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You're listening to the Modern Web Podcast. For more podcasts, videos, and events, find us online at modern-web.org or follow us on Twitter at modern.web, that's M-O-D-E-R-N-D-O-T-W-E-B. Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Modern Web Podcast. My name is Rob O'Sell, and I'm an architect at this.labs. Today, we are excited to be talking to Trisha Cat, who is a self-taught developer and dev rel engineer from South Africa. Trisha is going to be talking to us about getting started in development and in developer relations and developer advocacy. We're going to be talking about CSS, and who knows, a whole bunch of other topics. So Trisha, how are you doing today? Hi, Rob. Hello, everyone who's listening. I am doing amazing, I'm doing well, enjoying the weather as always, and yeah, man, I hope everyone will enjoy listening to this episode. Now talk to people, because when we release this, it's still going to be sort of the dead of winter in the United States, and a lot of people might be listening from, and we just had Groundhog's Day as the time of recording this, who condemned us to six more weeks of winter. So can you tell everybody, they're imagining you're enjoying the weather, they're thinking it's tropical and sunny, wherever you are, can you tell them what's actually happening? What's actually happening is I have the lights on inside the house, because it's so dark. It's like, it's like, the clouds are dark, actually, and it's, it's looking like it's going to be a violent rain. So I'm looking forward to all the thunderstorms, the lightning, hopefully it strikes somewhere okay, I'm joking, but yeah, man, I'm, I'm that kind of a person, I love rainy weather. I think it's amazing, it brings water to relaxing, and so I'm looking forward to that. Absolutely. I'm, I'm, I was mentioning this just before we started that I'm the same way, I'm from the Midwest, the United States, and I feel like that is our, our calming, healing energy is just opening all the windows and listening to the rumble of thunder from off in the distance as it slowly comes up and catches up to you, and you can kind of hear the water as it hits like a lake or something, and you can hear it moving across the lake until it gets to your house. I mean, that is, that is just childhood in a, in a single image to me. So hopefully you get a, a, an enjoyable storm where you are. Thanks. I hope I do too. All right. Well, let's jump right into it. And you know, to get us started, I think people are going to be interested to hear about your journey, at least just the beginnings of it. So could you give us like a condensed version of kind of how you came to be in development, because I think people would be interested to hear how that came to be. Yes, of course. So Rob mentioned that I am self-taught and I am based in South Africa, which is like the hardest place to actually land your first job as a self-taught without any degree diploma. And so my journey started when I dropped out of college in 2021. And I decided to self-teach myself with pre-code camp. And after that, a few months later, I think three months into my starting journey, I'm not sure. I landed my first U.S. freelance gig, which I worked on for six months until January 2022, which was last year. And then after that, I sort of discovered Debrell and what it was and I wanted to join and be a developer advocate. And months, I think two months, I joined Strapi as a developer advocate intern. And so that's basically how my journey has started. It all started with dropping out of college, starting a course in pre-code camp and being exposed to my first remote freelance gig and then lending my internship at Strapi. You know, it's such an interesting decision that I know was difficult at times for you, because everybody is sort of told, going to college, that's the pathway to your life working out. And maybe you're being told that from being a young child and then to decide to drop out to pursue this vision, it's not only difficult, it's a lot of work, but it's got to be difficult because you were on supposedly a track that was going to inevitably lead to success. So how did you stay focused, motivated, and not want to give up and go back to the path that you were on before? Like how did you stay committed to that when sort of that doubt might be crept in? That's a good question and I must be honest with you, I felt like giving up most of the time because I've never actually found anyone who was in the exact same position. And as I was at that time, who was South African, who was Black South African, who was working for companies outside of South Africa as a self-taught developer. And so having no one to look out for was difficult on its own because I had no role model. I had no certainty that whatever I'm doing, is it worth it, must I go back to college? And I would say what gave me motivation was tech Twitter. When I saw that other people, even though they were in other provinces, not provinces, other countries, they also felt the same way in my shoes. And when I saw people posting their good news that they finally landed a role as a self-taught developer in some remote company, that just helped me to not give up. It helped me to move forward and it's like, I was like, okay, if it does happen for me, then I can also be a role model for someone who is in the same shoes as I am. And so I went on ahead, I joined communities, I found like-minded people and those people helped me to be motivated and they really helped me too much. And I wouldn't have found that you as a remote freelance role, if it wasn't for the connection I made with someone else, because that someone referred me to that person and that's how I got the role. And so it's all about making great connections. And once you have those great connections, then you have a great motivation to go on. You know, it's such a great point because when you come up, especially you're starting out in a self-taught environment, so not necessarily in a program, you're doing it in the pandemic when we're all already more isolated than we had been in the past, community and finding it. I mean, what an amazing opportunity that you found on Twitter. But I think I remember reading that your decision to join Twitter was also sort of serendipitous in some ways. It wasn't necessarily something that had a ton of forethought or was quite inevitable itself. So how did you decide to stumble into tech Twitter, right? Because there's a million communities on Twitter. So what made you sort of look there and get on Twitter in the first place? Okay. So, Twitter. Okay. So I joined Twitter, I think 2020, that was like my first day in college. So throughout my life in high school, you can see that I had no social media whatsoever. That's how, I don't know, I was like, anti-social media, I'm not the kind of person who like social media, I just thought it was a waste of time. Maybe it's my father's mentality talking here, but it's just, and I was like, okay, I need to like have some social presence because I heard that when people hire somebody, they look out for their social life so that they can see if they have a digital footprint. And if you don't have a digital footprint, then you are considered weird, like, why don't you have social media? And so I was like, okay, let me join Twitter. And I joined Twitter initially just to like follow some trends and I don't know, like do all nonsense. And then after, so okay, so my cousin, she was doing her online business at the time and she was like, she wants someone to make a website for her and she told me to make a website for her and then I did the whole Google process. It's in my blog, I wrote a blog about this, so I'm just like doing a summary. So after that, I found a media travesty, travesty media to do the HTML course. And then I went to Twitter, I created my account, went to Twitter and I followed Brad travesty and along with Brad travesty, you know how Twitter suggests some people to follow and that's how it came to be. And then somehow I got, I saw this hashtag 100 days of code and I clicked on that hashtag and I saw like what was happening, I see people are learning, people are sharing what they're learning. And I was like, okay, so this is how I'm going to dip my toes into tech Twitter. And that didn't happen that same year, I became active on Twitter in 2021 because I joined in 2020. And so yeah, that's how I did my toes into tech Twitter, 100 days of code became what is it? These code newbies, I follow people, people make connections, comments and everything and then my timeline was filled with web development stuff and that's how I came to be. And that's my Twitter, my Twitter stuff. It's so fascinating because yeah, when I got on, I mean, I was on Twitter very early on, but I didn't use it much at the beginning, it was just sort of a playful thing to keep up with news. But when I got on found the tech sphere, I don't know what it was about my mentality that I just assumed that like all the developers in the universe were at the company I worked at and the companies my friends worked at. Like, I don't know why for some reason it just never occurred to me that there must be hundreds of thousands, millions of us around. And so getting on to Twitter, it was like, oh, this is such a cool place to find good blogs to read and to share blogs. But then it's when you make those connections that you're talking about, like you get on that hashtag and you find somebody who posted their first sample project and they just ask for advice. And you know, I got the opportunity to reach out to somebody, they posted their project, I had a couple of minutes, so I looked at it, I said, oh, this is really great. Maybe here's some advice and things to look at and followed them. And then, you know, a few months later, they get a project and it's shared by Sarah Drasner and then they have a, you know, a course that they sell and they're making a bunch of money and then all of a sudden they get like an amazing job and you're like, that was so cool to watch somebody blow up like that. I don't know what it is, but it really is a great place despite all of the other things going on on the platform. It's not perfect from end to end, but it's those connections and those moments that I think still make it so worth it for people, even people starting now. I don't know if you, if you would agree, if you would suggest to somebody get involved in Twitter if they were just starting today, but I just feel like those connections you can make are so valuable to, you know, finding a job, sure, but even just finding a community or a network of people or role models to look up to that have, that are walking your, maybe your similar path. Yes, I definitely agree with you and as someone who has, I might not look it, but I have social anxiety people, believe me, I am not a social person. I'm afraid of approaching people, I don't want to disturb anyone's peace. And so when I, I was like starting out with creating connections on Twitter, it usually starts with the comment sections because I'm not someone who DMs people, I don't do that. It's like, it's too personal, I'm invading a space directly by doing that. So like the comment sections, 100 days of code, like I said, it's the perfect place to find people who are like learning the exact same thing as you. And so that's how like, I started my early connections, I saw someone was learning JavaScript and they were facing the exact same problem as I was. And I kept on asking questions in the comment section, each time they posted, I look forward to the post so that I can reply to them and have a conversation from there. And I think like a few months later, that exact same person, like I said, got me the opportunity to the remote US freelance opportunity. So it's like, it doesn't have to be you approaching big accounts to make great connections. It's someone small, someone at that small hashtag, someone with two, three likes can help you in so many ways than someone with, I don't know, like 90k followers. And so it's really important to not look at the numbers when you're creating connections. Just look at the person, look at what they are, what they're bringing out and reach out to them, compliment them, ask them questions, start small and it would lead to something big. And so it's a great place to make connections with people outside of your own country because like Twitter is worldwide. And so it gives you a sense of being open-minded, being introduced to people's different work cultures and everything. And so take advantage of it. That's all I can say. It's so great to meet another person that has the same opinion on DMs. I was having that conversation with someone recently. They were like, how many DMs conversations do you have active at any given point in time? And I was like, what are you talking about? Like one every couple months? And they're like, I have 10 every single day going on. And I'm like, how? How does that even happen? Like, how does that even initiate? So yeah, I'm really familiar with you. You know, I think it's funny to, I need to sort of break the illusion here of humility because we need to call attention to the fact that you are knocking on the door as the time of this recording of 40K followers on Twitter right now. So you know, all of the things that you're talking about that you've overcome notwithstanding, it's been very successful for you. And what I like about that is that, you know, you've done it, as you said, not as someone who is setting out to become famous or coming to build this with an objective and maybe not even to necessarily do it with a particular strategy. You've probably developed things, maybe that work well. But I like that you've built this a bit on the back of being authentic and humorous and a little bit self-deprecating, but also serious. So I don't know, can you explain to me, if you try to reflect on it, how that happened and how you approach Twitter and how you kind of, you know, want to engage with it just from your own content? Okay, so how do I overcome? I don't know. I can be a weird individual sometimes. What did you say, self-deprecating? Sometimes some of your tweets are humorous, but sometimes they're humorous because it's like, I'll never figure out JavaScript or like, you know, this kind of stuff. So it's very relatable, it's like the thoughts that flip through our mind sometimes in the midst of a hard problem, you find a way to put them as one line very succinctly on your Twitter. It's incredibly relatable. I assume that's why so many people have followed you is to the relatability of what you're putting down there. Yes, actually, I have been told, but in our honesty, people, if you follow at Trisha KS, please do let me know why you follow me because I don't know why I have no idea why people follow me, but okay, so I would say it's like, okay, I treat Twitter as my, should I say like my diary, like my confession, like my, like my everything, like where I trash talk or if I have some unfunny funny jokes, maybe funny jokes for me. And then I'm like, oh, actually, people are liking this. It's like, I just post them out. And also, my tweets are short because I don't like to read long things. I'm not someone who likes to read long stuff, even like threads, unless it's like, it's really something I have to learn. I want to understand. But otherwise, I'm not someone who likes to read a long sentence. Like one sentence that is effective straight to the point touches your soul, you're related to it, then that's, that's like, that's like good enough for me. And so I always try to keep my tweets short because that's the kind of tweets I would like to see. I'm not judging anyone on anything. You are your own person. I'm my own person. I like short things. You might like long things, but then I do what works for me. And if you like it, then thank you so much. I, I don't try to be relatable. I just, I post things that just randomly go through my mind or the thing I faced for the day. And so yeah, I, yeah, I guess that's like, that's it on that. Well, you know, it's interesting because there is something to be said about finding your style or knowing your style and being authentic. It's a much easier to be yourself than to, you know, if you were going to approach Twitter and say, well, it seems like all of tech Twitter is long post and thread. So I need to find a way to do what I would normally do as long posts and threads. It wouldn't sound like you. It maybe wouldn't be interesting to follow. So you know, as you sort of develop that style, like, have you adopted any of what we'll call the Twitter meta? Like, have you, have you become more aware of the, the times when posting gets more engagement or, or is this truly sort of incidental? Like, you're just posting what you're thinking when you're thinking of it and it's still connecting. Well, I would say I'm just, I'm just the person you see people as the person you see on my timeline, I, I, I post what I like, I post what I think, but I will admit starting my early days of content creation on tech, Twitter, it's, it's, it's really hard to like immediately find a niche, something you, you would like to be known for. And so I have dipped and doubled on some few things that creating threads. Like I just said, I don't like threads and I created threads. And I guess I wouldn't say I expressed myself authentically doing that. And then also, if you are on Twitter, Rob, you, you always, you must have seen people posting eight AI tools and, you know, yeah, you know, right, exactly. Yeah, the eight AI tools, he has how to find them a thread and all that stuff. I've tried all of those. They didn't work for me. And then I was like, okay, everyone is doing it. Every account is doing it. Everyone is like, I don't know how do I set you apart from someone else? Because it's like, I will follow five people and then post the same thing, the same syntax, whatever. I'm saying syntax on Twitter people. I don't know why, but it's like, I had to think of like setting myself apart. You know, like, what, what is it I would like to be known for? I don't want to be like everyone else, you know? And so it's like, okay, what do I like to do? I like to do CSS. I like to do CSS code. I like to do CSS arts. And then I started by that. I started sharing my CSS arts. I started to share my CSS project. And then from project, it went to CSS puns. And I was like, hmm, I'm a sucker for dead jokes. Let me post those and people like them. And then I was like, hmm, the more I learned JavaScript, I could be able to make a pun out of JavaScript and make some unfunny jokes. And then I posted those two. And so over time, people liked it. And then I have what, close to 40K followers on Twitter. I don't know why people, but yes, it's, it's like that. It took some time. So just, just be yourself, be authentic self, set yourself apart, make people think about you. And when they think about you, they must associate something with you. Like when they think of CSS, they're like, okay, I'm going to follow Tricia. Sorry, I'm going to follow Tricia or web three. I'm going to follow Francesco or Denny Thompson. I'm going to follow for motivation, inspiration, that sort of thing. And so your goal is to be identified by something and have that something associated with your name on tech Twitter. That's my advice. I can give you on growing on tech to be yourself. Share your niche and just, just do what you like. And then people will like you for it. You don't have to do a lot of things. It just, it will grow on its own. Be patient. Patience is a big one. But, you know, I like this idea too that, you know, when everybody is, if everybody's doing a certain thing, then people feel compelled to do it and they feel a little bit like you did at the beginning, which is to say, like people without a community, they say, well, I like weird silly jokes. And I like not taking things too seriously. And I like talking about CSS, but everybody's talking about React. So I guess I need to talk about React on Twitter. And it's like, you know, I was a, a gamer many years ago, long before it was quite as mainstream as it was now. And I remember being in conversations with people and, you know, you're like, oh, the weather, oh, sports, oh, business. And you kind of just have in that conversation. And then maybe it slips that one of you plays a video game. And then the other person goes, wait, you play, you play video games. And all of a sudden then this, all this animation and, you know, this, this nerd found another nerd and they have a moment of community and bonding. And a deeper conversation than they ever would have had. And you can be that on Twitter, right? Like you can be that person that is talking about the thing that maybe nobody else is talking about, but people really want to, but think they're not allowed to. Uh, and you know, it's like you said, when clearly people were hungry for that kind of, uh, you know, silliness as well as CSS talk, uh, in a world full of a lot of JavaScript talks. So, um, you know, happy that you found a niche. Maybe not everybody will find quite as potent of a niche, but you'll certainly enjoy your experience on Twitter a lot more. You will find your tribe, even if your tribe isn't extremely large, uh, as long as you're being yourself. So yeah, absolutely. Okay. So then you sort of progress from, from, uh, well, I mean, you're still on Twitter, but we've progressed the story from, from Twitter to getting a job. And what's fascinating about your job journey is that you pretty quickly went, um, from self taught developer to developer relations engineer or developer advocate and, um, you know, this is certainly a career that has over gone a lot of changes, certainly during the pandemic, but, but over the last many years as the, as it's matured, um, and, you know, I don't know that there's been a ton of people talking about starting with developer relations or developer advocacy as opposed to like maybe, um, switching over to it after a little bit of time of being a developer. So can you kind of explain, um, how you, I mean, you talked a little bit about how you got the job, but kind of how you got into this, uh, this career and how you sort of, uh, dealt with it coming from maybe not, you know, a 10 year career being a developer already and kind of what challenges and opportunities that, that provided for you. Okay. So how I, I would say how I discovered developer advocacy was because of Pratham does, there's a user by the name of Pratham. She's an Indian, uh, developer advocate at N host, which is an open source company. I forgot for what, but she is the sole responsible person that I am in developer advocacy. Well, I was interested in it. I am still in interested in it. Um, and so I discovered that last year, like January, February, summer day, and I, what, what really brought me into liking Devra was how it was described the role of the job. So the role of the job, basically, it involves, I think, four pillars. If I'm not mistaken, one is education. So creating content for developers, making sure that they are learning, uh, about the product they, they are representing. And so, uh, the education you create is to help developers be successful with the product they're using. And then the second pillar is marketing, bringing awareness, going to tech conferences, speaking about the product you're representing. The third thing is, um, if I'm not mistaken, it's community, community management. So you're going to be engaging a lot with community management, uh, community members and helping them out. And, you know, just basically forming relationships with your community. And then the fourth one is coding. So you must have some technical skill to be able to relate with the community you are representing for to the company. And so I was like, that's a nice job. That is what I am doing as a, as a tech tweeter person. I'm not an influencer. I refuse to be known as that. That is what I'm doing here on Twitter. So I, what I, what led me into believing that I can also be a developer advocate was that I'm so, I have a blog. I love writing things down. I, I would say I communicate so much better when I write things down. It's an actual verbal communication. And so I love creating content. I love, uh, showing people how they can use something. I remember there was a time where Tylen CSS was something new to me. And I started using it. And then I went all in to convince people that, hey, leave bootstrap behind. Bootstrap is not for you. Go to Tylen CSS. I will convince you, I will show you. And that's what I did. I would make demos and show people that this is how you build a button in less than five minutes, of course, if my typing speed suffices. But, you know, I, I used to do those things. I used to like advocate. I used to, I, I, I like communicating with people, the community and all that stuff. I know I said I have social anxiety. I don't like to talk to people, but I do enjoy to talk to somebody to help them achieve something. And so I was enjoying that. And I was like coding. I, I code. I love to code. I would say it's fun. It's, it's, it's a combination of things that I like. And I want to experience this field. I want to work as a developer advocate. I got the job. I worked at Strapi. It was amazing. It was everything I imagined and even more. And, and so, yeah, man, I, I don't know if I should go on from this point. But the point is developer advocacy is an amazing role. It's, it's just like you work with people, you meet amazing people. And you, you get to do the things you like as a job and you get paid for it. I mean, who gets paid to write blogs for fun? I mean, I find it writing fun. And, and you know, it's, it's like, it's a dream position. And also you travel, but I didn't get the chance to, but still you travel because of your job. And so it has a lot of con. No, wait, is it cons or pros? Which one is good? Which one is the pros? OK, it's the pros. Oh, my God, the pros are good. That's what I mean. The pros are good. That's what I meant. So yeah, it's interesting because, you know, I think I think people have gotten better in the community of understanding this role a little bit more. But I think there are still some, maybe perceptions or misperceptions exist. Um, one of them is that, oh, I want to be in DevRel because I would just get to code demos all day and then travel to conferences and it would be the coolest job. I hear a lot of people talking about it the same way they talk about like being like a Twitch streamer or like a YouTuber. They're like, oh, I get to play video games all day for a living. What an amazing life. And I don't think they fully understand the hard bits behind it, the metrics, the parts that are not as glamorous, but are difficult. Um, and other people worry that, you know, if I go to DevRel, maybe all I'll be doing is blogs or all I'll be doing is talking to people. I lose all my technical acumen. I won't grow anymore. So I wonder if you could speak to both of those perceptions, both that DevRel is this glamorous, enjoyable, never ending fun of all the best parts of development and none of the hard parts like deadlines and clients. And the other side of people that feel like it's non-technical and maybe they would, they would not be as much of a developer or, or struggle in their growth if they were DevRel. Okay. So I would say developer relations is, like you said, there are good parts and then there are bad parts to it. But for me personally speaking, oh no, personally speaking for myself, I would say the bad part is there's a lot of things going on. Like as much as the schedule, like you don't know how your day is going to go, which is awesome. I, I like that about it. But at the same time, it's like, you don't know how your day is going to go. And you have so much to learn. There's a lot of things to learn. And I remember there was, I, we were working on an initiative at Strapi. And one of the initiatives was to form a partnership with Versell. And it's not exactly marketing. It's not exactly, you know, community and, and, um, you know, education. It's more like sales. So you have to like get into other departments and to work with other teams. You have to be someone who collaborates openly with other teams within the company to make sure that you, you know, you, you make things work. So sales, I don't know anything about salespeople. I was like, how am I going to do this for Sal me? But anyway, it's, it's like there's a lot to learn and you also have to be comfortable with being flexible. So like I said, I don't know anything about sales, but you have to be comfortable about not knowing what sales is and being able to take the role and being like, okay, let's break it down. What's the first step to achieving this goal? What do we have to do? Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I'd say those are difficult. And also when it comes to like community, community management is not as easy as it looks. Just having a lot of people in your community, the numbers don't matter. It, what matters is how are you going to make the community grow? How are you going to help everyone to grow while using your product? Because, you know, like with, with community, they are people too. We are people too. People get frustrated and it just so happens that it's, it's so hard to, to, to, to, to manage a community because you always have to think of something else. How do I make it better? How do I introduce new things? Will they like, will they not? How do we help everyone with questions about Strapi? Because we, we can't, we can't do that too. We, we are people. We, we, yeah, it's just, those are the few things I can, oh yes. And when it comes to video people, even, even if you are an expert on creating videos, you will spend, I don't know, there was a time I had to record a simple, simple video on how you can upgrade just Strapi application. Believe you me, I sat here at 9am and finally got off my chair, I think at 3pm. It was a less than three minute video. And, and I had to like do a lot of pre-shoots and all that stuff. Like it's, it's, it's, it's like not as simple as it seems. And also, even after you shoot, you have to get feedback and then do it again. So it's like, yeah man, this, this, this, this challenges everywhere. Even with blog writing, the blogs you write, they have to accommodate the community. It's not about what you like to write about. It's about what the community needs. And so you're going to have to write about something you have no clue about. And so that's, that's on that. It's, that's my views on that. Yeah, it's, it's, it's so fascinating. I, I love this idea because it's so true that there is nothing more difficult than looking effortless. Like, uh, people maybe learned this. I think we still get fooled by it often on like Instagram. People are like, wow, this person is so glamorous. They take such amazing photos. How could that be your first, your, the first selfie you took out of bed? It's like, it's, it's not got up, put on makeup, set everything up right, put up lights, took a thousand photos and that was the best one. Like, you know, but it looks effortless. And I think good developer relations, good videos and things like that are like that, right? It's born of a lot of, of iteration, of a lot of retries and a lot of reshoots to produce something that feels, uh, solid, that feels good, that feels effortless when somebody watches it. Doesn't mean that it's perfect, um, but it, but it, but it, it sort of melds. And I mean, we have that in development too. I, I like to tell people that like when you get a good designer that puts a good design together for you, it's like a website. It's like you can't tell what the HTML elements are that built it. It just turns into a painting. And I said, it doesn't take a lot sometimes, a little bit of spacing mess up, a little bit of style, oddness and the whole cohesiveness of the design fractures. And you go, that's clearly a div. That's clearly an input. That's clearly a button. That's clear. And it just turns into all the constituent elements. So there's just something about that. Like when, when something finally congeals at the end, it looks well polished. Um, and, uh, it doesn't take a lot of deviance from that for people to see behind the scenes of it a little bit, which is, I think is super interesting. I guess that sounds like that should be intimidating. I actually get inspired by it because I think it's really cool to find that point when everything kind of blends together. I think so too, because from challenges, that's where you learn the most, you know, it's, it's like, as much as I was intimidated by this whole partnership with Vercel, I got to learn a lot from it. Like how you, um, you started actually forming partnership. What is the point? What are we trying to do and create sales pipeline? All that stuff. Community management. It gives you that mindset that, you know what, community is more than just the number. It's more about how you help the people succeed, you know, what it's, it's more than that. That's, that's what I learned. And with blogging as well, I mean, as much as I was a blog myself, a blogger myself, as a hobby, I learned that there's a lot of work that goes into blogging and how you can make a blog stand out, how you can communicate with your target audience, how to capture people's attention. That kind of stuff, I learned that in my role. And so being flexible too, it does help to, to, to expect the unexpected and learning how to adapt to those circumstances is really important. And I would say those are one of the skills I also gained and community and communication with different departments within the team. And so it might seem intimidating, but it is for a good cause because it does open your mind to a lot of things, things that you have never thought about. And when you face something like that, again, then you know what to do. And if you face another problem, then it's, it's a learning opportunity. So I take these challenges as a learning opportunity. And, you know, I like how this connects to the Twitter piece. And I think it's maybe part of the reason why you enjoy it is I think one of the recipes for success in developer relations and advocacy is, is authenticity. Developers are better than average at sniffing out inauthentic contributors or brands hiding behind developer relations. They know when they're being sold to, but they love when they're being related to and when they're really being engaged. And so I think that can sometimes be challenging for people at the beginning, because if you don't feel strong in your own brand or in the brand of the company, in your approach, that can be tough. And it can be tough sometimes to sustain. I tell people like, you can make a discord all you want, and you can get a couple people to join. But can you get the conversation to keep going so that it's there in a month? So that it's there in a year, you know, you can get somebody to read a blog. But can you create a platform where people will want to keep coming back to read your blogs? That is hard. There's not a shortcut for it. There's no magic recipe for it. But it is a lot harder, or not harder, again, not to be intimidating. It's a lot more of a challenge than people might give it credit for. It's even a slightly different skill set than just producing an individual piece of content, is to slot that into where is my community that's sort of starting to grow, and it's starting to smoke and turn into a small flame, and how do I keep feeding them with more outlets, more videos, more content, so that it actually catches. And then to see a community begin to self-sustain, I mean, that has to be such a feeling of pride and happiness in that job. I don't know if you've got to experience that as well. Well, I do experience that. It's like, I don't know, we must remember that behind these communities, it's real people. Those are real people. The same with Tech Twitter. Those accounts, the actual people. I'm an actual person. I'm not an AI robot. And so people cannot be programmed to come back for more. They're not callback functions. Okay, that was lousy. I should have said that. But it's really hard to get someone to come back, to actually like your things, and come back for more. And so it's a skill that I think it's so hard to craft, and to what is the word, to master. And so it's like you find what people are looking for, and you pay attention to what people need. And once you give people what they want, and they see that you're listening to them, they see that you hear the cries they're paying, then I guess that will also help with them being able to trust that you are doing this for them. And then they can come back for more. And if someone else they know are facing similar problems, they know which community, which company they can direct those people to. And that also creates marketing. You know, word of mouth is the most powerful marketing tool out there. And so you do want to make sure that the people you are taking care of, they feel safe, they feel appreciated. And once they feel the trust, the credibility, then they have no doubt but to come back. And yeah, like I said, it's not easy. I'm not mastering it. It's something I'm learning to. And yeah, that's the job. It's all about learning. It's all about facing challenges. And yeah, crying sometimes, but tears of joy. And that's where the community helps. You know, what I love about some of the names in the community that you've talked about is that a lot of them are relatively junior in their careers. And I love that learning in public became a trend. And supporting each other, learning in public, became one of the foundational elements of Tech Twitter. Again, I know there's a lot of noise out there and a lot of nastiness at times. But that core of it, I think, is exciting. Because it does mean that when things are hard, you at least have some people you can go to and say, wow, this is really hard. And people can say, I agree. It is actually sometimes really hard. And I like that word that we can at times be a humble community and not be afraid to admit that sometimes this is overwhelming for all of us. And so that if you're feeling that way as somebody who's either just starting out on their self-taught journey or is lost looking for a job right now, there are a lot of people like you out there that you can connect with on Twitter or other spaces as well. Discord's been a great place these days to find those people as well. Yes, but I must admit, I am actually not as active on Discord. Like, it's like, Twitter's my cave, like my bad cave. I'm always on Twitter all the time. Discord for some reason. I don't know what, but it's not doing it for me for some reason. But I do try. I would say there are a lot of great communities that I've joined on Discord. For example, the 4C community, which is ran by Francesco. It also does have a lot of newbies, a lot of people who are interested in tech. And he also helps them out with resources for learning and for web-free resources. So that's Francesco and another community is, I think coding newbies does have one too. On Discord, if I'm not mistaken, the name itself, it says it all, coding newbies. So that's a great place to also connect with people. It might not be people who are like new in tech, but you will find that someone is learning the exact same thing as you and the conversation can skyrocket into something else, a great connection, friendship, whatever you would like to name it. And so Discord does have great communities. Oh, and Eddie Hub, and Eddie Hub. How can I forget, Eddie Hub? Yes, Eddie. And yeah, those are a few communities I can name the great communities. And yeah, people use Discord. Don't be like me. You'll find a lot of value. You'll find. Yeah, use Discord. It's taste their own. I mean, I think that's the lesson, right? Just finding your niche to contribute to any particular platform is find the platform that works best for you. I know people who never resonated with any platform they sell, they started contributing on LinkedIn. And that's where they found their tribe. And that's where they really resonated with people. And it's like, yeah, let's take advantage of the existence of so many social networks and not feel compelled to necessarily engage with all of them. But to find the tribe again, that works best for us. I agree. I agree. Thank you so much. I'm just like, it doesn't help to be everywhere at once. So just stick with one place that you like. I grew on Twitter. I can't imagine starting my growth on LinkedIn. It's like, well, people are serious. It's all seriousness. So it's like, yeah, stick to one platform, grow, make friends there. And you don't have to worry about anything else. I guess, you know, just find what works for you. Don't be pressured. Now, we're wrapping things up here. But at the end, we like to ask a little bit of a fun question. And I happen to see, well, looking into your profile that you are a big Marvel cinematic universe fan. Oh, yes. So at the time that this will come out, it'll be pretty close to when the movie comes out. But I'm curious, how excited are you for Ant-Man and the Wals? Are you going to be there day one? Are you super excited? Let me tell you something. I bought the ticket two weeks ago. That's how prepared I am. I was like, on Friday, 2pm, because that's the time it's going to play for us. 2pm afternoon, Ant-Man is playing. And to be honest, I'm actually afraid. Ant-Man is my favorite. It's my favorite MCU character. You will even see on my bio, I have a spider. I mean, not a spider, an ant. That ant, a lot of people don't figure it out that, oh, that ant is for Ant-Man. That emojis for Ant-Man. So if Ant-Man dies, if Paul Rudd dies, oh, no, people, I don't think I'll recover. So hopefully it might be, it might be if you're listening to this podcast that you have now seen the movie. And so if the unfortunate has happened, please reach out to Tricia and make sure that she's doing well in her time of mourning. But I didn't know, I thought that was just because of the movie coming out. I didn't realize that was more of a global thing. Well, I wish you luck then watching the movie. So I will also be there the first weekend, because I cannot avoid spoilers for very long, you know, there's the downside of social media. So I need to see things on opening night or else. The spoilers, the spoilers are so bad. I tell you, the people who spoil Marvel movies are not Marvel fans. I said it because if you are a true Marvel fan, you would never spoil that for another fellow person. So if you are DC, please stop, stop posting, please. All right, well, we'll leave it there. We hope that it, we hope that it's enjoyable. I certainly hope that it's enjoyable as well. I hope so. I hope so, dude, like you have no idea how stressed I am. I'm like, do I, do I have to buy it another time? Because like, I'm so stressed out. But anyway, I just hope Paul Rudd doesn't die or anyone doesn't die. Like, but knowing Marvel in every third movie, someone dies. So I have to be emotionally prepared. All right. Well, that's going to be it for us today. Thank you everybody for listening to this modern web podcast and good luck to Paul Rudd. And thank you, of course, to our guest, Trisha. As always, the conversation does not stop here. So you can find Trisha on Twitter, as we've talked about a lot today, at TrishaKS. That's T-R-E-C-I-A-K-S. You can find me online at Robosel. As for the podcast, you can find us online at moderndotweb.com or on Twitter at modern.web. Hope to see you all next time. Thanks, Trisha. Thank you. Bye. Come on. Come on. This podcast is sponsored by VISTOT Labs, a firmware-cognostic consultancy that specializes in JavaScript. You can find them at VISTOT.C-O slash labs. That's T-H-I-S-D-O-T dot C-O slash labs. Come on, now, because we know the shuttle for you.