the importance of written content w/ brian morrison, educator at planetscale

full transcript

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

Hello, hello. Thanks for listening to Guidance Counselor 2.0. Listen, I want to give you a quick rundown of what this podcast is and what you're about to get into as you listen to these episodes. We had Guidance Counselors in middle school. We had Guidance Counselors in high school, but we didn't really have Guidance Counselors in college and now as professionals, we don't really have anybody to turn to to ask a quick question to learn something about the job search or to navigate your career. So that is what I want this podcast to be for you. I want it to be a tool for you to navigate the job search and your career.

So that being said, I hope you enjoy this episode. And if you need to reach me at social media at tdsntdesseyn. And finally, please rate and review this in the app store because I want this to be discoverable for others so they can navigate their careers. Hope you enjoy the episode. All right, we live. What's going on, y'all? Good morning. When I say, I don't know why to talk. like no one's here yet. We can literally be talking about the weather right now. I'm like people, people wouldn't care. What's going on y'all? Good morning. Please comment, say, hey, would love to hear from you. Let's see here.

And man, nothing is working today. Now it's not even picking up my mic. What is going on this morning? Listen, please comment, say, hey, we'll live here for you. I'm hanging out with Brian this morning. I'm excited to hang out with Brian. Brian, I met at that conference. Brian's a good dude. Good to be here. Both Brian and I are wearing a black this morning. No, we did not coordinate this morning. But it's good to see y'all. Here we go. Mr. Ricardo commenting. Mike is good now. All right. We live. Ricardo's good to see you brother. So y'all comment. Less than we're tuning from. The reason why I tell people this, I say this all the time.

The reason why I tell people this is because I want this to become a really good developer community where people can just comment on a comment on the show and you can network with other people, right? What's the now? We all don't have Apple Pro visions. We're not like in the metaverse yet. So no one knows if you're watching unless you comment. So that's why I tell people to comment. I have, and I'm not kidding you on this. I've had people find mentor mentorship, mentor, mentor mentees, internships, jobs on the show. So even if you watch this in the future, we're not live anymore, please comment because it is worth it.

A lot of people connect on the show. Second thing is, please ask questions. Brian is a wealth of knowledge, and I'm really excited to take what we're talking about content. But we're not going to talk about video content. I know a lot of times I talk about video content. We're going to talk about written content today, which I'm very excited about, and Brian's going to dive into that with me. I'm also going to talk about community as well. So ask Brian questions, right? This is the one time where he doesn't bill you for it. Also, shout out that conference for being the coffee sponsor of the show.

It's actually texting with Clark right before Brian, you and I were hanging out. And Brian Clark was like, you need more coffee? I said, Clark, I said, I go half-calf. I go half-calf. So I don't go through the coffee quite as fast because my anxiety fuels me enough when I wake up first thing. Also, one of your shots of Brian's haircut, Brian, you got great hair. I just like low-key. Did you get a cut yesterday, by the way? I did get a cut yesterday. And honestly, nice. How did that new cut look, man? It looks good. I did this just for you, Taylor. I love it, man.

Yeah, you got to get the cut before coming on guys comes to 2.0. Also shotgun IO for hiring me and taking a chance on me. I appreciate them. And I really think what we're doing in the hiring space is pretty cool. So, I want your shots people tuning in Ricardo. It's great to see you Alex LinkedIn user. What's up guys? What's up LinkedIn user Alex Richie. What up? What up hump day again? I don't know why all state went away with hat with, you know, happy hump day with a camel. Muhammad's good to see you. Mark. It's good to see you as well. First time joining Mark.

I love it, man. Thanks for, thanks for joining. I appreciate it. I'm excited you're here. Barrett, Mike Brady Brady's good to see you Brady my guess he had Magnolia JS let me know Chris Nashville I love is that a question or statement I can't tell I'm a national marker you and Nashville yeah me it's good to see you from Ontario love it Clark is amazing Clark is amazing Scott my guy what's going on tick-tock it's great to see y'all as well alright Brian let's give the people what they want big dog who are you what do you do and we'll go from there. Yeah, I can't wait to have a turn again.

Just start talking. I'll figure this out. Sure. Yeah, so my name is Brian Morrison. I'm a developer educator at PlanetScale. If you go on planetscale.com and check out the blog or the docs or go on our YouTube channel, you'll see my face all over that because that's a lot of what I do. Before that, I was actually full stack developer at an IoT company. I leaned definitely into the back end. I've the 6040 is how I usually describe it, 60% of the back end. And before even that, I actually used to work in IT. So I've done the help desk thing. I've done server admin.

I've done network engineering. Looks like Taylor is gone. So this could be kind of fun and interesting. I'm bad. I know I'm here. I promise. But I don't know what's going on my camera. Like literally, Streamy Art just cut out. So Brian, you're doing great. Hey, here we go. There it is. All right. I got the back. You said 6040 back end, more back end focus? 6040 back end and then before that I was in IT. So I've done the help that thing. I've done server administration. I've done network engineering. Before I actually decided I want to be a developer, I was going for my CCIE.

So really heavy into the Cisco world. I love all things tech. I am such a hyper nerd. I even have a half rack and an actual big iron server in my laundry room now that I used to play around with workload. So that gives you a little bit insight into how crazy my mind is that's big nerd. That's that's that's big nerd status. But I love it, man. I love it. I want to ask you this, you know, I kind of, I talk about this at the M, but I also want to open it up to me. What do you, what do you passion about right now?

I'm kind of asking one of my landing questions, but I want to get to know you a little bit on the show again. I met Brian, but I haven't met Brian. But what do you do outside of work for fun, man? Except maybe your router thing em jigger I don't know, you know, I got three kids So the router thing em jinger doesn't happen as often as it used to most of my time outside of work is spent with them If I'm not hanging out with my family I own a small farm out in Kentucky actually very newly owned farm. Yeah, we went a little back and forth on that So they go trying to figure out what to do with all the property.

I love gaming. I'm huge You know a game called destiny to I got every once in a while. I'll pick up some other things I like working out more recently been into doing a whole lot of yoga because I've got some lower back injuries that I just That just don't seem to want to get any better. So for that. Yeah, that's that's kind of me in my life in a nutshell. I love it I love it. Sarah's good to see you mark shoshy. It's great. See you Brady. I'm glad you're gonna get Magnolia JS Look at this Richard from Kenya. I love it. We're in the National this morning Brian.

I'm especially how many acres do you have on the farm? 17 17 17 good. You need me good chunk. Oh pretty close. Yeah And then I know you and I mess about that. What's kind of your long-term goal with the farm, man? Well, the big driving force was since I got three kids. I got three boys. So I had some nice of three kids, but I got three boys. They're all young and they're all wild. And yeah, so I originally was born and raised near Chicago, grew up there, was there all my life. And then living in the suburbs and we're just like, we need something bigger, something more spread out to let them go crazy with.

So that's why we got the land. But then as we got here, we started realizing like, hey, we could grow our own food. We got a bunch of chickens and a rooster right now too, so we're making our own eggs. Stuff like that. We're still in the process of even trying to figure out what the hell to do with it all. You know, it's curious. There's some stuff going on on Twitter about tech guys and gals living on a farm. Why do you think that is? Because there's a lot of us who have land. And when I say farm, I use that more of just like a plot of land.

I have horses, you could say, is it a horse farm? I don't know. farm is generally utilized as just a term. Why do you why do you think folks in tech move out to land? I don't know. It's interesting you say that because even when I I've got a small discord that I run even when I threw in there that I was moving out to, you know, to get some Bakerage, someone made the comment of like, oh, you're in the, you're in the end game of the software engineer world now. And I was like, yeah, that does kind of track. Yeah. There's something, there's something, I think we're all tied to our computers and our screens way too much.

So there's something that's so like that draws you in about just being in nature and I didn't even really I didn't even fully realize it until I moved out here where it's like when I'm done with work oftentimes I'm like I just want to disconnect yeah whereas like when I lived in your traditional kind of suburban dad life it was I disconnect and then we go to the TV or go play games or you know do something else in front of the screen there's something natural about being in nature that I think a lot of people have just lost I think so too there there there's an internal recruiter that I knew and I promise we're gonna get to the topics here soon I'm glad we brought this I'm glad I brought some some chopping up on there I've talked to like like one recruiter, here's that stripe and he was like, I'm just gonna be a farmhand.

He goes, I'm just gonna get out of tech. And I think you're right. I think there's this screen, like the screens were in front of screens, especially creating content like yourself and me and you're not only doing work, but then you're also creating content. It's just kind of a lot. And I think there's just a piece of like getting out and like being on some sort of land and being away from people. Yeah. Let's see, we got some more. South Africa, I love it. Sarah, yes, you are here. I love it. it's good to see you can't we see it Magnolia Js Robert's good to see you and it comes in I'm a horse for a strange time Standing in conversation exactly.

It's my wife streamed next house to buy cow. I love it. Cows are great Man, especially one of those long haired like cows are so cute Just give me a mini pet pig and I'm happy. I want one to love programming hate screens. Yeah That that should be a tattoo or something because I get that if you can't smell pigs or cows is really far I get that Thomas is good to see you. What are your thoughts about hydroponic farming Brian? If I knew what that was I could have some comments. That's a question. That's a big word for Wednesday morning That's a really big word Anna comes in working in techniques me appreciate parks and nature.

Yeah, I know it's weird I need to probably deep dive into this a little bit more. All right, Brian. Let's talk about why we're here that conference You want to talk about that for a second Brian Brian's got something special. I can talk about that so I guess I'll kick it off by saying that conference holds a very special place in my heart. The reason is I've been to tech conferences before, but that conference is the one that the only one that so far has made it feel like a community. In fact, that's how Taylor and I even connected in the first place. We ran into each other due to a mutual connection at that conference in Texas almost a year ago.

And when I was there, literally changed the course of my career. I was actually planning on completely getting out of content creation all together just because, you know, You know, I didn't I didn't feel like it was fulfilling me necessarily and just being there and being around that energy was insane. So Because of that because of that because of that and because that Texas is coming up I have an extra ticket I would like to give away to one of your viewers today It just it covers all three days of the conference This of all the entire talk all the talks that are included there.

It also covers food I've got the big ticket the one that actually will get you a full ride with food the entire way through You go have to figure out how to get there and you're going to have to figure out where to say. I can't help you out with that. But as long as someone can get there, I'll pick someone at random from within your audience, say, within the next week. If they go to everyone in the audience, go to Taylor's Twitter account. I'm a Twitterman. I'm sorry. I see you got a lot of LinkedIn followers here, but I do most of my stuff on Twitter.

Go to Twitter. Comment on his tweet with this, I guess, it'd be video after the fact in there. Let us know why you want to go to that conference, and I'll pick somebody at random and then DM you on Twitter. Yeah, I love that. I love that. So again, comment on my tweet or comment on this live, right? On my Twitter, right? And that was just said, and then say a few words of why you want to come. Again, this is not cover travel. Brian's not made of money. He just bought a farm. I can attest he's not made of money anymore. And we will Brian.

So if you cover your travel, Brian will cover your ticket. That ticket includes food. So go to my Twitter, go to this video. Great. Hold on. I guess I can talk because I do not have a fire alarm going off. All right. Everything is blowing up this morning. Like, try and start working. Fire alarm is going off in the house. The house is fine. Yeah, so go to my Twitter comments and we'll go from there. Does that sound good, Brian? sounds awesome. Sweet. Fire alarms did not sound awesome in my ear just now. Next thing, let's dive into it, man. Written content. So talk about what you have planned at scale and talk about why you're doubling down on written content.

Because I am curious about that. As a guy, I do so much video. I'm curious to talk to you about written content. Yeah, so let's see. I guess the selfish reason is why I'm getting into written content is because we have somebody at planet scale who does really great job at videos. So in trying to find a way that I can provide for the team the best way I possibly can, I figured, why not look more into doing written content? I mean, it's been around for way longer than video has been popular, right? That's kind of how the internet started is on people creating content in the sense of websites and blogs and stuff, and then Google crawls it, and then people search for information and whatnot.

So that's kind of the main driver between behind why I decided to go farther into video. It fulfills me more, honestly. I've had a YouTube channel for like three years now and I seem to like the, I love the idea of just sitting down with some music and quiet and writing some stuff out, right? And plus, it's a lot quicker to be able to spit written content out than it is video, especially well done video. Like you can see behind me, I've got this, you know, this wall here that's kind of really designed to do my YouTube thing. And when I do it, I have to be here at this particular location.

And we're just talking about having to be tied to a screen and sitting in front of a screen to do stuff. With video, you have to do that. But with written content, you don't necessarily have to do that. I could pick up and go to a cafe and start, right? Read a book and write notes and jot down my ideas and thoughts and stuff that I want to do. And then turn that into a blog post to share my knowledge with other people. So there's a lot of benefits to written content over video. And that's not to say that one form of content is better than the other.

Some people really like doing videos. I still watch YouTube all the time. I mean, but when I wanna consume something, like when I wanna like learn and understand things, a lot of times I'll go for written content because I can actually read it faster than I can watch something. And take notes and be able to produce something quicker, you know, quicker that way. So I'm curious for people who are watching right now, please comment, do you prefer video or written content? I'm actually, or audio. Let's just do it, cause it's all three mediums. audio written or video, this is kind of for my quick research, also for Brian as well.

Tell me what your favorite rank them. Let's rank them, right? Video, audio, written, one to three, one being your most favorite way to consume content. How would you rank them? Me, not that you're asking Brian, video, audio, written. I hate reading words. So that's just me. That's just me. Okay, yep. So yeah, y'all comment, let me know. Video written or audio, audio obviously being podcast. And let us know. I see the comments coming in. We'll get there in a second. Brian, what makes a good written content? Like what makes good writing content? What makes writing content good? From the standpoint of creating the written content or consuming the written content or both?

I don't know. I like both. I like both. I like both. So again, from writing, I enjoy being able to kind of disconnect and being able to just focus on my thoughts and what I'm doing. I think the process of creating written content is much simpler than video is as well. So that's, again, one of the reasons why I like writing stuff. I like being able to quickly brainstorm thoughts and ideas because my brain is always going all the time. Like for instance, I was cooking breakfast for my kids this morning and I'm like, Oh, I got a good idea for a mini article on how vector embeddings work because we just announced that at planet scale, you know, like it just comes to me.

So like I can quickly like jot my notes down and then give me an hour and then I can have a really a decently put together article that I can publish out to the internet. Whereas like with video, I come with the idea, then I have to plan the script, then I have to test the code, then I have to make, you know, do the editing. It's like, it's a much more involved process. Yeah. So that's one thing that I really like about written content. But as far as like consuming it, again, the more you read the faster you get. So I've been in content, I guess I've been in tech for long enough, where I'm like I'm reading code, I'm reading docs, I'm reading articles on how to do this.

So I could scan an article pretty quickly. And I think the best articles are ones that kind of get to the point really quickly and show you what you want to do. The classic bad article example is the one you would go to for a recipe where they have to go through 20 paragraphs explaining why their grandmother's mother coined this recipe. recipe and you know the heart of it a later. Yeah right like like just give me the ingredients and show me how to put it together to make a thing and I understand like there's there's a downside there's a reason why these websites do that because it's the way that they generate revenue but there's different ways to generate revenue like from the business perspective there's so many different ways you can generate revenue that aren't ad oriented that don't create terrible experiences for your users.

Yeah yeah absolutely I love that. I'm a lot of comments came in so I'm just gonna read a few Rizelle what's going on girls good to see written content she prefers video video video Let's see here written Written audio video interesting Alex videos third. That's crazy man. I mean this for me. It's crazy for you. It's not crazy Anna written audio video same thing crazy. Okay Okay, video written audio, interesting written video audio. Okay, all right, written video audio, interesting. None of y'all like podcasts, duly noted on my end. Video written, video written as well, okay. For tech content, I prefer written for just about everything else, I prefer video.

For tech content, I, comment, what do you mean? Do you mean like educational type of how to do, so I'm kind of curious what you mean by for tech content, or just do you just mean in general? to consume video, audio written to create. Written audio video. That's a good one. That's a really good course, Rossell being granular. I don't love it. It's almost like she does this for a job. It's all based on levels of my laziness. Girl, hard that. Let's see here, video, video written, a lot of written, a lot of written. That's awesome. Holy cow, there's so many comments. It's absolutely worse because there's no go-to recipe bud.

Or I'm Bon Appetit where they push you to sign up and you're reading halfway through the recipe. It's shit grinds my gears. Bon Appetit's not that shit. No, I think. And I agree with Brian. My brain is always going. It's easy for me to write and organize my thoughts. It's so involved with the video, do my hair. Yeah, I gotta do my hair too. And name Brian. I mean, it takes a long time to do this hair. So much longer, yeah, but when I'm consuming content, I wanna quickly, I love that. Sarah comes in here. Yes, being able to read something is so much faster than watching the video, but it's more challenging.

I love that. You're audience is my people, look at that. Elliot, Elliot out here being like super granular. I'm a bense with in person, YouTube shorts. Man, I like to get real granular love it. I comes in here code API reference type of learner as well. Okay, cool. So yeah, a little bit more granular type stuff, which is kind of what you just talked about. Yeah. One of the things that I think is, I just wanted to make a commentary about. People are still comments, it's crazy. So I keep going. No, it's good. What are the things I want to comment on as far as like consuming content?

I mean, just because you have preferences, I mean, you can't like use all combinations. Like there's a lot of times, like I'm either cooking or cleaning or whatnot in the kitchen. And I'll have, like, as long as no one's sitting there with me, I'll have a video going on in the background about whatever I'm trying to learn on that given day, right? And I'll still like absorb the content, even if I'm not looking at the code, there's something to be said about having like background absorption. So then when you go back to like read a written version of that video or whatever concept you're trying to learn, like you're like, oh yeah, I heard these terms.

And now I know how it pieces together because I'm like ingesting it in different ways. That makes sense. So combining them all I think is like the key to understanding things personally. Yeah, 100%. So I want to kind of end again real quick reminder. Quick reminder, Brian has a ticket to that conference. If you want to take it for that conference Texas, you got to get your travel, go to my tweet on Twitter and comment why you would want to go. Just a quick infomercial break. Brian, so you started out in IT, right? IT general infrastructure kind of type of side of things help this talk about how you got into software, right?

because so I talk a lot about starting, you don't always have to start your career being a developer. I think there's many paths to being a developer. I think there's many ways to be in tech without being a developer. Talk about how you got into development from starting in IT. Okay, so I will actually start with before I got in IT, the way that I got in the- I'm not gonna get into, no not that far. We're gonna fast forward a couple years from there, right? I actually, my entry into tech in general was through networking. And specifically because I just so happened to be partnered in college on a math project with somebody who was a manager at a Tiger Direct, if anyone remembers those stores from back in the day.

Computer parts retailer, kind of like your best buy, but more for computer parts. So I told him, I was like, hey, I'm thinking about getting a job there. And him and I were like, we kind of had built this little mini relationship already where like he knew I was smart and could do stuff. So he's like, yeah, comment and apply again. Got to call same night. Within an hour of applying, got to call, got pulled in the next day, got to offer the job on the spot. So I will start this off with who you know is the shortcut into getting to any position that you really want.

So from there, this is where I really started getting into programming. Within the help desk department that I worked with, because that was my role there, I broke down some of the common tasks that we would do on customers computers. And I wrote command line scripts on them and figured out how to apply those in order to speed up our processes. From there, I actually left and started my own company, but then I went to work with a managed IT company after that because wife wanted to start a life, which I did too. So, you know, running your own business that especially me at that time was very inconsistent.

So join that same thing. Hey, what are you guys doing? Where are your pain points? How can I make better. I learned C sharp a little bit here and there. I started picking up SQL there, started figuring out how to automate processes. That's one of the places that I was at where I actually have a hard number on what I was able to like save the company. I wrote a program that automated like three or four different processes that we had multiple people working on every single day and save the company like a hundred and some thousand dollars in billable hours over the core like each year.

So like that led me into other opportunities where I got to work with some customers to build some mini applications for them, which in turn made my company money. Then I went into work in internal IT, and same thing. What are we doing? Where can I help? How can I use my coding skills to make things better, faster, whatever? And at that job specifically was when a position opened up for an API developer, my boss, so I had a really good relationship, knew that I liked writing code, knew that I liked automating processes, and he's like, hey, you want to give this thing a try?

And I'm like, sure. And that was my bridge into being a software developer. It was just everywhere that I went, I would look for things that could be automated, things that could be made easier with code. And then just, you know, in my free time, let's figure it out. Let's figure out how we can do this. Let's figure out how we can make your life easier. And that's why I really got into development in the first place is I like making people's lives easier. I love that. I like taking your pain away and using these machines, these computers to do your work for you and just make your day just a little bit better.

Do you think that's a maybe a good mindset for people to have, especially trying to get into tech or maybe in their first job, like look for those ways to help automate or kind of add to the bottom line for companies? Absolutely. I mean, anything that you can do, whether it's with CODA without CODA, like the more value you can add to the company you're working for, the better your rapport is going to be with that company with your manager, with your manager's manager, all the way up the chain. Like most companies I've worked for, I have a pretty good reputation with everyone in management just because I would always try and look for these opportunities.

Whereas like there are plenty of people who will just go in, clock in, do their work, and then leave at the end of the day with no extra effort. And it's that extra effort that's been the catalyst in my career to get me to where I'm at today. I love that. I love working. Yeah. Well, and I want to go back to networking, about how do you network internally at every stop you've been at? So I've started to talk with, I've been talking about this, I kind of go through waves of what I've been talking about and internal networking, something I've been more passionate about as of late.

Talk about your tactics on how to internal network once you get a job. I think for me a lot of my roles have been collaborative where I have to work with other people within the company to do things. Like even right now at planet scale, I'm a content creator at Planisco, right? I write I contribute a lot to the blog and YouTube and whatnot but like in order to figure out what some of these features that I'm demonstrating do under the hood a lot of times I'll have to reach out to people engineering be like hey I was told you're the person to talk to to learn about XYZ here's what I'm trying to do let's have a conversation you know and sometimes that's in Slack sometimes it's in zoom and we just chat and you know it kind of leads into me finding out what they do me kind of building that reputation with them and those reputations, they make such a big difference down the road when you're ready for the next thing.

Not to say I'm ready for the next thing, but you know. Yeah, I love that. I love that. So as we kind of wrap up our time here and again, time flies when you're having fun with friends and also when a fire alarm goes off and your video doesn't work. So this has been a hell of a morning. Let's go back to that conference again. I see the tweets coming in Brian. We're gonna have a hard time picking somebody just FYI. I'm seeing the tweets come in. If you want to go to that conference in Texas in January, again, travel's not included and lodging's not included, but if you want to go and you want your ticket paid for with food provided, comment on this live on my Twitter about why you want to go.

And Brian are gonna do a random drawing. So Brian, let's finish out, talk about how you navigate conferences yourself. It's kind of conference season, I would say probably the next, really now for the next 45 days, There's a shit ton of conferences happening. Talk about how you navigate conferences. When I used to go to conferences before that, earlier this year in Texas, I would go, I'd find the sessions that I really wanted to see. I'd sit in those sessions, I'd take what I wanted to and I'd basically dip and that would be it. Since I started going to that conference, I guess it made a big difference that I knew people there because that was one of the main reasons why I wanted to go.

I quickly realized like the value of being at a conference isn't the sessions. The sessions are amazing. And I say that as someone who's actually speaking at, I can't say much. I'm the same way. Yeah. Go and talk to people. Go meet people. It's as simple as, you know, when I was at that conference in Texas earlier this year, keep saying that conference. Clark, who's the organizer, had encouraged people that for lunch, go sit with somebody different. Go sit with people you don't know. Yeah. And I did. I just picked a table and be like, hey, let's sit here. Hi, my name is Brian. Here's what I do.

What's your name and what do you do? Okay, what's your name and what do you do? Okay, what's your name and what do you do? meet people, talk to people, ask them about their life stories, ask them what they enjoy to do. And then from that, that's how you build relationships and that's how you build connections. So it's for me conferences is all about that networking and it's all about making friends and making connections that are gonna last significantly longer than React 18 is gonna last. Cause God knows next year, React's gonna be totally different. So let me ask you this. And do you have a specific, like what's your go-to word track to meet a stranger in one of those hallway tracks.

So obviously like, hey, my name's Brian, this is what I do, what do you do, I mean you probably do that, right? Yeah, that's a pretty common one. One of my tricks though is to let people talk and to respond to what they're talking. A lot of people like to be heard, right? I think a lot of people, especially in the age of working from home, aren't heard. So when they start talking, it's like, respond to them, ask them to dig more deeper into it. asking and that's how I like I like building connections just you know listening I think listening is more valuable than talking yeah I'm using it or valuable talking I love that yeah so I love this Anna I just lost it as Brian was talking my networking fair just a stare at people that to assert dominance it is not working so well and I love that Anna said that because Anna is like one of the kindest individuals and one of the most social individuals I know so that's great yeah hi hi my name is buddy what's your favorite color yeah and I think to Brian And I'm interested here you thoughts on this.

I get a lot of people will be like, I'm trying to, I literally, most people was like, I'm trying to get a 30 minute elevator pitch down to talk to people at conferences and like, no, you don't, people don't want to talk that long to you. Yeah. And I mean, that to me mean, people got to have a time of conferences. So like, I mean, I tell people like, listen, three to five minutes, just make sure you connect with them either on Twitter or LinkedIn. Yeah. Whatever their platforming process. I mean, it's, I think personally, I think even five minutes is quite long. I mean, it's not, I mean, I had seen was attention in 30 seconds.

Like, yeah, this is who I am, this is where I'm from, this is what I do, tell me about yourself. Yeah, absolutely. I do want to get into speaking real fast. Why should people consider speaking at conferences? Very obviously networking. I'll just go ahead and repeat that one more time. But the other thing you get from speaking at conferences is you have to dive quite deep into whatever topic you want to talk about. Like my session at, I presented at that conference in Wisconsin just a couple of months ago. And I proposed a talk of which I thought I knew quite a lot about. And it turns out in order to speak well to that, and this is true for any content creation, even speaking at conferences, you got a really deep dive deep into it to learn the nuances.

And if you're talking, if you're practicing a talk and you're realizing that like, hey, I'm not very confident in the way XYZ is coming out, that's an indicator that maybe you don't understand that topic as good as you think you do. Yeah. So you're educating people, but you're also educating yourself. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Few, few comments. Yeah. LinkedIn QR code. Huge. Huge, huge, huge, right? Huge. Sometimes I ask what's keeping you busy these days, I love that. I love that. And that's why on the podcast, I start asking, like, what do people do outside of work that brings them joy? Because I always love bonding with people with stuff outside of work.

We're already there to talk work stuff. So like that's a good de facto. But if you can say, Hey, my name's Brian. What do you like to do outside of code? I think you'll probably get some pretty cool answers. Go ahead, Brian. I got a quick pro tip on the QR thing. So this is by a friend of mine, Brad Garepy, who is, I think you might know Brad, I'm not sure. He showed me this. It's a QR code that's a wallpaper on the phone. You can generate these on Adobe's website. The QR code to go anywhere. So like I have a QR code that goes right to like my popular social so people can pick where they want to go to not necessarily LinkedIn.

So just pro tip. I'm gonna hit you up on that. Sure. I'm gonna get that done. Yeah, what's key, because I love that. Jason, within 10 seconds, you should read how long a conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Go green. Read the room. Read the room. Yeah. 100%. Oh, it's a year. Sarah goes, that didn't apply, I speak at that, but my favorite thing is me is to speak, because I'm an introvert. It makes so much, yeah, yeah, 100%. Like, speak into like a room of 15, 20 people is a lot easier than sometimes a conference. But yeah, Sarah, I love that. Also, I'm an introvert too.

So I'm an introvert unless I have the mic. And then I'm not an introvert. Let's see here. If it's that I have a meetup, my gut instinct is always more relaxed. Yeah, again. So I was messing with somebody about this on the internet, yesterday on Twitter. And they were like, I like being at home and creating content because it helps me network. And I get that. I would challenge yourself, y'all, to start going to one in person, meetup a month. I would really start to push yourself because it really helps deepen the connections. I think online allows you to scale, but it's a lot of surface.

I think once you can meet the people in person that develops that sort of connection and bond. Thoughts on that, Brian? Agreed, although I never practiced that myself. Yeah, I get it. I get it. It's hard. Yeah, I actually want to. And you know what? The other downside is, especially now that I live kind of in the middle of nowhere in Kentucky, there's not a lot of meetup tech meetups around me. So there's not even an opportunity for me to go somewhere. Like I didn't say this, but I was semi-planning on crashing your little meetup you had in Nashville last week and the logistics just didn't work out for for well I moved it to tonight well now the logistics still aren't going to work out so thanks for the heads up but anyway yeah um for the meetup in November try to be there in November we're going to we're going to be at a really cool spot it's going to be two or three hours yeah and it's going to be early so if you can make it obviously we'd love to see you um yeah Barrett says in here introverts of the world unite separately on your own away from people I need that on this shirt That's fucking awesome.

Also, this is probably why I'm shadowing on things like Kirsty much. Alright, so to finish out today, again, go connect with Brian. Again, if you want a ticket to that conference, there's only one comment on this live. Say why you want to go. Again, it doesn't cover travel logic, but we'd love to have you. Brian, as we wrap up two last questions for you, what tools, technologies, trends, are you looking at researching or maybe even using using on the side that you want to talk about. Researching. The big thing that I'm researching now is probably AI in vector embeds, just because that's part of my role at PlanetSkills, trying to figure out how all this stuff works and speak intelligently on it.

Outside of that, nothing new and shiny, honestly, at the moment, I'm looking into. I'm building stuff with stacks that I'm comfortable with and familiar with. I do want to dive more into Go and HTMX, just because that Go is probably my favorite language, even though I do more with JavaScript these days. Those things hot right now. Go, yeah, I love working with Go personally. The problem is like, you know, if you want to build anything front end, you're kind of stuck with JavaScript. So it's like, you know, might as well just stick with React and Express, at least for sure. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Last question.

So a show is called Guidance Council 2.0 for a reason. We had Guidance Council's a middle school high school in college, but now as adults, we don't really have a Guidance Council return to you just to ask for general career advice questions. What's your biggest piece of career advice to younger Brian? Be consistent. That's when something I've struggled with very much, like if I have an idea, just bang on it until something comes out of it. I often will hop from thing to thing to thing to thing to thing without actually seeing things through to completion. So being consistent and seeing things through, I think would have probably pushed me farther than I am now.

And I say that with the caveat of, I've been very blessed with my career and I made it farther than I ever thought I would be. So I love that. I love that. All right, y'all. Well, that is it for today. Brian, thanks again for hanging with me, buddy. I appreciate it. Stay on, so I can say to you backstage. Again, one more time. If you want to go to that conference in Austin in January, you have to pay for your travel and the lodging. But if you want the ticket and the food paid for, comment on my tweet with this video on my Twitter about why you want to go.

Brian is going to do a random thing in my jigger. and then he's gonna pick whoever it selects. So do that, Brian, thank you my friend for hanging out with me to say, any last final thoughts for the folks? Anything else that you wanna get off your chest? No, get out there and meet people. Network, there you go, network meet people. It's almost like you've heard that before. Cool, all right y'all, appreciate y'all time. Tomorrow, unicorn finders. Really cool, I'm actually, when I say I'm actually really excited, we've talked with a lot of cool startups. This is a really cool startup. It's a calendar app to track meetings for middle managers inside companies.

So it's a way, there's like a lot of data involved about where you're spending your time, how many times your meeting with so-and-so, and giving that back to upper leadership to show what you're doing. So really interested to see the app, talk about the app tomorrow. I have the founder Brian Daly on the show, so tomorrow morning at 3AM Central, at Unicorn Finders, and then Friday, we're doing a special edition, Guidance Council 2.0 at noon central. I have the former lead designer of Headspace, the meditation app coming on the show, Frank Bock. So that's gonna be a good one. So y'all have a good one, Brian.

Thank you, my friends. I appreciate you. And I'll see you soon. Thanks for having me. All right, brother. See y'all. Hey, you did it. You listened to an entire episode. And I am very grateful. Cause you know why? There's a lot of podcasts out there. There's a lot of episodes. And I myself rarely finished an entire episode. So I appreciate you so, so much for listening. Quick reminder, please rate and review this podcast in the App Store. I want this to be discoverable to others. And the only way that happens is if you take the time right now and rate and review it, please, like right now, unless you're driving, then don't do it.

So thank you again, if you need to reach out to me at Tdastin' on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.