Ep. 11 - Community Onion with SJ Morris | Developers:After Dark
SJ Morris joins the crew to talk about building developer communities and mentorship. They dig into how community roles have changed, what makes mentorship work, and how to actually unwind when you're deep in tech.
I attempted to chop wood this past summer and it was the funniest thing ever. My kids were laughing like, Nick, you were there. Like, everybody was laughing at me because it was the worst attempt at chop.
I don't even think it broke the surface. Here we are. That's such a beautiful intro. I love that. It really is. I love that.
Thank you for that, for sure.
Well, we are here on episode 11 of Develop. Good stuff. Very interesting stuff indeed. And. But before we get into it, obviously everyone.
And then as of the 19th, we'll have our beautiful landing page live. That will give you all the details. And we will be wrapping up the application period on March 5, and we'll take a week to go back and do our algorithmic and human matching magic. And then on March 12, we'll announce the pairings. Hit me up with any questions that you have either on the dev slack or on the dev community, wherever you like, and I'll be happy to answer them. But yeah, I'm super excited to launch this. It's been a dream of mine to launch a mentorship program for developers across all the companies that I've worked at for a long time. And so I'm just really happy that A, the community has responded really well to it and B, that we can expand it and get more folks up and running on building their careers on HubSpot.
Loving it. We'll throw all that stuff in the show notes, by the way, all your links and Nick does a very diligent job of getting those.
I knew that's where you're going the minute, because I know I'm like two shows behind, so I knew that's where you're going with that the minute you said it. But sj, I, I, I should mention too, right, that people should sign up as soon as possible because I believe the beta filled up very quickly.
It did fiddle very quickly. I'd say that there isn't going to be a specific, you know, like there's not a higher chance of getting accepted if you apply earlier. Not to say don't apply early, but it's all about demonstrating your commitment to being an active participant in the relationship for nine months. That's really where our questions are going to, going to go. And it's all about making sure that we're able to pair you with someone who really meets your specific as a mentee, someone who really meets your specific desired skills. And if you're a mentor, just being really precise about your availability and the skills that you have to share and how you'd like to help, you know, upskill someone in the community. And potentially, you know, there's always a chance that you'll find your next great hire in this program. So that's incentive for mentors too.
That's, that's what I was going to ask you. Like the. Being a mentee is a no brainer to me.
Right.
I want to do that. The mentor, that's a tough one, like sell me.
There is some incentives beyond that. You'll get a really snazzy certificate and some badging that you can use throughout the community. That's going to be exclusive to folks who are our first, you know, batch of non hand selected mentors from last year. And you know, there's going to be access to exclusive events and networking opportunities that you won't be able to get otherwise. And I do hope to sort of build kind of an alumni community out of the folks that participate in this and also eventually, fingers crossed to turn this into, like I said before, kind of a sort of a starting point for things like job boards, things like much more intentional connection from folks looking and folks hiring. So I would say as a mentor, you get a ton of like, additional credibility in the HubSpot community, more visibility for your work and for your agency or wherever you work. Um, and you know, like, honestly, we've actually had a lot of folks come to us like organically before we ever started this program. And I think aj you've even brought it up to me years ago, like there are people who like literally offered their, their times. We have such a great community that we don't even need all those fancy bells and whistles. There's so many folks willing to share knowledge. So all of that other stuff is icing on the cake. But yeah, yeah, to make that icing delicious.
Was it, was it 100 mentees or.
Was it 100 all together?
What's, what's the ratio you're looking for?
That's a really good question. That's gonna.
Thank you.
I mean in an ideal world, we have 50 mentors and 50 mentees, but hopefully like, we're gonna have to see what comes in in terms of like what skill sets are most sought after and what skills are most offered. We tried to learn from last year in terms of like what the highest frequency was for the types of skills folks were looking for and make, make that, make the categories a little bit more inclusive of those and not so specific, but also not so broad so that folks could fit into them well and would be able to Pair successfully.
So you're saying, like, one of the groups isn't going to be like, HTML?
I'm leading that.
Or the proper way to. To build out a mohawk.
I can teach you how to make a little kitten run around at the bottom of your screen. Yeah, nice.
Use the marquee tag. Just use the marquee tag.
The marquee tag. Yeah. Retro coding with sj. Very retro.
So. Yes, go ahead.
Sorry, I don't even know what I was going to say.
But no, I was. So I recommend. Just sign up as soon as you can. Don't wait till, like, I do with taxes. Two minutes before the day it's due. Do you know? And. But, but yeah, if they need a mohawk specialist as a mentor, just. I know a guy that can help out with that. So.
Wow. Also, a mohawk that has no nose because the light on you is Mohawk.
Have a nose.
I'm like Casper the Ghost with this lighting. It's amazing. I don't know.
Do you have like, 12 monitors on you right now?
Three, actually. It's like, I need to. Yeah, I. I'm working on that. As soon as the. I got the green screen, the cam, it will get. This will get. This will get sorted. It's okay. People don't come to look at me. It's fine. Like 50. 50.
True. It's true.
The rest of it is just.
People don't. 50. That's a big deal.
But enough about me, though. A little birdie did tell me, named Dennis the success whale, told me that a particular person, maybe on this podcast, will be taking over the developer hug for next month, potentially.
Oh, yeah.
Are we excited about that?
Me, a whole bunch of fabulous women will be taking over the developer hug. Low key. In honor of international women's history. I don't know. Like, it's just. We get a month.
Right.
It's such a weird thing. I was. I started to talk about this last. Our last podcast, and I want to say Women's month. It's such a strange thing to.
I know. It's very odd.
You only get that if you talk after this month.
Yeah.
Yeah. So that's why this is our big chance. We were. You know, it's. It's illegal for us to do a hug unless it's right.
So Dennis is just worried the quality of the D hog is gonna, like, jump when he's not doing it for a month.
Yeah, very loosely. We're looking at talking about, you know, getting past barriers to entry in tech. In tech, just generally. So it won't be like ultra specific to the lived experience of women. It'll just be about, you know, getting started in tech and, and some of the challenges that folks face. And you know, that is one of the reasons why we launched the mentorship program. See how I did that? But there, you know, I think a lot of folks listening here today can agree that HubSpot is not the easiest platform to get started on, depending on what you're trying to do. And the best way I've found in my experience is to connect with the folks who know what they're talking about or at least pretend to know what they're talking about to help guide you. And that's one of my favorite aspects of Community, is just pairing people together to make exciting things happen. So yeah, Dev Hug is going to be a lot of fun and all about that and I look forward to it. So that'll be what, March 27th.
Yeah. Things we just read up on you.
Fantastic. Now, speaking of fantastic segues, you had mentioned breaking barriers and getting into tech before we. I want to ask you how you got into tech. But before we do that, I did want to acknowledge one admonishment that I should have. So that way that does explain the last. Well, the, the only one that will explain last week's episode title. Yes. In fact, there are no 800 pound elephants. I think there's the 8,000 pound gorilla and then there's the elephant in the room. But for some reason I merged them together in a fit of genius mentioned an 800 pound elephant in the room. And so if you're wondering where the.
Teeny elephant isn't it.
It's a teeny tiny. It's a baby.
It's a really tiny elephant.
Yeah, Isaac did defend me and their baby elephants, so there is that. So I do kind of like lean on that as my excuse. But I did want to point that out because that, that did, that was.
I mean, how else do new, new things get created? New expressions? Like maybe it's like a slightly big deal, but not a huge deal, like just a baby deal.
It was the nightmare fuel that, that kind of made the, the title of last week's episode possible. So I just wanted to point that out. So yeah, you can admonish me for that. That is, that's okay. That's allowable, I guess. But that aside, tell us how you got into the business. Like you had mentioned that there were like as a segue like, you know, getting in like there, there are barriers. There are like. And with everybody that we've talked to. There's a journey, right. And it's, it's unique. Right? There are, there's, there's similarities. Right. But everybody kind of has a story, whether it's from John out with cruise ships and, and, and you know, Mona Lisas and paintings, you know, to like just anything. There's, there's always this kind of like really unique story. So tell us how kind of you got into this. And it can be into tech or it can be into HubSpot, like however you want to kind of like tell the story. But like how did you, how did you get into it?
So I'm, I'm old and that means I have a lot of places where I can start here. I can go all the way back. I can go first job in techish. You know what, I'll start there because it's funny.
Can you lean into your, your background? Like do like more of a comedic set with this?
Yeah, I need a mic. Wait, I'm trying to.
What is the, what's the, what's the deal with tech?
Getting started in tech. So once upon a time I was a wee last in my twenties living in Montreal, Canada and I graduated. I got an English degree at McGill and I did not know what the hell to do with myself. Pardon, can we say hell on the show. I just did.
Great, great. There goes our sponsor Highlights magazines.
All right, well, heck, from now on anyway, yeah, so I, I spent a few years after university just being like working in retail and really being quite lost and not knowing to do with what to do with my fancy English degree. Like what does one do with that? And then I fell into, you know, I was. This is how long ago this was. I was looking on Craigslist for various gigs. I started doing editing, a couple of editing gigs for local like Agen. And then I started doing some like French to English translation, not English to French because, you know, good times in Montreal. And then just dabbling. I was like, wow, that was back in the day when you could get like interesting jobs on Craigslist that were buying and sketchy. And so there was an opening for something called affiliate marketing that never heard of before. And it turned out it was at a gambling company.
Of course it was.
Of course.
That was my big moment. That was the start of tech for me. It was all about. We made money when people lost money. So it was like pretty soul sucking. However, this was back in the day when I, my community was webmasters. Like, what is the webmaster today? Is what I'd like to know, do we. There's no such thing, but it's sort of a developer. I mean, I don't know, it was like developer adjacent at the time in like the early 2000s. So these were like really intense folks. They wanted to make lots of money from their poker banners on their poker strategy websites. And so I learned a lot about a demanding community and building community in the most rudimentary online terms, like in forums. Right. Which still exists today. We have them at HubSpot. And so it was a crash course in community building and, and eventually that job was too soul sucking. So I will skip ahead quite a bit. I did a.
It does though, doesn't it? Not like online gambling in the casino industry is kind of like one of those. It's one of those, I don't want to say unsung heroes, but when it comes to like technological advancements, it's wild.
How all of these sort of like, you know, shady parts of life actually are the big progressors in technology and we're human after all, so we won't get into that too much. But essentially, yes. And I also feel like that was a little taste of what it was going to be like working with developers before. Wow. Is there editing that happens here? No, because we're live. I just got a big alert from security on my computer. It's time to update and restart your MacBook right now. And I can't make the screen go away. I'm just going to keep talking. I can't see anything anymore, but I'm just going to keep talking. Yes. So do you. Would you like me to continue on my tech journey? This is part of my tech journey being. Yeah.
No, I mean, absolutely. Yeah. Like how did it. So from there, at what point did the community aspect, like, I guess like the question I'm. I'm probably most interested in is like at what point throughout the journey, like especially with the starting off, you know, in like with casinos and online gambling and stuff. Where did you kind of get that first taste of like, oh, like the community aspect. And like this is because. And I try to equate this to like for me, SEO. Right. Like, I didn't realize what it. Not that you didn't know what community was, but like I didn't realize like what it encompassed until I first got into as Dennis, real estate. There was a, there was a, there was a time where, you know, I was mostly just a developer and doing coding and doing, you know, nothing to do with that. But there was an instance where you first got that first experience into it where you're like, oh, this is a whole different avenue that I can kind of transition into and this can become a thing. Did you. Did you. Do you remember that moment for you.
Where there were moments that led up to the, I guess, moment that made it like. Yeah. Okay, so there was. So what I was doing back at the affiliate marketing company was 100% community building, but it was not called it then that terminology. Okay, defer 12 hours. Yay. Okay, I'm free.
Yeah, you're back.
Yeah. Upgrading your computer is a big part of everyone's tech journey. It is a barrier to entry as well. Yeah. So there was a few moments along the way after that gig. So I. After that gig, I did a few just sort of generic online marketing roles at some small companies in Montreal. But there was one company I worked at that did voice of customer surveys called iPerceptions. And we launched this, like, sort of like free product that was called. It's a very unfortunate name, but it was called 4Q. And it was. It was fun. And I ended up. That product was kind of my baby. And so that was another product where we were referring to the community as webmasters because, you know, put this little JavaScript code on their site and they would get like, oddly, it was an on entrance survey, which is like, anyway, doesn't exist anymore. But it was meant to say, like, will you take a survey at the. At the end of this? And it would ask you four questions at the end to see if you achieved the task that you came to achieve. Very simple metric, right? So I was building community with all these webmasters that were leveraging this tool. And that was when community started to, like, pop up in the industry, like around 2008 as a title. So that was my title. I was the community manager for 4Q. And I was like, okay, this is kind of cool. Like, admittedly, the. The world of community has been kind of vague in terms of, like, the actual job duties associated to it. And it was very vague back then. I was essentially like, PMM support, all the things related to this little product. But I liked it. I really liked kind of having this group of folks that had like a shared, like, you know, they wanted to get insights from their customers, and that was the shared identity. And so I did that for a while and then moved on to a couple of more of those little random marketing roles and then. And actually worked at an agency, an account manager, doing an SEO and agency for a while. So that's another thing. But then, like, I have such a problem of going like rabbit holing when I'm telling these stories. So feel free to interrupt me at any time. I will fast forward to dev Dev rel the dev rel moment for me. So I have alluded to doing these sort of like dabbling in all of these sort of online marketing and some, some community roles but I was getting a little like kind of fed up. I wanted something new. Interestingly, I got introduced to this tiny startup in Montreal in 2011 by my manager at that company iPerceptions. They were a company called Context IO. They were an email API. I barely knew what an API was. All I knew about APIs at the time was that we needed to leverage data from the Google Analytics API. We were here thrown around at the agency a lot and so I vaguely knew what an API was, but I wasn't super familiar. And at the time APIs as products, like companies building their entire product on an API was a fairly new concept that was right around when like Twilio and Sendgrid launched their first you know, APIs to the world. As like that was the offering of the company you would pay to use these APIs. And so that was what context IO was and it was me and the founder who was an engineer and another engineer. So I was essentially like wearing all of the hats which I low key love. Like you may have noticed that here at HubSpot I like to wear many hats and do lots of different things and I think that you know, the rules I've had since then allow me to. But the thing I love the most about that job was building community with developers and at the time that happened largely through in person events. So we did so it was so funny. I went to lots of hackathons as a awesome almost non programmer. I mean I, I'm not a programmer. I like to pretend that I've. If I written a line of code that I'm a programmer.
But you're such a programmer. HTML. Yeah, marquee, Marquee.
I've written some php, I've written some python.
There you go.
Stack overflow. Then you're fine. That's a developer.
Yeah, basically yeah, I've done that. I had. I used to have some green square squares in my GitHub. But that, you know, as we know that might not be programming but in any case I used to love going to hackathons. It was kind of a weird arrangement because we'd have like our engineers on Skype and like me just like hyping up the product. But I just found like it hearkened back a little bit to the gambling affiliate days because these folks were super, no nonsense. Like you cannot, you know, like our goals with developers and developer marketing and Developer Connection was so much more about like shortening the path to value as opposed to all these other marketing metrics. We're like, ooh, they need to see, you know, a brand exposure of seven times before they convert. And this is so much more straightforward. It's just like, here's what we've got. Does it work or not? Can you use it in your project or not? If not, sorry, you know, you're out of luck and you're going to find out really, really fast. And so I appreciated that transparency, that like lack of, you know, nonsense. And they became my favorite kind of folks to work with. And the parts of the job, that job that I liked the most were really the community building aspect. So with each additional role it was always kind of diverse because we know what it's like on Devrel there's lots of different things going on and I worked for a lot of smaller teams but as the teams got bigger and as this industry has evolved, I feel like there's been more and more specialization and as I've been able to like go down that path, I've been able to hone in on community specifically. So yeah, that was like, I think that job was probably the moment for me where it cemented and honestly this. So I'm a boomerang for HubSpot. I was at the company from 2019 to 2020 as a program manager on Devrel. When I came back, I came back exclusively to focus on community. So this is my first job that is 100% developer community focused. So yeah, it all led up to this moment.
This is the icing on the cake.
I can retire after this.
Would you be happy with just any type of community? Developer specific. Is that something that's really big?
It's really stuck. It's really, really stuck. Like that was the big career pivot for me. I was, I, I've often wondered that, like how would I feel with a customer based community or like more B2B? And I think I could do it and still get, you know, satisfaction out of it. But again there's something, it's just about like solving problems more in a more obvious way than it is and building relationships. Like there's so many strong relationships in our community and we've seen so much, you know, partnership and collaboration and that I love to see. But when I see someone post a question in our dev slack or on the dev forums and somebody come in and just immediately unblock them and then being like, oh my God, thank you so much. You helped me so much. Like, it's just so, it's so like there's, there's no mystery to what that is. He literally got unlocked by the community and it's just really satisfying to see.
Very much so, yeah. How much does this extend to your own personal life? I mean, how like your lessons, you learn a community, do you apply them?
Huh?
That's a good question.
I don't like tolerating bs.
I'm here all day, folks. I. I got the questions, don't worry about it. Next. Take off, buddy.
I also like straightforward. Like, you know, I also appreciate that. And I, you know, I've dated several programmers, so that could be like, interesting. Don't even get me started. Am I right? Yeah, that's so, yeah. Community has impacted. I mean, that also just so happens that this is the kind of people I was meeting because I spent so much time around, you know, techies. So I can't believe I just said techies, but you know what I mean, I got you.
We'll bring webmasters back. We got to bring that. I mean, if we haven't learned anything, we need to bring that back.
Retro coding with SJ for webmasters only.
Yes.
Oh God.
I was going to say, I always thought that it was easier working with developer. So I have a marketing background and I've marketed to both consumers and developers. And I have to say working with developers is the easiest because it's so clear cut and dry. And I think that's what a lot of businesses are kind of missing the mark on in some way is that they look at their audience and they go, oh, a developer. Give them the marketing one sheet. Let's make that. And it's like, it doesn't have to be fancy. It could literally be like a word doc. And I mean, we've done that with some of the beta things. We've had our documentation as Google Docs and it's still just as effective. And the developers just literally want to know, like almost black and white, like, what is it? Like you said earlier, Ashley, right? Here's how it works, here's how you use it. Does it work for your company? No, sorry. This is, this is how it works though. Okay. But it works for that guy's company, so. Or, you know, that girl's company. So we're going to go and it's Just one of those things where like they also, when it comes to feedback and I think sj, you probably share this sentiment, they are ruthless and it's like if you want feedback, ask a developer because they do not care about a gambling webmaster. It's one of those things where like I've seen some feedback come in and like usually like some feedback that I've seen in other places is like we really love the product, blah, blah, developers are straight up like this sucks. Like just right, like what they are.
Trying to achieve is usually so specific. Whereas I feel like God bless marketers or other non programmers and I want to talk a little bit about how I feel like those lines are blurring. But we, we can today or another day, I don't know. But marketers may not even know what it is they're trying to solve. When they come in with a question. They might just sort of have a vague like we need to increase our site speed for example. And you know, there might be some obvious things they can do. There might be some less obvious things they can do. Whereas developers coming in more of the question like, you know, my images are too large, how do I like reduce the size or whatever. That's even also a marketer question. But like, you know what I mean, I'm trying to be more specific.
Yeah. Oh, so go continue.
No, it's just that it's that specificity and that like knowledge of exactly what they're trying to achieve. But I think we take that for granted actually because that's one of the things that the mentorship program and other sort of barrier entry things are because I've actually spoken to some developers who are so excited about. They've been tasked to work with HubSpot. They're so excited about it, but they're not sure exactly where to start. Once they do get started then they can get into that specificity. But sometimes there is that sort of like that moment like it was literally someone whose company had just switched from Salesforce to HubSpot and he was about to change his like signature, his title like from Salesforce Developer to HubSpot Developer. And he's like, where do I start? So I can feel like I'm a HubSpot developer and you know, I was like, try the Academy, try the CRM boot camp, join the mentorship program. Like these are all things that will help folks really weave that into their identity and then get in to those like very specific community solved problems.
Yeah, I was just going to say I feel like it's Almost a double edged sword, the specificity of like a developer's needs. Because when I was community manager on our forums, everything was. Seemed very transactional. Right. Like you get what you want and that's all I'm here for is what I want right now, to get the people who have that feedback, who actually are there to support and, you know, help others. That's. That's the hard thing with developers, in my opinion. I feel like the fact that marketing is. Is ambiguous in a sense. Like you're always kind of asking a question, trying to figure out where you're going. It's stickier that way somehow.
Right here in community. One of the things that I think is something I try to share for folks who are building community programs for the first time, dev community programs for the first time. There's only ever going to be a tiny percentage of your dev community that is offering lots of feedback. Engaged every day in the community, answering those questions. By far the most. The touch point that's most frequent is just coming in to get unblocked and then carrying on with your day. Yeah, there are some core folks that for whatever reason that, you know, we're trying to get to that secret sauce and understand what those reasons are. But like they end up getting hooked on what's possible for HubSpot and what it can do for their customers. And they also just have kind of the spirit of wanting to be more involved with this thing that they work on every day and they want to give back to the community in all kinds of fascinating ways. And we know a lot of those folks. I think some of those folks have even been on this podcast.
Yeah, I mean two of these folks are here right now. I mean, and we're not talking about this company.
That's a thing too. Yeah, that's the pinnacle. Right. Of to me, like, I mean, not everyone in the community is going to get hired by the company, but like you can't get more at the core of the community. Onion then. Oh my gosh, there's people here. Hi, Anton. Hi, Cam. Nicholas Von James.
There's people.
Wait, people watch this?
What?
Yeah, no, I mean, obviously they do, but anyway, yeah, I had a train of thought, but it's gone.
It's okay. Sj, are you listening to both the. The website as well as.
Am I messing with the sound?
I think you might need to meet the.
I have this little thing open. If I stop this, will I go away?
Wait, please don't stop it.
Dennis was saying too. I kind of feel like it's the equivalent of when you torrent movies online. People just come there what they want leave, they get what they want and they leave. But no one really stays to help the community as in sharing. You know what I'm saying? There's a very, there's a very distinct.
Connection there have seen my auto messages that are like a rising boat. Tide lifts all boats. It's all about karma. I think one thing is we do have like a broader community champions program at HubSpot that literally incentivizes folks to go into the community and answer questions. And we have a lot of devs in that community, including Anton who's here today and we're super appreciative of those and we understand that like why would folks, you know there has to be a ultimately when especially when it comes to you know, career based stuff and jobs like there has to be some benefit for you in the long run for doing this contribution. And I, I personally feel like we actually are going to do some analysis behind the scenes soon. But I have a very strong theory that the folks that are and I.
Mean we've done that with some of the beta things. We've had our documentation as Google Docs and it's still just as effective. And like developers just literally want to know like almost black and white like what is it? Like you said earlier, Ashley, right here's how it works, here's how you use it. Does it work for your company? No, sorry. This is how it works though. Okay. But it works for that guy's company or that girl's company. So we're going to go. It's just one of those things where they also when it comes to feedback and I think sj, you probably share this sentiment, they are ruthless and it's like if you want feedback, ask a developer because they do not care about it.
Or a gambling webmaster.
It's one of those things where like I've seen some feedback come in and like usually like some feedback that I've seen in other places is like we really love the product, blah blah. Developers are straight up like this sucks. Like just right like what they are.
Trying to achieve is usually so specific. Whereas I feel like God bless marketers or other non programmers and I want to talk a little bit about how I feel like those lines are blurring. But we, we can today or another day, I don't know. But marketers may not even know what it is they're trying to solve. When they come in with a question. They might just sort of have a vague like we need to increase our site speed, for example. And you know, there might be some obvious things they can do, there might be some less obvious things they can do. Whereas developers coming in more with the question like, you know, my images are too large, how do I like reduce the size or whatever. That's even also a marketer question. But like, you know what I mean? I'm trying to be more specific.
Yeah, continue.
No, it's just that it's that specificity and that like knowledge of exactly what they're trying to achieve. But I think we take that for granted actually because that's one of the things that the mentorship program and other sort of barrier entry things are because I've actually spoken to some developers who are so excited about. They've been tasked to work with HubSpot. They're so excited about it, but they're not sure exactly where to start. Once they do get started, then they can get into that specificity. But sometimes there is that sort of like that moment like it was literally someone whose company had just switched from Salesforce to HubSpot and he was about to change his like signature, his title, like from Salesforce Developer to HubSpot Developer and he's like, where do I start? So I can feel like I'm a HubSpot developer. And you know, I was like, try the Academy, try the CRM Bootcamp, join the mentorship program. Like these are all things that will help folks really weave that into their identity and then get in to those like very specific community solved problems.
Yeah, I was just going to say I feel like it's almost a double edged sword, the specificity of like a developer's needs. Because when I was community manager on our forums everything was seemed very transactional, right? Like you get what you want and that's all I'm here for is what I want right now.
Read the news every week. He doesn't even have to show up.
We had talked about the AI and actors and will they be necessary? At one point we could just make. Yeah, you're right.
Who knows?
No, that's. That's fair.
Account. I follow that does the weirdest little like famous person AI video clips and they have like Steve Harvey saying all this crazy stuff and it's really funny.
Is it as great as the AI where they were, they were trying to get Will Smith to eat pasta. Have you seen that?
Oh wait, is that like with the immense amounts of pasta?
Like yeah, where it just like I can't like at one point his jaw becomes unhinged like a snake and just.
Starts, like eating the plate.
Look away. So scary.
Yeah, it's, it's interesting.
What, what moment are we living in? But it's, it's wild. It's wild.
Now with as overbearing as technology and everything that comes with the, the amount of touch points that you kind of have to be involved in with the community. Are there things that. And I always have to preface this with you can never 100% get away from technology as much as sometimes we may want to. Are there things that you do as least techy as possible, I guess is the best way to put it, to kind of remove yourself and unwind and try to like, distance yourself a little bit from that stressfulness.
Yeah. It's funny because I live in a studio apartment in New York and I have a tiny desk and like my work world is literally the center of my apartment. But I do feel like I'm in two separate worlds from when I sit down in the morning and open my laptop and get my big second monitor running. And for the moment that, like, there's always that moment. And it's sometimes it's 5, sometimes it's 7:30, sometimes it's 3:30 where I'm just like, I can't do anymore. And I slap, slap the old laptop shut. And I do feel like I'm in a little bit of a different world. I have started this. This is like, not advice, but you asked the question, like, I have started this new ritual to unwind at the end of the day where I slap on a cold sheet mask from the fridge, highly recommended to all of you and everyone listening. Very refreshing. And then I just turn on this. There's this really cheesy game that is a hundred percent aimed for children that I play. I don't know if any of you, like, have seen the Netflix games beta. They. I don't know if it's on everyone's Netflix or not, but.
Oh, yeah, yeah, okay.
I mean, I don't know. I've never played any of the other games, but I play this game called Underwater Fruit Merge and it just turns off my brain completely. And I don't know if that's, that's still technically techy because it's a video game, but.
Oh, well, no, it should because it's hard to get away from it. There's like, there's tech, tech, things that you can do to unwind. And then there's like.
I mean, I also leave my apartment sometimes. I just started doing Broadway jazz dance class last Night was my first.
Awesome. How'd it go? Good.
The dorkiest thing I've ever done in my life, and it's so much fun. Like, we're doing choreography for a coffee. A Chorus Line. That song won from A Chorus Line, which, if the younger folks in this room may not remember that particular Broadway play, and I'm not gonna sing it, but you can if you YouTube it. One A Chorus Line, you will see there are hats involved. And our feature brought out the hats yesterday.
Oh, awesome.
And I have exist.
If there's no photos.
What I'm hearing is inbound in San Francisco is going to be fantastic.
This.
Yeah.
I was going to say there. There better be a. A. Like a tech talk with sj. And then at the end, she does kind of like the hello, my baby hello.
It is that energy, and it's so silly. So I try to do stuff like that. And I also, like. I. I don't think it's a problem yet, but I enjoy tasty cocktails all around New York City, which is a good place to live in for those.
I don't think it's a problem yet.
Not a problem yet. But who knows? Check in. Like, this year is, like. It might push me to a point, but I'm good for now.
That's awesome.
I love it Now.
Y' all do for. For unwinding and fun.
Chop wood.
All right. I mean, that's a good skill to have. Like, you never know.
I don't doubt that, though, Dennis, because.
You were a park ranger.
That's not far from.
Yeah, I could see Dennis out there.
Just with, like, answer and very decisive.
Like, put yourself on people. You're creeping on people is what you're trying to say.
Publicly, though, it's not. It's like, there's one there because I. I know there's a. There's an Ireland trip coming up for a lot of hubspotters. There's one of, like, a famous. I can't remember the name it off the top of my head now, but it's just, like, street corner where there's a bar, and it's like. It's just. Yeah. So I. I'm gonna suggest all the hubspotters go there so I can see them.
Probably.
Yeah, it is, actually. That's the one. Yeah. Yeah. It's red, and it's got. Yeah, yeah, that's. It's like, there's always a party going on, no matter when it flashes to that random. Yeah, always. Always.
So is this the same one where you can watch Abbey Road and just laugh at all the people that recreate the Beatles album.
Yeah, that's one of them, actually. Abbey Road is what. There's just the UK Abbey Road Cam. And it's just, like. It's literally just focused right on that. Rain, sun. It doesn't matter. It's. Yeah, it's. I think it's interesting because if you're sitting here and you're working from home, right, and you're kind of stuck in the house, and you're stuck. Like, it's. It's nice to be able to be like, oh, there's a real world still. Oh, yeah, that's right.
The pandemic. There was this website that you could go to that just, like, would tune into someone's random webcam, like, anywhere in the world. And, like, not like. Like. Like Genesis. I know. Like, it's fun, right, to see where. What they're. It was to look out their window. So I go, yeah, out their window.
Yeah.
So it's similar energy.
Yeah. Wow. I think it's necessary sometimes. I mean, especially now where, like, tech is kind of saturated everything. Like, you can still use it in a way to kind of.
Of.
It's not like you're unplugging, but you are. Yeah.
You're decluttering your brain, advocating for the actual going outside. I think that's kind of an important thing to do. I know you.
Yeah. I mean, my kid tells me to touch grass all the time.
Have you, though? Have you?
Well, Mike, I. I have some sort of, like, cinch bug where my so's dead. So, I mean, like, I have to fix that problem. But, yeah, once that's done, yeah, I'll be able to touch grass.
So I work. I, like, spend a lot. Especially in winter. I spend a lot of time inside, and then I'll just, like, go on a trip, and that will get all my outside energy. Like for Ireland, for example, whenever I have the opportunity to travel for work, I like to extend it a little bit, either before or after, and take a little vacation time and go exploring because, you know, I'm there. I'm there. Yeah, yeah.
When in Rome. That's why I took extra days for inbound, because I wanted to hang out with Dennis because it was just, like, it was necessary. I mean, outside, when you get a chance to hang out with the legend, you. You make time.
What did you call him before the success whale. I need to know what that is about.
Oh, there was a. This is a little inside baseball, but they're. I Believe John, who's been on the show before, had posted something about.
No, Steve. It was Steve.
Was it Steve?
Yeah, I thought it was.
Okay, because I. I stole the image and I'm gonna use it, so I figured I gotta give somebody credit for it. I didn't know who or all of.
Our Boss, by the way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, boss, boss.
Which we gotta have on the show at some point as well. But, yeah, it was. Somebody had posted something about. What was it like, fail whale. And then like, somebody had posted something with the. The butterfly wings on it. And I said, oh, that's Dennis the Success whale. And that's the mat that's going to be the mascot for developers after Dark. Yeah, I gotta edit the homepage and get that.
I mean, it doesn't have the cute rhyming factor of the fail in the whale.
Right.
There's not really an animal that rhymes with success.
So, Dennis, change your name. So that's the only reason to work.
So what about Ibex? Okay.
I kind of wanted to piggyback. Actually, I did have a question for you that I want to piggyback off of. Mentorship. Has there been any advice that someone has given you, like, someone that, like, you would consider like a mentor that has really been impactful for you throughout either life or your career?
Yeah. So there is someone that. When I first started in the Devrel world at that company, Context IO, I was like, what the heck is this world? What's going on? And I just started like, this was back in the days when you could just reach out to anyone on Twitter and they would respond. And I reached out to a bunch of folks doing dev advocacy, doing devrel at other companies. And there was someone named Tim Falls who worked at SendGrid, who was leading developer community at the time there. And I was like, oh, developer community. That's a thing. How interesting. And he was so generous with his time with me back then. He was basically just like. I mean, it was very community of him. First of all, that's one thing that I also love about working in the community industry or world is that they're just like, everyone is so generous and kind with their time. It's just part of, like, who gets drawn to this world. And so Tim was one of those folks. And he just introduced, like, it's not so much there were some things he said later in our sort of, like, working relationship that Tim have stuck with me, but he just introduced me around to so many people. And ultimately, like, down the road, he was the one responsible for Me getting into HubSpot. He knew our former head of Devrel. Her name was Elizabeth Risquido. I think I'm saying that right, Rashido. Anyway, and he had mentioned me to her as someone to come join the team and then she reached out and the rest was history. But he, he's just been around and always available to me and I've tried to, to reciprocate that whenever he's needed anything and it's always just been, you know, out of the goodness of his heart. And he's also just tremendously smart when it comes to community. He. I think I may have shared this concept with a few of you at some point. He introduced me to this concept called the Community Onion, which then became the, the model that we saw for a company called Orbit. It's the same concept. So essentially like you have all of these different tiers of engagement for the community and the folks in the middle are like the most engaged, but it kind of radiates outward and like sucks people into the Orbit or the layers of the Onion. And so I've just used that as a frame of reference for so long. And that was Tim's original baby. And he also, yeah, he's just been an inspiration to me for a super long time and has always been, you know, available to me. So someone like that, like, yes, this is going to be a nine month career that or a nine month opportunity that you'll have with the mentorship program. But the hope is that you meet someone like that who becomes like a mainstay and has support, supported you and connects you with opportunities for the rest of your life or the rest of your career. And so, you know, being able to try to like speed up that process for folks and make that happen as part of this program is something I'm so excited about. So everyone can find, you know, someone that's just, I don't know even if it's someone who's just going to cheer you on for this scope of a.
Project, like just so powerful and too Community Onion is a great title for, for a episode. I just thought I was like away.
The layers of our community.
I do like that. That is fantastic. One of the. I know we're almost, we're almost coming up on time, but I wanted to. One of the last things I kind of wanted to ask you was what were one of the things that, I mean and you can choose the, you know, tech in general or at HubSpot, like what were one of the one things or a few, whichever that surprised you the most when you first started. What were some of the things? Because I know, you know, for me, I mean, and, and not, not, not to steal an answer, but like traditionally, like most especially starting at HubSpot, like drinking from a fire hose. Right, that's. That's one that you can ask anybody and that is like, that's solid. That. That's on everybody's list. Right. So it's almost like kind of a gimme. Are there any others like that that you kind of came across where you were like, oh, wow, this is. I didn't expect this.
Well, it's not specific. It's not. Well, it applies very much to HubSpot, but it wasn't originally learned at HubSpot. So prior to working at HubSpot, I spent time at Shopify and HubSpot Mailchimp HubSpot. But there was. Shopify was the first company I worked at where developers weren't the primary audience for the product. Customers and merchants were. And so what surprised me the most was how much, what a different journey it is for a team that works with developers at a company that is customer obsessed. And the education that you need to do internally to demonstrate the value of developers throughout this company. And you have to be strategic about it too. Obviously not everyone's going to understand our technical audience or our developers at the company, nor should they. But I think it's the right folks making specific decisions that kind of domino down to us. Like that, that difference like, oh, hello.
Welcome to Special Guest before as we're wrapping up. Sorry, keep going.
I didn't know there was a little nick out there. No, I know. Yeah, the community just grew. Yeah, that's it. It's just the nuances between working for a company that is developer first versus what we call developer plus for another episode, how those lines are blurring. AI.
Wow. Wow.
Well played.
Hopefully my Inbound talk will be selected and Jenny Sawirda and I will be talking all about that at Inbound. So.
Nice.
That would be awesome.
Yeah, I hope so. Fingers crossed.
That's fantastic. Have you. Has there been any. Speaking of Inbound, has there been any other type of kind of meetups or conferences and stuff that you've gone to recently? That kind of.
I've been like, as I've progressed in age, the energy levels I have for those things have reduced. And so now all of my like, event and conference energies dedicated to HubSpot mostly. I did used to go to south by Southwest and TechCrunch disrupt a lot when I lived In San Francisco. And. Whoa, was that fun. South by Southwest was a blast. We were working there, but I also got to, like, be at the whole thing. It's really all encompassing and super cool. And the thing I think was the funniest part of south by Southwest for me was I'd be exhausted. I'd be at the airport and I was leaving after, you know, working at this. We used to have, like, an API lounge when I worked at a company called Nashery. And all the APIs we worked with had, like, little booths and we had, like, popcorn and Bloody Mary machine. It was crazy.
It's like a lounge. Airports, right? Like, where you can, like, airport, but.
In a conference center, basically. And we did need special permission to get in. So. Yeah. Anyway, so I would be at the airport, exhausted, and then, like, it was the end of tech week and music week would be starting and all of these cool musicians would be, like, landing on the planes and they'd look so dope. And it was like all the nerds at the airport, like, waiting at the gates, and it was just like, such an obvious transition at the airport on, like, a couple of specific days. That was really funny to me, but. But, yeah, no, I don't. I don't go to as many things as I would like to. I'm starting to look at doing more local events here in New York. There's a lot of stuff popping up. Like, I might check out some AI stuff locally soon. Maybe. Dennis, you can come and join me.
Yeah, for sure. I feel like it was a trend. Nick, you asked this question, everyone. I feel like no one's really doing events these days.
That's. I mean, I really want to start.
It a little bit.
Oh, sorry I cut you off.
Yeah.
Just.
I think the pandemic shifted our energy a little bit. Like, it really. I could do a whole other episode about how the pandemic changed Devrel, too, and community. But I. I agree that there's not as many events I do start. I do feel like the local meetup is starting to make a come back. Like our own. Brooke was at an event last night and brought some pizza. HubSpot. And like, those are the types of things that I used to do all the time in, like, 2011, 2012, and, like, that's organic community and it's the best. Like, that's. I don't know. That's my favorite kind of stuff. Like the.
I do keep slacking. Another LaPorte that works at HubSpot to try to set something up as far as A local meetup. But I don't know. I keep getting ghosted. I mean, I know the lighting may throw you off, but. Yeah, there's no need to ghost Casper the right person.
I don't know, man.
I don't know. I'm pretty sure. I'm pretty sure I'm a messenger.
I don't know.
I want to. I. I want to start doing more of that because I remember the last one me and AJ went to was one in the city in Chicago, where we got to meet hubspotters that, like, we would have never really ever talk to just because of, like, cross our paths would not have crossed. Right. Just because of the departments. And I felt like that was so. And there were even some people that we talked to were like, oh, you're doing that. Like, that's. I'm doing this. And it's like, it may not have been, like, directly related, like apples to apples, but there was still some sort of, like, interest. Right. Like, this huge interest never would have happened. Right. And I just feel like that to me.
Serendipity.
Oh, it's beautiful.
Unfortunately, it's hard to measure the ROI on serendipity, and, like, we're definitely under the microscope a little more than we used to be, but also no John.
Cusack, so we can't.
Right. We see. We want.
What was it. Was it Kate? Kate. Not Winslet?
No. Oh, my gosh. She's in the movie Underworld.
Kate Beckinsale. We need them. Without them.
The old video store employee.
It wasn't from 1991-94. I only operate in those years, so I don't. I really don't know.
Pop culture trivia. Pop culture, jeopardy. Another thing I love.
Yeah, nice. Nice. I have a. I have a rare condition where I'm stuck in between five years of movie references. And I. I don't. I don't know anything else outside of.
That, which is you, like, hyper specific trivia with you.
Like, it would have to. Yeah, it would have to be movies within 1991-1995. If not, I have no idea.
Really interesting.
Like, basically, when Jennifer Love Hewitt got into movies, it was like that stretch, like those four years that. That's about it.
And then I had no other Jennifer Jaylee. Never mind. I was trying to make out JLO thing happen, but then the H got in the way. And so anyway.
Well, we are coming up on time, and I do want to thank you, sj, for coming on. And I do encourage everyone to sign up for the mentorship program.
They should on the bottom of the screen right now. It's gonna. Oh.
Dennis, you got to give me access to doing this kind of stuff.
That's not gonna happen, buddy. That's not gonna happen.
Yeah, go to that page now. It'll be the old page, but click on the waiting list thing. And then by sometime, maybe even before the 19th, it'll be a beautiful page that our own Ashley. Ashley Webster is working on. She got web in the name for a reason, right?
Huh?
Yeah. There you go. Perfect. Love it. But, no, I wanted to thank you for coming on and sharing your story.
So much fun. Thank you for having me. I reached out to Nick, and I'm like, can I come and talk about the mentorship program? And he's like, yes, this week. Let's go.
And I'm like, I'm also bad with calendars, too, because I was like, yeah, no, Friday should be fine for everybody. Why can't people do Friday? And then I forgot it was Valentine's Day, so I'm like, I can do it.
Don't even get me started. Okay.
Sorry.
No, I just. I, I. I'm oblivious to just, like, the calendar. It's just like, I. I have this weird. I operate on, like, a 247 schedule, which is not healthy, but, like, I do, and it's. Everybody else is kind of like, what is wrong with you? Which is the question I get normally, just, you know, in general.
But Valentine's Day is a sellout holiday anyway, so it's all good.
I mean, that sweetest day. I mean, the two of them together. I mean, it's.
But we'll.
We'll leave that for another episode. But I, I will. I just want to say thank you, and I will leave everyone with this little fact that they may not be aware of. But originally, when the Beatles wrote Hard Days Night, it was the night after a critsis. So that's the reason why that was actually created, just in case. I don't know if anyone knew. That's literally a fact.
That's what a crit sit is. I think it's a HubSpot specific term, but I'm not sure.
It's Critical situation. Yeah, I mean, they use it, but that's the reason for that song was written because the night before, there was a crit sit.
Yeah, well, it was originally titled Dumpster Fire, but they didn't think it would sell.
So, yeah, marketing. It's not catchy. I like it. I like it.
Thank you.
No, no problem. So I thank everybody for listening and watching wherever you consume or how you consume your podcast. And, yeah, we'll see you next week.
Thank you so much. Bye, y'. All.
