The vlog captures a 72‑hour behind‑the‑scenes recap of Torque.dev’s presence at the All Things Open conference in Durham, North Carolina. The team, including Patrick, Jake, Hatcher, Zach, and others, narrates their arrival, the excitement around the first public drop of Torque swag, and the energetic atmosphere at their booth where a line formed around the table. They discuss the strategic importance of community‑focused developer marketing, emphasizing that conferences are critical touchpoints for driving sign‑ups to the Torque platform, distributing free conference tickets, and fostering engagement through email newsletters and Discord growth. Jake highlights the power of personal branding over corporate accounts, noting that people follow individuals more than companies, and cites a CEO’s success repurposing LinkedIn posts on a personal profile. The conversation shifts to Torque’s upcoming rebrand, describing a new LinkedIn‑like interface for developers, with visual references to Figma files. Patrick talks about an acquisition that will enable a talent‑community and on‑demand staffing model, likening it to a “factory model.” The vlog also covers networking events such as speaker and sponsor dinners, a “Dads & Tech” meetup, and informal lunches with sales lead Zach and other local founders. Throughout, the team shares personal anecdotes, jokes about hot weather, and the camaraderie that fuels their mission to help developers find jobs and build a supportive community.
Chapters
There it is.
We're here. We've been waiting for this elevator for a while. We are here.
Where are we today? We are in—
Patrick, it's good to see you again. It's good to see you too. It's been a minute. We're not in a foreign country. We are in Durham, North Carolina for All Things Open AI. Support my guy Todd Lewis and the, and, uh, the All Things Open crew. Just checked in, gonna get unpacked, and then we are tonight very excited to get it documented. Torque Swag is gonna be out in the wild for the first time. Let's just say the first time ever. We made it. We made it. Y'all matchy-matchy too. What up, Mom?
Hello.
So good to see you.
You too. Hello. Hey.
I didn't get my nails done. She got her nails done.
Looks like 4 more of these.
4 more of those? Holy smokes, 4 more. It's what happens when— it's what happens when it's the first drop. Let's go. Here it is, V1.
I grabbed my wrong luggage.
I grabbed my wife's suitcase and my suitcase. Boy's rocking shorts for the— I'm gonna go to 2 and ask them about the AC in the room. So it's hot, sweating. I'm probably gonna have to like meet people. I'm getting all close to you. No, please don't. I'm just like hot, like very flustered.
There you go.
It's out. Macro Data Refinement. All things open. Torque.dev.
Let's get it.
Hey.
Hey.
Come here.
Nice shirt.
Good to see you.
I love the shirt. Thanks for dressing up, buddy.
Yeah. Hey, so what were you just saying?
Yeah, okay, okay.
People don't follow companies, they follow people.
Totally true.
He was just giving us kind of the rundown of what he appreciated about how we're approaching content, because not a lot of people know about Torque, but they absolutely know about myself, or they know about Taylor. And I think it's super important. I mean, that's kind of again what Kevin— yeah, is, is also doing for Appsmith. A lot of people know him before they know the product. Yeah, yeah, good point.
And it's like, it's still good to post I post on the company account, but I find like you get more engagement when— because people are like, I know you, I mean, I know you're at Torque, but like I follow you, so I'm gonna see what you're posting, you know? And I do that at work too, like I'll just quote tweet something and it'll usually get more traction too.
Oh, of course, of course. That's how you build.
I actually read an article that a CEO of a company, over a week, he published the same stuff they were publishing on their LinkedIn page on his personal profile. profile, and he got so much more outreach, like, which is fucking brilliant. I love it because, like, people are just pre-prepared that they're gonna be sold. Yeah, this post is marketing something, but if it comes from a person, exactly, it's gonna have a different approach.
Yeah, I gotta make sure we properly address the swag here. Hell yeah, man, it was really good. We had about, we had about 15 people. I had a bunch of texts and DMs. They're like, hey, save me, save me a t-shirt, you know, save me this Severance t-shirt. And it was really cool. We were just talking the way down to dinner just about how I doubt there's any other company dropping their swag where they have people in the community going, save me a shirt. So yeah, it was great. It was great to see everybody. It had a lot of great— a lot of speakers came tonight as well, which I'm very grateful for. So excited for the next 2 days and seeing more Torque swag in the hands of everybody. Morning, sunshine.
Morning.
I had a nice scooter ride.
Did you?
Yep.
That's nice.
I'm tired still.
Voilà! What do you think about this shirt? Obviously, all things open. Todd and the crew have been super accommodating, and we're pumped. We're pumped to just network and hang out with people, and got the cold brew flowing, and Bob's are immaculate. Yo, Jason, nice name tag. You didn't fill out the form correctly. Thanks, buddy. I didn't fill it out. Jason, I didn't fill it out at all. That's not true. I forgot. I forgot. Do I have anything in my teeth?
Yeah.
This is what happens when you have good swag. Nobody else is at any other table but ours. I'm very used to the craziness of these tables in the morning now, but we're still working on the organization part. It gets a little hairy, but it's fun.
It's a good time.
I feel the shape of things to come. In the end, in the end, that's why we run. From the east to the west as we become one. Share with me the sun. Don't forget sometimes it's you and me.
Hey, hey, Jake. Jake's got to make the vlog. This is Jake. Jake, introduce yourself to the vlog.
What do you do? I'm Jake.
Hey, what do you do?
Let's see.
Right now, I'm president of a digital consulting firm called Build Global, where we do software cloud data AI solutions. Yeah, they're actually competitors. Yeah, they're actually competitors technically to what we do, but he's my friend, so it's kind of there's enough business for all of us. All right, so we had the rush. People seem to be really liking the swag. They seem to be loving the idea that we're here for the community, trying to help them. fine roles. Our consummate timeshare salesman here was really giving people a lot of energy.
It really did work.
It did, it did.
I mean, we had a line. I'm sure you got footage. It was like all the way around because people want to be a part of something cool, and I think we're bringing that to them. So All right, so let's talk about signups on the platform. So, you know, going to conferences like this, it's incredibly important to be in the community, get the signups, get the impressions on social, but also and just be a part of the community. I think a lot of times companies want to like, hey, like we want to help people, or like, hey, we're a staffing company and like we care about people, but like they're never in the community, right? And I think when it comes to developer marketing and building community with, with developers, you have to be where the developers are. This is one of the key things that I've built my entire career on, is like, hey, you got to be where the people are. And the people are at these conferences. If people aren't necessarily going to watch your ad unless it's a good ad, or people aren't necessarily gonna like engage on some Canva post, at the end of the day they're going to engage with you because they see actively trying to give back to developer community, which is the thing that I've really put my entire career on, is going to meetups, going to conferences, being active, being engaged. And so really for us, our main goal at Torque is to get people onto the platform really by these conferences. These conferences, the way I view it, is kind of a shot to the arm when it comes to signups on the platform. And so really we want to be here, we want to get individuals on the platform and sign up and get them engaged because Because shout out Brianna with her amazing email marketing skills. Our emails are actually a lot of fun to read. I read all of our emails. And the way we let people know about what we're doing is just to sign up, right? Yes, our platform, you can get jobs on it, but I think our platform is more than that. Our platform is a way for you to keep updated with what's going on, for you to engage with others, for you to network with others, for you to know what's going on. I mean, we're giving away free tickets to conferences if you're on our platform. Again, excited to be here. I'm excited to just meet so many new individuals and really get them within the community and get them signed up on the platform, which I'm really excited about the new rebrand that's coming out because I've seen the Figma files. What we're building is going to be a really, really cool version of LinkedIn. And so I'm trying to get as many people on the platform as possible because you're going to love what it looks like here in the next few weeks. This is like OG music, like Columbia, Lexington, South Carolina music. Like literally we were all playing like in kind of the same time. Yeah, you're still doing music. I love your stuff. Thanks. I mean, I still listen to it.
It's awesome. It's great.
We're off to speaker dinner, sponsor dinner now. Super excited. And, uh, yeah, let's go. I think there's a huge opportunity for creators in the tech space. To be very high level, because we were talking about it. There's a lot of C-suite folks that aren't technical that need to know this stuff, and if you can get to them, like that's that's how change is made at the organizational level.
Good up there.
I'm sweating. It's hot. Very hot. I'm dying. Morning, pumpkin. Good morning. We're gonna get everybody jobs. That was— oh my God, that was perfect. Bree, how do you do this? I got it, don't worry. iPad case 1, Taylor 0. Good morning, Patrick. How'd you sleep, baby boy?
I slept well.
You did?
That's good, I didn't. I didn't either. I was so wired last night. Oh God, I'm so— I gotta like not talk to anybody like past like 6. So last night, amazing, you know, hanging out with speakers, get to know some more folks. Great kind of after-after dinner with Gant and Mazen at Infinite Bread. Thank you boys, appreciate it. So yeah, wonderful evening last night. And then dads and tech meetup this morning. We had about nine dads come out this morning for our Raleigh chapter. Again, thank you Pat Clark and Mazen for leading that up. So wonderful morning, and we are back dialed in at the booth and ready for day two. Let's get it. I've personally been on job search now 3 times, and it's just terrifying. And so if you can have kind of a community to like step into and bounce ideas off of or say, hey, I'm struggling with this, you know, and we've grown the Discord from basically nothing to 4,000 people in a few months. So we are off to lunch with Zach. Zach is one of our head sales guys at Torque, and we're being joined up with another rock Roundstead individuals. So excited for this. Gonna get a little behind the scenes, probably talk a little about Torque a little bit more, especially what we offer from like the hiring manager side, the sales side. So excited to highlight this conversation. Good to see Zach. This is, you know, Zach's up in Boston, so I don't get to see him that much. And excited to meet some new Roundstead individuals. So it's gonna be a good little fun lunch over Mexican and give me some great conversations. And I'm gonna continue to sip my hot tea because my voice is going out again. This is Hatcher, by the way.
Hey, we met.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Finally, man, that was awesome. I'm glad you reached out.
That's where we're gonna need some work with some of the dynamic stuff, because basically we had a call yesterday and you're like, seems like y'all are gonna be more of like as-needed staffing or something right now. Yes, but we've got this company that we acquired, Torque.
Yeah.
They can build a talent community. We can start to accelerate that and have talent on demand a little bit more so. So similar to what you all are doing with Mexico, like building the factory model.
Yeah, yeah.
It's like we have to start here, but over time we can get here.
Yeah, I think a lot of times companies are just so like— and I get it from a hiring perspective, you got to be like, we just need it now, and they don't look ahead. And I think the sell with us is like, yo, like we're building, right? Yeah, yeah, we, we literally think 3, 6 months ahead for you guys, and then you guys can just run. Great lunch with Josh, new friend at Ronstadt. Love meeting new friends at Ronstadt. Um, and then Zach, obviously from Torque, who you guys have seen before in the vlog. It was just really refreshing talking with those guys, and, um, and that's why I'm just pumped to be here, because everyone's so aligned and like helping the customer and helping the job seeker, and there just seems to be this really this focus on helping people, which I'm super pumped about. So Back to the conference for a few hours before we tear down and enjoy the evening. All right, friends, we're done. All things open.
We did it, fam.
We did it.
It's great. Let's run it back next week to Salt Lake. Can't see Dot. See you soon, big dog.
