#44 Jeremy Likness became a developer through the backdoor and loved it
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Tim Bourguignon 0:06
Hello and welcome to developer's journey. The podcast shining a light on developers lives from all over the world. My name is Tim Bourguignon, and today, I receive Jeremy limpness. Jeremy is a cloud developer advocate for Azure at Microsoft. Jeremy has spent two decades building enterprise software with a focus on line of business web application. He's also the author of several highly acclaimed technical books, including designing Silverlight business applications and programming the Windows Runtime by example, he has given hundreds of technical presentations during his career as a professional developer. And he in his free time Jeremy likes to run to hike and to maintain his hundred percent plant based diet. Oh, God, we're not going to go along together. Jeremy, welcome to this journey.
Jeremy Likness 1:00
Thank you. That's quite quite the welcome. I'm sure we can be compatible even if I only plants.
Tim Bourguignon 1:08
Yeah, I tend to go on the low carb high fat diet, which is not completely easy to do with the only plans but but I am sure we will manage to get along. Sounds like a plan. Let's start by hearing your story. Before we talk about plant based diet, tell us how these these two decades as a software developer started and maybe how you ended up working for Microsoft.
Jeremy Likness 1:30
Okay, that is quite quite the journey. But it really started even more than than two decades ago, my my journey started when I was very young. Initially, I wanted to be an astronaut. And I was fascinated with space. So anything I could get my hands on. That was pictures of planets. I tracked the Voyager and Pioneer flybys as those satellites probe the unknown depths of space, but I had a really unique incident happen. And when I was seven years old, I went to a beach field trip. And at that time, excuse me, son, screen technology was not where it's at today. It was like a sick pace that I just hated. So I refuse to put my sunscreen on, I got incredibly burned, and ended up being burned so bad, I had to stay home from school. And there was not much to do but watch TV and eat. So I did plenty of that. But I got bored. And we had a personal computer called a ti 99. For a. This was a computer that had I think 32 kilobytes of memory ran on probably a one megahertz processor. And it was standing there staring at me. And we had no games or anything to do with it. So I turned it on. Well, what do I do now? I found a manual. It told me if I type these things into the keyboard, that this other thing would happen. So I tried it out. And next thing I knew I had a little pixelated character dancing across the screen. And from that point in time, I completely switched my career goals, decided that I was going to be a developer. So that became my main focus, my main pursuit, I was going to go to school, I was going to do great, I was going to get a degree I was going to land a job. And then I found out that life is more complicated than that I had a lot of personal issues arise in my life around the time that I started for college. And to keep a short story boring. I dropped out of college. And based on what I was told, everyone said, You can't be a developer without a degree. So I just listened to them and got a job working as a busboy. I worked as a at a bookstore, I worked at a clothing shop, I worked at a fast food restaurant. I even spent one year working in a pool hall, getting paid just a fixed flat rate to spend all day in the pool hall decided I was going to be a pool, hustler, and be great at pool and enjoyed that. And then got a job at a insurance company taking insurance claims in Spanish, because I learned Spanish in high school. So I checked a box that I spoke Spanish and they threw me into an interview. And it turns out I got this job. And the people in the job were very competitive with each other how many claims that we close out. And it was very tough to close out a claim if the software crashed and I noticed that the IT department when they would come down, our software would crash we'd file a ticket they'd come down and they basically just restart the application most of the time so I said well, I can do that. So I started restarting the application myself it noticed that in their audit logs came in had a conversation with me and next thing you know, I'm shifting over into the IT department they figured out that that was my true passion that I had a knack for it. So I got a job. As a night shift operator, basically managing these queues of documents that went to these huge printers. So the first thing I did was wrote some software to optimize the way the documents were sent to the printer. So I cut down the time it took to switch out print cartridges, from, I think it was maybe six or seven hours down to probably two or three hours, use the rest of the time to study all the books I could get my hands on, I may have walked around and maybe borrowed some books from other desks. But I was determined to teach myself the programming language, which at the time was a mainframe. And basically started showing how I could develop code moved in, and that was the start of my programming career, a lot happened in the middle, a lot can happen in 20 years. So we can definitely throw a closer look at some of those phases of my journey. But the the Microsoft phase was a very interesting phase for me, because it wasn't even a job that I was actively looking for. I was at a consulting firm, leading the application development practice. And part of that was helping establish the brand connecting with developers understanding what was out there in the market. So I was already doing things like writing blog posts, going to conferences, and connecting with with developers on behalf of that company. And I saw that a new group was forming at Microsoft, called developer advocacy. And it was a group that was specifically focused on empowering developers to have a better experience for Azure, which is our cloud offering. And I was watching this and I was thinking good for those people looks exciting. And out of the blue, no, no prompting from my side, just somehow a recruiter for a completely different position that Microsoft reached out to me. So I'm already thinking, wow, there's this interesting thing going on at Microsoft, the recruiter reaches out to me, and I wasn't actively looking. But I said, Hey, let me you know, see if how far it can go. I actually went through an interview process and was not selected for that position for reasons that are just some areas of focus than an align. So I said, Okay, well, that was a good go. At least I tried. But then another recruiter reached out and said, we have this other position that we'd like to talk to you about. So I started that process. And partway through the process, the process came to a halt, because the budgeting change, we cross the fiscal year, and they decided to make a shift. So I was like, Okay, well, that was probably my last opportunity. Nope. Third time, someone reached out and said, What do you think about this position, and it was the exact position that I had seen people talking about this new position, this exciting role of cloud developer advocacy. And I said, Absolutely, so I jumped in it. At the time. It was interesting, because I was going on an overseas trip to Italy, with my wife to celebrate our 20 year anniversary. And I had a very limited timeframe to come back. They wanted me to interview for two days. And I didn't have two days to ask for. But I was taking an extra day after I got back from Italy to adjust to the timezone. So I asked them Can Can we do this process in a day, and they agreed, so I flew back from Rome to Atlanta, helped my wife get on the bus with our luggage and everything, took my luggage, went back through security, flew across the country to Seattle, got into my hotel, probably about one in the morning was back up at five to get ready to go into a full day interview loop. And fortunately, the set of interviews went well. And here I am today, cloud developer advocate at Microsoft.
Tim Bourguignon 8:53
Wow, that's quite a journey.
Jeremy Likness 8:56
It is. And I even left out several steps along the way. But
Tim Bourguignon 9:00
allow me to backtrack a bit. You said something very interesting. You said, when you were in college, or when you dropped out after dropping out, you were convinced by someone that devlopment couldn't be a future carrier for yourself. When did you realize that's that this was not the case? I mean, when did you realize that you have the clinic for it that you that you actually can be good at it?
Jeremy Likness 9:26
So I had a very close minded view of how things worked. And I knew I was a capable developer, I could see the things that I created, you know, for high school assignment in c++, I wrote a Huffman encoding compression algorithm that that worked. It wasn't as fast as something commercially available, but I could take text, I could compress it, I could decompress it. So I knew I had aptitude and I had ability, but I just assumed Based on a culture that I think is cultivated in the United States, and it's probably one of the greatest marketing campaigns ever, is this campaign to convince people that they must go to college to be successful, and I'm not against college, there are great things that happened in college. But I was so bombarded with this, that I just didn't have it in my mindset that there was a possibility that a company would consider hiring me without a degree. So I just assumed I'd have to slog along, figure out other type of work that I didn't enjoy to do, until I could afford to go back to night school or get my degree or, or what have you. So it was almost accidentally I stumbled into this, in having that insurance job. Because I was fixing software, so to speak, on my own, just because I wanted to have good numbers, I wanted to be productive, I didn't want to wait for that i t ticket to be satisfied. So I took things into my own hands. And they recognize that and said, You know what, you know what you're doing, but we want you to do it in a formalized supervised way. So if you're interested, you can transfer into our team. And that's when I realized, okay, even though I don't have a degree, they're willing to take a bet on me based on my abilities. And after that, it built confidence in what I was doing. And I stopped looking at not having a degree as a handicap, and instead focused on my abilities and experiences moving forward. And that propelled me into the different stages of my career from being a developer, to being a manager to directing an IT department to having my own business to doing what I do now, in a advocacy role at Microsoft. How did you did you
Tim Bourguignon 11:55
learn during this phase, you said you were you were borrowing books, right and left? Is this the way the best way for you to learn things? Things just enclose yourself in your bubble? And and and try to learn with books? Or did you find patterns in there.
Jeremy Likness 12:09
So initially, I was pretty isolated. I was, you know, working odd jobs living in a really small, we call it a garage apartment is meant to be a room off a garage to store stuff and converted it to my apartment. So I just had my computer, we had the internet back then. But it was not as easy to get around. So it was physical print books, but I definitely learned by doing, I can read, I can watch videos, I can go to a conference, I can take a class. But until I actually build something, I feel like I haven't really mastered it and can't speak to it. So early in my career, I would do things just to solve problems. It seemed very logical to me, when I had that job as a night shift print operator, we had these massive printers, I mean, they were the size bigger than refrigerators. And they would only print black and one other ink color. And some of the forms had green on them. Some of them had red on them. And they would come in this haphazard fashion. And we were constantly swapping green and red and green and red. And I said surely there's a way to look at the document in the queue, figure out what ink it needs and sort it so that all the green ink comes together and all the red ink comes together. And then we only swap it twice, instead of multiple times. And it was just a question of Okay, I know what I want to do. Now I need to go look at a book that tells me how this language works. So I can figure out what the steps are to make it happen. So I had conceptualize the solution. And I did that I found throughout my career. That's how I learned I pick up a new technology, I think of a problem that I'm looking to solve. And then I attempt to solve it with that technology. And in the past, that would be books that I would turn to to be sort of my guide, or go online to forums. Now. I do a lot more of watching videos. And I learned a lot through through conferences, conferences, to me are fantastic not only because there's some amazing speakers who can share new technology and implementations and, and things from the field. But it also gives you an idea of what people are actually working on. We can have a technology that seems cool. But if it's breaking down in the real world, if it's not actually solving problems, or maybe it's just not getting adoption, it's not probably the right tool to focus your time and attention on. And one way to look at that is to work with with companies, right that are developing software, but a lot of the developers from those companies or even the users go to conferences, and that's a great way to gauge the pulse of what is trending, what's being used, what's working, what's not where can we go those gaps.
Tim Bourguignon 15:01
Um, how did you fall into this conference world,
Jeremy Likness 15:04
the conference world was was interesting for me. I was working at a startup that I started as the third employee. And my first day on the job, I flew in. I was living in Florida at the time the job was in Atlanta, flew in the CEO pick me up on the way back to the office, which was a set of lofts that used to be a hotel. And before that was a fire station. But he stopped by IKEA. And we went in and he bought a set of parts to assemble a desk, he drove me to the loft handed me a set of keys, said basically, we're on the second floor, we're in this door, find a spot that you like assemble your desk, Welcome to your new company. So that's how I started out and fast forward to five years later. So this was a company that were very heads down. Very startup mode is a successful company, it was later sold to VMware for $1.5 billion. So it did rather well. But a five years into this, I was still working crazy startup hours, I was heads down, I was writing a blog. But I didn't really have time I was the critical link. And it wasn't a technology or a knowledge issue. It was really a trust issue, I had built a lot of trust. And it was difficult to transfer that trust to other people so that I could have backups and leave and, and do things. So it meant that conferences weren't really an option. But I was writing blogs and doing some interesting things and decided that I really needed a lifestyle change, I knew I could be massively successful if I stayed with that company. But the hours I was working in the level of stress and frustration and ownership was spilling over into my personal life. And it was not a great situation with my wife and daughter. I didn't see them that often when I did, I wasn't in the best mood. So we all agreed that I needed to make a change. So a company came. And they were actually I think initially going to pitch their services for me to hire them where I was at. But when they approached me, I looked at their company, and it was a company of smaller company, the consultants mostly worked remotely out of the house, they had a very sane workload balance, and they had a compensation plan that if you happen to work extra hours, you were rewarded for that extra work proportionately. And it just seemed like a great lifestyle change. But it was a very visible company. And a lot of the members of that company had been in roles going to conferences. So I'm going to rewind a little bit, I know this is a little bit of a rambling way to get there. But at one point in time, I had started my own fitness business, I lost a lot of weight, realize that losing weight isn't really the key to it isn't the diet or the exercise, there's a lot of different diets that work. There's a lot of different exercises that work. The key is mindset. So I wanted to start a company that focused on mindset. And as part of that, what I had to do to make money was first get comfortable selling myself having confidence that I could help people with the mindset and then be able to sell and deliver that. But the second thing is to leverage and scale the business. Because this was a company of one I was the only employee my wife helped out with administrative tasks, I decided to do things like provide seminars, that I could record the seminar, I could generate some income from the seminar, then I could turn that into a DVD set, sell a DVD set online, and I could scale the business and produce leverage because those DVDs will sell without me ever having to record another seminar again. So that got me the experience and confidence in speaking. But I hadn't married it with technology. So I went to this consulting company, they strongly encourage you to get out, give back to the community go out, take what you learn, because you've worked on these amazing projects and topics and share it by getting out to a conference and giving a presentation. So I started doing that and fell into a love hate relationship. The hate part was simply because every time I would speak, I would be nauseous for days before I talked. I couldn't focus on anything else. I was so nervous, the talk would go wrong. But then I'd get up and deliver the talk and all it would take is one person, just one person coming up after the talk saying wow, that really demonstrated this in a way I hadn't seen before that solved my problem or that inspired me to do this. And that was enough to just feel free nominal about that accomplishment and decide, you know what I'm gonna do this again. And one talk turned to two to three to four. And eventually it became part of the cadence it was regularly looking for user groups that I could go out to, and plug in with the community either as an attendee to receive information or to, to deliver it. So that's how I got kind of shifted into this, this role of going out and speaking at conferences. Cool.
Tim Bourguignon 20:32
That's a nice, a nice segue into it. That's cool. Could you please define what you do as a developer advocate?
Jeremy Likness 20:40
Sure, you know, the very short and simple answer is three key things. And I call them the three C's. One C is community. And that's the community of developers. And I go out wherever developers are, that may be physically at a conference at a user group, it may be internally here at Microsoft, it could be online through Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, what have you, it may be in an open source project. But it's getting out where developers are to remove roadblocks. So it's about empowering developers. So that's the first C, the second C is content. As part of that, we create and curate content. So I may produce some of my content on my own, whether it's a blog post, or an article or a video. But I also am very passionate about finding good content that connects the dots and sharing that so that developers can have an avenue to solve the problems they're facing. The third part of it, the last C is a connection with engineering, I have relationships, close close relationships with engineers here who are working on Azure, who are working on dotnet, who are working on signal or who are working on different aspects of the product. And I it's a two way communication flow. If someone had developers having challenges in the field, part of what I do is take those challenges back and explain, here's the problem, here's why it's an important problem. And here's why we need to solve it. So that we can produce change and help engineering teams improve the products to solve those problems. But it's also about the engineering teams are working very hard to add new features and capabilities. And when those features and capabilities become available, I get out there and take those to the fields of people are aware of them know how to use them, and can integrate them. But that that's really the the cycle. It's first helping developers. And then second, I mean, at the end of the day, it's still a job on paid by Microsoft, it's promoting Azure as a platform, but it's not about competing in the sense of this is better. It's more of a focus of here's how you can solve this problem with the platform that I that I know if that makes sense.
Tim Bourguignon 23:07
Yes, it does. It does. You spoke a video we spoke already about the community and public speaking side of it. How did your your previous jobs prepare you for what you do today?
Jeremy Likness 23:20
Maybe beside the public speaking, oh, every every aspect of it. When I was at the insurance company, very early in my career, we were pioneering the use of SQL. So SQL as a language had just been introduced to this 400, which was the mid range I worked on. And so I had to learn the new syntax, learn how to apply it, learn how to solve business problems, then I moved on to a supply chain logistics company. And we were figuring out new things that hadn't been figured out before. We were connecting with new technology, you know, it was new at the time to have conveyor belts that could scan items and then move them on to different tracks based on response. And we were building controllers and interfaces to those. So I had to learn how to take a component that doesn't necessarily have a very easy manual that goes with it, and learn how to make things happen. Learn how to experiment, how to have successes and failures, create a package of software that could scale in the enterprise and be sold as a product. I would say probably the biggest learning experience for me though, was the company I mentioned where I started out as a third employee, because we went from at the time we started out as a hotspot management company, so we would provide Wi Fi now for people who have Wi Fi today. It's everywhere and it's easy at the time, and this was 10 years ago. There are only A few providers. And if you were a hotel and you wanted to have Wi Fi, you could sign up to one of the major telco providers and have their paid Wi Fi. But companies wanted to have a branded experience, they wanted it to be company acnes Wi Fi, if you will. So what we specialize in was designing custom software that would provide a unique experience. Part of that though, as a small company, managing that infrastructure meant building software that would monitor it, if you think about it, if I'm in Atlanta, and I have 50 access points in a massive Hotel in San Francisco. Last thing I want to have to do is every time something goes wrong, get in a plane and fly out there and be physically there. So if I can write software, if my software can manage and monitor those access points remotely, if it can do things, like take snapshots of their configuration, so that when that access point does go down, I can be alerted, I can flash the correct configuration in my office and drop ship a replacement. This is a way that we can scale. And we scaled very successfully. And that software morphed into mobile device management software. It was right around the time the iPhone came out and people started looking at Well, how do I manage these new devices that are getting on my networks. And so we had to deal with new technology, we had to deal with rapidly changing technology, we had to deal with massive concurrent scale, we had systems that were literally receiving millions of updates per second transactionally had to process that information alerting route. So I think if you look at all of the common programming challenges people face, regardless of what industry they're in, we faced a lot of those challenges. I mean, even to the point where as a developer, I had to learn about BGP, I think it's called BGP peering the actual IP address peering, so you have to physically different data centers that can have the same virtual IP address. So if a data center goes down, it can fail over. And I think all of those steps, gave me unique insight into troubleshooting unique insight into programming at scale, and even unique insight into how to manage teams and create productive teams. So I was in charge of all the hiring and team building at that company. And there's an art to having a productive and collaborative team. And this was before agile had been formalized and was so ubiquitous. So there were a lot of learnings along the way. But I feel like every single step in the 20 plus years of challenges that I faced, really prepare me for where I'm at. And there's no single technology that I mastered. But I mastered the art of development. Regardless of which language which platform, I learned how to take on a new platform, take on a new language, take on a new technology, and apply it in a way that solves a business problem. Always trying to reduce the overhead, the friction, the ceremony, the ritual, and increase the surface area of innovation. Right. So let's get out of the business of configuring network routers. Let's get out of the business of configuring servers, let's focus on what's unique for our business and solve that problem and do it at scale. Wow.
Tim Bourguignon 28:31
Cool. I'm a bit baffled. That's, that's a lot of tinkering and tweaking and finding your way into, into whatever you need to do. That's really cool. I've yet the you spoke a bit about team team management or our team leading Have you had the chance to work with with very young developers?
Jeremy Likness 28:53
Absolutely. I've worked with developers across the the levels of experience, but we had a very strong focus. We're located near Georgia Tech in Atlanta. So we worked very closely with them and worked with in both interns and recent graduates to onboard junior developers. And I'll always tell people from a perspective of having been on the hiring side of interviews probably hundreds of times that hiring an expert in the field is easier than people think because it's very easy to ask a difficult question and get a response are to see someone's portfolio and curriculum. When you're hiring someone who's more junior. It's takes a lot more empathy, patience and consideration because what you're really looking for is not Can you solve this textbook problem, or do you have this experience because they're new to the field, but what is the aptitude and the passion, right? If they're not passionate about learning and growing, it's going to be very difficult to onboard and train but there's Also an aptitude for learning and ability to synthesize new information and learn. And that's very hard to, to test for in the interview process, but it's very rewarding. And, you know, early on in my career, I got to a point where it wasn't about, you know, what's the next title that I can get? Or the next level of salary or anything else, I stepped back and said, What do I really want to get out of my career? And the answer came back, I want to empower developers to be their best. That's why I go to conferences. That's why I write blog posts. That's why I like managing teams, it's about enabling and empowering I love the solving problems, too. But that put it in perspective, there's nothing more powerful or impactful than being able to create a position and hire a junior person to that role, so that they have that opportunity to start that process and learn and grow and, and, you know, become a developer like they've they've dreamed of being
Tim Bourguignon 31:03
Have you found some kind of recipe that kind of works for you a very subjective one? Obviously, that works for you when you're searching for someone to detect potential.
Jeremy Likness 31:15
You know, I wish I could say I was a master of that, but but I haven't really, I mean, a lot of it is, is just create creating a dialogue, and hoping that that junior developer is being genuine and honest, I think sometimes, recruiters can coach developers to create this facade, and that it's not okay to not know things. And for me, personally, I've always appreciated when I ask a question, if the answers, I don't know that, but if you allow me a minute to try to think through, I can try to reason out and answer that's much better than, yes, I know it and rattling off something random, because you don't want to say you don't know something in the interview. So I don't have a formula. I've certainly possibly hired people who either weren't, then have their heart into it, or may have required more coaching. But at the end of the day, there's always that if someone could hire perfectly, I think there would be a book that would, you know, be a million dollar selling copy book on, you know, here's the magic way to always hire well. But I've always really focused on just being genuine. And if there's, there's chemistry, if it feels like there can be a genuine collaboration as part of that interview process, and there's a desire, and if, if all the elements come into place, then it's about us taking on the responsibility of taking that risk bringing that person on, and then really providing the tools that that they need to be successful.
Tim Bourguignon 32:54
What would dues be, for instance,
Jeremy Likness 32:59
you know, basically, being able to provide the time, right to to mentor or connecting them with a mentor providing resources, providing support, providing encouragement, you know, providing a team environment that's very open and welcoming, that celebrates the different types of ideas and doesn't penalize people for trying to think outside of the box. I mean, I think all of these elements are support tools that can help someone plug in feel comfortable, confident, realize it's okay, if they make mistakes, if those mistakes are out of ignorance and not out of, you know, desire to make something go wrong, right. And the sooner you can build that trust and that that team energy by just being genuine, open and supportive, I think the teams themselves just take on a life of their own and become very successful.
Tim Bourguignon 33:57
Cool, have you had the chance to to accompany someone on their public speaking journey and step into your your footsteps as a as maybe and maybe experienced this being sick in their stomach as well and realize that the they're still alive after the talk and everything went well.
Jeremy Likness 34:18
In this current role, it's exciting because we have a range of experiences, backgrounds, communities, some people have have joined this role who have been more content producers but wanted to step into speaking and vice versa. So you know, I wouldn't take responsibility for for anyone I'm here to enable and empower I don't create that that success but it has been very eye opening for me to be in a role where we have so many people who are doing this type of work to see the different stages of of experience and confidence and and how people deal with the nervousness In the stress and how people grow, you know, it's definitely something for me, you all still get nervous before certain talks. And I also still recognize that I may think I have a great talk and it may not be. So I've learned this skill that was very tough in the beginning is fast feedback, I used to be so scared of oh my gosh, someone's gonna look at my talk, they're not gonna like this or whatever. But being more open early on, and being a student myself, and saying, even though I've done this for eight years, I don't know at all, can you take a look at this, I've learned so many ways to to improve that, and then I can turn back around. And that's top of mind. So when someone more junior comes and talks to me, so I've definitely worked with people and help support and give feedback and, and done that, but they've really all themselves supplied the courage and the fortitude and effort and the focus to to move forward and be successful on their own.
Tim Bourguignon 35:58
Fantastic. Um, one more question. And I guess we'll be reaching the end of the time books. And so you probably don't want to change anything or much in your in your past? It seems a it was very logical build up to the place you're at right now. But if you could give yourself your your, your former self and advice would that be?
Jeremy Likness 36:24
Yeah, I have mixed feelings about that. Because I think the delays, I think that jumping right into a computer career, gave me exposure to other types of work. And and, quite frankly, there were times when I was in between jobs and had no money whatsoever. And I sort of needed that as a humbling experience, I was this kind of cocky person who I'm such a good developer, I'm going to get, you know, great grades in school, get a great job. And that's it. And it turns out, life doesn't work that way. So I'm thankful for that. But if I were able to go back, my advice would be stop being afraid, I was so afraid to do new things. Just moving out of Florida to Atlanta, for the first time was the most terrifying thing I ever did. And somehow, I summon up the courage to do it. And it was very crucial in my career. But I would say that I probably missed a lot of opportunities for fear of taking risks, or trying out something new and it doesn't mean going blindly into things. But I would just say stop being afraid. Like it's okay, you can try this out. If it doesn't work out, you can try something different. But don't miss out on something because you never tried it. You know, at the end of the day, I want to be the person who said I tried it and it was good or bad rather than I wish I had. And that's why I would say don't don't have don't join the not much club. Don't be that person. That if someone sees you five years later and asked what's new, you say? Not much, because you didn't take on risk and learn new things and explore that would be my advice to my old self.
Tim Bourguignon 38:03
Cool. Thank you. Thank you. Nice advice. Um, yeah, I guess we've reached the end of the time both we should we should wrap up. Um, what's what's on your plate in the next weeks or months, you're probably have a bunch of conferences. Where can people see you in person then maybe talk to you in person.
Jeremy Likness 38:26
So the the best place to go my blog is blog dot Jeremy liveness calm. And in addition to articles I write, I also have a tab for upcoming events of where I'm going. I'm part of a tour that Microsoft is hosting called Microsoft Ignite the tour. And I have two more stops for that. I'm going to Amsterdam, late in March. And then I'm going to Mumbai in the end of May. So I'm excited about that. I'll be delivering talks focused on building resilient cloud applications and also serverless. So that's exciting for that. I'll be going to Atlanta in April or not Atlanta to Knoxville. For code stock. I'm doing a keynote there and presenting a session. incredibly excited code stock was the very first major conference I spoke at. So to be able to come back almost 10 years later as a keynote speaker is incredibly exciting. I'll be going to Atlanta for a brand new conference called dotnet. South that we're helping spin up to, to cater to the dotnet developers in the Atlanta area. That'll be in May. And then in June, I'll be back in Atlanta for a diversity conference called refactor dot tech which is just ecstatic that they've invited me to a conference that really celebrates marginalized developers and technology professionals. So I'll be doing that and then still waiting to hear about Back from conferences for the second half of the year, but I'll post those to my blog as they come in. I'm also doing a video series that I'm slowly posting to Twitter and will result in an article teaching TypeScript been working on that that's been been ongoing and recording some Channel Nine videos close to finishing out a series with a co host Abel Wang called DevOps for dotnet developers that I'm excited about.
Tim Bourguignon 40:31
Cool quite a lot on your plate. Indeed. Not gonna get bored in the next few weeks or months as for doesn't look like it. Would Twitter be be the right way to contact you in the meantime?
Jeremy Likness 40:43
Absolutely. It's just at Jeremy lick nest on Twitter, and I've opened direct messages. That means even if I haven't followed someone, they can still send me a message. And I do respond to all messages. Cool. Cool.
Tim Bourguignon 40:55
Um, anything we missed? We should have been talking about and we didn't,
Jeremy Likness 41:00
um, I think anything we could have talked about would have led to another half hour of discussion. So I think we covered some, some good ground, I could tell lots of stories have been seen amazing things in my career, who knew that career and development could be so exciting and take you literally around the world. But it's something that both amazed by but feel incredibly blessed that I had that passion early on and was able to tap into it.
Tim Bourguignon 41:29
It never ceases to amaze me to hear all these stories. It says absolutely fantastic. And that's why I'm doing this. It's it's a variety and a diversity of of journeys and adventures. That's always different, yet always the same. And it's fantastic. I load the stain. Thank you very much for sharing your story tonight.
Jeremy Likness 41:50
Oh, my pleasure. Thanks for having me on. I'm excited about what you're doing as well.
Tim Bourguignon 41:54
And this has been another episode of developer's journey. And we'll see each other in two weeks. Bye bye.
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