do what you love and it just works out w/ kevin blanco, sr. devrel

full transcript

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

Kevin, it's good to be with the one man. Who are you? What do you do? And we'll go from there. Well, first of all, I'm passionate about education, about what I do. So we have to put a title on a senior developer relations advocate. That's what I do at AppSmith. But if I put it into simple worlds, I have fun. I had fun doing it in videos. I had fun talking to developers. I had fun recording stuff that I enjoy and somehow people also engage with that because going back to what you said at the beginning like when you do what you love people will feel that like there's a transmission of love in whatever piece of work you do whatever that is doesn't happen in video specifically yeah so in my case is whether I'm writing articles or I'm going to a event to speak at some audience which is something that I also been doing for the last two years for a couple of times.

And that's how I can put my title to the simple words. I do what I love and I do fun stuff. I love it. Do what you love and do fun stuff. I could not agree with you more. So you put, so again, Kevin, I can tell he's very thorough at his job because he basically gave me the rundown of what he wants to talk about today. So here are kind of the five bullet points that Kevin said, kind of set expectation. So we're going to talk about how he broke into the US Canadian tech market from abroad, building a successful career path without formal education.

I'm really big on that right now. Transisting from development into developer relations and creating opportunities when starting from scratch. Kevin, where do you want to start? You want to give a quick background about you, kind of your story. I mean, we'll just go from there. Yeah, yeah, totally. Let's talk about the story. I love it. Look at the camera angle shift. My guy is on it today. I love it. Yeah. So, okay, so I was born in Costa Rica. I live in Costa Rica. This is where I work from. I travel back to back a lot of times during the year, but I love here.

Costa Rica is amazing. It's a safe place, a beautiful place. If you haven't come here, you should. But so I was born in Costa Rica. I come from a very humble family. And like my story is that we don't have land. We don't have money. We don't have connections. And my mom and dad, they're very humble. My dad is a plumber. My mom is just a person who would take care of me and my brothers. And so I go to the public school system and never had access to a computer. So that's the first thing I have to say that it really blows my mind when I go to high school and all my friends and everyone have their own computer and their houses.

I never touch a computer and so we go to computer science basic, you know, a school and they're going to teach us how to use Microsoft Word and Power Pawn and all that stuff. And I never taught you computer in my life before. I don't even know what a mouse is. And so everyone is just moving their mouse. You know, the kids are crazy with the computers trying to play game. And I'm just like, how the heck did I use this? So that was pretty shocking for me. And I fall in love with computers at that moment. And I said, I want to work with these things.

So again, coming from a very humble family, a farm-ish place on the east side of Central Valley here in Costa Rica. And so I tell my parents that that's what I want to do. And they say, we don't have money. The thing that the best thing you can do is go to something that exists here in Costa Rica, that I don't know if it exists in the US. It's called a technical institute. So basically it's like a combination of the standard high school system plus some technical degree. So they give you like a basic technical degree that you can go off and have a job with the basics and then you can pay off your own university and things like that.

And so they said, you know, that's the best thing you can do is a public system. So because we don't have money for the university and like, you know, that's the best thing you can do. And so they have to take tests because since it's a very unique type of educational system, they take tests just to get the best people out of it. So I take the test, fortunately I get in, and that's where I take the computer science degree, technical degree. So they teach you everything related to the basics, like computer science, math, logical systems, and learning to program in Python, Java, HTML, JavaScript, SQL databases, like the basics.

So you can get a job. It's a three year thing. So in parallel to the standard educational system, like the standard thing, language, what have you, you take that thing and you stay all day at high school. And so when I get that degree, I go out to, you know, find a job and I realized that it's not easy. Yeah, that's usual. But as usually in my life, I was blessed. After three months of looking for a job, I see a position on a digital agency, very small shop that we're looking for their first hire. just three friends who created their agency building websites for, you know, basic agency, and they were looking for their first hire.

They're growing, but they don't have enough money to pay like somebody who is middle. So it's a junior position, I go there, they interview me, they say, you know, you have the basics, you have like the courage, we like to hire you, very basic payoff, but it was amazing because that's where I realized and found out about the beauty of working with communities. So the boss said, you know, One thing we'll love you to do if we hired you is we contribute back to the product we use. So we use a lot of Drupal. The thing that we like you to do is if you join us here is to contribute back.

We normally go to the Drupal camps and I'm only Drupal meet up. So we'll like you to do that's why I say yes. I mean, I need the job. Sure. But basically that's what happens. I joined this small agency. They teach me everything about Drupal. I knew PHP HTML JavaScript, but not Drupal as a content management system. So they teach me that. I'm always thankful to them about that. And so that's how I start my journey going to the community. So I gave my first presentation being 21 years old. I think I have a picture, I'll try to bring it up. Super bad presentation, like I was extremely scared.

Could I go through the whole thing? It was pretty painful to watch, but it was the first presentation I did and I'm also thankful to them about that. So that's how my journey starts. And then after two years working with them, I see a position related to Drupal as well on a company called Mobiquiti. They're located in Boston. My English level isn't that bad at that moment. So I said, you know, I think they're getting, they just have a better pay. I think I deserve to start growing. So I apply, they give me an interview. And everything went pretty well. they were looking for somebody to start building like APIs out of their Institute system.

So they have a mobile application. They had everything in the content management system which was Drupal and they went to expose APIs to it. So I started that job which was amazing. And I remember my first meeting with the technical manager of that account or that project. He was a guy from Texas and I thought I knew English. I thought I could understand English. Like the interview went pretty well. Yeah, the short guy was amazing. But these guys from Texas, I couldn't barely understood anything what he said. Yeah, yeah. Hi, Rod, it was extremely fast. So I remember that the first meeting at the end, I said, can you send me a recap on email?

Because I just make sure that I understood the right thing. Taxes is in the same language. Yeah, yeah. It was insane. But I started to practice, and after a few months, I was able to prepare my ear for those type of things. Yeah. And somehow I think I got some of that like Texas stuff, because when I go to the US people tell me like, are you from Texas? Oh, that's the matter. I'm from Costa Rica. But anyway, and that's how it started. Like we can continue talking about the journey as we move forward, but that's how it got started. And it's been beautiful, continue to working with the community.

So I stayed with the Drupal community for maybe six years. First as a community member, then I started to do presentations, then I joined the organization team, and I went to the DrupalCon 2016 in New Orleans, a beautiful experience, I got the chance to give a presentation there. And again, going back to the importance of the community, I meet people at DrupalCon from the Canada community, and they said, you know, we love your presentation. Why don't you just go to, we invite you to the Canada meetup that we have. So, and they invite me to the Drupal North, which is like the Canadian Drupal meetup or DrupalCon.

And I go there and I speak about that and it was just beautiful. Like once you get into community, like you cannot go away. Like you go in for the product but you stay for the community. I love that. I love it. And so I really, man, you've said so many good things. We could like break down right there. I mean, I think talk, it was what you just said, like kind of get into the zag, dude, those camera angles. I think it was fantastic. Talk about like, I mean, I know I talk about all the time. about community, right? Torque, we're very community first.

It's our focus of ours. But like a lot of people don't know, like talk about, because like I'm trying to, and honestly like Roxy on the call and Jeff on the call, like they're very active in the Torque community and I see them and I appreciate them. And I feel like sometimes people like, well, if I get involved in the community, like well, it'll give me a job. And like, it's not always a one to one, but can you just talk about the importance of just really just showing up because I feel like a lot of people are like, well, if I don't get something immediately, then I'm not going to be a part of it.

Yeah, that's the problem. I think that once you go into the community knowing that the reason is just to support each other and you have to go to a community not to get things for you is just to help other people. So once you do that, you'll realize that the community will eventually pay you back. I can tell you I spent 10 years of my life being with communities, first the Drupal community, then the JavaScript community, then the Google community. I was never given a job as a developer advocate. I was never given a single buck of money. I did everything by myself. I spent my own money, my own gasoline, then organizing, I spent my whole time.

And it was something that, you know, something that my wife also told me, like you're investing a lot of time on this, what, and I knew eventually that will pay off. And so when I interviewed for my first DevRel position, it was like, what is your background? Because it was my first time applying for a DevRel position. I don't have a formal DevRel background that I've been working with developers over the last 10 years all by myself. Here are all the presentations that I've done, or the events that have helped organize, and all of the different things that people can say about Kevin. Yes. And that helped me get the developer developer relations job after 10, 15 years of working with community alongside my full-time job as a developer.

So again, you go to help people not to help yourself. That will eventually come up. And it's beautiful. I can tell you that probably 80% of the new positions or new jobs that I've I've gotten in my career has been because somebody reached out to me after they knew me from a community engagement. It was never me applying for a job or a HR people reaching out to me. It was always, hey Kevin, I met you and this meet up, JavaScript meet up. It seems you know a lot about Node.js, we have a position where you live, you know, we like to apply. And so, yeah, it takes some time.

And I think that's one of the things that I always try to find is once you identify your path, you have to build momentum through consistency. And the only way you build consistency is going in helping the community. Like, I know it sounds like, that sounds like bullshit, but it's not. I know, I know, it just, well, it's so interesting. Like, this morning, I've been on a bunch of calls already, which I typically don't like to do because it takes me a second to wake up. I had a call with a data engineering leader here in Nashville this morning. His name is Ed Pearson. He's great.

And he threw a data conference here in Nashville. His first conference like 400 people showed up. It was amazing. And he told me on this call this morning, he goes, Taylor, he goes, I was so burnt out with networking that, oh dear. My buddy, Ed, He goes, I was so burnt out with networking that I took 2024 off. Oh, wow. Yep. You get it. Incredible. You get it. And he goes, he goes, that was a bad idea. Because he goes, people forgot me. And he goes, I don't mean it to be me. And he goes, I, and I don't mean it to be towards anybody.

He goes, but if you're not, he goes, and again, he says, I, he goes, it's a muscle. And he goes, if you just like let it after feed. It becomes harder to get off your couch and go to a networking event. It becomes harder to go and be a part of a webinar. It becomes hard to go get on a podcast because you're just not doing it. So literally he called me and he goes, what can I do? How can I help torque? Like, what are you guys doing? How can maybe we help with like some data initiatives here in Nashville? And so it's one of these things where it's like, you, you, it just builds on itself, right?

I mean, I was at, I mean up in Amsterdam and one guy said that too. It just builds on itself and it's really hard to explain and I think people don't realize that. Yeah, that's true. And last year I went to a conference in Vancouver and also another one in Calgary, a beautiful community in Calgary. Shout out to the Calgary community. And one of the things that I found interesting is how people go to these events in some sort of mindset that they have to pretend they know everything or they have to pretend that and I was talking to one of the guys that we have around table and was like the reason why I'm here is because I understand that everybody thinks that everyone else have or figured it out and I want to be the guy that says no I don't have it figured out even though I have 15 years in the career I still don't have it figured out sometimes I don't even know where I'm heading yes I have a goal I have a mindset but yes the path will change along the way and so when I He said that everyone's like, oh, dude, man, so glad you said that I feel the same way.

I feel burned out. I feel I don't know what I'm going. I feel that everybody else have to figure it out. Everybody else know about AI. Everybody's building this AI product and they're getting to one million or like super fast. And I was like, that's the beauty of the community that you can open yourself and be transparent and be very raw. And then from there, we can all build together to try to achieve our goals together. That's the end, I believe. Yeah, absolutely. And again, I'm going to transition off this topic here in a second because we still have some stuff to cover and time is going by quick.

But again, I want to give a shout to Jason Torres. I mean, I hired him because he was a part of the community before ever having a job. And I saw what he was building. I said, I want that person on my team. And that took over a year. He was in kind of my network for every year. And then boom, pulled the trigger. So again, it's incredibly, incredibly important. Jeff, I see you. Yeah, Jeff, email me, Taylor at torqu.dev. I'll make the connections with love for you to connect with Ed. And we get something to go into Nashville. All right, next thing I want to talk about, the lack of formal education.

I know you touched on it. I want to go back to it because my hot take is don't go get a degree in tech. Just start building, spend four years that you're going to go get a degree. Take that money, get that loan, and take that money, and just build stuff for yourself, and you're gonna come out way further along. That's my hot take. What are your thoughts on all that? What are your thoughts with education, bootcams, kind of give me kind of lay out the land from that perspective? Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. So like I said, I got my first job, and the whole idea was with that salary, I will start paying my degree, my university.

And so I did, I started to do that, and I go to the university, And I start to realize everything they're teaching here, I'm doing 10 times higher in that the agency as a junior person. Like I'm understanding, because since I was the first hire, I was also involved in all of the other processes they had. They were very transparent about that. So I was able to understand how to receive a customer to the meeting, how to prepare a scope of work, how to make a council, how to do you manage their servers. I wasn't just building the website, like the HTML. I was actually doing front end and deeming.

But on the end, I started to do everything with the guys because they were doing everything. So I remember that after two years paying my degree, my university with the salary, I realized like, this is a waste of money. It's nothing against universities or the formal education systems, but the way technology is moving, compared to other like fields of education, like medicine or something like that, I understand they need a degree, but for us, we don't. like you need to know what to do. I was never asked for my degree on an interview. I was always asked, give me your GitHub profile, give me your LinkedIn profile, show me the code you have built, the contributions you have done, they never asked before a degree.

And so if that's the nature of the field that we're at, then you have to take advantage of that. And I have friends who took the entire five, seven years degree thing, and at the end, they have to start from the background, from a junior position, because although they have this engineering degree, and yeah, they learn a lot, they did have experience. And at the end companies would like to have your experience because you know, everybody knows this, the things you learn in whatever education systems you will be is not the same as the real life. It is not always like that. And the other thing I will say is, and it's something that I learn maybe a little too late in my career is, there's also a big investment in things that are not related to technical stuff, invest in your communication skills, invest in your soft skills.

I will say that a lot of the decisions from people hiring me came because I connected with them. It, yeah, I had the background, I had my GitHub, I knew how to code. All of the other people have, interviewing for that position also knew how to code maybe better than me, honestly. But I had something that connected with them. It was because I knew how to communicate, how to build empathy. And so I learned that I had to invest also in the way that I speak, in the way I communicate, and that also helped me build my career. So yes, take that money, invest it in yourself, get certified.

I think certifications are a really good way to build up like they're fast. You can learn things, you can pick up things really quick, and it can help you get that, let's say, formality you might be looking for, but without spending that amount of money on a formal education system, I will say. So yeah. I love that. I love it. I want to go back to Baron's comment here. That's part of why I keep submitting to conferences. It's easy to get discouraged and burnt out. I nearly passed on submitting to Star Trek because I never got accepted, but I did it anyway and got accepted this year.

Don't give up even when you really, really want to. Yeah. Thoughts on this? That's true. Well, you know, I've been telling the good things about my career, but it's been a lot of bad things. Like I've applied to conferences speaking, like hundreds of times. I've done like very bad presentations. Things have gone wrong and I've learned how to do things sometimes the bad way. But yeah, I think the thing is what separates the winners from the not so winners is consistency. Like if you just said, oh, I applied for this particular event, they didn't accept me. F them. I'm not gonna do it again. They don't know me.

Like, they don't put yourself down and understand there's other people that are probably well prepared better than you, but still go to that event. So here's the thing that I always do by myself. I have to be in a room where I'm the dumbest guy. If you're in the room where you're a smartest guy, you just hit a roof. You're not gonna grow. So if probably they didn't accept your presentation, because maybe there are better people than you up going there. So it means that if you go there and you connect with them, you will be the dumbest person in the room and you will learn something.

Still try to go, still try to connect with those peers and understand what they're doing right that you didn't do correct, try to ask them, Hey, can you like tell me, how do you apply to that CFP and how do you get accepted? And learn from that. Never just try to let your ego take on yourself. And what Barrett said is don't give up even when you really want to. That's a beautiful advice for sure. I love it. So again, close to time. I do have a hard stop in six minutes, but I'll go a little over because I just love chatting with you. I want to go back to do what you love and it just works out.

I do want to make sure we highlight this, drive this home, give me your thoughts on this. Yeah, totally. When you do what you love, you will eventually find out that you won't be doing job. You will be just doing what you love. And I find myself what people so-called working on vacations, working on my free time during the weekends because it's just what I love. I love creating videos. I love producing. I love being in touch with developers. And so when you do what you love, it doesn't become a job and it won't be a pain. And eventually it will grow because people will see how transparent and good you are at that.

Since we're getting out of time, I'm gonna give you like the five steps that I normally take when I try to achieve something that I love. And somehow that have worked because I know we don't have time but I'm also a private pilot. I'm also being successful but people successfully in other fields. And it's always a repetitive path that I understood that if I take this path, I'll be able to achieve things that I'm passionate about. So the first thing is you have to quit the noise. And what I mean by that is don't look up others people. Like they might be way ahead of you or way back of you.

So if you look at the people on the back of you, you will build your own ego. And if you see people ahead of you, you will start to be depressed or maybe anxious. Don't do that quit the noise. You're at the best place you can be. The other thing is identify your path. And when I'm saying path is the end goal, like not the exactly path to get there because the path will change, but eventually you'll get there. So once you say this is what I want to achieve, I wanna be speaking at the EMBRO-CON 2025. All right, that's the end goal. What you have to do to get there, that's what you have to take the third step.

My third step is take for it, plan, let's action, you have to work. You have to work where nothing comes easy, about what you do, what you love. It becomes something that it is enjoyable, I will say. The fourth thing is once you start taking actual, eventually you build momentum. And again, I talk about building momentum, but it's so important that once you start getting momentum, you have to continue to have consistency because it is the momentum that will take you to that final stage to achieve your goal. And the other thing is, the final thing is surround yourself with the right people. Like a lot of people say this, but it's true.

You know, you are at the average of the five people you're surrounded yourself to. So pay attention to that. And eventually if you achieve this, if you use these five steps, you will eventually achieve your goals. But it takes consistency, be with the right people, take in action, quit in the noise, and then defy your empath. I love that man so good. All right, let's be wrapped up here. First up, everybody go connect with Kevin. There's a lot of comments about his camera angles. Kevin's a great video, just video creator, editor, creative, brand, direction, or thing, like he's great. So follow him, he's fantastic. I was telling him backstage, like in terms of like really interesting dev content, it's like him, Langstorf.

Yeah, he's great about it. So again, follow Kevin, cause he's fantastic. All right, Kevin, kind of rapid fire here. first off, if I were to tell you tomorrow morning, you couldn't wake up or you could wake up, but you couldn't do anything in tech. But I'll pay you the same. If not more, what would you do? Uh, Jeff, I will be cooking. Really? Yeah. I love cooking. I cook every meal in my house. So my wife loved it. Yeah, that's great. I'm gonna come over. I'll book a flight. And I'll And I'll take you fly. Yeah, yeah, I know. Seriously. Second question is outside of tech stuff, what do you like to do just for hobbies?

Video games and yeah, flying, like pilot, I love airplanes. I love that. What are you playing a lot of right now on the video game front? Right now I'm taking it slow because it takes a lot of time. So I'm just playing like soccer, FIFA. Just a lot of news. Who's the team you're playing with right now? Arsenal, go go. There you go. I love it. I love it. Next question. This kind of a new one I've added to my quick fire Arsenal. Who do you want to give a shout out to in the tech community that's doing some cool stuff? My friend Joseph, he's been doing amazing.

He's my friend, my left hand, my right hand at App Smith. big shout out to Joseph. He built his own whiteboard neon stuff to present things like that. Whiteboard is extremely expensive. And Amazon, he said, crap, I'm gonna do it myself. He built it himself and now he's doing amazing videos, like big shout out to Joseph because I know he's sticking hard. I love it, that's awesome. Last question of the day, and again, thank you my friend for hanging out. It was a pleasure. The show is called Guidance Council 2.0 because we had Guidance Councils in middle school, high school and college, but now as adults, you don't really have anybody to turn to.

and ask for general career advice. What would be the number one piece of career advice you would tell a young cabin as he started on his career? Forget about your career. I mean, whatever you do in career is cumulative. Go travel, talk to people, welcome to different street every day, watch a different movie, go to another gallery, listen to music, develop your taste and judgment because whatever you are put in front of an opportunity, your personality that you, Nutrit, has something to bounce off your unique. I love it. You love that so much. All right, y'all. Thank you, good for hanging out. Kevin, stay on the backstage.

I can say about it real quick. Y'all have a great one. 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 T.S. and on all social media handles. And I hope you have a fantastic day.