Category: Dev Advocacy
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Saying No, or If This Then Not That
I had to say no to a conference I would have loved to speak at today. I’ve had to say no to several conference speaking offers this year, because it turns out that time, space, and timezones can only be manipulated to a certain degree. I thought about not blogging about this, because it’s a…
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Lady Conference Speaker: 14 Travel Tips
I was talking to a fellow ladyish conference speaker, and I reeled off a list of my travel tips as they pertain to people who are working for small/nimble enough companies that you don’t have to book through The Corporate Site. Remember that your time is usually more valuable than the amount you can save…
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My first year, a professional review
A bit over a year ago, I applied to a startup. I’d never been a developer advocate before, and I wasn’t sure what the job actually entailed, but the person who recommended me (thanks, Rach!) and the hiring manager said that probably my experience doing talks about technical writing was enough to make me a…
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My first year, a personal review
I woke up to a cheery email today telling me that a quarter of my stock options had vested. That means I’ve been with LaunchDarkly a whole year! (there are worse anniversary notes to get). And what a year it’s been. I thought about doing a photo essay of all the conferences I went to…
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Dignity, Always Dignity
One of the interesting parts of being a semi-public figure by doing DevRel is that it makes you think a lot about how you look to other people, in a way I suspect is not a concern for the ordinary developer. It parallels the doubled perception that a lot of women already experience. In 1972,…
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Live-Tweeting for Fame and Fortune
That’s a joke. I have made $65 off 4 years of live-tweeting, and it’s more than I ever expected. As far as fame, the point is not for me to get famous, but to promote some amazing speakers as they do their thing. I don’t know about you, but I have about 20 tabs open…
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Using Airtable to Manage Conference Submissions
I know, it’s not a very catchy title, but it is descriptive. A large part of my current job is speaking at conferences and talking about feature flags, systems resiliency, and whatever else I can talk people into. And part of speaking at conferences is applying to lots and lots of conferences. But how do…
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This job is undoing me
… in the best way possible. My protective casing of hard-earned cynicism is being rubbed away by all this genuine kindness, cooperation, good culture, and all that jazz. It’s honestly kind of uncomfortable, like molting. You need to understand – I have this hard-ass candy shell for a reason. My first job in technology was…
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Teaching and learning
At LaunchDarkly, we’ve been hiring really aggressively, because we’re doing amazing things. (Come work with me!) That means that we are also doing a bunch of training, and I’ve been working on doing the training for our non-technical employees, folks like marketing, design, outbound sales. They’re important to our success and they have a TON…
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The sticker bag
I talked about this a little bit in Lady Speaker Small Talk , but let me expand. I have a bag of stickers that I take to every conference I go to. This week, I leveled up my game from “gallon ziploc bag of significant antiquity” to “bespoke bag”. It only took me a little while to…