now see this again.
It goes to show how much I know about Discord. We can put a uh, link in the, uh, show notes, or is, is there an in, there's still invites. I do know that.
[00:12:39] Amy: You can go to LearnBuildTeach.com and it'll redirect you to the Discord server so that you can get in.
[00:12:45] Todd: Cool. Thank you. So yeah, we'll put that in there. Um, okay, so we have that. Amy, you've got some stuff that you've done for teaching too. I wanna get into the teaching part cause I think that's real important. I was talking with somebody the other day, uh, last week, and they were like, you know, I need stuff because I wanna learn how to do this, this, and this.
And I'm like, okay, you know, what's, what's your, what's the style of learning you like to do that helps you best that you know, you feel comfortable with? Like for me, if I have everything in bite-sized chunks that I can parse and not be, you know, overwhelmed with information, like I can do like an an hour video, anything more than that, and I, you know, I get, I get lost.
I get the thousand-yard stare. Um, so some of the stuff you've done, I pointed them to
[00:13:58] Amy: Thank you.
[00:13:58] Todd: and James' stuff as well. Um, yeah, not a problem. What's some of the stuff that you have, and James this, you know, for you as well, is, are there any courses that are you have coming up that you are releasing or, you know, working on?
[00:14:18] Amy: We always have irons in the fire. Uh, So I, um, have been working on a Svelte course. I've been like also working on a Redwood course, so that's been fun and the focus with both of those is just being a full stack developer. Uh, I come from a front-end perspective, and it's been really neat as JavaScript has become more and more adopted on the backend with Node and being able to embrace that technology to be able to write front end and backend code.
So, both of those courses, look at the full stack of an application, and I'll also give a nice baton pass to James. He's been putting together an Astro course that looks absolutely phenomenal.
[00:15:03] James: Yeah, so I've got this idea of mind that I wanna try to execute on, and it's like turning course creation into more, something that I take more seriously on a consistent basis. And I think not doing software engineering like on a daily basis, not working on real world projects means I get to work on fun demos for YouTube videos, but I rarely get to go like deeper into products.
And so, I've got this idea of spending like six months at a time digging deeper into a certain framework or product, learning more about it specifically, and then at the end of that, kind of turning it into a course. And so, I really wanna like iterate on creating a course landing page, doing a newsletter like hyping and marketing, like practicing all the things to, to be successful as a course creator in these six-month rotations so that I can like do it, iterate on it and do it again.
Um, kind of back-to-back and then also get better ties to specific communities, products, and companies. Um, so anyways, I decided to do Astro. That's what my personal website is built on. It's something I've really enjoyed working with. I remember like thinking about migrating my site to Next.js and trying to do markdown and like code highlighting and stuff, which Next.js is great and I'm a huge fan, but just for those pieces it was difficult.
And I like tried Astro on a whim cause I saw people talking about it and I was like, this is definitely definitively the way to go. Like it's so easy. So, I just figured it'd be fun to create content around that. And then I'm tying into some other products that I've been using and enjoying as well into that course.
So, right now the landing page is available at astrocourse.dev. People can sign up for like updates and newsletter, which I'll send out an exclusive launch day discount. So that is ready, and then I'm working, I'm actually having some help on some of the demos but working on the demos behind the scenes and gonna work on marketing and promo material, free YouTube videos, free cheat sheets, et cetera, to kind of create this marketing funnel to hopefully bring people into a paid course to launch sometime, probably in, uh, July or August. That's, that's the target right now. But if people are interested in finding out more, it's at Astrocourse.dev.
[00:17:07] Todd: Nice. Um, I'm thinking about using Astro. I just bought a domain name yesterday. Lobster Lobster Roll.
[00:17:16] James: Dangerous
[00:17:16] Todd: Lobsterroll.me and.
[00:17:19] Amy: Oh, good one.
[00:17:20] James: Approved
[00:17:20] Todd: I'm going to put, I'm gonna put, uh, I'm working on an app that finds the best lobster rolls.
[00:17:28] James: Hmm?
[00:17:28] Todd: in your area.
[00:17:28] James: Yeah
[00:17:30] Amy: Oh, that's fantastic
[00:17:31] James: Perfect
[00:17:31] Todd: so, uh, working on that,
[00:17:34] Amy: You know I have a problem, right?
[00:17:37] James: problem with buying too many domains.
[00:17:39] Todd: yeah.
[00:17:39] James: Yeah.
[00:17:41] Todd: I've had to, yeah, I've had to keep my domain buying under check because, yeah, I, I, I looked at, I looked at my, um, my list and it was a
[00:17:55] Amy: Oh, don't do that.
[00:17:56] Todd: yeah, it was a little too long. So, uh, yeah, I haven't, I haven't looked at it since, and that was probably last year. Um, yeah. But, um, cool. So, Astro and then the Redwood and the, uh, Svelte stuff.
Three things, which I am actually looking at, um, looking into learning myself, trying to get back into coding after much, much too long, I will say, of auditing and auditing and auditing for accessibility stuff. So, um, I'll be looking for those. Definitely. So, we'll put those all in the show notes as well. Um, Let's talk about, uh, front end stuff.
Um, and, you know, we can even go into the backend if we, if need be, but what are some of the technologies you're finding these days, um, that, um, are attracting you and you want to either learn or you're using now that you, you know, you think that are fantastic and you know, really get pumped up about using.
[00:19:15] Amy: Good question. Um, for me, I've been looking at stacks more holistically, and that might just be where I'm at in my career and the pieces that I'm trying to deliver on. So, the things that I get excited about are how things integrate with other pieces. So, for example, when I'm working on a front-end project, I like to have Storybook up and running or running tests through Jest and Vitest.
Um, either one is great. Vitest is a little bit faster. Although I was recently working on a Net 13 project that was running Jest on rust, that was incredibly fast. So, the technology stuff that gets me excited is more of like the bundling and the entire developer experience as a whole, and not just an individual piece of technology.
Cause you can pick all these things apart, but in reality, they all have to work together in order to deliver a project and for that project to be successful.
[00:20:14] James: I'm gonna tie go like a high-level category and reference a, a talk that I have just submitted, uh, for two keynote opportunities, which I'm excited about and I may tweak, tweak the title, but the talk is focused on AI and developer experience. So, it's AI is revolutionizing developer experience. Are you ready?
And so, Amy and I have talked about this, um, on a couple of different episodes of the Compressed podcast about how excited we are for the progression of things like ChatGPT, GitHub, Co-pilot, et cetera. And I think it's really like already changed the way I work on a daily basis. And I did a, I did a video recently where I showed like five ways that I've used ChatGPT in a recent project, and one was to generate a cron string to do something on a daily basis.
One was like, hey, can you build me, can you help me add off to my next JS application using a backend as a service platform called Appwritet. Another one was just giving me ideas of stuff to incorporate into videos. It's really just absolutely incredible. So ChatGPT has become, uh, a consistent part of my workday, to be honest.
Like any, any lack of creativity or kind of, I can't kind of get to the next step of what I'm trying to do. I go there for inspiration and for code insights, and that's been super, super exciting. And I think people will have this like, some people have this fear of does it replace jobs? Does it take away jobs?
Like what does the future look like with AI? And, and to me it's just a, a new set of tools that we have at our disposal that enables developers to build more and build more faster than we ever have before. And it's, it's just like any other big step in developer experience. So, this is like, I know developer experience across the board gets better and better.
And I think, Amy, to tie into what you, what you said, like how these pieces all fit together. The thing that's exciting for me from a developer experience perspective is how many tools take care of the stuff that like, we just don't need to do ourselves, but give us a functionality. And I, I'm big fans of like Cloudinary for image optimizations and transformations.
I use them for a lot of different stuff. Um, Xata as a database has like really cool modern database technologies that integrate. They just shipped a new workflow to like integrate with your code workflow, like how you push code to a GitHub project and create, uh, previews and Netlify and Vercel and all this kind of stuff.
And so, there's, there's already been this progression of like, other companies are gonna provide you their services to do things for you so that you don't have to, which enables you to then focus more times on the, on building the things that are important for your app. And AI is just another one of those enablers.
So, developer experience continues to get better and better across the board. Like I feel like there's never not an exciting time and web development for me at least. So, all these things, um, and just the, the next steps I guess of where AI can take us to help us like supercharge our ability as developers.
Really, really exciting and fun for me.
[00:23:03] Todd: Yeah, definitely. I, when I was searching for, you know, hey, what am I going to use to build this app with? And then, you know, I'm looking around at React Native, I'm looking at Flutter and I'm looking at the, but I'm also looking at, I need this thing, this app, to be accessible because, you know, that's the bread and butter of what I do, and people know me for that.
Um, and then I found Ionic, and you know, our friend Mike Hartington, their Director of Developer Relations there. Um, you know, I asked some questions and so I'm building that with Angular, uh, and the Ionic framework and, um, you know, these tools that we have, I also, I put in a, a CFP for Ioniconf, uh, this year, and I used ChatGPT to come up with 10, uh, names for talks.
[00:24:03] James: Nice. Yes. Yes.
[00:24:06] Todd: and, and it came up with some good ones because I, I said, you know, come up with 10 names of talks for a conference about accessibility in JavaScript with some humor.
And it came up with 10 really good ones and the one I settled on, uh, it, it's, it's, it's perfect. So, um, and I of course, off the top of my head, can't remember it. Cause you know, I'm,
[00:24:34] James: I thought you were just teasing us.
[00:24:38] Amy: I wanted to know what a computer finds funny.
[00:24:41] James: Yeah,
[00:24:42] Todd: Surprisingly enough, they, they were pretty humorous. So, and that's, I don't know if I should be worried or not, you know, if I were a comic, I don't know if I'd be worried or not. But, um, now, and I've, you know, looked at, you know, I've, gotten some code snippets from ChatGPT.
Just I, I even, you know, asked some accessibility questions and even that, that was kind of iffy.
But, um, yeah, definitely, um, some good stuff out there. So, I wanted to swing around to, uh, Compressed podcast and talk about that you're at Compressed FM and you know, your, your podcast. I've been on twice now. Geez. I should know this stuff. I'm so ill prepared today. Twice.
[00:25:35] Amy: I just think once, unless you're asking for an invitation.
[00:25:40] James: This is how you set yourself up to come back. Nicely done.
[00:25:43] Todd: I, I mean memory loss with Todd. Uh,
[00:25:47] Amy: You’ve been part of the studio audience.
[00:25:49] Todd: I have been, yeah.
[00:25:50] Amy: multiple times, multiple times
[00:25:51] James: We did do a live episode at Magnolia JS and, uh, what we call Hunger Games in London.
[00:25:59] Todd: Technically. Um, okay. Yes, once on. Okay. Boy. Oh boy. I need a, I need a nap. I'm the, I'm the great-grandfather stage of my career. Um, what do you got coming up that you can talk about, you know, who's coming on and, and stuff like that. And, um, the stuff you have on the, on the podcast. I've listened from day one.
It's a great podcast. I love it. Um, what's some of the stuff you get coming up or is it a secret?
[00:26:40] James: As we, as we secretly pull up a calendar.
[00:26:41] Amy: I know.
[00:26:42] James: Behind the scenes to see who the upcoming guests are. Yeah,
[00:26:46] Amy: Well, and we've been talking about a swag store for almost two years now. So, but, uh, I would still love to see that happen this year. But, um, let's see. I was pulling up the guest list.
[00:26:59] James: So, we have Austin Gil coming up this week who also
[00:27:03] Amy: That'd be a fun
[00:27:04] James: we get to meet in person um, and Austin.
[00:27:10] Amy: Mm-hmm.
[00:27:11] James: right? At that conference in January, uh,
[00:27:14] Amy: That’s right
[00:27:14] James: looks like, I don't know if, if we, did we officially schedule this a Q and A episode for next Friday?
[00:27:20] Amy: We already, uh oh. You know what? I guess we, yeah, we did schedule that one even though we just had one,
[00:27:26] James: Okay
[00:27:26] Amy: so that'll be fun.
[00:27:28] James: Yeah, and then the week after that, which I won't be there cause we, so the one after that is the 19th and we will have a baby on the 18th. But Brandon Bayer. Is joining us.
[00:27:39] Amy: As a special guest.
[00:27:41] James: Yeah. Live from the hospital is where I will be.
[00:27:45] Amy: Be the best.
[00:27:47] James: I'm sure. I'm sure Jess would be thrilled to have the podcast.
[00:27:49] Amy: Oh, my goodness.
[00:27:51] James: from the hospital the next day.
[00:27:54] Amy: I know my, how I would feel about that if I were in her shoes.
[00:27:57] James: Yeah. No, but I think maybe like the coolest thing for us is like every time we go somewhere in person, we then come home from a conference and have like five people to reach out to to come on and be a guest cause there's so many amazing people. Yeah. More than that. And that's like, I also feel bad cause like I'll, I'll stumble across names every once in a while, of people I'm relatively close with.
And we've done 120 episodes and, and be like, wow, we've, we've never had this person. Like we've had so many amazing people on, and there's still infinite amount of people to have on as guests. So, I, I think it's, I think it's really cool. We talked about like doing. Mixing in more of just Amy and I talking.
Cause that's a really, I think we've got a, like a great dynamic and a fun way for us to kind of lead episodes as well. But there's so much to learn from, you know, all the guests and people that we invite on, on the show. So, I think that's been like, I think that's been the most fun. It's just being able to use it, use it as a, a free networking opportunity.
Cause like even if the podcast did nothing, which I would say has been a relative success and getting to do them in person has been a huge success. That's been fun. But just from a networking perspective, like these are people that we now have even, even deeper relationships than we did before. Whether we had them existing relationships or just out of the blue, like we've reached out to people just on Twitter to say, hey, like, like the thing you're doing, wanna come in and tell me about it.
Or another thing that I think is cool is people reaching out for potential collaborations for my YouTube channel and I, I just don't have the ability to do all of those, so, hey, come and tell us about your product on an episode of the podcast. And I think some people have had different perspectives on like people pitching to come and talk about their products.
But I also think like that's just been such a great hack again, to learn about different tools and, and options and things that are out there that we may not have ever come across.
[00:29:39] Todd: Right
[00:29:40] Amy: You know, one that's, uh, is also in the queue that I'm really excited about is Amanda Martin, and she works at Wix and talking about some, I'm gonna tie all this in, talking about future technologies with AI, but also talking about Wix and how they have historically been known as a no code, low code if that solution and how they really are embracing developers and I've been really interested in some of the things that they're doing and excited to have a conversation with them.
[00:30:09] Todd: Yeah
[00:30:09] Amy: Um, but that just, you know, further drives home. The point that James is making is that it is a great hack for us to be able to stay up to date in the industry and know things that are going on and being able to network with people because we have the podcast.
[00:30:23] Todd: Yeah
[00:30:23] James: No, it's interesting timing that you mentioned Wix too. cause I just, this morning was re kind of scripting the video, one of the videos I'm doing with them on integrating,
[00:30:34] Amy: Nice
[00:30:34] James: tying all of this full circle, integrating ChatGPT, Open AI, SDK into a Wix application by writing custom code with Velo, which is super cool.
Um, so I've been a big fan of like seeing all the different things that they've been doing for developers as well.
[00:30:48] Todd: That's, that sounds cool. I will be, uh, lurking and listening and watching. Um, Homer and I have done one episode where it was just him and I and I feel like it was just a lot better. There was a lot less, oh, I'm scrambling to find somebody, or, I've got a list of people here because when I originally um, asked around, I asked a few people thinking, well, you know, you might have some people that are gonna say no, that they can't do it, or for whatever reason, or, you know, they just don't want to, and I asked about, I don't know, 40 people, and they all said yes, which surprised me. So, um, this season was different.
Homer came on. I needed a co-host because, uh, I, I just am tired. Uh, it was, it's a lot when it's by yourself. So, Homer is great. You know, I've, you know, known Homer for over, I think it's over a year now. Um,
[00:31:59] James: You've only known each other for over a year? For a little over a year.
[00:32:02] Todd: It’s not been very long. Yeah.
[00:32:03] James: Really? Wow.
[00:32:04] Todd: Yeah.
[00:32:04] James: That’s awesome.
[00:32:04] Todd: And you know, we have, you know, he was my second guest, I believe, on the podcast.
So, and we talked accessibility. We get along, we have like you and Amy, we have a great rapport and um, you know, I just said, hey, you wanna just come on? Cause we were bouncing the idea back and forth and we actually recorded a, a, an episode. Um, of a podcast that we were going to do, but it wasn't this one, but I was like, you know what, why don't we just do this one?
We can be co-hosts and then, you know, if we're at an event together, we can do one there maybe and do all this stuff. So, um, it's just a lot less, um, I guess just darting back and forth, having to make sure schedules are all set, even though. Um, you know, with his schedule, my schedule's a lot less than it's been lately, but, um, excuse me.
Um, yeah, it, the one-on-ones that we have the, even though it's only been one so far, we're gonna schedule a lot more. And, and it felt like, you know, a giant weight was lifted, um, off your shoulders because it's just like, it's just two people talking. And, um, we just actually, and I was gonna reach out to you both anyways about this.
We talked about my work in W2C lately, about deceptive patterns and the, uh, fast framework in the W3C. So, um, that one-on-one talk and, you know, the people that we've had on, uh, we've had Josh Goldberg on and Carrie Fisher. Carrie, Carrie is awesome. Josh is awesome too. Um, and then, you know, it's been so busy for the both of us where it hasn't been, I, we don't have many episodes in the can.
So, um, it’s gonna be a short season this, this season, and then we get things wrong. We also got KCDC coming up and we have a, so I said, hey, you want to do a workshop day? And he's like, sure. So, he thought I signed us up for a half day, but it's actually a full day. So, we're doing an accessibility workshop on auditing.
[00:34:34] James: That’s a lot of work
[00:34:36] Todd: It is a lot of work. Yeah. Um, With that. With that, let's go into conference speaking because I know you both, you know, we met at the one that we're
[00:34:55] James: Magnolia first.
[00:34:57] Todd: No. Was it Magnolia?
[00:34:59] James: We were at Magnolia. Magnolia was before.
[00:35:01] Amy: Yeah, I met you at Magnolia. Uh,
[00:35:03] Todd: Yes, it was. Magnolia
[00:35:06] James: London after that. Yeah.
[00:35:07] Todd: Before London. Um, let's see. Do you have conferences coming up this year that you'll be speaking at? And what do you look for in a conference that attracts you to speak at it? Let me, let me throw those questions out there for the both of you.
[00:35:37] James: I've got a few, I've got a few plans now. Uh, so we, we needed to confirm our details together at Render, but our plan is to be at Render together. I also have a talk at Render ATL, which like from a diversity perspective, Render is, is special. Like, it's just, it's different. It's not your typical white male conference.
Uh, it's, it's just, it's different in such a good way and I'm super excited about that. So that'll be at the end of May. I'll have to sneak away for a few days, like two weeks after Baby, which I think our parents will still be here, so I think it'll be, be okay. Um, and then I just, uh, just got asked to do a keynote talk at, uh, Refactor Comp in Toronto in early July.
So, I just booked travel for that. I'm super excited about it. And um, and then I have Infobit Shift. It's either in August or September, but it's in Croatia. So that was one that people. The team reached out to me as well. So, um, I don't know. Things that I look for, like first and foremost is people that are going, like I get the most out of being able to interact with, with you all that are here and like our friends and making new friends.
Like those relationships are incredibly valuable and it's really interesting for me cause I have to gauge, like I don't have a company paying for travel anymore, so I have to be really intentional about if it's something I'm investing my own money in. It needs to have a return of some sort and, and we kind of joked about how poor the conference was in London, but also for all the things that I hoped to get out of it.
I got, cause I got the networking time, I got to see people, I got to build relationships. So, it was really worth it from that perspective. But I'm also looking at, for me, kind of taking a next step as a speaker, like really targeting bigger audiences and higher profile speaking opportunities, specifically keynote opportunities.
And that's because, there's so many conferences I would love to do, like I'm sure you both are in the same boat. Like we all love going to them, but there's really only so many you can do. And, and it's really tough to not do them all and to make decisions not to go to one because you just can't timewise.
And that, that's a struggle. So, I'm trying to, to really maximize the exposure that I get selfishly, but also just the interactions that I have with people. And, um, anyway, so we, we had a great time at that conference in Austin that was a ton of fun. So many like amazing experiences and people to see there.
So, I'll be back, hopefully at, uh, in Austin in January and then kind of follow that, uh, that section of section of, uh, conferences, not section series of conferences. Yeah, I think the people is, is number one. And then from a professional perspective for me, just trying to continue to raise, raise my profile as a professional speaker.
[00:38:16] Amy: Yeah. For me, a lot of it depends on the conference's content and what the reputation of that conference is. So, there's a few that. I've heard people be like, oh, this one is awesome. It just has something unique. Like James was saying, with Render or uh, Homer's at Stir Trek, I've heard fantastic things about that conference as well.
So, keeping an eye on those things definitely makes a difference. But for me, another thing is just some of the best conferences that I went to in the last year were not necessarily the ones that I would expect that I was just pleasantly surprised by. So, we've mentioned Magnolia a couple times. It was a probably the smallest conference that I went to in the past year, but it was one of my most favorite because it was so small, we were able to connect with other people and get to know them well, which is what you want at a conference.
And, you know, one of the things I've come to realize when you talk about networking and building your network, really, you're just talking about making friends. And I think when you put it in those terms, I just wanna go to a conference, hang out with my friends, make new friends, makes it a little bit more approachable and sounds a lot more fun than the business-y corporate-y, I'm gonna go network.
[00:39:25] James: Yep. And it's, it's interesting when I, like, I feel weird talking about the networking opportunities, but like networking to me is not the sterile networking that people associate with it. Like networking has a really cold unfun connotation to it. My definition of networking is just investing in my community.
It's just being there and it's just hanging out with people like I get. There's like the difference between introvert and extrovert. Like introverts gets energy from themselves or or like by themselves versus extroverts get energy from the people around them. And I definitely have my moments of feeling introverted and needing my time alone, but I get so much energy from the people around me.
Like every conversation I have with developers around tools that they use or content creators and workflow and ideas and all these things, I gotta get so much from the people around me and I just wanna be there. I wanna be a part of the, the conversation I wanna be hanging out in between talks. I wanna be hanging out by the fire, like after, like, just, just being, being there, being a part of it.
Uh, so that's what, that's like always the highlight for me. And to your point, Amy, Magnolia was, was so cool. It, it was so small, but like that was such a benefit because we didn't have to like pick and choose where we spent our time. We were just all together. Like, that's one of the overwhelming things sometimes about bigger conferences is you, you potentially have a lot of people in different groups and it's hard to coordinate and it's hard to know, like, where's gonna be the best, best place to spend my time?
So Magnolia was really special in the sense of like, I just felt like we were all in it together and we could do everything together and not really have to pick and choose where we spend our time.
[00:40:55] Amy: Well, and I wanna tack on more thing in terms of networking. You're talking about it feeling cold. I think some of it is, it feels more transactional to me. Like when I meet somebody,
[00:41:04] James: Yeah
[00:41:04] Amy: I'm not just thinking, what can they get me?
[00:41:07] James: What can you get.
[00:41:07] Amy: What can I get out of this relationship? Who do you know that I wanna connect with?
And if you approach it more from a friendship standpoint and how can I help you? What can I do? And I think that's kind of what you're talking about, James, when you're talking about going to serve your community, it's more of what can I give instead of what can I receive? And having that posture makes conferences so much more enjoyable.
[00:41:29] Todd: Definitely. So, when I look back still on the, on the London experience, it was worth it. It was out of pocket entirely from, from me, um, which is fine. Um, one because I hadn't been to London in over 30 years, so, it had been a long time and, um, I just was like, I need to go. Two was looking at the, the speaker roster and being, you know, and being like, okay, all these people are gonna be there.
I want to meet these people and I know these people and love to hang out and all that. So, it was well worth it. I mean, the walk that we did around London, um, stuff like that, uh, going out to eat and have, I mean, granted some of the places I ate at wasn't, it wasn't a yacht, but, um, um, the experience was worth going as much as the, I wanna say the event itself was underwhelming, I guess. So
[00:43:03] James: That’s a way to put it.
[00:43:05] Todd: Talking on a Friday night at 5:30in the evening. Not, you know, ideal, I would say, um, on the last day. But, um, so I know that we gotta cut it here pretty soon. So there anything else that, um, you got going on that you know, you want the listeners to know about and.
[00:43:39] James: Just trying to get ready for a baby.
[00:43:41] Todd: Yeah.
[00:43:42] James: I'm doing,
[00:43:42] Amy: me, not me.
[00:43:44] James: You've, you've already had your, your fair share.
[00:43:46] Todd: Well, this gives me the opportunity to say, to face to face. Congratulations, James. Um,
[00:43:52] James: thank you.
[00:43:54] Todd: it's all it, I have two, uh, well, they're grown up and gone away, but I've got two of my own, so I, I know how it is. Um, I guess the last thing I think, we'll, I, I think I'll leave, um, the audio stuff. Maybe we can get together another time when Homer's around and then we can, uh, talk about the audio stuff.
Um, is there anything you want to plug? Is there anything, you know, you got the, the pod, you got the podcast, you got the, the Discord. Is there anything else you wanna, you know, courses? Is there anything else that you wanna plug?
[00:44:37] Amy: I will plug my Twitter and I'm only joking cause who knows whether it's gonna be around if anybody has a Bluesky invite, you know? But, um, the reason I'm plugging it is because I've been a part of a program called Ship 30 over the last month where I've been writing an atomic essay every day for the last, um, 24 days solid right now.
But it's been a great experience for me just to write consistently 200 to 300 words and have had a lot of fun putting those essays together. So, I would love feedback, I'd love the interaction. It makes that so much more enjoyable, uh, when there's a conversation that comes out of that. So, find me on Twitter.
My handle is self-teach me.
[00:45:24] James: Now Amy's making me feel weird cause she plugged one thing, and I was gonna list like five, but, so, uh, James Q Quick on Twitter. So I'd love to say all the things that, that Amy just said. Uh, also plug the Astro course that we mentioned earlier at astrocourse.dev. Excited to make more and more progress with that.
Over the next couple weeks and then, uh, I'll just give another shout out to the Learn, Build, Teach Community. Free, nothing that I make money off of there. And like I said, doing more individual, not, uh, like group sessions, uh, focused on things that provide value to beginner, to intermediate developers, specifically predominantly in the web development space, but just developers in general so you can find more information and join at learnbuildteach.com.
[00:46:07] Todd: Excellent. We'll have all those links in the show notes, and again, I want to thank you both for coming on. I asked Homer, I said, you know, do you want to reschedule? Oh, no, go, go ahead, go through it. So hopefully we can, uh, do this again. I wouldn't mind doing it again. I don't know about you two, even though I was not prepared because I've been so busy lately.
But, um, yeah. I want to thank you both for coming on, spending part of your day with me and the listeners, and with that, uh, this has been the Front End Nerdery Podcast. If you would go on the YouTube channel and subscribe, like, hit those buttons, do all that stuff that the kids say these days, helps you get, you know, all the monies.
And then, uh, Todd needs the monies. Um, and then, uh, podcast, uh, app of your choice. Uh, the podcast is there, the audio version as well. Um, transcripts, show notes we'll have all that up, um, as soon as this comes out. And, uh, make sure it's all accessible for everybody as well. So, with that, uh, thank you for, uh, joining us.
This has been the Front End Nerdery Podcast and we'll see you soon.