ep. 05 - building community for the first time in mexico

Good morning, Patrick.

It's 3:49 AM. I've been away from you for 36 hours and I've missed you, so we might as well just run it back one more time to Mexico.

Hell yeah.

Guadalajara.

Let's get it.

There's no coffee. Tired, hungry, very distracted. I walked out of customs without my check bag, which the check bag is all the shirts for the conference. So all of our shirts for the conference are currently there, and I'm here. Bag acquired. We got the swag for the conference. We're, we're good to go.

No sé qué fue lo que pasó. Algo en la sangre me nació y solo quiero ser mejor. Miro a nadie alrededor. Hoy encaminado desde un visión me pone el cargo yo.

Basically, the meetup for tonight is solely for us to connect with the community, the local community. So all of these meetup organizers. Some of the community-based organization organizers—they are all local to Guadalajara. So we have people from AWS, from PayPal, from Hacker Nation—I can't remember the name—people from C3—all these people who host meetups on their own, but they have the insights to give of what do the people of Guadalajara, what do the people of Mexico really need to be successful? Whether it be offshore, nearshore, whatever the case might be, we have to make it here.

I was able to make it over there. I was able to make it over there. What's up, Patrick? We're gonna make some introductions. Introduce yourself to the camera. Hi, my name is Ace. There you go. How you doing? There you go. I'm Emily. Super excited for this.

We're about to we're meeting Brianna down here in the lobby. We are going to our first influencer community. community dinner that we are hosting. This is something that we're going to start trying to do in different cities where we go for conferences. It's trying to take a larger group of individuals and make it more intimate. So we have a 17-person dinner tonight. I know Brianna talked about earlier this afternoon, but a handful of people from the Torque Platform are going to be here from Guadalajara, and then the other 12 individuals that are going to be here all run their own communities in the area. It's gonna be a great opportunity to love on them and to be able to start making inroads here in the Guadalajara area. So really Excited about this and excited about replicating this down the road for every single event we go to.

Pumped, super, super pumped.

This is where, like in my opinion, this is where like the connections are made. I think conferences you have to nurture the connections a little bit more. I think you do a dinner like this and then it spreads like wildfire. So Brianna, Brianna and Angelos put this together on my team. So shout out to them. They've done an incredible job putting this together and very, very excited with what we're building.

Yeah. Nice out here. Solo observo y pienso. Me decepcionó y me alejó más de ti porque yo ya no quiero sufrir. Quiero ser feliz. Tu amor es veneno. Tonight's event in Guadalajara.

Amazingly, we had so many local community builders show up and show out, and it was just so inspirational to hear from them. What are they doing in the community? How can we support them? How do we make sure that their developers are supported and feel ready to apply to jobs on the Torque platform? So I just— I'm so happy that we actually got to do that.

Working early? Yeah, uh, trying to get out my newsletter. I realized like I need to get it out this morning. I want to update everybody what's going on. So trying to bang this out and then take a quick shower and then we're gonna go grab some coffee real quick. I got some more work to do, more sessions to submit to for conferences. You know, we're starting to really focus on what conferences to go to in 2025. And so I just, we actually got a message from a woman named Jessica who heads up all of our PR at Torque and she sent us an amazing conference out in California. So I'm gonna submit to that. I got a bunch of other work to do this morning, some follow-ups from the dinner last night, which was so amazing.

Thank you, Brianna and Andrew.

who put that together. You all crushed it. And then, speaking today, 1 o'clock. So, a lot of work this morning. Probably gonna head to the conference around, I don't know, a little later this morning and then speak and just network for the rest of the afternoon. Speaking today at 1 o'clock. Got some coffee in me. Coffee's great, by the way, Americano. Sent out the newsletter this morning. Got some more work. I gotta work on my slides. I gotta update a QR code so people can join our platform. 'Cause right now, the QR code on my slide is for the meetup in Raleigh, so they don't need to scan that. So we're headed to the conference center. We're going to meet Bree downstairs. We're going to get after it. It's a great day. Beautiful day in Guadalajara. Make it a good one.

You're still there while I'm here and I'm starting to lose my mind.

Anytime you send out a newsletter on LinkedIn, you know how when you get an invite on LinkedIn, it's like subscribe to somebody's page or whatever? It's— I think it pushes the same way. So I have 3,000 subscribers for my LinkedIn, which is the same thing on Substack. But it's like trying to be everywhere at once. So now, you know, I have I have 25,000 followers on LinkedIn, so that's greater than a 10% engagement rate. That's really good. So that's why I think we should probably send out the torque one too.

Try it. Yeah. Yeah, try it.

I wanna take up all the morning sun. I wanna take it to you.

Talk in 5. I'm actually nervous. It's my first international speaking gig. Also, it's kind of a new talk. I've only given this talk one other time. It was at that conference in January, what's it, this year? I think it was this year. So I haven't done it before, or I've only done it one other time, so it's gonna be good. Basically just really want people to understand the importance of what we're doing, right? The importance of this, the importance of putting yourself out there. So really excited. I just heard some clapping, so I think we're about up. I'm gonna stay here. I don't know if I'm supposed to go over there or they're gonna find me, so I think we should probably head over there. This is my first time in Mexico, and this is obviously my first time in Guadalajara, and the people are amazing. You all are amazing. The food is amazing. The vibes are immaculate. And so I'm very blessed to be here. Overall went well. I got, you know, I would say I would probably rate myself So like, it's a newer talk. I'd probably give myself a 7 out of 10. I need to kind of work on a few more kind of actionable items. One of the, one of the issues that I have from giving like high-level talks is the way my brain works is I want like practical tactical information. And I think a lot of this talk is a little bit more like, hey, this is why this is important. So it's not quite as much like tactical advice even though I did give it. So I just need to kind of work on A little bit high-level stuff. I talked really fast, I feel like. So like I looked down the clock and I was like, I still have 20 minutes left. So I need to dial it in a little bit more, but the feedback seems to be great. It was a great talk and a great first talk internationally, which I'm pumped about. Looking forward to many more in 2025. Just sent out a Slack to the Torque team. Very proud of the community team, Luca, Angelos, Nikita, Shushmi, Brianna, Jason, for just crushing it. This October and really kind of double, like buckling down on Latin American growth numbers. So we just hit a new all-time high for tech individuals added to our platform per month. So we just hit 1,394 members on our platform for October. Our previous high was 1,361. So again, a lot of growth going on, a lot of good things happening. Obviously being down here, it's like our first time throwing an event in Mexico, first time me speaking in Mexico. So a lot of firsts going on right now. now with a Torque organization that I'm super pumped about.

Great talk. Thank you. Yeah, it was very— thank you.

You're gonna start posting on LinkedIn?

Yeah, well, I already—

Good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Awesome.

I have been, yeah. But well, I think it's great to say that to the younger people to find community. Well, like, for example, I joined like the open source community like in the end of the '90s. Like, very young.

I love it. I love it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, obviously you grow professionally, but also you find friends for life.

100%. The thing that most talent marketplaces are missing, in my perspective, is a thriving community that gives back to engineers and makes engineers feel welcome and have enough initiatives to where engineers feel engaged. I just want to come to here to say thank you for the talk. Absolutely.

And I really appreciate that you take the time to talk about this.

Yes.

Because it's something that the people doesn't talk What do you feel about it?

It feels good. Like, no conferences now for 30 days until Dallas, the conference that my guy Danny Thompson is putting on for charity to give back to the community. And then potentially back here. I don't know. We'll see. Got some budget conversations we gotta have, but we'd love to come back down here in December. There's a huge event, about 500 people or so we were told, and it's all the community builders from all around Guadalajara and tech to come together. So we'll see if we can make it back down here, but amazing last 30-day run. Uh, in October. It's like what my boss said, it's the Taylor Error Tour. Get it? Like code? Anyways, heck of October. It's time to relax. So I'm watching, uh, Marcus Milone's Mints in New York drop, really just trying to take notes. One of the things Mark— like Sam does when editing is like when Marcus talks to the camera And I'm not saying we have to do it, but basically like he does a lot of B-roll of Marcus referencing what he's talking about, if that makes sense. We've been on just an absolute tear with travel. I think now we gotta try to plan out like us sitting in a WeWork trying to like record this stuff. Like the travel documentary is good. What I don't want to do, and I think a lot of these like vloggers do, or these business owners do, they capture like the high life, like the travel, But they don't really capture in the weeds. How do we frame these conversations? And I'm not saying like, at the end of the day, it's just gonna be me talking on Zoom calls for the next 4 weeks. But I think it's gonna be a good change of pace from it not being basically like a travel vlog. Yeah, yeah. It's gonna be showing like the actual, actual behind the scenes buildings. We have so much. I mean, literally, like, like next week, like, so we gotta Like next week I'm interviewing like recruiters all week. Like literally my calendar is insane. Basically if we can create this magic with all these guys, Sam Stone, Karl Markov, Marcus McGinn, whatever, I think like that's gonna be like— and do it consistently, I think that's where we really start to start to be special. I was about to say that I'm so glad I'm gonna be home for the next 30 days, but literally now Next week, so this upcoming week, I'm gonna go see my buddy Brian Ganz in San Jose. Then the following week, me and my wife are going up to Louisville to hang out with friends. I think the 3rd week in November, I'm good. The 4th week in November, I'm good. And then the 1st week of December, back out on the road. Hell yeah, baby.

Here we go.