Hello folks and welcome to the Tech World
Human Skills Podcast.
It is wonderful as
ever to have you with us.
Now, in this episode, we're talking about
the power of the tech community.
And I love this topic because we're
talking about the beating heart of the
tech world, the people,
and how we can help each other out.
So to help us with the conversation
today, we have got someone that is so
passionate about the tech community
and for years has been organizing events
and creating communities.
So please welcome to the podcast, Ethan
Sumner. Ethan, it is
lovely to have you with us.
Thank you for having me on, Ben.
Well, absolute pleasure.
And I wonder if we could start, could you
introduce yourself to all of our
wonderful listeners?
Sure. Hi, everybody. Nice to meet you.
I'm Ethan Sumner. I'm
the CEO of DevEx Connect.
We are a community-driven, independent
research analyst and events organization
within everything under the
developer experience umbrella. So DevOps,
SRE and platform engineering,
as well as traditional DevEx,
not developer productivity, but not
wanting to go down that rabbit hole.
But yeah, and then also run new specific
communities up and around the UK,
predominantly in
Yorkshire, where I'm based.
I'm very proud to come from Barnsley and
also chair the Yorkshire Digital
Community Alliance alongside one of my
good friends and ex-colleagues, Ethan
Jones. Lovely. And what's your sort of
roadmap to get there?
Because I believe it's relatively new,
this role that you have got now.
So what's your background and I guess
career been leading up until this point?
So it's been very crazy. So as you can
all quite tell, I'm quite young. I'm 21.
I've been interested in five years,
started when I was 16.
I originally had the goal of being a
DevOps engineer, worked very hard in
different startups and traditional
software engineering positions,
managed to get DevOps engineer at
MasterCard at 18, which is pretty cool,
working with
international banking systems.
And then went to Microsoft. I was a cloud
solutions architect, which is pretty cool
within public sector
and then digital natives.
And then moving on to Conteino before
being acquired by Cognizant within all
things, sort of FinOps.
I've done different areas around IT and
then community wise, I started my first
user group called Young DevOps,
which is all about trying to solve early
in career challenges within kind of the
DevOps and IT operation space.
And that just expanded to Yorkshire
DevOps and Yorkshire user group.
I've at peak run about seven user groups.
We've acquired around 11, I think, in
total, merged them through.
So at the moment, I support something
about 60, 70 events per year and do
numerous different strategic advisory
bits around the country to
other user groups as well.
So yes, it's been a pretty wild career,
but community and sort of
day job have accelerated it.
And that's how I've got the job I am now.
I've got a head home to buy Paul Stovall
to see how I've got to put the whole
humans DevX Connect.
So yeah, that's why I got the job. Yeah,
very much looking forward to it.
Brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.
Now, I wonder, therefore, if we could
start to maybe dig in to the depths of
tech community and that kind of stuff.
And I wonder if we could start off by
thinking about the current state of the
tech community landscape.
So what's it like out there from a
community perspective at the moment?
I think for me, it's quite good at the
moment. I think it was really, really
strong, obviously, pre-COVID, COVID put a
bit of a damper of different things.
21, 22, it was sort of getting the
community back together, events
restarting to organize.
There's been quite a large shift in
organizers and
companies getting involved.
And then sort of last year, it was all
around establishing foundations and
really, I'm seeing through 2024, it's
scaling up quite a lot.
User groups are back and attendance
numbers are back. They're not as pretty.
So, for example, for Yorkshire DevOps, we
had get around 60, 78 people per event.
Pre-COVID, it was back 90 to 100. So we
still got that wiggle room for growth.
But I think it's very much dependent on
regional perspective.
So if you're in London, I think that's
still actually got a bit of time to
return. User groups are
strong, but not there.
I think in areas around leads, like the
lead tech community is amazing.
I mean, I know you did that talk at
Yorkshire as a group,
which is pretty cool.
We got a lot of good feedback on that.
And I think it's, you know, it's a very
strong, strong community.
I know Scotland is doing quite well at
the moment, quite of an
uprising community scene.
So, yeah, it's it's rocky, but it's
pretty good. It's getting there.
I think 2025 is going to be the year of
growth for UGs. So it's pretty cool.
Yeah, it sort of feels if I think about
the user groups, I've been to sort of
quite a lot over the
last few years, a few years.
Well, many years if I go all the way back
and it's and it definitely feels like
we've got a bit more life post-COVID.
It definitely, you know, it was great to
see the communities move online, you
know, to Zoom and Teams
calls and that kind of stuff.
But everybody was just like
death by video called out.
And did they then want to
spend their evening doing more?
So it felt like that
that made a real challenge.
But it feels like it's getting back now.
Yeah, I think the online
stuff is quite interesting.
What I've found is is that if you've got
quite an active Slack group, all that
kind of asynchronous
stuff is really good.
But you're right, particularly if you're
working from home, I think
I've seen a lot of value.
I think Persa is myself as well attending
a user group just to meet people in
person, have that shift of dynamic,
particularly if you work for a company
which is like based in London and you
live in Leeds, for example.
So, yeah, it's quite interesting.
I think there's also quite a strong
demand for pre-recorded content.
It's why we started to
record a lot of the user groups.
You can probably see
the camera kit behind me.
That's why we invested in it.
So it's quite interesting what I find is
even at conferences, people go for the
networking and don't really tell the
talks and then sit and watch them after.
So it's quite unique in a way.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.
And I've definitely noticed if I think
about conferences, probably after Covid,
there was a bit where people still didn't
really want to get together.
They sort of do I
really can I be bothered?
Do I want to?
Whereas now I've noticed a difference in
that people actually
want to get together.
They actually want to see each other.
They've been sat at home on
their own for so many years.
I actually do.
And I've noticed the step up in people's
attendance and that kind of stuff in the
certainly in the last year, I think I've
noticed that going up,
which is which is really good.
In fact, it just reminds me.
We were I did a podcast a few a few
episodes ago with Scott Hanselman.
And he was talking about this idea of a
third place, how people used to have
their home, their their work life.
So they would be at home with the family,
then they would be at a physical
workplace and then they
would have a third place.
Sometimes that might be a
sports and social group.
That might be a church.
That might be whatever it might be.
But there were things that you and you
had three places and that sort of
collapsed down into
one of I work at home.
I socialize at home and
I've got nowhere else to go.
And so actually, these sorts of events
and that open up that kind of third place
again, this idea where there's somewhere
else we can go meet and
socialize and that kind of stuff.
Yeah, definitely.
Because you're right.
He's like you're doing
the same the same thing.
I think the people who don't I'm very
fortunate to have a dedicated office, but
it's only a recent addition.
And you're right.
If you're just in the same room, you're
living, you know, eating, sleeping and
that kind of thing, it doesn't.
Yeah, I totally get it.
But it's quite interesting.
We get a lot of regulars, like community
groups, what I find, and it's really good
to see people enjoying it and coming back
and making friends and
different things from it.
It's very good.
And what about more internationally?
So I guess we've got the UK user groups,
conferences, that kind of stuff.
What about broadly the US across Europe?
Is the community thriving globally?
I would say the UK and India are doing
the leading the charge at the moment.
Very strong from a community standpoint.
The US obviously due to the nature of how
large it is, the certain areas.
I think the San Francisco
tech scene has reduced a bit.
I'm aware that the Boston kind of scene
in Boston, Massachusetts, if I'm proud to
say it correctly, is
very strong at the moment.
There's quite a few
different user groups there.
I think in Australia, it's
still picking up an AIPAC.
So I'm essential Europe is getting there,
but it's very much
kind of strict to that.
I would say to the capital or kind of
like very major cities.
So in the UK, there's like, you know,
there's a massive tech scene in
Birmingham, Leeds, London, Manchester,
and then kind of
smaller areas in Scotland.
If you go to Germany, it's pretty much
the capital and then a few
other kind of major cities.
So there's really what I would call the
proper niche in your local
communities aren't there.
They're more central, larger.
I'd also say a lot of them are quite more
corporate driven than
actual community led.
It's like, you know, specific user group
to one area or something like that.
So it's yeah, I'd say across the whole,
like the AIPAC user group
community is doing quite well.
The Microsoft community is getting there.
The GCP one's still a bit
rocky globally at the moment.
I'd say like your more traditional
umbrella, so like your DevOps SRE could
do with a bit of work as well.
So it's been quite interesting to see how
the global community
landscape has shifted recently.
Yeah.
Well, maybe let's just start to then
think for listeners that aren't involved
but would like to get more involved or
don't even know if
they should get involved.
What's the point in the community?
You know, so like what benefit is there
to get involved in a community?
So I think for me, there's three areas
which I always like to mention.
Just meet people, connections,
networking, you know, whether that's
professionally or I know people have made
friends through
different user groups, etc.
All my friends that are actually from
community and I've gone on to do
different things with them.
I'd say the second part is obviously L&D.
You learn a lot and if you go to a quite
well organized user group, it's not sales
pitches from vendors.
It's more about really local insights,
how organization has
done a massive challenge.
For example, I went to
a development summit.
There was a fantastic talk by EDF on how
they did their DevOps transformations.
We've had some.
I've got BT.
We're doing about BT in September and
they're talking about how they do
developer experience, etc.
So it's pretty cool to be honest and how
they also did the AI stuff
as well, which is pretty cool.
And then I'd say the third part is
obviously growing yourself.
So whether that's either organizing or
speaking or something like that, I've
tried to put a large emphasis.
I know I've been working on this to try
and get new speakers into the space and
get themselves on the
circuit if you like.
So yeah, I think those are the three core
benefits in my eyes.
Yeah.
And I think I'd really agree with that.
I think I love...
So the first point you're talking about
there is just building
networks, getting to know people.
There's people that you come across that
you wouldn't meet otherwise.
And I think that was one of the things
that COVID did was COVID
kind of ruined serendipity.
You know, there was no, I just bump into
somebody here and have this random
conversation that leads to this thing
that then leads to this thing.
It's all very much 30 minute time slices
with an agenda and we turn up, we do this
thing, we kind of leave.
Excuse me.
Whereas when you're meeting people, all
those kind of conversations and you don't
know who you're going to meet,
that leads to some interesting things.
And in fact, we've been met through
community and that kind of stuff, which
has then led to you
coming on this podcast.
It's led to some work we're collaborating
on, maybe we'll talk about that later.
There's things that came from that just
because we were in a room
together and had a conversation.
So that is really the thing.
The other thing then is, is you find out
about that kind of, you
know, what jobs are around?
What's it really like
working at this company?
And if I think about you, a lot of the
jobs you've made through
or the jobs that you've got,
have you've helped, you've helped get
them because of your community network.
Is that right?
Yeah, I'd also say it's
because I'm quite well known.
There's a lot.
It's quite strange.
I wouldn't call myself an influencer
because I'm more in the background doing
the operations and logistics,
but it's quite weird.
People just randomly stopping me and
events are going, you're Ethan, you do
that, you know, X, Y, Z.
So yeah, a lot of my jobs.
So when I joined Contino, Ben Hicks, my
former manager, he just saw the amazing
work I did on LinkedIn.
I said I was open to work.
He just sent me a message saying, love
the community stuff.
Do you want to have an
interview kind of thing?
It's the same way I've
got, you know, got my new job.
So yeah, it is quite good from a
community standpoint, just being
recognized, being open.
But I'd say even if you don't do any of
the organizing or speaking,
just being present at your local
community shows a lot of
initiative in my personal view.
You know, it shows that you
care about your job interests.
I appreciate even if you just tend like
once or twice a year,
you know, just show,
I appreciate not everybody can
attend for different reasons.
But you write for particular communities
like in Leeds, you know,
there's only so many big companies and,
you know, there's people do a
stent up one company and then the next
consultant and all this kind of thing.
It's a very small network.
Everybody knows each other.
So being involved with that and you're
right, you can gain
insights and different things.
You can get a true, particularly if
you're going through
recruitment for a major local
employer in your area, if you tend a
community, you'll likely
find someone from them.
So whether it's asking for
advice or speaking to people.
So yeah, it's pretty cool.
But community has made a massive impact
on my life from a kind of
job opportunity standpoint.
That's not the main reason why I do it,
but it's just an added
benefit, which is why I see.
Yeah. And then you get to
learn some cool stuff, don't you?
I mean, I was just thinking about when I
came up to the user group in
Leeds and the other speaker
was doing a great did a great session on
comparing and
contrasting the different speech
synthesis software that was out there.
And he was going through, you
know, what the pros and cons.
He was showing us how to do it.
It's not something I
would ever have done.
Probably really interesting.
Learn a lot and you
just learn some cool stuff.
So yeah, you learn some great stuff.
You build your network.
It can help your career.
I think loads of great benefits really.
Load of things.
Well, in case people are
thinking, how do I get involved?
How would you suggest people start
getting involved in the
community a little bit?
So I'd say there's sort of three ways.
What I usually recommend is I usually
like to recommend three
different things of things.
I'd say the first one is identify a
community that you want to start.
So that's how I sort of get started.
There wasn't an Azure
community in Yorkshire.
That's why me and Ethan started it.
And then you sort of go from there.
The second side is volunteering or get
involved in an existing community.
So whether that's just our people
approach, we're bringing
on three new organizers for
the general community that I run.
And I'm all about training different
people to help
eventually take over and run it.
And that sort of, you know, get involved
from that perspective.
The third I would say is trying to take
over a dormant user group.
So say, for example, there's like local
communities that have been
going for around two years
or it didn't pick up after COVID, but it
already has an
established membership base.
So I would do a bit of an admin and
acquire the user group
and then just kickstart it.
Because you've already got that
established brand and it's
much easier to just carry it on,
if you see what I mean.
Because you can often see previous
speakers and they want to speak again
or different venues
that they previously used.
I appreciate companies have, you know,
upsized or downsized their
office space since COVID.
But that's how I traditionally would
recommend to get involved with it.
Okay. Now, so that's sorry, those three
say those three things
again, those three things were...
Yeah.
So find an area which you want to
organize user group in and go do it.
Yeah.
Second one, I would say go volunteer with
a user group and then, you know,
get more involved and either
start your own or carry on.
Third, I would say is find a dormant user
group and then take it over
and bring it back to life.
Right. And so can I step back a little
bit and go, so for some
people that might be that's like
you're going to now become the organizer
and the orchestrator
of the tire community.
There's probably, and can we
dig into those in a minute?
Probably there's some easier steps for
people that just want to
dip their toe in the water
of the community world. For people that
are more at the toe
dipping phase of the community,
what would be the main
ways to get involved?
I think for me either volunteering, so
for example,
volunteering to help just one event.
So if you've got a monthly user group,
you know, say, look, I'm interested in
maybe getting involved
with this. Could I help organize some
speakers or you could do a
special event? So for example,
I'm trying to put emphasis on women in
tech events and different things. So
if you want to get involved with that
perspective or a lot of
conferences have volunteering. So to
DevOps Days London, we have around eight
to 10 volunteers. So people are
interested in getting a
bit of conference organizing communities.
They can get involved and
we give them a free ticket
and they get half the day to still go do
the conference if you
like. So that's how it sort
of did be toe in. It's quite weird that
there isn't really an
intermediate, it's sort of that,
or just full blown. There's not really
kind of those small opportunities.
I guess you saw the first thing is just
attending, isn't it? So the
first thing is like, you know,
get involved, see what's going on, get
the lay of the land kind of.
So it feels to me like that's
the first thing is, well, hey, let's go
and see what people are
like. Then the other thing is,
is it's a great place to then start to
deliver some sessions and
it's a great safe place to
practice your public speaking, get used
to doing some talks to
people. I think it's a great place
to do some of that sort of stuff as well,
isn't it? Oh yeah,
definitely. I think one very common
thing which people don't realize is if
you don't want to speak or you're not
good at public speaking,
there's so many kind of logistics and
operations side towards the
community. So if you don't want
to get up and go speak or do the
introductions, if you're more an
established user group with a couple
organizers, it's not an issue. So for
DevOps days, like London, for example,
there's so many amazing
people who you won't find on stage
shouting about what they do,
but they've got one of the most
critical and important jobs making sure
logistically that that event
is amazing. So I think a lot of
people forget about that side too as
well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think
that's a great way to
develop some leadership skills, I think,
particularly as you are developing your
career a little bit.
Some of those orchestration and
leadership skills can be really helpful
and then really helpful in
future, A, giving you the experience and
then giving you some stories
that you can use in interviews
to talk about, right, well, this is how I
set this up. This is how I
took this. This is how I was
proactive, you know, and that's really
lovely as a former hiring
manager to have people that have
learnt those sorts of skills is really
useful. You're right,
because not everybody has the
opportunity to move into management, you
know, in the day job. So
you're right, picking up those
kind of side skills, kind of able to use
those skills and when you
either go for an internal
promotion or obviously change your
organization, you can definitely use
them. There's a lot of
really good skills like I've learnt
social media, I mean, I'm
not very good at social media,
but social media, video editing, you
know, different things
like PR, finance, you know,
and different things. There's a lot of
really cool skills that you learn.
Yeah, yeah. And then if we move on to
that speaking piece,
because that's a bit where we're
doing a little bit of collaboration,
haven't we, aren't we, Ethan,
where, you know, sometimes the
speaker circuit for these things can be
the same folks going around
and around and around doing
the same things. And it would be awesome
to get some more people
up there sharing the really
important things that they've learned,
that they've known, building those
skills. So what we built
together is a tech community speaker
course. So specifically
aimed, it's just a short digital
90 minute course aimed at people that
specifically want to get and
build those skills and develop
their speaker skills at user groups,
events, where they're
doing those sorts of things.
So that hopefully we can get a few more,
you know, diverse speakers from different
backgrounds with different things to say,
not the same old, same old
folks going around the circuit.
Yeah, I think definitely, I think, I
mean, I know we've been
speaking around it for a couple
months, and that's why obviously we
decided to develop the
course. But for years, I've had
people come into me saying, look, I'd
love to speak, but I've never done any
public speaker training, or,
you know, the company won't fund it, I've
never had the opportunity.
So I think it's a great way
for everybody to learn and get involved
and obviously go out and
speak in your community.
And maybe even join this, you know, maybe
join the circuit themselves, if you like.
Yeah, it's pretty cool. There's so many
unique stories. We've
had some amazing speakers,
and it's something which we sort of half
offered, you know, either
I'll sit on a call with someone
and help, you know, help coach them or,
you know, run through the
presentation, give them feedback,
etc. So it's great that the finally is a
place that's the whole
reason why I did this course,
that people can go and go and experience
it. And obviously through
our community endeavors,
so we've purchased a couple courses to
obviously give to our local
communities. And then through
our new, to my new job, we've launched
something called Operation
Uplift, which is around providing
£100,000 in funding in the UK to use the
groups around, well, around
the country and all sorts of
areas, predominantly in that kind of core
four areas, five
areas, sorry, DevX, DevOps,
SRE, Platform Engineering and Cloud. So I
think we've found about 100
licenses. So yeah, if you're a
speaker and you're interested in speaking
in that space, you know, please get in
touch with one of us
and we can put you in, you know, we can
get something sorted for
you. Yeah, growing the next
generation of people with interesting
things to share and great
experiences. So we've got the
people attending, we've got the people
trying to speak from a, from
people that thinking, do you
know what, I reckon I might be able to
run a community. I reckon
I've got space, head space
in my life. And it's something that I'm
passionate about. You
talked about either taking over a
dormant one or setting up. What top tips
would you have for running
a community for any people
that fancy that? Yeah, I think for me,
there's kind of two sides
to it. So if you're wanting
kind of more of what I call the funner
side of organizing, so, you
know, having a small local
community, you organize, you know, one
community, two communities,
you know, you do about 10 events
per year, you take regular breaks. I
think that's quite fun, you know, getting
involved. That's all
about building that true authentic kind
of small niche. You don't
have to be focused on scale.
If you're more up to the side where I
know where it's more things,
you know, at scale, multiple
user groups, making sure we've got
partnerships, alliances, you're really
trying to grow, do that
more authentic stuff at scale. I'd make
sure that you focus on things like
strategy, you know, where
do you want to see it, growth techniques
and different things.
There's that side. But as I said,
if you want in that more smaller, you
know, the funner element, I
would say, you know, it's all
around just making sure that your members
really enjoy what you're
doing. Because to me, people
measure community success differently.
I'm not too fussed on number
size. You know, some people
are like, "Oh, I have 300 members at
every single event." I'm like, "That's
great, but what do those
300 members actually take away?" So for
me, even a, you know, like say a 20
person on average meetup
in your local kind of really small office
that someone's like you
borrowed and you've got a
couple pizzas from Domino's and some
alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks. And
it's really successful
and everybody loves it. And there's so
many different ball
stories and things being shared.
That to me is also just as successful as
a thousand person
conference. So whatever kind
of scale or area you're in, I think just
the key thing I would say is have fun,
don't get burnt out.
And if you can refine as many processes
as possible, please do.
Because it does happen.
I once booked four speakers for one event
when I should have needed
two. You know, we have spent,
yeah, there's a couple of war stories I
can talk around that, but
we've put a deliberate focus on
strategy and refining processes and
different things. And as part
of the work that we're doing
through Operation Up with the community
project that we're working
on, we're actually providing
a lot of open source guides in this space
and also taking a lot of
the hassle off of community
organizers mind. So we're creating a
national database of
approved venues, which has got like,
for example, the size community contacts,
how many times they can host
a month. So we're just taking
the what I would call the non-fun or the
kind of pain out of
organizing, if you see what I mean.
So yeah, that's what I would say. Yeah.
And then I think if you've
got some great speakers that are
taught, and when I say great speakers,
people are saying
relevant and interesting things,
you know, that's really important. And
then if you then got some
people that are coming along,
that, you know, are talking to you and
happy to share their
experiences and that kind of stuff,
that's really lovely. So that's the best
bit. If you've got a
pizza and a beer or a coke,
brilliant, but you know, they're not
essentials. But then the
other thing that you need to do,
and this is what I've learned from
running a business, is then
you have got to tell people
about it, you know, there is kind of that
thing. I think it was Field
of Dreams, an old film where
they were like, if you build it, they
will come. And I've just
learned, that's a load of rubbish.
If you build it, and you tell people
about it, they will come.
There needs to be that telling
people about it. And you know, you can't
just build something
great and then keep it hidden
away. That's the thing I've learned. If
you build it, you make it
great, and you tell people about
it, then they'll come. Yeah, exactly.
It's that thing, it's all
about marketing and promotion and
etc. Like Meetup, to be fair, kind of UI
and stuff isn't the best, but their
algorithm is exceptional.
And it has enabled us to grow and scale
quite quickly without us pushing. I mean,
probably do about two or three social
media posts a month. We're not like
daily. You won't find me
on TikTok. You know, I can't be bothered
with things like that. But
yeah, the Meetup algorithm
does a pretty good job. But it's quite
surprising. The amount of people don't
know what Meetup is,
or that exists. So when they do, it's
actually the kind of your
customer acquisition costs,
if you like, or community acquisition
costs, is more around getting people to
know what Meetup is,
so then they can find their local tech
Meetup. So Meetup, maybe
just if we step back a little
bit on that. So Meetup is a great little
website. And you can go in
and put in your zip code, your
postcode, your city, whatever it is, the
topic that you're
interested in, like Azure or AWS,
whatever it is. And then it will bring up
all of those Meetup
communities that are on there.
Is that right? Yes. And it's completely
free to use an end user. So
it's only organizers that has
to pay. Yeah, it's very good. And so
Meetup is one of the main
places to find communities.
What are the other ways that you can find
out about communities or
is it all just on Meetup?
This is Meetup, there's a vent, right,
which I know different
people use. There's a couple
new unique startups in this space as
well. So it'd be
interesting to see if they take off.
There's things like Azure Tech Maps as
well. I think they are in
the process of updating it,
but as a list of all your Azure user
groups and Microsoft user groups,
I think there's a similar and for AWS as
well. And then kind of
vocal communities and different
things. We are in the process of trying
to build a map of all the
major technical communities, but
it's still in development. So yeah, it'd
be interesting to see. But
yeah, Meetup is predominantly
the place to go. Or maybe just ask
internally. I think a lot of
people, I know we talk about
community Meetups, but a lot of people
forget about their own
internal Meetups. If you work
for a massive organization, I mean, we
have different community
things at Microsoft. So
there is so many local communities,
sorry, internal communities at work. So
try and check out those as
well. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I've just
glanced at the clock and we
are rapidly, rapidly running out
of time. So for all those folks that have
been listening to this
whilst they're at the gym,
or they're driving or mowing the lawn or
whatever it is they might be
doing, what would be the key
takeaway, Ethan, that you'd like people
to remember from our chat
together? So the first one is,
please just attend a, you know, attend a
community event. That's it.
Whether you go once, it's not
for you. Whether you keep going, if
there's one key takeaway, find
an evening in a year and just
attend one. Find your local event and go
to it and see what you
think. And I think, you know,
the kind of opportunities after that will
go on from where it is.
The second side is help an
organizer out. So if you do want to get
involved, whether that's
speaking or helping organize or
promoting or mentioning internally, and
you know, you work to drive
more of your colleagues to come
out. That's, you know, second key point.
I'll say that's about it, to
be honest, just attend. And if
you can get involved, great. If not,
just, you know, really enjoy attending
and keep coming back.
That's all as an organizer. That's all I
want is people to go to my
communities, love them and
hopefully keep coming back. Yeah. And I
think as I reflect, my key
takeaways will be, you know,
from a really selfish perspective, a
really, you know, what's in it for me
perspective, they are a
great place to learn. They are a great
place to build
relationships that can help your career.
They're a great place to develop your
skills. So, you know, they're
all really good from a selfish
perspective. But then also, it's a great
place to give back and help
and give, you know, the next
generation or other people that are
developing their career and, and give
them back as well. So I,
I think a great place and credit to you
and, and all the teams of
volunteers out there that are,
are running these things. So great job.
Just find it, if people have
liked what you've been saying
and want to get in touch with you, where
can people get in touch
with you, Ethan? Yeah, sure.
So LinkedIn is probably the best place.
You can also check out my
website. There's an email on
there as well, but you're more likely to
get a response from, from
me on LinkedIn. You can send
me a message on Meetup, but the API is
bits products. So sometimes it comes
through, sometimes it
doesn't. So, okay. So Ethan Sumner, and
I'll put the link in the show notes so
that people can find
your LinkedIn profile to make sure that
they are getting the right
people, the right person,
the right person. So I guess the final
thing for me is to say thank you so much,
Ethan. It has been brilliant to have you
with us talking about all
things, things community.
So thank you very much. Yeah, thanks very
much. Great for having
you. Thank you for letting me
come on.
