This content was created by taylor desseyn. This content was uploaded by taylor desseyn. This is a YouTube vlog episode titled "building the brand: tackling the largest tech conference in the southeast | ep. 18" (published/created 2025-07-14). The excerpt is a diarized, first-person conference vlog featuring a primary host (labeled SPEAKER A, who appears to be a Torque community/marketing lead) in conversation with Andy Hutzel and mentioning others (Jason, Mike Morris—CEO of Torque, Brianna Holmes, Patrick, Kelly, Dennis, Angelo). The content covers activities at the Render conference (networking, ambassador meetup, speaker duties, tattoos, rooftop parties), discussions about community-building and scaling a two-sided hiring platform (Torque.dev), hiring pipelines and candidate verification, and on-the-ground event logistics and reflections.
Chapters
I was trying to have some alone time, you know. We're here, Render, day 1. Day 1, we're here. I'm excited. Noah's here, so let's have a good week. Time to go to bed. Morning, Patrick. It's, uh, day 1 of Render. Uh, this morning working, just trying to get stuff done before Heading to lunch with Andy Hutzel. Pretty pumped about meeting him. He was on Guidance Counselor 2.0 Friday, this past Friday. He runs the direct hire of technology, so he runs, manages about 30 folks at Ronstadt Digital. So we're gonna have lunch with him, talk about Ronstadt, power of community, how excited he is about Torque, and then go see the office. So pumped about this morning. Well, first off, I think you're doing the right thing and just literally coming up to strangers and saying hey. I think that's the most important part.
It's like part of the networking is Networking is everything, right?
I mean, right now there's so many people submitting resumes, like it's really like who you know. So I would really try to go to like as many meetups as possible. Okay.
Oh yeah, it's right here. Smokestack is going.
You know, you're talking about the future of like platforms and stuff. I mean, you've been at Ronseit for 14 years. I mean, do you think buyers want to buy off of self-service or do you think there's still— do buyers still, like hiring managers, leaders, CIOs, CTOs, Still want to use humans?
I think that to serve well and to make us easy to do business with, you should do both really well.
Yeah.
And everybody is different.
Yeah.
Everybody's going to be at a different phase of the journey, but not having a self-service platform is crazy.
Yeah.
So having one makes really good sense. Also, how do you interact with people, build loyalty, trust, like all of the things that actually drive business? How do you do that, Andy?
How do you do that?
Start with a C.
And I think it's interesting too, because it's like, then what does community look like, right? So like right now, I was telling Mess this, is that you have your customizable hiring pipelines, which is what we're starting to do, right? For Epic, for Workday, for Guidewire, for whatever. Then you have like, we just need people on the platform. 70% sign-up is kind of a signal that if we reach out to you, you're going to get back to us, right? Our whole sell is verified. I mean, I just saw a tweet the other day the other day from an agency recruiter. He goes, 80% of my time is spent just verifying if a resume is actually real because of AI. So it's like, then you have that, then you have kind of what we're building, which is kind of outside of everything, which is people just wanna be a part. But then you have like all the people we've placed, right? 'Cause then you could build a really good community around the people we've placed. We haven't touched that yet.
Yeah.
So like, there's just— and then you try to scale that across a $30 billion organization.
Yeah. It's crazy.
Sure, but it's gonna take time.
I also, I view it in terms of like, where does a talent, where does a client fall into the sequence of events?
Because then clients could also be community. I know we're talking a lot about community for developers and job seekers. We could build a whole community for the hiring side.
Which is the point, right? So like, you want to be able to look at a problem, a 2-way platform from 2 ways.
Yeah.
And community applies to both ways.
Absolutely.
And at the end of the day, it's like, where does that person, that individual fall within and the sequences of events from needing a job to having a job to wanting a new job to getting laid off and struggling. How do they get supported? How do they get upskilled? And then on the client side, the exact same thing. Like, the competing priorities they have to have, you know, this project delivered by this time, or, oh man, like, Q2 earnings were off, and so now they gotta drop some headcount.
Yeah.
What does that mean? How do they serve their employees well?
Yeah.
Like, at the end stage. So I view everything in terms of, like, the sequence of events around all angles of hiring, and then how does it commute community support structure and highlight or upskill or tell?
Everything is give back. Yeah, the whole point of community is just give back. How are we giving back to CIOs of Fortune 100 clients versus how are we giving back to founders that just secured their Series A or Series B? I mean, there is, there's a massive amount of range.
Yeah, so Ron Stodd, one of the strategic moves they made during the '96 Atlanta Olympics, did all the staffing for the Olympics events, which is why I think Ronstadt's still so embedded.
That's really cool.
With the Olympic Committee, like, obviously across the world.
That's our watch.
Yeah, it's a torch, and our founder, I think, carried it in the torch.
Nashville. It says Nashville. Yeah.
So like, I think they flew to New York or something like that, and then like they had it like hand-carried across wherever it was.
That's so sick. Just an amazing conversation with Andy So can't wait to highlight that in the vlog. Walked around the Ronstadt office. It's always cool. So we've been to Boston, I've been to Tampa, now Atlanta. So it's good to see the Ronstadt crew and some of the folks from Ronstadt office. Got a sweet backpack, so thank you, Andy, for that. So we're at Rev. We got an hour and a half. I mean, not much time. Gonna do some work here and then we are off to get—
Tattoos.
Tattoos. So we're heading to do that in an hour and a half. So can't wait to document that. And then a busy evening.
So let's get caught up on some work and let's have a good little afternoon.
We're here at the marvelous tattoos. Yeah, we are— Torque Gear is getting tattooed on 7 people today. Nice little outline. So now we're headed to CallRail. For the pre-render meetup. Hopefully we can get you in, Patrick, because I forgot to send you the register. So we're gonna go do that. I may have gotten a little overzealous on my plate. I haven't even done the toppings yet. I was trying to have some alone time, you know. There he is. Party's here. Here you go. Chicken fingers.
Tracy.
Yeah, that's right. Now, Kelly and I don't really plan ever. I think we're gonna talk about just how to maximize your time at Render. So here's what I'm talking about. I don't know how it's gonna go. We'll figure it out. I had dairy before this. I had to— What? So— So, uh, what we really want to cover today is how do you get the most out of a conference like this. So let's dive in. Everybody here is nice for the most part, um, and everybody here wants to network, right? I feel like one of the, one of the things I talk to folks the most is that they are scared to go up to a person, right? Um, and so I want to empower everybody, really encourage everybody today, like everybody who's Here, they they want to be here, right? They want to talk to people. Be memorable. Just say hey. Connect with a person on LinkedIn and then just move on. Century Sandwich Bar and she came over and was like, "We're off to the ambassador meetup." It's nine p.m. It's gonna be good to have a little hang with just the ambassador crew right now. So let's go hang out a little bit and stay out past my bedtime. Hi, friend.
Morning, Patrick.
Morning, Patrick. We're at day 2 of Render. Incredible ambassador meetup last night. We had our entire crew, we had like 11 folks out there, plus Dennis from Appwrite. So we had a great night. And then yeah, today, crazy busy morning. Had to get coffee now, and then I am meeting up with Jason at his hotel to stream with Mike Morris, the CEO of Torque, on really how we're changing the landscape in hiring. I've been talking about it, but it's gonna be good to get Mike on the livestream and talk about it. So we're gonna talk about that. And we got a busy day, so hold on to your britches, Patrick. I watch all these D2C founder-led vlogs, and, you know, obviously they have like an actual tangible product to sell, and they're all like, you know, hey, we'll give you a year's worth of product if you get our logo tattooed. We're just, we're not giving away anything and we had people voluntarily do this.
Unbelievable.
It's nuts. It's nuts. Will you bring that up on the podcast? I will. And our ambassador meetup we had last night, we had 12 of our ambassadors here in Atlanta. And so we were out till like midnight last night.
Awesome.
Yeah. So it was a great live, talked about really how we are moving the needle and completely redefining the staffing industry. So Mike, thank you so much for hanging out. And it was a great conversation. It's nuts, man. Welcome to Redmond. Welcome to Redmond. Angelo is bringing his dance. I was totally We have like another like maybe 20 people coming, so it's gonna be, it's gonna be a lot. Again, thank you all for coming out. Real quick, um, Torque.dev, for those of you who don't know who, what we do, um, we help people get jobs. Um, we are a jobs platform. Think LinkedIn or Indeed, but the community team, me and Jason, Brianna Holmes, who helps run Render Marketing, is also on my team. Um, anything you hear from us from a communications standpoint is us. We have a very active community. We'd love to have you in the Discord, Torque.dev/discord. I'm super grateful. This is incredible. This is what we want to do, but the turnout is way more than I expected. So thank you everybody who showed up. Thank you for Torque for your support financially. But again, I mean, I'm super glad that we can bring people together like this. Having 50 people show up at a meetup, I mean, there are a lot of local meetups who can't get 50 people out. So the fact that we're doing this off of a lunch is incredible. I'll be good. Alright, so we are heading to speaker dinner. Got maybe an hour of rest and recharge before I head to the speaker happy hour, and then after that it's Ponte City for the infamous rooftop party, and then it's executive happy hour, and then I gotta come home. Like, I gotta get home and study because there's I have like, like 11 sessions tomorrow. I have to MC and I need to prep. So basically, my entire plan now is I'm gonna sit. I'm gonna stand right here. I'm the welcoming committee. When everybody comes off the elevator, I'm just gonna say, "Hey, like I am the render greeter." Welcome to Render. Hello. Hello. Prime example, hiring manager calls us up Friday after— Friday morning, need mobile engineers. Great, one bailed. Fine, not us, just internal. Sent them profiles, not resumes. We don't send resumes, we send profiles that dig into what the actual developer is doing. Monday morning they review, Monday afternoon they hire. So they they kind of like you all to curate. Yeah, like we we we're curation of talent. Yes. Let's not put them through the wringer. I mean, yeah. Well, we can bounce through this group. That's it. So we've kind of done some of the heavy lifting, and we're not going to put our reputation on the line if they're not legit. That's it.
It's almost like the kind of sports agents, right?
Like I'm just looking for someone that's legit.
Yeah, yeah.
Like can't have time. Yep. Day one.
Done.
One of Render complete. In the books.
Done.
Finished. Heck of a rooftop event. So we're back. It's 10:24. Gonna prep a little bit. Gonna have some downtime. Got some snacks. Got some snacks. And tomorrow, main stage. All day. It's my 4th year with Render. 5th year in existence for Render. You know, been here for 4 years. 3rd year as an MC and it's just gonna be an amazing time. So today was great. One for the books, as they say. At least I think that's what they say. And I'm pumped tomorrow to tell some just amazing jokes that my wife never laughs at, but the tech community does. So pretty pumped.
