LATAM Community Recap

Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Probably like Taylor. I didn't see anything on the calendar for this. It's not. This is a random live that I am doing this morning. Wanted to hang out, just hang out. I haven't done— man, I haven't done a solo live since I got back from paternity break at the beginning of the year. So it's been, it's been 5 months now since I have— since I've done a solo live. And, and, uh, you know, I, I wanted to hang out for a second, for a few minutes, um, and just talk about our LATAM experiences. Uh, to be honest with you, I have a Substack, uh, kind of ready to go I still got to put pictures in, kind of recapping. I'm going to send out a Substack recapping Mexico, and then I'm going to send out a Substack recapping Chile. But I want to come live and just talk to you about it. It's been a crazy, crazy time in the community world. So if you're watching, say hey. We'd love to hear from you again. I just may be yapping to me, myself, and I on this one. And quite honestly, that's okay. You can find this content later. That's why I like going live on LinkedIn, because the way it works. Ricardo, I got one guy, Mr. Ricardo, always here. Um, but, uh, but yeah, so I want to talk about it. Um, you know, the— you know, we, we did our all-hands, um, for the Torque community, uh, for the, for the Torque team this week, and I was told to only do 2 slides. Um, but we had— but I, um, I, you know, uh, came up with 6 pages of documentation. of all the stuff the community team has done over the last 6 weeks since our last all-hands. And, and so, um, so I just kind of want to talk about everything that's going on. I'm actually going to pull up this document and kind of go through stuff, but I do want to talk about LATAM, um, first. So listen, I mean, uh, Mexico City, uh, so, so the team went down to Mexico City a few weeks back. Um, what up, Jeff? Yeah, this is, this is, this is my Yappy Hour. I'm not gonna be able to make, uh, the networking event today in the Discord for Yappy Hour, but so this is kind of This is kind of my version of it. Um, so hey, at least I got Ricardo and Jeff here. I appreciate— you know, I always say I appreciate, uh, the, the, the 5 people that like my Instagram post. Um, Amelia, it's good to see you this morning. It's good to see you. So, all right, so let's talk about Mexico. Um, so it's kind of to frame the conversation a little bit. So we went to Talentland. Talentland is one of the largest, uh, engineering conferences in Mexico. Um, there's on record 30,000 to 40,000 um, uh, individuals there. It is a crazy experience. The— it is in a massive conference hall. Um, you know, last year we were in Guadalajara, this year we're in Mexico City. Um, I like the change of scenery. I have not been to Mexico City yet. Uh, Mexico City was insane. Um, loved Mexico City. The architecture was nuts. Uh, that's just kind of a side note. The buildings, um, it was just gorgeous. It was great. Um, it definitely felt like where we were staying, it definitely felt like, uh, Atlanta. It's so funny. I literally— Richie, Richie just popped in. What's up from Atlanta? So where we were staying in Mexico City, out my hotel window, it kind of gave Atlanta vibes. Um, but, uh, so we went there last year, um, and, uh, you know, we wanted to go back. The feedback, um, that what we're doing is tremendous. You know, I talk about this and I'm gonna put this in my Substack, but I, I never understand why staffing companies don't show up at engineering events. Um, you know, I know a lot of staffing companies just go to other staffing conferences, which doesn't make any sense. So I mean, again, we were one of— I would— I didn't walk the entire floor, but I'm— I would put money on the fact that we were the only staffing talent solutions company, um, at the conference, let alone, um, you know, kind of again what we're building, this community-first approach with the platform, um, and matching LATAM engineers with US opportunities. And so Uh, so we got down there. Um, just FYI, uh, if you travel with 2 hockey bags, 2 rolling hockey bags full of swag, um, you get stopped at customs. Um, so I got stopped at customs and I had to pay a fine for all of the gear that we brought in. Um, uh, I did, uh, obviously did not speak Spanish, and so I got pulled aside. I'm gonna be honest with you, probably was a little bit of a power play, but that's neither here nor there. Um, And then, so funny story, um, we all were landing at the same time, like me, Brianna, our social media girl Gigi, um, uh, uh, our video crew. Like, we were all kind of landing at the same time. So I got all of our stuff, got through customs, um, and then was waiting. I just— I was waiting outside customs. And so Brianna landed. I was like texting Brianna, and Brianna, she called me. She's like, where are you at? And I was like, I'm right— I'm literally right outside customs. What we did not know is not all international flights come into the same terminal. Um, so I was waiting around for like 30 to 45 minutes waiting on Brianna to join me. Um, what we realized is we were in 2 separate terminals, so I had to get to the hotel by myself. That was fun. Uh, I, uh, did— a taxi driver got me. Um, when I say got me, like came up to me. I was like, sure. I was so tired, I just didn't want to deal with an Uber. The traffic was kind of crazy, and so Um, he did not speak English. He did not speak a lick of English. Um, so shout out to Google Translate, the unofficial sponsor of, uh, this morning's pod. Um, but so had to communicate with him like where I was going with Google Translate, 2 hockey bags full. Um, and, uh, and, and he kept telling me he wanted to stop for tacos. I didn't want to really be a part of a Taken movie situation, so I was like, no, let's just go to the hotel. I'm not really hungry. Um, even the tacos would have been great. So got to the hotel. And of course, like, I'm gonna have to figure out how to submit this expense. But of course, we got to the hotel and he was like, oh, I don't have receipt paper. And I was like, great. It was like a $100 Uber ride or taxi ride. So I'm gonna have to figure that out. That's neither here nor there right now. So got to the event, got to the hotel. So one of the cool things, so we have not been to Mexico City yet. We have a very engaged user base on our platform. in LATAM. And so we wanted to host 2 events. So we sent out an email to all the people in Mexico City on our platform, and we booked up 2 events pretty quickly, 2 private dinners. And what happened was, is there was a substantial waitlist to get in. So we pivoted about a week, the week of, and And we just threw another dinner the first night. I tell you what, traveling and then getting dressed and then having to put on your networking hat to go to, um, a, uh, a dinner the night you— the day you land, uh, was a lot. Um, but it was great. Um, uh, the vibes were immaculate as always. Um, it was really cool. Got to like meet people at the dinner like that were actively working for Torque at one of our clients. Um, we got to meet other people who were interviewing through the Torque platform. It's just really cool, right? Like, we get so caught up— I talk about this a lot— like, we get so caught up in like how many emails we're sending, like what does the social content look like, like all this stuff. But then like when you go to another country and people show up that like are actually benefiting from your services, it's pretty incredible. So that was night one, and then, and then we got to the conference, um, early that day. I do have to say it was kind of crazy. There was no Uh, Wi-Fi, no Wi-Fi. That was crazy. And no, uh, no cell service because of like the building. So there was no way to do like any social media, any sort of like, you know, streaming, because like typically we like to stream at these booths. So that was a little bit of a disaster, to be totally frank with you. Um, but the team got there, got set up. And then we got flooded the first day. Absolutely. Uh, Torque India tour, when? It's being talked about. It's being talked about. Um, but, uh, probably won't be until 2027. Um, uh, but I will be gladly on that tour, um, because I've always wanted to visit India. Um, and so, uh, first day went off great. Uh, we kind of braced ourselves, um, being at this conference, the the amount of people that kind of swarm your booth, especially our booth. What's been consistent is we, we for the most part have some of the busiest booths at the conference. I think it's a mix of we have obviously opportunities available that you can sign up for. I think people want to be a part of that. But also too, I tweeted this this week, like we don't have a massive budget, but I think the people— what I— no, not I think, I believe the people that I have hired and that show up have a ton of energy. And I think people want to be around that. Right? And so our booth, uh, right on schedule, was absolutely flooded the first day. Um, it was nuts. Shout out to Roxy, uh, Fernanda, who's our events coordinator. She's down in Mexico. Ximena. Um, and also Brianna. She's— she was basically fluent at the end of our LATAM, uh, tour leg, um, in Spanish. They basically controlled most of the conversation. I was there just making sure things were moving along because your boy don't speak Spanish that well. Um, and so, uh, basically first day was great. That night we had another dinner, right? I mean, again, I talk about this like, listen, it's awesome traveling. I love seeing new places, but at the end of the day, it's usually the hotel and the conference venue, and it is just an absolute grind in terms of networking and talking and people and shaking hands and all that. So, uh, the second night, um, we had another dinner, went off great, got to meet more of our community, um, had some of our ambassadors show up on that dinner. Also had a few internal Torque people. Like, so we have a pretty large presence. Our matching team that matches you to opportunities, kind of the human in the loop situation, a lot of them sit in Latin America. We had a few show up, um, to our dinner the second night. It was great to meet those folks. Um, and then basically third and fourth day were just more of the same. Um, uh, but we were absolutely gassed. Like, the last night we, we had a team dinner set and we canceled the team dinner. We just were absolutely— just gassed. Um, and so, uh, uh, you know, we kind of like went down to the hotel lobby and caught up, and then we went to bed early. So Mexico City was great, incredible experience. We'll be back in Mexico City in November with Nerdela, um, the conference we went to in Chile, which I'm gonna talk about right now. Um, so, uh, can't wait to go back to Mexico City end of this year. I think that's in November. Um, so let's talk about Chile, right? So Chile, Um, uh, not to be confused with the restaurant. I was, uh, I got called out on social media. I was spelling Chile wrong like all the time. It's C-H-I-L-E, um, just FYI. Um, and so, uh, it's crazy. Again, networking connections. So we really try— one of the things we try to do with the Torque community is align with conferences, um, uh, that really have a community-first mission. Right. Um, you know, we, we are very ingrained with all things Open. Um, we're about to sign an agreement where we're gonna be, um, the premier platinum sponsor for 3 meetups in Raleigh for all things Open. We're gonna be on their email newsletter. We're getting really entrenched with all things Open. Render, obviously, um, uh, you know, we're very entrenched with, with my involvement previously to Torp, but then also Brianna. Like, we're very entrenched with Render, very community-first mindset. And so it kind of worked out great. Shout out Ximena, our community manager in Mexico. She made sure that I connected with a gentleman named Ariel at All Things Open in October of last year in Raleigh. And Ariel came to one of our events, the, our networking event we did with CodeRabbit and DigitalOcean, and we started to catch up and he was like, would love to see you guys down at Nerdella. We talked about it some more and basically Nerdella is the largest conference circuit for engineers in Latin America. So he hosts a Chile, he does a Buenos Aires, Argentina, which is kind of his flagship one. Supposedly it's like 10,000 to 20,000 people. And then he also has a Mexico City one. So we signed an agreement with Nerdella to go to all 3 events this year. And supposedly Chile was like the smallest one, which is crazy because it was one of our top 5 conference experiences all time. The conference and why we so closely align with Nerdella is it is a free conference. So anybody in the community can sign up in Chile. And so it very closely aligns to, again, what we're doing at Torque, right? Always providing value, always trying to help people. And so they had, I think the final number was like between 1,200 and 1,500 people. And I will say this confidently because there wasn't a ton of sponsors. Um, we had the second busiest booth next to AWS. Um, AWS had a massive booth set up. We did not. Um, but, uh, we literally, to put it in perspective, the team shook hands. So, so they had a scanning badge situation. We are, I just got the final tally count. It was like 858 people that we shook hands with and scanned their information. And there was only, so we scanned half the conference. Maybe, maybe I'm bad at fractions, maybe 3/5 of the conference. But like, like we basically scanned half the conference, which to be honest with you is insane, right? Typically from a conference traffic perspective, you usually have maybe 10% traffic, 15% traffic to your booth. We had 50% traffic to our booth, which again, shout out to the team, shout out to the energy. I mean, we had some people, I'm not kidding you, we had some people cry. That got our swag. That was crazy. Literally, we— like, when the vlog comes out, you'll see it. We had people cry because they really wanted a fanny pack. We were giving away some Polaroid cameras. Um, one, uh, one, one lady had always wanted a Polaroid camera and she could never afford it, and we gave it to her and she just like busted out crying. So again, I mean, pretty crazy. You just don't know the impact that you have on people's lives, and even a simple Polaroid camera can really affect people. Um, so we again, through our dinner, we kind of have a cadence down with kind of how we build community. When we go to an event, we throw a private dinner usually the night before. Um, obviously it was the team's— and, and what was really cool about Chile is, um, as far as I'm aware, it was the first time that Torque was actually in South America, um, which is, which is pretty cool because that, that's kind of the OG initial like Torque, uh, business model is LATAM specific. So being able to actually pioneer us going down to South America for the first time was crazy. And again, we threw a dinner at capacity. I didn't think anyone was going to show up. I texted my wife. It was like 15 minutes past when the time frame was going to be there. There was like 2 people there, and I was like, this is going to get awkward. I texted my wife. I was like, nobody's showing up. And then literally like 15, 20 minutes later, like everybody showed up. But again, it was crazy. Like we had— there was people who were interviewing with Torque, and there were people who knew about Torque. So It was just a really special experience, um, being able to actually be in South America for the first time and booking out a dinner for the first time. Again, really, really cool experience. Um, the conference, um, was in a great setting. It was in the, the conference center was, was like beautiful. Um, I don't know if you saw some pictures, um, but, but you'll see it in the vlog. Very open air. We, we were in like a closed, obviously like normal conference type vibe, but a lot of natural light. And the people were just super kind, super energetic. I say this time and time again, LATAM conferences are just built different. The energy is like, the energy in my perspective is like people like are desperate, are like excited for job opportunities and excited to learn with what you're doing and want the swag. And typically in US conferences, you have to like beg people to give away your swag. So Um, you know, we, we handed out, we handed out all of our postcards. We passed out over, we passed out 1,000 postcards. Um, so typically what the way we had is I, I was like your greeter, so I kind of posted up, um, in the very front and just passed out postcards. And then people could, I, I told people, hey, go check out our booth if you want to hear more, which I think really, really helped a lot of that foot traffic, um, which we probably will continue to do that moving forward. Um, but again, great, great experience, great conference. Um, Chile, I had a lot of people message me like, what was the vibe of Santiago? Um, it was crazy. So Santiago, I'm, I'm pretty sure it's the Andes Mountains, but like Santiago is like in the— it's like wedged in between the— in the valley of the Andes Mountains. So like you had the mountains all around you. Um, definitely New York vibes at night, super busy traffic. Um, you know, a lot of tall buildings, definitely gave like, you know, Uh, New York vibes at night. Um, and then I'll tell you this, the food down there— I, I had so much, uh, cheese and bread. So much cheese and bread down there. Um, I feel like that's all I ate. Um, and, uh, but again, great time, great, uh, great experience for sure. Um, so I want to kind of pull up, um, this document, and, and, and I shared this, um, internally. I won't go over everything. But I do want to go over kind of some highlights on what the community team is doing for those of you who watch this now in the future. So, uh, first off, one of the, one of the core parts of the community team is email marketing. Um, you know, I always say you really can't build community if nobody knows about you, and being able to handle the communication and make sure we're showing up in an interpersonal way is, is super important. So like one of the things that we've done, um, is we are up to about 300,000 emails a month between various different versions of the type of emails we're doing. We scaled that from basically zero. So again, shout out to the team, shout out to our email marketer, Shlok. He's not public, but he's helped a ton. But yeah, I mean, we sent— I mean, on one email campaign, we sent 134,000 emails in March. In February, it was at 20,000. Um, and then our newsletter total, we've gone from, uh, 21,000 email or email subs on newsletter to we're up to over 51,000 emails on, on, uh, or email subscribers for our newsletter. Um, because of the efforts we're doing, we've 7x'd claimed profiles on Torque. Claiming is just another verbiage of like, hey, you logged in. So we've been able to drive that, um, which has been pretty tremendous. Obviously, from a virtual events perspective, we did our Vonage, uh, workshop, which went off great. Shout out Roxy for, for managing that. Um, of course, you know, we, we have our Yappy Hour, which is today for the Discord. We have our resume reviews, Laid Off Lounge, Guidance Counselor 2.0, LinkedIn reviews. I want to give a shout out to Roxy. She is starting She Ships, which is her, um, livestream podcast around, um, highlighting women in tech. I've already seen the guests she's bringing on. They're going to be incredible. So super excited to get her up and going. The Discord, shout out to all the folks in the Discord, Amelia, Jeff, and I think even Richie pops in there. But basically, we've scaled that thing again. When I took over a year and a half ago, it was a ghost town, probably just a few hundred messages sent a month, maybe if that. And then now we're pretty much eclipsing around 10,000 to 16,000 messages a month. Um, and we're about to hit 4,000 members in the Discord, so that's been awesome. Um, I just talked about LATAM. Obviously I spoke at All Things Open in Raleigh. Um, uh, we had Roxy speak at DevOps Days. Roxy was down in React Miami being obviously an ambassador for Torque, and Roxy is in Stir Trek right now speaking. She's gonna be speaking in DevOps Austin. Um, and then I believe there's one more she's speaking at as well. So she is just absolutely crushing it. She's our road warrior, which is great. Um, let's see here, what else? Uh, some, some stuff coming down the pipe. Again, we are about to sign an agreement with All Things Open to, um, host their meetups in Raleigh, so we're going to lean on our ambassadors in Raleigh to show up for us there. Um, there's some internal, like, repositioning of people that y'all don't really care about. Um, we are slowly working towards a learning platform. Um, uh, so that is coming. One of the things that we get asked a lot at our booth is like, do you guys have any upskilling, any training available? So that is coming, um, kind of aligning with our goals and vision for what we're building on the business side. Most of our training and learning is probably going to be Java-focused right now, probably get into some AI learnings as well. So really excited about launching that. We kind of inherited a team from another part of Ronstadt, so that is coming. Um, what else? Uh, a lot of emails, a lot of emails being sent, just to be totally honest with you. Um, what else? And then shout out to the ambassadors. Shout out to Roxy for helping kind of the application process, submission process of submitting, um, your post. Um, but, uh, our top 3 ambassadors have posted 75 to 80 times, um, for us and amplifying what we're doing. Previous leaders were around 30 to 40, so we've basically 2x'd that with kind of what Roxy has done. So shout out to her. Um, and then we are talking about, uh, kind of fine-tuning the Mentor-Mentee program. The, the, the first part of the 2025— is 2026? 2026. 2020. I keep getting the years confused, but 2026, um, uh, Mentor-Mentee, the first cohort's about to wrap up. So we're kind of fine-tuning that, looking ahead for the second half of the year. So that's everything that's going on, um, in the community world. Latium was incredible. Um, can't wait to go back. The community team as a whole is off the road for the most part. Obviously Roxy's doing her thing, um, but we were gonna be back travel— we're gonna be— our first kind of big conference is gonna be, um, in August, um, and then obviously we're gonna be on the road pretty consistently from August to December. So that's a quick update. Um, I just wanted to, uh, come and hang out with y'all, give you guys an update. It's been too long. Um, so appreciate y'all, everybody in the chat, everybody in the community. Um, and, uh, again, we'll see y'all at Yappy Hour. I won't be there, but Roxy will be leading it. See y'all, Yappy Hour, networking hour in the Discord, the Torque Discord, um, here today. Y'all have a great weekend, um, and, uh, thank y'all for support. It means so much. Y'all have a good one. Peace.