ep. 04 - torc's first time in raleigh taking on a 5k person conference

I gotta do you too.

Yeah.

Per my nutritionist, Mandy, I'm cutting caffeine out for this conference. This is gonna be the first conference with no caffeine. We'll see how it goes. Terrified, absolutely terrified. So for Mexico, we're throwing an influencer dinner. It's so funny, my wife's like, an influencer dinner? I was like, yeah, like influencer for nerds. So 12 of the people coming are like really big in the Guadalajara region. They have like big communities. And then we got 5 people from the Torque platform to come out here. We're giving them a ticket to volunteer. At the conference, and they're invited to the dinner as well. So we have 17 people. You should see this menu. This menu—I mean, literally so good. Cannot wait. It's gonna be a heck of a time. I think we'll be able to get really cool stuff for Torque, and obviously we're just gonna get some great conversations with people about building community. I think we're gonna be able to—the Mexico vlogs will be great. I mean, the Mexico vlog—I mean, this vlog's gonna be great, but the Mexico vlogs will be great. No, no. All these questions. I just literally just. I literally just want. If there was a muffin that described a day of the week, it would be Monday. This would be the muffin. This is a Monday muffin. This is not a very attractive muffin. Oh, Laura's cats are crazy. Please hold on to those backpacks.

Go.

What is this? I don't know. It's a car. What are you talking about? It's a car. Enterprise threatens to give you a Jeep. Absolutely dialed for this last few days. So I worked in Raleigh from 2013 to 2014, and that was like my very first job as a recruiter that like got out of the traditional recruiting sense. So I started to like do a lot with community. I started to go to the .NET meetup every single week here in Raleigh, and that was kind of like the original like community that I got introduced to. What was your role there? And because of that community, I got my first speaking gig here in Raleigh at Raleigh Codes in 2013. And I'm pretty sure that this is the first time that I'm speaking in Raleigh since I left Raleigh, I think. But even more than that, it's come full circle because I'm obviously the head of community now for Torque. And this is really the city where I started to get into community and started to see what community was before even knowing what it was. So it's really special. For me to be here. I'm extremely excited for these next 2 to 3 days. And just thankful to be here. Thankful for Todd and All Things Open for having me. It's just special, special to come back, especially to be a part of this community again and speak at such an amazing conference. So excited and grateful.

There you go.

We have merch. Not merch, swag. I keep saying merch like band shirts. It's the same. It's the same. There you go. Very nice. There you go. These are the XLs. Yeah, these XLs. Yes, dude. Comfort colors too. I would say the Indian just kind of like kind of moved everything out the way it was supposed to go. That had to happen this morning. Love that. Hey, better than last trip. Last trip we didn't do a whole lot of— No, there was none of that that just happened on last trip. It was too many too many late dinners. Day one of all things open. We are off to a coffee shop to get some work done. You know, kind of playing out today. Got the team, the full team coming in. So Brianna's coming in today. Jason's already here. We're gonna meet up around two o'clock this afternoon, which we're gonna film. It's gonna be some great little behind the scenes on how my team thinks about community, so I'm excited about that. But yeah, let's, uh, let's go get some— let's go get some coffee, even though I'm not drinking coffee right now. Let's just go, you know, let's, let's just go get a flavored beverage. Let's get a flavored beverage. We're fine doing Brazil right now. I just— we need in 2025 to like grow in other areas. That was something that we'd also kind of talked about, was maybe doing Hackathons next year, which would align pretty well with the way these events are falling in these cities. So just just a thought. In Mexico, we need Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey. Those are the three biggest tech cities. And then Buenos Aires, Santiago, Bogotá, Venezuela, Costa Rica.

Let's start with there. How many meetups are we trying to do each month? Are we trying to do one domestic and one international each month? Or are we trying to go international, domestic, international, domestic?

Torque's main responsibility is to grow Latin America. The goal for the US is to— engagement in the US. Grow LATAM, top of the funnel LATAM, mid to bottom of the funnel for US. Yeah, but still, what about the other 90 people? You're totally taking my line, yes. I wanna give them opportunities to skill up, to network, to be a part of a community that's giving them things back. Well, that's why I talked to Lane about getting all of our job search content on torque.dev Like, I want torp.dev to get all of our content. It's not a paywall, you just gotta sign up.

We have a lot of things to accomplish in a little bit of time, so what we're gonna do— the call to action, the things that we're doing, the things that we are going to get done— Jason's gonna be looking up conferences that we can go to between January and March all across Latin America. He's gonna come back to me, we're gonna figure out what's the best course of action.

So Jason, you're doing that?

Mm-hmm. And we'll have that by Wednesday. We're gonna take a look at that on Wednesday, and then together we'll figure out where we really think we should go. We'll give it to you. You can make the ultimate decision. Yeah, yeah. Either way you look at it, Q1 of 2025, we're hitting Latin America hard. We have to.

We're getting ready for taxi go.

Taxi go.

Come home tonight, say I'm the best. I know I don't deserve it, but I can't eat, baby, I can't sleep, and the only thing I can think about is you. Time to go be social. All right, day 1— actually day 2. Day 1, day 2 of All Things Open in Raleigh. There's a lot of people to talk to and I'm absolutely terrified, but excited for today. Busy day. 11:30, my talk, Exposing the Interview Process. 2:45, I'm on a panel with The New Stack. 6 PM is a Torque meetup, uh, just right down the road. And then 7:30 is a speaker dinner. Let's get it. Gonna be an amazing day. Let's go. Still, still can't find Taylor. Ah, the hunt for Taylor continues. Hey there. It's Jason, community evangelist at Torque.dev. You may remember me from such communities as the Tech Commute and Appwrite. But today we're here to talk to you about the wonderful community we're building here at Torque.dev and all the amazing things at All Things Open. Come with me! Well, you guys came from that way, so I'm guessing he's that way. I— yeah, I have no idea. It's too bad you don't have like comms. I'm getting ready for my talk.

You coming?

I actually just got a really fancy job title called the VP of Global Community, which what all that means is I'm a professional friend maker. If you did not sign up for the meetup tonight, it's gonna be great. We did overspend, so I would like for you to show up, please. And then also join our platform as well. Basically my job, what we want to do, and again, Brianna and Jason here, if you see us, please come say hey to us. And we want everyone to be a part of this, right? What our goal is, is if you're on the job search, We do not want you to be alone. Another back-to-back sold out, sold out. Say we're selling tickets. It's sold out. There was a line around the block. It was around like a yeah. Just to get in. It was like a Thin Lizzy concert. Why did I pull from Thin Lizzy? That was Thin Lizzy. Thin Lizzy. Anyways, it was like an Eddie Van Halen concert. No, it was great. Eighty. I think it was like what? I think Jay said like eighty people or something like that. Yeah. Uh.

We had to turn people away.

Yeah, we had to turn people away. It was hot, really hot box, the whole thing. It was great. It was great. It was awesome. Fantastic. I'm pumped. Next talk, 2:45. Yeah, my name is Taylor Desseyn. I am VP of Global Community at Torque. Basically what that means is I just am a professional friend maker. Torque is a talent marketplace. We do all things in tech development on the functional side, you name it. And I've been a traditional recruiter back when I was recruiting .NET Web Forms. So I've seen the internet change pretty drastically, and I've seen all the hype, and I can resonate with you on a lot of different topics, but I'll pass it off. That was great. Oh, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thanks for coming out, man. Appreciate it. Yeah.

That's Taylor.

What? That was awesome. Great, great. Second talk down. I'm done. That was it. We're done. Dude, I only have 3 questions in the whole thing. That's it. That's all right. That's all right. I only spoke 3 times. No, It was great, great conversation. Really, I think there's a lot of people out in the market right now that like just are scared and need help. That's why I'm so excited with what we're doing at Torx. I really think we could be a beacon of light for a lot of people who are struggling in their careers right now. So this has been a really good kind of case study, field study with how the market's feeling, which is what we're gonna double down on with Torx. All right.

Hey everybody, I'm Brianna and I'm the head of global community operations for Torque. You might know me from Render, but Taylor knows me from being his boss.

You see something bad, she's gonna know it's me. Crazy amazing day. Day 1. Really technically it's like day 3, but whatever. Day 1 of All Things Open. Crazy amazing day. Uh, right now I'm sending out DMs. I'm throwing a Dads in Tech, which is kind of my other endeavor. I'm throwing a Dads in Tech event tomorrow morning. So I'm sending out DMs. We're going to start a little bit later because I'm tired. So we're doing that. My voice is going. If you can't tell, it was an amazing first day at the conference. 2 standing room only sessions. I'm super blessed. Literally the first session, we had to turn people away because we were at capacity. And then the second session was pretty much the same. So incredible. Tonight, the Torque Meetup. Unbelievable. To everybody who came out, thank you so much for supporting me, supporting our vision. It was really cool. Basically, I was talking to so many people tonight that were senior that want to help, that want to help pour back into the Tork community and into what we're building. Like, I saw the vision tonight and I could not be more excited. So for everybody who came up to me, I am going to tap on your shoulder here in the next 3 to 6 months What we're building is something special. I want you along for the ride. And thank you everybody who came up to me wanting to help. It just means so, so much. So, you know who you are. So, thank you. Right now, I'm going to send out some DMs. We are off to Mexico in 48 hours which is crazy to think about. No, not 48. 72 hours. So, I have some organization stuff that I need to do as well for the team to get going there. So, So we're gonna be up here for probably another hour or 2, but man, crazy awesome day 1. Could not be more grateful. Could not be more tired, but thankful. So, so thankful. We just finished the Dads in Tech breakfast here. So I forgot to record. Patrick, I know you're disappointed in me, but I wanted— I want to show proof. It was a great— it was fantastic. Can you get that?

Oh yeah.

That was great. Great time. Shout out to the dads for showing up. Great conversation. It was a great way to start day 2 of All Things Open. Let's go watch some keynotes, and then let's just go get some work done after because I'm very behind with work. Let's go. Going to the best, the best restaurant in Raga. We got to eat fast because this is only an hour meter. To the people who follow me when I did music, I tell people now that basically this traveling to speak is basically like being on the road for tour because literally. Literally right now, we're in Raleigh right now. Cherry Case, the band I was in, literally played at the Poorhouse like 15, 20 years ago. No, yeah, like 20 years ago we played here. And so like I just tell people, like at the end of the day, like what I do now is basically on the, like being on tour, I just get to stay in a DoubleTree and not a Motel 6. And Also, I'm trying to like bridge the gap, lead the gap, bridge the gap from like corporatey stuff to like basically like all the tour documentaries that you watch of your favorite bands. That's my goal. I am so tired. We're here in Nashville for— I said 48 hours, Patrick said not even. He said about 36 hours. So we're gonna be back here in the airport at 4 AM, 3:30 in the morning. And what's today? 4 AM. Today's Tuesday.

3:30.

Today's Tuesday. Right now it says Tuesday at 7:34. We're gonna be in the airport Thursday morning at like 3:30 in the morning. So, uh, it was a heck of a time. All Things Open, this was special. It's like I just posted, uh, you know, getting to know Todd, the, the guy who runs it. He's from South Carolina. He literally lives like 15-20 minutes from like the house I grew up in, and I'm outside of Lexington. Uh, you know, getting rejected like 6 times. I wasn't even gonna apply this year and getting accepted. And then bringing some of my new team here from Torque and throwing a massive successful meetup was just a blessing. So crazy awesome time. I'm stoked, excited for Mexico.

Let's get it.

Thank you.